Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
the podcast that tells you about people who some random
girl thinks are cool. I'm that random girl. I tell
you about people that I think you're cool. I'm youan
host mar here till join and joining me this week,
if I'm being honest, is maybe my favorite podcaster, Jamie Loftus.
But Jamie, don't tell anyone I said that. Um, I'm
(00:23):
pretty sure that no one's like, I don't think that
this is going to be publicly accessible, right, No, No,
absolutely not that would be This is a private episode. Yeah,
it's private. Just totally not a creepy concept. Um, thank
you so much for that could get So that's kind
of a fun theory to spread though, that there's all
(00:45):
these private episodes that you've recorded of your own show
that just they're like, no, sorry, it's it's just intellable.
You'll never know, Like, this one's about my friend John.
He's really cool, but all this ship is a crime,
so I can't tell you. You You just write episodes of
the show about the person who is guesting, and then
(01:05):
they're like, oh, thank you so much. It's just to
gas them up, you know, yeah, totally and then it's
slipped into weird fake facts and see if they notice
as as always joining us playing the voice of God?
Is Sophie lichterman Um or maybe you're the producer. I'm
not sure, maybe both. How are you, Sophie. I'm doing
I'm doing. That's how. So if you have you met
(01:29):
my friend Jamie before? Are you all acquainted? If you
all want any awards together? Oh? Uh? Did we perhaps
say Webby? Did we win one of those Jamie Webby? Wow?
Are we plugging our own Webby show? You know? Jamie
(01:50):
bold of Us bold of Us is my best friend.
Well you told me to gass you all up. So wait,
that's true. It's true. I do to be fair. I
do feel amazing right now. Uh, Sophie, we've how long
(02:11):
we've known each other for like what like five years
now or something like that. We've done life a decade
of beautiful friendship, and we've we've put out like a
bunch of bunch of plots, so much content. The best
friendships are founded on a foundation of trust and digital content. Yeah,
like we talked about sixteen thousand times a day. It's true,
(02:35):
It's true, and I wouldn't I wouldn't have it any
other way, genuinely, like, well, I don't know how to
relate to people besides making things with them at this point.
Hang out with your friends and you're like, do you
want to start a band? I don't know how can
we artistically? Uh? Weep this friendship. I have the same
(02:57):
thing sometimes where I'm like, hey, we get along really well.
Why don't we um find a reason to give ourselves deadlines?
And no wonder no one wants to be friends with
me for very long to explain a lot. Okay, No,
this is how I know that we're going to be
(03:17):
very good friends. I'm so, I'm so excited to be
on the show. It's so awesome. So this is so
my three closest friends. Where did I meet them on
the job? Alright? Alright, So I have a question for you.
What if I told you about an exciting opportunity wherein
you have the chance to spend your whole life working
(03:37):
twelve to fourteen hour days, maybe starting from around the
time you're six years old, to make other people rich,
and in exchange, you get almost enough food to eat,
but not quite so sometimes you slip into outright starvation
with with that word sound good for you? Well, you know,
I think that you've really got to pay your time
(03:58):
and am I? Well, actually, if am I, I guess
what I would like to ask, is am I being
paid in exposure or like? Is it a little bit
of food and some exposure? No, it's it's um, it's
just starvation wages, probably working in a factory. I was
gonna say, I was gonna say, you're describing the career
(04:18):
of a podcast or but without yes, I was yeah, yeah, okay, okay,
fair enough. Well there's some munization in this story too,
so that oh, I'm excited, all right, So what about
the idea? Would you be excited about the idea that
a few super rich people should control everything politically and
economically that I am not nuts about. I have to say, okay, well,
(04:41):
if you don't like those things, at least the second thing,
then you might like today's protagonist, because today we're going
to be talking about the anarchist revolution that got nestled
into the Spanish Civil War when millions of people determined, no,
thank you, the system does not seem good, and they
built a viable alternative while fighting off a fascist and
Asian that's so exciting. I'm sorry that I started by
(05:04):
being like I love starving and I hate billionaires. I
am not familiar with this story. I'm very stoked. Cool. Okay, well,
this is okay. This is one of the like stickiest
stories because a lot of people who are very online
and are like I have a lot of opinions about
this because a short version, you might say the Spanish
(05:26):
Civil Wars, when all the ideologies of the twentieth century
just bashed into each other like a bunch of battle
bots while the rest of the world looked on and
didn't help. Um. And to to finish the analogy, it
would be like if one of the battle bots was fascism,
and then after it one it broke free of the
battle bot cage and went after the battle bot audience
and a little known conflict that historians like to call
(05:48):
World War two. But we're not going to talk about
World War two today, um, besides a little bit unfortunately,
uh for fucking once. Instead we're talking about Spanish War,
which had an awful lot of cool people and spoilers.
They don't pull it off in the end, but along
the way they do a lot of cool stuff. Originally,
(06:08):
I had this whole thing where I was going to
like deep dive into like one of the particular groups,
especially some of the women organizers and stuff like that.
But unfortunately this subject is so big that I I
wasn't able to like dive in as close. This is
a little bit of a big picture of you. That's
a good problem to have. I kind of feel like
we could have done like a month of this. Yeah, absolutely,
(06:32):
at least. Yeah, So you're not going anywhere for the
next two weeks, right, Jamie, you can stay on the
zoom call. No, It's all good. I I actually just
got some rice cakes from Vonds, so I might just
turn my video off every once in a while so
I can crunch it like a little mouse. But I'm
good to go. I could stay for weeks. Okay, great, Okay,
(06:54):
So okay. So being poor sucks universally across time and place,
including turn of the twentieth century Spain. It was largely
a peasant economy with only little bits of hints of industry,
and it was mostly centered. The industry is mostly centered
in Catalonia, which is a region on the east coast
of Spain where a lot of this story is going
to take place. Most of the poor in Spain are
rural poor, and it just fucking sucked. In Andalusia, where
(07:17):
which is in the south, almost all the land was
owned by a few rich house owls and rather than
hire regular employees, they hired everyone as day labors, like
constantly with absolutely no job security. Workers were literally starving
and most of their calories came from oil and bread.
So they were doing like the or like their version
(07:37):
of the gig the gig economy basically, yeah, pretty much. Yeah, fascinating, um,
even actually with people living in like um, you know,
I don't remember the word for it, but where a
lot of people sleep in bunks because they can't afford
a regular house. Like you see terrible things about the
West Coast from at least I don't. Whenever I see
news about San Francisco, it's like, here's where you have
(07:58):
to live if you want to be a tech worker.
I guess I went from tech worker to gig Funny,
you only make a hundred thousand dollars a year and
here's how you live in San Francisco and you're just like,
oh my god, what is going on up there? It's terrifying. Yeah. Um,
but the spoiled proletarians in the city. Unlike these people
(08:19):
and the peasants, they had it easy. The spoiled proletarians, Um,
all they had to do was work twelve to fifteen
hour days in hot, dark, stuffy rooms, men and women
both and children as young as six, and in general,
the life expectancy for the poor in Spain around this
time it was half of that of the rich, which
(08:40):
doesn't give you a lot of reasons not to rise
up and try and destroy the powerful people. Right if
you're if you're only going to make it to you know,
or thirty anyway, right, Like, what's the worst that can happen?
You lose a couple of years in exchange for being
on the right side of history. Yeah, yeah, I mean
it seems like you should just have after you beat
(09:01):
after you get past your life expectancy, everything is like
bonus time. You know. That's kind of Funnyeah. Once you
hit twenty five, you're like, well, I'm living on borrow
time at this point. It's basically the purge rules for
me at this point exactly. That's exciting. We should start
doing that. I see no downsides to this. Yeah, Okay,
(09:22):
So the thing about being poor and desperate. Is that
most people don't actually want to be poor and desperate.
They want to have control over their own lives. They
want to be part of a healthy community. They want
to love and be loved. They want to leisure time,
and they won't have enough food eat because they're a
bunch of spoiled bastards. I know it sounds it sounds
pretty self centered to me. Yeah, And in in eighteen
sixty eight, a new ideology hits the Iberian Peninsula. Anarchism
(09:45):
shows up, and the idea finds fertile soil and the
hearts of poor workers roll in urban alike, and it
shows up in the mouth of a really unlikely and
really ill equipped profit an Italian politician who didn't speak Spanish. No,
what's what's his deal? So there's this guy, his name
is Gieseppe Finelle, and he spent most of his life
(10:06):
fighting in like every revolution. He gets hands on as
a republican, which is to say, someone who likes having
a republic versus like a monarchy or whatever. I love.
I love that little turn of phrase that always gets
someone all puffed up and then you're like, well wait, wait,
and then they get confused and then they stopped listening. Yeah,
it's you should see the YouTube comments under I ra
(10:27):
A songs on YouTube, because it's all these American Republicans
being like, yeah, the Republicans, and it's these Irish people
being like, we're fucking socialists. Okay, it's like listen to
the lyrics, folks. Yeah. Um. So he's fighting as a
republican in a bunch of In eighteen forty eight, there's
(10:48):
revolutions all over Europe. He fought in that, and then
he fought for the unification of Italy, and then he
went and fought in a Polish uprising for its own independence.
I'm not actually entirely share his motivations there, and then
he wound up startin to it. At that point he's
just on I think, so, I think this is just
this thing. He serves in the Italian Parliament, and then
he goes and then goes to war again to fight
to defend Italy from an Austrian invasion, and then he
(11:11):
meets the anarchists and he's like, oh, okay, that sounds cool.
I'm gonna do that. And and so after all of this,
what he's most famous for is going on and speaking
tour in Spain, which I would be annoyed about if
I was this guy. He's like, that's a lot of
conflicts deep at that point. Yeah, although that's that's exciting,
(11:31):
I still feel his name is Giuseppe what Finelli, gise Finelle.
I am still picturing him as the drummer and Chuck
E Cheeses band, and I'm trying to yank myself out
of that. You know, the Italian chef who plays the
drums in Chuckie Cheese is band. Can make me picture
this from my childhood. I he's on my mind all
(11:54):
the time. This man, this man and that in that
character are nothing. Okay, he doesn't actually look like past
quality from czuck E Cheese. Okay, Now I feel grounded
in the story vibes with like he does kind of
really does. So he's he's like many conflicts deep at
(12:15):
this point, and he's been at it. He's already served
in parliament. But he's most famous for the speaking tour, yeah,
which is about how there shouldn't be parliaments. Um love it.
And so he goes around Spain in eighteen sixty eight
and he's basically like, hey, guys, I heard of this
neat thing called anarchy or no one can tell you
what to do, and we all work together for the
betterment of ourselves in our communities. It's the hot new
(12:37):
things sweeping the continent. I'm paraphrasing here. Um that's oh,
that's not a direct quote. Yeah no, it's unfortunately not um.
But the problem is he did he only spoke Italian
in French, and none of the Spanish workers really knew
Italian or French. Not a lot of time for formal
education when you've been working since your age was the
(12:57):
single digits. Sure so, but managed to convince some type
setters of this cool new ideology. He conveys his meaning
as much through tone and gesture as he does through language,
which kind of sounds like the most Italian thing. You're like,
you're just imagining. Now, I'm back to imagining chef pasquality
from Chuck E Cheese. Yeah. Um, And so chefs quality
from Chuck E Cheese is going around and uh, and
(13:20):
the working classes like into it. They are just so
ready for this like combination of self descrimination and socialism.
And within five years there's sixty tho anarchists in Spain,
and soon Spain and its anarchists are the largest chunk
of the International Workingman's Association, which is a catch all
international group that had anarchists and Marxists and socialists, well
(13:40):
actually had literal marks in it. Who was not a Marxist.
Another another fun thing to unpack for someone as as
you're you're like, well wait wait, yeah. Yeah. So they
spend decades trying to have a revolution, since that's like
the whole thing, and they try all these different ideas,
and I'm sure I'll do episodes about in the future
because they do really fun stuff. They including like they
(14:01):
fight for secular education and birth the modern school movement. Um,
they organized labor unions, they assassinate prime ministers whenever the
prime ministers have a bunch of them killed, and fast forward,
they don't succeed fast forward. Well, you know, it depends
what you count of success. You know, if you if
you if you have a couple of prime ministers, you know,
(14:21):
if you've got the bodies of prime ministers, he did
something that's not nothing, yeah yeah, and they get a
lot of them. Um. And so in nine, I'm gonna
start with something called the Tragic Week. The government was
trying to do more conquering in Morocco just colony, and
because the government was onto colonization and ship and the
working class, especially the left, was was less excited about colonization.
(14:44):
And some of them, yeah, I know, some of them
were against it because they were against colonization on principle,
and some of it were like, I don't want to
die in your dumb fucking war that only serves rich people,
Like this sounds like a bad plan. And so the
people are like, well and funk your war and we're
not going to do it. And the Spanish government was like, no,
fuck you, you're going to war. And it was true,
(15:09):
but they did go to war, just against each other
m hm for not for It was called the Tragic Week.
So anarchists and republicans get together and they strike and
they riot, and they blocked troop trains in Barcelona and
the government forces open fire on them. The people said
a barricades, they fight back. The government has to bring
in troops from other areas because the Barcelona troops aren't
(15:30):
stoked by shooting their own people. And and for in
the way these things go, about eight army or cop
people die and then a hundred hundred and fifty other
on like the Good Side Die God in a single
week in Barcelona, and five of the supposed leaders of
(15:51):
the movement are executed, including the really awesome school teacher
named for our who is the I'll talk about him
some other time. I'm really excited about him. Um, and
tons of people get life in prison. I just I'm like,
school school teachers are such historically such great organizers. I'm like, oh,
of course there was an incredible school teacher that lost
(16:11):
their life for no fucking reason. Yeah, well for but
you know, no, yeah, totally. I mean for he should
not have had to lose his life in order to
be like, hey, what if we don't go declare war
on this country that we have nothing to do, and
we don't go do your colonialization? Yeah, a little project
for you. Yeah, Like, I've got an idea, just really quick.
(16:32):
Let me pitch it really quick. What we don't do?
So many things could so many political movements could just
be summed up by being like or not totally Um
did so this didn't. It did not stop the colonial
wars in Morocco. It did accomplish that the Prime Minister
(16:53):
was forced to resign and a slightly more progressive guy
got in. But but the the colonization continue continuing. Okay, yeah, yeah,
slightly more progressive doesn't mean shit about that. We'll talk
about progressive governments pretending like they're going to stop colonization
a little bit later. Um yeah, hooray. I feel bad.
(17:17):
This is like slightly less reverse behind. I mean, the
show has nothing to do with the very distinct show
behind the Bastards, but usually it is more distinct from
this is we're getting we're getting the bad stuff out
at the top. Yeah yeah, okay. So in the wake
of the tragic week in the Spanish anarchists get their
ship together and they form Confederation Nasonale Torajo, which is
(17:41):
the National Confederation of Labor or the CNT. And I
know acronyms are annoying and I'm gonna leave most of
them out of the story, but the CNT is like
very central to all of this. Okay. Uh. They didn't
come out of nowhere. It was the latest in a
long line of anarchists labor organizations, but they finally got
the recipe right. They're secret sauce. I actually hate food analogies,
(18:02):
but here we go. They have a secret toss and
chef quality of you exactly. That's what I'm trying to
go with here. I barely remember Chuckie cheese. Uh, I
remember collecting um. So they're they're secret sauce that the chef.
The chef provided for them is that they can they
(18:26):
figure how to appeal both the moderate workers and the
more revolutionary workers. At the same time. They used more
reformist means, which was union organizing, which is not actually
the same thing as seizing workplaces by force and kicking
out the bosses. But they paired that with more revolutionary goals,
which is to say, they were not at all against
the idea of seizing workplaces by force and kicking out
the bosses. So everyone was happy except the bosses, the landlords,
(18:51):
the liberals, the fascists, and actually the Catholic Church, who
are a real major I mean, that's a god, that's
like a that's an incredible group of people to isolate
in your ideology. Yeah, that's all the cartoon villains. That's great. Yeah,
And and the Catholic Church was particularly cartoon villain around
(19:11):
this time in Spain. There's some other places that particularly
cartoon villain, like you know, the schools in North America.
But so they start with thousand people are so in
nineteen ten, and they grow exponentially through the nineteen tents.
And even though they were outlawed for several years in
nineteen eleven after they let a strike, but it turns
up being an outlaw is really cool. So this had
no negative effect on their organizing. As far as I
(19:33):
can tell, by nineteen nineteen, they've got like seven fifty
thousand people. Later, twenty years later, by the time the
Spanish Civil War kicks off in nineteen thirty six, I've
seen estimates that range from one point five million to
three million people. So there was a period of time
where one in ten adults in Spain were in the
same anarchist union. That's incredible, Yeah, and it's not written
(19:57):
about in history. I was like, I truly had no
idea and that is such a large percentage. That is
so wild, And I mean, did did World War One?
Like like what was contributed? Was it just sort of
like growing um, you know, like growing tensions are like
what what were the reasons? More and more and more
(20:17):
people were getting involved. So one thing that they had
going for them is that they actually just already had
a certain amount of inertia that they were the largest
far left, like they were a larger group than the
socialist unions and the communist unions in this case socialists
being more like social democrat type stuff, and then communists
being more like Bolshevik aligned you know, like Russian Revolution
(20:39):
Lenin and stuff like that. UM. And then basically like
as things keep getting really bad, they more and more
people are like this seems like the best thing going.
And and actually I'll talk a little bit in a
second about some of their organizational tricks and how they
created like a beautiful, healthy community, like well, you're poor,
but you can going into this like culture of mutual
(21:01):
aid and you can actually have a decent life and
like your kids can go on hiking trips and everything
is beautiful and wonderful and happy or whatever. That's so
wonderful because yeah, I mean it's like I for sure
was like raised to view anarchy as like this dirty word,
and to like hear stories about how mutual aid organizations
(21:22):
like are like made accessible of like, yeah, we should
be doing this, um is always fascinating to me. That's
so cool. One in ten Yeah, which is I mean,
that's the that's the the upper estimate of these guesses. Um,
but it they are absolutely the largest union in Spain
for decades. Amazing. Uh, so they're there are anarcho syndicalists,
(21:47):
which is a type of anarchists where they center their
organization around trade unions. Um. Individual workplaces would be autonomous,
but then they would cooperate with each other in federations.
So you would be so like your seem stress factory
or seems whatever sewing factory, you have a federation of
all the sewing factories, and you would have a federation
of all the like all the people in Barcelona who
(22:09):
are in this thing or whatever city you're in. And
then but your but your own individual one would be autonomous,
so you would you would coordinate with these larger groups,
but you wouldn't necessarily be beholden to them. And so
they they're not afraid of organization. Is actually kind of
like one of the things whenever people are like, oh,
anarchists are afraid of organization, I'm like, no, there's too
much of it. There's too much of it. The biggest
(22:31):
problem is that I want other people to make decisions.
Sometimes the organizations inside of organizations, inside of organizations. Yeah,
in order to create a space in which people can't
take over and cause bad things. But and so, so
World War One kicks off and Spain is like, well,
we could go to war, but we don't want to.
(22:54):
There's no reason for us to, so they don't. They
just sell arms to both sides. They sold guns to
both sides of the war. And it's actually the neutrality.
I had no idea about this in times of this research.
It's the neutrality that is the reason they got blamed
for the Spanish Flu, which killed anywhere between seventeen to
a hundred million people worldwide. And no kidding, it came
at the tail end of the of World War One
(23:17):
because everyone else in Europe was under wartime propaganda censorship,
so Spain was the only Western country that was admitting
that everyone was sucking dying, And so people are like, wow,
it's really bad in Spain. Bet it's their fault, those
motherfucker's that's so mean, you know, you know, Jesus Christ.
And one thing that came out of the Spanish Flu
(23:39):
was so actually, when you're asking where where a lot
of their growth comes from, actually it comes from less
World War One and more the Spanish Flu there was
a general strike in Barcelona, and and it wasn't just
the CNT the Socialist Union, they allied themselves to do
this general strike. And there's been a wave of strikes
going on because cans for workers were getting really fucking
(24:02):
bad because there was a flu and all the people
were dying, and except the bridge, the rich fucked off
to their estates and waited it all out, which is
some of the parallels are gonna be kind of heavy handed.
Some of the parallels to the monit what they're equivalent of,
like going to Mars or whatever. The fun we're all
going to the Denver Airport of this time and place.
(24:25):
But one of my favorite little miniature strikes in here
is that there was a casket factory and the woodworkers
Union was like, we're going on strike. Fuck this because
people really needed caskets. So it was a very quick
strike and their demands were met right away. That is
um not to you know, belittle the intensity of that,
(24:52):
but that does sound like a very funny sketch. Yeah,
just a unionized casket disaster is so funny. Yeah, it's
the it's like the pre it's it lends itself to
the coffin flop extended universe. Wait, I don't know the coffin.
(25:12):
Oh is this the practical comedy of a coffin falls
out in the body? Yeah, there's it's a it's in.
I think you should leave with Tim Robinson where it's
like a clip show where the bottoms of coffins just break.
It's like structured like a prank show, and then the
corpses just go like it's I think you'd really like it.
(25:33):
It's really funny and yeah, so let's imagine that that's
how they did it. Instead of actually coffin flop, they
just they took like some rich people's caskets and made
the bottoms really weak. Let's pretend like that's how it happened. Okay,
I love you know, I don't love it, but it's
(25:56):
very funny. So the way that the general rural strikes
starts around this time is that eight workers at a
hydro electric company in Barcelona were laid off for political reasons.
I couldn't find out exactly, but I think they were
laid off because they were organizers with the CN team.
I'm not undercent sure. Within a week, not only had
the entire more or less the entire staff of that
place walked off the job, but so at eight percent
(26:17):
of the textile workers in Barcelona, which is a big
part of the industry, and then the rest of the
electrical workers in Barcelona followed. Within two weeks of the
industry of the entire region of Catalonia was shut down
by this strike. That's incredible. Yeah, we talk a lot
about it. Seems like the left talks a lot about
general strikes right now, and the general wisdom is that
(26:38):
you need to prepare for them for years, and I
think that's often the case, but sometimes they just happened,
but they just happened, particularly well when you've organized when
huge chunks of the industry are already organized into unions
right where it's like if you already have um autonomous
organizations inside federations, and as many as one in ten
people are completely on board that I mean in a
(27:01):
way that is the years of preparation totally. Yeah. And
there's like a lot of these people that I am
reading are like third third generation anarchists, and and you
know sometimes where they're like in conflict with their parents
who are a little too conservative about like gender or
sex or something like that. You know. That's so cool.
I mean how many? I mean, unfortunately, I don't know.
(27:24):
I'm like one percentage of third generation American anarchists are there.
I know that they're out there, and I celebrate them,
but not enough. I don't personally. I only know second
generation anarchists personally, and a lot of the second generation
anarchists I know made their parents into anarchists. Oh that's
not sure. I have one friend who has both a
child and a mom who are both anarchists. Well, the
(27:45):
child is no longer a child, the child is a
grown up. Just anyway, that's excited. Okay, So so they
are out there, Yeah, but they're they're rarer. There will
be more, Yeah, a rare breed. And so when they
do have this general strike, they a one and much
more successful than Tragic Week. They won so well that
(28:05):
all of Spain passed an eight hour work day at
a federal level, which is the first country I think
in the world to do so. Like in what year
this happened? Okay, that's amazing. Yeah, because there's you know,
actually the very first episode of this show about Haymarket,
which is the fight for they had out worked in
the US and a lot of industries want it, but
(28:26):
it wasn't one at a federal level, and it and
it still hasn't been one at a federal level. Here.
Is that correct? No, I think it is federal here. Um,
I no longer have my like memory notes that's the
word for memory. Uh. I believe that during all the
New Deal stuff we got more of like a federal like.
That's why he can get over time at most jobs
(28:48):
and things like that. There's like and then right, and
that's why, Um, there's so many uh weird workarounds to
having to pay people up time that have come up
since that makes sense, like the gig economy. Yeah, speaking
of the gig economy, here's some advertisers and we are
(29:16):
back and we are talking about winning the eight our
work day, and so the c nt I didn't. They're
fucking cool. And then the Russian Revolution happens, right, and
so they think to themselves like, okay, we should go
ally ourselves as Soviet Russia, until one of them actually
goes there. The Snarco Cinna CLIs goes and visits Soviet
Russia and he comes back and he's like never mind,
never mind U. And the CNT IS like Nope, we're
(29:40):
not doing that. And but unfortunately it's not just all
like peace and love and happy strikes and stuff. The
bosses are scared and they're powerful, and that's a not
the best combination. So they start lashing out. They'll do
lockouts where anyone who's union affiliated will be just like
literally locked out of work. They'll fire union workers. They
(30:00):
worked with all these conservative unions to try and divide
the labor movement, but it wasn't working. The anarchists were
still kicking their asses. So the government passes this law
called the Fugitive Law, which basically says like, like, cops
are kind of just like allowed to shoot anyone who's
sort of a fugitive. And when we say cops, were like,
and what do they mean when they say fugitive because
that feels like a pretty fluid turb too, ya. So
(30:21):
what they would do is that they would arrest people
and then say okay, you're free to go, and then
as soon as they would start walking away, they would
assassinate them. You are now a fugitive because you didn't
do what I said. Okay, got it, Jesus. And so
bosses start hiring assassins they're called the whole concept of
this is called a piece leismo, and they just start
(30:42):
murdering anarchists and republicans and socialists, and it happened to
a lot of people. So the anarchists didn't like this,
it turns out, huh. So they started doing two things
about it. First, they set up defense committees and they
would arm workers for self defense, and seventeen years later
has become the malicious that hold back a fascist coup. Second,
(31:04):
good plant and payoff, Yeah, totally yeah. And second anarchist
guerrilla groups just start assassinating people right back, and boss's
heads of these conservative like fake unions, politicians and clergy,
anyone who's been organizing to kill their comrades they assassinate,
including the prime minister. I love how many prime ministers
(31:26):
are hitting the floor in this story. So this is
their third prime minister, not including the one that they
got to resign. This is the third that they've killed. Um,
they've got killed the spirit of the fourth one. And
so in twenty five years they take out three prime
ministers like that is nuts. Yeah, Well, because these prime
(31:46):
ministers kept criminalizing them and torturing them and murdering them
and so they were like, we don't. We prefer not to,
you know. And so the last one of these prime
ministers who gets got Eduardo Datto. He was being driven
around in front of Parliament. And then I suspect that
the source I read had the plural of the following wrong.
But theoretically three anarchists roll up on one motorcycle. Um,
(32:13):
and that's what I wanted. The motorcycle have like pegs
like seventh grade. Probably one's on the handlebars. I like
that that there's just one person sitting and then there's
one on somebody's shoulders, and once another person's shoulders, like
a cheer period, like in a trench coat, like kids
in a trench coat. Three kids in a trench coat
(32:33):
with revolvers. The trench coat opens. Guess what, no more,
Prime Minister. That sounds like a like a band cover,
like an album cover. For sure, that does sound like
a like a punk album from the lab. Yeah, it's
the vibe. So you know, it's also possible that they
(32:55):
showed up on three motorcycles. I'm not sure, but we
all know how it should have gone, so I don't
leave them. It was one. Yeah, motorcycles are expensive. This
is nine twenty or something. I don't actually have the
actual date written down. I yeah, I mean going middle
school rules on this one makes total sense to me.
So they also got into street fights and some back
(33:15):
and forth assassinations with this group called the carl Lists,
who were right wing monarchists, but they didn't like the
sitting king Alfonso. They were bitter about something from a
hundred years ago where some girl got the throne instead
of some boy named Carlos. So that's why they were
carl Lists. So a hundred years later is also a
(33:35):
middle school's style grudguate being held. Yeah, and the car
Lists are like a right wing mayor to the CNT
in some ways. They have youth groups and they have
a right wing labor union that is basically like the
boot liquors Union where everyone who's in it really likes
the bosses and like kisses the boss's asses. Um, that's god, losers.
(33:57):
They're like, what if we made a whole new generation
fucking the loser. Yeah, it's the loser generation is the Carlists,
and they're nowhere near as big as the CNT. They
have between a hundred and two hundred thousand members, which
is a lot, but it's nothing. It's like a tenth
or so of what the CNT has got it. And
(34:17):
so but in addition to assassinated prime ministers, the anarchists
did all kinds of other stuff. They set up these
like storefront cultural centers everywhere, which served as schools and
rec centers for working class youth. And here's a quote
from one participant, n Riquetta Rivera, describing such a place.
We're in a group called Soli Vita son in life
(34:38):
with boys and girls. We did theater pieces, gymnastics, went
on trips to the mountains, to the sea. It was
both a cultural and a recreational group. There was always
a little educational talk of some sort, and in that
way ideas got stirred up. They created a sense of
being compagnatos and compagnadas. True people went to union meetings
and the like, but relations within our group were more intimate.
(34:59):
The explana aation is more extensive. That's where we were
formed most deeply ideologically. And so, yeah, they're they're poor workers,
but they survive on bad pay by mutual aid and
coming together as a community. That makes me so happy.
That's so sweet, you know, I know, I'm like kind
of bitter. We didn't. We don't have this everywhere. Um,
(35:21):
I know, it's like why don't we? I mean, I
know many reasons why, But like that, that is, anytime
you listen to it mutual aid testimonial, you're just like, oh, yeah,
let's drop fucking everything. Yeah, totally, and it It doesn't
whatever group is doing this mutual aid, you know, like
(35:42):
like yes, just create community and take care of each other.
That sounds great. I don't see what as a problem. Um.
And So the CNT was not a monolith, monolithic organization.
As a writer, Jorge Vlada said, it's leadership was not unified.
Members did not necessarily follower except decisions made made by
its leadership Council, and a variety of ideologies, strategies, and
(36:05):
tactics were pursued simultaneously. It was precisely this great diversity
of ideas and action that made the CNT so vibrant
and powerful. One can say there was not one CNT,
but several c nt s, And I like that. I
like that because I feel like decentralization is so often
like presented as a negative and as like a hindrance
(36:27):
to like advancing ideas and it's always nice too. Here's
someone sort of touting the clear advantages of that were
that's that's really cool. Well that's actually that's guess going
to be the core of what happens during the war
is a conflict about that idea. But that's for that's
for Wednesday out of the next three months of your
(36:50):
life that you're going to be on the SILM call.
So good because so that's today's Monday, and so we'll
be talking about Okay, well, well you just don't know
what days are. That's all this is going to be.
There will be no more Sorry, You'll tell me it's Wednesday,
and I'll have no way of knowing. Yeah, okay, but
this this isn't an AD transition. But do you know
(37:11):
what time it is? It's dictator time? What if it
AD just came in anyways, totally, I just never thought
that phrase would come out of your mouth. Yeah, I
honestly like regress to two thousand and six and peanut
(37:31):
butter jelly time. Gift of the banana is what came
to mind when you ask me what time gets. It's
not peanut butter jelly time. It's un fortunately dictator No,
it's time to get rid of the constitution. Okay, okay,
and in the Spain gets a dictator. For a while
before this they were doing the constitutional monarchy thing. They
(37:53):
keep the same King of fons and but he's like
his buddy Miguel Prima Rivera, like hey, can I be
the dictator? And the thing's like yeah, okay, I guess,
and so he becomes the dictator. Clearly, people who actually
study spansches or will be mad at me about Again,
I'm paraphrasing not just quotes but events what I say. Yeah,
(38:14):
so he tried to nationalize a bunch of ships. He's
trying to get the economy back on track, basically, and
the non CNT labor unions, like the socialists and ship
they're willing to compromise and work with him. But the
CNT is the CNT, and they're like, no, we're not
gonna we're not gonna work with you. So he outlaws them.
But did I mention before that this has no impact
upon their recruiting Because it has no impact upon their recruiting.
(38:37):
This that's amazing. The outlaw labor union continues to be
the largest labor union. Um they the anarchists aren't like, oh, no,
it's illegal to be anarchists. I guess we'll just give up. Well,
because at that point, theoretically they're like, it sounds it's
correct me if I'm wrong. It sounds like they're not
quite too big to fail, but they're like too big
(38:59):
to fail a j sinned because they're so huge, right, Yeah,
I think that that's true, because yeah, there's yeah, it's
just so many of them. And at one point they
actually start the CNT starts moving more moderate during this,
and a large chunk of them are like, maybe we
should uh get rid of drop the more anarchy side
of this and just be syndicalists and try and become legal.
(39:20):
But then instead the majority of them are like, no,
we're actually gonna become more committed to anarchism, and they
form like a subsect, the Iberian Anarchist Federation, the f
ai UM and the and what what what year are
we in issues? So this is I think that they
do this. I'm skipping through most of the twenties UM
(39:41):
and our dictator. He first he's trying to get shipped
done by taxing the rich, but the rich don't like
to be taxed, so instead he borrows money from the
public and instead Spank gets really bad inflation, which is
completely unfamiliar to the modern listener, getting inflation instead of
taxing the rich. Yeah, this sounds like it really sucked
for them. Yeah. And and so the other thing that
(40:03):
there's other players going on in a lot of this,
which is that Spain doesn't want to be Spain most people.
A lot of different areas like Catalonian Boss country in particular,
but a lot of the different regions are like, no,
we're Catalonia, We're not Spain. Like funck this. And so
part of his whole dictator thing is that he outlaws
the Caddalan language from being spoken in church services. He
bans a bunch of the traditional dances. He just does
(40:25):
the like kind of internal colonization dictator fucking nonsense, right,
just wiping out anything that isn't his. Yeah, yeah, but
he just he fox it all up. No one likes
him by get this guy, Yeah, we gotta get this guy. Yeah. Um,
the Great Depression hits, which does not help things. And
(40:47):
then so one day he goes to his generals and
he's like, hey, you'll have my back, right if anything happens.
The generals are like h m hmm. I mean, I it' imagine.
Why do they actually indicate to him that they might
turn on him or are they just like I think
(41:09):
that they are, they just like playing like reality shout contestants,
where they're like, yeah, totally, I'm very loyal. Now I
can't remember. I actually wish I hadn't put in the
exact para. I wish i'd actually put in the quotes
of the paraphrasing in this. But they make it clear
to him that they do not have his back. If
anything happens, good for them, And so he's like, well,
I hear Paris is nice this time of year, and
(41:31):
so he quits, and he resigns, and he moves to Paris,
whereupon he dies like three months later of a combination
of diabetes in the flu. Good he shouldn't get to God,
what a bye? Okay? So he so he flees and
dies of of something. And as a side note, his
(41:53):
kid Jose Antonio three invents Spanish fascism uh by saying, hey,
what's s bade needs a fascist party? I think he's
part of starting it. He's not like the Soul founder,
but he's part of the founder of the Lanche. Yeah,
I know, um, but fortunately, just to skip ahead, just
to get this guy's legacy out of the way. In
(42:15):
nineteen thirty six, when they're trying to overthrow the Republic,
when the fascists are they they execute him. So oh
good the guy anyway, So okay, so we got we
got rid of him. That's an unfortunate legacy none the last.
I'm glad they got his ass. But King Alfonso the
thirteenth he does not last much longer than his dictator.
(42:36):
And they're basically I think in one it might the
vote might have been in nineteen thirty but it might
be I only wrote half the notes. And here I
am admitting this in front of just you because this
is a private episode. But this is a private episode. Yeah,
this is Paywald and I'm the only member totally. And
so he has a hey do you all still want
a king vote that he puts out to everyone, and
(43:00):
I think he wins, but like so barely that he's
like this is bad, so he resigns. That is so
I mean, that's double embarrassing. But that's just so goofy,
especially because you're I feel like when when stuff like
that is issued, it's good when people vote their conscience, obviously,
(43:22):
but it's like, yeah, we know who is asking this question,
and do you look you look like a fool? You
look so self conscious it reminds me of Okay, allow
me to draw the worst parallel of all time. Um
so when beanie babies were on the decline in the
late nineteen nineties. Now, let me get into my area
(43:46):
of expertise. The person who invented beanie babies, who is
just like unbelievably bizarre. But he's like, he's a kind
of a million if not billionaire at this point. He
has so much money, but no one's buying beanie babies.
And so what he does is he announces that all
(44:08):
of the beanie babies are retired. They're all going to
go away, in hopes that this will restoke the marketing
people will want more beanie babies. Then, like just a
couple of months later, he issues an online poll that
you have to pay to participate in, much like taxpayers
have to pay to participate in their elections, where he says, guys,
(44:32):
should I bring beanie babies back? What do you think?
He still didn't. People were paying fifty cents to say no,
like it was just like, that is exactly what happens
to al Fons. Alfonso and Tie Warner should really sit
(44:52):
down in hell where they're at now. Well, I want
to see if the parallel with what's about to happen
with Alpha and so. Okay, so he you know, I
will say he did the one good thing a monarch
can do, which is quit us. But Ty Werner didn't quit.
He just got into real estate. Okay. Well, what Alfonso
(45:14):
did before he quit is he invented the modern porn industry.
Hold on, depending on how you look at it, you
can make the same case probably about other people. I'm
not sure. But he he was really really into porn,
and he had king level money, so he spent a
(45:35):
ton of his money commissioning porn, including all kinds of
stuff that was entirely hypocritical to the rest of his reign,
like priests and nuns and lesbians and all kinds of stuff. Yeah.
And I'm not saying there's any moral judgment like I,
you know, sex workers hypocrisy. Yeah. Um, so anyway, I
don't know, I beanie baby guys did the same thing.
(45:56):
I'm not trying to projecture on that. But no, beanie
baby guy. A um, he was. He was chaotic, corny,
but I think in actually kind of a less cool way,
the real estate way. Yeah, And unfortunately I keep forgetting
because he's he's real old, but he is, he is
still alive and he is he's a billionaire. And you
(46:18):
know who else are billionaires who probably these advertisers, the
advertisers support the show. Yeah, it's just like it's just
like Bezos doing a personal ad. That's that's the sponsor.
You here now? Yeah, we are back. So there's no
(46:40):
more monarchy. And people are like, well, what do we do.
Let's have a republic. So they declared the Second Spanish Republic.
The first Spanish Republic was like a historical footnote. It
lasted about two years between eighteen seventy three and eighteen
seventy four. The second one last four times is long,
which is still not very impressive in the Grund scheme
of things. But they get a republic just better than
(47:02):
a monarchy, and it's super polarized and divided. People do
not get along on the left and the right. Again
totally unfamiliar. On the left, you've got republicans and you've
got socialists. Think like Bernie or AOC. And then you've
got a pretty small communist party that's loyal to the USSR,
and you've got Basking Caddalan and some other regional nationalists
(47:25):
whose main things they don't actually want to be in
Spain at all. And then you've got a huge anarchist
movement that isn't even fucking with government and they abstain
from voting. And is the anarchist movement what like size
are they at at this point? Have they blood any members?
Are they still gaining? What's this is? So this is
one of their high points. So they're probably at around
(47:46):
the somewhere between seven fifty thousand and one point five
million people out of population of about twenty to twenty
three million at the time. Wow, that's incredible. And then
on the right you've got two different into monarchists. You've
got the ones who want Alfie the porn guy back,
and then the the ones who want carl because they're like,
(48:08):
when you know, when does Carlos is great great great grandkids,
when do they get to tell us all what to
do invest their political position? So embarrassing for them, bring
I mean, yeah, it's it's you know, I'm not in
favor of bringing the porn guy back because he represents
the monarchy. But at least they stand for something yet,
you know, yeah, instead of like, we don't like that
(48:29):
a girl got the throne a hundred years ago. And
then you've got the Catholic Church, and they're the higher
ups of the church in particular, super conservative. The lay
priests start off less right wing, but then the way
that the left hates the priests and everything kind of
pushes them a little bit further to the right. Um.
And overall, the Catholic Church is like the main chunk
(48:51):
of the center right because the left is very anti
clerical as the way it gets described. And I'm always
kind of on the lookout for times that Catholics do
cool things, but this is not one of those times. Um.
I mean I guess that. Yeah, if if you're Catholic,
you have to really cling to those ws because they
(49:13):
are few and far between, totally. Yeah, And it's usually
people who actually are going completely against the church, um yeah,
and okay. And then you've also got the fascists, the
actual fascist and they're a very small minority of the
right wing, unlike something like Italy or or Germany. Where
(49:34):
the fascist movement actually grew as a popular movement. The
fascists actually take control of Spain by invading basically, and
are they at this point are they actively identifying as
fascist or is there like a cute cutie pine name
for it. I think that I've read one historian that
claims that they actually the Falange, which is the Fascist Party,
(49:56):
was like never technically fascist because they weren't Selini. But
that same person was claiming that Hitler wasn't technically a
fascist because of because he wasn't Ussolini. But there the
interesting time just be splitting hairs. Yeah. Um, so the
left and the right hate each other and they're waiting
for a showdown, and sometimes they're not waiting. This is
(50:17):
not like loyal opposition time. This is polarized society time.
And at the very beginning, the republic the center left
is in power. It's mostly the socialists and the Republicans,
and they do all kinds of cool ship. They pass
suffrage for women, they allow divorce. They slowly start trying
to figure out land reform, just how to say, get
the arable land out of the hands of only a
(50:37):
few people and into the hands of the peasants, and
they pass some labor protections, they open secular schools, more
people are able to stay in school longer, so they're
they're cool. They and then they say, oh, yeah, colonization,
that's that's bad. We should let Morocco go, I guess.
But then they're getting around to that, they're claiming to
(50:58):
get around so that they then they realized it would
be politically inconvenient because it would upset France. God forbid
you upset France, so they don't free Morocco. Um, I
love to upset France. I know if they've been willing
to up some time I go to France, I upset France,
I think. I don't think. I've only been twice, but
both times I don't think that they were thrilled I
(51:20):
was there. That's the kind of classic French move. Um. Yeah,
So they would have saved themselves in trouble if they
had let go of Morocco, although they would have really
saved themselves a trouble if they let go of Morocco
like thirty years earlier, because Morocco is actually where the
fascists later go to go hang out and prepare with
all their fascist stuff. But it is probably too late
(51:43):
at this point, but they don't let Morocco go. And
the and then the Second Republic was super anti clerical,
which pushes the Catholics further to the right. Two the
right wing tries to stage a coup with the military.
Franco who's the guy who ends up the dictator at
the end of the story. He's invited to this coup
and he's like, no, I'm good. This sounds like y'all
are just going to fail and go to prisoner die
(52:05):
and wow, nice to get the evite to the coup, though, Yeah,
I think he felt included, and then he used to
feel Yeah, it nice to feel like a part of
something larger than yourself. Um. Yeah, which you'll see what
he does to the people who invited him later. Um. Oh, So,
so it turns out that he's he's correct. The coup fails.
So then the c and T is like, well, let's
(52:27):
have a revolution, and so then I wish I had
more time to go into it. But they try to
have a revolution. They start like taking control of the
areas that they already live in. It's like like all
of the workers in a mining town will be like
they'll raise the red and black flag like the anarchist flag,
and then they'll be like, all right, we're it's like
um money python like king. We don't have a king,
We're an anarcho synocolist colony. Um. That's what they did.
(52:50):
The miners were like, thank you for putting it into
terms I understand genuinely. Yeah. I mean like that is
actually the widest representation of anarcho synocolism and pop culture.
That's so. So they were generally going for areas that
were majority working class, where they already had a fair
amount of support. Yeah, because they weren't. Because one of
(53:10):
the whole things with anarchists in general is they're very
rarely like we're going to go kill the king and
take over instead anarchism. Like, we'll have to be like
we can make ourselves be anarchists, but we can't make
anyone else do it. So all we can do is
tell people they can't stop us. So they would take
over their own town and declare it anarchists, and then
(53:31):
the Republic's army would come in and put it down
and make them all go back to work. Um. Who
so uh. In three the revolution fails, thirty thousand of
them go to prison over this. Okay. Also in three,
the Socialists and Republicans start getting mad at each other
(53:53):
and thirty thousand of them, Yeah, thirty thousand of them
go to jail and that it's that's that's you said,
that's so good. I didn't. Yeah, you said it's so
casually that I panicked and I was like, okay, thirty yeah,
I know you said that. I was like, that's the normal,
(54:13):
that's normal. That's that's that's cool. What so many people Margaret? Okay,
so just because their their political ideology had been outlawed,
or did they have to like find I mean they
committed crimes, they like tried to they tried to like
stop Spain being in charge of them. Sure, crimes were committed,
(54:35):
but what did they really do? Yeah, that's that is
that's a lot um And I want to know more
about that uprising. It was like one of those things
where I like found it and I read a bit
about it, and then I was like, I actually don't
have time to go into this because I haven't even
gotten to the time that they collective as huge chunks
of Spain yet. Um. But so, also in thirty three,
(54:58):
the socialist and Republicans start getting mad at each other.
The coalition, the like left coalition, falls apart, and so
when new elections are had in ninety three, the anarchist
once again abstain, and then the center right takes power
in the center right immediately, let's free all of the
the fascist prisoners from their failed coup. I believe backhound.
(55:18):
No, no no, no, no. The fascists are left. No no,
no no. In the next election in February, the left
is like, hey, could we fucking stop fighting each other.
The fascists keep winning, and so they form something called
the Popular Front and they let all the fascists out
of the Yeah. When the right wing took power, they
(55:40):
let fascists out. Um okay. So the left is like,
let's form a popular Front. Let's all all of the
left parties just be one, will have one candidate, you know,
well one party. We're gonna win this thing. And they're like, hey, anarchists,
you want to vote for us. The anarchists like no,
and and they're like, well, let everyone out of prison.
(56:03):
And the anarchists are like so now, So they tell
the anarchists, if we win, will let the anarchists out
of prison. But the anarchists are kind of like they're
they can't they can't advocate voting and joining government because
it's like against the anarchist thing. They've presented a catch
(56:23):
twenty two and they fucking know it. So what they
did is they were like, we don't abstain um, we
don't not not not not Yeah, and they win the
popular front winds by like less than one per um,
(56:44):
and the Left is now back in power. And then
this is the most surprising thing of all that was
like their vote blue no matter who moments but kind
but imagine if the vote blue no matter who then
did the things they said they were going to do.
Oh okay, now I've lost my relation to this anecdote
(57:05):
because they let the prisoners out. Wow. They like, there'll
be like a thing where like the Marxist who suddenly
in charge of such and such region will like call
and be like, hey, you have to let all the
prisoners out of the jail. And they're like wait really,
and you're like, yeah, yeah, you have to let them
all go, and they and they all got out. Wow
that I did not see that coming. That's wow. This
(57:28):
really is a more positive shown again and so like
I listened to it, but I'm like, oh, just he
feeling that relief in real time, Like this is unfamiliar
to me, Like just imagine how I feel. I keep
I'm like, okay, okay, okay, it's got to happened, right,
(57:51):
it's an existential dread. Where is it? Where is it?
Then the markets like here's some hope. Yeah. Um. And
so the right wing, of course, they're like, well, good show,
old sport. We know when we're beat. We'll see you
next time at the polls. Just kidding, uh, right wing ideology.
(58:14):
Yeah no. Instead, they gather up their colonial army in
Morocco and invade Spain. Oh and they say, shipped to
the media like we would be perfectly happy to murder
literally half the population of Spain if that's what it
took to take power. Like Franco has a quote to
the media. I again, I didn't write downward for word,
but it is really close to that. And they've been
(58:35):
planning this for years. They've been planning this coup for
a long time. Even when they were the ones in power,
they were planning a coup against their own government because
they didn't want to be in charge of a republic.
They wanted to be in charge of a dictatorship because
they're fascist and uh. And again it didn't grow up organically.
It wasn't like Italy or or Germany. They it was
(58:56):
a takeover. And it shows that all of these military generals,
these are all the colonial generals. They're all used to
taking over other countries. So July nine was supposed to
be a really amazing day in Spain. It was supposed
to be the opening of the anti fascist Olympics because hold, oh,
(59:18):
you're gonna like this part. I think I'm getting I
just even hearing that put butterflies in my stomach. It
felt like falling in love. So people all over the
world are like, well fuck Hitler, right, And so that
a lot of people were boycotting the German Olympics of
x and so the left desides to throw their own
Olympics in Spain, and the USSR had like, it's like
(59:39):
Soviet Olympics, but you had to be like a Soviet guy,
and like you didn't have to be in Russia, but
you had to be like a loyal Communist Party member
or whatever to be in that. So those don't count
barrier to entry. Yeah, so the people's Olympics were going
to be for the center left, the authoritarian left, the
anti authoritarian left, and the general we don't like Nazis
very much. Crowd, not in not just people who were
(01:00:00):
boycotting the German Olympics. They actually set their games to
be a few days earlier so that if some people
wanted to go to both they could. UM because they
wanted to present an alternative vision of what sports and
competition could be. It was organized anti fascistically. Nations were competing,
but you didn't have to be nation states. So for example,
Morocco got to compete as Morocco and not Spain, Um, Catalonian,
(01:00:23):
the boss country, et cetera. All got to be their
own like regions and nations. Exiled Jews got to compete
as basically the innation of Jews and exile. Um. Some
people came representing their trade unions instead of their countries. Uh.
The organizers offered, yeah, no, there's this whole book on
I never heard of this, and I talked to James Stout,
(01:00:44):
wrote a book about this, who has actually been on
some other cools on podcasts. Um, yeah, we love James.
And so they wrote to the u S and they
were like, hey, you have a lot of black athletes,
we will pay their way if money is a barrier
to make sure that like black people are represented in
these and um. And it wasn't supposed to be about superiority,
(01:01:07):
like who is the absolute best at everything, but instead
fraternal competition between like equals and stuff. And they also
added like what people say the Olympics should be. So
these people took it seriously. And this wasn't even the
anarchists actually didn't organize this. This was just like them,
the leftist republican government or I actually don't think it
was a necessary government sponsored um okay, but it was
(01:01:31):
like a popularly supported saying by the left, Yes, including
the anarchists, but also including other people. I'm not trying
to take credit for this one. As what I'm trying
to say. Um. They also added chess, folk dancing, and
music to the list of events. Now we're fucking talking.
This is the greatest thing I've ever heard in my life.
This is God, It's what I mean. I know I'm
(01:01:54):
fully preaching to the choir, but it is still like
in the year two thousand twenty, to be anti Olympics
is still so baffling and and was to me, you know,
probably whenever five to seven years ago, like I didn't
know what that meant. And it's still people are like, oh,
you hate sports, you're not sporty, Well, don't watch and
(01:02:16):
like that is still what all of my uncles think
I'm saying. They're like, yeah, so you didn't get a
sports yeah, instead of like, oh, this is the way
that they just gentrify and destroy cities one after the other,
like right, and like they're gonna they're gonna destroy where
I live and could easily destroy where you live, like
where you literally where we are eating this horrible Christmas
(01:02:41):
meal right now could be gone thanks to an Olympic
stadium that is not necessary. I just this sounds amazing. Yeah,
it would have been, and it was going to happen
on July. But did you just did you just bust?
I did? And I feel guilty. I got so I
and I know I that's on me for doubling down
(01:03:02):
on being thrilled. Now, it's still a beautiful thing that
people tried really hard to do, and it's really just
the reason it's like why we can't have nice things
as nazis um because on it is supposed to happen
on July nine, and on July seventeen, the fascist took
over Spanish Morocco and then invaded mainland Spain. Well, isn't
(01:03:24):
that just like them? Um Jesus Christ. And so the
athletes fled the approach of the fascist except here's a
beautiful part of it. Two hundred of them stayed and
joined the workers malicious that fought back the coup. What okay,
that's amazing. And the coach what happens to them? We'll
get to that. Is there another twist coming? I mean,
(01:03:46):
civil war does not end well for the anti fascists
in the end. Um. Yeah. So the coach for the U.
S team is a communist named Chick check In, and
he he leaves to see his athletes safe home. I know,
he's a great name, and he basically is like, all right,
I can't stay in fight because I have to get
all of my athletes home. So he gets them home,
and then a year later he comes back and he
(01:04:08):
joins the International Brigades and he dies in the fight.
You know, But that is very I mean, as far
as those sorts of things go, that is very noble
that he returned in the first place, and it was
likely the autonomous power of the anarchist militias that allowed
them to act quickly enough to stop the initial fascist coup. Basically,
(01:04:29):
the defense committees were used to making decisions themselves, so
they responded faster to crisis and they didn't have to
wait for a chain of command, and in most places
the initial coup was decided in like matters of hours.
M whoever acted faster one that region of Spain basically
um and then James Stoddoshi makes his argument also that
(01:04:52):
one of the reasons that the militias did really well
as that the anarchists had this like culture of sports
and athleticism which extended to women as well, and it
was very much against the conservative culture at the time
that women got to be involved in sports and athleticism.
And so because women were involved, they had twice as
many potential fighters and everyone was like ready to go.
(01:05:12):
And it's interesting to me because now I think of
like working class sports being such an obvious thing, like
of course working class sports, but then apparently a hundred
years ago, a lot of times people were too busy,
starving and working fifteen hour days. So sure, sure, I
mean five years to live for no through no fault
of your own. Okay, here's the weirdest twist. In Barcelona,
(01:05:37):
two groups fought back the initial fascist coup successfully. One
was the workers militias, mostly anarchist, and the other group
was And I want you to guess, guess who's the
least likely group to join the anarchists to fight the fascists.
Fascists with slightly different opinions clothe the cops. No, no,
(01:06:04):
that is fascists, not even socialist cops because they're part
of the socialist government. Wait, unpacked that first, So I
actually don't know of all what are the socialist cops
up to in this case? They were, I mean in
this case they specifically, like in general, they were running
(01:06:25):
around being cops, right, like, you know, this is the
same republic that like put down the various revolutions and
things like that. Kay. But when the fascist came and invaded,
the two groups that were just ready to go and
fought them back were the cops and the anarchists. And
(01:06:45):
it wasn't like side by side. I think they had
different areas of town. I think at different neighborhoods. They
did this, but they did it together. Um, I can't
get my head around this. But but but I have to,
but I have no choice. Mean, it's kind of like
watching like the January six thing right where the cops
are the ones trying to stop the insurrection, right and
(01:07:06):
in that moment, and if they were aligned with me
this one, but then you're just like, but no, but no, Jamie,
that doesn't make sense. So that's the fun brain breaking
thing about war and conflict makes really weird. You're like, well,
they showed up and they are on our side, so
and they have a lot of ammunition you would imagine,
(01:07:30):
Um god, Okay. So and then one of the things
that happened in all of this, but in particular, and
I think in the initial push, but throughout the entire
Spanish Civil Wars, that the anarchists kept taking dumb risks
because they were all such true believers that they would
like go sacrifice themselves way too easily. Um, this is
me and the Beanie Baby Wars. Yeah, I think so. Actually, Um,
(01:07:51):
I think isn't the Beanie Baby War is just a
parable about the Spanish Civil War? I mean it's kind
of the endless war in a way. Okay, Um, so
the fascist uprising did not work completely, so there was
a They defeated the coup, but the fascists take a
huge chunk of the middle of Spain. The only major
city they get a Seville, which unfortunately helped them land
(01:08:12):
troops because there's a port. And Franco gets called the
leader of this coup, and in the end he was.
But at the beginning he was just one of three leaders,
and the most leadery of the leaders was this asshole
named Jose sent Hero. I'm only calling an asshole because
he was a fascist. I don't know anything about theim
as a person. Well, actually you know that's not true.
I know a lot about him as okay. Anyway, still
(01:08:33):
very generousive, you could make the clarification. So he had
led the failed coup in two he had gone to prison.
He's the one who sent the evite, I think, and
he had been okay, so he set up the event.
Definitely an asshole. Anyone's sending an evy, get over yourself.
And he was an exile in Portugal because after he
(01:08:55):
was arrested for the coup, he was let go by
the when the right wing took control the government, and
so when it's time to fly back and oversee the coup.
He's told, hey, fly on this passenger plane and he's like, no,
I want to fly with my buddy. He's a pilot,
and he's there. Was like, really, okay, you can fly
in the small plane there, and then he shows up
with his giant trunk of clothes and his buddy, the
(01:09:17):
pilot is like, that's too heavy. You can't fly with that,
and he's like, you don't understand. I'm about to be
in charge of all of Spain. I need really sick clothes.
So he gets into the plane and they crash and
he dies. So he like he kind of buddy hollied
himself in a way, or hear me out, or so
the other leader, Emilio Mola, he's in charge of the
(01:09:41):
war in the north, where Franco is in charge from
the south. Except one day seven, Emilio Mola his plane
is flying in bad weather and whoops, it flies into
a mountain and Emilia dies. So both of his buddies
die in mysterious airplane accidents. It is probably a coincidence.
It is also definitely he had also just said I'm
(01:10:06):
willing to kill half of Spade. It interesting that is okay,
so but it but it was definitely an accident. I'm
choosing to see this as you know. Let's yeah, it's
the clothes, it's it was the pressures of keeping up
with fashion is what brought the plane down. Yeah, it was.
(01:10:26):
It was the day the music died in a way, Um,
but for fascism. And so this guy is kind of
the big bopper of fascism. And I'm glad that there's
no terrible song I have to hear about him for
and over again. God, I'm sure. Yeah. I hopefully it
(01:10:47):
doesn't exist, and if it does, it didn't catch on
and we should all be grateful God. That is um okay,
well I guess you know it could. That's a mysterious coincidence.
But I have no further question. Gin Yeah, yeah, totally.
So we're almost done for today, but I want to
leave you on a hopeful note. Besides, of course, fascist
dying in plane crashes, which is that, I was gonna say,
(01:11:09):
the big bopper of fascism dying in a plane crash
not the worst thing I've heard. Um. There was a
part that before the fascist coup, the anarchists were like,
there's going to be a fascist coup. Hey, government, give
us guns, and the government was like, we can't, that
wouldn't be legal. Uh, and so when the fascists. So
then the anarchists went and dug up their their cachets
(01:11:30):
of guns from their failed revolution a couple of years earlier,
and that's what they used to defend the coup. So
one everything might have gone really differently if the government
had just given the anarchist guns. But to the hopeful
note I'm going to leave you on, is that pretty
quickly after the coup starts, the government reverses its don't
give weapons to the anarchist malicious policy and they give
(01:11:51):
one point five there's now one point five to three
million anarchists and who keep trying to declare libertarian socialism
which is like the word for anarchism, and take control
of their lives. And suddenly they have hella fucking guns.
What's going to happen in the next part of the episode?
Who knows? I'm I'm thrilled, I'm captivated, I'm excited. Well
(01:12:19):
that's that's it for for today. You can catch the
next part on Wednesday. Yeah, Jamie, do you do you
want to plug your plug? Doubles perhaps something where you
require lots of sound effects. Yeah, well, in a way,
me talking about me and Ian looking for very specific
sound effects that I struggled to describe in detail is
a great segue, um to the show where all of
(01:12:42):
those sound effects eventually miraculously appear because Ian is amazing. Um.
You can listen to my new podcast, Ghost Church, which
is produced by one Sophie like German on one Glue
Zone Media. Um. And it's my show that's coming out
(01:13:02):
about the history of American spiritualism, basically the history of
organized religion that revolves around talking to ghosts in the
US and the time that I spent with some of
the remaining spiritualists in Florida earlier this year. Um. And
that's you know, that's wherever you're listening to this show
(01:13:24):
Ghost Churches. There also wonderful Margaret. Do you wanna do
you want to pre plug your pre pre pre pre
order for your book? Oh yeah, I have a book
coming out. It's a book of short stories. It's called
We Won't Be Here Tomorrow and it comes out from
a k Press on September. In case you're listening to
this in the future, Well, you are listening to in
the future, but it depends on how far into the
future you're listening to it. Well, actually, I guess only
(01:13:45):
one person is listening to his private episode. But it's
available for pre order. I'm going to I'm gonna get it.
I appreciate that it's available for pre order on June.
Is that June already? Know it's May currently? Yeah, I
was somewhere around them and it is. I I write
science fiction and fantasy. So if you want to read
about trans woman thief who feeds men to her mermaid girlfriend,
(01:14:09):
or if you want to read about Margaret Um, this
is really exciting. If you want to read about hackers
who programmed drones in order to uh troll CEOs into
quitting and then one of them is seriously guys, then
you should read this book. Uh that I'm in. I'm in,
(01:14:30):
and you know this is a private recording, but for
our one listener, which is I mean, but but that
if if there ever was a targeted ad in this,
that is it. And we'll be We'll be back up.
We'll be back up one part two. Stay hopeful. Yeah.
(01:14:54):
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