Margaret continues talking with Ron Placone about three antifascists who died protecting a humanitarian corridor--and one would-be antifascist who died on the other side of the war.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did
Cool Stuff a podcast. I'm your host, Marta Kiljoyny, and
I don't have a tagline. I've never had a tagline.
This podcasts no tagline. But I have a guest and
it's Ron Blacone. Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hi. I also don't have a tagline. So we are
a Sands tagline podcast today.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
That's right, that's our tagline is sand No Sands tagline.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
But we do have a producer who's name Sophie, who
isn't here right now. We also have an audio engineer
named Eva, and we all have to say hi to Eva.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Hi. Eva, Hello, Eva. I will try to do everything
in my power to make your job easy in the future.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I've been distributing clicker toys to all my guests to
make Eva's life worse. It is fun to try and
slowly figure out what I can fiddle with and what
I can't fiddle with as a podcaster.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Oh totally. It's like, Oh, it turns out click at
this pen wasn't a great idea. Who do That's no?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
And then like trying to explain to people why they
can't use headphone mics because every time they touch their
hair it crackles.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, those are something.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yes, this is a total normal problems that everyone has.
But Ron has them too, because Ron is a podcaster.
Ron has a podcast called one thousand with Ron Plicon
that y'all should listen to.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, check it out, Margaret, you have been a guest.
That was a super fun episode. And yeah, it's a
podcast where I am on a quest to interview a
thousand different people who have inspired me in some way.
There's going to be some guests you've heard of, some
you haven't. Some are musicians, some are filmmakers, some are activists,
some are radical academics, some are just people who have
(01:45):
a really fascinating life story. But yeah, they're all stories
I want the world to know.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
So and I think that probably if you listen to
this podcast and like the sorts of people that we
talk about, you'll probably like Ron's podcast. That's part of
why I had.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Rod on that is fair. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
So we're in part two of a story about internationalists
fighting and dying in Ukraine, and in part one we
talked about Michael Gloss, who died fighting on the wrong
side sort of tragically from my position by having gun
sucked into nonsense and conspiracy videos. And we've been talking
about Dmitri Petrov or Ecologue or Iliya Leshi, the man
(02:27):
with all the good names.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Are there more names that we haven't hit yet?
Speaker 1 (02:31):
I think that's it for him though, Oh really I
think for him?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, I mean three is pretty solid. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
No in the three whole sets too, right, because like
Ilia and Leshi goes by both, Like the website memorial
is Leshie dot info. Also, if you play Dungeons and
Dragons or maybe it's Pathfinder, one of the games has
Leshi's which is little forest creatures you can be instead
of like an alpha gnome or a human or whatever.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Are they good character to take on? I've never played something.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
I've never played Aleshie.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
I once made a player really mad because I was
setting up this whole world and it was very elaborate
and super serious, no smiling and everything was this like
dramatic thing the story I was working on. And they
were like, I want to play a Leshie who's basically
a character from Legend of Zelda. And I was like
you cannot, and they were like fuck you then, and
I was like, that's fair.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
You know, I was diagnosed ADHD a little bit later
in life, so it was actually kind of recent that
I was diagnosed ADHD. And I never got into dungeons
and dragons. But I feel like had I got diagnosed
earlier in life, I would have been really into dungeons
and dragons, you know. I feel like being high functioning
(03:45):
for just a long time in my life is part
of the reason I never got into stuff like that.
I think I would have been otherwise.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
One of my best friends super ADHD and we would
play so much dandy together back in the day. Hm hm,
And I was like, how can you focus on this?
You can't focus on anything, And they look at me
very seriously, like, this is the only thing I can
focus on.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I mean, that's how it was explained to me. When
it's something you really love, you.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Can hyper focus on it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah, And I was just able. You know, I was
a road comic for a long time, so really that's
a kind of ideal life for an ADHD person. Oh yeah,
because you know, your early responsibility is just get to
the venue on time and then do your act, which
is the thing that you focus on. So I was
(04:32):
able to just sort of go under the radar. You know,
I did good in college because it was all stuff
I was interested in anyway.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
No, no, I mean speaking of both of us getting
sidetracked talking about Leshi's instead of talking about Ili Aleshi.
Ili Aleshi probably now has this name. Came back to
Russia from Roshava, and then in twenty eighteen he got
wind of the fact that Putin was going to arrest him,
so he finally got the fuck out of the country
(05:01):
and he wrote about it. I don't know the quote
in front of me, but he was basically like, I
stayed as long as I could, but then I figured
out that they were after me too, and it was
time to go. And he goes to Ukraine, where he
joined a vibrant diasporic anarchist community that was built out
of Russian and Belarussian refugees. In twenty twenty, Belarus tried
(05:22):
to kick out their own equivalent of Putin, the only
person who has ever been president of modern Belarus since
nineteen ninety four, Lukashenko. These protests didn't succeed either, unfortunately,
although you know it's like sometimes they do, right, it
kind of works in Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, Can I ask a question if it.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Involves Lukashenko's first name, I don't know, because I didn't
write it into my script.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
No, no, No, is there a particular reason why he
didn't go further?
Speaker 1 (05:49):
No, that's fair.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Like if I got a letter that Trump was after me,
I wouldn't be like, well, I'm just gonna drive two
hours down to Mexico. I would try to get significantly
for there, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
I think that in a lot of ways Ukraine felt
close enough to so I didn't end up working most
of this into the script. At this point, he's working
with this group I believe it's called the Anarco Communist
Combat Organization, and they see themselves as partisans within Russia
fighting against Putin, and this is like his life, right
(06:22):
and so I don't think he wants to be so
far away that he can't continue to coordinate and work
with people.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
And then also I feel like going to Ukraine would
be the equivalent of going to Mexico or Canada, who
are both right now, not big fucking fans of Trump.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
You know.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
No, So, in some ways, even thoughther geographically closer, Ukraine
specifically does not like Putin at this point, you know,
and so like, in some ways probably felt like it
was a perfect center and or you know, because there
was this whole community of people there who are fighting, right.
(06:59):
But yeah, I think that if he was prioritizing his
own safety, probably would have gone to like France or
something like that, you know, mm hmm. In twenty twenty,
Belarus decides that they're going to kick out Lukashenko, and
Dmitri illegally crosses the border into Belarus to help throw
down at these protests, and once again you have these
(07:19):
huge mass protests all day and then some committed groups,
including Dmitri, would go around at night to keep doing
more work. In this case, what they did was destroy
surveillance cameras that were being used to repress protests. They're
pretty savvy folks. Like it wasn't for lack of trying,
you know.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, they always focused on the kind of important things.
It seems like it's like cops, police stations, surveillance cameras,
Like they're not messing around.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah, Like the implements of repression are what they're going after, yeah, exactly,
which is a good way to get the implements of repression.
Mad at you, But it keeps other people safe in
the process. Yes, so like he absolutely risk his life
and his freedom and kept on countable numbers of people
safe by destroying every surveillance camera that they destroyed in
a fascist state.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
You know.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
There are, however, still a ton of people in Belarussian
prison as a result of this uprising, and they deserve
our support. A lot of them are young punks. Specifically,
there's a bunch of anti fascist skins because the skinhead
movement in Eastern Europe had a stronger and longer lasting
anti fascist element within it.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
I feel like Europe as a whole, that's kind of
the totals. Yeah, I mean, the original history is very
very anti fascist. Yeah, and I think for the most
part that's what carries on. I mean not completely, but
you know, overall, all the European skinheads I know, which
is not a ton, but they're all like some of
the most anti fascist people I know, and they're all musicians.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
When I lived in Amsterdam, I lived with a bunch
of anti fascist skins, and they were all like super sweet,
but also like so massive and macho, but not necessarily
like macho in a bad way. Like literally they would
identify as macho kind of in similar ways someone might
identify as butch, you know, like it was like a okay,
a gender expression almost, And it was like my friend
who spent all of his time listening to hip hop
(09:14):
and lifting weights and fighting Nazis and like wore a
black bomber jacket and shaved his head and is the
one who got me back into dungeons and dragons. It
all goes full circle.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Oh yeah, that is big time full circle. Is this
the add person too? No?
Speaker 1 (09:27):
No, a different, different person, Yeah, right now, this person.
I was staying at the squat that we lived at
together and they came up to my room and they're like, Magpie,
do you want to play D and D with me?
And I'm like, are you just making fun of me?
Like because I was very aware of the cultural difference
of me being like this like weird American who had
a beard and more dresses, you know, and like everyone
(09:48):
around me like this, Like fifteen year old I was
friends with was like, but don't you want to be
a macho and like wear a bomber jacket? Like why
do you dress like that? And I'm like, no, I don't.
I don't want to do those things. He wasn't joking,
he wasn't making fun of me.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
So you thought they didn't actually play? Yeah, you thought
they were too okay, got.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, But then he was like, someone dropped out of
my campaign. I need a new player. And that's how
I got back into Dungeons and Dragons after stopping for years.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Amsterdam is on my very short list. I've never been,
but it's on my short list hopefully for later this year.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
The nice place, or it was twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
I have a cousin there who've never met. Oh shit,
I have an Italian cousin there who I never met,
because every time I'm in Italy he's never there because
he lives in Amsterdam and he's a comic book artist
in Amsterdam.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
He should go.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
I've never I mean, you know, we've whatsapped a bunch,
and so yeah, I want to meet him.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
So after the Belarussian Revolution fails, unless he goes back
to yev And then in twenty twenty two, Putin invaded
Ukraine and it's not an easy thing for anarchists and
other anti authoritarians to decide to take up arms in
a war between two states. Famously, anarchists not big fans
(10:58):
of States, But it seemed like the vast majority of
the movement in Ukraine was like, well, you can't invade
us EU fascist fucks, like you can't just go around
kill grandmas and shit, we are going to stop you
by whatever means is at our disposal. And so they
took up arms and Dmitri wrote about it quote as
an anarchist, revolutionary and Russian, I found it necessary to
(11:21):
take part in the armed resistance of the Ukrainian people
against Putin's occupiers. I did this for justice, for defense
of the Ukrainian society, and for the liberation of my country,
Russia from oppression, for the sake of all the people
who are deprived of their dignity and opportunity to breathe
freely by the vile totalitarian system created in Russia and Belarus.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
It's got away with words, this guy, he's h yeah,
I really writer.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
He's really got at all. A PhD in history, excellent writer,
not afraid to do what's necessary, Well, is afraid, but
does it anyway.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Does it anyway, conquers the fear, uses it to his advantage.
And he's probably writing all this stuff after he just
did some exhausting you know, like I just ReLit a
bomb and now I got some pros D that's I
probably just would have went to bed.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
I don't know, yeah, I would have been like, could
I just see the pros part and y'all can throw
them anyway? Uh, never mind. Anyway, when they knew the
invasion was happening, they were looking at the situation and
they were like, well, how are we going to do
anti authoritarian military stuff? So Dimitrian others put together an
anarchist and anti authoritarian military unit in parts so that
people had an alternative to fighting alongside the fascists who
(12:32):
are absolutely also in the Ukrainian military. This unit fought
defending Kiev as an independent unit, but shit got messier
and to quote crime Think Again anarchist publisher, it got
quote mired in military bureaucracy, putting the status of non
Ukrainian members in limbo and keeping the entire unit away
(12:53):
from the fighting, and so basically like the states like,
we don't know what the fuck to do with you guys,
like you can't do anything for a moment. We gotta
figure this out. They built this unit on what they'd
seen in Rojeva about how to incorporate anti authoritarian concepts
into a military structure. But yeah, so they helped defend
Kiev and then eventually they were able to move out
(13:15):
east when the fighting moved out east, where he was
joined by a bunch of other folks, including two I
want to talk about but before I want to talk
about them, I don't want to talk about ads being
yet I'm legally obliged to. So here they are.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
And we're beck.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Man. I have no idea what those people would have
thought about the whatever. It's complicated anyway, I rant about
anti advertising and how I'm accidentally doing their work by
saying I hate it.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
They'd be on board with every product.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
So next we're going to talk about the irishman Finbarr Kaffriki.
Finbar Kaffrikey was born in the late seventies. He's the
oldest of this group. He was forty five or forty
six when he died. I think he was born in
County Mayo on och Hill Island, just off the coast.
This is not exactly a bustling metropolitan place to live.
(14:10):
There are currently two three hundred and forty five people
who live on this entire fairly large island.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Oh wow. Is it like one of those areas in
Ireland right now where they're just paying people to go
live there.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
I don't think it's quite at that level, okay, but
I do look at that quite regularly. That particular headline.
That headline is a very enticing headline.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Oh, I look at a lot of those headlines.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Actually, for some weird reason, people have their eye on
the door right now, some weird reason.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
But we have talked about this island before because Grace O'Malley,
the Pirate Queen of Ireland, had her castle there and
we did a two parter about her way back in
the day. This is in the galtecht of Ireland, which
we've also talked about before on the show. I assume
the gal Tech is the part of the country where
people still speak Irish, or rather it's the place that
(15:01):
people held on too Irish successfully during eight hundred years
of colonization, which is a long ass time and a
thing that keeps coming up all the time when people
are like, oh, the US has been colonized for five
hundred years, why don't people get over it. Ireland had
took eight hundred years and they did eventually get those
fuckers out. So m yeah, the galtext held onto Irish
(15:23):
language and culture a bit more successfully, and it is
the seed from which this endangered language has spread back
out across Ireland. It is also a very poor place.
Not coincidentally, this is the Boonies. Finbarr was the oldest
of five and a family that speaks Irish. The documentary
about him is in Irish and his whole family's there
and they speak Irish and stuff, and I just think
(15:45):
that's great.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
What does it sound like? I've never actually heard.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Oh really, you should watch the movie Kneecap. It is hilarious, Okay.
It is about a Northern Irish rap band that wraps
in Irish and their struggles, which is a real band,
but it's a fictional movie.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Okay, Well, this is random. I will hear some words
here and there, and every now and again I'll use them.
But it's because you know, the sport hurling.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
I am aware that there's a sport called hurling, and
I think it's an Irish sport, right.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
It's an Irish sport. So I play it like just
a buddy of mine taught me how. It is one
of the most fun games you can play. It's part lacrosse,
part soccer, part football, part very physical, right, it can
be very physical, Like that's the only issue. Like if
you're playing with people who are real competitive that you know,
some ribs might get broken. And I'm not looking for
(16:31):
any of that. But it is a really really fun
game to play. And occasionally, if you're with people who
are you know, pretty dedicated, they will use Irish words,
you know, on the field and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
That's cool.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah, it's pretty fun. I mean there's only just kind
of clubs of the States, and even over there, it's
like mostly a club thing. But yeah, so that's my
only connection to the language, which is very much not
much of anything.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
But the main word that every anarchist I knew was okay,
which is the word for freedom. And so like my
friends had a kid named Sirisha, Finnbar is in front
of a bunch of graffiti and Rojeva later that says Siirsha.
But Finbar is the oldest of five His parents I
believe owned the pub on the island because they talk
about how he grew up in a pub, and I
(17:18):
think they meant that literally and not figuratively.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
It's the most Irish story ever I know.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Right, finnbar grew up in a pu Yeah, and all
he does is read books. And he's a quiet kid,
and he was a quiet adult. A friend of his
put it eulogizing him. Later wrote, quote a man of
few words. Anything he did say was worth hearing. His
brother said about him, he didn't feel the social pressure
(17:44):
that other people felt, and he could sit down and
have a conversation with anyone. And this is kind of
an interesting position for me because I worked with this
publishing Collectificult Strangers in Tengle Wilderness, and we're putting out
a book right now that is the wartime journals of
an Italian anarchist who died fighting isis a guy named
Orso and comrades smuggled out his diaries. People have translated it,
(18:07):
were publishing it in English. It's already available in Italian.
And his father wrote some pieces for the book, and
his father was like, he goes his own way, he
doesn't do what society expected. He's a complete freethinker. And
what I've come to realize is that's what radical's parents
think about their kids.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Hmmm.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
When you're inside a social movement, you don't realize quite
how free thinking it seems to the outside, because in
my mind, I'm like, oh, I try to be a freethinker,
but really I'm kind of part of this subculture and
culture right of this like political idea and stuff, you know, Right,
But I suspect that Finbarr was even on top of that,
absolutely a freethinker and not someone who conformed a social pressure.
(18:51):
He finished school, he went to university for a while.
Best as I can tell, he came into radical politics
starting around two thousand and five when he joined a
protest movement called shelz Se which was fighting against the
Shell oil pipeline in the Northwest County Mayo, which of
course affected the poorest people in Ireland. And I also
like this because there's like a connection. Like we've covered
anti pipeline protests and the States a bunch on this show.
(19:12):
There's a lot of things that are actually happening all
over the world that people work against.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
You know.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Finbar wrote the anthem for this movement, and this man
can sing I don't love us protest songs like don't
get mad at Me, Dear protest singers, but like the
American folk protest song thing like doesn't really do it
for me most of the time, especially when it's like
a protest song about a specific campaign or whatever.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
You know, I know you need.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
There's such good ones.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Yeah, I don't want to pay too broad a brush,
because like there's definitely some protest music, you know, for
a long time ago and even more recent that you know,
I connect with and I feel like, oh, that's a banger,
but yeah, I hear you though.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
The song he wrote is just Irish as hell, and
it's so good. They're pretty good with their folk Oh yeah, yeah,
they know what they're doing with music.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
They kind of know with.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
This protest movement was controversial. Some people wanted the project
where it to come because they were poor and they
wanted economic stimulus, and this split the community. And this
is a fairly universal thing.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah, I was going to say, this all sounds very,
very familiar, you know, whether we're talking the Barcella shale
in Pennsylvania or whether we're talking Sherwood Forest, you know,
more nearby to them in the UK. It's, yeah, a
little bit of a universal thing going on.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yep, and Finbar starts showing up to it, and I
believe this is where he started getting radicalized. The protesters
built a camp on the dunes and people from all
over the world came. He and others went out and
kayaks to fuck with the offshore drilling place that the
pipeline was starting or whatever. They certainly delayed the hell
out of it and they re routed the pipeline. So
I think that they kind of like one but out
(20:46):
without fully winning. If people want to hear more about
what it's involved in fighting a pipeline then winning despite
not winning, listen to our episodes about the Mountain Valley
of pipeline. So he's off in the middle of it
all the time, the Serian Civil War was causing a
refugee crisis, so in twenty fifteen, Finbarr went off to
the Greek border to help. He stayed with other volunteers
(21:07):
in tents and helped all the people who were washing
up in Europe on dinghies and shit. And this is
the thing, I know, a bunch of people have done this.
Just you go and you help out. They just need
people to go and be like a welcome face in Europe,
which overall, Europe is kind of doing a similar thing
as the States, where they're like we want to cause
trouble all over the world, but then we don't want
(21:28):
to let anyone come in.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Yeah. Yeah, well especially as of for recent Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
In twenty seventeen, he decided to help a bit more
directly in the Syrian problem, so he liked Dmitri went
to Roseeva in Syria. He joined the YPG, the People's
Protection Units, and fought in a heavy weapons unit in
the successful war against ISIS. And he took the name Siya.
And I do not know how to pronounce this, and
(21:57):
I'm genuinely sorry. I think it might be more like THEA,
but it's a CE with some stuff going on, and
an I and a y in an A and I looked,
but I couldn't find a pronunciation for it.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
I think C with some stuff going on is the
official Yeah, I think we got it.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
And it's the Kurdish word for mountain. He wasn't the
only Irish volunteer over there, and he drew connections between
the Kurdish and Irish rebels. And I have known for
a long time that anti colonial rebels all over the
world saying Irish rebel songs, and the Kurds in Syria
do it too, And It always makes me happy really, yeah,
because like I didn't know that the Irish were the
(22:33):
first people to fight modern imperialism, because modern imperialism was
born in the UK by colonizing Ireland.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yeah, they've been through some things.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, there's a reason that Ireland is like one of
the only European countries of the decent position on Palestine,
you know.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Right, Oh, yeah, absolutely, And they'll be the first to
tell you that whenever people ask about there, look at what.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
We've been through, what position do you think exactly, well,
we've been starved, Like when he fought Isis. He wrote
about the battle for Raka, which he fought in as
feeling like what he'd read about the Easter rising. For
another thing we've covered on the show before, how they
(23:15):
would move through the buildings in the city and fight
basically door to door. His unit was ambushed and one
of them died, and they were treated and held off
the attackers throughout the night. At no point did he
tell his family he joined the military.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
There.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
They just saw it when they saw it in the news,
when there was like the articles about Irish people fighting
in Roseeva.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
They just saw him there. They're like, man, we knew
he was quiet, but he didn't even mention this to us.
Our last zup meat. He was just talking about books
he was reading. We had no idea. We thought he
was down the streets.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
I'm kind of annoyed by the number of like Michael
Gloss also didn't tell his family he was fighting, although
that makes more sense because what he did is deeply shameful.
But like, I don't know, and I get what people
are like, don't bother telling their family things. But the
last guy we're going to talk about absolutely told his
family everything. And I think it's telling that he's the
black American first, like the irishman is white, you know,
(24:08):
and the Irish culture is often a little bit cold
and emotionally reserved. So Finbar fought for the YPG for
similar reasons that Dmitri fought for Ukraine. Some Putin apologists
will try to claim that the Russian invasion Ukraine is
preemptive defense against NATO, right, even though Ukraine is an
in NATO, and also preemptive defense is a really strange
(24:29):
reason to give for killing a bunch of people who
live in their own houses. Finbar, in an interview with
the Irish paper rabble said quote. When I learned that
the Islamic State was being facilitated financially and militarily by
the Turkish state in its attacks on the Kurds in
Syria and Iraq, I realized that this was only made
possible by the connivance of its NATO allies in the EU,
(24:53):
who turn a blind eye in return for Turkey stopping
Syrian refugees reaching Europe. As an EU citizen, this made
me complicit in the horrors perpetrated by the Islamic State
in the territory controls, and I wasn't happy about that.
So he sees the fact that he's in NATO or
in the EU as complicity with war crime. Right, So
(25:16):
he's not saying like NATO good because Russia bad. He's
actually just like looking at what's happening.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yeah, yeah, no, totally, which is again, that's a full
picture approach, which.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Is what you should do before you start shooting people.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
If you're gonna pick up a gun, you can't just
be like, my ideology tells me that this is what
I should do.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
You know, totally. Yeah, the above preliminary work is a
good idea.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
And so he comes back. He's living on his own
on the island for a while, or maybe with other people.
I don't know. He's living in a nice stonehouse on
an island. Sounds very dreamy to me. Russia invades Ukraine
and the anarchists were fighting to stop it. So he
went to help, and he didn't go join the military
there for a long time. He went and did support work.
(26:06):
He would fix up vehicles, he would deliver supplies from
Poland to Ukraine. He worked with all of these like
basically these different like punk collectives went from like throwing
shows to delivering supplies to fighters in Ukraine, especially to
the anti authoritarian units.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Oh yeah, yeah, there was a big article about that.
Like they basically formed an entire like collective. I don't
know how extensive it was, if it was all over
the country or like a specific region, but yeah, they
just basically, based on the venue routing and whatnot, just
started doing extensive mutual aid. And yeah, I mean, those
(26:43):
are the stories that are just really really fricking powerful,
and I think of the takeaways people should.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Have, you know, totally, like if you can organize a show,
you can organize politically, and you can organize mutual aid,
and you shouldn't stop organizing shows. Shows are great, but
don't sell yourself short. Like the skills that we use
to navigate our social circles are similar to the skills
that we can use to change the world to political organizing.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
I still think I learned all of life's most valuable
lessons at punk show.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Yeah, pick up the people who fall down and like, yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah, I mean totally. That's not to say it was
all yeah good. There was plenty of not great stuff too,
like anything where a bunch of people gathered.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
But totally. He actually one of the groups he worked
with was called XVX Tacticade, so straight edge vegan that's
what XVX means. He worked with solidarity collectives and anti
authoritarian support Network for the front lines, and people would
ask him what he was doing, like he would just
he spent like a year just like driving supplies the
(27:45):
front lines and shit, And people would ask him what
he was doing and he would be like, well, I
have time and I can be useful here, and like,
I think it was kind of as simple as that
to him. When you actually got him talking, he could
tell you all about the history we have Irish republicanism.
He could tell you all about democratic and federalism in Syria.
He could tell you all of these things. Right, But
(28:07):
everyone who talked about him talked over and over about
his incredible modesty. People only slowly came to learn all
of the amazing adventures of this life.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
He seems like a guy where he's an open book,
but you gotta ask. Yeah, so if you ask, well,
why are you doing this, he's just going to answer
that yet, And if you want him to expand, well
you got to ask more questions. He's there, he'll answer,
but you got to ask.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
One of the people who wrote about him actually specifically,
was like, I didn't ask him enough yet there was
still so much more, you know, and like one of
the reasons I really like this about him. When you
describe this kind of character based on the actions that
led up to this moment, you're not always describing my
favorite kind of person. Super activists can be kind of annoying, sure,
(28:56):
and like, especially when they're full of themselves and they're like, oh,
I've been everywhere, I've done this, I've done that, and
I have all the answers and everyone should have sex
with me or whatever.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
You know, and my vision for change is the only
one that will temporally work, and so I am leaving
any group that doesn't see it one hundred percent totally.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
And he is exactly not that guy. And that was
like one of my favorite things to realize about him.
And then after a year of delivering stuff, there's not
a lot that people know about because he didn't talk
about this with Oh, it's because of Irish culture. I
was like, he didn't talk about his like emotional decision making,
and I'm like, yeah, right, as previously discussed, but he
(29:40):
was called to fight. He moved from delivering stuff and
picked up a gun. She had done before in Syria,
but he did again.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
And now.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
What you could pick up instead of a gun, unless
our sponsors are guns, is whatever our sponsors are selling.
Use whatever our sponsors are selling to fight fascism. That's
your job.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Now.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
If it's sports gambling, good luck, probably just don't sports gamble.
It's probably addictive and bad. But here's our ads, and
they haven't fired me for saying that yet, and we're back.
The last person of a three d internationalists who were
killed on the same day I know the least about
(30:22):
and this makes me sad because I wish I had
about four times as much time per episode. Because this
last guy, my friends were friends with them.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Oh wow, I know.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
People who knew the other two as well. But like
this person helps start the infoshop that I'm going to
go talk at tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
And as we record this, as you're listening, sorry you
already missed it. Cooper was an American from Ohio. Cooper
Andrews was his name, and he was twenty six years
old when he died, and he was an Eagle Scout.
As a kid. He started getting involved in radical politics
(31:04):
and he actually joined the Marines. I don't recommend this,
but I'm not trying to talk shit either. He joined
the Marines after he became a radical because he wanted
to gain the skills to become an internationalist volunteer.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
That is quite a strategy, that is. Yeah, I get
what you're saying. I don't think I would recommend that
to anybody.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Especially right now.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, especially right now. But bad, that is a really
long form strategy to do something.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
He took it very seriously. He sent back funds from
his soldier's salary to help fund So there's a place
in Cleveland called Riizome House and it's a community center
that I've done a bunch of talks at and I'll
be at Well, it's useless to point out because of
May second, which is in the past as you're listening,
but I'll be there again sometime. And his collective mates
(31:55):
when they talk about how like when they were getting
the project going, it was really hard. They didn't have
enough money for brick and and they were like, what
are we going to do and we should just give up.
Cooper was always there being like, no, we're we're going
to do this. We're going to get it done, and
he sent back his funds from his soldier's salary to
start this infoshop. Infoshop's a fancy word for banarchist community space.
(32:19):
And he was a black autonomous from Cleveland Heights and
he worked endlessly on mutual aid projects, supporting people in
housing projects in Cleveland. He worked as a Wildlands firefighter,
and then when Russia invaded Ukraine, he volunteered. He worked
a full contract with the Foreign Legion and then he
decided to stay and fight alongside the Resistance Committee, which
(32:41):
was the Anti authoritarian platoon. Basically like that thing that
got started kept shifting and is still shifting, but still exists.
They are still anti authoritarian units within the Ukrainian military,
unlike some of these other people. Regular communication with his mom.
She knew a lot about his life and they were close.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Was she cool with it? She? I mean as cool
as a mom could be. Obviously, she's proud of her kid. Yeah, okay, And.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
I'll talk about a little bit at the end about
how she's handled stuff since his death. But she's proud
of her kid. He texted his friend while he was fighting, quote,
in our hands, there is a world to win, in
a fight which requires great sacrifice for us and everybody
else who faces the shadow of fascist aggression. There's only
victory or death. And he signed it off love and struggle.
(33:32):
He also wrote about his decision quote Putin's imperialism represents
a great purveyor of fascism, regardless of what certain weak
willed turncoats may say while they stain the name of
anti fascism. A victory here for Putin will not only
plunge this region into a dark period of authoritarianism from
which there will be no escape, but it will also
(33:54):
represent a victory for those who seek to recast the
world in the image of the old, and I mean,
I think that's accurate. I don't think there's ever a
moment where there's no escape. But like, I think that
Putin winning is absolutely a win for authoritarianism. And the
idea that he's like trying to recast the world in
the image of the old is so.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
True.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
Like he sees himself as part of the legacy of
the czars and shit, you know, m hm. And then
he's fighting with the Resistance Committee and well they died,
you know that part Already there was a path known
as the Road of Life that was the only thing
connecting Bakmut from the rest of Ukraine. I don't know
(34:38):
all the ins and out of this battle. At the
Battle of Bakmut has been presented as the bloodiest battle
in Europe since World War Two.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
The Road of Life is like the way that refugees
got out and is the way that they would evacuate
the city. It also is the way that they would
get supplies and soldiers into. It's been described that defending
it was the most dangerous assignment around and these three
internationalist fighters volunteered to protect it and they were killed
by mortars their bodies couldn't be recovered for quite some time.
(35:08):
A Ukrainian soldier named Andre said, quote, it's almost impossible
to do that, and we even had a so called
agreement between Russian troops and her own allocation team was
entering to pick up the bodies and they were immediately shot.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Yeah, their deaths made international news. The Russian embassy in
Ireland made this whole big deal out of it, where
it blamed their death on Ireland as a country having
bad politics. It's so, of course, oh and fucking Ireland
as a country. So as anarchist has died, and not
(35:47):
only do the news articles about him, is if this
was an American and you see it with the articles
about Cooper, they don't mention his politics by name.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
You know.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
The Irish newspapers are like, oh, he was an anarchist,
and they also have to explain it a little bit
because like it's not like Ireland's like land of everyone
knows what anarchism is, right sure, but they're like not
hiding it. And when this anarchist died and Russia's trying
to use it against the Irish government, more than one
elected politician in the Irish Parliament came to speak out
(36:22):
in defense of their friend, the anarchist Finbar, because more
than one of them knew him personally.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Nice. Every now and again you see something like that
from Ireland, this kind of just subversive statement by someone
who actually has electoral Yeah, and you're just going, wow,
it is possible.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
I mean, and they have a history of like they're
elected politicians not being able to serve because they're in
prison for fighting against the UK, you know, and like
Ireland is also like everywhere considering hardcore racist nationalism and
anti immigrants sentiment and all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
You know, oh totally yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not all
roses anyway.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
But there are documentaries about Finbar. There's one in the
Irish language about his death. Plus there's a documentary about Rojeva,
and they're not afraid to let his brother describe what
Nark is a meant to Finbar, someone who wants to
build a new, cooperative, non hierarchical society. Cooper's mother, Willow Andrews,
put up a fundraiser in her son's name, not to
raise money for herself or for her funeral expenses, which
(37:22):
would have been entirely appropriate and fully in deserving of support,
but to continue her son's work. This is when when
you asked what mom thinks of it? Yeah, she writes
quote as a baby, Cooper never crawled, he rolled, he scooted,
and then he ran. And it was at that point
(37:43):
I knew I was in for it. My son spent
the next twenty six years of his life running headlong
into difficult conversations, fighting for causes he cared about and
ideas he found vital.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
That's quite the uli. I know, it's pretty amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
The fundraiser was for a lot of things we've talked
about on the show. It was for a group called
Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, which is a decentralized anarchist disaster
relief network that I've worked with some not enough to
like give myself credit, but rather to say, like, these
people are cool and I've worked with them. Riizome House,
which is the infoshop her son started, and Food Not
Bombs maybe the pre eminent mutual Aid group in the world.
(38:23):
And then as for Dimitri, I don't know as much
about his family I would like to, especially his father.
I mean, I just know that his father taught him
about radical Russian history. But he wrote a letter to
be published in case of his death, and in it
he wrote, quote, I firmly believe that the struggle for justice,
(38:44):
against oppression and injustice is one of the most worthy
meanings that humans can fill their life with, and this
struggle requires sacrifices up to complete self sacrifice. The best
memory for me is if you continue to actively struggle
overcoming per small ambitions and unnecessary, harmful strife, if you
continue to fight actively to achieve a free society based
(39:06):
on equality and solidarity for you and me, for all
of our comrades, risk, deprivation and sacrifice on this path
are our constant companions. But be sure they are not
in vain Finbar's I've read a bunch of different things
about whether his body made it back to Ireland, but
(39:26):
there's a memorial service for him, and there's a growing
Ukrainian presence in Ireland because of the refugee crisis caused
by the invasion of Ukraine. And hundreds of people came
to his memorial and forty of them were from Ukraine
and they brought a wreath saying like basically like thank
you all of Ukraine, thanks you, and I love that
(39:49):
back in Ireland is building these connections between people from
different countries.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
You know. Yeah, that's so fascinating to be too, because
you have seen that in different times throughout history, especially
when it's particular to the Irish. I mean, the first
thing that comes to my mind is something like the
Saint Patrick's Battalion, you know, when they saw what the
United States was doing and so they said, you know,
we're going to fight for Mexico, even though we know
(40:16):
we're basically going to our deaths. We're going to fight
for Mexico because we've seen this type of repression before
and we're not going to be on that side because
we've seen this before.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Well, now you're just spoiling because that has been a
future friend of the pod. I've been wanting to cover
the Saint Patrick's Battalion since I started the show, and
I still haven't done it yet.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Oh, it's such a cool I'm just.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Afraid of being a little too like Irish history with Margaret.
You know, it is such a good story. It's an
incredible story that not a lot of people know about.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
No. I think, God, you know Saint Patrick's Stay, You're
not going to hear many people talking about that person.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Yeah, the battalion that fought against America.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Yeah, as they're drinking domestic beer at a given bar.
I'm not going to hear about that too. En. Maybe somewhere,
I mean I shouldn't a sue, yea know, I like, yeah,
some people do. And somewhere there's a dude in Boston
and all of his friends are telling him to show yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yeah, and he's like, no, actually, our legacy is leftist
and people like, shut up, just wear green. We're white now,
fuck you. And so the last quote I want to
end with is also from Dimitri from Ilia Leshi, and
it's from another one of his articles, called to be
a Revolutionary and was published by The Anarchist Combatant in
(41:33):
twenty eighteen, which I believe is the outlet that the
Anarchic Communists combat brigade the Partisans in Russia put out.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
I want to remind all pessimists that there are no
objective reasons for considering the social revolution and the triumph
of anti authoritarian ideas to be reserved for an indefinitely
distant future. The speed and unpredictability of social change in
the modern world teaches us one important lesson everything is possible,
including freedom and justice. And this one resonated really hard
(42:09):
with me as someone who does all this research for
the show, because I do tend to have this like, well,
everything is really slow. Like I mean, when I was young,
I was like, Oh, we're gonna do this overnight, and
then I was like, Oh, everything's really slow. What it
is is that everything's up in the air, like things
stay the same and then they change in a moment.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
I think that last quote is especially important right now
with what we're going through, especially in the contemporary American society.
We're finding out that first of all, laws don't mean
that much if nobody's going to enforce them. Unfortunately, we're
learning that in a bad way. Yeah, we're taking very
bad institutions and replacing them with something worse, which is
the opposite direction. But you know, the kind of glimmer
(42:51):
of I guess hope is well, if it could be
replaced with something bad, it could also be replaced with
something better. Change is really slow until it is.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, we could read about this moment in American history
one hundred years from now and look back and people
could be like, oh, yeah, and then things got real bad.
For a moment and politics became completely unmoored from the
status quo. And then people change things dramatically, you know,
in a positive way like that. You know, we could
(43:22):
get our Star Trek future or whatever it is that
you're dreaming of.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
You know, yeah, we totally could. I don't want to
say what I would put my money on, because I
don't want to kill the momentum.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
No, no, no no, But it's always worth like even
when you don't expect to win, you fight to win totally.
And this is true in sport, it's true in hurling.
I'm certain as an expert, you know, no matter, I.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Am so far from an expert. Yeah too, But you
just put it out there hobbyists.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
I've just seen it in that movie Win Shakes the Barley.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
I did a lot more research for the show, this
particular episode, but I'm going to put it into a
different Epis said later. There's a whole legacy of resistance
from within Putin's Russia. That was the thing I was
originally going to cover with this. People's political positions are
not determined by their nationality. There is partisan struggle happening
right now inside Russia against Putin there are teenagers spending
(44:16):
years in prison for posting poems to walls, and there
are also people launching DIY drones against Russian military infrastructure.
And yeah, the future is not yet determined. I think
one of the last social media posts. I'm not one
hundred percent sortin about this, I think one of Cooper's
last social media posts.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Do you know that meme?
Speaker 1 (44:36):
It's a still from I think a video game, is
a very realistic video game. It's a guy in a
mask and a tank and he says like, hey friend,
I know the world is scary right now, and then
he looks like close up and he goes, but it's
going to get way worse. Have you seen that?
Speaker 2 (44:50):
M I mean, it's not ringing a bill, but I'd
imagine if I saw it to be, oh.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yeah, that one lives rent free in my head. But
but there's an inversion of it that I believe Cooper posted.
I only have someone said that he posted it, which is,
hey friend, I know the world is really dark right now.
But and then the next line is something like, but
the future is undetermined and is based on what we
do and the decisions we make.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Amen. I mean, yeah, I think that is the best
way to look at things all the time, but especially
right now. Yeah. Well that's what I got for you.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
That's four people who call themselves anti fascists who died
in Ukraine, three of them fighting against fascism, although in
a complicated, morally gray area of fighting for what they
believe to be the lesser evil, as.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
It often is. Yeah. Wow, that's an interesting web that
was woven.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
Thanks. Well, uh guy, any thing you want to plug
here at the end?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
Yeah, I do.
Speaker 3 (45:52):
So.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
I'm on the road a little bit. I'll be in
Seattle May twenty third, and then I'll be doing the
Hollywood Fringe Festival with my next production, which is a
stage play that's a scathing commentary of the American healthcare system.
You can get tickets and all information at romplicone dot com.
And I have a movie out that I'm really excited about.
It's called Left It Wall. If you like quirky indie
(46:14):
comedies that skewer Wall Street and are from an anti
capitalist perspective, you'll like this movie. You can find it
on Apple TV, YouTube Movies, Amazon, Google Play. It's out
there and please check it out. It's Left at Wall.
And if you're not sure, where to find it. You
can just go to my website romplicode dot com and
it says where you can find.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Oh yeah, and if you want, I'm probably going to
write a whole essay that is the essay that started
all this, and it probably came out today while you
listen to this, and if it didn't, then you can
yell at me, but I'll ignore you. But you can
check it out on my substock which is Marter Kiljoy
dot substock dot com, and that's where I post things,
and almost all of it's free. There's some like more
(46:56):
personal posts that are behind a paywall, but all of
my stuff that I think matters is free. So you
can check that out and I'll see you all next
week with more Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonmedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did
Cool Stuff a podcast. I'm your host, Marta Kiljoyny, and
I don't have a tagline. I've never had a tagline.
This podcasts no tagline. But I have a guest and
it's Ron Blacone. Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hi. I also don't have a tagline. So we are
a Sands tagline podcast today.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
That's right, that's our tagline is sand No Sands tagline.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
But we do have a producer who's name Sophie, who
isn't here right now. We also have an audio engineer
named Eva, and we all have to say hi to Eva.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Hi. Eva, Hello, Eva. I will try to do everything
in my power to make your job easy in the future.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I've been distributing clicker toys to all my guests to
make Eva's life worse. It is fun to try and
slowly figure out what I can fiddle with and what
I can't fiddle with as a podcaster.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Oh totally. It's like, Oh, it turns out click at
this pen wasn't a great idea. Who do That's no?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
And then like trying to explain to people why they
can't use headphone mics because every time they touch their
hair it crackles.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, those are something.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yes, this is a total normal problems that everyone has.
But Ron has them too, because Ron is a podcaster.
Ron has a podcast called one thousand with Ron Plicon
that y'all should listen to.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, check it out, Margaret, you have been a guest.
That was a super fun episode. And yeah, it's a
podcast where I am on a quest to interview a
thousand different people who have inspired me in some way.
There's going to be some guests you've heard of, some
you haven't. Some are musicians, some are filmmakers, some are activists,
some are radical academics, some are just people who have
(01:45):
a really fascinating life story. But yeah, they're all stories
I want the world to know.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
So and I think that probably if you listen to
this podcast and like the sorts of people that we
talk about, you'll probably like Ron's podcast. That's part of
why I had.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Rod on that is fair. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
So we're in part two of a story about internationalists
fighting and dying in Ukraine, and in part one we
talked about Michael Gloss, who died fighting on the wrong
side sort of tragically from my position by having gun
sucked into nonsense and conspiracy videos. And we've been talking
about Dmitri Petrov or Ecologue or Iliya Leshi, the man
(02:27):
with all the good names.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Are there more names that we haven't hit yet?
Speaker 1 (02:31):
I think that's it for him though, Oh really I
think for him?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, I mean three is pretty solid. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
No in the three whole sets too, right, because like
Ilia and Leshi goes by both, Like the website memorial
is Leshie dot info. Also, if you play Dungeons and
Dragons or maybe it's Pathfinder, one of the games has
Leshi's which is little forest creatures you can be instead
of like an alpha gnome or a human or whatever.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Are they good character to take on? I've never played something.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
I've never played Aleshie.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
I once made a player really mad because I was
setting up this whole world and it was very elaborate
and super serious, no smiling and everything was this like
dramatic thing the story I was working on. And they
were like, I want to play a Leshie who's basically
a character from Legend of Zelda. And I was like
you cannot, and they were like fuck you then, and
I was like, that's fair.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
You know, I was diagnosed ADHD a little bit later
in life, so it was actually kind of recent that
I was diagnosed ADHD. And I never got into dungeons
and dragons. But I feel like had I got diagnosed
earlier in life, I would have been really into dungeons
and dragons, you know. I feel like being high functioning
(03:45):
for just a long time in my life is part
of the reason I never got into stuff like that.
I think I would have been otherwise.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
One of my best friends super ADHD and we would
play so much dandy together back in the day. Hm hm,
And I was like, how can you focus on this?
You can't focus on anything, And they look at me
very seriously, like, this is the only thing I can
focus on.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I mean, that's how it was explained to me. When
it's something you really love, you.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Can hyper focus on it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah, And I was just able. You know, I was
a road comic for a long time, so really that's
a kind of ideal life for an ADHD person. Oh yeah,
because you know, your early responsibility is just get to
the venue on time and then do your act, which
is the thing that you focus on. So I was
(04:32):
able to just sort of go under the radar. You know,
I did good in college because it was all stuff
I was interested in anyway.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
No, no, I mean speaking of both of us getting
sidetracked talking about Leshi's instead of talking about Ili Aleshi.
Ili Aleshi probably now has this name. Came back to
Russia from Roshava, and then in twenty eighteen he got
wind of the fact that Putin was going to arrest him,
so he finally got the fuck out of the country
(05:01):
and he wrote about it. I don't know the quote
in front of me, but he was basically like, I
stayed as long as I could, but then I figured
out that they were after me too, and it was
time to go. And he goes to Ukraine, where he
joined a vibrant diasporic anarchist community that was built out
of Russian and Belarussian refugees. In twenty twenty, Belarus tried
(05:22):
to kick out their own equivalent of Putin, the only
person who has ever been president of modern Belarus since
nineteen ninety four, Lukashenko. These protests didn't succeed either, unfortunately,
although you know it's like sometimes they do, right, it
kind of works in Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, Can I ask a question if it.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Involves Lukashenko's first name, I don't know, because I didn't
write it into my script.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
No, no, No, is there a particular reason why he
didn't go further?
Speaker 1 (05:49):
No, that's fair.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Like if I got a letter that Trump was after me,
I wouldn't be like, well, I'm just gonna drive two
hours down to Mexico. I would try to get significantly
for there, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
I think that in a lot of ways Ukraine felt
close enough to so I didn't end up working most
of this into the script. At this point, he's working
with this group I believe it's called the Anarco Communist
Combat Organization, and they see themselves as partisans within Russia
fighting against Putin, and this is like his life, right
(06:22):
and so I don't think he wants to be so
far away that he can't continue to coordinate and work
with people.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
And then also I feel like going to Ukraine would
be the equivalent of going to Mexico or Canada, who
are both right now, not big fucking fans of Trump.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
You know.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
No, So, in some ways, even thoughther geographically closer, Ukraine
specifically does not like Putin at this point, you know,
and so like, in some ways probably felt like it
was a perfect center and or you know, because there
was this whole community of people there who are fighting, right.
(06:59):
But yeah, I think that if he was prioritizing his
own safety, probably would have gone to like France or
something like that, you know, mm hmm. In twenty twenty,
Belarus decides that they're going to kick out Lukashenko, and
Dmitri illegally crosses the border into Belarus to help throw
down at these protests, and once again you have these
(07:19):
huge mass protests all day and then some committed groups,
including Dmitri, would go around at night to keep doing
more work. In this case, what they did was destroy
surveillance cameras that were being used to repress protests. They're
pretty savvy folks. Like it wasn't for lack of trying,
you know.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, they always focused on the kind of important things.
It seems like it's like cops, police stations, surveillance cameras,
Like they're not messing around.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah, Like the implements of repression are what they're going after, yeah, exactly,
which is a good way to get the implements of repression.
Mad at you, But it keeps other people safe in
the process. Yes, so like he absolutely risk his life
and his freedom and kept on countable numbers of people
safe by destroying every surveillance camera that they destroyed in
a fascist state.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
You know.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
There are, however, still a ton of people in Belarussian
prison as a result of this uprising, and they deserve
our support. A lot of them are young punks. Specifically,
there's a bunch of anti fascist skins because the skinhead
movement in Eastern Europe had a stronger and longer lasting
anti fascist element within it.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
I feel like Europe as a whole, that's kind of
the totals. Yeah, I mean, the original history is very
very anti fascist. Yeah, and I think for the most
part that's what carries on. I mean not completely, but
you know, overall, all the European skinheads I know, which
is not a ton, but they're all like some of
the most anti fascist people I know, and they're all musicians.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
When I lived in Amsterdam, I lived with a bunch
of anti fascist skins, and they were all like super sweet,
but also like so massive and macho, but not necessarily
like macho in a bad way. Like literally they would
identify as macho kind of in similar ways someone might
identify as butch, you know, like it was like a okay,
a gender expression almost, And it was like my friend
who spent all of his time listening to hip hop
(09:14):
and lifting weights and fighting Nazis and like wore a
black bomber jacket and shaved his head and is the
one who got me back into dungeons and dragons. It
all goes full circle.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Oh yeah, that is big time full circle. Is this
the add person too? No?
Speaker 1 (09:27):
No, a different, different person, Yeah, right now, this person.
I was staying at the squat that we lived at
together and they came up to my room and they're like, Magpie,
do you want to play D and D with me?
And I'm like, are you just making fun of me?
Like because I was very aware of the cultural difference
of me being like this like weird American who had
a beard and more dresses, you know, and like everyone
(09:48):
around me like this, Like fifteen year old I was
friends with was like, but don't you want to be
a macho and like wear a bomber jacket? Like why
do you dress like that? And I'm like, no, I don't.
I don't want to do those things. He wasn't joking,
he wasn't making fun of me.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
So you thought they didn't actually play? Yeah, you thought
they were too okay, got.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, But then he was like, someone dropped out of
my campaign. I need a new player. And that's how
I got back into Dungeons and Dragons after stopping for years.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Amsterdam is on my very short list. I've never been,
but it's on my short list hopefully for later this year.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
The nice place, or it was twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
I have a cousin there who've never met. Oh shit,
I have an Italian cousin there who I never met,
because every time I'm in Italy he's never there because
he lives in Amsterdam and he's a comic book artist
in Amsterdam.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
He should go.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
I've never I mean, you know, we've whatsapped a bunch,
and so yeah, I want to meet him.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
So after the Belarussian Revolution fails, unless he goes back
to yev And then in twenty twenty two, Putin invaded
Ukraine and it's not an easy thing for anarchists and
other anti authoritarians to decide to take up arms in
a war between two states. Famously, anarchists not big fans
(10:58):
of States, But it seemed like the vast majority of
the movement in Ukraine was like, well, you can't invade
us EU fascist fucks, like you can't just go around
kill grandmas and shit, we are going to stop you
by whatever means is at our disposal. And so they
took up arms and Dmitri wrote about it quote as
an anarchist, revolutionary and Russian, I found it necessary to
(11:21):
take part in the armed resistance of the Ukrainian people
against Putin's occupiers. I did this for justice, for defense
of the Ukrainian society, and for the liberation of my country,
Russia from oppression, for the sake of all the people
who are deprived of their dignity and opportunity to breathe
freely by the vile totalitarian system created in Russia and Belarus.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
It's got away with words, this guy, he's h yeah,
I really writer.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
He's really got at all. A PhD in history, excellent writer,
not afraid to do what's necessary, Well, is afraid, but
does it anyway.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Does it anyway, conquers the fear, uses it to his advantage.
And he's probably writing all this stuff after he just
did some exhausting you know, like I just ReLit a
bomb and now I got some pros D that's I
probably just would have went to bed.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
I don't know, yeah, I would have been like, could
I just see the pros part and y'all can throw
them anyway? Uh, never mind. Anyway, when they knew the
invasion was happening, they were looking at the situation and
they were like, well, how are we going to do
anti authoritarian military stuff? So Dimitrian others put together an
anarchist and anti authoritarian military unit in parts so that
people had an alternative to fighting alongside the fascists who
(12:32):
are absolutely also in the Ukrainian military. This unit fought
defending Kiev as an independent unit, but shit got messier
and to quote crime Think Again anarchist publisher, it got
quote mired in military bureaucracy, putting the status of non
Ukrainian members in limbo and keeping the entire unit away
(12:53):
from the fighting, and so basically like the states like,
we don't know what the fuck to do with you guys,
like you can't do anything for a moment. We gotta
figure this out. They built this unit on what they'd
seen in Rojeva about how to incorporate anti authoritarian concepts
into a military structure. But yeah, so they helped defend
Kiev and then eventually they were able to move out
(13:15):
east when the fighting moved out east, where he was
joined by a bunch of other folks, including two I
want to talk about but before I want to talk
about them, I don't want to talk about ads being
yet I'm legally obliged to. So here they are.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
And we're beck.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Man. I have no idea what those people would have
thought about the whatever. It's complicated anyway, I rant about
anti advertising and how I'm accidentally doing their work by
saying I hate it.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
They'd be on board with every product.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
So next we're going to talk about the irishman Finbarr Kaffriki.
Finbar Kaffrikey was born in the late seventies. He's the
oldest of this group. He was forty five or forty
six when he died. I think he was born in
County Mayo on och Hill Island, just off the coast.
This is not exactly a bustling metropolitan place to live.
(14:10):
There are currently two three hundred and forty five people
who live on this entire fairly large island.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Oh wow. Is it like one of those areas in
Ireland right now where they're just paying people to go
live there.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
I don't think it's quite at that level, okay, but
I do look at that quite regularly. That particular headline.
That headline is a very enticing headline.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Oh, I look at a lot of those headlines.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Actually, for some weird reason, people have their eye on
the door right now, some weird reason.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
But we have talked about this island before because Grace O'Malley,
the Pirate Queen of Ireland, had her castle there and
we did a two parter about her way back in
the day. This is in the galtecht of Ireland, which
we've also talked about before on the show. I assume
the gal Tech is the part of the country where
people still speak Irish, or rather it's the place that
(15:01):
people held on too Irish successfully during eight hundred years
of colonization, which is a long ass time and a
thing that keeps coming up all the time when people
are like, oh, the US has been colonized for five
hundred years, why don't people get over it. Ireland had
took eight hundred years and they did eventually get those
fuckers out. So m yeah, the galtext held onto Irish
(15:23):
language and culture a bit more successfully, and it is
the seed from which this endangered language has spread back
out across Ireland. It is also a very poor place.
Not coincidentally, this is the Boonies. Finbarr was the oldest
of five and a family that speaks Irish. The documentary
about him is in Irish and his whole family's there
and they speak Irish and stuff, and I just think
(15:45):
that's great.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
What does it sound like? I've never actually heard.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Oh really, you should watch the movie Kneecap. It is hilarious, Okay.
It is about a Northern Irish rap band that wraps
in Irish and their struggles, which is a real band,
but it's a fictional movie.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Okay, Well, this is random. I will hear some words
here and there, and every now and again I'll use them.
But it's because you know, the sport hurling.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
I am aware that there's a sport called hurling, and
I think it's an Irish sport, right.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
It's an Irish sport. So I play it like just
a buddy of mine taught me how. It is one
of the most fun games you can play. It's part lacrosse,
part soccer, part football, part very physical, right, it can
be very physical, Like that's the only issue. Like if
you're playing with people who are real competitive that you know,
some ribs might get broken. And I'm not looking for
(16:31):
any of that. But it is a really really fun
game to play. And occasionally, if you're with people who
are you know, pretty dedicated, they will use Irish words,
you know, on the field and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
That's cool.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah, it's pretty fun. I mean there's only just kind
of clubs of the States, and even over there, it's
like mostly a club thing. But yeah, so that's my
only connection to the language, which is very much not
much of anything.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
But the main word that every anarchist I knew was okay,
which is the word for freedom. And so like my
friends had a kid named Sirisha, Finnbar is in front
of a bunch of graffiti and Rojeva later that says Siirsha.
But Finbar is the oldest of five His parents I
believe owned the pub on the island because they talk
about how he grew up in a pub, and I
(17:18):
think they meant that literally and not figuratively.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
It's the most Irish story ever I know.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Right, finnbar grew up in a pu Yeah, and all
he does is read books. And he's a quiet kid,
and he was a quiet adult. A friend of his
put it eulogizing him. Later wrote, quote a man of
few words. Anything he did say was worth hearing. His
brother said about him, he didn't feel the social pressure
(17:44):
that other people felt, and he could sit down and
have a conversation with anyone. And this is kind of
an interesting position for me because I worked with this
publishing Collectificult Strangers in Tengle Wilderness, and we're putting out
a book right now that is the wartime journals of
an Italian anarchist who died fighting isis a guy named
Orso and comrades smuggled out his diaries. People have translated it,
(18:07):
were publishing it in English. It's already available in Italian.
And his father wrote some pieces for the book, and
his father was like, he goes his own way, he
doesn't do what society expected. He's a complete freethinker. And
what I've come to realize is that's what radical's parents
think about their kids.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Hmmm.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
When you're inside a social movement, you don't realize quite
how free thinking it seems to the outside, because in
my mind, I'm like, oh, I try to be a freethinker,
but really I'm kind of part of this subculture and
culture right of this like political idea and stuff, you know, Right,
But I suspect that Finbarr was even on top of that,
absolutely a freethinker and not someone who conformed a social pressure.
(18:51):
He finished school, he went to university for a while.
Best as I can tell, he came into radical politics
starting around two thousand and five when he joined a
protest movement called shelz Se which was fighting against the
Shell oil pipeline in the Northwest County Mayo, which of
course affected the poorest people in Ireland. And I also
like this because there's like a connection. Like we've covered
anti pipeline protests and the States a bunch on this show.
(19:12):
There's a lot of things that are actually happening all
over the world that people work against.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
You know.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Finbar wrote the anthem for this movement, and this man
can sing I don't love us protest songs like don't
get mad at Me, Dear protest singers, but like the
American folk protest song thing like doesn't really do it
for me most of the time, especially when it's like
a protest song about a specific campaign or whatever.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
You know, I know you need.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
There's such good ones.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Yeah, I don't want to pay too broad a brush,
because like there's definitely some protest music, you know, for
a long time ago and even more recent that you know,
I connect with and I feel like, oh, that's a banger,
but yeah, I hear you though.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
The song he wrote is just Irish as hell, and
it's so good. They're pretty good with their folk Oh yeah, yeah,
they know what they're doing with music.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
They kind of know with.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
This protest movement was controversial. Some people wanted the project
where it to come because they were poor and they
wanted economic stimulus, and this split the community. And this
is a fairly universal thing.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah, I was going to say, this all sounds very,
very familiar, you know, whether we're talking the Barcella shale
in Pennsylvania or whether we're talking Sherwood Forest, you know,
more nearby to them in the UK. It's, yeah, a
little bit of a universal thing going on.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yep, and Finbar starts showing up to it, and I
believe this is where he started getting radicalized. The protesters
built a camp on the dunes and people from all
over the world came. He and others went out and
kayaks to fuck with the offshore drilling place that the
pipeline was starting or whatever. They certainly delayed the hell
out of it and they re routed the pipeline. So
I think that they kind of like one but out
(20:46):
without fully winning. If people want to hear more about
what it's involved in fighting a pipeline then winning despite
not winning, listen to our episodes about the Mountain Valley
of pipeline. So he's off in the middle of it
all the time, the Serian Civil War was causing a
refugee crisis, so in twenty fifteen, Finbarr went off to
the Greek border to help. He stayed with other volunteers
(21:07):
in tents and helped all the people who were washing
up in Europe on dinghies and shit. And this is
the thing, I know, a bunch of people have done this.
Just you go and you help out. They just need
people to go and be like a welcome face in Europe,
which overall, Europe is kind of doing a similar thing
as the States, where they're like we want to cause
trouble all over the world, but then we don't want
(21:28):
to let anyone come in.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Yeah. Yeah, well especially as of for recent Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
In twenty seventeen, he decided to help a bit more
directly in the Syrian problem, so he liked Dmitri went
to Roseeva in Syria. He joined the YPG, the People's
Protection Units, and fought in a heavy weapons unit in
the successful war against ISIS. And he took the name Siya.
And I do not know how to pronounce this, and
(21:57):
I'm genuinely sorry. I think it might be more like THEA,
but it's a CE with some stuff going on, and
an I and a y in an A and I looked,
but I couldn't find a pronunciation for it.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
I think C with some stuff going on is the
official Yeah, I think we got it.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
And it's the Kurdish word for mountain. He wasn't the
only Irish volunteer over there, and he drew connections between
the Kurdish and Irish rebels. And I have known for
a long time that anti colonial rebels all over the
world saying Irish rebel songs, and the Kurds in Syria
do it too, And It always makes me happy really, yeah,
because like I didn't know that the Irish were the
(22:33):
first people to fight modern imperialism, because modern imperialism was
born in the UK by colonizing Ireland.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yeah, they've been through some things.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, there's a reason that Ireland is like one of
the only European countries of the decent position on Palestine,
you know.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Right, Oh, yeah, absolutely, And they'll be the first to
tell you that whenever people ask about there, look at what.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
We've been through, what position do you think exactly, well,
we've been starved, Like when he fought Isis. He wrote
about the battle for Raka, which he fought in as
feeling like what he'd read about the Easter rising. For
another thing we've covered on the show before, how they
(23:15):
would move through the buildings in the city and fight
basically door to door. His unit was ambushed and one
of them died, and they were treated and held off
the attackers throughout the night. At no point did he
tell his family he joined the military.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
There.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
They just saw it when they saw it in the news,
when there was like the articles about Irish people fighting
in Roseeva.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
They just saw him there. They're like, man, we knew
he was quiet, but he didn't even mention this to us.
Our last zup meat. He was just talking about books
he was reading. We had no idea. We thought he
was down the streets.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
I'm kind of annoyed by the number of like Michael
Gloss also didn't tell his family he was fighting, although
that makes more sense because what he did is deeply shameful.
But like, I don't know, and I get what people
are like, don't bother telling their family things. But the
last guy we're going to talk about absolutely told his
family everything. And I think it's telling that he's the
black American first, like the irishman is white, you know,
(24:08):
and the Irish culture is often a little bit cold
and emotionally reserved. So Finbar fought for the YPG for
similar reasons that Dmitri fought for Ukraine. Some Putin apologists
will try to claim that the Russian invasion Ukraine is
preemptive defense against NATO, right, even though Ukraine is an
in NATO, and also preemptive defense is a really strange
(24:29):
reason to give for killing a bunch of people who
live in their own houses. Finbar, in an interview with
the Irish paper rabble said quote. When I learned that
the Islamic State was being facilitated financially and militarily by
the Turkish state in its attacks on the Kurds in
Syria and Iraq, I realized that this was only made
possible by the connivance of its NATO allies in the EU,
(24:53):
who turn a blind eye in return for Turkey stopping
Syrian refugees reaching Europe. As an EU citizen, this made
me complicit in the horrors perpetrated by the Islamic State
in the territory controls, and I wasn't happy about that.
So he sees the fact that he's in NATO or
in the EU as complicity with war crime. Right, So
(25:16):
he's not saying like NATO good because Russia bad. He's
actually just like looking at what's happening.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yeah, yeah, no, totally, which is again, that's a full
picture approach, which.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Is what you should do before you start shooting people.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
If you're gonna pick up a gun, you can't just
be like, my ideology tells me that this is what
I should do.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
You know, totally. Yeah, the above preliminary work is a
good idea.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
And so he comes back. He's living on his own
on the island for a while, or maybe with other people.
I don't know. He's living in a nice stonehouse on
an island. Sounds very dreamy to me. Russia invades Ukraine
and the anarchists were fighting to stop it. So he
went to help, and he didn't go join the military
there for a long time. He went and did support work.
(26:06):
He would fix up vehicles, he would deliver supplies from
Poland to Ukraine. He worked with all of these like
basically these different like punk collectives went from like throwing
shows to delivering supplies to fighters in Ukraine, especially to
the anti authoritarian units.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Oh yeah, yeah, there was a big article about that.
Like they basically formed an entire like collective. I don't
know how extensive it was, if it was all over
the country or like a specific region, but yeah, they
just basically, based on the venue routing and whatnot, just
started doing extensive mutual aid. And yeah, I mean, those
(26:43):
are the stories that are just really really fricking powerful,
and I think of the takeaways people should.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Have, you know, totally, like if you can organize a show,
you can organize politically, and you can organize mutual aid,
and you shouldn't stop organizing shows. Shows are great, but
don't sell yourself short. Like the skills that we use
to navigate our social circles are similar to the skills
that we can use to change the world to political organizing.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
I still think I learned all of life's most valuable
lessons at punk show.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Yeah, pick up the people who fall down and like, yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah, I mean totally. That's not to say it was
all yeah good. There was plenty of not great stuff too,
like anything where a bunch of people gathered.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
But totally. He actually one of the groups he worked
with was called XVX Tacticade, so straight edge vegan that's
what XVX means. He worked with solidarity collectives and anti
authoritarian support Network for the front lines, and people would
ask him what he was doing, like he would just
he spent like a year just like driving supplies the
(27:45):
front lines and shit, And people would ask him what
he was doing and he would be like, well, I
have time and I can be useful here, and like,
I think it was kind of as simple as that
to him. When you actually got him talking, he could
tell you all about the history we have Irish republicanism.
He could tell you all about democratic and federalism in Syria.
He could tell you all of these things. Right, But
(28:07):
everyone who talked about him talked over and over about
his incredible modesty. People only slowly came to learn all
of the amazing adventures of this life.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
He seems like a guy where he's an open book,
but you gotta ask. Yeah, so if you ask, well,
why are you doing this, he's just going to answer
that yet, And if you want him to expand, well
you got to ask more questions. He's there, he'll answer,
but you got to ask.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
One of the people who wrote about him actually specifically,
was like, I didn't ask him enough yet there was
still so much more, you know, and like one of
the reasons I really like this about him. When you
describe this kind of character based on the actions that
led up to this moment, you're not always describing my
favorite kind of person. Super activists can be kind of annoying, sure,
(28:56):
and like, especially when they're full of themselves and they're like, oh,
I've been everywhere, I've done this, I've done that, and
I have all the answers and everyone should have sex
with me or whatever.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
You know, and my vision for change is the only
one that will temporally work, and so I am leaving
any group that doesn't see it one hundred percent totally.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
And he is exactly not that guy. And that was
like one of my favorite things to realize about him.
And then after a year of delivering stuff, there's not
a lot that people know about because he didn't talk
about this with Oh, it's because of Irish culture. I
was like, he didn't talk about his like emotional decision making,
and I'm like, yeah, right, as previously discussed, but he
(29:40):
was called to fight. He moved from delivering stuff and
picked up a gun. She had done before in Syria,
but he did again.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
And now.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
What you could pick up instead of a gun, unless
our sponsors are guns, is whatever our sponsors are selling.
Use whatever our sponsors are selling to fight fascism. That's
your job.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Now.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
If it's sports gambling, good luck, probably just don't sports gamble.
It's probably addictive and bad. But here's our ads, and
they haven't fired me for saying that yet, and we're back.
The last person of a three d internationalists who were
killed on the same day I know the least about
(30:22):
and this makes me sad because I wish I had
about four times as much time per episode. Because this
last guy, my friends were friends with them.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Oh wow, I know.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
People who knew the other two as well. But like
this person helps start the infoshop that I'm going to
go talk at tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
And as we record this, as you're listening, sorry you
already missed it. Cooper was an American from Ohio. Cooper
Andrews was his name, and he was twenty six years
old when he died, and he was an Eagle Scout.
As a kid. He started getting involved in radical politics
(31:04):
and he actually joined the Marines. I don't recommend this,
but I'm not trying to talk shit either. He joined
the Marines after he became a radical because he wanted
to gain the skills to become an internationalist volunteer.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
That is quite a strategy, that is. Yeah, I get
what you're saying. I don't think I would recommend that
to anybody.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Especially right now.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, especially right now. But bad, that is a really
long form strategy to do something.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
He took it very seriously. He sent back funds from
his soldier's salary to help fund So there's a place
in Cleveland called Riizome House and it's a community center
that I've done a bunch of talks at and I'll
be at Well, it's useless to point out because of
May second, which is in the past as you're listening,
but I'll be there again sometime. And his collective mates
(31:55):
when they talk about how like when they were getting
the project going, it was really hard. They didn't have
enough money for brick and and they were like, what
are we going to do and we should just give up.
Cooper was always there being like, no, we're we're going
to do this. We're going to get it done, and
he sent back his funds from his soldier's salary to
start this infoshop. Infoshop's a fancy word for banarchist community space.
(32:19):
And he was a black autonomous from Cleveland Heights and
he worked endlessly on mutual aid projects, supporting people in
housing projects in Cleveland. He worked as a Wildlands firefighter,
and then when Russia invaded Ukraine, he volunteered. He worked
a full contract with the Foreign Legion and then he
decided to stay and fight alongside the Resistance Committee, which
(32:41):
was the Anti authoritarian platoon. Basically like that thing that
got started kept shifting and is still shifting, but still exists.
They are still anti authoritarian units within the Ukrainian military,
unlike some of these other people. Regular communication with his mom.
She knew a lot about his life and they were close.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Was she cool with it? She? I mean as cool
as a mom could be. Obviously, she's proud of her kid. Yeah, okay, And.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
I'll talk about a little bit at the end about
how she's handled stuff since his death. But she's proud
of her kid. He texted his friend while he was fighting, quote,
in our hands, there is a world to win, in
a fight which requires great sacrifice for us and everybody
else who faces the shadow of fascist aggression. There's only
victory or death. And he signed it off love and struggle.
(33:32):
He also wrote about his decision quote Putin's imperialism represents
a great purveyor of fascism, regardless of what certain weak
willed turncoats may say while they stain the name of
anti fascism. A victory here for Putin will not only
plunge this region into a dark period of authoritarianism from
which there will be no escape, but it will also
(33:54):
represent a victory for those who seek to recast the
world in the image of the old, and I mean,
I think that's accurate. I don't think there's ever a
moment where there's no escape. But like, I think that
Putin winning is absolutely a win for authoritarianism. And the
idea that he's like trying to recast the world in
the image of the old is so.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
True.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
Like he sees himself as part of the legacy of
the czars and shit, you know, m hm. And then
he's fighting with the Resistance Committee and well they died,
you know that part Already there was a path known
as the Road of Life that was the only thing
connecting Bakmut from the rest of Ukraine. I don't know
(34:38):
all the ins and out of this battle. At the
Battle of Bakmut has been presented as the bloodiest battle
in Europe since World War Two.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
The Road of Life is like the way that refugees
got out and is the way that they would evacuate
the city. It also is the way that they would
get supplies and soldiers into. It's been described that defending
it was the most dangerous assignment around and these three
internationalist fighters volunteered to protect it and they were killed
by mortars their bodies couldn't be recovered for quite some time.
(35:08):
A Ukrainian soldier named Andre said, quote, it's almost impossible
to do that, and we even had a so called
agreement between Russian troops and her own allocation team was
entering to pick up the bodies and they were immediately shot.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Yeah, their deaths made international news. The Russian embassy in
Ireland made this whole big deal out of it, where
it blamed their death on Ireland as a country having
bad politics. It's so, of course, oh and fucking Ireland
as a country. So as anarchist has died, and not
(35:47):
only do the news articles about him, is if this
was an American and you see it with the articles
about Cooper, they don't mention his politics by name.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
You know.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
The Irish newspapers are like, oh, he was an anarchist,
and they also have to explain it a little bit
because like it's not like Ireland's like land of everyone
knows what anarchism is, right sure, but they're like not
hiding it. And when this anarchist died and Russia's trying
to use it against the Irish government, more than one
elected politician in the Irish Parliament came to speak out
(36:22):
in defense of their friend, the anarchist Finbar, because more
than one of them knew him personally.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Nice. Every now and again you see something like that
from Ireland, this kind of just subversive statement by someone
who actually has electoral Yeah, and you're just going, wow,
it is possible.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
I mean, and they have a history of like they're
elected politicians not being able to serve because they're in
prison for fighting against the UK, you know, and like
Ireland is also like everywhere considering hardcore racist nationalism and
anti immigrants sentiment and all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
You know, oh totally yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not all
roses anyway.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
But there are documentaries about Finbar. There's one in the
Irish language about his death. Plus there's a documentary about Rojeva,
and they're not afraid to let his brother describe what
Nark is a meant to Finbar, someone who wants to
build a new, cooperative, non hierarchical society. Cooper's mother, Willow Andrews,
put up a fundraiser in her son's name, not to
raise money for herself or for her funeral expenses, which
(37:22):
would have been entirely appropriate and fully in deserving of support,
but to continue her son's work. This is when when
you asked what mom thinks of it? Yeah, she writes
quote as a baby, Cooper never crawled, he rolled, he scooted,
and then he ran. And it was at that point
(37:43):
I knew I was in for it. My son spent
the next twenty six years of his life running headlong
into difficult conversations, fighting for causes he cared about and
ideas he found vital.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
That's quite the uli. I know, it's pretty amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
The fundraiser was for a lot of things we've talked
about on the show. It was for a group called
Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, which is a decentralized anarchist disaster
relief network that I've worked with some not enough to
like give myself credit, but rather to say, like, these
people are cool and I've worked with them. Riizome House,
which is the infoshop her son started, and Food Not
Bombs maybe the pre eminent mutual Aid group in the world.
(38:23):
And then as for Dimitri, I don't know as much
about his family I would like to, especially his father.
I mean, I just know that his father taught him
about radical Russian history. But he wrote a letter to
be published in case of his death, and in it
he wrote, quote, I firmly believe that the struggle for justice,
(38:44):
against oppression and injustice is one of the most worthy
meanings that humans can fill their life with, and this
struggle requires sacrifices up to complete self sacrifice. The best
memory for me is if you continue to actively struggle
overcoming per small ambitions and unnecessary, harmful strife, if you
continue to fight actively to achieve a free society based
(39:06):
on equality and solidarity for you and me, for all
of our comrades, risk, deprivation and sacrifice on this path
are our constant companions. But be sure they are not
in vain Finbar's I've read a bunch of different things
about whether his body made it back to Ireland, but
(39:26):
there's a memorial service for him, and there's a growing
Ukrainian presence in Ireland because of the refugee crisis caused
by the invasion of Ukraine. And hundreds of people came
to his memorial and forty of them were from Ukraine
and they brought a wreath saying like basically like thank
you all of Ukraine, thanks you, and I love that
(39:49):
back in Ireland is building these connections between people from
different countries.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
You know. Yeah, that's so fascinating to be too, because
you have seen that in different times throughout history, especially
when it's particular to the Irish. I mean, the first
thing that comes to my mind is something like the
Saint Patrick's Battalion, you know, when they saw what the
United States was doing and so they said, you know,
we're going to fight for Mexico, even though we know
(40:16):
we're basically going to our deaths. We're going to fight
for Mexico because we've seen this type of repression before
and we're not going to be on that side because
we've seen this before.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Well, now you're just spoiling because that has been a
future friend of the pod. I've been wanting to cover
the Saint Patrick's Battalion since I started the show, and
I still haven't done it yet.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Oh, it's such a cool I'm just.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Afraid of being a little too like Irish history with Margaret.
You know, it is such a good story. It's an
incredible story that not a lot of people know about.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
No. I think, God, you know Saint Patrick's Stay, You're
not going to hear many people talking about that person.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Yeah, the battalion that fought against America.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Yeah, as they're drinking domestic beer at a given bar.
I'm not going to hear about that too. En. Maybe somewhere,
I mean I shouldn't a sue, yea know, I like, yeah,
some people do. And somewhere there's a dude in Boston
and all of his friends are telling him to show yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yeah, and he's like, no, actually, our legacy is leftist
and people like, shut up, just wear green. We're white now,
fuck you. And so the last quote I want to
end with is also from Dimitri from Ilia Leshi, and
it's from another one of his articles, called to be
a Revolutionary and was published by The Anarchist Combatant in
(41:33):
twenty eighteen, which I believe is the outlet that the
Anarchic Communists combat brigade the Partisans in Russia put out.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
I want to remind all pessimists that there are no
objective reasons for considering the social revolution and the triumph
of anti authoritarian ideas to be reserved for an indefinitely
distant future. The speed and unpredictability of social change in
the modern world teaches us one important lesson everything is possible,
including freedom and justice. And this one resonated really hard
(42:09):
with me as someone who does all this research for
the show, because I do tend to have this like, well,
everything is really slow. Like I mean, when I was young,
I was like, Oh, we're gonna do this overnight, and
then I was like, Oh, everything's really slow. What it
is is that everything's up in the air, like things
stay the same and then they change in a moment.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
I think that last quote is especially important right now
with what we're going through, especially in the contemporary American society.
We're finding out that first of all, laws don't mean
that much if nobody's going to enforce them. Unfortunately, we're
learning that in a bad way. Yeah, we're taking very
bad institutions and replacing them with something worse, which is
the opposite direction. But you know, the kind of glimmer
(42:51):
of I guess hope is well, if it could be
replaced with something bad, it could also be replaced with
something better. Change is really slow until it is.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, we could read about this moment in American history
one hundred years from now and look back and people
could be like, oh, yeah, and then things got real bad.
For a moment and politics became completely unmoored from the
status quo. And then people change things dramatically, you know,
in a positive way like that. You know, we could
(43:22):
get our Star Trek future or whatever it is that
you're dreaming of.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
You know, yeah, we totally could. I don't want to
say what I would put my money on, because I
don't want to kill the momentum.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
No, no, no no, But it's always worth like even
when you don't expect to win, you fight to win totally.
And this is true in sport, it's true in hurling.
I'm certain as an expert, you know, no matter, I.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Am so far from an expert. Yeah too, But you
just put it out there hobbyists.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
I've just seen it in that movie Win Shakes the Barley.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
I did a lot more research for the show, this
particular episode, but I'm going to put it into a
different Epis said later. There's a whole legacy of resistance
from within Putin's Russia. That was the thing I was
originally going to cover with this. People's political positions are
not determined by their nationality. There is partisan struggle happening
right now inside Russia against Putin there are teenagers spending
(44:16):
years in prison for posting poems to walls, and there
are also people launching DIY drones against Russian military infrastructure.
And yeah, the future is not yet determined. I think
one of the last social media posts. I'm not one
hundred percent sortin about this, I think one of Cooper's
last social media posts.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Do you know that meme?
Speaker 1 (44:36):
It's a still from I think a video game, is
a very realistic video game. It's a guy in a
mask and a tank and he says like, hey friend,
I know the world is scary right now, and then
he looks like close up and he goes, but it's
going to get way worse. Have you seen that?
Speaker 2 (44:50):
M I mean, it's not ringing a bill, but I'd
imagine if I saw it to be, oh.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yeah, that one lives rent free in my head. But
but there's an inversion of it that I believe Cooper posted.
I only have someone said that he posted it, which is,
hey friend, I know the world is really dark right now.
But and then the next line is something like, but
the future is undetermined and is based on what we
do and the decisions we make.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Amen. I mean, yeah, I think that is the best
way to look at things all the time, but especially
right now. Yeah. Well that's what I got for you.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
That's four people who call themselves anti fascists who died
in Ukraine, three of them fighting against fascism, although in
a complicated, morally gray area of fighting for what they
believe to be the lesser evil, as.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
It often is. Yeah. Wow, that's an interesting web that
was woven.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
Thanks. Well, uh guy, any thing you want to plug
here at the end?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
Yeah, I do.
Speaker 3 (45:52):
So.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
I'm on the road a little bit. I'll be in
Seattle May twenty third, and then I'll be doing the
Hollywood Fringe Festival with my next production, which is a
stage play that's a scathing commentary of the American healthcare system.
You can get tickets and all information at romplicone dot com.
And I have a movie out that I'm really excited about.
It's called Left It Wall. If you like quirky indie
(46:14):
comedies that skewer Wall Street and are from an anti
capitalist perspective, you'll like this movie. You can find it
on Apple TV, YouTube Movies, Amazon, Google Play. It's out
there and please check it out. It's Left at Wall.
And if you're not sure, where to find it. You
can just go to my website romplicode dot com and
it says where you can find.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Oh yeah, and if you want, I'm probably going to
write a whole essay that is the essay that started
all this, and it probably came out today while you
listen to this, and if it didn't, then you can
yell at me, but I'll ignore you. But you can
check it out on my substock which is Marter Kiljoy
dot substock dot com, and that's where I post things,
and almost all of it's free. There's some like more
(46:56):
personal posts that are behind a paywall, but all of
my stuff that I think matters is free. So you
can check that out and I'll see you all next
week with more Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonmedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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