January 24, 2024 • 44 mins
Mia and James attempt to evaluate the common claim by post-Occupy political parties that they were the only ones serious about taking power by looking at the records of nine such parties. They fare poorly.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Alson media elections. No, we're not talking about those elections.
This is it could happen here. We're talking about a
bunch of other elections and how fucking terribly they went.
I'm your host, Miya along with these James.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Stout Hi Mayah, I'm stoked. I do love a good election.
It's great to vote for people.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
We are kind of talking about elections today, but the
thing that we're actually talking about is what has happened
to the left since twenty eleven. And anyone who was
around eleven, twenty thirteen, and like any time after that,
one of the arguments you got constantly was okay, so
twenty eleven, you have occupy, you have the movement to
(00:44):
the squares, You have these mass millions of people like
assembling in squares and trying to do direct democratic stuff
and you know, figuring it out and making it work,
and it not working, and you know all the complicated
and messy things that happen when you have real political movements.
And that the entire time, there was an entire chorus
of dipshits whose only line was, well, if you want
(01:06):
to get serious about taking power, you have to get
into electoral politics and these people got their wish, and
now we are, like almost a decade and a half out.
I think, I think we are finally in a position
to objectively analyze how well this shit went. And oh boy,
so join us as we wander from disaster to apocl
(01:29):
disaster and go over the wreckage of all of these very,
very once promising and inspiring social movements. Joy, I'm so excited.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I'm so excited to hear yet another attempt at making
the world better than in fact failed.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah. So okay, there's actually two places we could start here,
so I'm gonna let you pick. Do you want to
start with SARS or do you want to start with Podemos.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Let's start with Podemos. I do. I do enjoy a
good Spain. I'd been reading about the another round of
xums today, so I do love a country that has
banked into its constitution amnesty for people who did fucking
mass it likex Splain has more mass graves in anywhere
apart from is it Rwanda or Caia Cambodia. Cambodia is
(02:14):
if the only person I think that beat Spain from
Spain for mass graves. Yeah, a country which I cannot
say enough has not finished its civil war and remains
a post dictatorship and will until it recovers. Allows people
whose fucking parents and grandparents were murdered in the street
to recover their remains and grief for them. Sorry, I
(02:38):
thank you for me to my ted.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
No, no, this is good. Well, and I mean, and part
of the context of this whole thing is that this
is one of the underlying things that causes the enormous
uprisings in Spain twenty eleven. They have one of the
biggest I mean actually literally one of the reasons Occupy
happens is that there are specific people who are in
like actually we fucked up with to Vicky Arsiwell on
(03:00):
the show about this, Like she was in Catalonia when
this stuff started. There's there's like a million like there
were individual squares where there are like a million people.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Yeah, I was in Catilinia when this stuff started.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah, and like, and that's one of the things that
brought that brings Occupied to the US is people who
were there for that being in the US and like
being in Chiconti Park when Occupied started, and so you know,
they have they have one of the largest and most
powerful like antisterity movements like anywhere in the world, is
very well organized. But one of the things that happens
in this is very quickly there's an attempt to hijack
(03:34):
this because people see the number of people who are
in the streets. They see they see this as an
opportunity to you know, take electoral power. Right, this is
the whole lines like we're we're serious about taking power,
blah blah blah blah blah. And Podemos in particular, is
influenced by like some of the people on earth who
I hate the most. They're they're they're influenced by like
(03:59):
like they deliberate. They called themselves post Marxists, like left
populist philosophers. Their their model is Perhnism. It is a
shit show. It is a catastrophe. Like every single party
who's ever tried their strategy of taking power has failed,
Like left populism as an elect as specifically, like this
kind of left populaism at a strategy has a worse
(04:21):
record for taking power in Europe. Then left wing military
cups like.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
It's that bad to be fair. Left wing mandatary rarely
succeed at the ballot box.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
They use means they're they're they're a more effective way
of getting into power than this this fucking left electoralism shit.
So for people who don't really remember, Potamos was like
the like them and SARSI were like the thing in
like like post sort of like post occupier like and
in that moment of like, these are the like the
big like left like electoral successes, these are the things
(04:53):
they're gonna gonna take power po Damos specifically, So the
the thing Podamos calls itself like their whole strategy is
to build old what they called the electoral war machine.
Their entire strategy is just to win elections.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
That's the whole thing. They're gonna pull together a bunch
of leftist groups, They're going to win elections. Did they
ever win a single election? No? Zero, The entire type
it has been says the formation of Footabos. It has
been what like thirteen years. They have lost every single
election in a row.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
They were in the they were in the Sanchez coalition
government with the facility.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah, well so this is this is the other interesting
thing is that put the thing that Potamos is like
thing right originally was well they had this whole sort
of One of the things that was very popular in
their early twenty tens was this whole like, oh, we'll
have a political party, but it'll like take like it'll
it'll take its policy from these direct democratic assemblies. Those
(05:49):
assemblies have ever material that was all lie. Yet anytime
someone tells you that their political party is going to
take its direction from like assemblies in the street, they're
lying to you. They're trying to get you out of
the street. Don't believe them. So that that was all.
But the other big thing about about Potamos was that
they were supposed to be like the big like third
force in in Spanish politics, right, they were gonna be
like the new force that was going to come in.
(06:09):
They were going to wipe away all the crup politicians
and they specifically their big thing was that they refuse
to answer coalition governments. Now for long fast forward to
losing like six straight elections, and now what is Potamos
podemos is the permanent minority government coalition partner with the
Spanish Socialist Party. And before you get excited about the
(06:29):
Spanish Socialist Party like they suck, like they.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Are base shit, I will always stand anyone who digs
up Franco's rotting corps and flies it across the country.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
That's those written. But they're also like that so much
like they they're they're they're they're also I mean, they've
they've kind of been forced to go a bit to
the left, like by Podemos and like by the sort
of transformations that happen. But they're also just like a
bunch of dealerble shits, Like they're like, literally, this is
one of the parties that Potamos was formed to run
out of power, and now they're just you know, they're
just a permanent like minority collige and governments. Pablo and Glacios,
(07:05):
who was put Amos as like great political strategies, he
was like, he was like their guy. He was the
guy he wore cool leather jackets and ship like. He
was the guy who was like in every.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Day any way you say a politician and left the
jacket you fucking run, Yeah, you run a mile and
he dad's trying to look cool energy.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
He he has retired from politics. It just abject failure
because nothing ever fucking worked. One of the one of
one of the big things that you know, one of
the big recent things that Potamos did was help the
Socialist Party crush the massive wave of metalworkers strikes that
swept Spain in twenty eleven and in twenty twenty one.
So great stuff happening there. Like they're you know, they're
not literally fascists, and that's that's their selling point. Uh.
(07:47):
They they fucking lose every election and they yeah, ran, ran,
ran the social movements into the ground.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah, it's a They literally had a thing, didn't they, Like, Yeah,
they're there men. Their initial manifesto was like to convert
indignation into political change, and like the movement that began
the occupation of the squares in Spain was called the
Indignatzo indignaos in Catalando Spanish. Like the whole thing was
like two channel this energy into a process which is
(08:13):
literally designed to stop shit changing.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah, and you know, guess what, it didn't fucking change.
They lost every election. They've never want an election, They're
never going to win an election.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah, remain in the street to my Spanish friends and
Catalan friends and Basque friends and Galician friends and other
friends in Iberia.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Yeah, so all right, moving on to so you know,
we talked about how Spain had one of the biggest
movement of the squares type things. Greece, I think technically
gets the honor of having the first post two thousand
and eight uprising, which was actually not an economic thing.
It was the cops like murdered a fucking kid and
people just lit shit on fire like it was. It
(08:55):
was fucking wild. It was. There's a quarter about like
those first protests that I always I was thinking about
in like the height of twenty twenty when I was
watching that guy in the elbow mask with a molotov like,
which is you know that those first protests, it was
like people, it wasn't It wasn't that people were trying.
People weren't trying to build a political movement. They just
(09:16):
wanted destruction because.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, yeah, they were angry and they wanted to ben
sh it.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Down, abject abject fury at the cops just murdering this child,
and partially also they murdered this kid like in in Xarchia,
which is like Greece's anarchist like neighborhood. So yeah, terrible
idea by the police. Terrible thing. Greece has repeated massive protests.
One of the reasons they're having these protests is that
Greece is forced to accept these like crippling austerity measures
(09:45):
by the Troika, which is this group that was running
the bailouts in Europe, composed of the International Monetary Fund,
the European Central Bank, and the European Commission, which is
basically the executive branch of the European Union with reps
from all of the EU countries. And the product of
this is that the only faction that ever actually mattered
in the Troika was just Germany. Effectively, what was happening
(10:05):
with Germany was imposing like a bunch of economic sanctions on.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, this is when like the European Union became like
what Germany says, we do especially got to this stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
In the context of these massive protests, Greece elects Soresa,
which is supposedly this left wing party that is going
to you know, the specifically the mandate they were handed
was stop the austerity, and literally they are in negotiation
with the Troika. They have a plan in hand to
tell the Troika to fuck off and for Greece to
(10:39):
leave the European Union, to set up capital controls to start,
like you know, this is a process that would have
like the only way this could have functioned is they start,
you know, they start literally like seizing property from like
a bunch of fucking yacht owners. And instead of doing
that literally at the last second, with the plan in
hand at the negotiating table, Soresa folds. Instead they cut
(11:01):
a deal with the Troika. They imposed literally the exact
same austerity measures they are put in power to stop.
And then you know, now now having done this, they're
now facing their own giant anti sterarity protests. And the
thing that Theresa does is ally with the riot police. You,
by the way, one of the things, one of the
ways this reason got people to support them was specifically
(11:23):
by running on basically completely rebuilding the Greek police force,
because Greece's police force, oh yeah, fuck me, just straight
up a bunch of Nazis. And when I say that,
I literally they vote. I think it's ninety seven percent
of their members voted for the Golden Dawn, which is
like the Greek neo Nazi Party. Yeah, and like so
(11:44):
many of these people vote for the Golden Down that
they can be considered like a significant part of the
total of the Golden Don's base.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, I'm perhaps more importantly of its like street fighting
element that yeah that kills anti fascists, right.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Those guys like the Golden Dawn eventually comes apart because
they they ordered the assassination of an anti fascist rapper
from parliament and then had the guy killed. Yeah, yeah,
just fucking batch it. And those are the people who
the Greek police are supporting. But Sarge Sarsa needs them
because they need the police to smash the anti serity
movements to stop people from like knocking off their governments
(12:20):
and stopping the austerity. And they do it. It works Eventually,
after years and years and years and years of just
smashing these like smashing these protests with police, they're able
to you know, they're they're they're able to stamp out
the sort of the giant social movements. And the consequence
of this is that they turn over Greece to just
like a bunch of murderously far right, anti immigrant shitheads.
(12:43):
Who are the people who currently run Greece. They're unbelievable,
like just unbelievably right wing. These guys are so right
wing they were trying to find ways to claim credit
for getting it, like getting those like several hundred people
on that migrant ship earlier this year killed Like, yeah,
that's who currently runs Greece, and that's Shoe. The reason
like turned power over to because they literally did nothing,
(13:05):
it destroyed their own base.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yeah, it's probably worth like stopping to note here that
like fearmongering around migrants has been the thing that has
moved like straight up fascists into power in much of
southern Europe, right, like Italy and Greece, And like, even
if you're not a person who lives at the border,
like this ship is absolutely like the playbook that the
(13:28):
fire right is using all over the world, absolutely using
here right now, and we have an election. You're here,
and like you owe it to the world to correct
that bullshit differ information whenever you can. Now that we're
talking about Greece, can we just briefly mention the Archer
of Syntagma, the biggest chad ever to walk the earth? Yeah, sorry,
I can't do it. I got you an episode without
(13:49):
this guy. If you are not familiar with Yannis Mikladis,
this absolutely legend dude who took a bow and arrow
to the protests given a third Tia said, and then
escape from prison I think was recaptured and then it
went on hunger straight for a while. Just just a
series of experts that they're truly legendary.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
H incredible. They replace this with fucking just being another
party that imposed Austeria. Yeah, like, no, no one's replaced
that guy. He's still he's still remain but as as
as they replaced the political movement that produced this guy
with like just just genuinely the greatest glowdown in human history.
(14:36):
Just terrible stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yeah, it's it's very sad. It could have been a
wonderful thing. There are still like Greece has still are
very strong and and and uh like a respectable anarchist movement.
I'm trying to get over there to they squat large
areas of housing for migrants to like allow microslip in it.
And it's extremely based and I'm trying to get spend
some time.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
I forgot to mention this. So they also do this
in Spain, and so I find about this on the
show before, but I actually mentioned it here since we're
doing this. So want of pudimos is like regional allies
as Barcelona and Camu. First thing that Barcelona and Camu
did upon taking power was a victim immigrant squad because
they knew it wouldn't have enough defenses to stop the
police and victim. So fuck these people. Those people used
(15:15):
to be anarchists, they're traders. Fuck them.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah, and this happens constantly, right like the Senate entered
into government in nineteen thirty six with the Spanish Socialist
Party and getting and got completely owned by Moscow and
extremely predictable fashion, and all their friends got in some
cases literally flayed alive. Perhaps consider not doing that next time.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah, So, speaking of being played alive, do you know
do you know who else will flay you alive? You
don't buy their buy their stuff?
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Is it their products and services? I support this podcast again,
isn't it? They're fucking they're all over that shit. We
can't say that? Can we just bleep it me in?
All right?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
We're back, So all right, we need to talk about
two other places where this kind of stuff happened. We're
leaving Europe, We're gonna go We're gonna go to briefly,
we're going to go to the Anglophone world. No, a
deeply cursed place. So in the US, all of these
same people gained power their giant political project, and their
(16:20):
only real political project was attempting to elect Bernie Sanders.
Bernie Sanders lost two consecutive elections, first to Hillary Clinton,
the most unpopular Democratic presidential candidate in modern history, and
then lost a second election to Joe Biden de manso.
See now he forgot what president he served as VP under.
And I'm only mentioning this because these are these are
the people who spend all of their time talking about
(16:41):
how serious they are about taking power, and they got
their rass kicked by again Hillary Clinton, the most unpopular
candidate in the entire history, like the Bordern history of
the Democratic Party, and Joe fucking bited a man like
I just okay. And instead the one guy they did
run and managed actually like get into power was one
(17:03):
John Fetterman.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Oh yeah, yeah, Look he's had some banging tweets, but
he's been a complete fucking turd in his time in office.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
I'm pissed about this because from the very beginning I
was like, this guy sucks ass. He's a Zionists, he's
anti immigrants, he fucking sees.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Anti trousers, he opposes said anything below.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
The knee, and no one fucking believed me this. His
campaign was run by a bunch of fucking DSA people,
and instead they elected John fucking Fetterman, who hates everyone
who fucking worked with him, is just screaming like the
same fascist anti immigrant borders.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
He's also in the pocket of big egg. He's made
he's introduced a bill to not allow people to go
vegan ex substitutes egg.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
But he's not even in like the pocket of like
good big egg. Like he's not in the pocket of
like big people who haven't realized that they're trans yet. No. No,
he's in the pocket of bad big egg.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
I think that's an act of solidarity. Like as a
as a man with a giant bull dome, he somewhat
resembles an egg, so he feels like communion with other eggs.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
I think that's what he says. Yeah, so okay, that
that's the US. At some point, we're gonna do another
episode about the all of the just fucking absolute dipshits
that they elected in the DSA elected in LA who've
been doing like just sweeping homeless camps. So fuck them.
But that's not that's not today. We're we're a Segnna
move to Corbin. So all right, so the British last
(18:26):
in the beginning of and I know it's this is
like impossible to imagine now, but in the beginning of
the twenty tens, the Britain had a vibrant and expanding left.
It had a bunch of straight movements. They had the
student protests, they had a bunch of riots, and all
of that energy and all of those fucking people, you know,
got got sucked up by Corbinism, and Corbin lost an
election to Boris fucking Johnson, a man who was ousted
(18:50):
by his own party and replaced by Liz shorter term
than a cabbage trust, like you know, and all of
these people, all these people I've I've had to talk
to these people for fucking years and years and years, right,
and their whole thing was like, well, okay, like, but
the media riad the election against us, and the Labor
Party was trying to stab just like, yeah, no, shit,
what the what the fuck did you expect was going
(19:11):
to happen? Did you seriously think if you even like
just wreck remotely wanted to challenge capital at all? Did
you seriously expect that the poorgeoisie were gonna play by
the rules. What the fuck did you think was gonna happen?
Did you think they were just gonna fucking sit there
and let you take power because your ideas were somewhat popular, Like, no,
of course they fucking were. Of course they were going
to sabotaut you. And the whole fucking thing about the media,
(19:32):
it's like, well, yeah, of course, you know, like, yeah,
obviously the media in Britain is run by the fucking Burdox.
Their press is unbelievably insanely right wing. Sure, however, come
you guys are the ones who decided to pick an
arena where your candidate and your entire political project can
be sunk by negative press attention. You picked that arena
to fight, and then on top of that, you ran
(19:54):
a completely conventional political campaign. Right, Literally, all you did
was fucking campus. You ran a completely conventional political campaign
that everyone's fucking Pikachu facing that they had like one
of the worst labor losses in modern history, right, Like Okay,
what what the fuck did you think was going to happen? Right? Then?
This this is again, this is one of the reasons
why electorialism doesn't work, because if you're in a field
(20:15):
that is entirely about the popularity of one person, and
there's an entire apparatus that is able, that is better
able than you to directly communicate to the entire population
to tell them that that one person is fucking bad.
Of course you're gonna fucking lose, Like what did you
think was going to happen? And now you know the
Labor Party is run by Cure Starmer, who is like
(20:36):
the most right wing labor candidate since, like Tony Blair.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
He prosecuted the people who were in the streets in
twenty ten. Right, Like that is where we've got to now.
It's like we have a choice between like Ricci like
send gunboats into the channel to smink sink the small
ship Sunak and the guy who wants to look you
up for taking a bottle of water from boots in
twenty ten.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
It's yeah, it's not a choice. And that's and like
the corporate left has been basically completely liquidated. The only
thing that's left if you know, these media organizations who
are all attacking right as fast as they can possibly
fucking move, because that's what the fucking money is. Because
you know, Stormary actually used to be a trusky eye
and all of these people know that the way you actually,
if if you were on the left and you want
to take electoral power in Britain, the way you do
it has become a conservative and it will work.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Yeah yeah, I mean look, look look at Tony Blair, right,
he was extremely successful in like criminalizing being a teenager
and these insanely right wing policies. Again, people aren't familiar
with anti social behavior orders in Britain. They should, they
should look them up. And oh my god, machines that
make noise to keep young people out of public space,
like to fully yeah, like the ship he was doing
(21:44):
was insane, and uh if people continue to well, look
Britain's electoral system and you think America's electoral system as fucked,
check out first past the post, like fully insane. One
of the areas I lived when I was a kid,
like you just didn't have an option. There was some
like someone named Giles or a similar kind of like
Giles vibing name, or a token Lib DEM candidate and like,
(22:08):
you know, mom, but Juke was your only choice really,
like like, which is why I did not engage in
the practice of voting in the United Kingdom. But yeah,
it is a funck system.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Yeah, and again it's like, well, yeah, you chose a
rigged system to participate in in the first place. And
then it's like, well you lost. Well yeah, it was like, yes,
you can complain that it was rigged against you, but
you should have known that going in. If you were
genuinely serious about taking power, you had to know that,
and you fucking didn't, and now your entire country has
been absolutely destroyed. So yeah, that's the UK and we're
(22:41):
going down. And so from there we're going to pivot
to Latin America, where there is a very very long history.
In fact, a lot of the Latin America parties we'll
be talking about mostly aren't even parties that took over
from the momentum of twenty eleven like uprisings. They're from
like the two thousand and one movement, some people who
hijacked like two generations back of social movements by this point.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
And I think that the post twenty eleven stuff was
inspired by the pink wave stuff in Latin America, right,
Like it goes around in the circle.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Yeah, So so now we're gonna check in on how
the pink tide's doing. The answer is absolutely dog shit.
So we're gonna go to Ecuador first. So okay, Ecuador
is right now a complete fucking disaster. It shouldn't be
like this though. In theory, Korea is like the is
the guy, and he's like the leftist guy. In Ecuador,
he's like, he is there, guy, you came out of
(23:30):
the pink tide. And in theory, his party should win
like basically every Ecuadorian election from now to the end
of time. They should, in theory have the easiest job
of like every every any electoralers you're talking about in
this party they have had. They had a decade in
power to just completely destroy all of their political oppositions
and you know, to completely rebuild the economy and political
(23:52):
land shape in a way that would have made the
right taking power impossible. Instead, his party is completely unelect
and have an out of power for eight fucking years.
After Lennon Moreno, who is the guy that they literally
the hand picked guy that they picked to run their
own party, purged them all, tried to have Correa arrested,
and spent the entire rest of his career being a
(24:14):
right winger. Now, even after even after they got purged
for their own party, by the guy that they hand
picked to put into power decks after they would turned
out to be a right winger. Even after that happened,
they still should have been able to win like every
fucking election. However, Comma Correa, instead of like doing normal
leftist stuff, spent like his entire career sending riot police
(24:36):
to beat the shit out of the digitus eychological protesters
who didn't want them drinking water to be poisoned by minds,
which means there were a huge number of like indigenous
leftists who should be part of like the left wing base,
who Wilma under any circumstances vote for Korea even if
he was running against literally the devil, because he fucking
beat the shit out of them, like fuck you, and
(24:59):
you know, and when I should briefly explain like, okay,
this is this is obviously a very very simplified this
is yes, a political I mean, I'm going to do
a political compass thing that's very simplified, but I think
gets across one of the major kind of like breaks
(25:19):
in a lot of Latin American countries that have real
lefts and also whose economies are largely based on resource extraction,
which is that okay. So you know, you have you
have your kind of political compass like you would in
the US, you have a let you have a left
right axis. But in a lot of these countries, the
updown acxis isn't like statist anti status. The updown access
is on the one hand you have like developmental extractivists
(25:42):
and on the other hand you have ecological anti extractivists.
So what this means in practice is there's this giant
divide over whether or not you should do drilling on
indigenous land. So, for example, you have the current right
wing Ecadorian government which is extractivist in right wing, and
this means they think you should drill on indigenous land
(26:03):
and you should take all of the money you get
from that and give it the rich people. There is
you know, Korea's government was extractivist and left wing, which
means that you know, you do you do all the
mining on indigenous land, but then you take the money
and you give it to a welfare state. And then
opposed to him was a bunch of anti extractivists, indigenous
ecological groups who want redistribution, but they don't want like
(26:26):
they don't want people poisoning their water with mines, so
they oppost Korea because they don't want their shit. Mind.
And then there's also Kris alsopposed by these like liberal
environmental NGOs who like don't want the Amazon destroyed, but
also like poor people can go fuck themselves. And this
this has made the way the consolation of these things
(26:49):
have worked out, means that like what should be like
a pretty normal left right political alignment thing has gone
completely nuts. There's a bunch of like there's a bunch
of sort of like econological indigenous groups who have on
who have like swung right because the right wingers are
the only people who will support them against Korea. Meanwhile,
the actual like indigenous electoral opposition in his various forms
(27:09):
is a complete fucking disaster, Patrick Cutik, which is like
the this is the like the big sort of like
indigenous electoral alliance. They keep running this guy named yaku Perez,
who is like he's like the only person in the
entirety of Ecuador who's more unelectable than Korea. Is like
nobody fucking even even the addigenous opposition to Korea like
(27:30):
doesn't like him. So and and you know, eventually Jakuperez
like left the party, but it doesn't really matter because
they still just lose every single election. The the left
just there's completely dysfunctional. And you know, there's there's other
like things going on here. Two, which is that like,
for example, Korea is like has an unbelievably hardline anti
(27:51):
abortion stance, Like he he threatened to resign if his
party tried to pass legislation that would allow abortion in
the case of rape like that. So anti abortion, this guy.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Is fucking that's bad.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
This is like, like, okay, yes, this is this is
this is a very very Catholic country. Right even by
that standards, that's fucking nuts, Like.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yeah, that's christ Oh yeah, that's that's rough.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
You know. So the product of this is that a
a country that has a like a decently centered left
electoral like electorate in theory, has produced three straight conservative governments. Uh.
These governments have absolutely annihilated the Ecuadorian economy and the
welfare state and left it prey to like to organize crime.
Who you know, Unlike the just completely dysfunctional Electorian state
(28:37):
can at least provide like a semi stable income. But
the downside of this is that they're organized crime. So
you know not things going very badly. You've probably seen
some of the like absolutely wild videos of stuff of
like people storming, like like armed groups just like storming
like TV stations, they assassinate, they'vessassinated actually several presidential candidates.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Now, yeah, that was it's been there on a wild one.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Yeah, it's really bad.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
On Christmas Eve, if I was talking to a family
from Ecuador who's had gone to the US to get
some medical treatment for the son who very manifestly needed help,
and they were telling me like just of their life
experiences and.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Like it was bad.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
It was like I've been to some places where violence
it happens, and like the stuff that they were telling
me was was shocking.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
It's gotten really really bad since basically between twenty fifteen
and twenty seventeen, and it's just progressively gotten worse. As
he's writing, governments have stayed in power, and you know,
right now, right now, there hasn't been an alternative to
them because the electoralists tour again, the people who are
supposed to be serious about taking power are just a
(29:51):
complete fucking disaster and can't do anything.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Yeah, career can't literally can't go back to Ecuador. Now right,
I think he might.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
I think you can go back. Now. There was a
while where there was a warn out for his arrest.
I think he's back now. Okay, Yeah, but the ray
of light for ecuadors. The Ecuador still has a lot
of very like of very militant street movements who have
been winning, have actually been like winning concessions from governments
when they go when they go into the streets. So
(30:22):
that's good. In Shilah, one day the electoralis get the
fuck out of their way and they win. But hasn't
happened yet. Things are really bleak. On that note. Do
you know what's not really bleak?
Speaker 2 (30:35):
The possibility of buying gold coins. Yeah, to insulate ourselves
against inflation. Yep, you'd be stoked if you had a
ton of gold, neck kudo, wouldn't you? Currency has gone
to shit. Sitting on your pile of gold like Scrooge mcdug,
you'd be you'd be living the dream.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
All right, And we're back. So all right, we're gonna
take a couple of other take a few other places
that the electoral left has won in uh Chavismo is
dead as a door nail. Maduro's slashing pensions, all rising
the economies, cutting a bunch of deals with American oil companies,
and has arrested leadership the Venezuelan Communist Party again keeps
(31:25):
doing this. So, you know, things things going great, like
obviously not helped by the blockade, which is very bad,
but like, you know, not great Marina, which we're not
going to talk an enormous At some point we're gonna
like actually do a thing like actually go talk to
the Zapatistas. But things are not good there right now.
(31:49):
So the left in theory kind of has taken power
in Mexico. Unfortunately, the moment they took power, they immediately
tacked right, handed control of vast swaths of the country
over to the military, built a train through a bunch
of indigenous land and then gave that to the military.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Yeah, switched a bunch of military commands around because they
like claimed that the old guys were corrupt.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Yeah, And you know, and one of the other things
that's been really bleak about it was that, like the
whole premise of Omlo like coming into power was like
he ran in the campaign hugs not bullets, right. His
whole thing was he was supposed to be ending the
war on drugs. Did he end the war on drugs?
Absolutely not, power to the military. People still getting fucking slaughtered.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah, I don't know. I definitely saw a bunch of
dudes in ski mask with a fifty cow chilling just
the other side of the border, yeah, by the government
two days.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Ago, and and and and instead of doing that, he's
also been like continuing the like escalating the war against
the Zapatistas who have been getting just like people getting
fucking murdered by a bunch of these government backed Proya militaries.
It's really fucking bleak out there right now. Yeah, So
that that that's been that's in the legacy of OMLO
(33:01):
finally winning a Mexican election is the most right wing
possible Omlow governments. Like I will say, they're better on
trand stuff than everyone, like the other parties who were
all completely nuts. But that's about the only bright spot.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yeah. I mean, like they were in bilateral negotiations with
the US, and like when the US clicked his fingers
and said shut down these gaps in the border, they
sent a bunch of National Guards soul just to sit
right at the gap in the border.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
War they've been they've been doing a bunch of just
like horrific anti border shit. AMLA was also just like
pretty friendly with Trump, which.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah, there was a populist thing there.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Yeah, so that fucking sucks. And so we're going to
close on the maas Oh boy. So there's been a
bunch of stuff happening in Bolivia that I don't I
don't think most Americans have heard much about. So the
(33:58):
Maasment movement for socialism, there's some other shit, but yeah,
uh they are well, okay, So for most of the
time they've existed, it's been even Moralesis party. However, COMMA
it was always kind of a weird coalition because the
mes is this coalition between like the social movements, and
(34:20):
in this context, like people say social movements, this includes
like you know, like giant like movement groups, but also
like unions and stuff. So it was a coalition of
these unions and these like developmentalist capitalists who are well
together by even morallies and some of his allies, and
you know, the sort of common ground of forging a
like quote unquote indigenous Florid national state that's based on
(34:44):
like based on forging a welfare state based on like
mining and extractive stuff and like oil drilling and stuff,
and also based on the emersions of this new sort
of indigenous middle class. Right now it has split in
two between an Evil Morales faction and who was the
foreign president, was president for a very very long time,
(35:05):
and Luis ocre who was the who is the current
president of Oblivia, but has been kicked out of the
MS by EVO and his faction. So this is a disaster.
They both of them, both Okre and Evil Morales, have
these they have a lot of personal alliances within the
social movements, and this means it's been a very very
(35:25):
messy split. And you know, this is not okay. If
you look at these two people, you would expect it
to be an ideological split because Acres from like the
developmentalist right of the party. Like he was he was
a banker, he's been in charge of the Bolivion Central
Bank for a long time. He was like finance minister,
so he's from like the center right, like developmentalist faction
(35:48):
of the party. Evo technically speaking, has been the representative
of like the the sort of like the social movement
faction of the party. He has a lot of allies
in a lot of Coca Growers' Union stuff like that.
But it hasn't broken like that because this isn't an
ideological fight. This is just these two guys both want
to be presidents and so they've they've literally torn the
(36:11):
entire Bolivion left in two over over this fucking bullshit.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Yeah, never before happened on the left. Two dudes wanting
to be in charge.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, and this is this has been really really messy,
and it's not breaking down the way. It's not breaking
cleanly politically down because there's a lot of like people
from the anti extractivist left of the party who are
pissed off of the way that EVO has like personally
tried to seize control of what are supposed to be
independent social movements. And I know people hear that and
are like, wait, what's what's the problem with like social
(36:41):
movements being integrated with the state, Because like we don't
the US doesn't have social movements, like not not in
the way that like that Latin America has them. Like
BLM is the closest thing that we have to that.
But imagine if like BLM was like an actual leftist group,
like the actual like or organization Black lives Matter, Yeah,
(37:01):
like capital Western Yeah, yeah, it was like it was
like it was like a leftist group that would like
lead protests and strikes and ship like we don't we
don't have that. That's like not a thing here. And
so mostly when when people hear about the stuff, they're like, wait,
what what does that mean? Like why why are we
complaining that the like these that social movements are being
like folded into the state or like folded into this
bureaucratic apparatus. So I'm gonna run through an example of
(37:23):
what that looks like in practice. So we're gonna we're
gonna talk about the could briefly talk about the Confederation
of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
So yeah, based, yeah, so we follow flag.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
I didn't have anything in there on it. It is
very funny, given given what we're about to talk about.
It is very funny that all of the pro m
As people in in in the US had that as
their flag, as like, they had that flag as their
profile picture when this coup was going on.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
It's one of the cool oft flags out there.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
It rips, it does rip. So so back in twenty eleven,
this is like this is like eight years before the coup,
the Confederation of Indigenous People of Bolivia opposed building this
road through protected indigenous territory that the government was trying
to force through. So they opposed it. Their opposition didn't
do anything. They you know, they joined in this enormous
protest movement against this road construction, even when his supporters
(38:17):
had the Confederation's offices stormed by riot police and tried
to replace his leadership with loyalists. This failed initially, and
the you know, so the the Confederation of Indigenous People's
Oblivia had been part of the like of the mas's
like formal alliance, right, and after that they were like
fuck you man, we're out. Uh. They left, and then
(38:37):
the confederation split between the groups who were pro evil
and everyone else. So another faction of the confederation split
from the regular confederation and went back and joined and
calling themselves the same thing, and went back and joined
the MAAS again. So like this is a shit show, right,
and a lot of it is like you know, it's
it's it's it's comes down to these sort of like
loyalty testings, like are you willing to back every single
(38:59):
thing that EVO wants to do? And if you're not
like they're going they're faction. And this is the thing
that like this happens in the fucking DSA all the time, right,
Like everyone in the DSA is constantly trying to purge
every other faction to install their loyalists like in charge
of whatever fucking working group. Right. But you know this
is happening in a place where the left actually has power,
which means that instead of like you know a series
(39:21):
of weird elections and like purging people from positions, you're
storming their offices riot police. Yeah, this is why a
lot of sort of groups so you would expect to
be backing evil Art and are backing Okray instead. But really, truly,
this is just two guys having a dick waving contest.
By this is what happens when you do electoralism. Yeah,
(39:44):
but you know it's also worth mentioning the reason we're
in this situation in the first place is that Evo
refused to just like in twenty nineteen, refuse to just
let someone else in his party run. Like if literally
anyone else had run, the MAAS would have just trivially
easily won the election. There wouldn't have been coup. It
wouldn't even been the potential to do one, but he
refused because he wants to personally be in power. And
(40:06):
this is what allows the twenty nineteen coup to happen.
And the second, the second reason that we're here now
is that in twenty twenty one, and I don't think
I don't think most American left just like know about this.
I think people know about the coup. I don't think
people know about the stuff that happened in twenty twenty one,
which is that there was this massive series of there
was this massive series of like barricades that went up
to bring down the coup government. So this is the
(40:28):
thing that happens periodically in Bolivia. This is like, this
is how the social movements took power in the first place.
Is that they, you know, Blivia because of the way
the terrain works, very very mountainous country, very narrow roads,
not many roads into a place. You could just block
all of the roads that go into the capitol, and
you can you can shut down the entire country's economy
by just doing these roadblocks. They very nearly this is
(40:49):
actually like again the origin of the NIS is that
they very nearly like completely destroyed the believing government with
this in two thousand and six, and then Evo pulled
his people off the barricades and was like, no, we're
gonna do an election, and he easily wins the election
because he's you know, he's doing the things we've been
talking about this whole episode, which is harnessing the power
of the social movements in order to get elected. And
it works, like he becomes president, but and she doesn't.
(41:12):
You know, in twenty twenty one, it happens again, and
these groups are getting very close. They've they've they've done
enough damage that they forced the coup government to like
actually have elections, which they didn't want to have. But
they're on the verge of like actually knocking the government
out of power. And Evo once again pulls all of
his people off the barricades because he doesn't want the
(41:33):
barricades to like disrupt his chance of winning the election.
And so instead of like bringing down this government and
like ushering in like sweeping like leffering reforms whatever on
like the back of a revolutionary seizure of power, we
have the mas split between two dipshits, and yeah, these
(41:54):
are these are very very serious about taking power You
can tell this because they've split the party over personal bullshit.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Yeah every time, right, Like leaderism is the curse of
the left, and it Yeah, it stops us doing things
because it's always just dude to chest something at each other. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
And and this is the second part about it, is
that this is this is a product of leaving the streets.
And we're going to close on Chile. We did a
very optimistic episode in the protests in Chile a couple
of years ago because it looked like they were actually winning.
That's not true anymore. After the whole Okay, so Chile
and twenty nineteen has these massive, massive treat protests. They
(42:34):
successfully forced the government to call a constitutional convention to
like replace their Pinochet constitution. But that got everyone off
the streets. And because it got everyone off the streets,
both successive attempts to have a constitution have failed. It's
deeply unclear what the fox had happened with the constitution.
It's possible they're gonna end up with a constitution that
is even more right wing than the current one because
(42:56):
they've blown literally their momentive opportunity by pulling it went
out of the streets and now the rights resurgence. It's
a complete fiasco. Yeah, the repression of visions people has
continued undebated under the new quote unquote leftling government. So yeah,
it's it's a complete fiasco. And that that is today's lesson,
which is if anyone when when when people tell you
that they are the ones who are serious about taking
(43:18):
a wielding power and they want you to go vote
for them. We have they have failed everywhere for a decade.
Do not let them do this to you again. Don't
leave the streets. Yeah, Instead, don't leave the streets. Don't
give someone else fucking power, take it for yourself. That's that's, that's,
that's all I've got.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
Yeah, that's a good place to end, I think. Yeah,
don't uh, don't infantilize yourself by electing some Instagram brick
to make decisions for you.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, but check us out on the
iHeart You app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
You listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It
could Happen here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia, dot com, slash sources,
Thanks for listening.
Alson media elections. No, we're not talking about those elections.
This is it could happen here. We're talking about a
bunch of other elections and how fucking terribly they went.
I'm your host, Miya along with these James.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Stout Hi Mayah, I'm stoked. I do love a good election.
It's great to vote for people.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
We are kind of talking about elections today, but the
thing that we're actually talking about is what has happened
to the left since twenty eleven. And anyone who was
around eleven, twenty thirteen, and like any time after that,
one of the arguments you got constantly was okay, so
twenty eleven, you have occupy, you have the movement to
(00:44):
the squares, You have these mass millions of people like
assembling in squares and trying to do direct democratic stuff
and you know, figuring it out and making it work,
and it not working, and you know all the complicated
and messy things that happen when you have real political movements.
And that the entire time, there was an entire chorus
of dipshits whose only line was, well, if you want
(01:06):
to get serious about taking power, you have to get
into electoral politics and these people got their wish, and
now we are, like almost a decade and a half out.
I think, I think we are finally in a position
to objectively analyze how well this shit went. And oh boy,
so join us as we wander from disaster to apocl
(01:29):
disaster and go over the wreckage of all of these very,
very once promising and inspiring social movements. Joy, I'm so excited.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I'm so excited to hear yet another attempt at making
the world better than in fact failed.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah. So okay, there's actually two places we could start here,
so I'm gonna let you pick. Do you want to
start with SARS or do you want to start with Podemos.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Let's start with Podemos. I do. I do enjoy a
good Spain. I'd been reading about the another round of
xums today, so I do love a country that has
banked into its constitution amnesty for people who did fucking
mass it likex Splain has more mass graves in anywhere
apart from is it Rwanda or Caia Cambodia. Cambodia is
(02:14):
if the only person I think that beat Spain from
Spain for mass graves. Yeah, a country which I cannot
say enough has not finished its civil war and remains
a post dictatorship and will until it recovers. Allows people
whose fucking parents and grandparents were murdered in the street
to recover their remains and grief for them. Sorry, I
(02:38):
thank you for me to my ted.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
No, no, this is good. Well, and I mean, and part
of the context of this whole thing is that this
is one of the underlying things that causes the enormous
uprisings in Spain twenty eleven. They have one of the
biggest I mean actually literally one of the reasons Occupy
happens is that there are specific people who are in
like actually we fucked up with to Vicky Arsiwell on
(03:00):
the show about this, Like she was in Catalonia when
this stuff started. There's there's like a million like there
were individual squares where there are like a million people.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Yeah, I was in Catilinia when this stuff started.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah, and like, and that's one of the things that
brought that brings Occupied to the US is people who
were there for that being in the US and like
being in Chiconti Park when Occupied started, and so you know,
they have they have one of the largest and most
powerful like antisterity movements like anywhere in the world, is
very well organized. But one of the things that happens
in this is very quickly there's an attempt to hijack
(03:34):
this because people see the number of people who are
in the streets. They see they see this as an
opportunity to you know, take electoral power. Right, this is
the whole lines like we're we're serious about taking power,
blah blah blah blah blah. And Podemos in particular, is
influenced by like some of the people on earth who
I hate the most. They're they're they're influenced by like
(03:59):
like they deliberate. They called themselves post Marxists, like left
populist philosophers. Their their model is Perhnism. It is a
shit show. It is a catastrophe. Like every single party
who's ever tried their strategy of taking power has failed,
Like left populism as an elect as specifically, like this
kind of left populaism at a strategy has a worse
(04:21):
record for taking power in Europe. Then left wing military
cups like.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
It's that bad to be fair. Left wing mandatary rarely
succeed at the ballot box.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
They use means they're they're they're a more effective way
of getting into power than this this fucking left electoralism shit.
So for people who don't really remember, Potamos was like
the like them and SARSI were like the thing in
like like post sort of like post occupier like and
in that moment of like, these are the like the
big like left like electoral successes, these are the things
(04:53):
they're gonna gonna take power po Damos specifically, So the
the thing Podamos calls itself like their whole strategy is
to build old what they called the electoral war machine.
Their entire strategy is just to win elections.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
That's the whole thing. They're gonna pull together a bunch
of leftist groups, They're going to win elections. Did they
ever win a single election? No? Zero, The entire type
it has been says the formation of Footabos. It has
been what like thirteen years. They have lost every single
election in a row.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
They were in the they were in the Sanchez coalition
government with the facility.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah, well so this is this is the other interesting
thing is that put the thing that Potamos is like
thing right originally was well they had this whole sort
of One of the things that was very popular in
their early twenty tens was this whole like, oh, we'll
have a political party, but it'll like take like it'll
it'll take its policy from these direct democratic assemblies. Those
(05:49):
assemblies have ever material that was all lie. Yet anytime
someone tells you that their political party is going to
take its direction from like assemblies in the street, they're
lying to you. They're trying to get you out of
the street. Don't believe them. So that that was all.
But the other big thing about about Potamos was that
they were supposed to be like the big like third
force in in Spanish politics, right, they were gonna be
like the new force that was going to come in.
(06:09):
They were going to wipe away all the crup politicians
and they specifically their big thing was that they refuse
to answer coalition governments. Now for long fast forward to
losing like six straight elections, and now what is Potamos
podemos is the permanent minority government coalition partner with the
Spanish Socialist Party. And before you get excited about the
(06:29):
Spanish Socialist Party like they suck, like they.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Are base shit, I will always stand anyone who digs
up Franco's rotting corps and flies it across the country.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
That's those written. But they're also like that so much
like they they're they're they're they're also I mean, they've
they've kind of been forced to go a bit to
the left, like by Podemos and like by the sort
of transformations that happen. But they're also just like a
bunch of dealerble shits, Like they're like, literally, this is
one of the parties that Potamos was formed to run
out of power, and now they're just you know, they're
just a permanent like minority collige and governments. Pablo and Glacios,
(07:05):
who was put Amos as like great political strategies, he
was like, he was like their guy. He was the
guy he wore cool leather jackets and ship like. He
was the guy who was like in every.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Day any way you say a politician and left the
jacket you fucking run, Yeah, you run a mile and
he dad's trying to look cool energy.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
He he has retired from politics. It just abject failure
because nothing ever fucking worked. One of the one of
one of the big things that you know, one of
the big recent things that Potamos did was help the
Socialist Party crush the massive wave of metalworkers strikes that
swept Spain in twenty eleven and in twenty twenty one.
So great stuff happening there. Like they're you know, they're
not literally fascists, and that's that's their selling point. Uh.
(07:47):
They they fucking lose every election and they yeah, ran, ran,
ran the social movements into the ground.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah, it's a They literally had a thing, didn't they, Like, Yeah,
they're there men. Their initial manifesto was like to convert
indignation into political change, and like the movement that began
the occupation of the squares in Spain was called the
Indignatzo indignaos in Catalando Spanish. Like the whole thing was
like two channel this energy into a process which is
(08:13):
literally designed to stop shit changing.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah, and you know, guess what, it didn't fucking change.
They lost every election. They've never want an election, They're
never going to win an election.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah, remain in the street to my Spanish friends and
Catalan friends and Basque friends and Galician friends and other
friends in Iberia.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Yeah, so all right, moving on to so you know,
we talked about how Spain had one of the biggest
movement of the squares type things. Greece, I think technically
gets the honor of having the first post two thousand
and eight uprising, which was actually not an economic thing.
It was the cops like murdered a fucking kid and
people just lit shit on fire like it was. It
(08:55):
was fucking wild. It was. There's a quarter about like
those first protests that I always I was thinking about
in like the height of twenty twenty when I was
watching that guy in the elbow mask with a molotov like,
which is you know that those first protests, it was
like people, it wasn't It wasn't that people were trying.
People weren't trying to build a political movement. They just
(09:16):
wanted destruction because.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, yeah, they were angry and they wanted to ben
sh it.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Down, abject abject fury at the cops just murdering this child,
and partially also they murdered this kid like in in Xarchia,
which is like Greece's anarchist like neighborhood. So yeah, terrible
idea by the police. Terrible thing. Greece has repeated massive protests.
One of the reasons they're having these protests is that
Greece is forced to accept these like crippling austerity measures
(09:45):
by the Troika, which is this group that was running
the bailouts in Europe, composed of the International Monetary Fund,
the European Central Bank, and the European Commission, which is
basically the executive branch of the European Union with reps
from all of the EU countries. And the product of
this is that the only faction that ever actually mattered
in the Troika was just Germany. Effectively, what was happening
(10:05):
with Germany was imposing like a bunch of economic sanctions on.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, this is when like the European Union became like
what Germany says, we do especially got to this stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
In the context of these massive protests, Greece elects Soresa,
which is supposedly this left wing party that is going
to you know, the specifically the mandate they were handed
was stop the austerity, and literally they are in negotiation
with the Troika. They have a plan in hand to
tell the Troika to fuck off and for Greece to
(10:39):
leave the European Union, to set up capital controls to start,
like you know, this is a process that would have
like the only way this could have functioned is they start,
you know, they start literally like seizing property from like
a bunch of fucking yacht owners. And instead of doing
that literally at the last second, with the plan in
hand at the negotiating table, Soresa folds. Instead they cut
(11:01):
a deal with the Troika. They imposed literally the exact
same austerity measures they are put in power to stop.
And then you know, now now having done this, they're
now facing their own giant anti sterarity protests. And the
thing that Theresa does is ally with the riot police. You,
by the way, one of the things, one of the
ways this reason got people to support them was specifically
(11:23):
by running on basically completely rebuilding the Greek police force,
because Greece's police force, oh yeah, fuck me, just straight
up a bunch of Nazis. And when I say that,
I literally they vote. I think it's ninety seven percent
of their members voted for the Golden Dawn, which is
like the Greek neo Nazi Party. Yeah, and like so
(11:44):
many of these people vote for the Golden Down that
they can be considered like a significant part of the
total of the Golden Don's base.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, I'm perhaps more importantly of its like street fighting
element that yeah that kills anti fascists, right.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Those guys like the Golden Dawn eventually comes apart because
they they ordered the assassination of an anti fascist rapper
from parliament and then had the guy killed. Yeah, yeah,
just fucking batch it. And those are the people who
the Greek police are supporting. But Sarge Sarsa needs them
because they need the police to smash the anti serity
movements to stop people from like knocking off their governments
(12:20):
and stopping the austerity. And they do it. It works Eventually,
after years and years and years and years of just
smashing these like smashing these protests with police, they're able
to you know, they're they're they're able to stamp out
the sort of the giant social movements. And the consequence
of this is that they turn over Greece to just
like a bunch of murderously far right, anti immigrant shitheads.
(12:43):
Who are the people who currently run Greece. They're unbelievable,
like just unbelievably right wing. These guys are so right
wing they were trying to find ways to claim credit
for getting it, like getting those like several hundred people
on that migrant ship earlier this year killed Like, yeah,
that's who currently runs Greece, and that's Shoe. The reason
like turned power over to because they literally did nothing,
(13:05):
it destroyed their own base.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yeah, it's probably worth like stopping to note here that
like fearmongering around migrants has been the thing that has
moved like straight up fascists into power in much of
southern Europe, right, like Italy and Greece, And like, even
if you're not a person who lives at the border,
like this ship is absolutely like the playbook that the
(13:28):
fire right is using all over the world, absolutely using
here right now, and we have an election. You're here,
and like you owe it to the world to correct
that bullshit differ information whenever you can. Now that we're
talking about Greece, can we just briefly mention the Archer
of Syntagma, the biggest chad ever to walk the earth? Yeah, sorry,
I can't do it. I got you an episode without
(13:49):
this guy. If you are not familiar with Yannis Mikladis,
this absolutely legend dude who took a bow and arrow
to the protests given a third Tia said, and then
escape from prison I think was recaptured and then it
went on hunger straight for a while. Just just a
series of experts that they're truly legendary.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
H incredible. They replace this with fucking just being another
party that imposed Austeria. Yeah, like, no, no one's replaced
that guy. He's still he's still remain but as as
as they replaced the political movement that produced this guy
with like just just genuinely the greatest glowdown in human history.
(14:36):
Just terrible stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yeah, it's it's very sad. It could have been a
wonderful thing. There are still like Greece has still are
very strong and and and uh like a respectable anarchist movement.
I'm trying to get over there to they squat large
areas of housing for migrants to like allow microslip in it.
And it's extremely based and I'm trying to get spend
some time.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
I forgot to mention this. So they also do this
in Spain, and so I find about this on the
show before, but I actually mentioned it here since we're
doing this. So want of pudimos is like regional allies
as Barcelona and Camu. First thing that Barcelona and Camu
did upon taking power was a victim immigrant squad because
they knew it wouldn't have enough defenses to stop the
police and victim. So fuck these people. Those people used
(15:15):
to be anarchists, they're traders. Fuck them.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah, and this happens constantly, right like the Senate entered
into government in nineteen thirty six with the Spanish Socialist
Party and getting and got completely owned by Moscow and
extremely predictable fashion, and all their friends got in some
cases literally flayed alive. Perhaps consider not doing that next time.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah, So, speaking of being played alive, do you know
do you know who else will flay you alive? You
don't buy their buy their stuff?
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Is it their products and services? I support this podcast again,
isn't it? They're fucking they're all over that shit. We
can't say that? Can we just bleep it me in?
All right?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
We're back, So all right, we need to talk about
two other places where this kind of stuff happened. We're
leaving Europe, We're gonna go We're gonna go to briefly,
we're going to go to the Anglophone world. No, a
deeply cursed place. So in the US, all of these
same people gained power their giant political project, and their
(16:20):
only real political project was attempting to elect Bernie Sanders.
Bernie Sanders lost two consecutive elections, first to Hillary Clinton,
the most unpopular Democratic presidential candidate in modern history, and
then lost a second election to Joe Biden de manso.
See now he forgot what president he served as VP under.
And I'm only mentioning this because these are these are
the people who spend all of their time talking about
(16:41):
how serious they are about taking power, and they got
their rass kicked by again Hillary Clinton, the most unpopular
candidate in the entire history, like the Bordern history of
the Democratic Party, and Joe fucking bited a man like
I just okay. And instead the one guy they did
run and managed actually like get into power was one
(17:03):
John Fetterman.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Oh yeah, yeah, Look he's had some banging tweets, but
he's been a complete fucking turd in his time in office.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
I'm pissed about this because from the very beginning I
was like, this guy sucks ass. He's a Zionists, he's
anti immigrants, he fucking sees.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Anti trousers, he opposes said anything below.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
The knee, and no one fucking believed me this. His
campaign was run by a bunch of fucking DSA people,
and instead they elected John fucking Fetterman, who hates everyone
who fucking worked with him, is just screaming like the
same fascist anti immigrant borders.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
He's also in the pocket of big egg. He's made
he's introduced a bill to not allow people to go
vegan ex substitutes egg.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
But he's not even in like the pocket of like
good big egg. Like he's not in the pocket of
like big people who haven't realized that they're trans yet. No. No,
he's in the pocket of bad big egg.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
I think that's an act of solidarity. Like as a
as a man with a giant bull dome, he somewhat
resembles an egg, so he feels like communion with other eggs.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
I think that's what he says. Yeah, so okay, that
that's the US. At some point, we're gonna do another
episode about the all of the just fucking absolute dipshits
that they elected in the DSA elected in LA who've
been doing like just sweeping homeless camps. So fuck them.
But that's not that's not today. We're we're a Segnna
move to Corbin. So all right, so the British last
(18:26):
in the beginning of and I know it's this is
like impossible to imagine now, but in the beginning of
the twenty tens, the Britain had a vibrant and expanding left.
It had a bunch of straight movements. They had the
student protests, they had a bunch of riots, and all
of that energy and all of those fucking people, you know,
got got sucked up by Corbinism, and Corbin lost an
election to Boris fucking Johnson, a man who was ousted
(18:50):
by his own party and replaced by Liz shorter term
than a cabbage trust, like you know, and all of
these people, all these people I've I've had to talk
to these people for fucking years and years and years, right,
and their whole thing was like, well, okay, like, but
the media riad the election against us, and the Labor
Party was trying to stab just like, yeah, no, shit,
what the what the fuck did you expect was going
(19:11):
to happen? Did you seriously think if you even like
just wreck remotely wanted to challenge capital at all? Did
you seriously expect that the poorgeoisie were gonna play by
the rules. What the fuck did you think was gonna happen?
Did you think they were just gonna fucking sit there
and let you take power because your ideas were somewhat popular, Like, no,
of course they fucking were. Of course they were going
to sabotaut you. And the whole fucking thing about the media,
(19:32):
it's like, well, yeah, of course, you know, like, yeah,
obviously the media in Britain is run by the fucking Burdox.
Their press is unbelievably insanely right wing. Sure, however, come
you guys are the ones who decided to pick an
arena where your candidate and your entire political project can
be sunk by negative press attention. You picked that arena
to fight, and then on top of that, you ran
(19:54):
a completely conventional political campaign. Right, Literally, all you did
was fucking campus. You ran a completely conventional political campaign
that everyone's fucking Pikachu facing that they had like one
of the worst labor losses in modern history, right, Like Okay,
what what the fuck did you think was going to happen? Right? Then?
This this is again, this is one of the reasons
why electorialism doesn't work, because if you're in a field
(20:15):
that is entirely about the popularity of one person, and
there's an entire apparatus that is able, that is better
able than you to directly communicate to the entire population
to tell them that that one person is fucking bad.
Of course you're gonna fucking lose, Like what did you
think was going to happen? And now you know the
Labor Party is run by Cure Starmer, who is like
(20:36):
the most right wing labor candidate since, like Tony Blair.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
He prosecuted the people who were in the streets in
twenty ten. Right, Like that is where we've got to now.
It's like we have a choice between like Ricci like
send gunboats into the channel to smink sink the small
ship Sunak and the guy who wants to look you
up for taking a bottle of water from boots in
twenty ten.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
It's yeah, it's not a choice. And that's and like
the corporate left has been basically completely liquidated. The only
thing that's left if you know, these media organizations who
are all attacking right as fast as they can possibly
fucking move, because that's what the fucking money is. Because
you know, Stormary actually used to be a trusky eye
and all of these people know that the way you actually,
if if you were on the left and you want
to take electoral power in Britain, the way you do
it has become a conservative and it will work.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Yeah yeah, I mean look, look look at Tony Blair, right,
he was extremely successful in like criminalizing being a teenager
and these insanely right wing policies. Again, people aren't familiar
with anti social behavior orders in Britain. They should, they
should look them up. And oh my god, machines that
make noise to keep young people out of public space,
like to fully yeah, like the ship he was doing
(21:44):
was insane, and uh if people continue to well, look
Britain's electoral system and you think America's electoral system as fucked,
check out first past the post, like fully insane. One
of the areas I lived when I was a kid,
like you just didn't have an option. There was some
like someone named Giles or a similar kind of like
Giles vibing name, or a token Lib DEM candidate and like,
(22:08):
you know, mom, but Juke was your only choice really,
like like, which is why I did not engage in
the practice of voting in the United Kingdom. But yeah,
it is a funck system.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Yeah, and again it's like, well, yeah, you chose a
rigged system to participate in in the first place. And
then it's like, well you lost. Well yeah, it was like, yes,
you can complain that it was rigged against you, but
you should have known that going in. If you were
genuinely serious about taking power, you had to know that,
and you fucking didn't, and now your entire country has
been absolutely destroyed. So yeah, that's the UK and we're
(22:41):
going down. And so from there we're going to pivot
to Latin America, where there is a very very long history.
In fact, a lot of the Latin America parties we'll
be talking about mostly aren't even parties that took over
from the momentum of twenty eleven like uprisings. They're from
like the two thousand and one movement, some people who
hijacked like two generations back of social movements by this point.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
And I think that the post twenty eleven stuff was
inspired by the pink wave stuff in Latin America, right,
Like it goes around in the circle.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Yeah, So so now we're gonna check in on how
the pink tide's doing. The answer is absolutely dog shit.
So we're gonna go to Ecuador first. So okay, Ecuador
is right now a complete fucking disaster. It shouldn't be
like this though. In theory, Korea is like the is
the guy, and he's like the leftist guy. In Ecuador,
he's like, he is there, guy, you came out of
(23:30):
the pink tide. And in theory, his party should win
like basically every Ecuadorian election from now to the end
of time. They should, in theory have the easiest job
of like every every any electoralers you're talking about in
this party they have had. They had a decade in
power to just completely destroy all of their political oppositions
and you know, to completely rebuild the economy and political
(23:52):
land shape in a way that would have made the
right taking power impossible. Instead, his party is completely unelect
and have an out of power for eight fucking years.
After Lennon Moreno, who is the guy that they literally
the hand picked guy that they picked to run their
own party, purged them all, tried to have Correa arrested,
and spent the entire rest of his career being a
(24:14):
right winger. Now, even after even after they got purged
for their own party, by the guy that they hand
picked to put into power decks after they would turned
out to be a right winger. Even after that happened,
they still should have been able to win like every
fucking election. However, Comma Correa, instead of like doing normal
leftist stuff, spent like his entire career sending riot police
(24:36):
to beat the shit out of the digitus eychological protesters
who didn't want them drinking water to be poisoned by minds,
which means there were a huge number of like indigenous
leftists who should be part of like the left wing base,
who Wilma under any circumstances vote for Korea even if
he was running against literally the devil, because he fucking
beat the shit out of them, like fuck you, and
(24:59):
you know, and when I should briefly explain like, okay,
this is this is obviously a very very simplified this
is yes, a political I mean, I'm going to do
a political compass thing that's very simplified, but I think
gets across one of the major kind of like breaks
(25:19):
in a lot of Latin American countries that have real
lefts and also whose economies are largely based on resource extraction,
which is that okay. So you know, you have you
have your kind of political compass like you would in
the US, you have a let you have a left
right axis. But in a lot of these countries, the
updown acxis isn't like statist anti status. The updown access
is on the one hand you have like developmental extractivists
(25:42):
and on the other hand you have ecological anti extractivists.
So what this means in practice is there's this giant
divide over whether or not you should do drilling on
indigenous land. So, for example, you have the current right
wing Ecadorian government which is extractivist in right wing, and
this means they think you should drill on indigenous land
(26:03):
and you should take all of the money you get
from that and give it the rich people. There is
you know, Korea's government was extractivist and left wing, which
means that you know, you do you do all the
mining on indigenous land, but then you take the money
and you give it to a welfare state. And then
opposed to him was a bunch of anti extractivists, indigenous
ecological groups who want redistribution, but they don't want like
(26:26):
they don't want people poisoning their water with mines, so
they oppost Korea because they don't want their shit. Mind.
And then there's also Kris alsopposed by these like liberal
environmental NGOs who like don't want the Amazon destroyed, but
also like poor people can go fuck themselves. And this
this has made the way the consolation of these things
(26:49):
have worked out, means that like what should be like
a pretty normal left right political alignment thing has gone
completely nuts. There's a bunch of like there's a bunch
of sort of like econological indigenous groups who have on
who have like swung right because the right wingers are
the only people who will support them against Korea. Meanwhile,
the actual like indigenous electoral opposition in his various forms
(27:09):
is a complete fucking disaster, Patrick Cutik, which is like
the this is the like the big sort of like
indigenous electoral alliance. They keep running this guy named yaku Perez,
who is like he's like the only person in the
entirety of Ecuador who's more unelectable than Korea. Is like
nobody fucking even even the addigenous opposition to Korea like
(27:30):
doesn't like him. So and and you know, eventually Jakuperez
like left the party, but it doesn't really matter because
they still just lose every single election. The the left
just there's completely dysfunctional. And you know, there's there's other
like things going on here. Two, which is that like,
for example, Korea is like has an unbelievably hardline anti
(27:51):
abortion stance, Like he he threatened to resign if his
party tried to pass legislation that would allow abortion in
the case of rape like that. So anti abortion, this guy.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Is fucking that's bad.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
This is like, like, okay, yes, this is this is
this is a very very Catholic country. Right even by
that standards, that's fucking nuts, Like.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yeah, that's christ Oh yeah, that's that's rough.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
You know. So the product of this is that a
a country that has a like a decently centered left
electoral like electorate in theory, has produced three straight conservative governments. Uh.
These governments have absolutely annihilated the Ecuadorian economy and the
welfare state and left it prey to like to organize crime.
Who you know, Unlike the just completely dysfunctional Electorian state
(28:37):
can at least provide like a semi stable income. But
the downside of this is that they're organized crime. So
you know not things going very badly. You've probably seen
some of the like absolutely wild videos of stuff of
like people storming, like like armed groups just like storming
like TV stations, they assassinate, they'vessassinated actually several presidential candidates.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Now, yeah, that was it's been there on a wild one.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Yeah, it's really bad.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
On Christmas Eve, if I was talking to a family
from Ecuador who's had gone to the US to get
some medical treatment for the son who very manifestly needed help,
and they were telling me like just of their life
experiences and.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Like it was bad.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
It was like I've been to some places where violence
it happens, and like the stuff that they were telling
me was was shocking.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
It's gotten really really bad since basically between twenty fifteen
and twenty seventeen, and it's just progressively gotten worse. As
he's writing, governments have stayed in power, and you know,
right now, right now, there hasn't been an alternative to
them because the electoralists tour again, the people who are
supposed to be serious about taking power are just a
(29:51):
complete fucking disaster and can't do anything.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Yeah, career can't literally can't go back to Ecuador. Now right,
I think he might.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
I think you can go back. Now. There was a
while where there was a warn out for his arrest.
I think he's back now. Okay, Yeah, but the ray
of light for ecuadors. The Ecuador still has a lot
of very like of very militant street movements who have
been winning, have actually been like winning concessions from governments
when they go when they go into the streets. So
(30:22):
that's good. In Shilah, one day the electoralis get the
fuck out of their way and they win. But hasn't
happened yet. Things are really bleak. On that note. Do
you know what's not really bleak?
Speaker 2 (30:35):
The possibility of buying gold coins. Yeah, to insulate ourselves
against inflation. Yep, you'd be stoked if you had a
ton of gold, neck kudo, wouldn't you? Currency has gone
to shit. Sitting on your pile of gold like Scrooge mcdug,
you'd be you'd be living the dream.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
All right, And we're back. So all right, we're gonna
take a couple of other take a few other places
that the electoral left has won in uh Chavismo is
dead as a door nail. Maduro's slashing pensions, all rising
the economies, cutting a bunch of deals with American oil companies,
and has arrested leadership the Venezuelan Communist Party again keeps
(31:25):
doing this. So, you know, things things going great, like
obviously not helped by the blockade, which is very bad,
but like, you know, not great Marina, which we're not
going to talk an enormous At some point we're gonna
like actually do a thing like actually go talk to
the Zapatistas. But things are not good there right now.
(31:49):
So the left in theory kind of has taken power
in Mexico. Unfortunately, the moment they took power, they immediately
tacked right, handed control of vast swaths of the country
over to the military, built a train through a bunch
of indigenous land and then gave that to the military.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Yeah, switched a bunch of military commands around because they
like claimed that the old guys were corrupt.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Yeah, And you know, and one of the other things
that's been really bleak about it was that, like the
whole premise of Omlo like coming into power was like
he ran in the campaign hugs not bullets, right. His
whole thing was he was supposed to be ending the
war on drugs. Did he end the war on drugs?
Absolutely not, power to the military. People still getting fucking slaughtered.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah, I don't know. I definitely saw a bunch of
dudes in ski mask with a fifty cow chilling just
the other side of the border, yeah, by the government
two days.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Ago, and and and and instead of doing that, he's
also been like continuing the like escalating the war against
the Zapatistas who have been getting just like people getting
fucking murdered by a bunch of these government backed Proya militaries.
It's really fucking bleak out there right now. Yeah, So
that that that's been that's in the legacy of OMLO
(33:01):
finally winning a Mexican election is the most right wing
possible Omlow governments. Like I will say, they're better on
trand stuff than everyone, like the other parties who were
all completely nuts. But that's about the only bright spot.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yeah. I mean, like they were in bilateral negotiations with
the US, and like when the US clicked his fingers
and said shut down these gaps in the border, they
sent a bunch of National Guards soul just to sit
right at the gap in the border.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
War they've been they've been doing a bunch of just
like horrific anti border shit. AMLA was also just like
pretty friendly with Trump, which.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah, there was a populist thing there.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Yeah, so that fucking sucks. And so we're going to
close on the maas Oh boy. So there's been a
bunch of stuff happening in Bolivia that I don't I
don't think most Americans have heard much about. So the
(33:58):
Maasment movement for socialism, there's some other shit, but yeah,
uh they are well, okay, So for most of the
time they've existed, it's been even Moralesis party. However, COMMA
it was always kind of a weird coalition because the
mes is this coalition between like the social movements, and
(34:20):
in this context, like people say social movements, this includes
like you know, like giant like movement groups, but also
like unions and stuff. So it was a coalition of
these unions and these like developmentalist capitalists who are well
together by even morallies and some of his allies, and
you know, the sort of common ground of forging a
like quote unquote indigenous Florid national state that's based on
(34:44):
like based on forging a welfare state based on like
mining and extractive stuff and like oil drilling and stuff,
and also based on the emersions of this new sort
of indigenous middle class. Right now it has split in
two between an Evil Morales faction and who was the
foreign president, was president for a very very long time,
(35:05):
and Luis ocre who was the who is the current
president of Oblivia, but has been kicked out of the
MS by EVO and his faction. So this is a disaster.
They both of them, both Okre and Evil Morales, have
these they have a lot of personal alliances within the
social movements, and this means it's been a very very
(35:25):
messy split. And you know, this is not okay. If
you look at these two people, you would expect it
to be an ideological split because Acres from like the
developmentalist right of the party. Like he was he was
a banker, he's been in charge of the Bolivion Central
Bank for a long time. He was like finance minister,
so he's from like the center right, like developmentalist faction
(35:48):
of the party. Evo technically speaking, has been the representative
of like the the sort of like the social movement
faction of the party. He has a lot of allies
in a lot of Coca Growers' Union stuff like that.
But it hasn't broken like that because this isn't an
ideological fight. This is just these two guys both want
to be presidents and so they've they've literally torn the
(36:11):
entire Bolivion left in two over over this fucking bullshit.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Yeah, never before happened on the left. Two dudes wanting
to be in charge.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, and this is this has been really really messy,
and it's not breaking down the way. It's not breaking
cleanly politically down because there's a lot of like people
from the anti extractivist left of the party who are
pissed off of the way that EVO has like personally
tried to seize control of what are supposed to be
independent social movements. And I know people hear that and
are like, wait, what's what's the problem with like social
(36:41):
movements being integrated with the state, Because like we don't
the US doesn't have social movements, like not not in
the way that like that Latin America has them. Like
BLM is the closest thing that we have to that.
But imagine if like BLM was like an actual leftist group,
like the actual like or organization Black lives Matter, Yeah,
(37:01):
like capital Western Yeah, yeah, it was like it was
like it was like a leftist group that would like
lead protests and strikes and ship like we don't we
don't have that. That's like not a thing here. And
so mostly when when people hear about the stuff, they're like, wait,
what what does that mean? Like why why are we
complaining that the like these that social movements are being
like folded into the state or like folded into this
bureaucratic apparatus. So I'm gonna run through an example of
(37:23):
what that looks like in practice. So we're gonna we're
gonna talk about the could briefly talk about the Confederation
of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
So yeah, based, yeah, so we follow flag.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
I didn't have anything in there on it. It is
very funny, given given what we're about to talk about.
It is very funny that all of the pro m
As people in in in the US had that as
their flag, as like, they had that flag as their
profile picture when this coup was going on.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
It's one of the cool oft flags out there.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
It rips, it does rip. So so back in twenty eleven,
this is like this is like eight years before the coup,
the Confederation of Indigenous People of Bolivia opposed building this
road through protected indigenous territory that the government was trying
to force through. So they opposed it. Their opposition didn't
do anything. They you know, they joined in this enormous
protest movement against this road construction, even when his supporters
(38:17):
had the Confederation's offices stormed by riot police and tried
to replace his leadership with loyalists. This failed initially, and
the you know, so the the Confederation of Indigenous People's
Oblivia had been part of the like of the mas's
like formal alliance, right, and after that they were like
fuck you man, we're out. Uh. They left, and then
(38:37):
the confederation split between the groups who were pro evil
and everyone else. So another faction of the confederation split
from the regular confederation and went back and joined and
calling themselves the same thing, and went back and joined
the MAAS again. So like this is a shit show, right,
and a lot of it is like you know, it's
it's it's it's comes down to these sort of like
loyalty testings, like are you willing to back every single
(38:59):
thing that EVO wants to do? And if you're not
like they're going they're faction. And this is the thing
that like this happens in the fucking DSA all the time, right,
Like everyone in the DSA is constantly trying to purge
every other faction to install their loyalists like in charge
of whatever fucking working group. Right. But you know this
is happening in a place where the left actually has power,
which means that instead of like you know a series
(39:21):
of weird elections and like purging people from positions, you're
storming their offices riot police. Yeah, this is why a
lot of sort of groups so you would expect to
be backing evil Art and are backing Okray instead. But really, truly,
this is just two guys having a dick waving contest.
By this is what happens when you do electoralism. Yeah,
(39:44):
but you know it's also worth mentioning the reason we're
in this situation in the first place is that Evo
refused to just like in twenty nineteen, refuse to just
let someone else in his party run. Like if literally
anyone else had run, the MAAS would have just trivially
easily won the election. There wouldn't have been coup. It
wouldn't even been the potential to do one, but he
refused because he wants to personally be in power. And
(40:06):
this is what allows the twenty nineteen coup to happen.
And the second, the second reason that we're here now
is that in twenty twenty one, and I don't think
I don't think most American left just like know about this.
I think people know about the coup. I don't think
people know about the stuff that happened in twenty twenty one,
which is that there was this massive series of there
was this massive series of like barricades that went up
to bring down the coup government. So this is the
(40:28):
thing that happens periodically in Bolivia. This is like, this
is how the social movements took power in the first place.
Is that they, you know, Blivia because of the way
the terrain works, very very mountainous country, very narrow roads,
not many roads into a place. You could just block
all of the roads that go into the capitol, and
you can you can shut down the entire country's economy
by just doing these roadblocks. They very nearly this is
(40:49):
actually like again the origin of the NIS is that
they very nearly like completely destroyed the believing government with
this in two thousand and six, and then Evo pulled
his people off the barricades and was like, no, we're
gonna do an election, and he easily wins the election
because he's you know, he's doing the things we've been
talking about this whole episode, which is harnessing the power
of the social movements in order to get elected. And
it works, like he becomes president, but and she doesn't.
(41:12):
You know, in twenty twenty one, it happens again, and
these groups are getting very close. They've they've they've done
enough damage that they forced the coup government to like
actually have elections, which they didn't want to have. But
they're on the verge of like actually knocking the government
out of power. And Evo once again pulls all of
his people off the barricades because he doesn't want the
(41:33):
barricades to like disrupt his chance of winning the election.
And so instead of like bringing down this government and
like ushering in like sweeping like leffering reforms whatever on
like the back of a revolutionary seizure of power, we
have the mas split between two dipshits, and yeah, these
(41:54):
are these are very very serious about taking power You
can tell this because they've split the party over personal bullshit.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Yeah every time, right, Like leaderism is the curse of
the left, and it Yeah, it stops us doing things
because it's always just dude to chest something at each other. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
And and this is the second part about it, is
that this is this is a product of leaving the streets.
And we're going to close on Chile. We did a
very optimistic episode in the protests in Chile a couple
of years ago because it looked like they were actually winning.
That's not true anymore. After the whole Okay, so Chile
and twenty nineteen has these massive, massive treat protests. They
(42:34):
successfully forced the government to call a constitutional convention to
like replace their Pinochet constitution. But that got everyone off
the streets. And because it got everyone off the streets,
both successive attempts to have a constitution have failed. It's
deeply unclear what the fox had happened with the constitution.
It's possible they're gonna end up with a constitution that
is even more right wing than the current one because
(42:56):
they've blown literally their momentive opportunity by pulling it went
out of the streets and now the rights resurgence. It's
a complete fiasco. Yeah, the repression of visions people has
continued undebated under the new quote unquote leftling government. So yeah,
it's it's a complete fiasco. And that that is today's lesson,
which is if anyone when when when people tell you
that they are the ones who are serious about taking
(43:18):
a wielding power and they want you to go vote
for them. We have they have failed everywhere for a decade.
Do not let them do this to you again. Don't
leave the streets. Yeah, Instead, don't leave the streets. Don't
give someone else fucking power, take it for yourself. That's that's, that's,
that's all I've got.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
Yeah, that's a good place to end, I think. Yeah,
don't uh, don't infantilize yourself by electing some Instagram brick
to make decisions for you.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, but check us out on the
iHeart You app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
You listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It
could Happen here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia, dot com, slash sources,
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Host
Robert Evans
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