Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to ADHD History Hour with Margaret. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Margaret, and each week I try to make
Speaker 1: a coherent story out of all the rabbit holes that
Speaker 1: I fell down that week. Usually there are rabbit holes
Speaker 1: about cool people did cool stuff. What do you think, Sophie,
Speaker 1: should be change the name of the podcast the cool
Speaker 1: People Did Cool Stuff? Or should we keep ADHD History Hour.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I know it depends on how you
Speaker 2: feel that week.
Speaker 1: Okay, fair well, this week we have Sharen as our guest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Hi, Saren, Hi, Margaret, thanks for having me back anytime.
Speaker 1: Serene is host of the podcast. It could happen here. Yes,
Speaker 1: also has a resume that makes me want to guess
Speaker 1: whether or not you have particular shared mental issues? Is me?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I have. I'm not well to say the least. I
Speaker 3: just got clear, uh.
Speaker 1: Specifically a resume full of a thousand interests assurance book.
Speaker 2: Busy always baby.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also, I just like do not know who I am,
Speaker 3: so I just continue to flail about. Right, I do
Speaker 3: know who I am, but I think I'm just I mean,
Speaker 3: this is ADHD History Hour. I mean, just let me
Speaker 3: write in that happens. That's that's me all right, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: Our producer is Sophie. Hi, Sophie up, Sophie. Our audio
Speaker 3: engineers Ian. Everyone wants to say Hi, Ian, And our
Speaker 3: music was produced for us by On Woman on Women.
Speaker 3: This week, we're going to talk about hunger strikes, the
Speaker 3: tool used by folks who have no other tools left.
Speaker 3: And in particular, we're gonna talk about hunger strikes in
Speaker 3: two countries that have faced very similar problems and have
Speaker 3: developed very similar solutions, Ireland and Palestine. Along the way,
Speaker 3: we're going to do too much context because I really
Speaker 3: like context. Okay, here's my theory, okay, And how when
Speaker 3: you're like eating soup, the best part is the crackers
Speaker 3: that you put in the soup.
Speaker 1: This is a universal experience, right, Oh huh yeah, the
Speaker 1: crunch yeah yeah, yeah. The crackers are the context. Right.
Speaker 3: Oh. The soup is the main idea, and the crackers
Speaker 3: are what you need to digest it.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and to leave full, yes.
Speaker 3: Leave satisfied and sated.
Speaker 1: And and it's empty carbs.
Speaker 3: So you're here your family.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've ever been around hunger strikers? I only have once.
Speaker 3: I haven't. I can't say I have.
Speaker 1: I was once in Athens, Greece. This is probably twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: I'm very bad at tracking my own travels. I think
Speaker 1: it's twenty eleven, and so I tried to like look
Speaker 1: up was like hunger strike, immigrant hunger strike in Greece,
Speaker 1: and it was like there's a major one every year basically.
Speaker 1: But I think I was there for the twenty eleven one.
Speaker 1: And I've talked a bit about the Greek neighborhood of
Speaker 1: Exarchia on the show before in Athens, I think in
Speaker 1: the episode about riot dogs. But in short, it's the
Speaker 1: sort of anarchist neighborhood of Athens that has greater to
Speaker 1: lesser degrees. It's autonomous from the Greek state and the police.
Speaker 1: It's a really cool place. There's lots of graffiti, and
Speaker 1: there's lots of people self organizing to feed people and
Speaker 1: take care of each other. There's like a self organized park.
Speaker 1: And the thing that impressed me the most was that
Speaker 1: I saw the degree to which Greek anarchists and the
Speaker 1: refugee population were working together to help the refugee population.
Speaker 1: I went to one of the many squatted social centers
Speaker 1: in Greece that has been transformed into a housing and
Speaker 1: education and a place for self organization for refugees mostly
Speaker 1: from Swanna countries. And not only was it free housing,
Speaker 1: but it was also protection from the Greek police, because
Speaker 1: this is like one of the major reasons why the refugees. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of people were trying to arrest them, but
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people who didn't want the
Speaker 1: police to be able to arrest them, and fortunately they
Speaker 1: had all these like self organized places that the police
Speaker 1: cannot safely go right m h. Police can't go to
Speaker 1: a squat in Exarchia without an awful lot of police.
Speaker 3: What's a sorry, this is go ahead, non intelligent, but
Speaker 3: like what's the the vibe for lack of a better word,
Speaker 3: of the Greek police, Like what do they carry guns?
Speaker 3: Are they terrible? I mean, all cults are terrible, but
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Like, what level of bad
Speaker 3: are they?
Speaker 1: So that's actually funny. I don't remember whether or not
Speaker 1: they carry guns, but the Greek police, at least most
Speaker 1: of my information is about ten years old. When I
Speaker 1: was there. The regular Greek police are like not great,
Speaker 1: but then there's a group of police called the Delta.
Speaker 1: I would like the they're actually I think the moped cops,
Speaker 1: but they're like the worst cops and they specifically a
Speaker 1: lot of them were or are I don't know about
Speaker 1: our but were members of I think It's Golden Dawn.
Speaker 1: They like the Nazi group, the Nazi political party in Greece.
Speaker 1: So the police in Athens in particular, but in Greece
Speaker 1: in general are like absolutely skew, way, way more right
Speaker 1: wing than the rest of the population.
Speaker 3: I see, Okay, it's good to know. Did not know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they would like go in force into Xarchia,
Speaker 1: Like if you saw police in Exarchia at that time,
Speaker 1: you saw like fifty police in Oxarchia, because otherwise they
Speaker 1: can't really be there. The police station there is routinely
Speaker 1: molotovt But yeah, So while I was in Exarchia, there
Speaker 1: was an immigrant hunger strike happening, and this particular one
Speaker 1: was North African immigrants, many of whom had were not
Speaker 1: recent refugees, actually had been working for many years in
Speaker 1: the country until the economic downturn had forced them out
Speaker 1: of work. And basically the government was like, oh, you're
Speaker 1: no longer are legal immigrants who do cheap agricultural labor,
Speaker 1: so we want you gone. And they were like, this
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like a fair deal based on the fact
Speaker 1: that we're the ones who feed you, and Greece was like,
Speaker 1: we don't really care what's fair. We're the government, right.
Speaker 1: This is verbatim translation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds like them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the hunger Strikers went behind the walls of
Speaker 1: the into the courtyard of one of these like large
Speaker 1: squatted buildings, right, and there're so these huge tents, the
Speaker 1: big old style that in my mind you see like
Speaker 1: like military style tents, like you know, the giant tents
Speaker 1: that thirty people can sleep in, you know. And they're
Speaker 1: the refugees. They're lying in the shade and they're hunger
Speaker 1: striking for themselves and most importantly for their fellow refugees
Speaker 1: and immigrants. I was there as an independent journalist, which
Speaker 1: is not something that i'd do much anymore what he
Speaker 1: used to do, and so I took a bunch of
Speaker 1: photos and I had some conversations not with the hunger
Speaker 1: strikers but with like their media represented representatives, and later
Speaker 1: a bunch of them got transferred to hospitals. Hospitals were
Speaker 1: a contested space, right, so it was like actually kind
Speaker 1: of cool. There was this major movement in Greece. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just like the anarchists or whatever, right, there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people who were openly confrontational with the
Speaker 1: right wing policies of the government. So a lot of
Speaker 1: people when they would go to the hospital, the police
Speaker 1: would show up and be like, oh, we want to
Speaker 1: arrest these people, and the doctors would physically drive out
Speaker 1: the police from the hospitals, which is something I would
Speaker 1: like to see more of. Ye, And I don't know,
Speaker 1: it was really moving. I saw dozens of people with
Speaker 1: no recourse but to skirt close to death in order
Speaker 1: to fight for dignity and fair treatment. And it worked.
Speaker 1: After six weeks of three hundred people hunger striking, mostly
Speaker 1: from North Africa, it shamed the government into action and
Speaker 1: they won temporary permits. I one thing that's like really
Speaker 1: annoying about this kind of action is that the media
Speaker 1: usually kind of like drops off and you never like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened to them later, you know,
Speaker 1: right right.
Speaker 3: I Mean it's also like shame is such a like
Speaker 3: the fact that that is what makes the government do
Speaker 3: anything is so infuriating, Like yeah, it's it's just uh yeah.
Speaker 3: And and the person that's hunger striking is literally like
Speaker 3: on death's door potentially, and the government is just like
Speaker 3: this is going to be a bad look and they
Speaker 3: do something like it's so just the whole the whole
Speaker 3: dynamic is bonkers.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, No, and that's that's what this
Speaker 1: episode is about, is that dynamic. And yeah, so we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about that, and we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about two colonized countries that have a long history of
Speaker 1: cooperation and solidarity, Ireland and Palestine. And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I want to tie these two together. One, they're
Speaker 1: both actually just very natural places to talk about hunger strikes.
Speaker 1: But two, I think that a lot of American society,
Speaker 1: especially white American society, seems to think that the Irish
Speaker 1: anti settler movement is legitimate, but the Palestinian one isn't.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I don't agree with that. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to make a lot of comparisons between the two today.
Speaker 3: No, I think it's necessary. Also, Like I don't know,
Speaker 3: I don't think really people realize the connection or the
Speaker 3: similarities usually because they think it's like, oh, that's like
Speaker 3: a brown person problem and this is like this is different.
Speaker 3: You know totally h but I'm glad you're bringing it
Speaker 3: up because they're so related, if not extremely similar, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, Like it's I don't know, and
Speaker 3: I feel like people that go through something like that
Speaker 3: are always going to be in solidarity with each other
Speaker 3: because they understand at a level that most people don't.
Speaker 3: So I'm glad you're doing this episode. Cool.
Speaker 1: No, I'm glad. Yeah, Like I didn't, it's not in
Speaker 1: the script, but I ended up like reading a bunch
Speaker 1: of like Palestinian immigrants in Ireland and Ireland being like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is like the one place in Europe where I
Speaker 1: can walk down the street and see Palestinian flags and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, feel comfortable. Obviously, Ireland, like everywhere, is dealing
Speaker 1: with some right wing bullshit right now, and there's like
Speaker 1: a lot going on with people fighting against right wing
Speaker 1: Irish nationalism and all of that, but that's sort of
Speaker 1: beside the point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is, it is. Sorry, No, I'm just thinking,
Speaker 3: like how fucked up it is that the only time
Speaker 3: a Palestinian or like some like can feel comfortable is
Speaker 3: if a country has also experienced like something terrible like
Speaker 3: they did. You know what, I mean like that's the
Speaker 3: only reason and they can feel like they can be
Speaker 3: Palestinian is because oh, this country also went through some
Speaker 3: fucked up shit like all the other countries probably are
Speaker 3: just like it's like that. That's it's like the annoying
Speaker 3: uh you only care about something when it affects you thing,
Speaker 3: but like country version. Yeah, it's just so silly to
Speaker 3: actually see that happened. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Continue, Yeah, so to talk about the hunger strike, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about ancient Irish legal customs. Great, mmm,
Speaker 1: crackers in the soup, the hunger This is a weird
Speaker 1: comparison to makes this this whole thing is about not whatever.
Speaker 3: Anyway, So it's too late. You're on the trade. You
Speaker 3: have to continue going on this trade.
Speaker 1: The hunger strike is probably as old as society, and
Speaker 1: I can point to it. One of the places I
Speaker 1: can point to that easily is in Ireland. There's a
Speaker 1: but I hunt law, which is the pre colonial legal
Speaker 1: system of Ireland. And I promise I didn't go out
Speaker 1: of my way to find out to work it into
Speaker 1: this episode, even though it's come up a bunch of
Speaker 1: times recently on this shows. There's a bunch of written
Speaker 1: records of Brahaon law. But it's also impossible to translate
Speaker 1: with certainty because it's it was not a particularly write
Speaker 1: things down culture. And okay, there's lots of reasons, right,
Speaker 1: but overall the idea seems to have been passed down
Speaker 1: successfully throughout history and I think it's neat and hunger
Speaker 1: strikes are literally written into ancient Irish legal code, so
Speaker 1: to talk about the law system in general, of like
Speaker 1: this is the sort of pre Christian and up to
Speaker 1: early Christian actually up to different parts of Ireland was
Speaker 1: up to like the middle of the like fifteen hundreds
Speaker 1: and some places up to about nineteen hundred, you had
Speaker 1: elements of this law. Individuals didn't have absolute ownership of land. Instead,
Speaker 1: lands were owned by the larger clan and then divvied up,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they were divvied up equally, sometimes hierarchically. But
Speaker 1: everyone had access to a whole bunch of common land,
Speaker 1: including pastures but also some pastures, but also all the forests,
Speaker 1: mountain mountains, bogs and wastelands. And then a lot of
Speaker 1: the decision making would happen at these huge assemblies that
Speaker 1: would meet in graveyards because their entire legal system grew
Speaker 1: out of funeral practices because the Irish have got in
Speaker 1: their blood.
Speaker 3: Wow yeah, wow, that is just sick.
Speaker 1: Yeah totally. And then also really interestingly, most crime and
Speaker 1: punishment was not up to the state, like the clan
Speaker 1: leaders are king or whatever the fuck right. Only political
Speaker 1: crimes were handled by the state. If you're trying to
Speaker 1: like go over the government, the states like as kind
Speaker 1: of about us, we should probably do something right. All
Speaker 1: other crime, like stealing shit and murdering people and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff was handled by a sort of
Speaker 1: non state court. A jury of peers would investigate the
Speaker 1: crime and then bring their findings to a judge. And
Speaker 1: the judge was a Breyhon and who would decide the
Speaker 1: right or right and wrong of it and then meet
Speaker 1: out a punishment. And the Brehons would like the judges
Speaker 1: would like go different places. Sometimes it's different. It changed
Speaker 1: over time, right, like sometimes they were more formal, sometimes
Speaker 1: they were less formal. For a while, anyone could be
Speaker 1: a judge as long as they were like a learned guy.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was mentally or not. Actually,
Speaker 1: there's like weird. Gender in ancient Ireland was way more
Speaker 1: equal than most of the rest of history. It was,
Speaker 1: but it was also not perfect, you know.
Speaker 3: Right, better better than most, yeah, but not perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then so later. So originally any and at
Speaker 1: least any dude who was like considered learned could become one.
Speaker 1: And then eventually it was you had to study for
Speaker 1: twenty years in order to be one.
Speaker 3: Twenty years. Yeah, what do you study for twenty years?
Speaker 1: I guess you just I don't know. It's probably a
Speaker 1: combination of ethics and like precedent and social norms and
Speaker 1: all kinds of shit. It seemed to work fairly well, okay,
Speaker 1: they most punishments weren't vengeance based. There was capital punishment existed,
Speaker 1: but it was like really rare. In some places in
Speaker 1: the old myths and stuff, they'll be like, oh, anyone
Speaker 1: who kills someone must die or whatever, but that was like,
Speaker 1: actually rarely what happened in practice. Other high level punishments
Speaker 1: were banishment and gouging out the eyes, but these were
Speaker 1: not so different. Yeah, I know, right, These were not common.
Speaker 1: Usually it was basically debt. Now you owe this family,
Speaker 1: like some of your land, some of your chickens. I
Speaker 1: don't know if their chickens are not some of you know,
Speaker 1: some of your money whatever. There's no cops. There's no prisons,
Speaker 1: or rather, there's no public prisons for some really bad crimes.
Speaker 1: If you're in debt and can't pay it, you become
Speaker 1: a slave to the other family until your debt is paid.
Speaker 1: Oh and then you go free. So it would be
Speaker 1: like instead of prison, it's like, well, now you're in
Speaker 1: prison of you killed this family's kid, so now you've
Speaker 1: got to like serve them for five years.
Speaker 3: I don't honestly, that doesn't not make sense to me personally.
Speaker 3: But it doesn't make sense, or it doesn't not it
Speaker 3: doesn't not make sense. Yeah, no, it it's like if
Speaker 3: you're if you're gonna just just to if we pretend
Speaker 3: that someone did a terrible thing to family, the least
Speaker 3: they could do is serve the family for redemption, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So, I mean it's better than fucking throwing someone in
Speaker 1: prison for twenty years. Yeah, like learn how to do
Speaker 1: crime and have a horrible life and are tortured.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And usually though it was like all right, you
Speaker 1: lost your lands or you got to give up some
Speaker 1: cows or whatever. To these folks, it was fairly the
Speaker 1: reason that there wasn't capital punishment much in it. I
Speaker 1: think this is a little bit my inference. It was
Speaker 1: a successful method of stopping like revenge killings and mob
Speaker 1: rule right, all without the interference of an actual state
Speaker 1: or a specialized roles besides the judges. And if the judge,
Speaker 1: the one who study for twenty years, if he gives
Speaker 1: a he gives a ruling that later people overturn, the
Speaker 1: judge often loses their job for good because they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you actually did. It's like you had to study for
Speaker 1: twenty years because you have to get this right. You
Speaker 1: can't fuck this up, right, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean I think I was thinking about it as
Speaker 3: after we said twenty years thing, and it feels like
Speaker 3: they're just waiting for the person to get older, like
Speaker 3: to be like older and wiser, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 3: you have to wait at least twenty years because your
Speaker 3: brain needs to evolve a bit and then you can
Speaker 3: make decisions. But it is interesting, yeah yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 1: I I mean like I have like notes. This isn't
Speaker 1: like a no note situation, but like it sounds better
Speaker 1: than what we live with currently by oh yeah, magnitude, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and yeah, and so what does it have to do
Speaker 1: with hunger strikes? I'm glad you asked my own script. Well, Ireland,
Speaker 1: what does it have to do with hunger strikes? I'm
Speaker 1: glad you asked. Ireland and India had really specific and
Speaker 1: interesting overlaps in this ancient law, and one of them
Speaker 1: was the right to redress by fasting by hunger strike.
Speaker 1: So if you've if you've been wronged by someone who's
Speaker 1: socially above you, like a clan leader, king or whatever
Speaker 1: the fuck, it sure is hard to enforce because like
Speaker 1: you know, there's no cops, right and like you're not
Speaker 1: gonna be able to come up with as strong of
Speaker 1: like a posse as the other guy is. So there's
Speaker 1: tristcod fasting, and it is the legal process of show
Speaker 1: up at your better's doorstep, wait outside, refusing to eat
Speaker 1: until he socially shamed into complying with the judgment against him.
Speaker 3: So shame is the driving force. Yes, you're across the board.
Speaker 1: Yes, and and it'll come up a couple times in
Speaker 1: this but the it's not make someone change their mind,
Speaker 1: it's not change their heart. It is shame. It is
Speaker 1: embarrassed them in front of their community.
Speaker 3: It's not I don't want to see this person die,
Speaker 3: it's I don't want people to think I'm terrible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, Okay, And then I fell down this rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: I was like, why the fuck is it? India and
Speaker 1: Ireland are the two places with this written into their
Speaker 1: ancient legal codes. Mm hmmm, well, and I get really annoyed. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people who want to talk about
Speaker 1: like similarities between far flung cultures are conspiracy minded and
Speaker 1: like talking about aliens and like just like not on
Speaker 1: a page that I'm really interested in or like really
Speaker 1: interested in some like racial myths that I have just
Speaker 1: like no fucking time. But the best explanation that I've
Speaker 1: been able to find. You've got Indo European languages, right,
Speaker 1: This is the larger family tree of languages that forty
Speaker 1: six percent of the world speaks as a first language.
Speaker 1: Everything from English and Irish to Italian to Bengali to
Speaker 1: Farsi are all Indo European languages. They almost certainly originate
Speaker 1: from a language that gets called proto Indo European. People
Speaker 1: like to argue about where that came from, but currently
Speaker 1: the sort of scientific consensus is that it came from
Speaker 1: the Pontic Caspian Step, which is a region that covers
Speaker 1: like Ukraine to Kazakistan, kind of like near the Black
Speaker 1: Sea and shit, where the Yamnaya people lived around three
Speaker 1: thousand BC. And then it's spread out from there, and
Speaker 1: it spread out so well because the Yamnaya people might
Speaker 1: have been the first horseback riders in the world. WHOA, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I decided not to go down a huge rabbit hole
Speaker 1: about horses. But one day, one day, yeah, I would
Speaker 1: love that. I was like, my like horse girl friend
Speaker 1: was like explaining, got really excited about every time I
Speaker 1: do any research, she's able to tie it into horses
Speaker 1: in one way or another, and this one was like
Speaker 1: really easy.
Speaker 3: I mean, I love horses. I will always remember this
Speaker 3: one comment. This random person I don't even remember who
Speaker 3: made this comment, but it was someone in a circle
Speaker 3: of friends or something, and they were saying that like something.
Speaker 3: I was just saying something about how oh, I was
Speaker 3: really upset because in medieval times it really feels like
Speaker 3: they abuse the horses or like they drug them up
Speaker 3: or whatever. They seem so miserable. Yeah, And then the
Speaker 3: person was like, well, horses are meant to be ridden
Speaker 3: on by humans, like that's where they're that's why they're there,
Speaker 3: or whatever, like something indicating that, like the horses on this.
Speaker 1: Planet, yeah, yeah, to.
Speaker 3: Have a human on top of it. And I got
Speaker 3: so pissed. And my main personality trait is that I'm angry.
Speaker 3: I hide it very well, but I'm usually very angry
Speaker 3: all the time. And I got so mad, and I
Speaker 3: was like, what do you fucking mean, like a it's
Speaker 3: an animal. Yeah, it would have been here if you
Speaker 3: were here. So I don't know. Horses I think are
Speaker 3: beautiful creatures and I would love a horse rabbit hole
Speaker 3: one day. Yeah, sorry for that tangent. I just always
Speaker 3: think of that. I guess so mad.
Speaker 1: No, No, I'm like making a mental note than when
Speaker 1: I do a horse episode, I should have you as
Speaker 1: the guest. So if there, if there's this Indo European culture,
Speaker 1: then some of its furthest fringes, the furthest it gets.
Speaker 1: Some of it is Ireland in India, right, northern India,
Speaker 1: mm hmm. And this is the more conjectural part of this.
Speaker 1: At the fringes, older tradition's hand hang on longer because
Speaker 1: they're not as like often conquered, right, Ireland wasn't conquered
Speaker 1: by Rome, so Roman stuff didn't replace Irish stuff the
Speaker 1: way that Roman stuff replaced like ancient British stuff, for example.
Speaker 1: And this hypothesis is used to explain a bunch of
Speaker 1: overlaps between Celtic and Vedic culture and cosmology, Vedic culture
Speaker 1: being ancient Hinduism basically some differences there. But and again
Speaker 1: anything that's like learn about ancient religions and their overlap,
Speaker 1: I'm like taken with a fucking grain assault. So I'm
Speaker 1: not like coming in hard being like, but it sure
Speaker 1: is interesting that there's a ton of linguistic mythological overlaps,
Speaker 1: and in this particular case, the right to redress by
Speaker 1: by hunger strike. But of course Ireland and India aren't
Speaker 1: the only places where hunger strikes happened historically. They also
Speaker 1: happen in our gnome. No, it's usually we're actually sponsored
Speaker 1: by people who give us food, won't sell people food advertisers.
Speaker 1: Here they go and we're back. So what is a
Speaker 1: hunger strike? It's fairly self evident. I think I'm guessing
Speaker 1: it's when you refuse to eat until your demands are
Speaker 1: met It falls into the larger category of non violence
Speaker 1: nonviolent resistance, and I think people tend to misunderstand nonviolent resistance.
Speaker 1: We've talked about some non violent resistance on this show.
Speaker 1: I admit that sometimes we've talked a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the violent resistance. But we'll continue to talk about
Speaker 1: non violence resistance on the show too. Understand the traditional
Speaker 1: conception of the hunger strike. I'm going to turn back
Speaker 1: to Ireland because there's this Irish writer, This guy actually sucks.
Speaker 1: His name's Yates. He's a piece.
Speaker 3: I like that you preface it with that so I
Speaker 3: could know exactly what I should be thinking when you're
Speaker 3: saying it. Yeah, this guy sucks, just foy I and
Speaker 3: this is the context. Yeah I love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I love Yeates's poem The Second Coming, But
Speaker 1: it's like I love it because it's about everything falling
Speaker 1: apart he and it presents it as if it's bad,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, yeah, the center can hold mere anarchy
Speaker 1: is loosed upon the world. What rough be slouching towards Bethlehem?
Speaker 1: Like I'm into it, but.
Speaker 3: Like look at to do list. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: Yeats was always I mean, he was like being an
Speaker 1: Irish nationalist is actually very complicated who is not necessarily
Speaker 1: a right wing position like any anti colonial nationalism. But
Speaker 1: later he just was a fascist. He just was like, man,
Speaker 1: democracy sucks. Hitler's great support the Blue Shirts, which were
Speaker 1: like Ireland's fascist movement, so he sucks. But he summed
Speaker 1: up the hunger strike really well in his play The
Speaker 1: King's Threshold. This is a line from The King, and
Speaker 1: now I kind of like, I haven't read the whole play.
Speaker 1: I kind of wonder whether he's like actually trying to
Speaker 1: talk shit on hunger strikes and he's just making it cool,
Speaker 1: you know, because that seems to be his thing.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: The King says he has chosen death, refusing to eat
Speaker 1: or drink, that he may bring disgrace upon me. For
Speaker 1: there is a custom, an old and foolish custom, that
Speaker 1: if a man be wronged, or think that he is wronged,
Speaker 1: and starve upon another's threshold till he die, the common
Speaker 1: people for all time to come will raise a heavy
Speaker 1: cry against that threshold, even though it be the King's.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's not about making someone have a
Speaker 1: like ghost of Christmas past revelation that they were like
Speaker 1: on the wrong side of history and like they should
Speaker 1: be nice to people. It's about being like, not only
Speaker 1: will everyone hate you, but like a thousand years from
Speaker 1: now people are still going to fucking hate you.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty strong. Hatred is strong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it mo it is. Why not it's your
Speaker 1: primary emotion, as you've expressed.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean it's there, Yeah, it's ever present.
Speaker 1: I want to contrast it with a quote that I
Speaker 1: think is a true quote by future friend of the
Speaker 1: pod Assada Shakur, and this is from an autobiography. The
Speaker 1: quote is nobody in the world, nobody in history, has
Speaker 1: ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense
Speaker 1: of the people who are pressing them. And people use
Speaker 1: that quote to dismiss nonviolence. But I think this is
Speaker 1: an important quote with which to understand nonviolence because it
Speaker 1: isn't about appealing to the moral sense of people. Because
Speaker 1: like when cops like, getting beat up by cops doesn't
Speaker 1: make cops feel bad, you know, right, And it doesn't
Speaker 1: make the people who sent out those cops feel bad.
Speaker 1: The answer to how do you sleep at night is
Speaker 1: usually like a baby in my make mansion that I
Speaker 1: bought with the money I made by hurting people, you know.
Speaker 1: But when nonviolence is ostensibly capable of doing, is shaming
Speaker 1: the cops and those who sent them out in front
Speaker 1: of their community. And the problem is, i'man to conjecture
Speaker 1: land here woo. In a capitalist society, community is almost
Speaker 1: meaningless term, right, since money is the primary thing of value.
Speaker 1: Non violence isn't always effective because you can be like
Speaker 1: you'd be like, I don't care if my neighbors hate me.
Speaker 1: I have a fucking McMansion, you know. Yeah, So it
Speaker 1: takes a functioning society and a healthy community to allow
Speaker 1: nonviolence to work out its most effective, which means that
Speaker 1: if you don't want the people you're pressing to fucking
Speaker 1: murder you, you should listen to shame and anyway should
Speaker 1: let nonviolence work. Hunger strikes, as I've seen them, don't
Speaker 1: tend to work when it's like some random person who
Speaker 1: isn't in prison or isn't directly oppressed, who's just like
Speaker 1: I'm going to go on hunger strike until the climate
Speaker 1: change is solved or whatever. Right, But when movements of people,
Speaker 1: especially prisoners or refugees or other people who are in
Speaker 1: some way unfree, when they do it, it can be
Speaker 1: powerful as hell. Humans can live for a while without food.
Speaker 1: It's not a good idea. I'm not advocating this. I
Speaker 1: think people probably picked up on the content note based
Speaker 1: on the title of the episode. I hope. So your
Speaker 1: body feeds itself with your body fat and then your
Speaker 1: muscles and bone, and you're like bone, marrow and shit,
Speaker 1: and sometimes around usually sixty to seventy days, you die,
Speaker 1: sometimes way earlier than that, sometimes longer than that. And
Speaker 1: a lot of hunger strikers die. You are playing chicken
Speaker 1: with the government when you hunger strike. Prisons have dealt
Speaker 1: with this in a couple of ways. One of them,
Speaker 1: one of the older ways they don't tend to do
Speaker 1: this anymore, is that they would just release people when
Speaker 1: they started to get sick. They did this with a
Speaker 1: lot of the Suffragettes. Actually in England, Suffergets actually did
Speaker 1: a bunch of hunger strike stuff that isn't in this episode.
Speaker 1: And one day I'll cover the Suffragettes and how they
Speaker 1: were in some ways very cool and in some ways
Speaker 1: not because of the racism, just in case people were
Speaker 1: wondering why anyway, So they would let these people go
Speaker 1: and then as soon as they were healthy again, you'd
Speaker 1: put them back in prison.
Speaker 3: You know, oh my god.
Speaker 1: And then the other way, go eat and then come back. Yeah, totally, totally.
Speaker 1: The other way, the newer fangled way is that they
Speaker 1: put a tube up your nose and down into your throat.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy five, the World Medical Association declared that
Speaker 1: doctors should not force feed strikers and that it is
Speaker 1: a form of torture. This has stopped almost no one.
Speaker 1: Whenever international law makes something illegal, it doesn't change anything.
Speaker 3: Maybe oh not at all. International law is the most
Speaker 3: empty bucket of words, like nothing actually like I don't know,
Speaker 3: Like Palestine's a great example of that. You'll hear like
Speaker 3: these real violated international laws committing crimes against humanity. Here
Speaker 3: they go again, Like it's basically all it is it
Speaker 3: actually ever happens. Yeah, it doesn't mean anything at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, EU still won't recognize Palestine.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, it's like, oh, Israel is an apartheid state.
Speaker 3: This is all the organizations that say so, oh well,
Speaker 3: like it's basically the vibe of it, Like there's nothing
Speaker 3: actually like powerful about international law at all.
Speaker 1: It's like when men acknowledge that their friends are sketchy
Speaker 1: to women but don't do anything about it.
Speaker 3: You know, Like that's a good comparison.
Speaker 1: I remember, like one of my friends was assaulted by
Speaker 1: someone and then their roommate was like, oh, sorry, but
Speaker 1: my friend he's a titty grabber when he's drunk.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, You're like, all right, we've determined this man is
Speaker 1: a kitty grabber. Should there be consequences?
Speaker 3: Right? Should we have a talk?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: At least?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that's international law and palace fine, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: titty grabbing. The Bureau of Prisons in the US, for example,
Speaker 1: says that it is quote it is the responsibility of
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Prisons to monitor the health and welfare
Speaker 1: of individual inmates and to ensure that procedures are pursued
Speaker 1: to preserve life. Which is really funny because I have
Speaker 1: a friend who teaches harm reduction and gives it harm
Speaker 1: reduction supplies and has had to like go into prisons
Speaker 1: and teach guards how to use nelocks own and love
Speaker 1: the reverse OD drug, and the prison guards have it
Speaker 1: and they just don't use it. They just watch people
Speaker 1: die because they're all like, oh, they believe that, you know,
Speaker 1: the cops of that we are like folklore that if
Speaker 1: you're in the same room as fentanyl and you're already dead,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, yeah, So the Bureau of Prisons clearly
Speaker 1: very committed.
Speaker 3: To Oh yeah, they care about them so much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course they do. Yeah. Some hunger strikers go
Speaker 1: until they die, some give up. Others like those North
Speaker 1: African strikers and the squads of Athens, have their demands met.
Speaker 1: And first we're going to talk about the Irish hunger
Speaker 1: strike of nineteen eighty one. I have avoided talking about
Speaker 1: twenty century Irish history for a reason. The reason is
Speaker 1: twentieth century Irish history is messy as fuck. But considering that,
Speaker 1: the other thing we're gonna talk about this week is Palestine,
Speaker 1: it's just complicated week where yeah, yeah, once Ireland was colonized,
Speaker 1: you had really clear good guys and bad guys for
Speaker 1: a while, right, Irish was anti colonial, like the Irish
Speaker 1: anti colonial uprisings, they were good. England was bad. There's
Speaker 1: some blurriness. There's people who mistakenly frame it as a
Speaker 1: Catholic versus Protestant think. Solely the Catholic Church was up
Speaker 1: to a lot of no good against the Irish Catholics,
Speaker 1: and against other people. There were right wing and left
Speaker 1: wing tendencies within the different resistance movements. Overall. Ireland good
Speaker 1: England bad decent way to frame things. If you don't
Speaker 1: want history to condemn your country with blanket statements, don't
Speaker 1: be a genocidal colonial power. Until the Irish warfare independence
Speaker 1: came to a truce on July eleventh, nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 1: The short version of this truce was that basically, there's
Speaker 1: the Irish War for Independence was happening, and they were like, fuck,
Speaker 1: you get the fuck out of our country, right, and
Speaker 1: they were doing all right, And then England was like,
Speaker 1: all right, we're offering you a deal. What if most
Speaker 1: of Ireland becomes more or less independent, but it's still
Speaker 1: a dominion of the UK, and you like, swear fealty
Speaker 1: to our monarchy. And then we get a chunk of
Speaker 1: northern Ireland and this stays formerly part of the United Kingdom.
Speaker 1: And about half the Irish were like, yeah, I could
Speaker 1: be done with war. This is really bad and it
Speaker 1: keeps fucking killing us, so sure we'll take the deal.
Speaker 1: The other half we're like, are you fucking kidding me?
Speaker 1: Fuck the monarchy. Also, we get all of Ireland, not
Speaker 1: most of Ireland. So they had a civil war, and
Speaker 1: the right for wrong gets way blurrier. At this point.
Speaker 1: I've got a position in that my family was anti treaty,
Speaker 1: which is to say, they fought for a unified Irish Republic.
Speaker 1: This was by and large the more lefty side of things,
Speaker 1: and the side that I think is better. It's also
Speaker 1: the side that lost against a force that now had
Speaker 1: the backing of the English Army that they'd just been fighting.
Speaker 1: So as soon as Michael Collins and those other focks
Speaker 1: were like, well, from my position, those other fucks were like, ah,
Speaker 1: we've made a deal with England, they just like turn
Speaker 1: around and use fucking England to crush the people they'd
Speaker 1: just been fighting alongside of My great uncle, who fought
Speaker 1: in the Easter Rising, went to his grave cursing the
Speaker 1: name of Michael Collins, the IRA leader who sold out Ireland. Well,
Speaker 1: then Irish politics got real fucking messy for basically the
Speaker 1: entire twentieth century because you no longer have like now
Speaker 1: you have Irish versus Irish right right, and this gets
Speaker 1: flattened to Catholic versus Protestant, which is a bit of truth,
Speaker 1: but the more accurate sides are loyalists who want Northern
Speaker 1: Ireland to remain part of the UK, sometimes called unionists,
Speaker 1: and then the nationalists who want Northern Ireland return to
Speaker 1: the Republic of Ireland. And by and large the nationalists
Speaker 1: are actually socialists and lefty, and actually many of them
Speaker 1: were probably internationalists, and by and large the you know,
Speaker 1: the other sides more right wing.
Speaker 3: What we were there benefits to be I mean, there
Speaker 3: had to have been benefits for being with England, no,
Speaker 3: from their perspective.
Speaker 1: I think, and I'm not entirely certain. I think that
Speaker 1: there were probably a ton of economic benefits. But also
Speaker 1: it was a lot of the people, especially in Northern Ireland,
Speaker 1: maybe not the majority, but a lot of the people
Speaker 1: were more culturally saw themselves as Anglican, saw themselves as
Speaker 1: coming from England. And you also have it like it's
Speaker 1: really messy, I mean, partly in that they're all white, right,
Speaker 1: so you can't like use like race to distinguish a lot.
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland had a higher percentage of people who were
Speaker 1: descended from English settlers, right, But people don't make a distinction,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of interesting. People don't make a distinction
Speaker 1: of someone who has descended from English settlers versus someone
Speaker 1: who's like family isn't right, And when they do make
Speaker 1: that distinction, it's usually like versus Protestant. Frankly, but again
Speaker 1: that's a rude exaggeration. There are a ton of Protestants
Speaker 1: who fought for Irish independence, right, But yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: actually I should know more about what the like.
Speaker 3: I mean, I thought you should or not, But like,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just it's just pretty shitty to be like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: we're gonna fight the person I was just fighting next
Speaker 3: to you because of X, Y and Z. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't know. I mean, this is maybe also silly to
Speaker 3: ask or even say out loud. Are there like if
Speaker 3: there's no racism involved the color? If the color doesn't
Speaker 3: play a factor, do accents play a factor? Like I've like,
Speaker 3: you know, how like certain accents indicate you're like from
Speaker 3: a shitty part of town quote unquote, or like you're
Speaker 3: from this area or whatever. Does that you think play
Speaker 3: a factor with English versus Ireland or not? Really?
Speaker 1: I mostly don't know, because I don't know about Northern Ireland,
Speaker 1: where most of this tension is happening. I only know
Speaker 1: about it as it relates to Ireland as a whole.
Speaker 1: You have a lot of oppression against the gel Tech
Speaker 1: to the Irish speaking part of Ireland, which is largely
Speaker 1: the northwest and the West coast of Ireland. Okay, and
Speaker 1: I know that there is a large cultural difference, but
Speaker 1: I know more about this in the nineteenth century than
Speaker 1: I do in the early twentieth century, just based on
Speaker 1: what I've read.
Speaker 3: That's fair. I'm just kind of yeah, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: it's yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean because like there's all these times throughout this
Speaker 1: where you're going to talk about like people machine gunning
Speaker 1: Catholics on the street, and I'm like, how'd they know
Speaker 1: they were Catholic?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: There probably has some way of knowing it. I just
Speaker 1: don't currently know what that way is.
Speaker 3: I don't know if they did, but okay, yeah, right,
Speaker 3: like how do you well?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like if someone's like walking down the
Speaker 1: street holding the like, I.
Speaker 3: Don't know unless they're like I'm Catholic, like a sign
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, no, I don't know, And it wasn't a
Speaker 1: lot of our listeners do know, because a lot of
Speaker 1: our listeners are Irish. So let us know, but let
Speaker 1: us know in a polite way instead of what the
Speaker 1: fuck is wrong with you? Ay, So in nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 1: the Northern Irish government, the brand new government, passes the
Speaker 1: Special Powers Act. This is going to be completely unrecognizable
Speaker 1: to people who study what's happening in Palestine right now,
Speaker 1: where suspects no longer had to be charged with crimes
Speaker 1: in order to be arrested.
Speaker 3: Yeah in Ireland.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in Northern Ireland, which is you know, the other country,
Speaker 1: the conflict, the zone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so that sounds about right, I mean taking
Speaker 3: tips for israel.
Speaker 1: I guess yeah, well it's the way around Israel doesn't
Speaker 1: exist at this point.
Speaker 3: Wait, what time are we talking to? Twenty two twenty two? Okay, yes,
Speaker 3: I was still I was jumping around in my head.
Speaker 1: No, no, it's okay.
Speaker 3: From bringing me back to that area.
Speaker 1: Well, there's going to be like direct overlap later when
Speaker 1: I get to the sixties and seventies. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: Special Powers Act mean that suspects could be arrested and
Speaker 1: flogged without trial. So basically, and the cop is allowed
Speaker 1: to beat up anyone they want. They're like, oh, you're
Speaker 1: like arrested, not I gonna hit you? Like so Nationalists
Speaker 1: got elected in Northern Ireland in nineteen twenty two, and
Speaker 1: they're like democratic elections, and the government was like, oh,
Speaker 1: never mind about democracy, and so they just redrew all
Speaker 1: the lines so that Nationals couldn't get elected, which isn't
Speaker 1: familiar in the United States. Loyalists and therefore generally Protestants
Speaker 1: were given preferential treatment with housing and jobs and shit.
Speaker 1: The ninety percent Protestant cops love beating up Catholics and
Speaker 1: we're generally not good. And this goes on and largely
Speaker 1: armed resistance takes a back seat for a while. A
Speaker 1: couple of the generation or so. Nineteen sixty nine, a
Speaker 1: civil rights struggle by the Catholics in Northern Ireland kicks up.
Speaker 1: And this is a this is a civil rights struggle.
Speaker 1: It's not actually a let's reunite with Ireland struggle. It's
Speaker 1: a just like, could you stop please beating us all
Speaker 1: up and giving it discriminating against us. And this kicks
Speaker 1: off what's known as the Truble, when the British Army
Speaker 1: comes and occupies the area and responds to the civil
Speaker 1: rights struggle. But you know, I won't give you any trouble.
Speaker 1: It's the stuff it's it's buying stuff. It's just like
Speaker 1: it's almost like our entire system is set up to
Speaker 1: allow you to spend money that you don't even have.
Speaker 1: You could go into debt to buy with whatever comes.
Speaker 3: No, it's one thing you can rely on, you know,
Speaker 3: just how buying things works. Yeah, good job, that was
Speaker 3: a great segway. Good job.
Speaker 1: Thanks, There you go and we're back. I am struggling
Speaker 1: to come up with a more British word for thirty
Speaker 1: year War of occupation than the troubles, Like.
Speaker 3: It makes it sound almost cute and unfortunately like, Oh
Speaker 3: I have the I have the sniffles. Oh, I have
Speaker 3: the rumbles of my tummy. Yeah, I'm really dying, That's
Speaker 3: what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally a little bit of a rough there as
Speaker 1: you're on fire. Yeah. And so soon enough the let's
Speaker 1: not like, let's just not get treated like shit campaign
Speaker 1: becomes actually let's rejoin Ireland campaign. The IRA the Irish
Speaker 1: Republican Army, which was the name of the military force
Speaker 1: that won independence from England that came out of the
Speaker 1: Irish Republican Brotherhood. They they have split into a million
Speaker 1: pieces at this point, including but not limited to the
Speaker 1: Real IRA, the Official IRA, the Provisional IRA, and the
Speaker 1: National Liberation Irish National Liberation Army. Most of these groups
Speaker 1: are socialists, but they disagree about things that I'm sure
Speaker 1: seemed important at the time. Sometimes they shoot each other
Speaker 1: over these things. And they and a bunch of other
Speaker 1: folks are now attacking and have been, but are now
Speaker 1: especially they're attacking British occupiers, and they're attacking loyalists and
Speaker 1: their riots, and there's lots of terrorist attacks on both sides.
Speaker 1: More than half the people killed and the whole mess
Speaker 1: were civilians fifty two percent of the people killed in
Speaker 1: the troubles, which is part of why like, like, I
Speaker 1: don't have like a lot of communication Irish family, but
Speaker 1: they like overall were like, man, we don't want to
Speaker 1: talk about politics. This is like what you know, because
Speaker 1: you're like, this is just a bad thing that happened.
Speaker 1: Right to a lot of people's perspective. A majority of
Speaker 1: the civilians killed in the troubles were killed by loyalist
Speaker 1: paramilitaries like the Ulster Volunteer Force the UVF, or by
Speaker 1: British soldiers, but the IRA absolutely killed a lot of
Speaker 1: civilians too. The Republican side killed more Republican fighters than
Speaker 1: their enemies did, which is kind of bad, right, Why
Speaker 1: is that in fighting? Oh? Just where the real IRA
Speaker 1: it's in our name, or where the official IRA, well
Speaker 1: where the provisional provisional doesn't actually sound as like tough.
Speaker 3: Honestly, like the most childish bullshit. But also like with guns,
Speaker 3: it's like you're at recess but with weapons, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like, it's no, totally I don't know, but I will
Speaker 1: say I was talking to my friends about this before
Speaker 1: we recorded. I don't think that they are to blame entirely.
Speaker 1: I think England put them in this position. Like people
Speaker 1: talk about.
Speaker 3: Life, I'm just mad about fighting in job, Yeah, telling anyone,
Speaker 3: I'm just thinking, Yeah, fighting is actually pretty silly when
Speaker 3: you think about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of times, especially on your own fucking side,
Speaker 1: people talk about crabs in a bucket pulling each other down, right,
Speaker 1: and they'll be like, oh, it's human nature. Crabs in
Speaker 1: a bucket always pulling each other down. The bucket is
Speaker 1: not the crab's natural habitat. That's a very good point,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if the other side started it, though,
Speaker 1: is a decent excuse for all of the killing that
Speaker 1: included a lot of civilians. But the terrorism and civilian
Speaker 1: murders started the Ulcer Volunteer Force, the loyalist paramilitary group,
Speaker 1: whom they just started bombing Catholic homes and schools and
Speaker 1: shooting random Catholics on the street. That's what kicked off
Speaker 1: this violence. So in nineteen seventy one, the British Army
Speaker 1: conducted Operation Demetrius, which swept up three hundred and forty
Speaker 1: two people suspected of involvement in the IRA. A lot
Speaker 1: of the people that they swept up had long since
Speaker 1: retired from the IRA or had never been involved at all.
Speaker 1: They also swept up a bunch of the civil rights
Speaker 1: leaders who had no ties to any violence or even nationalism.
Speaker 1: And of course, even though the UVF was actually killing
Speaker 1: way more civilians and had started it, none of the
Speaker 1: UVF was targeted by this sweep because it's not that
Speaker 1: the British government disapproved of terrorist violence, it's that they
Speaker 1: disapproved of terrorist violence against the British government, and this
Speaker 1: only escalated the sectarian violence. When all these people got arrested,
Speaker 1: folks weren't actually accused of any crime. This wasn't imprisonment
Speaker 1: it was in tournament and thousands of people were interred
Speaker 1: as a result of this. In nineteen seventy two, you
Speaker 1: get the thing that caused you two to write the
Speaker 1: only good song that they wrote, which I don't even
Speaker 1: know if they wrote, but they play.
Speaker 3: You're gonna have to tell me you chose something that
Speaker 3: I purposely know nothing about.
Speaker 2: Great. Yeah, My main, my main thing that I know
Speaker 2: about you too is that they snuck that album on
Speaker 2: everybody's phone.
Speaker 3: That's all. That's the only thing I know and want
Speaker 3: to know.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, and Bono wear sunglasses all the time and.
Speaker 1: He likes things. He's like saving the world, but he's
Speaker 1: actually just a liberal pon. Yeah. No, but they were
Speaker 1: a song called blood or they play I don't know
Speaker 1: wrote I didn't look it up. They have a song
Speaker 1: called Bloody Sunday. A thing happened in nineteen seventy two
Speaker 1: that's called Bloody Sunday. And there was a protest march.
Speaker 1: You know, got all this paramilitary stuff happening in the
Speaker 1: IRA fighting all like that. There was also just social
Speaker 1: movements with thousands and thousands of people who were fighting
Speaker 1: but through less clandestine means, and most of this was
Speaker 1: organized or a lot of this. This particular march we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about was organized by the Northern Ireland
Speaker 1: Civil Rights Association NICRA and it was a big, peaceful,
Speaker 1: unarmed march in the city of Derry. Darry was a
Speaker 1: majority Catholic and it was majority Nationalist. But so because
Speaker 1: it was Catholic, it had been cut out of public funding.
Speaker 1: The roads were like fucking gone to shit, and it
Speaker 1: was basically being like economically mistreated by the loyalist government.
Speaker 1: So there was a protest march. The Prime Minister was like, no,
Speaker 1: you can't have a march, and people were like, why
Speaker 1: would I care what you have to say about that,
Speaker 1: We're going to have a march. Ten or fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: people marched. The occupying army started by shooting rubber bullets
Speaker 1: and tear gas, so people started throwing rocks at the army.
Speaker 1: The army opened fire. They shot twenty six people, many
Speaker 1: of whom were running away or were rendering aid. Every
Speaker 1: eye witness besides the soldiers attest to this. The soldiers
Speaker 1: were like, no, we only shot people who were throwing
Speaker 1: nail bombs at us, even though there was no evidence
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's classic what you say, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, rocks,
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: That person threw a rock in my general direction, so
Speaker 1: I shot his mother.
Speaker 3: Yes exactly. Oh, okay, and that's in that case, that's
Speaker 3: totally fair.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Is that man's fault for throwing the rock.
Speaker 1: At least one soldier was seen shooting randomly into the crowd,
Speaker 1: firing from the hip. Fourteen people, all Catholics, were killed.
Speaker 1: All of them were unarmed, Six of them were boys.
Speaker 1: One was a fifty nine year old man who hadn't
Speaker 1: been part of the march. He'd just been walking through
Speaker 1: the neighborhood and he died from his wounds a few
Speaker 1: days later. This wasn't even the only massacre the British
Speaker 1: Army did in Northern Ireland this year. Tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of people came to the funeral. In the nearby country
Speaker 1: of Actual Ireland. They held a day of mourning with
Speaker 1: Saramon's held at both Catholic and Protestant churches, because again,
Speaker 1: I mean, religion is part of it, but it's not
Speaker 1: the whole fucking thing, like people want us to believe.
Speaker 1: The largest general strike that Europe had ever seen since
Speaker 1: the since World War Two, happened. As a result of this,
Speaker 1: thousands of people marched to the British Embassy in Dublin
Speaker 1: and they protested with a very respectable diversity of tactics.
Speaker 1: Some people non violently placed thirteen coffins on the steps
Speaker 1: of the British embassy. Other people burned the embassy down.
Speaker 1: Both acceptable, I think, I agree. Diversity of tactics makes it.
Speaker 3: Honestly and both extremely symbolic and poetic. I will go
Speaker 3: I'll go that far. I think those are chef's kiss
Speaker 3: if you can let me say that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, No, both of those are great. I
Speaker 1: fully support the one conclusion that came out of Bloody
Speaker 1: Sunday for the Irish of the Republic of Ireland and
Speaker 1: for the nationalists in Northern Ireland, it was pretty much
Speaker 1: that the I that paramilitary force was legitimate and that
Speaker 1: it was a war against colonial occupation in Northern Ireland.
Speaker 1: And so the IRA sees itself as a legitimate army.
Speaker 1: It does not see itself as like, well doesn't see
Speaker 1: itself as terrorists. It sees itself as an army.
Speaker 3: Well, of course it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, they think that they had a good reason
Speaker 1: to believe what they believed, and I overall agree with them.
Speaker 1: I also don't like when armies target civilians, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make them not an army.
Speaker 3: Yeah, also does that make them not terrorists?
Speaker 1: Right totally? But yeah, I mean both can be true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fucking these words are anyway. So things are heating up.
Speaker 1: The interred prisoners. They're actually given for a while something
Speaker 1: called special category status, which is basically prisoner of war status,
Speaker 1: and so the Geneva Can Conventions applied to them. And
Speaker 1: how the IRA won that status for themselves was force
Speaker 1: of arms. It was a precondition for any discussion of
Speaker 1: a truce, right. The government's like, oh, let's like figure
Speaker 1: this out, and they were like, you better treat our
Speaker 1: arrested people like prisoners of war before we'll even talk
Speaker 1: about coming to the table with you. So for a
Speaker 1: little while you had that, and you had we'll talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about what that meant a little bit.
Speaker 1: But a few years later the UK was like, eh,
Speaker 1: what if we stop treating them special We're like UK
Speaker 1: and they're just fucking Ireland. Fuck them. In nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: a fucking baron named Merlin, because the United Kingdom is
Speaker 1: a fantasy land.
Speaker 3: Sorry one more time, just for emphasis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this man his name, he was a baron named Merlin.
Speaker 1: Got it spelled a little y instead of an eye.
Speaker 1: Of course it is what was I think? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: completely different, so Baron Merlin ash.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's unique.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he rolled away the rock from his grave. I
Speaker 1: don't remember enough about what happened to Merlin. I think
Speaker 1: he ended up with a rock in front of his grave.
Speaker 3: His name was Merlin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, he announces no more special category status. Prisoners
Speaker 1: are just fucking prisoners. They will have to wear prison
Speaker 1: clothes and do prison labor and shit. And by the way,
Speaker 1: the name of the prison was Her Majesty's Prison Maze.
Speaker 3: No it wasn't.
Speaker 1: It absolutely was. There was a nearby town called Maze,
Speaker 1: right but like ms Yeah, no, no wise in here,
Speaker 1: so not corn, not corn like the trap.
Speaker 3: So yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's basically a minotaur in her center of Her
Speaker 1: Majesty's Prison Maze.
Speaker 3: And it's a lot. Sorry, this is just the most
Speaker 3: British thing I've ever heard of my life. You know,
Speaker 3: the troubles Her Majesty's Prison mays where Baron Merlin has changed.
Speaker 3: If it wasn't so fucked up. It would be like,
Speaker 3: actually hilarious, Loki still is I know because we can
Speaker 3: see it like say it in retrospect.
Speaker 1: But like, come on, yeah, Like if you're going to
Speaker 1: be the prison in the town of Maze, just be
Speaker 1: like Maze's Prison or something. Don't be prison Maze and
Speaker 1: don't be her Majesty's Prison. Mays No, unless you have
Speaker 1: a minotaur, then you can call it that.
Speaker 3: Honestly, Okay, maybe this is crude, but it could be
Speaker 3: sexual to her Majesty's Prison Maze, like that could be
Speaker 3: some there's something there. I have it fleshed out completely,
Speaker 3: but I think there's something there.
Speaker 1: Anyway I do, we'll have new merch.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so this change of status to where people were
Speaker 1: now being treated like regular prisoners, it didn't make people happy.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, actually several times throughout what's going
Speaker 1: to happen, the prisoners were like, it's not that we
Speaker 1: want to be treated better than the other prisoners. You
Speaker 1: should treat them well too, What the fuck is wrong
Speaker 1: with you? But this change of status, it didn't make
Speaker 1: people happy, and it didn't strip the status from previous intorneys,
Speaker 1: but it fucked with all the new kids who did
Speaker 1: something about it, which I'm gonna tell you about on Wednesday.
Speaker 3: A maze can be a bush, right, you can.
Speaker 1: Have a bush may Oh, okay, I see where you're going.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, I'm sorry, I'm not anyway. Is that the Yeah?
Speaker 3: What what you got?
Speaker 1: Besides?
Speaker 3: Uh, I am I'm one of the rotating hosts on
Speaker 3: it could happen here, but the rest of them are
Speaker 3: are fairly talented and phenomenal doing great work. So go
Speaker 3: listen to that. I have my own podcast called Ethnically
Speaker 3: Ambiguous that I host with on a hose Nea and
Speaker 3: the rest of the stuff. You can google if you
Speaker 3: want to, but you don't have to. You can follow
Speaker 3: me on social if you want. Shiro Hero instagram' sure
Speaker 3: a hero sixty six to six on Twitter, but I'm
Speaker 3: actually not there anymore, so maybe you can encourage me
Speaker 3: to be there. I would never encourage to Twitter on Twitter? Now, Okay? Great?
Speaker 1: I mean on X.
Speaker 2: On X.
Speaker 3: God kill me. We thought Meadow was bad, you know,
Speaker 3: we thought threat whatever X. Yeah, it's like Merlin, that's
Speaker 3: you know what I mean? Like this, it's just as
Speaker 3: nerdy as being.
Speaker 1: I think it is less respectable than Merlin.
Speaker 3: I agree, at least Merlin hunt magic.
Speaker 1: I know, wasn't that cutemated King Arthur that I watched
Speaker 1: as a kid. Yeah, and his hat with all flopping yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And if you want to see me, probably not dressed
Speaker 1: up like a wizard. I will be tabling, presenting, and
Speaker 1: playing at the Asheville Anarchist Book Fair, which is or
Speaker 1: it's called the Another Carolina Anarchist Book Fair because people
Speaker 1: are trying to make I mean, have successfully made clever
Speaker 1: acab puns. And that is August ninth through thirteenth of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three in Asheville, North Carolina. I will be
Speaker 1: presenting a talk called a Halfway Concise History of Anarchism.
Speaker 1: So if you like listening to me talk about history,
Speaker 1: which you probably do if you made it this far,
Speaker 1: unless you're hate listening, in which case please don't come
Speaker 1: to my event, but keep listening for the numbers like yeah,
Speaker 1: totally set up a little machine that downloads it ever anyway,
Speaker 1: And then I'll be playing with my dark pop band
Speaker 1: solo project called Nomadic War Machine on Saturday night, so
Speaker 1: I will exist. I'm doing all of my socializing for
Speaker 1: the year in two.
Speaker 3: Days, right, Yeah, just knock it out. Yeah, get it down,
Speaker 3: then just stay home.
Speaker 1: Back to my house in the mountains as soon as
Speaker 1: it's over. Just kidding.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to see you while there. Cut it out, Ian, right,
Speaker 3: you could just cut the other part Outquin.
Speaker 1: Sophie.
Speaker 2: When you gotta plug, I just fall at cool zone
Speaker 2: media while you still can.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yet, I think I'm gonna not switch to another social media.
Speaker 1: I think I'm just gonna.
Speaker 2: Here's what's here's what I find so creepy about it.
Speaker 2: I was like, let me go see what this app is,
Speaker 2: and it automatically enrolls you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did the same thing I had to, and
Speaker 3: so I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't I like technically have an account, but I don't,
Speaker 2: but I didn't want to. And then it does this
Speaker 2: weird thing where it like brands you and puts your
Speaker 2: like user bar code, like not bar like user number
Speaker 2: code on your Instagram profile. And it took me a
Speaker 2: really long time to figure out how to remove.
Speaker 1: That, but I did.
Speaker 2: Wait, yeah, so if you yeah, so if you look
Speaker 2: at like, if you accidentally have threads, it's gonna put
Speaker 2: this weird code thing on. I'm ready.
Speaker 3: That's so stupid.
Speaker 2: On your Instagram and I I thought that was really creepy.
Speaker 3: Far more people than I thought were on there, to
Speaker 3: be honest, and I was like, oh, and also automatic, because.
Speaker 2: It automatically enrolls you is the problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. That's actually very true.
Speaker 2: And then it does that weird thing where it puts
Speaker 2: that code on your Instagram profile, which I find to
Speaker 2: be really weird to know. I am not on threads yet,
Speaker 2: but I am on threads, but I'm not on threads.
Speaker 2: And that's all I have to say about threads. We'll
Speaker 2: be back, motherfuckers. Sorry, I love you.
Speaker 3: Bye.
Speaker 2: I got what podcast I was on? Cool People Who
Speaker 2: Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 2: Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.