Part One: The Paris Commune: How to Steal Back Your Own City

In 1871, the people of Paris, tired of starving, took up arms and declared their city an autonomous commune. For almost two months, they ran their utopian experiment, and though they were eventually crushed, they inspired revolutionaries across the world for generations to come.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
It's a podcast. It's about stuff done by people. I'm
your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and my guest this week is
my friend Miriam Rocheck. How are you today, Miriam? Doing good?
How are you? I I didn't think anyone cared. I

(00:22):
always care. Okay, I'm doing good. Um okay. So my
my favorite way to describe Miriam is that Miriam is
a lesbian tall ship sailor who, once with the rest
of her crew, realized they weren't getting paid on their
tall ship, so they stole the ship from their bosses
and they sailed it off to continue to run tours

(00:44):
and kept all the money for themselves. I get that right. Um,
more or less there's yeah, I would say more or
less allegedly Okay, allegedly did all of these things? Obviously. Uh.
Statute of limitations ago in a fiction podcast, got it?
Check the statue of limitations on either work or takeover

(01:06):
of the means of production or piracy, whichever one you
feel like that is, well, speaking of work or takeover
the means of production and or piracy, we usually do
yeah okay, And then we also have on the call
our producer Sophie, how are you doing today, Sophie, I
am good. Allegedly Okay, we're all allegedly here. Okay, So

(01:32):
today we're gonna talk about a different lesbian who stole
a boat from their bosses. Only instead of a boat,
it was the entire city of Paris, and instead of
just one lesbian, it was one of modern histories first
lesbian icons who may or may not have been kay
and alongside the entire working class of Paris. That's right,
we're talking about Louise Michelle and the Paris motherfucking Commune

(01:56):
of Miriam. Have you ever heard of the Paris Commune?
I have heard of it. Yes, What what have you
heard about the Paris Commune? Um? Okay, So I think
the things that I know about the Paris Commune are
Louise Michelle was involved. Um. I know, I know sort
of about her existence. I know that it ended badly.

(02:20):
What I know like a story about radical politics where
things end badly? Who could have foreseen? Um? I know
that I was told at some point that the reason
anarchists where black is in mourning for the Paris Commune.
I was also told that is not true. I choose
to believe it anyway, because we're at hell. Oh and

(02:43):
I think I heard at some point that people after
the Paris commune um, after whatever happened to it, happened
to it, people were convicted of of having done things
during it because they took pictures of themselves doing things
during it, which may be the first time that that happened,
but a thing that I like to think about, um,

(03:06):
you know, in terms of reminding people that it is
generally not a good idea to take pictures of themselves
doing crimes. That's it. That's all my Paris Commune knowledge.
I assume it took place in Paris. It did, yes,
also in a commune um that was Paris. Yeah, we're
going to get to most of that stuff, although I
want to find more about these pictures of people doing crime.

(03:28):
Although there will be photographers in this story. I mean,
it's possible that a radical lawyer just made that up
to encourage their clients to stop taking pictures of them.
I wouldn't put it past them. I think that the
real tradition, and we'll talk about this more of the
Paris Commune is to mythologize the Paris Commune and then

(03:48):
apply whatever you think to the Paris Commune. Uh. But
the the short of it is that in right after
France got crushed by Prussia a ka. Germany, the working
class of Paris took over their own city. They elected
a council and they seceded from France. And for almost
two months they tried a bunch of different ideas about
how to be a free city. Some ideas were more

(04:10):
free than others. Overall is pretty freaking cool. And then
the French army invaded their own city and killed like
twenty people in a pretty gross and wholesale slaughter. But
before they all got wholesale slaughtered, the commune arts, which
is what they called themselves in the commune, they were um.
They were overall and with a bunch of caveats, like

(04:30):
every time on the show, like pretty cool people who
did cool stuff. And sometimes I think we should rename
this show cool people who got murdered for being cool.
I mean, that seems to be the trend thus far. Yeah,
we'll have to find some non murdered people at some point.
Let me know if you can find them. What theoretically

(04:53):
most people that we run across. So far, so good
for all of us history. However, that's the thing. Well,
I don't like that implication. If you're still alive, you
must not be cool. Okay, So we're gonna we're gonna

(05:16):
lay our scene in nineteenth century friends. And when you
think nineteenth century France, I want you to know that
the story starts where all stories start, with the musical
lame Is. I was hoping. So, yeah, that's like where
most of my decks back story knowledge comes from at
this point. Yeah, it's completely unrelated to Pairs Commune except

(05:36):
for how I'm going to tie it in beautifully and artfully. Okay,
So it's the play lame Is. Where everyone calls it
lame is because no one including me can pronounce the
word ms rabla. I basically can't pronounce any French. Didn't
do me very much good when I was in France.
But anyway, lame Is is a novel written by a
guy named Victor Hugo. It's not a short book. It's

(05:58):
longer than the entire Lord of the Rings true allegy.
And it's not about the French revolution um at least,
it's not about the big seventeen nine revolution. It's about
a little forgotten and failed revolution in eighteen thirty two,
when people quite understandably decided, hey, what if we didn't
have a king anymore? Again? Yeah, that's the thing that

(06:19):
the French decide quite often, to various degrees with success,
which will come up later in the same century. So
the Revolution eighty two fails and friends keeps having a
king for a while longer. And then our author Victor
Hugo hid from bullets flying this way and that during
it all, and thirty years later wrote a long ass

(06:41):
book about it that eventually became a play with some
of my favorite songs. Again not really related to what
we're talking about, but I just always want to shout
out these songs that I like. It goes pretty hard, yes,
And when I say shout out these songs, I don't
mean actually me singing it. I'm sorry. I'm suppressing the
urge because I because I know that that would be inappropriate.

(07:01):
But it's it's an effort. Oh, I I don't know
about it from a copyright point of view, that just
from I assume you want people to continue listening to this,
and if you and I start singing the confrontation right now,
that's just not going to happen. Yeah, Okay, but we're
not here to talk about eighteen thirty two or the
more successful revolution of eighteen forty eight, when France got

(07:23):
rid of their king and instituted the Second French Republic,
which lasted for four years before the president decided that
he was the Emperor. President Louis Napoleon Bonaparte declared himself
Emperor Napoleon the Third and started the French Second French Empire.
And this ship gets really confusing, at least to me.

(07:44):
He's not that Napoleon. He didn't get defeated in Waterloo.
There's no sick a a song about him. Um, that
was his uncle, Napoleon the first. Our guy was defeated
in France at a place called Sedan. And I'm not
aware of an Abba song called Sedan. I'm not aware
of their full cud log. But no, but actually Super
Trooper is about him. I don't know if you know that. Oh,

(08:05):
I didn't actually know that. Wait, every Appa song is
about some member of the Napoleon family. Right, that makes
more sense. When I choose to believe that you're telling
me the truth, you've annoying that you're not. Okay, what
song did they write about his cousin Napoleon the Second, MoMA, Mia,

(08:27):
I'm going to run out of Abba songs. I don't
know that much abba ya. See. The problem is that
you ran out of what you said, super Trooper. I
was thinking of the movie and now I'm just like
pretending to go along with it. Um But okay, So
Napoleon the Second did not do very well. He was
technically had a government for like two weeks when he
was four years old, and then he lived to the
ripe old age of one, and then he died of tuberculosis,

(08:49):
which I think basically all people in the nineteenth century
who weren't shot in battle or executed did a seventeen
year run. Is still pretty good for a four year old. Like,
I don't think I would have done that well if
ruling when I was four. Oh he was only ruling
for two weeks. Oh yeah. Napoleon the Second a blip

(09:12):
on the screen. Napoleon the Third he does all right
for a while, by monarch standards, not by like decent
human being standards. Um. So his whole thing, this is
all background and we're going to get to it. His
whole his whole thing is he's modernizing France. He puts
in more railroads, he modernizes the bank and ship and
he actually this this is actually kind of impressive. He

(09:33):
managed to end famine in France, Like apparently the last
time there was a major famine in France was eighteen
fifty five, and before that they used to be super common. Um,
so that's like the one thing I can be like,
all right, you did all right Napoleon. But uh, he
was a super like free trade capitalist guy, and he
got rid of a bunch of tariffs and he piste

(09:55):
off a huge trunk of the French industry and basically
was like, if you want to compete with Britain, do better. Um.
He also legalized striking. He's kind of all over the
map politically. He was really into this like populist authoritarianism
where he's like, oh, now I'm in charge, but like
I'm I'm one of the people, you know, which is
something that Americans are completely unfamiliar with today. Um, this

(10:17):
idea of a popular authoritarian. He was actually so popular
that it kind of sucked up the republican cause. And
by that I mean people who wanted a republic rather
than a monarchy. It kind of set that back because
people kind of liked the guy for a while, but
he was also a fucking emperor, which fundamentally prevents him
from being good. And he like double or tripled the

(10:37):
colonial holdings. He stole a place in the southwest, specific
called New Caledonia, which is still a French colony today.
He stole cam Cambodia and Senegal and the chunks of Vietnam.
And he's most well known in Paris. Have you heard
about this thing where Paris redesigned itself in the nineteenth century, Yes,

(11:00):
where they designed all the streets so that they couldn't
be barricaded and and stuff like that. Um, that's this guy,
Napoleon the third. He part of his modernizing Paris is
he's like, all right, so that the enemy is the
poor people, So we want to make it really easy
for armies to march through Paris, which of course have
no later consequences. When he makes his country easier to invade, um,

(11:24):
and makes it harder for people to resist in invaders.
So he knocks down entire neighborhoods and he widens the boulevards.
And basically before this, Paris was like a kind of
maze like and cool. And then instead it became like
grand with wide boulevards where an entire company of men
can march in formation down the street, and you know
that clearly doesn't have any lasting consequences. Um, he was

(11:49):
really into war. Uh, he did a bunch of stuff
with war. It was a thing that I guess emperors
are into and Napoleon's that's true. Yeah, And he didn't
do as good as the job as his dad, by
the standards that were going to now compare him on.
But um, he was kind of more like an adventurer

(12:12):
than like a conqueror. He like helped buds out. He
like helped his buds out in Italy and Crimea. At
one point he invaded Mexico City and then he installed
his bud from Austria, who was the brother of the
Austrian Emperor, as Emperor of Mexico, which only lasted like
three years until Mexico was like, we don't want an
emperor and they kicked him out. Actually I think they

(12:33):
shot him and then went back to being a republic.
Understandable decision. So like war is his side hobby, Like
like he doesn't like to do it full time, but
like he likes to stay involved. That's kind of the
impression I get. And I'm sure there's now someone angrily
who's like a big Napoleon three guy who's like shaking

(12:54):
his fist at me. But the impression I get is
he's like, yeah, it's not like he's not off to
go can or the world, but he's like, you know,
we need to bring back French honor by by going
off and and proving that we're mighty and manly and
all that. And because he wanted to be really manly,
he got into a huge dick swinging contest with Prussia,

(13:15):
um which Prussia being basically Germany. So there's this guy
named Otto von Bismarck, right, and he wants a unified Germany.
Yeah it's a big guy around here, you know. He
wants a unified Germany, and he needs some of the
southern German states to to play ball on this whole
like one country thing. And he figures what better way
to unify a country than to get invaded? But like badly,

(13:40):
And if you ever want to be invaded but badly,
what country do you think you should get to invade you?
I have a feeling you're gonna say, France. I am
going to say, France, I used context clues. Thanks, I
laid them down. Okay, So, Um, at least half the
historians that I run across basically are like Bismarck goads

(14:02):
Napoleon into invading and it works. And so he like
does the I'm not on your side of this, I'm
not on your side of the car seat. I'm not
until like his little brother punched him and then he
got to be and then he got the whole family
on his side. Is that is that the analogy, that
is a brilliant and perfect analogy that is exactly what happened. Um.

(14:25):
Is Actually the reason they invented cars was they looked
at what happened to Bismarck and they were like, we
need this analogy to exist. So while Napoleon was busy
designing his capital to accommodate large marching armies inside city limits,
Bismarck had been modernizing in a different direction. He was
preparing infrastructure for war. So he had been building armies

(14:47):
that could march into cities for example. Yeah, and also
he put in like train lines that went out to
the border, and there was like two tracks next to
each other, so that trains could go both to the
front and away from the front at one without having
to wait for the train to go back and forth
before they could send another train down the tracks. And

(15:07):
it didn't really um work out well. I mean, it
worked out very well for Bismarck. And Prussia just kicks
the ever loving ship out of France, and that's the
Franco Prussian War. France loses embarrassingly quickly, and our bud
Napoleon the Third gets himself captured pretty much right away
in that place called Sudan that that a song is about.

(15:31):
And he uh and and there goes the empire right
because the campers just no longer in service. He never
returns to power ahead. I do wish that we were
like still in a situation where heads of state we're
getting captured by other heads of state when there was
international conflict, like it just it seems like that's the

(15:53):
way it should be, Like you shouldn't be allowed to
stay home, like you should be in wherever that was,
and maybe getting captured you'll be a lot more honest,
you know. And then if you get captured, your government
doesn't exist anymore exactly, like well, you don't get to
be in charge anymore. It's yeah, there's something very simple
about that. It so okay. So to close off the

(16:18):
tail of Napoleon the Third, he gets himself captured. He
never returns to power. After the war, he gets exiled
to London, where he like tinkers around trying to invent
a more efficient stove. It was not what I expected
for a post emperor career, I know, he just he
just wanted to sunk around in the garage. You know,

(16:38):
how are his stoves? I think they were more efficient,
you know, for better or worse. And then he dies,
could you march an army up them? Well, his son
tried to march an army, or tried to march with
an army. And this is my favorite, some of my
favorite part of the stories, A lot of cool parts
of the story. But his son decides to join the

(16:58):
British army invading uh invading Africa and gets involved in
the Zulu war and just gets murdered by the enemy
and Zulu's killed the son of Napoleon the Third, And
that's cool. Yeah, that sounds sarcastic, but it's not sarcastic.
I'm entirely in favor of that. Having happened. I thought, um,

(17:19):
that we had already established that only cool people get murdered. No,
no, no no, no, it's a cool people do get murdered.
But that's it's a it's a ven diagram, it's a
logic thing. Yeah. Um, so you know, and is it
really murder? Not the word I would use. So back

(17:40):
in back in France, Germany, pressure or whatever kicks France's asked,
and then they keep marching, and they march on Paris
in the fall of eighteen seventy, which brings us to
the Siege of Paris, which is the thing. For the
longest time, I completely and utterly conflated with the Paris Commune,
even though they are entirely distinct. I think I did too.

(18:00):
I think that's one of the reasons I don't know
as much as I should about the Paris Commune. Is.
I think I thought I knew about it, but what
I actually knew about was the Siege of Paris. Yeah, okay,
So they declare a republic because they don't have an
emperor anymore, right, and they're like, oh, I guess we
fall back on this republic thing, and they don't get
to have elections for a while because the entire city
of Paris is surrounded by Prussian army and is under siege.

(18:24):
Uh Paris is about a half a million defenders, about
fifty thousand these or conscripted national guards people very little training.
Prussia decides a siege is actually a better thing than
just invading right away, despite these boulevards that they could
have marched their troops through, pretty much because they figured
out that if they starve all of the people of

(18:46):
France um or at least all the people of Paris
before they forced a surrender, there's like overall less France
and less French army to deal with in the future.
So they're thinking ahead. They're like, what if we just
starve this I think it's the largest city in Europe
by like a fair margin at this point, and it's
like seen as the capital of the Western world and

(19:07):
civilization and all that nonsense. Knowing that the army is coming,
a ton of the rich folks in Paris they fuck
off to their estates and ship, whereas the poor, knowing
an army is coming, are like, hey, there's walls over there.
I want to be on the other side of those walls.
So they all funk off to Paris, and this changes
the class composition of the city, which has interesting effects.

(19:30):
There's all these stories about the siege of Paris, where
like everyone got so hungry they ate rats. But it
turns out this isn't true. It's not now only the
rich people could afford deat rats. Oh damn, I hate that. Yeah,
the rich got to eat rats the poor eight. Like
I heard stale bread, My guess is it probably wasn't
cake because Mary Antonette wasn't there. I would definitely eat

(19:52):
stale bread before rats, though I agree. I think you
and I are vegetarians and the richest hair us I
guess we're not. Yeah, and you know who else wasn't
a vegetarian? Who? Well, actually I don't actually know the
products that support this show, but some of them might
be vegetarian. I want to hold out can be like

(20:14):
it's gonna be like a full on meat ad just
because you said that. But I want the potato ads.
That's what I've been pushing for. They don't need to
advertise potatoes. Potatoes sell themselves. I think there is like
a specific like food delivery service that's like called like
carnivore or something. I haven't heard of podcast add for it.

(20:37):
But and I could be completely getting the name wrong,
but I know the concept is there. That's going to
be who the sponsor is right now because I said that,
all right, we'll be back, and we're back. I hope
that you're loving those potatoes as much as I do.

(20:58):
But you know who also wasn't vegetarian as our man
are La Misman Victor Hugo and what he's eating, along
with many of the other presumably the rich, he's eating
mystery meat from the zoo. Oh no, yeah. During the
Paris Commune, they kill and eat the entire Sioux, including

(21:20):
like the beloved. I didn't even write down the elephants names.
I was like reading about it and it was like
they their beloved elephants and they put down the names,
and I was like, I'm not going to do that
to myself. For the listeners, you don't need to know
the names of these elephants that deserve better than they got.
But two important things are happening in Paris, and sorry
not the Paris Commune, the siege of Paris, at least

(21:41):
from our point of view. First, basically, all the dudes
in Paris are conscripted to the National Guard, which means
there's a ton of working class leftists in the National Guard. Now. Second,
since everyone's starving, they all set up mutual aid centers
just everywhere, and every neighborhood has a ton of these
mutual aid centers where people collectively meet their own needs

(22:02):
on a neighborhood or community level. There's like soup kitchens,
there's medical care, there's childcare, there's education. Everything's going on.
And these are set up by working class leftists, apparently,
especially the anarchist at least according to histories that I found,
but the the sort of proto anarchists will get to
them later. And then the National Guard they supplied their

(22:26):
own weapons, like they got together, they pulled their funds
and they bought fucking artillery and it was it was theirs.
These cannons are ours, we bought them. The individual like
the individual units are like individual people within the National Guard.
Or all I know is that it wasn't like owned
by the government, because the National Guard is very distinct

(22:48):
from the the formal military of the of Paris, and
so I'm under the impression that they it's probably at
the unit level. Also, these the National guards and are
electing their own officers and they have been going back decades.
It's it's very kind of interesting formation. But so their
own fucking canons and that'll come important later. And rents

(23:14):
were suspended during the siege too, because no one could
pay rent. And what kind of assholes would try to
collect rent during a national crisis? I don't even know.
Could you imagine that happening today? Like what if there
was like this national crisis and then um, people had
to still pay rent? Yeah? Like what if like people

(23:35):
died and they were still collecting rent that well, like
but but then like you got one payment like a
million years ago and they were like ha ha, you're good, right, Yeah,
well that would fix everything. Yeah, that's problem solved. And
you're like, Frank's I live in the fucking us. What
the hell am I going to do with? Okay? So

(24:02):
um okay. One of the odd things about this whole
thing with the siege of Paris is that the government
is like, we want to give up, we want to surrender,
and the people, including especially the left, are like, funck no,
We're not fucking surrendering to fucking Prussia. Um. And I
don't know whether it was like, I know, um and so,

(24:23):
but the radicals were like, even though there was conscription
going on, but they were like, it was a pretty
enthusiastic defense from the the working class level. And so
they were like self organizing a ton of the military
stuff as far as I can tell, again through the
National Garden and not an expert. They had their own
canons now, right, um okay. And then the other cool
thing that they did, dare I say the cool thing

(24:45):
done by cool people was airmail, the world's first airmail.
Are we talking about pigeons? There are pigeons involved, but
I'm talking about fucking hot air balloons. Um amazing. I
love that. Yeah, they're okay, They're probably been airmail with
pigeons before this and everything whenever you're in histories like

(25:07):
this is the first time that's ever happened, and I'm like,
it's maybe the first time a white person did and
someone wrote it down, but that they had hot air
balloons and they had one of the greatest wing nuts
in history. Felix Nadair. Felix Nadair, Okay, you don't do
you know his name? No, but you've seen his work.

(25:27):
He is a portrait photographer, and he took all the
portraits of people that you've heard of in the nineteenth
century except Marx. Actually I couldn't find a Mark's portrait.
But he took portraits of like all the different artists.
He took pictures of all the different like like the
different anarchists and revolutionists. He's the guy who takes like
the pictures you've seen of these various people. And he

(25:52):
he was more of a social light than a socialist.
Clever thing and my thing. Thanks for laughing, okay, and
it's a good one. Yeah, thanks. But he was like
he liked hanging out with the cool like ne'er Dowells
in the Bohemians. The way I would explain if Felix's
work is like the friend that knows how to get

(26:13):
the good photos of your of like influencers when they're out,
like the friend that knows the right angles, and all
the shots are super glamorous for the time. I mean
there's like there's like like off the shoulder poses and
like even like the the manly men with the mustaches
look kind of glamorous and like have like a good

(26:35):
pose going very interesting aesthetic. I would say, yeah, And
there's lots of um. One of people's favorite things to
argue about is like, who's gay in history? And every
probably Yeah, at least there's like the pictures he's taken
where it's like the man is very central and has

(26:56):
his hand down his pants. Yeah, a lot. And then
there's like guys that have hands on on their nipples
and it's just it's a vibe. Yeah. Was the hands
down your pants pose like a popular nineteenth century look
or or was that just his aesthetic? I think I'll
find it for you. I'll find it for you, Miriam.

(27:18):
If you start calling nineteenth century people gay, they're gonna
be like people who pop up who are like, actually,
it was extremely heterosexual for men to gaze at each
other with their hands down their pants back then, you
don't even know, and that's it was also very heterosexual
for men to tell each other I love you so
much and I want to sleep with you all the time.

(27:39):
You know, like this is what they do. This is
this is how they respond to you rightly calling people
in history gay. So you know, I just wanted to
preempt that question about the hands down the pants pose.
This is this is his self portrait with his hand
down his own pants. I mean, not as gay as
if it were down somebody else's pants. Fair enough. Well,
the people really get mad when people call people gay.

(28:02):
In history are going to love the second half of this,
uh this podcast, But okay, So he he invents aerial photography,
and I'm waiting for this photo to load, and then
I'm gonna get totally distracted. He invents aerial photography, and
he took like the first underground photographs with artificial light,

(28:22):
and he he runs his portrait studio and he's wildly popular,
but he fucking hates it. He hates like taking portraits
of people all day. He finds it so boring, and
so instead he just really wants to like funk off
and do weird adventures like fly around in hot air
balloons and invent artificial lights and ship and I have
a lot of Oh, and the whole reason his business

(28:44):
didn't entirely fall apart is because his wife, Ernestine, who
goes entirely on the thank throughout history, like, kept his
whole business running and otherwise he would have been completely
broke a thousand times over. But I have like a
certain amount of sympathy because I think Miriam knows this
but for a while I made my living take tin
types of people. Uh, just taking tin type portraits, and

(29:04):
it was so boring. It started off cool because you're like,
I'm taking photos but with ether, and then even the
fact that you get high on ether while you're developing,
it doesn't make up for the fact that you're just
taking the same photo over and over again. I don't know.
They did look cool though. Um also, Sophie has now

(29:25):
sent me the sent us the picture of this guy,
and um, you didn't mention this bow tie was bow
ties the size of a small child. Yeah, I mean
I thought the hand down the pants was more important
to point out. But I see your point and you
were correct. Okay, So at one point, this totally heterosexual

(29:46):
man Felix in the air bill the world's largest hot
air balloon named the Giant or like in French, like
I don't know eld giants or whatever. And I'm actually
studied more for punch than most of the languages, but
I'm still gonna anyway. And so he and he launches
it from the park where the Eiffel Tower is going

(30:07):
to go, and like two thousand people come and watch
it take off. He's just this adventurer dude and so this,
but he's like this wacky one. So the second time
he takes off in an LD Giant, he just crashes
and almost dies and uh. And then he also hosted
the first ever exhibition of the Impressionists in eighteen seventy four,
after all the fuss that we're gonna be talking about today.

(30:28):
But during the Siege of Paris he organized the air mail.
There were sixties six hot air balloon flights out during
the siege. They carried like literally millions of letters, and
so they also brought pigeons with them so that the
pigeons could then go home with return mail. And it
had a really high success rate, and only only nine
of the sixty six flights got like either lost at

(30:51):
sea or shot down or I mean, I wouldn't want
to fly one of these things. These were these were
not I guess I was picturing like attaching letters and
pigeons to an unmanned balloon and sending it up. There
were people on these, I believe, I believe. So I

(31:12):
I've looked at a bunch of different things, and that
is my best conjecture I can come up with. And
one of the people who at least volunteered for this service.
I do not know. I cannot confirm that he did.
It was a four year old National guardsman who is
an anarchist named at least a Reclu, who's one of
my favorite characters in this whole story. And he goes

(31:35):
on already my favorite. He volunteered for an experimental wartime
hot air balloon flight, I know, and he goes on
to become one of the foremost geographers of his era.
He's like the most important nineteenth century geographer from France
or whatever, and he's going to come up a whole
bunch more because he's cool. And they also use this
I know at least one person flew in one of
these hot air balloons. The Minister of War got the

(31:56):
funk out of Paris so that he could like keep
trying to run the war from outside a pair us
because otherwise there's no communication getting in and out until
our our wing nut guy sets it up for for
hot air balloons. And there's not really an agreement about
how to handle the war because the government wants to
give up, the people want to hold out, and so

(32:18):
there's a bunch of like sorties where they run out
and try and break the siege and they have no
success with this, and then there's a kind of these
conspiracy theories that may or may not be true that
basically all of the sorties were planned to fail. It
was like, Okay, if we send people out and they
all get their asses kicked, then people will be ready
to give up. And also during all of this, armed

(32:41):
socialists run up on the government like twice or three times,
I can't remember exactly, and they're trying and take it over,
but they don't succeed yet. And by January, the Third
Republic surrenders, they lose territory. They agreed to disarm most
of their army, and they agree to pay off some
like huge funk off fine. Like there's this story about
like when Bismarck is like, I want you to give

(33:02):
me this much money. They're like that it's too much money.
There's no way we can give it to you. And
Bismarck is like, okay, well then my soldiers will go
and find that money. And France was like we'll come
up with the money, okay. Fuck yeah. So thus ends
the Siege of Paris, And now I want to talk
about Louise Michelle because I kind of always want to

(33:26):
talk about Louise Michelle. Okay, so I started all this
off with Victor Hugo, and he's going to weave his
way in and out a bit when he's not busy
eating sue animals. But I brought him up because today's here.
Louise Michelle kind of kicked off the whole Paris Commune thing.
We'll get to that. And she was friends with him,
like when she was very she's like a teenager. She
would write him letters and became kind of a sort
of a mentee and a correspondent of Victor Hugo. Because

(33:49):
above it all, like, in addition to all the other
stuff that Louise Michelle wants to do, she's into being
a literary person. And if I were a proper historian,
it would be completely ludicrous for me to adjust that.
By therefore, Victor Hugo, who once saw a man arrested
for stealing bread and then wrote a book longer than
The Lord of the Rings about it, basically inspired the
Paris Commune. There'll be a wild leap for historian to make.

(34:12):
And I am not a historian. I'm a fiction writer. Uh.
I like the wild stories and strange connections that we've
throughout history. So I'm gonna go with it, even though
it's probably wrong or an exaggeration. A man stole bread,
Victor Hugo saw him, wrote a book. Louise Michelle correspondent
with Victor Hugo, and kicked off the Paris Commune, and

(34:33):
therefore the first time in Western history at least that
the working class seized the city too, took over their
own lives. So limisop is about the Paris Commune, or
if the Paris Commune is about Limiserrop the second one, yeah,
the second one, yeah, And again probably not actually true,

(34:56):
but inspirationally true. And she's she's forty when when our
story starts, and I'm going to call her middle age
throughout because I don't know forty counts is middle age.
But since I'm a thirty nine year old woman, I'm
going to like own it. I mean, I would just
call her a grown up, like for a revolutionary, that's
an adult. Like they're always, you know, you're always looking

(35:19):
back at history. And it's like when he was twenty two,
he was in charge of the entire like whatever. It
makes you feel really inadequate, well, that's not even in
charge of my own life when I was twenty two.
Then you're going to love the Paris Commune. Almost everyone
that I'm going to talk about today is in their
forties and fifties and they're running around with a revolution

(35:43):
that is over by ten pm because people are tired. Exactly.
It is actually a very calm and stately revolution. But
we'll get to that love this already. Yeah. So Louise
Michelle was born of unwed parents. Basically, her her dad
was like a son of the house and then knocked
up the maid. But the the grandparents basically they were like, okay,

(36:07):
well take care of this kid. Anyway. She got a
liberal education and her whole thing was that she was
a radical school teacher. That was like, her entire thing
was that she's like, I'm separating out religion and patriarchy
out of the educational system in France, and by France,
I mean everywhere she went, because she didn't actually have
enough sad to do it on the entire level of France.
Um And in the eighteen sixties her and a bunch

(36:28):
of other people started France's first feminist organization, which was
made of socialists and republicans and anarchists, which is a
mixture we're gonna see repeat itself soon. And since they
couldn't decide on like a single coherent political line, they
just decided to focus on the educational women, which is cool,
and it's good to get to occasionally focus on what

(36:49):
you have in common as a goal instead of just
fighting with each other about everything else. I think that's
sometimes true. So during Siegeaparish, she's all over the place
of the mutual aid societies. She's opening cooperative restaurants, which
I've heard referred to as soup kitchens, I've heard referred
to as workers cooperatives. I've heard referred to as like
working class restaurants. You know, I couldn't tell you the

(37:12):
entire economic model of how they functioned, but I think
that they were uh, mutual aid organizations that were workers
feeding workers. She ran schools and did childcare. She also
like worked tending to the wounded, and did all kinds
of ship And we're at January one. Sieges lifted the

(37:34):
Prussian army marches around those big open avenues and it's
just like parading around being like yeas a're sitting now,
and there's no resistance really, and everyone's like holding their breath,
being like, oh God, someone's gonna set all of this
crazy ship off and we're all gonna get slaughtered. Someone's
gonna like for a rock or something. And that doesn't
happen this time. The Republic finally gets together and they

(37:56):
hold elections and they decided to elect monarchists because most
of the electorate in France is rural conservative Catholics, and
they get this guy. He's not They don't actually make
him the president because it's like a it's a government
in transition or something. They put this guy named tier
at alf Tier in charge, and basically he looks at

(38:19):
Paris and he's like, oh, funck no, this is entirely
full of socialists and republicans and anarchists. And he moves
the capital to Versailles. It's always good things happen when
the government has moved to Versailles in French history. That's
one thing I know about history is what you've got

(38:40):
in Paris is a ton of like a funk ton
of working class people who all bought their own cannons
with their own money, who are pissed the government surrendered,
who are pissed that the government is now majority monarchist
and who are now used to meeting their needs through
various mutual aid societies. Uh. And suddenly everyone's rent is
due and the state runs around and confiscates everyone's stuff

(39:03):
and puts into a government run pawn shop to pay
back the people like the landlords and ship. The fact
of the government like having an organized like warehouse where
they would put everybody's stuff. Yeah, to pay back the landlords.
Um sucks. But also yeah, I can't imagine it combines

(39:24):
particularly well with the poor having cannons. Oh yeah that
did I mention that the poor head cannons. Wait, the
poor head cannons, the poor head canons, and the government
they were like, oh fuck, the poor have cannons. So
they decide on the night of March eighteenth, eighteen seventy one,
the government goes off to the army goes off to
confiscate the cannons, which are held in the different National

(39:46):
Guards sections of the different the neighborhoods of Paris. But
the thing is that the cannons aren't the governments. This
wasn't a like loan from the government that the people
bought these cannons. So one of the places they go
to get the cannons, whoever is in charge of, like
from the government, whoever whatever army guy was in charge
of bringing like horses and harnesses to haul away all

(40:08):
the artillery. Either forgot the horses or the harnesses, depending
on who you ask. Either way, they show up, they
nabbed the cannons, and then they're like left dicking around
in the wee hours of the night waiting for someone,
like waiting for all the ship they need to steal
the ship from the poor people. When who comes upon
the scene. But the hero of our story, can you guess, Miriam,

(40:28):
is it Louise Michelle? It is Louise fucking Michelle shows up.
She's not alone. She might have been the leader. History
fucking loves picking leaders, like everything is like and then
they were all led by and I'm like, I don't know.
It kind of seems like this was an angry mob.
But Louise Michelle is there. And there's like ten versions

(40:50):
of this story, but basically, Louise Michelle rolls in on
like on the net with the National Guard and is
in a National Guards uniform which is not really allowed
to be and I believe she sees the cannons being
stolen and they're like, everyone's like, now you don't get
to steal our cannons. And they say the army guys like, hey,
shouldn't we like be on the same side here, And

(41:12):
so the general guy it's like, fun this shoot all
these people and the army is like, we'd prefer not to. Yeah.
So depending on the story, but Louise Michelle's version of
stories that the sun rises and then you know, as
dawn breaks, the like army refuses to shoot. And then

(41:33):
another story I heard which kind of sounds like a
story making fun of French people, but is that they
all sit down have wine and cheese and bread the
two sides. Um, that does sound like a British person
who hates French people made that story. Yeah, And I
have no idea if it's true, but they do have
really I can't speak to the cheese, but the wine
and bread are very good, so maybe. Um. And it's

(41:56):
more likely that it was like a long tent standoff
for more and more of the army slowly to acted.
But either way, um, they they defect the people nab
The general kept trying to get the guys to shoot them,
and they also grab another general. Later that day, he
was like skulking around in plain clothes. He claims he

(42:16):
was like trying to figure out what was going on,
but like, I think he was trying to run off
and they fucking execute them, and the Paris Commune starts
over gun confiscation. Interesting, Yeah, which makes me argue, you know,
there's that that Texas flague worths come and take it,

(42:37):
and it's a cannon. I would argue that, um, the
left has a strong of a claim to come and
take it with cannons. I'm also a little stuck on
the whole like plain clothes general idea. Yeah, Like I'm
just I'm picturing, you know, how undercover cops look, you know,

(42:57):
and I'm just picturing like that. But a general roll,
so I guess like he's still saluting everybody or still
waiting for Yeah, he's still wearing like the shiniest boots
you've ever seen, and right, but he has a rage
against the machine shirt on. He's wearing a hoodie. But
he's marching. Yeah, totally. He can't help but march uh,

(43:19):
just like you all should march off by the products
that support the show as long as they're potatoes. If
it's anything but potatoes, you should think to yourself whether
or not you want it. But if it is potatoes,
then you shouldn't think. Just by and we're back and

(43:43):
where we last left our our heroes. They had just
killed two generals and taken over the city of Paris.
The first group that comes to power in the in
the commune was called the Central Committee of the National Guard,
which sounds really fucking ominous, right, but they were actually
the most like uncoup coup that you could possibly imagine.

(44:05):
They immediately their first task was how do we abolish ourselves?
And that should always be everybody's first task. You'd think
that any organization should be asking how do we make
ourselves irrelevant? And they, I mean, unless it's a cool one,
I don't know, well blanket statements. If you if you
seize power, I feel like once you've seize power, your

(44:28):
next step is to make yourself obsolute. And they actually
they do. They set out to abolish themselves, and they
do well. They don't abolish themselves, but they divest themselves
of power like pretty much right off, and maybe even
like the first thing they did is they were like, okay,
do we focus on one having elections or two do
we immediately take the fight to the enemy while they're

(44:50):
caught off guard and we have a ton of people
an attack Versall and overthrow France. And they picked elections
like like, God bless them, but it's possible the whole
world to be very different if they had decided otherwise. Um,
So they had elections and they picked a council. Did

(45:10):
say that these were grown ups running this revolution. That's
a good point. Actually, I see the twenty year olds
would have attacked Versai. Yeah, maybe that's why we let
twenty year olds run revolutions all the time. Yeah. I
think it's mostly because they don't realize their mortal yet

(45:30):
or that they need sleep. Yeah, totally. Okay. There's three
fun things of note about their elections. First, they're internationalists.
They let foreigners vote like anyone, Like, uh, you're foreign
guy living in France, you're living in Paris, you get
to vote. Why should someone's place a birth determine whether
or not they have a say in decisions that affect them,
So you're like, okay, fantastic, Okay. Second, they did not

(45:54):
give women the right to vote. Uh, don't even know
if it occurred to them that they like could give
the women the right to vote? Um, like, would women know?
How would would women? Are women physically capable of voting?
Who's to say? I'm not sure. They all said, uh,

(46:16):
do we know any women? I don't even know any women. Um,
so we we'll let these four I mean, like, I
am very pro them letting foreign people vote. Don't get
me wrong, totally okay. And then third, the rich basically
like refused to participate in the elections more or less
because Versailles was like, these elections are bad, don't vote

(46:40):
in them, and the rich will, I go okay, And
some some of the rich did vote, and some of
their candidates got in. And then but the candidates who
got in who are rich, just fucked off immediately. And
so basically even more rich people funck off from from Paris.
So who is that? Leave? Who made up the Paris Commune? Well,

(47:02):
I'm glad you asked Miriam. I'm glad you asked me
who made up the Paris Commune? I'm waiting I was
waiting for you to ask. I thought I already had
asked it made up the Paris Commune Margaret Well. Broadly
three different categories of people. There's three different political parties
sort of that that get in. First, there's the neo Jackbins,

(47:24):
who are basically trying to relive the Revolution of seventee
all over again, and they sometimes get called Every history
book is going to call all of these factions different things,
except the Blanchiest. They just get called blanchiest. But then
the Jacobins, they're the independent Revolutionaries. They're the largest chunk
on the council at least, and they're kind of they're

(47:45):
kind of the liberals if I have to map them
to anybody, And they get their name from the Jacobins
from the Old Revolution, who in turn got their name
because they met at a place called Saint Jacques and
they didn't really care about social change. They just want
political change. The social stuck can come later, I guess.
So they're the Republicans basically. And then you've got the Prodnists.
These are the sort of anarchists, the proto anarchists, and

(48:09):
they're the second largest chunk of people in the broadest sense,
the perdonists. They're excited about workers cooperatives, credit unions run
by the people, and market socialism in general, uh, and
not government. They don't really like government. They want to
keep money, but they want to get rid of wage
labor where someone can profit off of your work. So basically,
if if you're not hiring someone to do your work

(48:31):
for you, it's chill. And they're also kind of ironically,
especially to how anarchists are generally positioned themselves, now, they're
the least radical of all of these in terms of
how they want this social change to happen or this
political change to happen. They're actually they're by and large
their gradualists, and pretty much they're like, oh, well, well

(48:52):
make worker cooperatives and slowly take over the economy. And
I guess we accidentally took over the entire capital of
France too. And these people are named after a guy
named Pruden, who's not my favorite person in history. He's
not a cool guy who did cool stuff. He's a
piece of ship, misogynist, anti semite, homophobe who managed to

(49:15):
be the first person in history in the Western tradition
at least to call himself an anarchist back in eighteen forty.
And we'll all have been embarrassed since. Um. Though actually
a lot of the people who came after, including these protonists,
or at least some of them, fucking hated him for
his misogyny as anti semitism. Another early anarchist. Yeah, like

(49:36):
people were calling him out at the time. Louise Michelle
called him out. This guy Joseph de Jacques said, basically,
speak out about man's exploitation of women, or do not
call yourself an anarchist. And so the more I read
about him, the more I kind of want to call
him a proto anarchist more than an anarchist. I'm with
the Jacques on it. If you don't speak out about

(49:57):
that kind of stuff, it's like you can't be like,
I'm a product of the time. You're fucking buds knew
what was up right, And it's you know, if you're
if you're in favor of getting rid of most forms
of oppression but not a particular one that you benefit from,
you're not an anarchist, you know. If you're a anarcho capitalist,
you're not an anarchist. Yeah. And I don't think we're

(50:19):
like one true scotsman in this. I think that it's like, no,
you're like, well, do you do you have this criticism
of hierarchy or fucking not and speaking of historical figures
who may have been gay. Though. UM, I spent way
too long this week reading about how much of his
misogyny and homophobia. I I hate that everyone's like every

(50:41):
every homophobia is a closet case, but like our dude
was probably a closet case. Um, internalized homophobia is gonna
fuck a person up. Yeah, I just you know, you
don't have to take it out on everybody else, just
develop some weird fetishes or whatever. I know. Uh, but

(51:03):
Prudon did the world a favor and died in eighteen
sixty five, so he's actually not part of our main story.
And I don't know whether I don't know whether the
people on the council who I'm calling Prudona specifically would
have called themselves this or mutualists or anarchists or whatever.
But history calls them prudonas mostly to distinguish them from
the larger history of anarchism that is growing up around

(51:24):
this time, because no one is really accusing anarchism in
general of being gradualist. Um. Other history books will call
them internationalists also, because they're all part of the international
and all this other ship. Okay, then you've got the
third group, or the smallest in number but have kind
of an outsize impact. And they're the Blanchists. And they're

(51:44):
named after a guy named Blanchie who was in prison
at the time because basically all his all he likes
doing is trying to start a revolution. That's like his
entire politics is like, there should be a revolution um.
And they're authoritarian socialists. They're not Marxists. They actually are
almost more like proto lenin Ists without the marks. And

(52:07):
they believe that a secret society of socialists should force
a revolution and then impose socialism from the top down.
They're vanguardists. Yeah, like that's their whole thing, is the
revolutionary vanguard. Uh, the kind of almost I already don't
like them, I know, but Louise Michelle at this point
is a blankyist. Alright, I'm prepared to I'm prepared to

(52:30):
like them. You don't actually have to like what. You
don't have to like them. Uh, there's a reason that
she became an anarchist later. Okay, so you three wanna
I want to hear I want to hear what they did.
I'm I'm usually not well disposed towards vanguardists. But let's
let's see how this auth in general. It's like not
my Thingum, everyone is there, king, but I gotta like

(52:53):
somebody in this story. The guy who volunteered to go
on the hot air balloon hasn't shown up for a while,
so be here. So you've got the historical reenactment liberal Republicans,
you've got the gradualist proto anarchists, and you've got the
secret Society proto Bolsheviks, and I can call them that
and then pist off everyone who's listening who has a
dog in this fight. All three camps please now be

(53:15):
mad at me, But that is the best I can
figure out how to describe them. And oh and during
all of this, Louise Michelle writes Karl Marx and says,
if you have any guts, you put down your pen
and come join us. He did not. So let's talk
about what they wanted. They've got the city. What does

(53:37):
this motley assortment of working class folks working working together
in a weird coalition want? And the best way I
can describe it is that they wanted socialism, democracy, and
regional autonomy. They wanted Paris to function as an independent
city and coalition with other independent jurisdictions. Atlie's reclue Um,
which I keep bringing him up because I like him

(53:57):
a lot, he he am at that the world war
work best with society interwoven into four different ways of relating,
and this relates to the Paris Commune. So first and
most like intimately, you have your micro community like a
family or an affinity group. And Elie's reclu was Reclu
was really into this because he was one of like
fourteen kids and him and his his brother Ellie work

(54:18):
together their entire lives. And then you've got the autonomous commune,
which is the most important level from this point of view,
like the Paris Commune, so they would from an anarchist perspective,
they would practice direct democracy. However, the commune was practicing
representative democracy. Eliza said that you should be able to
delegate your power to others, but not be represented by others,

(54:39):
so you're allowed to say, like, hey go tell him
I said this, not hey go make up my mind
for me, you know. And then all the communes would
act together in solidarity with one another in a free federation.
Then you've gotten sort of intersecting federation, which is the
Workers International. And I don't totally understand how they conceived
of it in Paris, so I don't want to linger

(55:00):
there um. But it's basically it seems like it's like
allegiance in addition to your geographic communion, also have allegiance
to like your essentially your workplace union type thing and so,
which was theoretically help prevent conflict between different areas because
people would have multiple sets of allegiances. You can't go
to war with that other place because the Mason's over

(55:21):
there and the same union as me or whatever. Um.
And if that is how they did it, I want
to know, and don't know whether or not it was
like consciously taken from the hood and Shawnee indigenous folks
in North America who had a similar set of intersecting
stateless interesting ship. Okay, then you have the Universal Republic

(55:43):
above all of this, and that was like a big
thing in the commune. Everyone's into the Universal Republic. And
for Reclue and a lot of other people, I think
it would tie into this fifth level, which would tie
in the entire earth community and ecological restoration, and Reclu
is really into animal rights and and nature and ship.
I really he's fucking cool. Not everyone wants the same thing.

(56:04):
In general. They want Paris to be an autonomous democracy,
and for a little while they get to be an
autonomous democracy. One thing they did not want at the
start was a dictatorship. Um. Actually they never wanted a dictatorship,
and they were but at the start they're all about
pluralism and the guaranteed right to free speech and the
free press. And we'll get to why I say at

(56:26):
the start. Eventually, do have to keep reminding myself that
this is going to end badly because I'm getting hopeful now.
I'm at the part where I'm like, maybe it'll turn
out that everything is great and Paris is an independent
and self governing commune to this day, and I know
that's not true. It's I don't think so. I think

(56:50):
we would have hurt. Yeah, that's probably true. Okay, what
did they actually do? And they did some cool ship. Okay,
So the first thing they do, and my favorite thing
they do, is they abolish the death penalty and they
burned the guillotine and effigy in the public square. Fuck.
And so when I was like walking around Paris, of

(57:12):
the European anarchist That was like one of the first
things she wanted to point out is like, this is
where we were, not we, but you know where we
burned the fucking guillotine. And and it might make people
sad right who are listening to it, because people are
like really into the guillotine, um, but it's it's a
representation of the revolution at its worst. It was used
by a bourgeois revolution to murder fucking everybody left and right.

(57:33):
And I was into the guillotine as a symbol for
a while because I thought, because I was dumb, dumb,
that that everyone knew that it was a symbol that
like carries its own critique inherent in it. It's like, oh, yeah,
we're all into guillotines because we like both believe in, like,
you know, bringing the fight to the rich, but we
also realized that it can go wrong and we have
to always be careful of that. It turns out most

(57:56):
people are into it because they were into revolutionary tear
without any nu once. Yeah, I think you're giving giving
people too much credit there, I know, but I'll give
that credit to the fucking Paris Commune because they burned
the fucking guillotine. After the two generals they shot, they
stopped killing anyone until once again, right before the very end,

(58:19):
they suspended rent again, which is cool. I do have
a question that they burned the guillotine in effigy, not
they didn't burn the actual guillotine. Sorry, they burned the
actual guillotine, but they like as a symbol, sure, sure,
the guillotine as an effigy of capital punishment, they burned.
I got you. So they suspended rent again, which is cool.

(58:40):
And they they went and they returned a lot of
the stuff from the National pawn Shop, like all the
confiscated ship except gradualists. They didn't return all of it.
They returned all of the items like under a certain value.
And you know, so they took your like your petty stuff. Yeah,
you get it back. But they abolished conscription, which is

(59:03):
actually kind of cool because when they I mean, what's
always cool to not make people give fight by telling
them if you don't fight that you throw them in jail.
But they they abolished conscription, and yet for a long time,
the National Guard stays huge because everyone's like, yeah, but
we're in this, you know, we care. And they also
abolished all the interest on loans. They declared that any

(59:26):
factory that had been abandoned by its owner could be
taken over as a cooperative, but they didn't necessarily go
super far with it, and they also said you have
to like buy out the owner later, like you take
over the factory like ohem for the stuff you took,
just like um and it. It kind of pre sages
what happened in Argentina in two thousand three when during
the financial crisis, factory owners just like fucked off and

(59:47):
left their factories empty and the workers were like, well,
we know to do this, and they just started running them.
But they're actually there, weren't. People talked about this chunk
of it a lot. But apparently Paris of the time
was not actually a big factory talent. It was more
of an artist an economy. People were like oppressed workers
on a small decentralized scale. Instead, so forty three different

(01:00:09):
work or cooperative businesses opened. They didn't like force cooperativization
or collectivization on anyone. The council members were paid an
average wage and they were recallable at any time, and
a lot of the power was actually held in these
popular clubs. And various federations basically these sort of unions,
but there were also unions like the Women's Union, the
Artists Union, and the Women's Union fought for equal pay

(01:00:32):
for women, and by some accounts it was the largest
single organization within the commune. They did this whole thing
another attempt at feminism, not like suffrage or anything like that.
But they also said that if you if a National
guardsman has like a kid with someone who they're not
married to, the kids still gets supported by the state
even though they're not married. And they granted free in

(01:00:56):
secular education or the guaranteed free in secular education to
all kids. They ended night baking. Is this that everyone
was like, go ahead, night baker. Yeah, right, So like
whenever you listen to anything or read anything about the
Paris Commune, they're always like and they ended night baking
as if it was this like grand thing that they did.
But what it was that like bakers didn't have to

(01:01:17):
work at night, um, because you know, it's like if
you want fresh bread in the morning, the baker is
like working all night to give you a fresh bread
in the morning. And so they got rid of that,
and maybe it was a particularly hard job or something.
I'm a little bit confused by the way everyone focuses
on night baking, Like working at gray yard shift is
like not my favorite. But but that's because like we're

(01:01:41):
in the twenty one century where where people are working
all kinds of ridiculous and unpleasant hours. Whereas you're talking
about like pre electric lighting. I bet it was actually
really unusual for for bakers to you know, I bet
bakers were the odd guys out having to work nights. Yeah,

(01:02:01):
that's probably true. Um or I don't know though, because
the phrase night baking to me just like suggests it's
four am and I can't sleep, so I'm gonna make cookies,
which I'm sure isn't what it was. I'm sure it
was the other thing I said. You know, the National
Guard went door to door to make sure that no
one was making cookies at night. It was an important
part of their their practice. So do you know that

(01:02:26):
painting It's called the Origin of the World, and it's
like a closeup of some ladies like Lady Bits. Oh yes,
I do know that painting. Oh man, you all should
look up the Origin of the World. It's not safe
for work. Yeah, okay, So the guy behind this painting,
Gustav Corbett. He was a communard and also not young.

(01:02:47):
During any of this, he helps organizing the Union of Artists.
They demand that the museums stop. He basically he's like,
I'm going to democratize the arts, or the entire union
says we're going to democratize the arts. He just was
the most famous of them, so it all gets attributed
to him. Afterwards, they demanded that the museum stopped prioritizing
the famous artists, and they did like a bunch of

(01:03:09):
work to figure out how to get rid of all
of the art world as elite snobbish bullshit, even though
he totally was one of the famous artists who was
benefighting from all the elite snobbish bullshit. And he also
fucking ruled because later he sides with the anarchists and
the others when it comes time to oppose the revolutionary
police thing that ominous events that they keep referring to.

(01:03:32):
But he also at one point he proposed demolishing Tierre's house,
the guy in charge of France whos trying to kill
them all, who lives in Versailles, you know, his houses
in Paris, or it was in Paris. But then they
demolished it. They went and demolished his house, and they
confiscated all of his art. And he also proposed demolishing
this like big funk off piece of public art called
the Vendome Column, which was made of melted cannons of

(01:03:55):
places that France had conquered or whatever, and of like
a statue of Napoleon the first on top. And it's
possible that he proposed moving it, not demolishing it, but
he I think he said that because that's what he
argued in court to not get put to death. Uh
So it does sound tacky, it's it's a very tacky

(01:04:18):
statue yum. And and what's cool is when they when
they demolish it, it's just like a bunch of quarry
workers with rope just go and fucking tear the thing down.
And it had been a kind of like pet project
of his for a long time, is that he wanted
to see this like symbol of militarism come down. He
had actually written a letter to the government being like,
can we fucking take this thing down and move it?

(01:04:38):
It's ugly and bad um, which did not go well
in his court case that he had already argued for
the destruction of this thing, or at least the moving
of the thing. But in the end Corbett, after the
fall of all this, he gets six months in prison
and a fine. They probably didn't kill him because he's famous.
That's going to come up a couple of times too.
And but they decided he's on the hook for the

(01:05:01):
cost of rebuilding the entire fucking monument. So he foxs
off to Switzerland and he spends the remaining year. He's like,
this guy is not paid for that. Yeah, there's no way. Yeah.
But what he does is he goes to Switzerland and
that he starts painting things like a trout caught on
hooks that's bleeding from the gills and they're like self portraits. Yeah. Um.

(01:05:27):
And then he dies of alcohol related ship at fifty eight,
which is I guess the other thing to do if
you avoid firing squads and don't die tuberculosis. There's other
things though, that they didn't do. They were, like I said,
they're democratic revolutionaries, gradualists. They didn't rob the bank. They
the huh yeah, the gold reserves of the Bank of

(01:05:50):
France had already been moved to Versailles, but there's still
a ton of gold coins and paper money inside. Not
only did they not rob the bank, fifty National guards
men who like had previously worked at the Bank of
France guarded the bank during the Paris Commune, which is
the opposite of robbing it. Yeah. This is like when

(01:06:11):
people guard starbucks is during riots. Yeah. Yeah, if the
Starbucks was full of gold. Um. And basically the one
thing everyone loves arguing about what went wrong with the commune,
Every different faction is like, oh, they should have done this,
they should have done that. But everyone agrees on one thing,

(01:06:33):
which is they should have robbed the fucking bank and
spent the money. And they didn't because despite the fact
that they sees the city by force, they didn't actually
expropriate stuff like they didn't. Um, they didn't actually seize
the means of production and distributed to the workers. They
didn't really see as much of anything. Um. It was
kind of the mildest revolution the world is seen. Right.

(01:06:55):
It sounds like factory owners still own their factories, the
bank is still in control of the bank. The government
has left, and so they're doing the government's job. But
they haven't. It doesn't sound like so far that they're
doing a lot of the the things that might be
considered like seizing power in a in a revolutionary way,

(01:07:19):
right exactly. But we're gonna we're gonna leave it here
for today. I was gonna say this week, but actually
it'll be Wednesday that you can hear the second half
of this. We'll leave it here at this high water
mark where Paris is in charge of itself and the
great god Guillotine lies in ashes on the cobbled streets. Miriam,
how are you feeling about the communards so far? I'm
I'm trying not to feel too hopeful because you keep

(01:07:40):
alluding to trials and things like that that will happen
after the fact. So, um, things seem cool right now?
Not try not to be too optimistic. Well, fortunately, next
week it just stays good gets better. They abolish capitalism
in the state. Paris has been at utopia ever since.

(01:08:00):
And I don't know what you're talking about, but there's
like bloody weak thing. There's no nothing in history called
bloody weak that relates to Paris. Oh well, I'm not optimistic,
note Mirror. Is there anything you want to plug at
the end here? Um? No, not particularly. I don't want

(01:08:22):
anybody to find or communicate with me in any way.
I love that so much. It's beautiful, Margaret, you plugs anything. Well,
I'm continuing to plug my new podcast, Cool People Who
Did Cool Stuff, as well as the fact that you
can follow me on Twitter at Magpie kill Joy and
on Instagram at Margaret Killjoy. And I have a book

(01:08:46):
coming out later this year that I don't remember the
name of off the top of my head, so I
guess I successfully plug that. It's called We Won't Be
Here Tomorrow and it's a collection of short stories, and
it's not available for preorder yet, which is why I
haven't plugged it previously on this podcast. Well, when it is,
we'll plug it properly and then we'll be back on
Wednesday with part two. I can't wait to hear what

(01:09:09):
happens I. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a
production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool
Zone Media, visit our website cool zone Media dot com,
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