March 5, 2024 • 23 mins
Robert and Mia look at the wave of self-immolations in Tunisia and its role in workers protest in 2020's China.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Alz Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Everyone. Robert Evans here back to introduced. It could happen
here Part two of my discussion with Mia Wong of
the history of self immolation protests. We'll be starting with
Tunisia in this one and then moving on from there,
so please buckle up and listen in. But I will
move us on to talking about Tunisia, which is the
(00:27):
last place we will talk about self immolation protest.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Oh, I want to end. I guess a bit. I
want to end after you talk about Tunisia with one
in China. That kind of worked, Okay, well, that'll be nice.
So there was a you know, Tunisia existed for most
of the twenty first century under a dictator. This state
(00:51):
of affairs changed for unfortunately a fairly limited period of time.
On December seventeenth, twenty ten, when a young man and
he was twenty six, Mohammed was Zizi, went out to
sell fruit. And you know, Mohammed lived in a very
poor region, a very poor part of Tunisia, the city
(01:13):
of cd Boozid. It's about one hundred miles south of
tunis which is the capital. And like a lot of people,
you know, in that part of the world, it is
not uncommon, particularly for young men, because unemployment is so high,
for young men to kind of make their living doing
a mix of odd jobs and like odd vending, right
where you're just kind of like selling whatever you can
(01:33):
get your hands on and think that you can make
a profit on because there's there's not jobs in the
traditional sense, and because political corruption was so horrific in
the state at that point in time. It's one of
those things where most everybody who's out there selling shit
on the street is breaking the law by doing it, right,
because you can't get the permit, because the permit is
basically a bribe, and you can't afford the bribe, right,
(01:55):
That's how a lot of this stuff works. So, you know,
Mohammed kind of prior to this, he had he had
been his friends. When you read interviews with people who
knew him, he was always like one of these guys
who was like really upbeat and funny. His nickname basically
meant like funny.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Man in town. And this had started to change, like
friends noticed like a couple of years before you know,
twenty ten, when he's in hits his mid twenties and
starts getting into his late twenties that he's like, it
is impossible to get by as a young man. There
are no jobs for us, there's no future. I don't
(02:29):
feel at all like I have no nothing to be
hopeful for. Right. I think a lot of people can
understand empathized with where he was coming from. So he
goes out to self fruit and this municipal inspector fight
a Humdi sees him, realizes he doesn't have a permit
and takes his shit right, and there are accounts that
(02:49):
he like hits him too, basically is like what the
fuck is wrong with you? You're not paying your god
damn bribe and like smacks him around. So this is
kind of the breaking point for Easy. He goes to
the police stationed because he's got like this scale that
he's using to weigh out fruit and stuff that he
wants to get back it had been confiscated. He like
can't work without it, and they tell him like, fuck you,
(03:09):
you're not getting shit back. So he says, like, I
want to meet with the governor and like plead my
case to the guy in charge, and they're like, fuck you,
the governor doesn't want to see you. So at about
eleven thirty am. He takes his cart outside of the
governor's office. He pours I think lighter fluid something flammable
over his head and he lights himself on fire. His
(03:31):
cousin gets a call. Ali was easy gets a call
I guess from someone who was nearby and knew them
both and was like, Mohammad just lit himself on fire
in front of the governor's office, and Ali runs there,
sprints over to the governor's office with his smartphone and
he gets there in time to record his cousin's body
being taken into an ambulance. Protests start up after this,
(03:54):
almost immediately people take to the street. I think it's
just everyone is living under the same regime. They're living
under all of these like fucking corrupt ass officials. Everyone
pieces together this.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Yeah, and it's also it's worth mentioning this is also
a period of massive increases food prices, yes, which are
one of the big Like you if you want, if
you want your protest to work, like spark plus rising
food prices, great way to get it to happen.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yes, so you know the spark catches fire, Protests start
up and they do not calm down. Part of why
they don't calm down. Is alizz Easy stays out in
the street. He uploads footage of his cousin's body to Facebook,
and he takes footage of the protests too, and he
just starts sending shit to Al Jazeera. Right, So this this,
all of this footage he's taking like winds up on
(04:40):
television that evening, and by the next day other cities
in Tunisia are are holding protests. And this is the
kind of thing where it's like, you know, we all
saw this, you know, obviously with a different cause in
twenty twenty. Sometimes something happens that's so horrible that the
whole country takes to the streets. And that's what happens
in Tunisia. So the president at the time, basically a dictator,
(05:02):
Zeen l Abadin beIN Ali, does the normal dictator thing.
He sends out and non dictators, right, we do it
here too. Yeah, he sends the cops out to beat
the shit out of everybody. Right, But he's also he's
you talked in when we were talking about Vietnam about
like the playbook and they didn't quite have it down.
Part of the playbook is down because in addition to
(05:22):
sending the cops out to beat the shit out of people.
He visits Wazizi in the hospital because he lingers for
a while, right, And he also has the officer the
guy who slapped Wasizi arrested. You know, he's kind of
desperately trying like maybe this will call him everybody down.
It does not, was eas He dies in the hospital
a couple of days later, and the protests, which are
(05:42):
known now as the Jasmine Revolution. It takes about a month,
but they force ben Ali to flee the country for
Saudi Arabia and you know, successfully bring an end to
his regime and the return of a democratic system. There
are functional elections for a while in Tunisia. They gain
a significant amount of like political freedom, Like there are
(06:03):
some really significant inroads made in terms of like civil
rights during this period immediately after the Jasmine Revolution. But
things also don't get better, at least not enough.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
This is generally seen Tunisia as the start of the
Arab Spring, and if you know anything about the rest
of the Arab Spring, this was also seen as like
kind of the successful case, right, Like shit didn't work
out very well in Syria or in Egypt, but like, yeah,
bah Rain. But here they got rid of the dictator
and they gained a lot of civil rights, and that's great.
(06:38):
The problem is that the other issues, the high food prices,
the fact that unemployment is at a night maarish level,
the fact that corruption was a hideous problem in Tunisia.
This doesn't just go away, right, because it's deeper than
the dictator. The culture. Whenever you have a culture of
corruption like this, which is by the way, it's not
just the Middle East that has to deal with this,
but if you've spent time in the Middle East, one
(07:00):
of the things that is really depressing is how massive
and absolutely different, by the way, from the kind of
corruption that we have in the West, it is over there.
The degree to which and you start to care about
this not because you're getting fucked over as a tourist,
because you really don't notice it much as a tourist.
It's when you make friends in that country and you
talk to them about, like, how many different people are
(07:22):
constantly taking a little bit from them, right, and often
not a little bit, like the degree to which regular
people suffer because every single person who is quote unquote
a government official is just soliciting for bribes is that's
so much deeper than any one guy in charge. Right,
That's something you can't just revolt your way out of him. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Like one of my professors in college, I don't know
if you have actually wrote about it, but he's okay,
long story, but he lived in Egypt for a long
time and one of the things he would talk about is,
like that is the concept of like the oddly powerful bureaucrat.
So like the history was like like the the the
guy who sells you tickets at like the train station
in Cairo, Like that guy, if you don't fucking pay him,
(08:06):
he can just say no and you can't get on
a train. And there's just like so many layers of
like this guy who controls this specific thing and thus
can fuck you over unless you like do what he
tells you, which is usually give money. Unfortunately, we need
to go to ads. We'll be back in a second,
(08:35):
and we're back.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah. And it's part of why it's more durable is
it's not like you know, I think it's South Vietnam.
You know, when when DM was around, you had a
lot of you have all this corruption, but a lot
of it is top down. It is people who are
loyal to the president. Right, A lot of the corruption
in places like this is bottom up in that it's
not a situation where all of these men who are
(08:57):
so loyal to the dictator have this corrupt position. I mean,
that's part of it. I'm not saying that it's not,
but a lot of it is that, like, well, maybe
it's technically my job to stop the guy who works
at the train station from denying people entrey if they
don't bribe him. But if I do that, then maybe
he's gonna make a fuss about how I'm doing the
same thing for like permits to fix your roof or whatever. Right, Like,
(09:21):
it's so much more bottom up in a lot of way.
And so the reason this matters is that like, shit
doesn't really get better in Tunisia, right, And now that
the so while all these problems continue, corruption continues to
be an issue, high food prices continue to be an issue.
Unemployment continued to be an issue, particularly for young men.
Another thing that's changed is that now everyone has seen
(09:43):
what what's Easy does has done. And like, obviously he
dies horribly, but one thing that happens is like his
family moves to Canada, right, Like they and this is
I don't think fair to his family. I haven't seen
evidence they were like corrupt or whatever, but like I
think because of how like because they're able to like
get out of this situation, it's seen as like, well,
maybe if I do this, not only will that hurt
(10:04):
whoever whatever, corrupt motherfucker you know, I'm angry at but
maybe shit will work out for my family.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
This is often not what actually happens, but there have
been hundreds of self immolation cases in the last ten
years in Tunisia. It has become you might compare it
to kind of mass shootings in the United States. Not
obviously on a moral level, you're not doing nearly the
same thing. You're not hurting anyone else, but in terms
of the fact that it is this really really shocking
(10:32):
event that then becomes kind of routine because people pick
up on it as like, well, this is what you
do in this situation, you know. One of the articles
that I read for this was an AP News piece
that interviews a guy named Hasni Kaleia, who's one of
the dudes, one of the many Tunisians who have attempted
or succeeded in killing themselves through self emolation as an
(10:53):
active protest. Hasney survived, right, and he did not survive
without serious injury. Right now, he has to he covers
his face at all times. His left hand he's lost
a bunch of fingers. His right hand has no fingers
at all anymore. He is just grievously injured as a
result of this. And he said, when interviewed by the
(11:14):
AP quote, I would never describe the act of self
emolation as an act of courage, because even the bravest
person in the world couldn't do it. When I poured
the petrol over my head, I wasn't really conscious about
what I was doing. Then I saw a flash, I
felt my skin start to burn, and I fell down.
I woke up eight months later in the hospital. And
I found that really interesting, because there's a lot of
(11:34):
talk right now, you know, with what Aaron Bushnell did
about like principle and courage or mental illness or whatever,
and like to what do we credit something that is
so incomprehensible to most people. And I found what Hawsny
says here really interesting because what he's saying is that
like you can't even call it courage, you know, it's
(11:55):
almost like someone else's doing it. You were animated by
such rage and home hopelessness that it's almost like someone
else is in control of your body. And I don't
that doesn't sound like mental illness to me for certain.
That sounds like someone that sounds like desperation of such
(12:15):
an extent that it's mind altering. I don't know any
other way to describe it than that. And I'm not
saying this is what goes through everybody's head when they
sell f emlight. But you don't get a lot of
interviews with those people after the fact, right Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Well, like like there's the people who survive into Batan,
and it's like, well, those guys, the Chinese government will
not let anyone near them, right, Like, no, you know,
and like I guess I should also I should mention
this about the Chinese government line on this is that
it's very similar to what you see in the American
presss like the well, no, you're seeing the terrorist stuff
too here. But like the Chinese government line, and this
(12:47):
line worked pretty well, is like these people were mentally ill,
these people are terrorists or they were like misled by
like the Dalai Lamo who's like leading his people to
the flames. Yeah, and that's been kind of the that's
been kind of the playbook everywhere for this. That like
the one, the one that kind of works is that one.
(13:08):
It's it's you have to attack the moral character of
the person because it's such an it's such an.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Act of it's an inherently selfless selfless Yeah, it's the
only way to do it. He can't describe it anywhere else.
They're lighting themselves on fire.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Yeah, yeah, so and so they like, you know, the
it's it's it's the the Roger Stone rat fucking thing
of attack them where they're strong, and you know, so
it's the attack on the moral character that like happens.
I think the thing with Tunisia too is it's like,
like the political alternative to this is this like rabid
anti immigrant politics.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, we're like we'll talk about that in a second,
but yeah, it doesn't end well. One thing I do
want to hit on is the degree to which, again
this kind of does function in Tunisia as like a
mametic virus. Hawsny, the guy we heard from, survives, but
his brother shortly thereafter lights himself on fire in an
act of protest and kills himself and his mother attempts
(14:00):
to do the same, right like three members of the
family all carrying out self immolation, and it is one
of those things. This is listed as like an example
of the tactic succeeding, and it does in terms of it,
it gets the regime out of power. But things are
not better in Tunisia, especially since so you know, there
is a period of time where there is at least
(14:21):
a functioning democracy and significant gains for civil rights, but
because food still doesn't get affordable, there aren't jobs. A
lot You'll find a lot of articles from around twenty twenty,
especially where people are like, yeah, I guess freedom's nice,
but it's not really worth much if you're starving, you know, yeah,
which you know I anyway, all of this leads in
(14:42):
part to the coming to power of the guy who
is currently leading Tunisia, Kiss sayed. And as you noted, Mia,
you know this guy is a populist. He is elected
with seventy two percent of the vote. He frames himself
like populist. Him to do is like I am you know,
I'm outside the system. I'm gonna help you take on
the elite that have corruptly ruled our country, and he
(15:03):
also is very anti migrant right Tunisia. A lot of
people who migrate into Europe do so through Tunisia just
for geographical reasons, and he is blaming a lot of
their problems on He does like great replacement shit that
all these black migrants are causing our country's problems. He
inspires a wave of violence against black people in Tunisia
(15:26):
that's pretty hideous and horrific. And he has gained a
significant amount of backing from particularly the Italian government, I
think also the French government, because he's cracking down on migrants, right,
and those migrants come to Italy and France and that's
a problem for those governments. So they're supporting this guy, who,
by the way, has turned himself into a dictator. All
those gains Tunisia had in the wake of the Arab Spring,
(15:47):
he has rolled back. He has centralized power, he has
more or less destroyed the judiciary is something that's independent,
you know, he is if he's not a dictator, he's
not all that far from it, you know. And he's
being supported by the these quote unquote democratic nations because well,
I mean because racism, right, Yeah, same reason they support
a Gadaffi, Like, yeah, when it comes to the politicians,
(16:08):
it's a mixture of racism and just like well, racism
wins votes, and when it comes to like why racism
win votes, it's back to racism, right anyway, So those
are that's Tunisia more or less.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Unfortunately, we need to go to ads. We'll be back
in a second, and we're back. Yeah, So well let's
end on a slightly more positive note where well, so
(16:41):
the line I was gonna give was one about how
like you know, I mean, this is the thing with Tunisia, right,
is like you have this like Chenizia has effectively structural
unemployment rates of like thirty forty percent. Right, Yeah, it's
it's and that's that's the thing that that's the thing
that can't be solved without changing the economic system.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
If you you know, if you you can have your
political revolution without your social revolution, you'll be right back
to where you were in like ten years. The problem though,
the other thing is you can have your social revolution
and also end up in the same place, which is
where we're going with with China. Where so one of
the there's a very famous Okay, I guess the place
we should start with this is that one of the
(17:20):
I've talked about this a bit on this show. One
of the ways that labor works in China like structurally
is that so you're a contractor, you work for a
contracting company. The contracting company is this like series of
shell companies, and there's like a there's like there's a
payday on like New Years because that's when the like
the financial like the year sort of rolls over and
that's when you get paid. And so these companies are
(17:40):
designed to specifically go out of business like the day
before New Year, so they don't have to pay any
of the workers for the work that they've done. And
this leads to a rash of protests in China, like
every single year on New Year's Day, there's like this
massive there's a protests like fucking everywhere because people have
been screwed. It happens a lot with construction companies, and
(18:03):
so there's a very like one of the very common
tactics you see is people like standing on top of
buildings holding banners saying like we're going to jump unless
you guys like pay us. And so that that's kind
of the background of this, which is that that's like,
that's a fairly common kind of like workers protest. In
twenty twenty one, there's a delivery driver in Jongsu who
(18:24):
he so something something I didn't really talk about the
ten episodes is that Chinese economy is increasingly becoming a
gig economy and this has been this has been happening
for a while now. And so this guy is a
delivery driver for Ali Baba and he's like, he's like
trying to change apps, and the app garnishes his wages
and steals seven hundred dollars from him, and that's an
enormous amount of money.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah, I mean the app garnished his wages. As a sentence,
that just makes me want to light something on fire.
So I get why this would spark protests.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Yeah, And he like tries to get it back and
they don't give it to him, and he like and
he lights himself on fire, and this turns into so
he lets self on fire and then like this this
is this is in twenty twenty one. This is the
same year where that Temu employee falls over dead, like
like dies in your bed from over work, and also
the same year when when a Temo employee jumps off
(19:14):
of the building because of over work. And this sets
off like a giant kind of shift in in the
way that the Chinese public is thinking about labor, because
up until this one, people have been you know, like China.
It's it's not it's nowhere near as bad as a Nia,
(19:35):
but it also has this problem of like everyone works
harder and harder. You're working, You're working nine ninety six, right,
You're working nine am nine pm, six days a week,
and you're like, you're working more and more and more
hours and you're not getting ahead, right, You're still stuck
in your shitty apartment and your app isn't paying you
for the work you did. And this leads to a
(19:57):
whole like a whole thing that sort of culminates in
in something I talked about a bit in the time
of episodes, which is the Chinese Supreme Court, Like the
Chinese Constitution says you're not supposed to be able to
work people for longer, for like thirty five hours, unless
like special circumstances, and the Chinese Supreme Court goes like, well, obviously,
(20:17):
you're not allowed to work people like twelve out like
twelve hours a day, six days a week, and that
isn't like in large part and partially it's because of
the the Temu suicide and the Temu thing. But the
other huge contributing factor to this, and another huge thing
contributing to Chinese society attempting to reckon kind of with
(20:40):
their unbelievable overwork culture is is the self immolation. And
it's it's it's one, and it goes viral so fast
that there's no way to sort of like cover it up.
There's it's it's you can't. The Chinese government can't really
just press the racism button like they normally would, because
this isn't someone into back and someone in changeohn they
(21:01):
can't really do that, and so they kind of are.
They're forced to make at least like some kind of
change because it pisss off so many people in ways
that like can't really be contained. So you know, I
guess the lesson from that, if there is one, is
(21:22):
sometimes very rarely you can back a government into a
corner where the normal things that they would say about it,
or like the normal like mental illness, terrorists, deluded things
don't work because the raw simplicity of what they did
and why just breaks through the media sphere thing, and it's.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Again very hard to predict obviously, Like this isn't the
first within the last twelve months. This isn't the first
self emolation of the United States, right, and the last
self emolation attacked or not attacks? Sorry I should jeez,
do I have a media rain or what? Well? The
last self immolation that we had, which I believe was
was over climate change.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Oh there, there there was a Palestine one too.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Oh there was a past So I guess we've had
a couple like two in the last or three now,
I guess in the last like twelve months or so,
But they didn't the other ones did not really move
the needle. Yeah, right, why Aaron do I mean? I
think I think part of it might have to do
with with how deliberate it was and how you know,
it got was very quickly picked up by local media
and the national media. I don't know that's that's really
(22:32):
outside the scope of these episodes, but I hope you
at least now have more of a grounding and like
how this has gone other times, people have used this
as a method of protest, and hopefully that's of use
to you anyway. Have a good day, Bye.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
It could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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coolzonmedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Alz Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Everyone. Robert Evans here back to introduced. It could happen
here Part two of my discussion with Mia Wong of
the history of self immolation protests. We'll be starting with
Tunisia in this one and then moving on from there,
so please buckle up and listen in. But I will
move us on to talking about Tunisia, which is the
(00:27):
last place we will talk about self immolation protest.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Oh, I want to end. I guess a bit. I
want to end after you talk about Tunisia with one
in China. That kind of worked, Okay, well, that'll be nice.
So there was a you know, Tunisia existed for most
of the twenty first century under a dictator. This state
(00:51):
of affairs changed for unfortunately a fairly limited period of time.
On December seventeenth, twenty ten, when a young man and
he was twenty six, Mohammed was Zizi, went out to
sell fruit. And you know, Mohammed lived in a very
poor region, a very poor part of Tunisia, the city
(01:13):
of cd Boozid. It's about one hundred miles south of
tunis which is the capital. And like a lot of people,
you know, in that part of the world, it is
not uncommon, particularly for young men, because unemployment is so high,
for young men to kind of make their living doing
a mix of odd jobs and like odd vending, right
where you're just kind of like selling whatever you can
(01:33):
get your hands on and think that you can make
a profit on because there's there's not jobs in the
traditional sense, and because political corruption was so horrific in
the state at that point in time. It's one of
those things where most everybody who's out there selling shit
on the street is breaking the law by doing it, right,
because you can't get the permit, because the permit is
basically a bribe, and you can't afford the bribe, right,
(01:55):
That's how a lot of this stuff works. So, you know,
Mohammed kind of prior to this, he had he had
been his friends. When you read interviews with people who
knew him, he was always like one of these guys
who was like really upbeat and funny. His nickname basically
meant like funny.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Man in town. And this had started to change, like
friends noticed like a couple of years before you know,
twenty ten, when he's in hits his mid twenties and
starts getting into his late twenties that he's like, it
is impossible to get by as a young man. There
are no jobs for us, there's no future. I don't
(02:29):
feel at all like I have no nothing to be
hopeful for. Right. I think a lot of people can
understand empathized with where he was coming from. So he
goes out to self fruit and this municipal inspector fight
a Humdi sees him, realizes he doesn't have a permit
and takes his shit right, and there are accounts that
(02:49):
he like hits him too, basically is like what the
fuck is wrong with you? You're not paying your god
damn bribe and like smacks him around. So this is
kind of the breaking point for Easy. He goes to
the police stationed because he's got like this scale that
he's using to weigh out fruit and stuff that he
wants to get back it had been confiscated. He like
can't work without it, and they tell him like, fuck you,
(03:09):
you're not getting shit back. So he says, like, I
want to meet with the governor and like plead my
case to the guy in charge, and they're like, fuck you,
the governor doesn't want to see you. So at about
eleven thirty am. He takes his cart outside of the
governor's office. He pours I think lighter fluid something flammable
over his head and he lights himself on fire. His
(03:31):
cousin gets a call. Ali was easy gets a call
I guess from someone who was nearby and knew them
both and was like, Mohammad just lit himself on fire
in front of the governor's office, and Ali runs there,
sprints over to the governor's office with his smartphone and
he gets there in time to record his cousin's body
being taken into an ambulance. Protests start up after this,
(03:54):
almost immediately people take to the street. I think it's
just everyone is living under the same regime. They're living
under all of these like fucking corrupt ass officials. Everyone
pieces together this.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Yeah, and it's also it's worth mentioning this is also
a period of massive increases food prices, yes, which are
one of the big Like you if you want, if
you want your protest to work, like spark plus rising
food prices, great way to get it to happen.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yes, so you know the spark catches fire, Protests start
up and they do not calm down. Part of why
they don't calm down. Is alizz Easy stays out in
the street. He uploads footage of his cousin's body to Facebook,
and he takes footage of the protests too, and he
just starts sending shit to Al Jazeera. Right, So this this,
all of this footage he's taking like winds up on
(04:40):
television that evening, and by the next day other cities
in Tunisia are are holding protests. And this is the
kind of thing where it's like, you know, we all
saw this, you know, obviously with a different cause in
twenty twenty. Sometimes something happens that's so horrible that the
whole country takes to the streets. And that's what happens
in Tunisia. So the president at the time, basically a dictator,
(05:02):
Zeen l Abadin beIN Ali, does the normal dictator thing.
He sends out and non dictators, right, we do it
here too. Yeah, he sends the cops out to beat
the shit out of everybody. Right, But he's also he's
you talked in when we were talking about Vietnam about
like the playbook and they didn't quite have it down.
Part of the playbook is down because in addition to
(05:22):
sending the cops out to beat the shit out of people.
He visits Wazizi in the hospital because he lingers for
a while, right, And he also has the officer the
guy who slapped Wasizi arrested. You know, he's kind of
desperately trying like maybe this will call him everybody down.
It does not, was eas He dies in the hospital
a couple of days later, and the protests, which are
(05:42):
known now as the Jasmine Revolution. It takes about a month,
but they force ben Ali to flee the country for
Saudi Arabia and you know, successfully bring an end to
his regime and the return of a democratic system. There
are functional elections for a while in Tunisia. They gain
a significant amount of like political freedom, Like there are
(06:03):
some really significant inroads made in terms of like civil
rights during this period immediately after the Jasmine Revolution. But
things also don't get better, at least not enough.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
This is generally seen Tunisia as the start of the
Arab Spring, and if you know anything about the rest
of the Arab Spring, this was also seen as like
kind of the successful case, right, Like shit didn't work
out very well in Syria or in Egypt, but like, yeah,
bah Rain. But here they got rid of the dictator
and they gained a lot of civil rights, and that's great.
(06:38):
The problem is that the other issues, the high food prices,
the fact that unemployment is at a night maarish level,
the fact that corruption was a hideous problem in Tunisia.
This doesn't just go away, right, because it's deeper than
the dictator. The culture. Whenever you have a culture of
corruption like this, which is by the way, it's not
just the Middle East that has to deal with this,
but if you've spent time in the Middle East, one
(07:00):
of the things that is really depressing is how massive
and absolutely different, by the way, from the kind of
corruption that we have in the West, it is over there.
The degree to which and you start to care about
this not because you're getting fucked over as a tourist,
because you really don't notice it much as a tourist.
It's when you make friends in that country and you
talk to them about, like, how many different people are
(07:22):
constantly taking a little bit from them, right, and often
not a little bit, like the degree to which regular
people suffer because every single person who is quote unquote
a government official is just soliciting for bribes is that's
so much deeper than any one guy in charge. Right,
That's something you can't just revolt your way out of him. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Like one of my professors in college, I don't know
if you have actually wrote about it, but he's okay,
long story, but he lived in Egypt for a long
time and one of the things he would talk about is,
like that is the concept of like the oddly powerful bureaucrat.
So like the history was like like the the the
guy who sells you tickets at like the train station
in Cairo, Like that guy, if you don't fucking pay him,
(08:06):
he can just say no and you can't get on
a train. And there's just like so many layers of
like this guy who controls this specific thing and thus
can fuck you over unless you like do what he
tells you, which is usually give money. Unfortunately, we need
to go to ads. We'll be back in a second,
(08:35):
and we're back.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah. And it's part of why it's more durable is
it's not like you know, I think it's South Vietnam.
You know, when when DM was around, you had a
lot of you have all this corruption, but a lot
of it is top down. It is people who are
loyal to the president. Right, A lot of the corruption
in places like this is bottom up in that it's
not a situation where all of these men who are
(08:57):
so loyal to the dictator have this corrupt position. I mean,
that's part of it. I'm not saying that it's not,
but a lot of it is that, like, well, maybe
it's technically my job to stop the guy who works
at the train station from denying people entrey if they
don't bribe him. But if I do that, then maybe
he's gonna make a fuss about how I'm doing the
same thing for like permits to fix your roof or whatever. Right, Like,
(09:21):
it's so much more bottom up in a lot of way.
And so the reason this matters is that like, shit
doesn't really get better in Tunisia, right, And now that
the so while all these problems continue, corruption continues to
be an issue, high food prices continue to be an issue.
Unemployment continued to be an issue, particularly for young men.
Another thing that's changed is that now everyone has seen
(09:43):
what what's Easy does has done. And like, obviously he
dies horribly, but one thing that happens is like his
family moves to Canada, right, Like they and this is
I don't think fair to his family. I haven't seen
evidence they were like corrupt or whatever, but like I
think because of how like because they're able to like
get out of this situation, it's seen as like, well,
maybe if I do this, not only will that hurt
(10:04):
whoever whatever, corrupt motherfucker you know, I'm angry at but
maybe shit will work out for my family.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
This is often not what actually happens, but there have
been hundreds of self immolation cases in the last ten
years in Tunisia. It has become you might compare it
to kind of mass shootings in the United States. Not
obviously on a moral level, you're not doing nearly the
same thing. You're not hurting anyone else, but in terms
of the fact that it is this really really shocking
(10:32):
event that then becomes kind of routine because people pick
up on it as like, well, this is what you
do in this situation, you know. One of the articles
that I read for this was an AP News piece
that interviews a guy named Hasni Kaleia, who's one of
the dudes, one of the many Tunisians who have attempted
or succeeded in killing themselves through self emolation as an
(10:53):
active protest. Hasney survived, right, and he did not survive
without serious injury. Right now, he has to he covers
his face at all times. His left hand he's lost
a bunch of fingers. His right hand has no fingers
at all anymore. He is just grievously injured as a
result of this. And he said, when interviewed by the
(11:14):
AP quote, I would never describe the act of self
emolation as an act of courage, because even the bravest
person in the world couldn't do it. When I poured
the petrol over my head, I wasn't really conscious about
what I was doing. Then I saw a flash, I
felt my skin start to burn, and I fell down.
I woke up eight months later in the hospital. And
I found that really interesting, because there's a lot of
(11:34):
talk right now, you know, with what Aaron Bushnell did
about like principle and courage or mental illness or whatever,
and like to what do we credit something that is
so incomprehensible to most people. And I found what Hawsny
says here really interesting because what he's saying is that
like you can't even call it courage, you know, it's
(11:55):
almost like someone else's doing it. You were animated by
such rage and home hopelessness that it's almost like someone
else is in control of your body. And I don't
that doesn't sound like mental illness to me for certain.
That sounds like someone that sounds like desperation of such
(12:15):
an extent that it's mind altering. I don't know any
other way to describe it than that. And I'm not
saying this is what goes through everybody's head when they
sell f emlight. But you don't get a lot of
interviews with those people after the fact, right Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Well, like like there's the people who survive into Batan,
and it's like, well, those guys, the Chinese government will
not let anyone near them, right, Like, no, you know,
and like I guess I should also I should mention
this about the Chinese government line on this is that
it's very similar to what you see in the American
presss like the well, no, you're seeing the terrorist stuff
too here. But like the Chinese government line, and this
(12:47):
line worked pretty well, is like these people were mentally ill,
these people are terrorists or they were like misled by
like the Dalai Lamo who's like leading his people to
the flames. Yeah, and that's been kind of the that's
been kind of the playbook everywhere for this. That like
the one, the one that kind of works is that one.
(13:08):
It's it's you have to attack the moral character of
the person because it's such an it's such an.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Act of it's an inherently selfless selfless Yeah, it's the
only way to do it. He can't describe it anywhere else.
They're lighting themselves on fire.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Yeah, yeah, so and so they like, you know, the
it's it's it's the the Roger Stone rat fucking thing
of attack them where they're strong, and you know, so
it's the attack on the moral character that like happens.
I think the thing with Tunisia too is it's like,
like the political alternative to this is this like rabid
anti immigrant politics.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, we're like we'll talk about that in a second,
but yeah, it doesn't end well. One thing I do
want to hit on is the degree to which, again
this kind of does function in Tunisia as like a
mametic virus. Hawsny, the guy we heard from, survives, but
his brother shortly thereafter lights himself on fire in an
act of protest and kills himself and his mother attempts
(14:00):
to do the same, right like three members of the
family all carrying out self immolation, and it is one
of those things. This is listed as like an example
of the tactic succeeding, and it does in terms of it,
it gets the regime out of power. But things are
not better in Tunisia, especially since so you know, there
is a period of time where there is at least
(14:21):
a functioning democracy and significant gains for civil rights, but
because food still doesn't get affordable, there aren't jobs. A
lot You'll find a lot of articles from around twenty twenty,
especially where people are like, yeah, I guess freedom's nice,
but it's not really worth much if you're starving, you know, yeah,
which you know I anyway, all of this leads in
(14:42):
part to the coming to power of the guy who
is currently leading Tunisia, Kiss sayed. And as you noted, Mia,
you know this guy is a populist. He is elected
with seventy two percent of the vote. He frames himself
like populist. Him to do is like I am you know,
I'm outside the system. I'm gonna help you take on
the elite that have corruptly ruled our country, and he
(15:03):
also is very anti migrant right Tunisia. A lot of
people who migrate into Europe do so through Tunisia just
for geographical reasons, and he is blaming a lot of
their problems on He does like great replacement shit that
all these black migrants are causing our country's problems. He
inspires a wave of violence against black people in Tunisia
(15:26):
that's pretty hideous and horrific. And he has gained a
significant amount of backing from particularly the Italian government, I
think also the French government, because he's cracking down on migrants, right,
and those migrants come to Italy and France and that's
a problem for those governments. So they're supporting this guy, who,
by the way, has turned himself into a dictator. All
those gains Tunisia had in the wake of the Arab Spring,
(15:47):
he has rolled back. He has centralized power, he has
more or less destroyed the judiciary is something that's independent,
you know, he is if he's not a dictator, he's
not all that far from it, you know. And he's
being supported by the these quote unquote democratic nations because well,
I mean because racism, right, Yeah, same reason they support
a Gadaffi, Like, yeah, when it comes to the politicians,
(16:08):
it's a mixture of racism and just like well, racism
wins votes, and when it comes to like why racism
win votes, it's back to racism, right anyway, So those
are that's Tunisia more or less.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Unfortunately, we need to go to ads. We'll be back
in a second, and we're back. Yeah, So well let's
end on a slightly more positive note where well, so
(16:41):
the line I was gonna give was one about how
like you know, I mean, this is the thing with Tunisia, right,
is like you have this like Chenizia has effectively structural
unemployment rates of like thirty forty percent. Right, Yeah, it's
it's and that's that's the thing that that's the thing
that can't be solved without changing the economic system.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
If you you know, if you you can have your
political revolution without your social revolution, you'll be right back
to where you were in like ten years. The problem though,
the other thing is you can have your social revolution
and also end up in the same place, which is
where we're going with with China. Where so one of
the there's a very famous Okay, I guess the place
we should start with this is that one of the
(17:20):
I've talked about this a bit on this show. One
of the ways that labor works in China like structurally
is that so you're a contractor, you work for a
contracting company. The contracting company is this like series of
shell companies, and there's like a there's like there's a
payday on like New Years because that's when the like
the financial like the year sort of rolls over and
that's when you get paid. And so these companies are
(17:40):
designed to specifically go out of business like the day
before New Year, so they don't have to pay any
of the workers for the work that they've done. And
this leads to a rash of protests in China, like
every single year on New Year's Day, there's like this
massive there's a protests like fucking everywhere because people have
been screwed. It happens a lot with construction companies, and
(18:03):
so there's a very like one of the very common
tactics you see is people like standing on top of
buildings holding banners saying like we're going to jump unless
you guys like pay us. And so that that's kind
of the background of this, which is that that's like,
that's a fairly common kind of like workers protest. In
twenty twenty one, there's a delivery driver in Jongsu who
(18:24):
he so something something I didn't really talk about the
ten episodes is that Chinese economy is increasingly becoming a
gig economy and this has been this has been happening
for a while now. And so this guy is a
delivery driver for Ali Baba and he's like, he's like
trying to change apps, and the app garnishes his wages
and steals seven hundred dollars from him, and that's an
enormous amount of money.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah, I mean the app garnished his wages. As a sentence,
that just makes me want to light something on fire.
So I get why this would spark protests.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Yeah, And he like tries to get it back and
they don't give it to him, and he like and
he lights himself on fire, and this turns into so
he lets self on fire and then like this this
is this is in twenty twenty one. This is the
same year where that Temu employee falls over dead, like
like dies in your bed from over work, and also
the same year when when a Temo employee jumps off
(19:14):
of the building because of over work. And this sets
off like a giant kind of shift in in the
way that the Chinese public is thinking about labor, because
up until this one, people have been you know, like China.
It's it's not it's nowhere near as bad as a Nia,
(19:35):
but it also has this problem of like everyone works
harder and harder. You're working, You're working nine ninety six, right,
You're working nine am nine pm, six days a week,
and you're like, you're working more and more and more
hours and you're not getting ahead, right, You're still stuck
in your shitty apartment and your app isn't paying you
for the work you did. And this leads to a
(19:57):
whole like a whole thing that sort of culminates in
in something I talked about a bit in the time
of episodes, which is the Chinese Supreme Court, Like the
Chinese Constitution says you're not supposed to be able to
work people for longer, for like thirty five hours, unless
like special circumstances, and the Chinese Supreme Court goes like, well, obviously,
(20:17):
you're not allowed to work people like twelve out like
twelve hours a day, six days a week, and that
isn't like in large part and partially it's because of
the the Temu suicide and the Temu thing. But the
other huge contributing factor to this, and another huge thing
contributing to Chinese society attempting to reckon kind of with
(20:40):
their unbelievable overwork culture is is the self immolation. And
it's it's it's one, and it goes viral so fast
that there's no way to sort of like cover it up.
There's it's it's you can't. The Chinese government can't really
just press the racism button like they normally would, because
this isn't someone into back and someone in changeohn they
(21:01):
can't really do that, and so they kind of are.
They're forced to make at least like some kind of
change because it pisss off so many people in ways
that like can't really be contained. So you know, I
guess the lesson from that, if there is one, is
(21:22):
sometimes very rarely you can back a government into a
corner where the normal things that they would say about it,
or like the normal like mental illness, terrorists, deluded things
don't work because the raw simplicity of what they did
and why just breaks through the media sphere thing, and it's.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Again very hard to predict obviously, Like this isn't the
first within the last twelve months. This isn't the first
self emolation of the United States, right, and the last
self emolation attacked or not attacks? Sorry I should jeez,
do I have a media rain or what? Well? The
last self immolation that we had, which I believe was
was over climate change.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Oh there, there there was a Palestine one too.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Oh there was a past So I guess we've had
a couple like two in the last or three now,
I guess in the last like twelve months or so,
But they didn't the other ones did not really move
the needle. Yeah, right, why Aaron do I mean? I
think I think part of it might have to do
with with how deliberate it was and how you know,
it got was very quickly picked up by local media
and the national media. I don't know that's that's really
(22:32):
outside the scope of these episodes, but I hope you
at least now have more of a grounding and like
how this has gone other times, people have used this
as a method of protest, and hopefully that's of use
to you anyway. Have a good day, Bye.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
It could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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