Margaret talks with Ron Placone about three antifascists who died protecting a humanitarian corridor--and one would-be antifascist who died on the other side of the war.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Al Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People who
did cool stuff. You're a weekly reminder that when there's
bad things, there's people trying to do good things, either
in response to it or on their own. Sometimes the
bad things exist because people try and do good things,
and then people try and do bad things as a result.
I'm your host, Mardak Kiljoy and with me today is
(00:23):
my guest who This is as a fun reversal because
last time we talked, I was a guest on his podcast.
Instead it's Ron Placone. Hi, how are you.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hi'm Margaret. Good to see you again. And yeah, longtime listener,
first time caller for your podcast, So yeah, Sally be here.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I'm excited to have you on. For people who want
to listen to more of us talking, they can listen
to an episode of your podcast one thousand with Ron Placone. Yep,
what else can people find on that podcast?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
So that's a podcast. I'm going on a life quest
to interview one thousand people who have inspired me in
some way. So interviews are won and done and I
try to cover as much ground as I can, and
you are among the guests. I always say, if you're
a fan of punk rock music, lefty politics, radical academics,
(01:15):
and just kind of people who have had significant pivots
in life. Journalists, activists, comedians, filmmakers. You're going to enjoy
this podcast. I've had everything from sex workers to journalists,
to communists to anarchists, to people who I have no
idea what their politics are, but it's something very interesting
that I wanted to talk about, and yeah, everything in between.
(01:36):
So it's a fun show.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Cool all right. So, oh, I forgot to do the
rest of the introductions, so our producer Sophie. But Sophie
isn't here today, but we do have a new audio engineer, Eva.
Everyone has to say hi to Eva.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Hi Eva, Hello Eva.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
So I had this whole episode planned out that I
was going to do that you were going to be
the guest. I'm not going to tell you what it
is because I'm going to do it later with someone else,
and I'm sorry it all got derailed by last week's news,
two weeks AGO's news. By the time you're listening to this, Okay,
the big news story of the week, this is that
part sarcasm. Almost no one outside of me and the
(02:16):
few people I think, picked up on this particular news
story I am talking, of course, the biggest story last week.
Did you hear about the twenty one year old American
hippie who called themselves an anti fascist who died in Ukraine?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I did not, So.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
There isn't I say called themselves an anti fascist. Their
name was Michael Gloss. They were not cool people who
did cool stuff. They died in Ukraine as an internationalist
volunteer in Vladimir Putin's army.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Wow. Okay, Actually, now that you mentioned this, I think
I did hear something, but I did not hear much
of the details, nor did I hear the anti fascist part.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah. Well, I mean a lot of the news stories
are specifically leading with the fact that this person's mother
was CIA deputy minister, But I genuinely believe that that
is unrelated. Really Okay, yeah, I'm gonna explain why. So
don't worry. We're not going to do an episode about
(03:20):
Michael Gloss, but we're going to use Michael Gloss as
a start to this story.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Okay, okay, all right, I'm excited.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Michael Gloss was a hippie wanderer from the States who
made their way to Russia, and the reason I'm using
they them pronouns for this person. All news articles are
referring to them as he, but according to their social
media profile from when they were sixteen years old, they
were using they them, and I have no I have
no update providing a different pronoun from their own position.
(03:51):
They were a hippie wanderer from the US who made
their way to Russia and inspired by what I'm going
to call the Tanky distortion field, they signed up for
the Russian Army, whereupon they invaded Ukraine and got got.
Their Instagram was largely unused since they were sixteen, so
(04:12):
I have no idea how the conceived of gender at
the end of their life, but I do know that
their politics took a turn from anti authoritarian to and
when I say tanky, I'm being very specific right here,
because I specifically mean someone who believes in really strange
things about the modern world. Have you, I don't know
(04:33):
how far outside of my own sphere. Are you familiar
with this concept of a tanky?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah? Well, I was actually listening to I believe it
was your last episode.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
I didn't get to listen to the whole thing, but
I listened to some of it, and you know that
was historical. What tanky actually is in our contemporary sense.
I mean, I've said this a couple of times. Applying
it to the contemporary sense. I'm still not totally sure
I know exactly what a tanky is because I have
seen it use so many different ways. I myself have
(05:04):
even been called one where I'm like, what do you mean?
I think some people they use the word tanky to
describe anyone who's critical of American foreign policy, right, you know,
so it's like it's one of those things. Whenever that
term is thrown out there, I have to ask the
person for moore description, like, what does that mean to you?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
It's been abused this particular word, And I would argue
this primarily being abused by, like I would say, sort
of the liberal and centrists who are applying it to
anyone who's basically left of them. And yeah, anyone who's
critical of the United States or whatever.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
I'm pretty sure those are the people who said that
to me. Yeah, I didn't get to take a survey,
but you know, I saw the Twitter handles.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
I'm going to tell you the rest about Michael Gloss
and then see how to tie that into what I
would claim as a Tanky in the modern context. I
started writing this whole essay about Michael Gloss, about the
Tanky worldview, the distortion field of reality that would lead
a would be anti fascist to die in the service
(06:05):
of one of the most tremendously authoritarian states on the
planet right now, Russia under Putin. I'll probably finish that
essay at some point. But then I realized I was like,
this is more than an essay. I'm completely redoing my
script for the week. I saved all my notes for
the other scripts and started over because I want to
(06:26):
talk about three international anti fascists who died in Ukraine,
who died fighting Putin. And they each came from a
different position that led them to believe, for very good
reason that confronting Putin was a necessary thing to advance
the struggles that they believed in. These three who I'm
(06:48):
going to be talking about this week, they died defending
a humanitarian corridor on April nineteenth, twenty twenty three. There
are three anarchists. One was Russian and he had witnessed
and fought tooth and nail against the rise of Putin
and authoritarianism. For his entire adult life, and actually starting
when he was a teenager, for twenty years he fought
(07:10):
against putin. One was an Irish activist, a singer who
comes from a small Irish speaking community off the west
coast of Ireland, who spent all of his life helping
refugees and fighting against oil pipelines. And one was a
black American former marine who helped found an anarchist community
center in Cleveland, Ohio. Those are our cool people this week.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
They all sound pretty cool just right out the gate there.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah, I like them even more than I expected to.
And that's I mean, you know, they died trying to
defend a humanitarian corridor and all of this stuff, so
I'm like set up to like them, but I feel
like I missed out by not meeting any of these people.
But Michael Gloss before we gloss over him. That's the
(07:59):
only time I'll do that.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
I see what you did there?
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, thanks, thanks. It was really subtle that one. Most
of the news stories about Michael Gloss focus on the
fact that their mother, Julianne Galina, is the Deputy Director
for Digital Innovation for the CIA. This is a job
that she got about last year. She helps onboard new
technology for the CIA. Not a fan of the CIA,
But you don't say no, yeah, no for some weird reason. Yeah,
(08:24):
as it terms out, you can actually be critical of
authoritarianism wherever it is. You don't actually have to pick
one country good and therefore the other country bad or
the other way around.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Sorry, none of us are ever going to be on
cable news with that attitude, but continue that's true.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
I wonder if this is why, like the cap of
my fame is based on the fact that I'm going
to do several weeks in a row talking about the
problems with falling into authoritarian viewpoints based on misunderstanding of communism.
That's a classic thing that everyone likes talking about.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
I think, oh yeah, misunderstanding communism, talking about foreign conflicts
with any type of nuance, I don't get a microphone
cut everywhere except for places like this.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah yeah, people don't like to hear it.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Nope.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Michael's mother CIA. Their father is Larry Gloss, a Navy
vet who fought in the First Iraq War and also
does cybersecurity. Their Instagram handle is it ball for twenty
and ball is like spelled like the demon or whatever
that I don't know anything about I'm going to lose
all my metal points. Most of their posts are from
(09:29):
twenty twenty, when they were probably about sixteen years old,
and they show someone exploring radical politics. This part made
me sad. When I first heard this story, I was like,
fucking dipshit, fucking went and fought and died in Ukraine.
Fucked them right, and then I ended up just sad.
When they were sixteen, they were exploring radical politics. And
I don't expect anyone to have a coherent political worldview
(09:53):
when they're sixteen years old. If you tried to challenge
me based on my political positions when I was sixteen,
I would not hold up either. When Michael was sixteen,
they posted a lot of anti authoritarianism. They self identified
as an anarchist. They were also a COVID conspiracist, saying
that the COVID death numbers were inflated, and they went
(10:13):
to climate protests and you know, there's news articles about
them yelling like you're killing your own child, that people
working in like climate destroying you know, fields, And they
were also an eagle scout. They went to college to
study human ecology and then they dropped out in twenty
twenty three to go be a hippie and turkey and
(10:35):
start dressing in robes with a big antler necklace and
letting people call them Jesus.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Okay, did they amass a following throughout this or.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
They did not? Okay, but they were hanging out with
Do you know much about the Rainbow Family.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
I do not.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
I'm so excited to get to explain all these horrible
interesting things to you the Rainbow Family. And I'm actually
kind of officially neutral on I feel like if I
did way more research, i'd stop being neutral. But they're hippies.
So the Rainbow Family are people who really like going
to rainbow gatherings and they like gathering in the woods.
It's like burning Man without money. I know burning Man
(11:12):
doesn't have money within it, but you have to have
a lot of money to like do it.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
The people who show up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, I
got you.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
It's festival culture. Modern festival culture kind of comes out
of a similar thing. It's yeah, it tends to be
a working class, slightly rural, intensely interesting subculture that has
lots of positives and negatives, and probably more negatives and positives.
But I don't know enough about it to say it
certainly didn't go well for Michael Gloss. A lot of
(11:39):
people within the Rainbow family were very critical of what
they went on to do.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Well, if they showed up and their opener was hey,
I'm Jesus and you can call me that, I could
see how it wouldn't work out.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
I phrased it as they let people call them Jesus,
because I don't think they called themself Jesus. Oh, they
just didn't seem to mind when people did. There's a
lot of posts of them on this like like Russian
social media that they were posting to where they just
literally are like, oh, I lost my regular clothes. Now
I have to wear a robe and a cloak And
you're like, no, you just want to wear like no shame,
(12:11):
Like I got nothing against that part of it, you know,
mm hm. And they would spend like months at a
time at these festivals, but they would also do activism
whenever they could. They would work to fix up buildings
in Turkey, they were damaged by earthquakes. And then they
moved to Georgia, the country, not the state, and they
decided to cross into Russia. And this is the part
that most articles gloss over because I think they don't
(12:34):
understand the modern Tanky distortion field.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
He would camp out with a big Soviet flag over
his tent, and all of his posts started being about
the importance of a multipolar world. If you hear people
talking about this multipolar world thing, I'm not sure whether.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, I mean somewhat you can fill in some gaps, but.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, Basically, there are authoritarian communists who believe that the
USSR could have done no wrong when it was the US.
This is one position that I don't share, but they
then carry that onward when I talk about the modern
mindset of this particular subsection of people. They believe that
(13:14):
modern Russia is essentially still the voice for freedom in
the world. And it's interesting because even some of these
articles that I read was like, actually, a lot of
people have moved to Russia because of politics in the
past couple years. Yeah, conservatives. Conservatives have moved to Russia
because they're like, hey, a country that outlaws gay people.
You know, there haven't been a lot of communists moving
(13:36):
to Russia. I would argue that when you're presented with
a political issue, what we need to do is think
to ourselves what is right in this situation and not think, oh, well,
I'm a Democrat who I believe this. I'm a Republican,
I believe this. I'm a communist, I believe this. I'm
an anarchist. So I believe this, and you actually have
(13:57):
to go about it the other way. You have to
be like, what do why I believe about this thing?
Is there a label that is useful to call me
as relates to that? That's my argument. Take the invasion
of Ukraine. I don't think to myself, what is the
anarchist position on the invasion of Ukraine? And that is
the position I will take. Instead, I look at the
(14:18):
situation as a person. I listen to people on the ground,
I look at the history, I look at the context,
and I say, oh, Russia is doing an imperialism. I
hope they fail at doing that. And so that's my
argument of how to arrive at this sort of thing.
But in this thing that I'm going to continue to
rudely call the Tanky distortion field, which I probably shouldn't
(14:41):
call because some people's like brains turn off when you
say that word, because it's used as a pejorative. Rudely
in different ways, but I'm going.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
To nonetheless hell of a band name.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah, thanks Yeah. Everything is run through this tanky filter.
Everything is run through an ideological filter. Russia invading Ukraine
is good because NATO is bad, even though Ukraine famously
isn't in NATO, and therefore whatever Russia does there is justified.
The multi polar world idea is that, and there's like
(15:12):
kernels of truth in a lot of this, right. Their
idea is that since the US economic and military hegemony
over the world is bad, which is true, it is,
it's a bad thing, it would be therefore good to
have a strong counter force that's not even an inherently
bad idea, so it'd be a second pull to the
political world. But they use it to mean anyone who
(15:34):
fights against the US is my ally and is anti imperialism.
So like only the US can be imperialism. Iran not
imperialist force according to this position. Russia not an imperialist
force according to this And it's honestly one of the
easiest ways to sort of be like, oh, you're literally
(15:56):
living in a distortion field, You're living in an echo
chamber where you have like hit upon certain ideas. These
like axioms that cannot be challenged. If you talk to
people from Iran, it is an imperialist force in the
Swanna region, like Russia is an imperialist force in the
region that is in You know, that doesn't mean that
the US isn't a greater imperialist force.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
But I think it's one of those things. It's almost
human nature. People are kind of just naturally inclined to
want a good guy and a bad guy totally. Like
the world is a very simple comic book, and we
need a good guy and a bad guy. So Russia bad,
us good or vice versa, and it's one of those things. Well, unfortunately,
(16:39):
the world's a lot more complex like that.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yeah, yeah, the whole like more than one thing can
be bad at once is like such a basic concept
to me. But it's not one that is universally shared.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
You know, it's not universally shared at all. And again,
in certain circles, it's not going to win you any friends,
it's not going to get you elected in this country. No,
and that's the way it goes.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
No, And people also therefore don't understand like complexities of
geopolitics essentially, right, because you have like like take World
War two. Universally, people are like Germany bad besides the
people that we can immediately write off. But the people
who think Germany bad often therefore say so, therefore the
(17:20):
US good, therefore the uss are good. But neither one
will accept that the US and the USSR were allies
in that war, and so like, clearly bad people were
fighting against even worse people. And if you're like pro US,
you still got to hand it to the Soviets, and
if you're pro Soviet, you still got to kind of
hand it to the US. And people do not, And
(17:43):
in my mind, I'm like, well, these are both evil
forces that fought an even greater evil force, and so
it goes that's what geopolitics is. I don't know, you know,
our poor searcher Michael Gloss, and I think searcher is
kind of what I hit upon this. This person after
they died, their father was like, this was mental illness problem,
whereas a lot of their Rainbow family friends were like
(18:03):
they fell into conspiracy nonsense. They fell down this like
rabbit hole. And I think that, like many things can
be true at once, you know, right, but it's like
otherwise rational people also fall down conspiracy holes and start
believing increasingly unhinged things. Our poor searcher, who looks like
(18:24):
Jesus takes an Arabic name while in Turkey, and they
fall for this, and they start flying a Soviet flag,
and they go to Moscow and they sign up for
the military, and this part's like almost heartbreaking. They show
up and they're like, oh, I want Russian citizenship because
I'm going to heal the world. I'm going to solve
climate change. Russia is the force to do it. It
(18:45):
is the force for good in this world. And also
when I join the military, they're going to look at
my college background. I have a couple of years of
college and I'm going to do engineering work. I won't
have to pick up a gun. The Russian does not
give a fuck. This American is a body to put
into harm's way. They assigned Gloss immediately to an assault unit,
(19:07):
basically the role with the shortest life expectancy, and then
drop that confused kid into a meat grinder. They were
killed by artillery fire on April fourth, twenty twenty four,
and it wasn't confirmed until very recently that they died
fighting in the Russian military. And so there was like
an obituary that their family put up that I believe
(19:28):
has since been taken down, where they were like our
son died, you know, doing what he loved or whatever.
That's the story of Michael Gloss.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
That's yeah. What kind of rabbit holes were they diving
down most recently? Was it all just kind of they're
in the Russian military now or were there some other
subsets going on too?
Speaker 1 (19:52):
So they were in telegram channels and they were on
Russian social media, and I believe that they crossed into
Moscow to meet up with friends that they knew through
these like telegram channels in the Rainbow family. But again,
the Rainbow family I do not believe holds the Tanky line.
There are just many people within it who do. Apparently
I had no idea that there were, but you know,
(20:13):
that is heavily implied in our sources. There's a couple
different articles that go through. I only found the American
social media, which is mostly older, But then I read
a lot of the articles that polled their Russian social
media to talk about things, and there are other things
that they were convinced that bricks was the future. You know,
the idea of having an economic power that isn't based
(20:35):
on the dollar, which again I'm probably neutral on I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
But.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
It still doesn't mean I'm gonna go invade a sovereign
country in the right army of an authoritarian.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Again, that falls into the nuggets of truth component, where
it's like, yeah, there's some nuggets the truth here, but
that doesn't mean that this is one hundred percent good
idea either.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah. So, speaking of things that you should totally listen
to and base your worldview on, here's advertisers and we're back.
I want to contrast the story of Michael Gloss with
the story of three other internationalist anti fascists who are
(21:23):
also killed by artillery fire in Ukraine. They were killed
trying to stop Putin, not fighting for Putin. But in
order to tell their story, I'm going to start with contest.
Everyone knows context. I mean, if you listen to the show,
you probably have learned to put up with it. After
(21:45):
the collapse of the Soviet Union in nineteen ninety one,
do you know how many people have been in charge
of Russia since it's become Russia not the Soviet Union.
Well I didn't know this, so I had a guess
I guess.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
I don't though, because my guess would only be a
small handful, because I mean, Putin's around for a while.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Yeah, there have been two people in charge, and both
of them were basically assigned to that position. Boris Yeltsen
oversaw the transition from a state capitalist of economy to
a liberal capitalist economy, privatizing everything. This wasn't really a
transition to democracy. It could have been a lot of
Soviet states transitioned to liberal democracy or whatever. Right, But
(22:23):
Boris Yeltsen was impeached in nineteen ninety three, and so
Yeltsin's troops stormed the Parliament building. So he stayed in power,
because it turns out power is what matters. It's probably
gonna come up again in the script, but like, I
actually think that what's happening in Russia and particularly Putin,
is the single clearest example of what Trump wants to
(22:44):
do of anything that I've run across. I'll pitch it
as we go, because there's some comparisons to me. Eventually,
people were like, this is bad. You can't keep doing
this shit. So by nineteen ninety one, he resigned and
he appointed his hand picked successor Vladimir Putin as president.
Vladimir Putin was then elected in this like I'm going
(23:05):
to call an election like tomorrow. Good fucking luck, you know.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
H Unfortunately, ninety five percent of the people really liked
the guy, so you know, it worked out exactly.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah, he has been elected and re elected in two thousand,
two thousand and four, twenty twelve, twenty eighteen, and twenty
twenty four. Putin was a former KGB guy, so a
secret police guy during the Soviet era, and he has
been backed by collection of oligarchs basically forever. This is
(23:35):
part of why I think he's a role model for Trump.
I know we're all grasping for historical parallels like Mussolini
and Hitler and Franco and every other dictator ever, but
Putin feels like the most on the nose because the
Russian state is in the hands of a few powerful
oligarchs literally what we would just call billionaires here, Like
if someone was writing about the US honestly from outside,
they would refer to our billionaires as the oligarchy class.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Totally. I mean, they're all this. I mean I refer
to them as that.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, it's accurate. Save stuff Putin is at the helm
to protect their interests and vice versa. There is no
freedom of speech. His political rivals wind up dead and
barely concealed attacks. And you just see this, Like Trump
is really into strongman politics, right, He's really into just
openly being like, yeah, what if I just torture everyone?
(24:20):
I don't know, why would I do due process of law?
Who cares?
Speaker 2 (24:24):
How can we get the military boar involved here? How
can we just got to get them on the streets
just just at all ours? Why not? I can assign this?
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Putin sees himself in a long legacy of Russian leaders
like the Tsars and Stalin, and so there is a
kernel of truth to the whole tanky thing, where like
Putin's basically the USSR, just only the authoritarianism part.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yeah, the bad part.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Yeah, Like it's much better to be a woman in
the USSR than it isn't Putin's Russia. And like, again,
I'm not a big Soviet fan, but better to be
a woman in Russia than in the US at the
time too, you know, well in comparison to men. I
don't know whatever. Anyway, Putin's hold on popular support relies
(25:12):
on the sort of strong daddy figure archetype who will
keep everyone safe and happy as long as everyone obeys,
exactly like the kind of stuff that Trump says and
has like maga repeat. That's the core of my argument,
this oligarch run thing with a strong man leader that's
still basically built around capitalism.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
I mean, I feel safe when I see the dude
on a horse with no shirt on. But that's just me.
I mean.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Putin came out of the gate a bastard. He started
centralizing media control. He reinstated the old Soviet era and
national anthem, although with new lyrics. But Putinism developed over time.
The other reason I find the comparison useful is that
I think it gives a sense of time scale. Putinism
has like developed over the past twenty five years, and
(26:00):
in order to understand that transition, I want to follow
up one of today's main characters, a Russian anarchist who
committed his life to stopping Putin. His name was Dmitri Petrov. Well,
that was one of his names. He had a lot
of different names. His birth name was Dmitri. People have
called him both Dima and Dimi for short. In the
Russian anarchist movement. People called him ecologue, which translates to
(26:24):
a cologist, because of his commitment to eco anarchism. Once
he started fighting in Ukraine and presumably before that, in Roshava,
he went by Iliya Leshi and Iliya is a common
Kurdish name. And just to be clear, when people go
and fight in Roshava against like Isis and things like that,
it is normal and accepted in not cultural appropriation for
(26:47):
them to take or be given Kurdish names. Okay, So
he goes by Ilia Leshi. Ilia is a common Kurdish name,
and Leshi is a Slavic mythological figure, a reference to
the protector of the forest.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
So far, all this guy's like, all of his names
have been really really badass, Like they all have that,
I know, like all these staves. You're like, I wouldn't
want to owe that guy money like he did, but
I'd also i'd want to have a beer with this guy,
Like he seems like a cool dude.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
I know, he has so many good names, Like you're like,
save some good names for everyone else.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Most of what he did and most of what he wrote,
he did anonymously, especially when he was working underground in
Putin's Russia. Some of the quotes attributed to him are
simply people's best guesses looking at public communicates and essays
that were produced by the movements he was part of,
because he has a somewhat distinctive writing style, and he
did a lot of the writing for the underground movements
he was in part of. And now that he's dead,
(27:41):
people can be like, oh, yeah, that guy you're talking
about modelt having cop cars. That was totally Dimitri.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
You know that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Once I'm dead, you can blame all kinds of crimes
all I'm alive. I didn't do any of them. He
was born probably in the mid eighties or so. He
was radicalized, I believe by his father, or at least
he was exposed to radical ideas by his father. His
dad would talk to him about the Maknovists in Ukraine
during the Russian Civil War, who were ostensibly allied with
(28:11):
the Red Army in the war against capitalism, but then
the Red Army came and crushed them, and so this
is a whatever I've done like six episodes or something
about them. At least his dad also started taking him
to the oldest independent bookstore in Moscow called Fallen Star,
where he started reading the anarchist magazine Altonom. By two
(28:32):
thousand and four, when he was still in school, we
started his own anarchist newspaper with his friends, called Heretic
and at this point not now unfortunately for reasons we'll
talk about. The anarchist movement in Russia was pretty strong
and he started working with food not bombs, which was
a brave thing to do in Russia at the time.
Fascists used to bomb food not bombses in Russia, which
(28:54):
is explicitly not allowed.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
It's in the name, but like literally allowed bombs here.
They usually just arrest people for trying to feed hungry people.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
But no, I know, I was thinking about that. I
was like, ah, super crazy, dangerous to be a food
not bombser there. And I'm like, I mean people get
arrested for it all the time in the oh yeah state,
totally yeah, but usually not bombed.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
I mean, hey, who knows what the next couple of
years have as store, but so far.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
That's a good point. It Russia has an image of
the future is a dark concept, but not what I'm
convinced is wrong. He started getting involved in ecological protests.
He defended Bitzvesky Park, which is the biggest park in Moscow.
He worked with an anarchist union doing like labor organizing,
and a lot of what he was doing. A lot
(29:40):
of the anti fascism in this period was focused on
confronting Nazi street violence. This is a very common pattern
in history. Fascists build up to controlling state power by
dominating the streets with paramilitary fascist violence. This had happened
in Italy, it happened in Germany. They try. I had
to do it in the UK, but just to continue
(30:02):
to shout out all my older old episodes. At the
Battle of Cable Street, Irish Catholics and immigrant Jews teamed
up to beat the piss out of the fascists in
the street and throw like potatoes with razor blades in
them at them, and shit.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Now, that's a unique Irish resource if I've ever heard one,
I know, and.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
I actually think there's a chance that that was a
newspaper application of like, oh the Irish, they probably put
razor blades and potatoes, But I'm like, yeah, but it's
cool though. If you're throwing the Nazis.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Got to be at least one person that did it,
so you know, I say it exactly, yeah, or someone
saw that newspaper and then did it. Yeah they oh
good idea, Yeah, exactly totally.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
The journalists was just dreaming up their fantasy they were like,
and then they drowned them all in the Yeah. And
it's also a pattern we're seen in the US about
fascist violence on the street level leading to capture of
the state and fascist violence exerted by states just a
little bit, a little bit, which is actually part of
why I think things might change. But there's been less
(31:04):
street fighting and like proud boy activity since the second
Trump presidency. And I would argue it's not because those
groups are weaker, but literally because they're stronger. And now
we have ICE doing the violence. I mean, ICE has
always been doing the violence, but now it's just like
now you have like ICE volunteers grinning while they smash
open cars with sledgehammers. I actually met some Russian anarchists
(31:25):
during this period at one point at a gathering in Finland.
They had crossed a very difficult border to come tell
us about their experiences fighting fascists in the streets and
about the number of their friends who had died or
being tortured in prison, and it really put I was
there to talk about like fiction, and I was just like, oh, hey,
(31:46):
I'm super serious to it from It really put my
problems in perspective.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
You know, were you the closer? Did you have to
go last?
Speaker 1 (31:54):
No? No, they knew I was not. The draw was
because that this was like fifteen Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Talking about friends go to prison, all the brutality they've
been through, and then you gotta be hey, uh so
this novel that's not nonfiction. Put some different shoes on.
We're gonna we're gonna switch it up.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Yeah. No, I'm very grateful that I did not have.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Sometimes stuff like that happens to be because I'll be
invited to do an event and stuff like that, and
everybody is, of course very well meaning, but you know,
it's not always the easiest move in the world. What
you know, you're there to kind of give a little
bit of humorous relief and have the clown shoes on,
and the person before you is talking about some healthcare
tragedy or something like that. It's like, yeah, geez, guys,
(32:44):
we gotta can we do a little bit of a
palate cleanser or something here. It's like this isn't.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Yeah, you just come out and blow an airhorn and
then just like, oh, I didn't even thought about how
hard are we going to do comedy? Yeah, like fundraisers
and stuff.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Yeah, I mean it depends on the circumstance, but yeah,
sometimes you kind of get a reset a room, like
a normal person's scheduling that thing. They're not going to
think of stuff like that, but you know.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Yeah, well what they could think of instead maybe as
a palate cleanser. Perfect, they could just listen to a
bunch of advertisements and be reminded of the fact that
they live in a capitalist system and just be so
grateful that you live in a capitalist system and you
can choose minor differences between things that you can't afford
(33:31):
because of the terrible wages. Here's ads and we're back.
So Dmitri probably Ecologue at this point was involved in
these street fights against Baptists. Working to defend Georgian refugees
was like one of the big Basically, all of the
(33:52):
different ethnic groups, including ethnic groups that are like present
within Russia, don't even have to cross a border to
do it. We're all being horribly mistreated by the white supremacists.
At least two of his friends were murdered during this period.
The late oughts was a hard time to be an
anarchist in Russia. Fascists working alongside the state started killing activists,
(34:13):
including journalists and lawyers. But people fought back, not just anarchists,
just people fought back against the rise of Putin. There
were public demonstrations with hundreds of thousands of people out
against Putinism, and this is like kind of around the
time Putin's really coming into his own. Anti fascists worked
to protect the crowd from police violence. There were clandestine
(34:36):
actions happening pretty much every night. And this is across
Russia and also Belarus, which is in a very parallel position.
They have another Lukashenko is this guy who just has
been in power ever since the Soviet Union collapsed, or
since nineteen ninety four, I think he's been in power.
We don't know all of the actions that Dimitri did,
because it's not a good idea to tell people if
you've molotov cop cars of a fascist government. But we
(34:59):
know some of his actions. For example, in two thousand
and nine, Dimitri model to have a bunch of cop
cars of the fascist government. One flash point during this
time was an ecological protest, and this is one of
the things that helped humanize this. Like you know when
you look at Russia's this, oh they're fascist state, and
therefore you sort of imagine the progressives and the radicals
and the anarchists as being like completely different people made
(35:23):
from an stern stuff. They're all men of iron, like
stalin it means man of iron. But they got together
to defend a forest from being cut down to make
a toll road. And that was like one of their
big protests, defending a forest near Moscow called Kimky Forest.
(35:44):
There was like foxes in elk and bor and shit
that lived there, and people were like, no, we're going
to fight the hell out of you over this. When
the cutting started in twenty ten, activists of all stripes
started occupying the forest. And this was all deeply tied
to anti fascism and anti Putinism and anarchism and big
happy movement. I'm exaggerating, but in a eulogy for him,
(36:08):
one friend of Dimitri's recounted the following story quote, once
we wandered through the autumn forest at night, disabling construction
equipment and one girl lost her sneaker. She just stepped
on the ground and it swallowed her leg. I think,
like in muddle. She pulled her leg out, but the
shoe remained somewhere underground. Well. Dima took off his shoes,
(36:31):
gave her his sneakers, put bags on his feet, and
went on like that. People asked him, are you not cold?
Do you want to change? Eventually? He said, if it
becomes unbearable, then we will change. But he ended up
walking around in bags all night. That's who he was.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
And it it's funny because it would be just a
cute story if he was on a hike. But he's
like committing felonies in the middle of the night, destroying
a construction equipment and he's.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Like, oh, yeah, we're back. Just got that's all I got.
This is why I get multiple badass names. I'll give
my shoes stranger in need.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Yeah, totally. This protest culminated when people stormed the local
government offices or tried to. Five hundred anti fascists and
anarchists were arrested, and Russian cops have no qualms about
torturing people by like tying electrodes.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
To the shiteesh.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
So the fact that a KGB guy is running the
government is very evident. In Russia, a lot of anti
fascists started fleeing the country. At this point. It feels
the image of the future where you have this like
just slowly tightening vice on society and radical politics but
also just daily life.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Right, Oh yeah, I mean during that time, I mean
that was when he was banning random punk bands from
entering the country and stuff like that because that they,
like mentioned, you believe in their songs and stuff. I mean,
it was it was a wild time.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
I remember one of my Greek friends was talking about
taking a train into Russia because he really wanted to go.
I have always be met too Russia've always wanted to
take the Trans Siberian yea, yeah, but like it's going
to be a different world before I'm going to Russia.
This friend of mine, he has to go into Russia.
And in order to travel in Russia at that time
and now it's probably even harder, he needed a specific
visa with like his entire itinerary down to the minute
(38:20):
on it, right, and if you deviate from that you
can go to jail. And so he shows up and
he's allowed the next day, and this train shows up
at like eleven fifty five pm. It's like five minutes
early to the border, and so this man is yelling
at him in Russian and he's like, I don't really
speak any Russian, and you know, the woman sitting next
to him is trying to interpret I don't know whether
(38:40):
from Greek or English or what. And the guard is
just like this, says, you can't be here till tomorrow.
What are you doing here? And he's like, it's it's
five minutes from now, my guy, you know, midnight hits
and he's still arguing with this man and he's like,
it's midnight, can I come in now? And the guy
is like fuck it, gives them back his papers and
(39:03):
then he says thank you in Russian and the guys,
you spoke Russian this whole time, you blind bastard.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
You know, I thought you were gonna say. The guy
just said you're welcome, just like, well it's midnight, and whin.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Yeah, no, no, that would be like a that's like
a German cop, not a Nazi German cop, but a
modern German cop is just a stickler for the rules,
you know, but like otherwise polite. This is why I
never went to Russia.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
You don't want to risk that early train. You really don't.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
No, no, just no early trains to Russia. And so
the street protests started getting put down successfully and anti
fascist started fleeing the country, and basically, with you know,
opposition being crushed, he started centralizing control even more. Dmitri
didn't leave yet though. In twenty eleven, he and some
(39:53):
friends blew up a cop station along a toll road
in the middle of the night, and someone probably Dimitri,
wrote a story about how what happened. They set the
bomb off using a pool of gasoline, but the first
match didn't light it, so someone probably Dimitri had to
run back and throw another match. And it's interesting because
in all of his personal writings later he talks about
how he's like kind of a scaredy cat, and I'm.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Like, doesn't sound like it, my dude, he brought the
second match with no shoes. That part's not even in
the Yeah, he's not even the thing.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Yeah, yeah, he's like, shoesn't getting caught. He doesn't need
to put bags on your feet, can't track the footprints
that way. As Putin's power grew stronger and stronger. The
people of Ukraine were starting to get sick of their
government being basically Putin's toadies, and so they threw themselves
a little revolution. It started off as a social movement,
(40:45):
but it became a revolution and it was a wildly
mixed politics revolution. This is called the Maiden Protests or
euro Maiden, which is also a.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Bit Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
I actually had this rule where normally, if some one
says something would be a good band name, they're wrong.
That's like one of my like axioms. But maybe it's
just because Iron Maiden is such a Yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
You're a maid. Well were you on board with what
was it like Tanky distortion or something like that.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Oh, Tanky distortion field. Yeah, if it sounded like social distortion.
The problem is that going into it, I wouldn't know
whether it's like pro or anti Tanky. But if they
did it right, no one else would know either, right,
because you would like sing about things that almost make sense,
but then like at the last minute turn into the Netherlands.
You know that would be kind of clever.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, I mean it could be really beta depending on
how they went about it.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Yeah, I mean the best idea is that half of
the band be Marcus Lemonists and half of the band
be either social democrats or anarchists, and so they don't
even have internal consistency.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
And you know what, the time really goes by in
the van because of their conversations just keep going. It's
not always cordial, but yeah, and then they just drive
into Russia so they can turn them ten minutes midnight.
Like I thought our song ten minutes before midnight was different.
(42:09):
I thought it was about the army. They always show
up five minutes before soundcheck always.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Yeah, totally. So the euromaide in protests was the Ukrainian
government was like, we want to sign a packed tying
us closer to the EU, but the president was like, no,
fuck you, I like putin instead, so we refuse to
sign it. So protests picked up. And this was an
ideologically diverse movement, which is to say they were fascists
(42:38):
and anti fascists both involved. Basically there was people who
liked democracy, people who liked anti authoritarianism, and Ukrainian nationalists
who are like, no, we want our own far right thing,
just independent from Russia, which is kind of a classic
composition of shit in Ukraine to be real, going back
in into the moochnists, there was like anti authoritarians, and
(43:00):
there's also Ukrainian nationalists. The protests started off, as best
as I can tell, the protests started off more democratic
in character and became more nationalists as time went on.
The anarchists publisher Crime Think contrasts the Ukrainian movement to
the Yellowves movement in France from twenty eighteen twenty nineteen,
and they argue that quote the Yellow Vest movement of
(43:22):
twenty eighteen to twenty nineteen in France offers an example
of a social movement in which nationalists initially had an advantage,
but anarchists and anti fascists managed to outflank them. And
so it's like when people are mad at the status quo,
everyone gets together to be like, well, all I hate
the status quo, and then you like look around and
you're like wait, but some of you all are bad.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Yeah. It's kind of like, well, wait a second, why
do you hate the status quo. Let's work out some
of the details.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Yeah, Sometimes the enemy of your enemy is your enemy.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
Yeah, and if they're Nazis exactly.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Yeah. Some types we're talking about duots, flexities and stuff
like that. But there are other types where it is
quite simple and quite simple. For instance, Yazi enemy one
hundred percent of the time. Done.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
But you get into this messy, messy thing, right where
both sides of the Ukrainian Russian conflict have ideologically committed
fascists in their racks. Yep, right, But I would argue
that when you look at the Ukrainian side, there's both
ideologically committed fascists and ideologically committed anti fascists in separate units.
And on the Russian side, the only ideologically committed anti
(44:30):
fascist was an American who dressed like Jesus who got
dropped into the war zone. You know, I tend to
agree with you, right, Like you're like, oh, don't do
anything with fucking Nazis, But you're like, it wouldn't make
sense to Oh, it's fucking no, no shit, it's so messy. Yeah,
but yeah, in general, and then like overall, I think
that the euromade and protests were good, right, but it's
(44:53):
like the nationalist character was a problem, and so there
were people working within them to try and outflank the
fascists among the people in Ukraine trying to outflank the
fascists was Dmitri, the Russian guy. He went to Kiev
to throw down in the Ukrainian protests and helped form
an anarchist regiment, delivering food to protesters and offering a
(45:14):
connection to the anti Putin protests in Moscow, which must
have been cool, right, You're like, oh, here come Russians
talking about this huge movement in Russia that supports us,
that also hates Putin, right, and it helps remind them
that this isn't about like, oh I hate Russians, which
is like, there's like no better way to undermine nationalism
(45:34):
than to be like, your enemy isn't Russian people, Your
enemy is Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
And that's the stuff they will not. I mean, there
were all those protests going on in Moscow and elsewhere,
people protesting what Putin was doing, and it's like they're
never going to show you that on the news. They
don't want you to see that.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
No. Dmitri wrote about his experiences, talking about as the
protest became more militarized, I can't help but appreciate that
every everything is organized so seriously. However, the situation also
has a drawback, perhaps more significant than its advantages. The
presence of professional or quasi professional military men inevitably means
the collapse of any kind of democracy in the movement,
(46:14):
since by decision of their commanders, these people can impose
this or that order on everyone else in an organized
way by force, and then that protest movement. The Euromaidan
movement climax at the end of February in twenty fourteen,
when over one hundred protesters were killed about fourteen cops
were killed. I think Dimitri wrote the following about the
(46:35):
fighting on February eighteenth, quote, it is important to use
your fear so that it helps you avoid getting into
certain troubles, but does not flow into panic and flight. Personally,
I had an incessant fear that a bullet or a
grenade would hit me. I have known for a long
time that I am far from being a daredevil, and
(46:57):
I say that without any hint of coquetry. Now, for
the first time, I became interested in the essence of
such a feeling as courage. Next to fear, there was
a feeling similar to emptiness, a silent obligation to stay
and act. It is almost never formulated verbally, It just
(47:17):
is maybe courage is just about that. Furthermore, it is
important to begin to act meaningfully and not just stance
or stupidly rush back and forth. And I just this
idea that courage is the emptiness that sits next to
fear and tells you that you can't leave, you have
to get things done.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Yeah. Well, I also, I mean I actually connected more
and that stands out with the assessment of fear. Yeah,
you know, like I've never really unpacked the idea of
using fear constructively, so that's pretty cool to me. I
really like it.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
It very much humanizes this person who can look like
a you know, a paragon of something, you know, like
just a like ah, it's just the person who always
did what was right, never afraid of anything, and fought
and fought and fought and then eventually died saving lives.
What a hero, you know. And like, I mean, I
think this person's essentially a hero. I intentionally call the
(48:19):
show cool people did cool stuff, not heroes, because there's
problems with calling people heroes. But like, sure, the Putin
loving president was kicked the fuck out, which led to
Russia enacting crimea when you know, caused the current ker fluffle.
Putin's power seemed cemented in Russia at this point, and
with the movement kind of falling apart, Dmitri started traveling
(48:41):
around and just visiting beautiful places. He kept a blog
about going to see nature, and along the way he
got his PhD in history, heed did a lot of anthropology.
Where'd he do his PhD at university in Moscow somewhere?
I'm not sure, Okay, And he still hasn't fled the country.
He went to Ukraine, but that's it, oh, okay, Yeah.
So ever since twenty fourteen, Dmitri had been working to
(49:04):
support the people in Roshava, the northeastern Syria region that
we usually call Roshava, that is experimenting with bottom up
democracy in a system that they call democratic and federalism,
which I actually think I've never done an episode straight
up about. But you can listen to another school Zone
media podcast called The Women's War by Robert Evans that
(49:24):
talks all about this. Like a lot of anarchists and leftists,
Dimitri was intrigued, so he went during the fiercest part
of the war against ISIS and stayed there for six months.
Then he came home, only to be forced to flee,
But what happened when he fled? I mean, we know
he gets killed with a mortar blast eventually, but what
(49:45):
else happened? We'll talk about it on Wednesday. That's my cliffhanger.
It's not the best cliffhanger because again, we all know
what happens, but there's more people to talk about. We
haven't talked about the Cleveland, we haven't talked about the
Irish singer. There's so much more. But you got any
like thoughts with where we're at or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Yeah, I mean, so far this is pretty wild. I'm
interested in the next two that are going to jump
in here as well. Yeah, curious to kind of see
where this goes because I feel like, yeah, we know
the eddig, but I feel like there's going to be
a lot of gaps to fill in.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
Yeah, totally. Well, what if people have a whole bunch
of time between now and Wednesday? Do you have any
recommendations of the movies they could watch or podcast to
listen to?
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Thanks, Margaret. Yeah, you know, I have a movie out now.
It is called Left It Wall. It is a quirky
indie comedy that kind of satirizes the GameStop incident that happened.
Our story is completely fictional, but it sort of nods
to that event. You can get that now on Apple TV.
It is on YouTube Movies, It is on Google Play,
(50:49):
it is on Amazon. It is out there. You know.
If you type it into your Smart TV left it wall,
it will come up. Or you can go to my
website romplicone dot com and all the left it wall
info is there. So please check out my movie. It's
out now. Yeah, it's a fun time. You could totally
watch it between now and Wednesday. You got plenty of time,
so give it a watch. And you can find it
all on my tour dates and stuff like that at
(51:10):
romplicone dot com as well.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
And you do have to start now though, because it
is a twenty seven hour movie, I believe it's.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
A short one. Actually it's only sixty two minutes. It's
a short movie. I feel like we're in an era
where short movies are are kind of needed. Sometimes it's
like they really try to make it a marathon, and
there's a time and place for that if you're following
a series or something. But I kind of like a
short movie, which also my budget permitted for it. The
(51:39):
budget also permitted for a short movie.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
I like the like two and a half hour three
hour movies if I get into it, but usually totally
when it's well done.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
Yeah. A lot of times when I watch movies these days,
one of my takeaways is this could have been twenty
minutes shorter, yeah, or like thirty minutes shorter.
Speaker 1 (51:57):
I think, especially they can almost always cut from the clock.
If it's an action movie, the climax just goes on
for roughly too long.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
Yeah, Oh, totally totally, Like I got it, the stakes
are already as eyes are getting.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
Is that this does nothing for me narratively. I don't
really care about cargo Fast. I mean, I care about
cargo Fast as related.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
But but but what if it's faster and furious, sir?
Speaker 1 (52:24):
I do like those movies. I gotta admit, that's my
most basic bitch thing.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
You know, I've never seen one.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
They're really wholesome masculinity. That's what's wild about that. They're like,
I mean not entirely, and I'm not it's been a
while since I watched them, but like overall, they're this
attempt at this like criminal masculinity that's like just like
loves your family and shit. You know, like it's like
(52:49):
an anti Andrew Tap.
Speaker 2 (52:51):
I mean, I feel like I have to watch one
at some point just because it's just been in the
zeitgeist for so long.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
They do break people out of prison too, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Okay, all right, interesting now. I do have a bit
of a like a weird attachment there because a lifetime
ago I taught community college and one time I was
just doing the lesson or whatever and I made a
reference to nineteen eighty four and uh and I go, yeah,
you know, like a nineteen eighty four, and nobody had
(53:20):
any reaction.
Speaker 1 (53:21):
They were like, I don't know, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
And I go, I mean some of y'all have read
nineteen eighty four, right, and still just blank stairs And
I go, nobody in this room has ever read nineteen
eighty four. And they're all still just looking at me
with blank stares. This one student raises his hand and
I go, Okay, someone read nineteen eighty four. So so
I called on him and he goes, well, mister placone,
(53:47):
you've never seen any of the Fast and Furious movies.
That yeah, And I died a little bit inside that.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
So that's the free and post could war right there.
That's the dividing line is nineteen eighty four versus fast
and furious.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
Apparently all right, well, we will talk to you all
on Wednesday. Hi everyone. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
on cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonmedia dot com,
or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Al Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People who
did cool stuff. You're a weekly reminder that when there's
bad things, there's people trying to do good things, either
in response to it or on their own. Sometimes the
bad things exist because people try and do good things,
and then people try and do bad things as a result.
I'm your host, Mardak Kiljoy and with me today is
(00:23):
my guest who This is as a fun reversal because
last time we talked, I was a guest on his podcast.
Instead it's Ron Placone. Hi, how are you.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hi'm Margaret. Good to see you again. And yeah, longtime listener,
first time caller for your podcast, So yeah, Sally be here.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I'm excited to have you on. For people who want
to listen to more of us talking, they can listen
to an episode of your podcast one thousand with Ron Placone. Yep,
what else can people find on that podcast?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
So that's a podcast. I'm going on a life quest
to interview one thousand people who have inspired me in
some way. So interviews are won and done and I
try to cover as much ground as I can, and
you are among the guests. I always say, if you're
a fan of punk rock music, lefty politics, radical academics,
(01:15):
and just kind of people who have had significant pivots
in life. Journalists, activists, comedians, filmmakers. You're going to enjoy
this podcast. I've had everything from sex workers to journalists,
to communists to anarchists, to people who I have no
idea what their politics are, but it's something very interesting
that I wanted to talk about, and yeah, everything in between.
(01:36):
So it's a fun show.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Cool all right. So, oh, I forgot to do the
rest of the introductions, so our producer Sophie. But Sophie
isn't here today, but we do have a new audio engineer, Eva.
Everyone has to say hi to Eva.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Hi Eva, Hello Eva.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
So I had this whole episode planned out that I
was going to do that you were going to be
the guest. I'm not going to tell you what it
is because I'm going to do it later with someone else,
and I'm sorry it all got derailed by last week's news,
two weeks AGO's news. By the time you're listening to this, Okay,
the big news story of the week, this is that
part sarcasm. Almost no one outside of me and the
(02:16):
few people I think, picked up on this particular news
story I am talking, of course, the biggest story last week.
Did you hear about the twenty one year old American
hippie who called themselves an anti fascist who died in Ukraine?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I did not, So.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
There isn't I say called themselves an anti fascist. Their
name was Michael Gloss. They were not cool people who
did cool stuff. They died in Ukraine as an internationalist
volunteer in Vladimir Putin's army.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Wow. Okay, Actually, now that you mentioned this, I think
I did hear something, but I did not hear much
of the details, nor did I hear the anti fascist part.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah. Well, I mean a lot of the news stories
are specifically leading with the fact that this person's mother
was CIA deputy minister, But I genuinely believe that that
is unrelated. Really Okay, yeah, I'm gonna explain why. So
don't worry. We're not going to do an episode about
(03:20):
Michael Gloss, but we're going to use Michael Gloss as
a start to this story.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Okay, okay, all right, I'm excited.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Michael Gloss was a hippie wanderer from the States who
made their way to Russia, and the reason I'm using
they them pronouns for this person. All news articles are
referring to them as he, but according to their social
media profile from when they were sixteen years old, they
were using they them, and I have no I have
no update providing a different pronoun from their own position.
(03:51):
They were a hippie wanderer from the US who made
their way to Russia and inspired by what I'm going
to call the Tanky distortion field, they signed up for
the Russian Army, whereupon they invaded Ukraine and got got.
Their Instagram was largely unused since they were sixteen, so
(04:12):
I have no idea how the conceived of gender at
the end of their life, but I do know that
their politics took a turn from anti authoritarian to and
when I say tanky, I'm being very specific right here,
because I specifically mean someone who believes in really strange
things about the modern world. Have you, I don't know
(04:33):
how far outside of my own sphere. Are you familiar
with this concept of a tanky?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah? Well, I was actually listening to I believe it
was your last episode.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
I didn't get to listen to the whole thing, but
I listened to some of it, and you know that
was historical. What tanky actually is in our contemporary sense.
I mean, I've said this a couple of times. Applying
it to the contemporary sense. I'm still not totally sure
I know exactly what a tanky is because I have
seen it use so many different ways. I myself have
(05:04):
even been called one where I'm like, what do you mean?
I think some people they use the word tanky to
describe anyone who's critical of American foreign policy, right, you know,
so it's like it's one of those things. Whenever that
term is thrown out there, I have to ask the
person for moore description, like, what does that mean to you?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
It's been abused this particular word, And I would argue
this primarily being abused by, like I would say, sort
of the liberal and centrists who are applying it to
anyone who's basically left of them. And yeah, anyone who's
critical of the United States or whatever.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
I'm pretty sure those are the people who said that
to me. Yeah, I didn't get to take a survey,
but you know, I saw the Twitter handles.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
I'm going to tell you the rest about Michael Gloss
and then see how to tie that into what I
would claim as a Tanky in the modern context. I
started writing this whole essay about Michael Gloss, about the
Tanky worldview, the distortion field of reality that would lead
a would be anti fascist to die in the service
(06:05):
of one of the most tremendously authoritarian states on the
planet right now, Russia under Putin. I'll probably finish that
essay at some point. But then I realized I was like,
this is more than an essay. I'm completely redoing my
script for the week. I saved all my notes for
the other scripts and started over because I want to
(06:26):
talk about three international anti fascists who died in Ukraine,
who died fighting Putin. And they each came from a
different position that led them to believe, for very good
reason that confronting Putin was a necessary thing to advance
the struggles that they believed in. These three who I'm
(06:48):
going to be talking about this week, they died defending
a humanitarian corridor on April nineteenth, twenty twenty three. There
are three anarchists. One was Russian and he had witnessed
and fought tooth and nail against the rise of Putin
and authoritarianism. For his entire adult life, and actually starting
when he was a teenager, for twenty years he fought
(07:10):
against putin. One was an Irish activist, a singer who
comes from a small Irish speaking community off the west
coast of Ireland, who spent all of his life helping
refugees and fighting against oil pipelines. And one was a
black American former marine who helped found an anarchist community
center in Cleveland, Ohio. Those are our cool people this week.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
They all sound pretty cool just right out the gate there.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah, I like them even more than I expected to.
And that's I mean, you know, they died trying to
defend a humanitarian corridor and all of this stuff, so
I'm like set up to like them, but I feel
like I missed out by not meeting any of these people.
But Michael Gloss before we gloss over him. That's the
(07:59):
only time I'll do that.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
I see what you did there?
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, thanks, thanks. It was really subtle that one. Most
of the news stories about Michael Gloss focus on the
fact that their mother, Julianne Galina, is the Deputy Director
for Digital Innovation for the CIA. This is a job
that she got about last year. She helps onboard new
technology for the CIA. Not a fan of the CIA,
But you don't say no, yeah, no for some weird reason. Yeah,
(08:24):
as it terms out, you can actually be critical of
authoritarianism wherever it is. You don't actually have to pick
one country good and therefore the other country bad or
the other way around.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Sorry, none of us are ever going to be on
cable news with that attitude, but continue that's true.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
I wonder if this is why, like the cap of
my fame is based on the fact that I'm going
to do several weeks in a row talking about the
problems with falling into authoritarian viewpoints based on misunderstanding of communism.
That's a classic thing that everyone likes talking about.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
I think, oh yeah, misunderstanding communism, talking about foreign conflicts
with any type of nuance, I don't get a microphone
cut everywhere except for places like this.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah yeah, people don't like to hear it.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Nope.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Michael's mother CIA. Their father is Larry Gloss, a Navy
vet who fought in the First Iraq War and also
does cybersecurity. Their Instagram handle is it ball for twenty
and ball is like spelled like the demon or whatever
that I don't know anything about I'm going to lose
all my metal points. Most of their posts are from
(09:29):
twenty twenty, when they were probably about sixteen years old,
and they show someone exploring radical politics. This part made
me sad. When I first heard this story, I was like,
fucking dipshit, fucking went and fought and died in Ukraine.
Fucked them right, and then I ended up just sad.
When they were sixteen, they were exploring radical politics. And
I don't expect anyone to have a coherent political worldview
(09:53):
when they're sixteen years old. If you tried to challenge
me based on my political positions when I was sixteen,
I would not hold up either. When Michael was sixteen,
they posted a lot of anti authoritarianism. They self identified
as an anarchist. They were also a COVID conspiracist, saying
that the COVID death numbers were inflated, and they went
(10:13):
to climate protests and you know, there's news articles about
them yelling like you're killing your own child, that people
working in like climate destroying you know, fields, And they
were also an eagle scout. They went to college to
study human ecology and then they dropped out in twenty
twenty three to go be a hippie and turkey and
(10:35):
start dressing in robes with a big antler necklace and
letting people call them Jesus.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Okay, did they amass a following throughout this or.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
They did not? Okay, but they were hanging out with
Do you know much about the Rainbow Family.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
I do not.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
I'm so excited to get to explain all these horrible
interesting things to you the Rainbow Family. And I'm actually
kind of officially neutral on I feel like if I
did way more research, i'd stop being neutral. But they're hippies.
So the Rainbow Family are people who really like going
to rainbow gatherings and they like gathering in the woods.
It's like burning Man without money. I know burning Man
(11:12):
doesn't have money within it, but you have to have
a lot of money to like do it.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
The people who show up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, I
got you.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
It's festival culture. Modern festival culture kind of comes out
of a similar thing. It's yeah, it tends to be
a working class, slightly rural, intensely interesting subculture that has
lots of positives and negatives, and probably more negatives and positives.
But I don't know enough about it to say it
certainly didn't go well for Michael Gloss. A lot of
(11:39):
people within the Rainbow family were very critical of what
they went on to do.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Well, if they showed up and their opener was hey,
I'm Jesus and you can call me that, I could
see how it wouldn't work out.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
I phrased it as they let people call them Jesus,
because I don't think they called themself Jesus. Oh, they
just didn't seem to mind when people did. There's a
lot of posts of them on this like like Russian
social media that they were posting to where they just
literally are like, oh, I lost my regular clothes. Now
I have to wear a robe and a cloak And
you're like, no, you just want to wear like no shame,
(12:11):
Like I got nothing against that part of it, you know,
mm hm. And they would spend like months at a
time at these festivals, but they would also do activism
whenever they could. They would work to fix up buildings
in Turkey, they were damaged by earthquakes. And then they
moved to Georgia, the country, not the state, and they
decided to cross into Russia. And this is the part
that most articles gloss over because I think they don't
(12:34):
understand the modern Tanky distortion field.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
He would camp out with a big Soviet flag over
his tent, and all of his posts started being about
the importance of a multipolar world. If you hear people
talking about this multipolar world thing, I'm not sure whether.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, I mean somewhat you can fill in some gaps, but.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, Basically, there are authoritarian communists who believe that the
USSR could have done no wrong when it was the US.
This is one position that I don't share, but they
then carry that onward when I talk about the modern
mindset of this particular subsection of people. They believe that
(13:14):
modern Russia is essentially still the voice for freedom in
the world. And it's interesting because even some of these
articles that I read was like, actually, a lot of
people have moved to Russia because of politics in the
past couple years. Yeah, conservatives. Conservatives have moved to Russia
because they're like, hey, a country that outlaws gay people.
You know, there haven't been a lot of communists moving
(13:36):
to Russia. I would argue that when you're presented with
a political issue, what we need to do is think
to ourselves what is right in this situation and not think, oh, well,
I'm a Democrat who I believe this. I'm a Republican,
I believe this. I'm a communist, I believe this. I'm
an anarchist. So I believe this, and you actually have
(13:57):
to go about it the other way. You have to
be like, what do why I believe about this thing?
Is there a label that is useful to call me
as relates to that? That's my argument. Take the invasion
of Ukraine. I don't think to myself, what is the
anarchist position on the invasion of Ukraine? And that is
the position I will take. Instead, I look at the
(14:18):
situation as a person. I listen to people on the ground,
I look at the history, I look at the context,
and I say, oh, Russia is doing an imperialism. I
hope they fail at doing that. And so that's my
argument of how to arrive at this sort of thing.
But in this thing that I'm going to continue to
rudely call the Tanky distortion field, which I probably shouldn't
(14:41):
call because some people's like brains turn off when you
say that word, because it's used as a pejorative. Rudely
in different ways, but I'm going.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
To nonetheless hell of a band name.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah, thanks Yeah. Everything is run through this tanky filter.
Everything is run through an ideological filter. Russia invading Ukraine
is good because NATO is bad, even though Ukraine famously
isn't in NATO, and therefore whatever Russia does there is justified.
The multi polar world idea is that, and there's like
(15:12):
kernels of truth in a lot of this, right. Their
idea is that since the US economic and military hegemony
over the world is bad, which is true, it is,
it's a bad thing, it would be therefore good to
have a strong counter force that's not even an inherently
bad idea, so it'd be a second pull to the
political world. But they use it to mean anyone who
(15:34):
fights against the US is my ally and is anti imperialism.
So like only the US can be imperialism. Iran not
imperialist force according to this position. Russia not an imperialist
force according to this And it's honestly one of the
easiest ways to sort of be like, oh, you're literally
(15:56):
living in a distortion field, You're living in an echo
chamber where you have like hit upon certain ideas. These
like axioms that cannot be challenged. If you talk to
people from Iran, it is an imperialist force in the
Swanna region, like Russia is an imperialist force in the
region that is in You know, that doesn't mean that
the US isn't a greater imperialist force.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
But I think it's one of those things. It's almost
human nature. People are kind of just naturally inclined to
want a good guy and a bad guy totally. Like
the world is a very simple comic book, and we
need a good guy and a bad guy. So Russia bad,
us good or vice versa, and it's one of those things. Well, unfortunately,
(16:39):
the world's a lot more complex like that.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yeah, yeah, the whole like more than one thing can
be bad at once is like such a basic concept
to me. But it's not one that is universally shared.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
You know, it's not universally shared at all. And again,
in certain circles, it's not going to win you any friends,
it's not going to get you elected in this country. No,
and that's the way it goes.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
No, And people also therefore don't understand like complexities of
geopolitics essentially, right, because you have like like take World
War two. Universally, people are like Germany bad besides the
people that we can immediately write off. But the people
who think Germany bad often therefore say so, therefore the
(17:20):
US good, therefore the uss are good. But neither one
will accept that the US and the USSR were allies
in that war, and so like, clearly bad people were
fighting against even worse people. And if you're like pro US,
you still got to hand it to the Soviets, and
if you're pro Soviet, you still got to kind of
hand it to the US. And people do not, And
(17:43):
in my mind, I'm like, well, these are both evil
forces that fought an even greater evil force, and so
it goes that's what geopolitics is. I don't know, you know,
our poor searcher Michael Gloss, and I think searcher is
kind of what I hit upon this. This person after
they died, their father was like, this was mental illness problem,
whereas a lot of their Rainbow family friends were like
(18:03):
they fell into conspiracy nonsense. They fell down this like
rabbit hole. And I think that, like many things can
be true at once, you know, right, but it's like
otherwise rational people also fall down conspiracy holes and start
believing increasingly unhinged things. Our poor searcher, who looks like
(18:24):
Jesus takes an Arabic name while in Turkey, and they
fall for this, and they start flying a Soviet flag,
and they go to Moscow and they sign up for
the military, and this part's like almost heartbreaking. They show
up and they're like, oh, I want Russian citizenship because
I'm going to heal the world. I'm going to solve
climate change. Russia is the force to do it. It
(18:45):
is the force for good in this world. And also
when I join the military, they're going to look at
my college background. I have a couple of years of
college and I'm going to do engineering work. I won't
have to pick up a gun. The Russian does not
give a fuck. This American is a body to put
into harm's way. They assigned Gloss immediately to an assault unit,
(19:07):
basically the role with the shortest life expectancy, and then
drop that confused kid into a meat grinder. They were
killed by artillery fire on April fourth, twenty twenty four,
and it wasn't confirmed until very recently that they died
fighting in the Russian military. And so there was like
an obituary that their family put up that I believe
(19:28):
has since been taken down, where they were like our
son died, you know, doing what he loved or whatever.
That's the story of Michael Gloss.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
That's yeah. What kind of rabbit holes were they diving
down most recently? Was it all just kind of they're
in the Russian military now or were there some other
subsets going on too?
Speaker 1 (19:52):
So they were in telegram channels and they were on
Russian social media, and I believe that they crossed into
Moscow to meet up with friends that they knew through
these like telegram channels in the Rainbow family. But again,
the Rainbow family I do not believe holds the Tanky line.
There are just many people within it who do. Apparently
I had no idea that there were, but you know,
(20:13):
that is heavily implied in our sources. There's a couple
different articles that go through. I only found the American
social media, which is mostly older, But then I read
a lot of the articles that polled their Russian social
media to talk about things, and there are other things
that they were convinced that bricks was the future. You know,
the idea of having an economic power that isn't based
(20:35):
on the dollar, which again I'm probably neutral on I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
But.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
It still doesn't mean I'm gonna go invade a sovereign
country in the right army of an authoritarian.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Again, that falls into the nuggets of truth component, where
it's like, yeah, there's some nuggets the truth here, but
that doesn't mean that this is one hundred percent good
idea either.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah. So, speaking of things that you should totally listen
to and base your worldview on, here's advertisers and we're back.
I want to contrast the story of Michael Gloss with
the story of three other internationalist anti fascists who are
(21:23):
also killed by artillery fire in Ukraine. They were killed
trying to stop Putin, not fighting for Putin. But in
order to tell their story, I'm going to start with contest.
Everyone knows context. I mean, if you listen to the show,
you probably have learned to put up with it. After
(21:45):
the collapse of the Soviet Union in nineteen ninety one,
do you know how many people have been in charge
of Russia since it's become Russia not the Soviet Union.
Well I didn't know this, so I had a guess
I guess.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
I don't though, because my guess would only be a
small handful, because I mean, Putin's around for a while.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Yeah, there have been two people in charge, and both
of them were basically assigned to that position. Boris Yeltsen
oversaw the transition from a state capitalist of economy to
a liberal capitalist economy, privatizing everything. This wasn't really a
transition to democracy. It could have been a lot of
Soviet states transitioned to liberal democracy or whatever. Right, But
(22:23):
Boris Yeltsen was impeached in nineteen ninety three, and so
Yeltsin's troops stormed the Parliament building. So he stayed in power,
because it turns out power is what matters. It's probably
gonna come up again in the script, but like, I
actually think that what's happening in Russia and particularly Putin,
is the single clearest example of what Trump wants to
(22:44):
do of anything that I've run across. I'll pitch it
as we go, because there's some comparisons to me. Eventually,
people were like, this is bad. You can't keep doing
this shit. So by nineteen ninety one, he resigned and
he appointed his hand picked successor Vladimir Putin as president.
Vladimir Putin was then elected in this like I'm going
(23:05):
to call an election like tomorrow. Good fucking luck, you know.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
H Unfortunately, ninety five percent of the people really liked
the guy, so you know, it worked out exactly.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah, he has been elected and re elected in two thousand,
two thousand and four, twenty twelve, twenty eighteen, and twenty
twenty four. Putin was a former KGB guy, so a
secret police guy during the Soviet era, and he has
been backed by collection of oligarchs basically forever. This is
(23:35):
part of why I think he's a role model for Trump.
I know we're all grasping for historical parallels like Mussolini
and Hitler and Franco and every other dictator ever, but
Putin feels like the most on the nose because the
Russian state is in the hands of a few powerful
oligarchs literally what we would just call billionaires here, Like
if someone was writing about the US honestly from outside,
they would refer to our billionaires as the oligarchy class.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Totally. I mean, they're all this. I mean I refer
to them as that.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, it's accurate. Save stuff Putin is at the helm
to protect their interests and vice versa. There is no
freedom of speech. His political rivals wind up dead and
barely concealed attacks. And you just see this, Like Trump
is really into strongman politics, right, He's really into just
openly being like, yeah, what if I just torture everyone?
(24:20):
I don't know, why would I do due process of law?
Who cares?
Speaker 2 (24:24):
How can we get the military boar involved here? How
can we just got to get them on the streets
just just at all ours? Why not? I can assign this?
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Putin sees himself in a long legacy of Russian leaders
like the Tsars and Stalin, and so there is a
kernel of truth to the whole tanky thing, where like
Putin's basically the USSR, just only the authoritarianism part.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yeah, the bad part.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Yeah, Like it's much better to be a woman in
the USSR than it isn't Putin's Russia. And like, again,
I'm not a big Soviet fan, but better to be
a woman in Russia than in the US at the
time too, you know, well in comparison to men. I
don't know whatever. Anyway, Putin's hold on popular support relies
(25:12):
on the sort of strong daddy figure archetype who will
keep everyone safe and happy as long as everyone obeys,
exactly like the kind of stuff that Trump says and
has like maga repeat. That's the core of my argument,
this oligarch run thing with a strong man leader that's
still basically built around capitalism.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
I mean, I feel safe when I see the dude
on a horse with no shirt on. But that's just me.
I mean.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Putin came out of the gate a bastard. He started
centralizing media control. He reinstated the old Soviet era and
national anthem, although with new lyrics. But Putinism developed over time.
The other reason I find the comparison useful is that
I think it gives a sense of time scale. Putinism
has like developed over the past twenty five years, and
(26:00):
in order to understand that transition, I want to follow
up one of today's main characters, a Russian anarchist who
committed his life to stopping Putin. His name was Dmitri Petrov. Well,
that was one of his names. He had a lot
of different names. His birth name was Dmitri. People have
called him both Dima and Dimi for short. In the
Russian anarchist movement. People called him ecologue, which translates to
(26:24):
a cologist, because of his commitment to eco anarchism. Once
he started fighting in Ukraine and presumably before that, in Roshava,
he went by Iliya Leshi and Iliya is a common
Kurdish name. And just to be clear, when people go
and fight in Roshava against like Isis and things like that,
it is normal and accepted in not cultural appropriation for
(26:47):
them to take or be given Kurdish names. Okay, So
he goes by Ilia Leshi. Ilia is a common Kurdish name,
and Leshi is a Slavic mythological figure, a reference to
the protector of the forest.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
So far, all this guy's like, all of his names
have been really really badass, Like they all have that,
I know, like all these staves. You're like, I wouldn't
want to owe that guy money like he did, but
I'd also i'd want to have a beer with this guy,
Like he seems like a cool dude.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
I know, he has so many good names, Like you're like,
save some good names for everyone else.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Most of what he did and most of what he wrote,
he did anonymously, especially when he was working underground in
Putin's Russia. Some of the quotes attributed to him are
simply people's best guesses looking at public communicates and essays
that were produced by the movements he was part of,
because he has a somewhat distinctive writing style, and he
did a lot of the writing for the underground movements
he was in part of. And now that he's dead,
(27:41):
people can be like, oh, yeah, that guy you're talking
about modelt having cop cars. That was totally Dimitri.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
You know that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Once I'm dead, you can blame all kinds of crimes
all I'm alive. I didn't do any of them. He
was born probably in the mid eighties or so. He
was radicalized, I believe by his father, or at least
he was exposed to radical ideas by his father. His
dad would talk to him about the Maknovists in Ukraine
during the Russian Civil War, who were ostensibly allied with
(28:11):
the Red Army in the war against capitalism, but then
the Red Army came and crushed them, and so this
is a whatever I've done like six episodes or something
about them. At least his dad also started taking him
to the oldest independent bookstore in Moscow called Fallen Star,
where he started reading the anarchist magazine Altonom. By two
(28:32):
thousand and four, when he was still in school, we
started his own anarchist newspaper with his friends, called Heretic
and at this point not now unfortunately for reasons we'll
talk about. The anarchist movement in Russia was pretty strong
and he started working with food not bombs, which was
a brave thing to do in Russia at the time.
Fascists used to bomb food not bombses in Russia, which
(28:54):
is explicitly not allowed.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
It's in the name, but like literally allowed bombs here.
They usually just arrest people for trying to feed hungry people.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
But no, I know, I was thinking about that. I
was like, ah, super crazy, dangerous to be a food
not bombser there. And I'm like, I mean people get
arrested for it all the time in the oh yeah state,
totally yeah, but usually not bombed.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
I mean, hey, who knows what the next couple of
years have as store, but so far.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
That's a good point. It Russia has an image of
the future is a dark concept, but not what I'm
convinced is wrong. He started getting involved in ecological protests.
He defended Bitzvesky Park, which is the biggest park in Moscow.
He worked with an anarchist union doing like labor organizing,
and a lot of what he was doing. A lot
(29:40):
of the anti fascism in this period was focused on
confronting Nazi street violence. This is a very common pattern
in history. Fascists build up to controlling state power by
dominating the streets with paramilitary fascist violence. This had happened
in Italy, it happened in Germany. They try. I had
to do it in the UK, but just to continue
(30:02):
to shout out all my older old episodes. At the
Battle of Cable Street, Irish Catholics and immigrant Jews teamed
up to beat the piss out of the fascists in
the street and throw like potatoes with razor blades in
them at them, and shit.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Now, that's a unique Irish resource if I've ever heard one,
I know, and.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
I actually think there's a chance that that was a
newspaper application of like, oh the Irish, they probably put
razor blades and potatoes, But I'm like, yeah, but it's
cool though. If you're throwing the Nazis.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Got to be at least one person that did it,
so you know, I say it exactly, yeah, or someone
saw that newspaper and then did it. Yeah they oh
good idea, Yeah, exactly totally.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
The journalists was just dreaming up their fantasy they were like,
and then they drowned them all in the Yeah. And
it's also a pattern we're seen in the US about
fascist violence on the street level leading to capture of
the state and fascist violence exerted by states just a
little bit, a little bit, which is actually part of
why I think things might change. But there's been less
(31:04):
street fighting and like proud boy activity since the second
Trump presidency. And I would argue it's not because those
groups are weaker, but literally because they're stronger. And now
we have ICE doing the violence. I mean, ICE has
always been doing the violence, but now it's just like
now you have like ICE volunteers grinning while they smash
open cars with sledgehammers. I actually met some Russian anarchists
(31:25):
during this period at one point at a gathering in Finland.
They had crossed a very difficult border to come tell
us about their experiences fighting fascists in the streets and
about the number of their friends who had died or
being tortured in prison, and it really put I was
there to talk about like fiction, and I was just like, oh, hey,
(31:46):
I'm super serious to it from It really put my
problems in perspective.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
You know, were you the closer? Did you have to
go last?
Speaker 1 (31:54):
No? No, they knew I was not. The draw was
because that this was like fifteen Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Talking about friends go to prison, all the brutality they've
been through, and then you gotta be hey, uh so
this novel that's not nonfiction. Put some different shoes on.
We're gonna we're gonna switch it up.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Yeah. No, I'm very grateful that I did not have.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Sometimes stuff like that happens to be because I'll be
invited to do an event and stuff like that, and
everybody is, of course very well meaning, but you know,
it's not always the easiest move in the world. What
you know, you're there to kind of give a little
bit of humorous relief and have the clown shoes on,
and the person before you is talking about some healthcare
tragedy or something like that. It's like, yeah, geez, guys,
(32:44):
we gotta can we do a little bit of a
palate cleanser or something here. It's like this isn't.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Yeah, you just come out and blow an airhorn and
then just like, oh, I didn't even thought about how
hard are we going to do comedy? Yeah, like fundraisers
and stuff.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Yeah, I mean it depends on the circumstance, but yeah,
sometimes you kind of get a reset a room, like
a normal person's scheduling that thing. They're not going to
think of stuff like that, but you know.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Yeah, well what they could think of instead maybe as
a palate cleanser. Perfect, they could just listen to a
bunch of advertisements and be reminded of the fact that
they live in a capitalist system and just be so
grateful that you live in a capitalist system and you
can choose minor differences between things that you can't afford
(33:31):
because of the terrible wages. Here's ads and we're back.
So Dmitri probably Ecologue at this point was involved in
these street fights against Baptists. Working to defend Georgian refugees
was like one of the big Basically, all of the
(33:52):
different ethnic groups, including ethnic groups that are like present
within Russia, don't even have to cross a border to
do it. We're all being horribly mistreated by the white supremacists.
At least two of his friends were murdered during this period.
The late oughts was a hard time to be an
anarchist in Russia. Fascists working alongside the state started killing activists,
(34:13):
including journalists and lawyers. But people fought back, not just anarchists,
just people fought back against the rise of Putin. There
were public demonstrations with hundreds of thousands of people out
against Putinism, and this is like kind of around the
time Putin's really coming into his own. Anti fascists worked
to protect the crowd from police violence. There were clandestine
(34:36):
actions happening pretty much every night. And this is across
Russia and also Belarus, which is in a very parallel position.
They have another Lukashenko is this guy who just has
been in power ever since the Soviet Union collapsed, or
since nineteen ninety four, I think he's been in power.
We don't know all of the actions that Dimitri did,
because it's not a good idea to tell people if
you've molotov cop cars of a fascist government. But we
(34:59):
know some of his actions. For example, in two thousand
and nine, Dimitri model to have a bunch of cop
cars of the fascist government. One flash point during this
time was an ecological protest, and this is one of
the things that helped humanize this. Like you know when
you look at Russia's this, oh they're fascist state, and
therefore you sort of imagine the progressives and the radicals
and the anarchists as being like completely different people made
(35:23):
from an stern stuff. They're all men of iron, like
stalin it means man of iron. But they got together
to defend a forest from being cut down to make
a toll road. And that was like one of their
big protests, defending a forest near Moscow called Kimky Forest.
(35:44):
There was like foxes in elk and bor and shit
that lived there, and people were like, no, we're going
to fight the hell out of you over this. When
the cutting started in twenty ten, activists of all stripes
started occupying the forest. And this was all deeply tied
to anti fascism and anti Putinism and anarchism and big
happy movement. I'm exaggerating, but in a eulogy for him,
(36:08):
one friend of Dimitri's recounted the following story quote, once
we wandered through the autumn forest at night, disabling construction
equipment and one girl lost her sneaker. She just stepped
on the ground and it swallowed her leg. I think,
like in muddle. She pulled her leg out, but the
shoe remained somewhere underground. Well. Dima took off his shoes,
(36:31):
gave her his sneakers, put bags on his feet, and
went on like that. People asked him, are you not cold?
Do you want to change? Eventually? He said, if it
becomes unbearable, then we will change. But he ended up
walking around in bags all night. That's who he was.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
And it it's funny because it would be just a
cute story if he was on a hike. But he's
like committing felonies in the middle of the night, destroying
a construction equipment and he's.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Like, oh, yeah, we're back. Just got that's all I got.
This is why I get multiple badass names. I'll give
my shoes stranger in need.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Yeah, totally. This protest culminated when people stormed the local
government offices or tried to. Five hundred anti fascists and
anarchists were arrested, and Russian cops have no qualms about
torturing people by like tying electrodes.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
To the shiteesh.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
So the fact that a KGB guy is running the
government is very evident. In Russia, a lot of anti
fascists started fleeing the country. At this point. It feels
the image of the future where you have this like
just slowly tightening vice on society and radical politics but
also just daily life.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Right, Oh yeah, I mean during that time, I mean
that was when he was banning random punk bands from
entering the country and stuff like that because that they,
like mentioned, you believe in their songs and stuff. I mean,
it was it was a wild time.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
I remember one of my Greek friends was talking about
taking a train into Russia because he really wanted to go.
I have always be met too Russia've always wanted to
take the Trans Siberian yea, yeah, but like it's going
to be a different world before I'm going to Russia.
This friend of mine, he has to go into Russia.
And in order to travel in Russia at that time
and now it's probably even harder, he needed a specific
visa with like his entire itinerary down to the minute
(38:20):
on it, right, and if you deviate from that you
can go to jail. And so he shows up and
he's allowed the next day, and this train shows up
at like eleven fifty five pm. It's like five minutes
early to the border, and so this man is yelling
at him in Russian and he's like, I don't really
speak any Russian, and you know, the woman sitting next
to him is trying to interpret I don't know whether
(38:40):
from Greek or English or what. And the guard is
just like this, says, you can't be here till tomorrow.
What are you doing here? And he's like, it's it's
five minutes from now, my guy, you know, midnight hits
and he's still arguing with this man and he's like,
it's midnight, can I come in now? And the guy
is like fuck it, gives them back his papers and
(39:03):
then he says thank you in Russian and the guys,
you spoke Russian this whole time, you blind bastard.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
You know, I thought you were gonna say. The guy
just said you're welcome, just like, well it's midnight, and whin.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Yeah, no, no, that would be like a that's like
a German cop, not a Nazi German cop, but a
modern German cop is just a stickler for the rules,
you know, but like otherwise polite. This is why I
never went to Russia.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
You don't want to risk that early train. You really don't.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
No, no, just no early trains to Russia. And so
the street protests started getting put down successfully and anti
fascist started fleeing the country, and basically, with you know,
opposition being crushed, he started centralizing control even more. Dmitri
didn't leave yet though. In twenty eleven, he and some
(39:53):
friends blew up a cop station along a toll road
in the middle of the night, and someone probably Dimitri,
wrote a story about how what happened. They set the
bomb off using a pool of gasoline, but the first
match didn't light it, so someone probably Dimitri had to
run back and throw another match. And it's interesting because
in all of his personal writings later he talks about
how he's like kind of a scaredy cat, and I'm.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Like, doesn't sound like it, my dude, he brought the
second match with no shoes. That part's not even in
the Yeah, he's not even the thing.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Yeah, yeah, he's like, shoesn't getting caught. He doesn't need
to put bags on your feet, can't track the footprints
that way. As Putin's power grew stronger and stronger. The
people of Ukraine were starting to get sick of their
government being basically Putin's toadies, and so they threw themselves
a little revolution. It started off as a social movement,
(40:45):
but it became a revolution and it was a wildly
mixed politics revolution. This is called the Maiden Protests or
euro Maiden, which is also a.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Bit Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
I actually had this rule where normally, if some one
says something would be a good band name, they're wrong.
That's like one of my like axioms. But maybe it's
just because Iron Maiden is such a Yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
You're a maid. Well were you on board with what
was it like Tanky distortion or something like that.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Oh, Tanky distortion field. Yeah, if it sounded like social distortion.
The problem is that going into it, I wouldn't know
whether it's like pro or anti Tanky. But if they
did it right, no one else would know either, right,
because you would like sing about things that almost make sense,
but then like at the last minute turn into the Netherlands.
You know that would be kind of clever.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, I mean it could be really beta depending on
how they went about it.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Yeah, I mean the best idea is that half of
the band be Marcus Lemonists and half of the band
be either social democrats or anarchists, and so they don't
even have internal consistency.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
And you know what, the time really goes by in
the van because of their conversations just keep going. It's
not always cordial, but yeah, and then they just drive
into Russia so they can turn them ten minutes midnight.
Like I thought our song ten minutes before midnight was different.
(42:09):
I thought it was about the army. They always show
up five minutes before soundcheck always.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Yeah, totally. So the euromaide in protests was the Ukrainian
government was like, we want to sign a packed tying
us closer to the EU, but the president was like, no,
fuck you, I like putin instead, so we refuse to
sign it. So protests picked up. And this was an
ideologically diverse movement, which is to say they were fascists
(42:38):
and anti fascists both involved. Basically there was people who
liked democracy, people who liked anti authoritarianism, and Ukrainian nationalists
who are like, no, we want our own far right thing,
just independent from Russia, which is kind of a classic
composition of shit in Ukraine to be real, going back
in into the moochnists, there was like anti authoritarians, and
(43:00):
there's also Ukrainian nationalists. The protests started off, as best
as I can tell, the protests started off more democratic
in character and became more nationalists as time went on.
The anarchists publisher Crime Think contrasts the Ukrainian movement to
the Yellowves movement in France from twenty eighteen twenty nineteen,
and they argue that quote the Yellow Vest movement of
(43:22):
twenty eighteen to twenty nineteen in France offers an example
of a social movement in which nationalists initially had an advantage,
but anarchists and anti fascists managed to outflank them. And
so it's like when people are mad at the status quo,
everyone gets together to be like, well, all I hate
the status quo, and then you like look around and
you're like wait, but some of you all are bad.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Yeah. It's kind of like, well, wait a second, why
do you hate the status quo. Let's work out some
of the details.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Yeah, Sometimes the enemy of your enemy is your enemy.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
Yeah, and if they're Nazis exactly.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Yeah. Some types we're talking about duots, flexities and stuff
like that. But there are other types where it is
quite simple and quite simple. For instance, Yazi enemy one
hundred percent of the time. Done.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
But you get into this messy, messy thing, right where
both sides of the Ukrainian Russian conflict have ideologically committed
fascists in their racks. Yep, right, But I would argue
that when you look at the Ukrainian side, there's both
ideologically committed fascists and ideologically committed anti fascists in separate units.
And on the Russian side, the only ideologically committed anti
(44:30):
fascist was an American who dressed like Jesus who got
dropped into the war zone. You know, I tend to
agree with you, right, Like you're like, oh, don't do
anything with fucking Nazis, But you're like, it wouldn't make
sense to Oh, it's fucking no, no shit, it's so messy. Yeah,
but yeah, in general, and then like overall, I think
that the euromade and protests were good, right, but it's
(44:53):
like the nationalist character was a problem, and so there
were people working within them to try and outflank the
fascists among the people in Ukraine trying to outflank the
fascists was Dmitri, the Russian guy. He went to Kiev
to throw down in the Ukrainian protests and helped form
an anarchist regiment, delivering food to protesters and offering a
(45:14):
connection to the anti Putin protests in Moscow, which must
have been cool, right, You're like, oh, here come Russians
talking about this huge movement in Russia that supports us,
that also hates Putin, right, and it helps remind them
that this isn't about like, oh I hate Russians, which
is like, there's like no better way to undermine nationalism
(45:34):
than to be like, your enemy isn't Russian people, Your
enemy is Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
And that's the stuff they will not. I mean, there
were all those protests going on in Moscow and elsewhere,
people protesting what Putin was doing, and it's like they're
never going to show you that on the news. They
don't want you to see that.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
No. Dmitri wrote about his experiences, talking about as the
protest became more militarized, I can't help but appreciate that
every everything is organized so seriously. However, the situation also
has a drawback, perhaps more significant than its advantages. The
presence of professional or quasi professional military men inevitably means
the collapse of any kind of democracy in the movement,
(46:14):
since by decision of their commanders, these people can impose
this or that order on everyone else in an organized
way by force, and then that protest movement. The Euromaidan
movement climax at the end of February in twenty fourteen,
when over one hundred protesters were killed about fourteen cops
were killed. I think Dimitri wrote the following about the
(46:35):
fighting on February eighteenth, quote, it is important to use
your fear so that it helps you avoid getting into
certain troubles, but does not flow into panic and flight. Personally,
I had an incessant fear that a bullet or a
grenade would hit me. I have known for a long
time that I am far from being a daredevil, and
(46:57):
I say that without any hint of coquetry. Now, for
the first time, I became interested in the essence of
such a feeling as courage. Next to fear, there was
a feeling similar to emptiness, a silent obligation to stay
and act. It is almost never formulated verbally, It just
(47:17):
is maybe courage is just about that. Furthermore, it is
important to begin to act meaningfully and not just stance
or stupidly rush back and forth. And I just this
idea that courage is the emptiness that sits next to
fear and tells you that you can't leave, you have
to get things done.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Yeah. Well, I also, I mean I actually connected more
and that stands out with the assessment of fear. Yeah,
you know, like I've never really unpacked the idea of
using fear constructively, so that's pretty cool to me. I
really like it.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
It very much humanizes this person who can look like
a you know, a paragon of something, you know, like
just a like ah, it's just the person who always
did what was right, never afraid of anything, and fought
and fought and fought and then eventually died saving lives.
What a hero, you know. And like, I mean, I
think this person's essentially a hero. I intentionally call the
(48:19):
show cool people did cool stuff, not heroes, because there's
problems with calling people heroes. But like, sure, the Putin
loving president was kicked the fuck out, which led to
Russia enacting crimea when you know, caused the current ker fluffle.
Putin's power seemed cemented in Russia at this point, and
with the movement kind of falling apart, Dmitri started traveling
(48:41):
around and just visiting beautiful places. He kept a blog
about going to see nature, and along the way he
got his PhD in history, heed did a lot of anthropology.
Where'd he do his PhD at university in Moscow somewhere?
I'm not sure, Okay, And he still hasn't fled the country.
He went to Ukraine, but that's it, oh, okay, Yeah.
So ever since twenty fourteen, Dmitri had been working to
(49:04):
support the people in Roshava, the northeastern Syria region that
we usually call Roshava, that is experimenting with bottom up
democracy in a system that they call democratic and federalism,
which I actually think I've never done an episode straight
up about. But you can listen to another school Zone
media podcast called The Women's War by Robert Evans that
(49:24):
talks all about this. Like a lot of anarchists and leftists,
Dimitri was intrigued, so he went during the fiercest part
of the war against ISIS and stayed there for six months.
Then he came home, only to be forced to flee,
But what happened when he fled? I mean, we know
he gets killed with a mortar blast eventually, but what
(49:45):
else happened? We'll talk about it on Wednesday. That's my cliffhanger.
It's not the best cliffhanger because again, we all know
what happens, but there's more people to talk about. We
haven't talked about the Cleveland, we haven't talked about the
Irish singer. There's so much more. But you got any
like thoughts with where we're at or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Yeah, I mean, so far this is pretty wild. I'm
interested in the next two that are going to jump
in here as well. Yeah, curious to kind of see
where this goes because I feel like, yeah, we know
the eddig, but I feel like there's going to be
a lot of gaps to fill in.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
Yeah, totally. Well, what if people have a whole bunch
of time between now and Wednesday? Do you have any
recommendations of the movies they could watch or podcast to
listen to?
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Thanks, Margaret. Yeah, you know, I have a movie out now.
It is called Left It Wall. It is a quirky
indie comedy that kind of satirizes the GameStop incident that happened.
Our story is completely fictional, but it sort of nods
to that event. You can get that now on Apple TV.
It is on YouTube Movies, It is on Google Play,
(50:49):
it is on Amazon. It is out there. You know.
If you type it into your Smart TV left it wall,
it will come up. Or you can go to my
website romplicone dot com and all the left it wall
info is there. So please check out my movie. It's
out now. Yeah, it's a fun time. You could totally
watch it between now and Wednesday. You got plenty of time,
so give it a watch. And you can find it
all on my tour dates and stuff like that at
(51:10):
romplicone dot com as well.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
And you do have to start now though, because it
is a twenty seven hour movie, I believe it's.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
A short one. Actually it's only sixty two minutes. It's
a short movie. I feel like we're in an era
where short movies are are kind of needed. Sometimes it's
like they really try to make it a marathon, and
there's a time and place for that if you're following
a series or something. But I kind of like a
short movie, which also my budget permitted for it. The
(51:39):
budget also permitted for a short movie.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
I like the like two and a half hour three
hour movies if I get into it, but usually totally
when it's well done.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
Yeah. A lot of times when I watch movies these days,
one of my takeaways is this could have been twenty
minutes shorter, yeah, or like thirty minutes shorter.
Speaker 1 (51:57):
I think, especially they can almost always cut from the clock.
If it's an action movie, the climax just goes on
for roughly too long.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
Yeah, Oh, totally totally, Like I got it, the stakes
are already as eyes are getting.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
Is that this does nothing for me narratively. I don't
really care about cargo Fast. I mean, I care about
cargo Fast as related.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
But but but what if it's faster and furious, sir?
Speaker 1 (52:24):
I do like those movies. I gotta admit, that's my
most basic bitch thing.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
You know, I've never seen one.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
They're really wholesome masculinity. That's what's wild about that. They're like,
I mean not entirely, and I'm not it's been a
while since I watched them, but like overall, they're this
attempt at this like criminal masculinity that's like just like
loves your family and shit. You know, like it's like
(52:49):
an anti Andrew Tap.
Speaker 2 (52:51):
I mean, I feel like I have to watch one
at some point just because it's just been in the
zeitgeist for so long.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
They do break people out of prison too, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Okay, all right, interesting now. I do have a bit
of a like a weird attachment there because a lifetime
ago I taught community college and one time I was
just doing the lesson or whatever and I made a
reference to nineteen eighty four and uh and I go, yeah,
you know, like a nineteen eighty four, and nobody had
(53:20):
any reaction.
Speaker 1 (53:21):
They were like, I don't know, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
And I go, I mean some of y'all have read
nineteen eighty four, right, and still just blank stairs And
I go, nobody in this room has ever read nineteen
eighty four. And they're all still just looking at me
with blank stares. This one student raises his hand and
I go, Okay, someone read nineteen eighty four. So so
I called on him and he goes, well, mister placone,
(53:47):
you've never seen any of the Fast and Furious movies.
That yeah, And I died a little bit inside that.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
So that's the free and post could war right there.
That's the dividing line is nineteen eighty four versus fast
and furious.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
Apparently all right, well, we will talk to you all
on Wednesday. Hi everyone. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
on cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonmedia dot com,
or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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