Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to cool People did cool stuff. You're
Speaker 1: a weekly reminder that we can do cool stuff with
Speaker 1: the one chance we have it being alive. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Margaret Giljoy with me today is James Hi. James, how
Speaker 1: are you.
Speaker 2: Hi, Margaret. I'm good. I'm good, very very controverted. You
Speaker 2: to eraise the concept of what's it called when you
Speaker 2: come back to life after you die? Reincarnation not come
Speaker 2: through joke?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, well, the one chance we know of. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Sophie Hi. Sophie Hi, our audio engineers Ian
Speaker 1: Hi Ian. Everyone wants to say I in Hi Yan Hian.
Speaker 1: Our theme musical is written for us by un woman,
Speaker 1: and this week we are talking about resistance to Franco
Speaker 1: the fascist dictator of Spain. In particular, we're following Francisco Sabata,
Speaker 1: also known as al Chico. World War two has just ended,
Speaker 1: so he snuck himself back into fascist Spain and is
Speaker 1: starting to raise funds for a gorilla struggle and let's
Speaker 1: go all that stolen money. It goes into the hands
Speaker 1: of the CNT, which was underground and trying to do
Speaker 1: everything from support the kids of dead anarchists to destroy
Speaker 1: the fascist regime in Spain. No money is actually going
Speaker 1: to the robbers personally. For the most part, Leonner is
Speaker 1: actually supporting the family in France by working as a
Speaker 1: house cleaner, plus probably whatever El Chico makes as a
Speaker 1: plumber when he's home, which, like, I feel like it's
Speaker 1: fine to get compensated fairly for your labor as a
Speaker 1: bank robber. But I still appreciate that they they weren't
Speaker 1: doing this to get rich.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they like meant it that quote from before about
Speaker 1: being like weird libertarian freedom fighters. Yeah, So, together with
Speaker 1: the CNT, the three Gorillas, El Qiko, El Absinio, and
Speaker 1: El Rosette, they free two anarchists and a communist from
Speaker 1: fascist hands. And this is like, it's funny because they
Speaker 1: freed a bunch of people already, including themselves several times.
Speaker 1: But this is like where they kind of come out
Speaker 1: onto the world stage a little bit when they do this.
Speaker 1: But they show up and they they free the three prisoners,
Speaker 1: and as they're running to the car, the communist is
Speaker 1: apparently like, never mind, I don't want to jail break.
Speaker 2: I just love fucking rules. Such a committed tanky like
Speaker 2: see a boot I want to lick.
Speaker 1: It, and so he goes back to jail voluntarily.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: At least according to the anarchist history book I read, Okay,
Speaker 1: I doesn't see them, having been like, oh, whoops, wait,
Speaker 1: you've got two anarchists and a tanky.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The guy gets out there and immediately, like you,
Speaker 2: get logs onto his Twitter and starts posting about how
Speaker 2: he's going to send him to the Gulag and then
Speaker 2: all right, you go fucking back right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, yeah, exactly. We thought we knew you better
Speaker 1: than that. Yeah, but you'll be shocked to know that
Speaker 1: after the war, not all of the former Synicalists were
Speaker 1: cool and good. Some joined the National Syndicalists aka the
Speaker 1: fascist left. There was at least one double agent and
Speaker 1: ex anarchist who worked for the new cops but was like,
Speaker 1: oh no, totally, I'm totally working for you all the anarchists,
Speaker 1: definitely who was working for the cops. He would help
Speaker 1: the anarchists while they were being super boring and ineffective,
Speaker 1: and then inform on them as soon as they did
Speaker 1: anything spicy and anywhere the anarchists were doing anything like,
Speaker 1: the cops would know about it and show up what
Speaker 1: it could Yeah, not a good guy. He spoiler alert.
Speaker 1: Not a way to live very long. Fortunately, the Gorillas
Speaker 1: didn't espouse to be under anyone's control, not the labor
Speaker 1: movement or whatever. They were working for the CNT and
Speaker 1: an arcosyndicalism in general, but not under its authority, so
Speaker 1: they were actually way harder to repress. The CNT was
Speaker 1: pretty mad about this, especially the CNT in France, like
Speaker 1: the people who would like run run away is the
Speaker 1: wrong word. The people who were refugees because they would
Speaker 1: get murdered. They some of them are very mad at Sabate.
Speaker 1: Throughout the rest of his career, the Gorilla movement was, though,
Speaker 1: and this still matters, it was very organized. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just like, hey, let's go fuck up Franco as shit
Speaker 1: and get ourselves killed and I know I'm going to
Speaker 1: like stick a lot to the like and here's where
Speaker 1: they blew this thing up, and here's where they shot
Speaker 1: this guy, and the like cool actions or whatever. But
Speaker 1: it was like mostly most of their work was organizing.
Speaker 1: From nineteen forty five to nineteen forty six, Sabate and
Speaker 1: the others set up base after base in the mountains,
Speaker 1: which is the refuge for all radicals everywhere, for comrades
Speaker 1: and guns. He and his family moved still in France,
Speaker 1: so he goes back up to France, back and forth
Speaker 1: all the time, moves way closer to the border, and
Speaker 1: he starts moving guns and explosives into Fascist Spain. At
Speaker 1: one point with four others in some tiny town near
Speaker 1: the border, cops pull a gun on them, so they
Speaker 1: one of them kills that cop, and they of have
Speaker 1: to go hide all the material and lie low because
Speaker 1: all the cops show up, you know, because for somebody
Speaker 1: else happened like that. Yeah, so they hit the guns
Speaker 1: and a ton of places and including a big old
Speaker 1: pilum anewer. Oh yeah. Sabate only got out by dressing
Speaker 1: as a peasant. He was like holding a scythe and
Speaker 1: walking around as a peasant while a woman from the
Speaker 1: village walked behind him carrying a submachine gun for him
Speaker 1: in a basket of food.
Speaker 2: Extremely let's see the cat National anthems and the second
Speaker 2: or it is like the scithers. Oh shit, okay, cool,
Speaker 2: it's extremely Catalan move. It's about the revolt with the size.
Speaker 1: Yeah that rules.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately the innkeeper went to go snitch voluntarily. He was like, ah,
Speaker 1: I know it's up, and the cops tortured the shit
Speaker 1: out of him.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, just what it is. The state violence comes
Speaker 2: for us all.
Speaker 1: I went to the fascist cops and they were mean
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah they new news. Yeah they did find the guns
Speaker 2: and the pile of ship. Well at least I had
Speaker 2: to go into a pile of shit. I know, I know.
Speaker 1: And the fascist feds in Barcelona in particular, working hard
Speaker 1: to beat the gorillas. They traced to communicate to a
Speaker 1: guy's typewriter and then like tortured the shit out of
Speaker 1: him until he gave up a meeting spot, which led
Speaker 1: the folks to the Feds to al El Absinio and
Speaker 1: our guy, the Abscenian was greeted at home with a
Speaker 1: hail of gunfire and he died before he had a
Speaker 1: chance to draw his gun.
Speaker 2: That's sad, I know.
Speaker 1: And l Rosette gets arrested at his house during all
Speaker 1: of this, and they're like this is gonna come up,
Speaker 1: Like L Rosette rules, Sabote just wants to lure cops.
Speaker 1: At this point, he's like, oh fuck, one of my
Speaker 1: friends is dead. The other ones arrested he's like, you
Speaker 1: know what, the cops are surrounding his parents' house, right,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I'm just gonna lure them into the
Speaker 1: open and fight them, just just fucking have it out.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And his remaining friends are like, don't fucking do that.
Speaker 1: What the fuck, Jesus Christ, what the fuck is wrong
Speaker 1: with you? And he listens to his friends and he
Speaker 1: doesn't go out in a useless way. Yeah, but he
Speaker 1: did need to get to his parents' house because his
Speaker 1: brother Jose had returned from prison at this point and
Speaker 1: he was at the family house and Sabate and well
Speaker 1: ol Kiko wanted to go see him. So he just
Speaker 1: walks through the police lines as if he's some regular guy,
Speaker 1: Like I'm a regular guy. What's going on over there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, famous efficiency of space police.
Speaker 1: Well, and then in the Spanish police thought that they
Speaker 1: would absolutely find him because l Rosette was being held
Speaker 1: in a cop car on orders of you better point
Speaker 1: out Sabate when you see him, or will fucking kill you.
Speaker 1: And so he was like, oh, sure, I will definitely
Speaker 1: do that. I will absolutely inform on this man. I
Speaker 1: fought a war with completely, that's my plan. When Sabate
Speaker 1: walked by. El Rosette was like, no, that's not him,
Speaker 1: that's just some guy.
Speaker 2: Amazing. Yeah, the entire force of the state come to Barron.
Speaker 2: You any results in them being conned by someone being
Speaker 2: liken it like yeah, totally moving on. Yeah, and their
Speaker 2: orders were absolutely to kill on site. Uh So l
Speaker 2: Rosette saves his life, I believe, I can't remember. I
Speaker 2: think at spends the rest of his life in prison,
Speaker 2: spends decades in prison.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Al Kko makes contact with Jose and they reunite more
Speaker 1: properly in the mountains of France, and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's get this ship fucking done. Luigi has entered the
Speaker 1: chat the Plumber brothers, I don't know if you is
Speaker 1: a plumber.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the Gorilla's form, Yeah, someone knows them. My kid's
Speaker 1: lost to history. It's like, no, y, I only have
Speaker 1: a week to research these things, so I can only
Speaker 1: read like one and a half books and like five
Speaker 1: or six articles and you know. Anyway, So the Gorilla's form,
Speaker 1: the MLR, the Spanish Liberation Resistance movement basically declaring autonomy
Speaker 1: from and hopefully shielding their like proper began to only
Speaker 1: type friends, right it's their way of being like, we
Speaker 1: are not the CNT, Please stop killing the CNT just
Speaker 1: because we do shit. Yeah it, I mean it sort
Speaker 1: of works. I mean they're still going to the Feds,
Speaker 1: are still going to just kill the CNT whenever they can,
Speaker 1: you know. But public enemy number one for the anarchists
Speaker 1: right now is this guy Alicio melis Dis, who's the
Speaker 1: former anarchist turned cop who is destroying the resistance movement.
Speaker 1: Because this is a fast and furious plot, the anarchists
Speaker 1: made Plan H I don't know what stands for, which
Speaker 1: was that they were not going to just kill this guy,
Speaker 1: but they were going to bring him down and reveal
Speaker 1: all the other traders too. They only half succeeded. They
Speaker 1: kidnap him, but he fought back, so they had to
Speaker 1: kill him after he killed one of them. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they did kill this guy. But and then they came
Speaker 1: out with the communicate to announce the MLR quote in
Speaker 1: the future, we will respond to governmental terrorism with the
Speaker 1: people's terrorism. We shall answer the murderer's bullets of the
Speaker 1: uniformed gunmen with the pistols and machine guns of the
Speaker 1: m people of the MLR will carry out sentence on
Speaker 1: all traders, as they have already done in the case
Speaker 1: of the notorious Alicio Meles of Unhappy Memory.
Speaker 2: It's another great one for your EMAO signature. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And all the while Sabote is going back and
Speaker 1: forth to France and spending making sure to spend time
Speaker 1: with the kids. I actually think he like, genuinely really
Speaker 1: liked his family and like spending time with them and stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, he does. He moves his family. He has
Speaker 1: more kids. Now, why with the biographer mentioned to talk
Speaker 1: about his kids instead of going on several pages about
Speaker 1: someone whom he doesn't even meet, who blows up his
Speaker 1: own leg with a grenade anyway, moves them closer to
Speaker 1: the border, and a quote young comrade moves in to
Speaker 1: help with the chores. Well, he's gone. I don't know
Speaker 1: that this is a this person needs a place to stay,
Speaker 1: or our house needs more sources of income, or maybe
Speaker 1: it's a polyamory thing. I don't I don't know his
Speaker 1: household includes more people now. He also gets really into
Speaker 1: farming for a little while, him and his mule dig
Speaker 1: a bunch of ditches to move water around, and soon
Speaker 1: he's growing melons and everyone's like Damn, we didn't know
Speaker 1: you could grow melons here. That rules your melons are great.
Speaker 2: So yeah, what a math?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, his domestic piece doesn't last. At one point,
Speaker 1: while he's in Spain, his house is raided in connection
Speaker 1: to some expropriation and the French police find a stash
Speaker 1: of bombs and grenades and guns. He's tried in absentia
Speaker 1: and is found guilty. This doesn't stop him. You'll be
Speaker 1: shocked to know, Yeah, shocked. He's in Spain, he starts
Speaker 1: working with the Libertarian Prisoner Support group, providing the money
Speaker 1: to provide for the families of imprisoned anarchists, and him
Speaker 1: and Jose are now getting money the old fashioned way,
Speaker 1: robbing the rich. Another one of his crew was named Tragapanas,
Speaker 1: which Google Translate tells me means swallow, but I think
Speaker 1: it means the bread eater.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Bread, Yeah, because he was all always hungry and he
Speaker 1: was always eating.
Speaker 2: It's just like a constantly shoving baggetts into his mouth. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like he gets a power up, you know, he eats. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he grows larger. I just like all their names. We're
Speaker 2: going to Spanish nickname into Germany. Phenomenal.
Speaker 1: Another tier yeah, and he is always for a while
Speaker 1: at least, he's always one step ahead of the cops.
Speaker 1: Time and time again he counter ambushes the cops line
Speaker 1: and wait for him, usually with a Tommy gun. He
Speaker 1: always carried a Tommy gun under his coat.
Speaker 2: Very nice. Yeah, yeah, from the US, I guess supplying
Speaker 2: the French machis. Maybe he got it that way.
Speaker 1: That makes sense because a lot of it's stand guns,
Speaker 1: which is another type of submachine gun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the British ones, but the guns really to make too, Okay,
Speaker 2: I've seen some stand guns.
Speaker 1: To the Tommy gun was like kind of his signature,
Speaker 1: and since he was a bank robber named a kid,
Speaker 1: it just sort of makes sense that he.
Speaker 2: Got Yeah, and you know, they were also obsessed with
Speaker 2: I think we've talked about this before with like Gangster
Speaker 2: Ship in Chicago.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: They called by the Barcelona Chinatown, not particularly because I
Speaker 2: had a large number of Asian people, because they were like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this has vibes of Chicago's Chinatown that we've seen in films. Yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe it was like a vibe. Maybe he was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is what I wanted to when I've seen this
Speaker 2: in films.
Speaker 1: I'm the kid, but he's not chomping a cigar because
Speaker 1: that man is sober and doesn't smoke.
Speaker 2: But he did go to me again.
Speaker 1: That was that's you know what, that's a more iconic
Speaker 1: and more influential thing.
Speaker 2: Like I like to think of him with a chocolate
Speaker 2: cigar as well. Yeah, totally bumbleming, living clean and carefree. Yeah.
Speaker 1: His crew worked with another crew for a while called
Speaker 1: Los Manos the Hands when they tried to kill Barcelona
Speaker 1: Minister of Police. That two groups actually met because they
Speaker 1: were both plotting to kill this guy. And I think
Speaker 1: they like maybe like saw each other on a steak.
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely sure how both of them trying to
Speaker 1: kill this guy got them in touch, but they teamed up.
Speaker 1: They they didn't succeed at this. It was a good plan.
Speaker 1: They knew the guy's schedule, they knew his car, they
Speaker 1: knew he drove down the following row in the following
Speaker 1: car every day, and so they did some grand theft
Speaker 1: auto shit where both teams stole some cars and then
Speaker 1: showed up and they're stolen cars. El Kiko actually like
Speaker 1: did the thing that actually has come up in a
Speaker 1: couple other episodes too, where he like his car is
Speaker 1: broken down and making air quotes here you can't see
Speaker 1: them because it's an audio medium, and he's like looking
Speaker 1: at the engine of his car, being like, oh, what's
Speaker 1: going on with my car? But he has a Tommy
Speaker 1: gun under his coat or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Classic, Yeah, And so the car comes by and they
Speaker 1: shoot it up and they killed two fascists, just not
Speaker 1: the one they were looking for. Some other people were
Speaker 1: driving it that day.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's sad.
Speaker 1: I know the cops already hated the anarchists, but now
Speaker 1: they hate them even more. They cracked down on all
Speaker 1: of Barcelona. There became an informal curfew because all evening
Speaker 1: entertainment was regularly broken up by cops demanding people's papers,
Speaker 1: so no one would do anything after eight pm. There
Speaker 1: wasn't any curfew. There was just a we will fuck
Speaker 1: you up if you do anything. Yeah, because fashions dinner
Speaker 1: and wow, that's an interesting point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like ten pm is your gamal like having did
Speaker 2: it with friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And for a while, anyone who hailed a cab
Speaker 1: was as likely as not taken to the police station
Speaker 1: to have their identity verified. Damn, which to be fair,
Speaker 1: I mean one there's a lot of people in Barcelona,
Speaker 1: not all of them are anarchists, but it is how
Speaker 1: most of the action groups were getting around was just cabs.
Speaker 1: They just all took cabs all the time.
Speaker 2: But the CNT had been the cab Driver's Union was
Speaker 2: an anarchist union previously. That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: That ties to a lot of this. That's why you're
Speaker 2: such a good guess for this. Thanks for being our guest.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Margaret, Thank you for having me. I'm enjoying
Speaker 2: myself this part.
Speaker 1: Cops started murdering random people because they got so jumpy
Speaker 1: that anyone reaching for a wallet was sometimes shot.
Speaker 2: Unprecedented.
Speaker 1: Imagine cops shooting innocent people mistaking walks for guns.
Speaker 2: I'm glad that hasn't happened since we fixed it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, absolutely only fascist societies. Only fascist cops too.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, Luckily we don't have to stay overreaching America.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: Now, Fascism is a specific form of government with no
Speaker 1: similar characteristics to any other form of government.
Speaker 2: Can only come from the Fascia reachion of Italy.
Speaker 1: It's not miss Selenius.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just sparkling authoritarianism.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the anarchists were like well, fuck you too,
Speaker 1: and some did a drive by on some cops. They
Speaker 1: wounded two of the cops. The police commissioner got so
Speaker 1: afraid of being assassinate that he wouldn't go home and
Speaker 1: he started staying at the office, which was surrounded by
Speaker 1: police at all times, who were ordered to shoot anyone
Speaker 1: or any car that came within like fifty yards of
Speaker 1: the police station.
Speaker 2: You know, you got him on the run.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then that the cops stationed that there were
Speaker 1: cops stationed in the sewers beneath the building.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. The anarchist loved a good sewer as well.
Speaker 2: They were big on sewer operations.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Yeah, it's because they're ninja turtles.
Speaker 2: I think in thirty eight they tried thirty nine, they
Speaker 2: tried to blow up the police station from underneath in
Speaker 2: the sewer and look out for being wet or something.
Speaker 2: But yeah, a known method, Nos, only that would be
Speaker 2: thirty five they six anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so during this particular pushback, there was all of
Speaker 1: these things, and then the cops got even more mad,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, how can they get more mad? They're
Speaker 1: already a fascist dictatorship and hate the cops and the
Speaker 1: murdering everyone, but there's just so many anarchists that there's
Speaker 1: still more to murder at any given point. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: cops came the closest they've been to the Sava table.
Speaker 1: They raided a rail worker's house. I think just coincidentally.
Speaker 1: They just like fucking with people, and they were like, well,
Speaker 1: look this guy, so they raided his house. The brothers
Speaker 1: and a friend were sleeping inside. A gunfight broke out
Speaker 1: and it left one cop dead, another cop injured. One
Speaker 1: anarchist named Jose a different Jose on Death's Door, and
Speaker 1: then Jose Sabate was shot through the chest the Jose
Speaker 1: on Death's Door. He was arrested after demanding Jose Sabate
Speaker 1: leave him, and was executed by the fascist regime. Years later,
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty, he wrote a last letter to his wife.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to quote it. It just makes me sad,
Speaker 2: but he told her to stay close with the family
Speaker 2: and that he loved her because I just want to
Speaker 2: humanize some of these people as much as Yeah, but
Speaker 2: Jose Sabat, with a fucking hole in his chest, held
Speaker 2: up some security guards at a factory at gunpoint, and
Speaker 2: then they actually just helped him make a bandage for
Speaker 2: the wound. This is like, there's going to be a
Speaker 2: lot of times where people do this. Oh yeah, he
Speaker 2: seems like a nice guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they like take off the shirt, you know.
Speaker 1: He's like, give me your shirt so I can make
Speaker 1: a bandage, and they're like, okay, but let me help
Speaker 1: you when they make a bandage for him, and then
Speaker 1: he swam across a river and made it eight miles
Speaker 1: off foot to a safe house.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, that is some true chat shit, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: with a hole in his chest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he went to a anti fascist doctor and was like, yo, doc,
Speaker 1: what's up. And the doctor was like, well, you got
Speaker 1: about as lucky as a guy who got shot in
Speaker 1: the chest can be because it passed through that hit
Speaker 1: in any vital organs.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, yeah, not much space, said, it's not Vike logans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I know. But the house he was planning
Speaker 1: on staying at, so he decided to go stay and
Speaker 1: recuperate at this one house, this safe house. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't safe. It was being occupied. It was being watched
Speaker 1: from an occupied house next door, and they needed a
Speaker 1: way out. So the anarchists pulled a prank on the cops.
Speaker 1: They sent one of their Okay, so the head of
Speaker 1: one of the police forces was an ex anarchist and
Speaker 1: now a fascist, and so they sent one of their
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like a militant any more friends to go
Speaker 1: meet up with his friend, the head of the police,
Speaker 1: the former anarchist, and the secretly down guy is just like, man,
Speaker 1: isn't it weird? The other cops not your group, but
Speaker 1: the group of cops that you're kind of in conflict
Speaker 1: with over like who gets to, you know, pissing rights
Speaker 1: in this part of town. They've occupied a house and
Speaker 1: so the cops are like, oh, fuck, someone's on our turf.
Speaker 2: They raid the other cops.
Speaker 1: They yeah, more or less they at least go argue
Speaker 1: in a fairly confrontational way. Yeah, and Jose escapes into confusion.
Speaker 2: Amazing the two. Yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not just it's not that this guy's life
Speaker 1: would be a movie. It's that this guy's life would
Speaker 1: be the Fast and Furious eight movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Both also been simultaneously like too crazy
Speaker 2: to be fictionized and unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Yeah totally. What else is un believable? Are these deals?
Speaker 2: Oh? Magnificent? Thanks? Thanks?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, oh yeah, I'm just really just don't clap.
Speaker 1: One thing you do is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah saying I was gonna say one thing Margaret
Speaker 2: killed he loves is selling products. Yeah, totally engaging in
Speaker 2: the cash nexers. Yeah, that's absolutely what I'm so excited about.
Speaker 2: And here you go, here's the ads, and we're back.
Speaker 2: So the two brothers are like, we should get out
Speaker 2: of Spain again. Let's go to Toulouse, which is not
Speaker 2: in Spain, it's in France. It's very nice sitting and
Speaker 2: at one point Francisco pretended to be recently released from
Speaker 2: an asylum.
Speaker 3: Guy.
Speaker 1: He always had these disguises. He's like, oh yeah, right,
Speaker 1: and this time he's like, ooh, I just got out
Speaker 1: of the madhouse. And then at one point he goes
Speaker 1: up to a peasant and he robs the peasant of
Speaker 1: his cart and he's like, can I give you like
Speaker 1: fifty grand for your cart? Which is me converting very badly,
Speaker 1: trying to use the internet to convert nineteen forties that
Speaker 1: set us to modern dollars. Gives the guy like fifty
Speaker 1: grand for his cart, and the guy's like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: can have my cart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like a good deal.
Speaker 1: He just basically like changed this man's class position. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that man's children do bad than life because robbed by sabote.
Speaker 2: Lucrative cart deal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there's one problem. He went back to France,
Speaker 1: but Alkiko had been tried in absentia by the French,
Speaker 1: you know, because the French were like, well it was
Speaker 1: fine when you had bombs in France to free France
Speaker 1: from fascists, but remember how you're not allowed to have
Speaker 1: bombs in France to free Spain from fascists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I remember how we learned so much from
Speaker 2: like taking the Ellen a war and on population surviving
Speaker 2: and defending freedom. Yeah, let to make sure that can't
Speaker 2: happen again.
Speaker 1: No, not, absolutely not. He made a good try for it.
Speaker 1: He was at home and Leoner just distracted the cops
Speaker 1: at the door while he escaped out the attic. But
Speaker 1: the cops sick dogs on him and got him, and
Speaker 1: he spent a year in French prison and then five
Speaker 1: years on probation where he was stuck in de Jon,
Speaker 1: which is a place in France where sparkling mustard comes from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've lost some skin in that town. Oh shit,
Speaker 2: I ass biker. Oh yeah, yeah, not a bad gambling debt.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, no, no. Literally, parts of my body was
Speaker 2: scraped off by the rose of Jean.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, yeah yeah, much like it's scraped five years
Speaker 1: off of Sabate's prime fighting life. Meanwhile, the struggle continued.
Speaker 1: More and more anarchists are getting gunned down, including those
Speaker 1: who had tried to stay legal within fascist Spain. Enter
Speaker 1: Manuel Sabate, the youngest Sabate brother. He hadn't been ten
Speaker 1: years old when the Civil War started. When he was
Speaker 1: sixteen and civil war was over, he traveled around as
Speaker 1: a train hopper for a while, Like literally he got
Speaker 1: a knapsack and rode around on freight trains because the
Speaker 1: anarchist traditions I continue across the oceans, I guess. But
Speaker 1: he was an adult now and there was adult stuff
Speaker 1: that needed doing, like stopping fascism. So he made his
Speaker 1: way into France and started working at a cooperative near
Speaker 1: the border. And his gorilla brothers were like, oh god,
Speaker 1: don't join us, learn a trade, live your life. We
Speaker 1: are doomed, do you know that?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Like we are fucking dead men walking. Try telling that
Speaker 1: to a twenty year old anarchist. His brothers told all
Speaker 1: the anarchist groups. You can't let our baby brother join you.
Speaker 1: For Jose, the dead men walking thing came true the earliest.
Speaker 1: On October seventeenth, nineteen forty nine, Jose was successfully trapped
Speaker 1: on the streets of Barcelona and basically went down in
Speaker 1: a hail gunfire, killing one of the cops who murdered him.
Speaker 1: And with Alqiko in jail and Jose dead in Spain,
Speaker 1: Manuel was like, well, I'm joining a fucking action group
Speaker 1: and now my brothers can't stop me. And the first
Speaker 1: thing they did is they tried to pull a grand
Speaker 1: theft auto but the car didn't stop, so they shot
Speaker 1: it up and they injured a young serving girl who
Speaker 1: was not exactly the class enemy for anyone who's keeping track.
Speaker 1: Soon the area was swarming with cops. Manuel Sabate was
Speaker 1: arrested and basically when the cops figured out his last name,
Speaker 1: they killed him.
Speaker 3: Ah fuck.
Speaker 1: On February twenty fourth, nineteen fifty, the winner of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty nine to nineteen fifty, the fascists took out most
Speaker 1: of the action groups. This is the end of the
Speaker 1: time when they are common. Every named character we've had
Speaker 1: until now, besides for al Qiko and Leoner are dead,
Speaker 1: the hands the bread eater dead. I think Rosette is
Speaker 1: just in prison. The thing is, though they had done
Speaker 1: a lot of good and popular descent was picking up.
Speaker 1: Even as the action groups were getting gunned down, they
Speaker 1: kept the flame alive in a lot of ways. Protests
Speaker 1: started up. It started with students, of course, as it
Speaker 1: kind of always does, and it moved to workers. In
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one, there's a general strike in Barcelona. It
Speaker 1: spread from there. More than one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: workers went on strike. Soldiers had to be shipped in
Speaker 1: from Madrid to put it down. The repression, though, made
Speaker 1: its way to France also. Southern France was full of
Speaker 1: Spanish anarchists at this point. They were the largest chunk
Speaker 1: of the exiles from Spain by a fair amount. So
Speaker 1: when a couple of anarchists tried to rob an armored
Speaker 1: car in France and some guards were killed, the press
Speaker 1: denounced the anarchists and the courts started rounding people up.
Speaker 1: But there was one problem. Everyone really liked the anarchists.
Speaker 1: They were like generally nice and upstanding people who like
Speaker 1: probably weren't hiding what they were about.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, there was going about not hurting people
Speaker 2: who weren't hurting them, as ikis should do.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So when once Spanish anarchist guerrilla was arrested and
Speaker 1: to lose in France, Spain was like extradite him, please,
Speaker 1: he is a crime guy, and France was like, we're
Speaker 1: actually not even going to consider your request.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Nice, and he was set free.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: The French police were not as nice as Sabote. They
Speaker 1: arrested him again in nineteen fifty one and tortured a
Speaker 1: confession out of him having something to do with that robbery,
Speaker 1: the which I frankly do not know if he had
Speaker 1: anything to do with. The torture was so bad that
Speaker 1: he either tried to kill himself, which is what is
Speaker 1: like claimed, or he he either got thrown out the
Speaker 1: window or he threw himself out the window. And there
Speaker 1: was kind of a thing going around of defenestrating anarchists
Speaker 1: and police stations. There's a play called The Accidental Death
Speaker 1: of an Anarchist.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I have acted in their play in high school. Yeah,
Speaker 2: use what play to do? We were like that one.
Speaker 1: They were like, okay, it's real funny. I watched the
Speaker 1: BBC production of it one time. It's good.
Speaker 2: It's a good play at Dario Foe.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, that sounds right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, damn, that's a throwback that had not been expecting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he survives getting thrown out the window or throwing
Speaker 1: himself out the window. Part of his crime that he
Speaker 1: was accused of was associating with evildoers, but they had
Speaker 1: gotten a confreshion out of him, right, isn't that real?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, great, good that the state gets to
Speaker 2: decide these things. Yeah, totally hate So wonderful, aren't they. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Eventually, in nineteen fifty two, the confession and the case
Speaker 1: were thrown out because it was so obviously induced by torture.
Speaker 1: He was still in probation from that shit before though,
Speaker 1: and not allowed to leave the area. Then in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five, as soon as he was free, he got
Speaker 1: himself over to Spain, and every time he went back
Speaker 1: to Spain, he went back to his hometown and made
Speaker 1: sure to like say hi to everyone and be nice
Speaker 1: to the old people and shit, even though he's like
Speaker 1: literally public enemy number one in Spain. Yeah, it wasn't
Speaker 1: a social call. His main thing was trying to form
Speaker 1: the CNT again. And the Anarchosinicalist Union that controlled most Catalonia,
Speaker 1: even though actually Sabote was like increasingly I keep hinting
Speaker 1: that that the CNT kind of doesn't like him anymore,
Speaker 1: but he likes the CNT. They disagreed with his reckless
Speaker 1: solve all problems with guns and bombs attitude, or they
Speaker 1: were cowards. It depends on who you ask. I actually
Speaker 1: don't have an opinion one way or the other.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's hard to find it in my heart to
Speaker 2: blame people who are living under a dictatorship that frequently
Speaker 2: murdered their friends for yeah, you know, yeah, their choices
Speaker 2: that they made totally.
Speaker 1: And so the actual tag groups he was forming weren't CNT.
Speaker 1: They were in arcosyndicalist groups, but he was also trying
Speaker 1: to recreate the CNT. Also, he wanted to keep them separate,
Speaker 1: but he wanted to do both, and this time he
Speaker 1: was mostly there to do propaganda. He hijacked a taxi
Speaker 1: to distribute a four page pamphlet called El Combate on
Speaker 1: the thirtieth of April go Ahead, I.
Speaker 2: Think that was the name of anoder anarchist newspaper.
Speaker 1: Okay cool. On the thirtieth of April nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: hoping to spark some Mayda shit, you know for may
Speaker 1: first yea. And the way he did this he brought
Speaker 1: with him from France. He made his own leaflet mortar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in an age before podcasts, our lives could have
Speaker 2: been so different.
Speaker 1: He made a fucking diy mortar. But that shoots paper
Speaker 1: into the air and then the leaflets fall down onto
Speaker 1: the street. And so when Franco visit Barcelona, he fired
Speaker 1: it out of the sun roof of a taxi.
Speaker 2: Even better.
Speaker 1: Yes, he also started soapboxing, the kinds of speeches you
Speaker 1: can't give in fascist Spain. The way he did it
Speaker 1: here's podcasting hero Sabote. He pre recorded them and played
Speaker 1: them off of tapes in crowded places full of workers.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The first podcast, yeah, yeah, amazing, that's great. There.
Speaker 2: He just just like, would they just start up from nowhere?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And then he and his friends they were also
Speaker 1: robbing banks right at one point in his friend cool podcasts. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how do you think we pay for these? I actually.
Speaker 2: Isn't. The Ragan coin guy ain't given a shit, want
Speaker 2: to be honest with you, Yeah, we're trying to go clean. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's why we wear Nixon masks when we rub the banks.
Speaker 1: And well we're podcast. So at one point, he and
Speaker 1: his friends rob a bank and get away when a
Speaker 1: taxi like they always do, and they tip the driver
Speaker 1: like eight thousand dollars or something, and then also immediately
Speaker 1: say every time they do this, they say, go straight
Speaker 1: to the police and tell them everything so that they
Speaker 1: don't hold you as an accessory. Yeah, well to considerate guys,
Speaker 1: I know, which is how you become a Robin Hood
Speaker 1: and not a random crime guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another time they rob, they rob this bank expertly, like
Speaker 1: a cop pulls a gun and they're like, no, no,
Speaker 1: not today, and they just disarm him because they're like
Speaker 1: not trying to like they actually like mostly try not
Speaker 1: to kill people, including like tools of the fascist state,
Speaker 1: unless they specifically want to assassinate specific people. So they
Speaker 1: disarm the cop and then they place a fake bomb
Speaker 1: near the entrance and they're like you'd better run and
Speaker 1: take cover because of this bomb, and everyone runs and
Speaker 1: take cover, and then it like the bomb never goes off,
Speaker 1: and finally when the bomb police or whatever show up,
Speaker 1: it's just full of sand and a note that says,
Speaker 1: I'm not as bloodthirsty as the press makes me out
Speaker 1: to be.
Speaker 2: Basically amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now you all just have PTSD.
Speaker 2: Yeah, forever traumatized, but you're not dead. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he's famous again. He's public enemy number one, and
Speaker 1: the fascists are being fascists and they round up everyone
Speaker 1: who's suspected of knowing him. So this time he wants
Speaker 1: to get back to France. He's just pulled off this
Speaker 1: crazy robbery. They've gotten a million pasettas, which actually seemed
Speaker 1: to roughly equal about a dollar in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: but with a wide range of possible failure. When I
Speaker 1: asked a website how much is this worth? And whatever?
Speaker 1: They got a million fucking dollars And it's it's our
Speaker 1: guy named Guy, and then it's another bank robber guy
Speaker 1: that he doesn't trust. And then the other third person
Speaker 1: who's coming with them across the border as a woman
Speaker 1: who he does trust. And the book uses the name
Speaker 1: Maria for her because the book was written in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four and she was still alive and so is Franco.
Speaker 1: So she was like, yeah, Maria, my name's totally Maria.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is my only name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this time they take a route that they
Speaker 1: haven't used in more than a decade. They I think
Speaker 1: it's like way west from where they usually cross, and
Speaker 1: they get lost, and so they recruit an old charcoal
Speaker 1: burner to help them find the way. I had to
Speaker 1: look at it bot anymore. Yeah, I had to look
Speaker 1: it up. It means you make charcoal.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I have actually seen people doing that
Speaker 2: in some of my work travels.
Speaker 1: That's cool. The charcoal burner was a trade unionist who
Speaker 1: had been arrested in torture by the fascists, and he
Speaker 1: wanted nothing to do with any of it. But when
Speaker 1: he was called upon, he helped them out and like
Speaker 1: sent his kid to direct them back onto the path.
Speaker 1: They left an envelope with a fuck ton of money
Speaker 1: in his house. Before they left, another woman fed them
Speaker 1: her husband was in prison three years already because he'd
Speaker 1: gone to a socialist meeting. And everywhere they stopped, they
Speaker 1: paid people like ten times what the food they ate
Speaker 1: was worth. Like one of them was like, here's for
Speaker 1: your daughter's raincoat, and they gave like, you know, ten
Speaker 1: times as much money as raincoat costs. But then the
Speaker 1: bank robber guy. He stole the money and left while
Speaker 1: they're still longs.
Speaker 2: Oh what absolute piece of shit.
Speaker 1: Fortunately you kind of can't get away with this such good.
Speaker 2: This is what happens when you create, like you leave
Speaker 2: a positive vibe when you go through places, right, you
Speaker 2: create sorlidarity, and it makes it a lot higher for
Speaker 2: people to fuck with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, just like some ad thing. For example, all
Speaker 1: of the products and services that come after this could
Speaker 1: be yours for free. All you gotta do is this
Speaker 1: one trick. Create a society based on solidarity and mutual aid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or crime that's another Yeah, not a society based on crime,
Speaker 1: but yeah, or you know, do things the standard way
Speaker 1: like I'm clearly doing and I'm a hypocrite for telling
Speaker 1: you otherwise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, which is start a podcast and get Ronald
Speaker 2: Reagan bunce you had.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the ghost of Ronald Reagan. Yeah, or maybe he's
Speaker 1: lich what's so dead? His philactory is these coins. If
Speaker 1: you buy the coins, you have a little piece of
Speaker 1: his soul.
Speaker 2: Okay? Is that like a whole crux? Yeah? Yeah, less
Speaker 2: turfy option yeah and older. It's what is where the
Speaker 2: guys that woman stole from she plagiarized. Okay, yeah, shocked
Speaker 2: shocked to hear that such a morally upstanding person I know,
Speaker 2: jk Rowning, I know who.
Speaker 1: Is totally not litagious. Anyway, here's some ads and we're back.
Speaker 1: So the bank robber guy had just stolen the money
Speaker 1: and run off, and Sabat and Maria tracked him down.
Speaker 1: They were like, he's just gonna go to the nearest
Speaker 1: town and buy him fucking alcohol. So they went to
Speaker 1: the nearest down they found him walking out of the
Speaker 1: alcohol store common straight edge. W Yeah, yeah totally, And
Speaker 1: he was like, oh, I totally wasn't trying to ditch you.
Speaker 1: I had to run because some cops came by. And
Speaker 1: they then spend like three days in a slow motion
Speaker 1: standoff where they know that this bank. They're moving through
Speaker 1: the mountains pretending to be friends. The other guy has
Speaker 1: his hand on his gun under his coat the entire time,
Speaker 1: and so they have to like watch him, and Sabata
Speaker 1: is just like not sleeping right right, and neither's the
Speaker 1: other guy, and they're just like and geez, and so
Speaker 1: they're just like slowly walking through the mountains waiting for
Speaker 1: a chance to sick someone to get the drop on
Speaker 1: someone else. Yeah, And finally at one point he like
Speaker 1: takes a drink with both hands on the cup, you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and Maria uh and Sabate basically like, Sabate pulls a
Speaker 1: gun and Maria disarms him and is like and Maria's
Speaker 1: like found where all of his knives are by like
Speaker 1: carefully watching him the whole time. So disarms him, not
Speaker 1: just of the gun, but all of the knives and stuff.
Speaker 1: And they take the money back, and since this is Sabate,
Speaker 1: he doesn't kill him. He gives him a speech about
Speaker 1: anarchy and the need to be selfless in the cause
Speaker 1: of revolution, and then says, we will take you to
Speaker 1: France because he's wanted in Spain and he'll kill him.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they take him to France, give him some money,
Speaker 1: and never see him again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, morally upstanding gun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there's a problem. It's the similar problem that
Speaker 1: he keeps running into when he goes to France. The
Speaker 1: world is moving towards accepting a fascist Spain with a
Speaker 1: dictator who won power Viakup. France is starting to cooperate
Speaker 1: with Franco more and more. An arrested comrade in Spain
Speaker 1: is tortured and he leads French, which leads French cops
Speaker 1: to a Sabate stash of guns in France, and Sabate
Speaker 1: is now wanted in France too, but he won't go
Speaker 1: on the run in France. That's like not his vibe.
Speaker 1: So he turns himself in and his defense in court
Speaker 1: is basically like, well, yeah, those are those are my guns.
Speaker 1: Those are for shooting fascists in Spain, yea. And the
Speaker 1: court is like, those are indeed mitigating circumstances. We're going
Speaker 1: to reduce your sentence. However, this is not your first time,
Speaker 1: so we're also going to up it. So he gets
Speaker 1: eight months. Oh wow, yeah, which I could totally see
Speaker 1: them being like, well it's good, but it's illegal, so
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, split the difference. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they tell him that he's trapped into Jean for another
Speaker 1: fucking five years. Scraping James's skin off of the pavement
Speaker 1: from the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's a wait punishment. I know, it's very
Speaker 2: come up with him. Yeah, French'll be at that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's why someone pushed you while you're riding
Speaker 1: your bike. You were the first James Stout who rode
Speaker 1: through the streets. So yeah, when Sabote got out of prison,
Speaker 1: he started working as an HVAC repairmanka and building up
Speaker 1: contact and even more resistance fighters had died while he
Speaker 1: was in prison. One of his old friends, an Italian
Speaker 1: named Face, went down in a hail of gunfire as
Speaker 1: he tried to cross the border into Spain and the
Speaker 1: resistance communities in exile, the ones in France were just
Speaker 1: like not interested his brand of resistance anymore. But he
Speaker 1: he can't quit, like he he's like constitutionally incapable of
Speaker 1: quitting and like morally incapable of quitting. He has friends
Speaker 1: rotting in prison. One of his friends, I think it
Speaker 1: was Rosette, wrote him and was like living like a
Speaker 1: lord over there in France while I rot in prisons.
Speaker 1: Fuck you know, because he's like living this nightmare of
Speaker 1: everyone dying around like whatever. Yeah, it constantly on their ready,
Speaker 1: And he has friends and brothers, two of them at
Speaker 1: least rotting in the ground. So he crosses over into
Speaker 1: Spain a final time in December nineteen fifty nine, but
Speaker 1: the French authorities had tipped off the fascists and so
Speaker 1: he and his companions four other anarchists with him. They're
Speaker 1: met with gunfire. They take refuge in a farmhouse which
Speaker 1: was soon laid siege by the fascists, and the fighting
Speaker 1: lasted all day and into the night, and during the
Speaker 1: night the anarchists tried to escape.
Speaker 3: They like.
Speaker 1: Three of them like pushed a cow to be like
Speaker 1: O cow go and then like try to run away
Speaker 1: while the people were like shooting the poor cow. They
Speaker 1: didn't succeed. They get gunned down. One of them hides
Speaker 1: and is later found executed. Sabate he has three bullet
Speaker 1: holes in him. I think his like leg, his butt,
Speaker 1: and then I can't remember where else, maybe his arm
Speaker 1: or something. And he decides to crawl away. And while
Speaker 1: he's crawling away in the dark, he runs across someone
Speaker 1: else who's crawling and the other crawler is like, don't shoot,
Speaker 1: I'm the lieutenant, and it's the lieutenant is trying to
Speaker 1: run away too, So Sabat shoots and kills the guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then keeps crawling, and every time he keeps running
Speaker 1: across police lines, he's like, don't shoot, I'm the lieutenant. Amazing,
Speaker 1: and he escapes, uh kind of yeah, Okay, he's the
Speaker 1: only one who gets out. He dropped Pepper on his
Speaker 1: tracks to confuse the scent dogs. I think he's learned
Speaker 1: his lesson from getting all last time dogs.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like his brother before him. He swam across a
Speaker 1: river despite bullet holes. He reached a train station, pointed
Speaker 1: a gun at the conductor, the gun talked to conductor,
Speaker 1: gave him a sandwich and let him ride sandwiches, and
Speaker 1: then slowed down before the next station so that he
Speaker 1: could jump off like ahead of time without getting caught.
Speaker 1: And then he hitched a ride into town. Cops found
Speaker 1: him feverish. He would have died of gangrene at this
Speaker 1: point no matter what, and he shot one before he
Speaker 1: was gunned down at eight thirty am on the fifth
Speaker 1: of January nineteen sixty. Most likely but unconfirmable. His last
Speaker 1: words were the last words of so many others, Viva
Speaker 1: la anarchy, long live anarchy. And the reason we think
Speaker 1: this is that the press kept reporting that his last
Speaker 1: words were Viva la morte long lived death, which is
Speaker 1: a fascist slogan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's milanissing for the Spanish legion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no way he would have said that. That
Speaker 1: was part of the press talking trash on him. So
Speaker 1: if he said viva la anything before he died, which
Speaker 1: he may or may not have, it was viva la anarchy.
Speaker 1: And I want to quote, I want to end with
Speaker 1: a quote from Alfredo Banano, who's an anarchist insurrectionist author,
Speaker 1: from the introduction to the book Sabat that most of
Speaker 1: but not all, of the history that I'm drawing from
Speaker 1: was pulled, and the quote is it is necessary to
Speaker 1: understand that we cannot wait for others, not even for
Speaker 1: other comrades, to give us the sign to act. The
Speaker 1: final indication this must come from us. Each of us,
Speaker 1: taken individually, must find his or her own commons and
Speaker 1: constitute small affinity groups, which are the essential element for
Speaker 1: giving life to the organization of attack that we need.
Speaker 1: Actions will come easily as a natural consequence of the
Speaker 1: decision to act together against the common enemy. Grand words,
Speaker 1: declarations to go down in history, the great organizations of
Speaker 1: the glorious past, and vast programs for the future are
Speaker 1: all useless if the will of the individual comrade is lacking.
Speaker 1: And in this perspective, Sabate was never alone. His struggle
Speaker 1: continues today. End quote.
Speaker 2: It's pretty great, Yeah, yeah, what a what a cool guy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's pretty sad that he died in nineteen sixty when
Speaker 2: like anti Francoism became more and more powerful. Yeah, in
Speaker 2: those following years, right, more student protests, more the broader
Speaker 2: based movement against Francoism and against Soviet communism like throughout
Speaker 2: Europe in that time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or Arrianism in general.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people thought authoritad is bad maybe, yeah, which it is.
Speaker 1: It's bad. You live in a fascist country, like a
Speaker 1: literal Hiham Franco. I call myself fascist.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I've incorporated the fascias dual symbology because I
Speaker 2: think it's good.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, but yeah, yeah, that's uh, that's that's Sabote,
Speaker 1: that's Elkko. I uh, what do you g?
Speaker 2: I enjoyed that, Yeah, I like.
Speaker 1: I got a lot out of reading it. I like,
Speaker 1: you know, because I barely knew about him, right, because
Speaker 1: he he wasn't presented as like one of the great thinkers.
Speaker 1: There's no like specific movement that you know. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a rudy he wasn't you know whatever. It wasn't all
Speaker 1: these people, but he was this person who did so much.
Speaker 3: For so long.
Speaker 1: I mean partly because he has seen so much, right
Speaker 1: you know, right, Yeah, I just I'm imagining him and
Speaker 1: those last days, Like he probably knew that wasn't going
Speaker 1: to work. He probably decided ten years earlier, he's just
Speaker 1: going to do this until they shoot.
Speaker 2: Him, right. Yeah. All of these people knew that they
Speaker 2: wouldn't die at home with their families, right, Yeah, they
Speaker 2: still kept doing it. Yeah. Yeah, it's nice sometimes to
Speaker 2: like there are of course a great anichi thinkers. We
Speaker 2: talk about them not, but they're also great anarchist doers
Speaker 2: and like, yeah, maybe we don't talk about them enough. Yeah,
Speaker 2: especially when they were like incredibly selfless and like lived
Speaker 2: by the morality that they preached. And yeah, like Spain
Speaker 2: seems to have been a bit of a hot spot
Speaker 2: for those people. Yeah, yeah, I really love his consistent morality.
Speaker 2: He's like, this is what I believe the world should
Speaker 2: be based on, and this is what I'm going to do.
Speaker 2: I can't let these bad things happen, but I will
Speaker 2: not be bloodthirsty. I will not use this.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was like walking around with millions of
Speaker 1: dollars constantly, right, and he wasn't like doing anything with
Speaker 1: that money. Besides, like giving it to the families of
Speaker 1: dead you know, dead comrades.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's Yeah, it's all very admirable. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but it creates a movement that like if you just
Speaker 2: normalize that shit, right, Like if you just normalize not
Speaker 2: acting as if you're the only person, you know, the
Speaker 2: sort of like low key solutism that capitalism encourages. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like and instead like acting as if you're a member
Speaker 2: of society. What was you all care for one another? Yeah,
Speaker 2: then like it's very easy to do, Like I see
Speaker 2: people do it, even like I rememberriting a scripture series
Speaker 2: about this border shit. But like it really struck me
Speaker 2: the other day that two people who were being detained
Speaker 2: by border patrol in the fucking in between the two
Speaker 2: border walls that we have that covered in dust and
Speaker 2: like you know, sleeping out of a top well, like,
Speaker 2: hey man, there's a camp where things are much worse,
Speaker 2: and then not allowing aid workers to go there. Could
Speaker 2: you help us by giving us as many bottles of
Speaker 2: water as you can so we can carry them up
Speaker 2: there for other people. Like it's very Yeah, it's cool
Speaker 2: when people, you know, I'm always inspired little things like
Speaker 2: that where I see people like not acting as if
Speaker 2: they're the only human beings on the planet, and like
Speaker 2: it's nice to be reminded that that's an option.
Speaker 1: No, And and even though this is like a story
Speaker 1: about action, right, m it's a story about mutual aid,
Speaker 1: and it's a story about trying to create a society,
Speaker 1: I'm mutual based on mutual aid.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like and like go ahead, go ahead, no.
Speaker 2: No, I think glasses from reading off his grip, there's
Speaker 2: a thing like where de Ruti looks as so that
Speaker 2: like another world is possible and it grows in our
Speaker 2: hearts every minute, right yea, where like I think what
Speaker 2: he's trying to say is that like it's possible because
Speaker 2: we're doing it, like rather than being like anarchism is
Speaker 2: a thing that we must struggle towards and like a
Speaker 2: long off distant it'll like, you know, which is the
Speaker 2: way kind of authoritarian comodies have justified doing authoritarian ship
Speaker 2: for so long. They anarchism is a thing we do
Speaker 2: every day in all our interactions, and yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: the world that we build ourselves with every every time
Speaker 2: we interact with another person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now that I like that, maybe that's a good
Speaker 1: good note to end on what do you want to
Speaker 1: plug maybe especially the kind of like border stuff like
Speaker 1: what if what if people who say live near the
Speaker 1: US border want to or or oh yeah, like how
Speaker 1: can people be useful about this like crisis that's happening
Speaker 1: right now where non dispersed champaign has been promoted at
Speaker 1: the southern border.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think things you can do If you have money,
Speaker 2: then you can give to groups like Altlado to Border
Speaker 2: Kindness who group out of San Diego, Armadillos, the Eagles
Speaker 2: of the Desert. Let's let's you can give to No
Speaker 2: Master and Worthy in Arizona. Those are people who are
Speaker 2: at there every weekend dropping water in the desert so
Speaker 2: that people don't die trying to come here, which is
Speaker 2: a good thing, and they're doing it because they want
Speaker 2: to help. If you have time, you can of course
Speaker 2: go out and drop water a place in the desert,
Speaker 2: joining one of those groups. If you're a citizen, that's
Speaker 2: perfectly legal and don't know they want to tell you
Speaker 2: it's not and you can. This is one of the
Speaker 2: things where you probably could make a difference by calling
Speaker 2: whichever person wearing a suit is supposed to represent you,
Speaker 2: Like I understand that they don't and for the most part,
Speaker 2: they don't care. But there was one person who came
Speaker 2: from a California state censor's office who was able to
Speaker 2: secure a mutilad group's access to where these people were camping,
Speaker 2: which makes a difference between people, I'm not exaggerating, between
Speaker 2: people loving and dying, right, And so they're calling those
Speaker 2: people and being like, why the fuck are you not
Speaker 2: that's one California state senator right in the biggest state
Speaker 2: in the country. Yeah, and no one else did shit.
Speaker 2: He was at Steve Padia if people want to know
Speaker 2: who that was, someone from his office. But this is
Speaker 2: probably a thing that you can call people make a
Speaker 2: difference on, and you can show up. Like every single
Speaker 2: time that's happened, right, this happened in twenty eighteen with
Speaker 2: the quote unquote caravan that came at the time of
Speaker 2: the midterms. The only people who show up to help
Speaker 2: are people just like you, Like, don't think that what
Speaker 2: you have is too small or too insignificant to make
Speaker 2: a difference, because like showing up with a bottle of
Speaker 2: water and a smile can change someone to day when
Speaker 2: the state is treating them like they're not a human being.
Speaker 2: Acknowledging their common humanity is really important. So if you
Speaker 2: have it within your means physically and financially to show up,
Speaker 2: show up otherwise, you know, giving your money and giving
Speaker 2: your time, and then like these people who were in
Speaker 2: the desert last week will hopefully be in your communities
Speaker 2: one day. Like refugees aren't just people who stop existing
Speaker 2: after they leave the border. They need your help. And
Speaker 2: when they come to your community, show them that they're welcome. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then if people don't want to make them welcome,
Speaker 2: then tell those people that their bigotry is not welcome.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, yeah, you know in any way that you
Speaker 2: see fit. Yeah, yeah, that's what I want to plug
Speaker 2: is doing all that shit.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, well that makes my plug film selfish, which
Speaker 1: is that I'm kickstarting a tabletop role playing game.
Speaker 2: No, it's good, it's good. It's good. We should we
Speaker 2: should remember that, like joy is important. Yeah, we continue
Speaker 2: in our struggles against the system which rips joy from us.
Speaker 1: And collaborative storytelling with your friends and like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I I yeah, I get a lot out of it.
Speaker 1: And so I'm currently kick starting a game, well currently
Speaker 1: as of this, you know, June twenty twenty three. If
Speaker 1: it's after that, you can probably just buy the game.
Speaker 1: It's called The Number City. It's been published by Strangers
Speaker 1: in a Tangled Wilderness, which is an anarchist publishing collective
Speaker 1: that I'm part of, and I'm real proud of it.
Speaker 1: I've been working on this game for like ten years
Speaker 1: in different forms, and you can do that, Sophie, you
Speaker 1: got anything you want to plug? Hot Dog book? Hot
Speaker 1: Dog book is out, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Braw Dog by Jamie loftis Yeah, I know, but.
Speaker 1: I pre ordered it to my house that I live at.
Speaker 1: But I don't spend a lot of my time at
Speaker 1: the house that I live at, so I don't have
Speaker 1: it yet.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go to an independent BOOKSTOREM.
Speaker 3: Can borrow my copy.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's good. Is your copy signed, Sophie?
Speaker 3: No, but I but when I see her in a week,
Speaker 3: she'll sign it.
Speaker 1: But no, No, I have a copy.
Speaker 3: But I've seen I've read before. It was in print
Speaker 3: because friendship.
Speaker 1: Because we are discussing friend of the pod, Jamie Loftus's
Speaker 1: book raw Dog, which is a history of hot dogs,
Speaker 1: that is going to be really good. Yeah, way more entertaining.
Speaker 1: I was like, no part of me that doubts that
Speaker 1: this wid incredibly entertaining and informa of book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, can I do my horrible capitalism line that?
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm supposed to please Sophie. Yeah.
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