Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to cool people who built a militant,
Speaker 2: popular social movement in face ofvere state repression and therefore
Speaker 2: splintered into a reformist wing that failed, as well as
Speaker 2: a more clandestine wing that also failed, but still changed
Speaker 2: the course of history. Your weekly podcast that does exactly
Speaker 2: what it says in the title almost every week. I'm
Speaker 2: your host, Margaret Kildroy. Well with me today, as my
Speaker 2: guest is see if I get this right, Robert Avon's
Speaker 2: host of the podcast derrier les Salude. Yeah, podcast that
Speaker 2: focuses on all the bad people in French history. I
Speaker 2: get that right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all of that's perfect. I continue to be amazed
Speaker 3: that the Apple people let that title into the into
Speaker 3: iTunes or whatever tunes they use these days. But I
Speaker 3: guess they knew brilliance when they saw it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, clearly because they didn't well or they were you know,
Speaker 2: just actually spoke French and didn't realize that derriere had
Speaker 2: a different meaning in English.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, so that's probably what happened.
Speaker 3: What are we hearing about today, magpie?
Speaker 2: Well, you ever had a piece of technology that you
Speaker 2: just couldn't stand, one that made you dare I say
Speaker 2: it feel like a bit of a luddite.
Speaker 3: Yes, everything that is more recent than about twenty twelve,
Speaker 3: with the exception what I'll say, this shows you how
Speaker 3: badly Star Trek the next generation hacked my brain. Anything
Speaker 3: that's like a cool screen, like a folding screen or
Speaker 3: a transparent screen, I'm still on board with. I love
Speaker 3: a cool screen. I can't get past that part of
Speaker 3: growing up on TNG. But yeah, self driving cars, no
Speaker 3: thank you, AI anything, no fucking thank you. I can't
Speaker 3: even really good on board with the tiktoks.
Speaker 2: I know, I'm like annoyed that I'm so actively annoyed
Speaker 2: that they're trying to ban it. Yeah, I also don't
Speaker 2: want to use it. But what I do want to
Speaker 2: do is remember to do the rest of my introduction,
Speaker 2: including introducing our producer Sophie Hi.
Speaker 5: Sophie Hi Robert doesn't know how to use most technology,
Speaker 5: but yet knows how to report on it.
Speaker 1: It's really fun for me. Yeah, his business kin impressive.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: I can't even tell you the amount of times of
Speaker 1: explained things to him and went. But you started as
Speaker 1: a tech turtalist.
Speaker 2: What are you talking about?
Speaker 1: How could you not do basic human thing in Robert's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, let me tell you about something nobody
Speaker 1: has ever heard of and explain it perfectly.
Speaker 2: I mean some of it is that like Abe Simpson
Speaker 2: saying it'll happen to you, because like my dad was
Speaker 2: an early adopter. He like didn't have a ton of
Speaker 2: money and he spent all of it on computers.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah that was my dad as well. Actually yeah,
Speaker 3: or more than more than he should have. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 3: and uh and no doesn't I mean, you know whatever
Speaker 3: I mean. But I'm starting to hit that point myself.
Speaker 3: I was like explaining computer things to my dad, and
Speaker 3: now I'm like, you know, one of my friends like
Speaker 3: takes the remote away from me while I'm trying to
Speaker 3: navigate the YouTube menu, and it's like give it to me, Grandma.
Speaker 3: Hya Garrison gives me no end of shit because I
Speaker 3: love having motions smoothing on Christ the most boomer thing
Speaker 3: I've ever said.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really upsetting.
Speaker 5: None of us would be anywhere with technology without our
Speaker 5: wonderful editor and who is he?
Speaker 2: Danel? That was a really good transition.
Speaker 1: It's almost like I'm a professional.
Speaker 2: Weird. Yeah, someone should actually pay you at this point.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we should get on that. Daniel is our audio editor.
Speaker 4: Everyone say saying hi to Daniel.
Speaker 5: Hi.
Speaker 3: Danel Hi, Daniel Hy Daniel.
Speaker 2: Our theme musical is written for us by unwoman. All right,
Speaker 2: so follow up question. You have the technology that makes
Speaker 2: you feel like a bit of a ludite. What's your
Speaker 2: take on industrial revolution and its consequences for humanity?
Speaker 3: You know, consequences is such a big word, and to
Speaker 3: be honest, I don't think you can really We're still
Speaker 3: waiting to see are we going to pull out of
Speaker 3: this climate tail spin that we are currently in before
Speaker 3: it it kills everything of value on the planet. And uh,
Speaker 3: I think I think until we get the final answer
Speaker 3: to that, we won't be able to say for sure.
Speaker 3: Because there's obviously there's a lot of horrible downsides, you know,
Speaker 3: fucking sweatshops and industrial war and shit. But there's also
Speaker 3: like labor saving devices. There's god knows how many people
Speaker 3: have had a chance to explore themselves art, creativity, just
Speaker 3: spend more time, you know, with their family because of
Speaker 3: labor saving devices. So I'm going to I'm going to say,
Speaker 3: like the this is still a neck and neck fight
Speaker 3: right now, Like we'll see, we'll see who hits the
Speaker 3: finish line first.
Speaker 2: Okay, I I feel like one team called climate change
Speaker 2: is pulled out ahead.
Speaker 3: It's yes, yes, look is that is that? Is that
Speaker 3: the best odds you're gonna get right now? Yes?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: But yeah, but I.
Speaker 2: Would put words in your mouth and say that appropriate
Speaker 2: technology is a beautiful thing and a worthwhile thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it certainly can be.
Speaker 2: And so sometimes people assume that to be a luttite
Speaker 2: is to be against all technology, and that the people
Speaker 2: fighting against the Industrial Revolution were against the idea of
Speaker 2: making life better. And today we're going to talk about them.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about the Luddites. Hell yeah, you
Speaker 2: know much about the Luddites. I know that they were
Speaker 2: skilled workers, mainly in the garment industry, like weaving and
Speaker 2: like that, which is just having done one part of that,
Speaker 2: like shearing the animal part of it.
Speaker 3: It's the whole. Like, the amount of human labor before
Speaker 3: we developed the machines we've developed was titanic. And my
Speaker 3: understanding is a lot of them did not like that
Speaker 3: these machines were coming in. At least certain types of
Speaker 3: the machines that came in to automate this process because
Speaker 3: they turned it from a skilled trade where people the
Speaker 3: people doing it were valuable and had some leverage because
Speaker 3: you needed it done and only a certain number of
Speaker 3: people knew how to do it to something that where
Speaker 3: they were all just kind of slotted in like little
Speaker 3: machines themselves, right, And they viewed it as like reducing
Speaker 3: the dignity of labor, among other problems.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say that that's a good overall look
Speaker 2: at the Luddites and what they were doing, is that
Speaker 2: they were opposed to what the machines were doing, rather
Speaker 2: than like that thing has too many spinning wheels.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The issue isn't I don't like machines because they
Speaker 3: do things better. It's I don't like the way these
Speaker 3: machines are being used to turn us into machines. Right.
Speaker 2: And also, interestingly, a lot of people are really proud
Speaker 2: of their work, and some of these machines, not all
Speaker 2: of them, but some of these machines were absolutely turning
Speaker 2: out junk. We're turning out inferior quality work.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: Interesting, I wonder if that's going to ever happen again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I'm not sure. I actually don't think that
Speaker 2: this has any reflection. This is very in the past.
Speaker 2: No modern, Okay, well I'll just get into it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In eighteen eleven, during the middle of the Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 2: a bunch of textile workers in northern England came together
Speaker 2: to fight against the mechanization of their industry. Labor organizing
Speaker 2: had been outlawed, so this didn't stop them. They formed
Speaker 2: a secret society and they went about smashing machines with hammers,
Speaker 2: burning down factories, and occasionally shooting back at the owners
Speaker 2: who were shooting and killing them on a regular basis.
Speaker 2: A bunch of them were men wearing dresses.
Speaker 3: Love to see it. I mean it's efficient, it.
Speaker 2: Is, Yeah, all that room to move, you know, I
Speaker 2: go hiking all the time in long skirts and people
Speaker 2: are like, what are you doing? That's gonna catch on things?
Speaker 2: And it's just like, I've been doing this for a
Speaker 2: very long time.
Speaker 3: When you're doing a lot of hallucinogens, you learn the
Speaker 3: best way to do certain things. And that's how I
Speaker 3: realized that the most efficient kind of dress was like
Speaker 3: a slightly longer than ankle link skirt. Yeah, like dress
Speaker 3: in terms of clothing, Yeah, totally stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the maxi skirt, this is the finest thing. It's
Speaker 2: pajamas you can wear all day.
Speaker 3: It's easy to make too. I used to make my
Speaker 3: own skirts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's actually the only thing I used to
Speaker 2: be able to sew.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I'm not a great just that.
Speaker 2: So these Luodites pushed England right to the brink of
Speaker 2: outright revolution. The other thing that I didn't realize coming
Speaker 2: into this was just how big of a deal the
Speaker 2: Luodite rebellion was. The government decided to declare its loyalty
Speaker 2: with the owners and not the people. Soldiers put down
Speaker 2: the uprising quite violently. A bunch of people were hanged,
Speaker 2: a bunch of people were deported to Australia, and the
Speaker 2: lud eight Rebellion was quelled. Its songs and its name
Speaker 2: live on, though mostly sadly are quite horribly misrepresented. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a few mainstream of it narratives available about our friends,
Speaker 2: the Luddites. The first, of course, is the simplistic version.
Speaker 2: And some people didn't like technology, so they smashed up
Speaker 2: machines because they hated change. Sure, and then if you're
Speaker 2: going galaxy brain chart, next up is the more historically
Speaker 2: informed one. The Luttites didn't hate technology, is a concept.
Speaker 2: They hated the automation of their jobs that robbed them
Speaker 2: of employment, like kind of like cashier's matt itself checkout
Speaker 2: lines or something. Sure you can keep going higher up
Speaker 2: you get to kind of you know, it's not that
Speaker 2: the Luddites had one job in a factory and suddenly
Speaker 2: had a different job in a factory. It's that they
Speaker 2: didn't have a factory job at all. They had a
Speaker 2: job as an artisan, right yeah. And the Luddite rebellion
Speaker 2: is positioned in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, and
Speaker 2: it was a revolt by those used to artistsan skilled
Speaker 2: labor and a life with some level of dignity and
Speaker 2: as you pointed out, some level of bargaining power, right yeah.
Speaker 2: And from this point of view, it is a revolt
Speaker 2: against the modern world. Is a revolt against what future
Speaker 2: friend of the Pod Woiam Blake, only seven years earlier
Speaker 2: had called the dark satanic mills of industry that were
Speaker 2: cropping up.
Speaker 3: M okay, but kind of makes them sound cool too.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: This is one of the problems when you hang out
Speaker 2: mostly in history books from like the early eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: a lot of people saying really cool radical stuff are
Speaker 2: framing it theologically, and so they're like confusing my like
Speaker 2: metal head conception of what makes something cool, you.
Speaker 3: Know, yeah, yeah, because I if like somebody was like, hey,
Speaker 3: I'm opened up like an occult themed like wool clothes shop,
Speaker 3: could I would you donate some of your wool to
Speaker 3: the dark satanic loom or whatever? Kah, Absolutely, that sounds
Speaker 3: based totally, Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2: And so most of the time, people who see the
Speaker 2: under these underlying issues still see the Luddites as like
Speaker 2: at best hopeless romantics who couldn't handle the changing of industry,
Speaker 2: like like the whalers who lost their job when lighting
Speaker 2: moved away from whale oil and towards petroleum, or the
Speaker 2: coal miners and Apalachia currently facing the decline of their
Speaker 2: industry right, And so it's this narrative of progress and
Speaker 2: these people who are like tragically left behind. I don't
Speaker 2: buy that narrative. I will present the industrial revolution not
Speaker 2: as a benign or neutral thing, but instead the birth
Speaker 2: of capitalism and industrial production that are, again I'm guessing,
Speaker 2: are going to have irrevocable danger to all of humanity
Speaker 2: in the world. They were not a tiny group doing
Speaker 2: an isolated rebellion. I want to position them as revolutionists
Speaker 2: in the middle of a decentralized global uprising in defense
Speaker 2: of the commons. And did you know that it started
Speaker 2: with a comet in the sky.
Speaker 3: A most good things do.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, Like I think that the well, I guess
Speaker 2: there's the Bible star thing, but I think overall, if
Speaker 2: you read like classic works of literature and there's like
Speaker 2: the omen of the comet in the sky. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: Comet of eighteen eleven, I think is where that comes from?
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: For two hundred and sixty days, from March eighteen eleven
Speaker 2: to January eighteen twelve, a massive comment held court in
Speaker 2: the heavens. Its tail was stretched out for everyone to see.
Speaker 2: Everyone in the northern hemisphere. Yeah, the Great Comet of
Speaker 2: eighteen eleven. It found its way into the writings of
Speaker 2: Tolstoy and Victor Hugo and William Blake. Tolstoy I wasn't
Speaker 2: alive yet, but it ends up in his writings, sure,
Speaker 2: And it was seen as a portent all over the
Speaker 2: world by all kinds of uprisings. Mostly people were like,
Speaker 2: you think the world's ending, and everyone's like pretty sure, Yeah,
Speaker 2: pretty sure.
Speaker 4: The world's ending.
Speaker 3: I think there's another thing psychologically going on here too.
Speaker 3: And I just say this because of like how I
Speaker 3: tend to interpret some of the things that I've experienced
Speaker 3: in my life that I could see as supernatural or whatever,
Speaker 3: which is that most people who recognize that like something
Speaker 3: is fucked up and they need to do something about
Speaker 3: all the fucked up shit are also like, but I
Speaker 3: don't want to like die or you know, sacrifice my
Speaker 3: life or whatever, and you're kind of looking for an
Speaker 3: excuse that like, Okay, it's the time to act, and
Speaker 3: anything that happens that's weird is like, well, shit, I
Speaker 3: guess it was that, right, Like that's as good as
Speaker 3: I've been looking for an excuse to start, you know,
Speaker 3: the process of fighting back. And I guess this comments
Speaker 3: as good as any.
Speaker 2: Honestly, that makes a lot of sense to me because
Speaker 2: it's like they knew it was a comet. Yeah, like
Speaker 2: they had astronomy and stuff. You know, it's still meant
Speaker 2: a lot to them symbolically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes sense to me. And there were a lot.
Speaker 2: Of uprisings in eighteen eleven and eighteen twelve, and some
Speaker 2: of them used very consciously the language of defending the Commons.
Speaker 2: Some of them didn't, but all of them, well, all
Speaker 2: the ones that I'm going to talk about, were fighting
Speaker 2: for a way of life that hadn't been defined by capitalism, colonialism,
Speaker 2: or the great enclosures of the Commons. To talk about
Speaker 2: the Commons, I talk about the comments reasonably often, but
Speaker 2: I think this is like one of the more important
Speaker 2: concepts to understand where we're at now is in short,
Speaker 2: lot of cultures, but most notably medieval England. Because they
Speaker 2: managed to export culture and language all over the world
Speaker 2: through power process of domination. You had what was known
Speaker 2: as the Commons, and the idea that most of the
Speaker 2: land was just kind of publicly owned, like well, why
Speaker 2: would you own that. It's not your house or yard.
Speaker 2: Of course, people can just go collect firewood, hunt gray's sheep,
Speaker 2: maybe grow some potatoes. It's land. Use it like land,
Speaker 2: everyone can use it. It's land, it's the commons. And
Speaker 2: then you get the enclosure of the commons, which was
Speaker 2: the privatization of it, which was literal and direct. And
Speaker 2: England was carved up by stone fences, hedgerows and ditches,
Speaker 2: dividing everything up. I like, whenever you see like an
Speaker 2: old movie and it's like medieval England and someone like
Speaker 2: runs through a hedge along the side of the road.
Speaker 2: It makes me feel like that couldn't be real, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: but that actually was, that was what was happening by
Speaker 2: late medieval England. Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess the last gasp of it is here
Speaker 3: out on the West coast, you have a shitload more
Speaker 3: BLM land, like out in Oregon and Washington and even
Speaker 3: big chunks of California. You regularly find yourself in these
Speaker 3: vast tracks of land that's just like, well, this is
Speaker 3: all of ours, right, Like it's still kind of the
Speaker 3: last gasp of that attitude, I guess because white people
Speaker 3: haven't been here as long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, totally. The public lands in the US are
Speaker 2: a really interesting and BLM is like more directly just
Speaker 2: used as like, huh, do whatever you want, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: And so this enclosure started in the medieval period and
Speaker 2: just kept ramping up through the nineteenth century. We've talked
Speaker 2: a bunch about the seventeenth century anti enclosure rebels. If
Speaker 2: people want to hear more about it, go listen to
Speaker 2: the episode with the about the diggers, the levelers and
Speaker 2: the ranters and then the Industrial Revolution kicked off and
Speaker 2: everything got more enclosurey by the end of the eighteenth century.
Speaker 2: By like the seventeen nineties or so, things are really
Speaker 2: fucking heated in this way. In the seventeen nineties there
Speaker 2: were twenty five parliamentary enclosure acts in England. By eighteen
Speaker 2: eleven there were one hundred and thirty three. Geez, and
Speaker 2: the enclosure wasn't just of land. Everything suddenly had to
Speaker 2: be discreete like with the tea in between the two
Speaker 2: e's and regimented rivers became canals. Language became more codified.
Speaker 2: You started getting like dictionaries and lexicons published, which overall, like,
Speaker 2: I'm not inherently against that. Right alongside of that, press
Speaker 2: censorship went up. Yeah, class divisions became even more pronounced,
Speaker 2: which I totally don't entirely understand, because England's like one
Speaker 2: of the most class divided places in the world. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: they speak a different language from each other. You know.
Speaker 2: At this point, during the enclosure of the commons, the
Speaker 2: word common takes on its negative connotations. Soldiers start living
Speaker 2: in they start living separate from everyone else, housed in barracks.
Speaker 2: The prison industrial complex kicks in prisons are being built everywhere.
Speaker 2: Prisoners are doing a lot of the labor for building
Speaker 2: this infrastructure in England. England became famous and actually mocked
Speaker 2: for building so many barracks and prisons, Like what the
Speaker 2: was wrong with these people? The enclosure also came for gender.
Speaker 2: To quote author Peter Liinbau quote, the household became part
Speaker 2: of the system of enclosure. The genders were separated by
Speaker 2: doctrine of the two spheres, the private sphere for women
Speaker 2: and the public sphere for men. The wife ceased to
Speaker 2: have a legal persona or existence. Yeah, And prior to
Speaker 2: the Industrial Revolution, most manufacturing was done by artisans working
Speaker 2: at home or in small workshops, which is now called
Speaker 2: kind of disparagingly a cottage industry. Right, These cottages became factories.
Speaker 2: And this was a way more efficient way to speed
Speaker 2: up the process of destroying the Earth's atmosphere. And it
Speaker 2: was also a substantial decreasing quality of life for the
Speaker 2: individual producers. It also had like some positive knock on effects, right,
Speaker 2: Like if you ever read about how long it took
Speaker 2: to make cloth back in the day, with yes and
Speaker 2: spinning and weaving, like that was your life was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean that is there's a really good
Speaker 3: a historian who does like a blog kind of analyzing
Speaker 3: myths about classical civilizations. He's did a multipiece one on
Speaker 3: the Spartans, trying to talk about like how oppressed the
Speaker 3: helots were. And one of the things he goes into
Speaker 3: is if you are a woman and a family, most
Speaker 3: of your life is making and maintaining clothing for your family,
Speaker 3: and not to have multiple outfits just to be able
Speaker 3: because you're wearing them every day. They're getting warned by
Speaker 3: outside work and when you're taxing you know half or what,
Speaker 3: Like it's like eighty hours a week for a lot
Speaker 3: of people for basically your whole life, like maintaining forty
Speaker 3: to eighty hours a week, depending you know, on a
Speaker 3: couple of things, maintaining and whatnot, clothing for your family,
Speaker 3: like it is like a nightmare burden.
Speaker 2: No, Yeah, I remember reading once that it was like
Speaker 2: to make a square yard of linen was about a
Speaker 2: week's worth of labor. Yeah, someone who knew what they
Speaker 2: were doing.
Speaker 3: There are very few people alive today who do anything
Speaker 3: as hard as maintaining clothing for a family back in
Speaker 3: like that period of time. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: No, And that's what's so frustrating, right, He's like, well,
Speaker 2: I love my dishwasher, right, yeah, yeah, it's great. Yeah
Speaker 2: the time, I don't, and I didn't have one until
Speaker 2: I was, you know, in my late thirties, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: but you know, and I was like, oh, I don't
Speaker 2: mean one of those wash dishes. That's meditative. I love that.
Speaker 2: I just like rinse off my dishes, throw them in
Speaker 2: the dishwasher, like yeah, no it is. It's and this
Speaker 2: is what's so frustrating, because yeah, it's very natural to
Speaker 2: look at this and be like, well, I don't want
Speaker 2: to go back to everyone having to hand weave everything, right.
Speaker 3: Of course not, I would just freeze to death.
Speaker 2: The very first factories of the Industrial Revolution textile factories
Speaker 2: producing the cloth that got sent out to the various cottages.
Speaker 2: So that was the first part to be industrialized. Yeah,
Speaker 2: textile was big business in England. It was the largest
Speaker 2: industry in England. A million people around ten percent of
Speaker 2: the country was involved in the wool industry alone. Then
Speaker 2: cotton started coming in from India and the US and
Speaker 2: that was even easier to work. You get your first
Speaker 2: textile machine, the stocking frame, invented in fifteen eighty nine.
Speaker 2: People of all genders wore stockings and not pants, and
Speaker 2: this was made of knitted wool, and so this was
Speaker 2: a way of automating or at least rapid incredibly speeding
Speaker 2: up that process. The queen was like, if you patent that,
Speaker 2: it'll fuck over all the poor people know it'll trash
Speaker 2: her economy, so she didn't let it be patented. And
Speaker 2: during the chunks of the medieval period you have this
Speaker 2: thing in England that you still see today where the
Speaker 2: crown is seen as what protects the commoners from like
Speaker 2: poverty and the rich you know what later becomes the
Speaker 2: capitalist class. But slowly, surely knitting was automated.
Speaker 3: And that makes sense to me, like the role of
Speaker 3: the because if you're the queen or the king or whatever,
Speaker 3: you're on top of your social hierarchy. Everyone below them
Speaker 3: is constantly jockeying and fighting for power and influence, and
Speaker 3: the primary way to do that is by finding new
Speaker 3: ways to fuck over the poor, Whereas if you're on top,
Speaker 3: you're not jockeying for power over the others, but you
Speaker 3: do always have to keep an eye on like, are
Speaker 3: the poor pissed off enough that they might kill us.
Speaker 3: All right, so you're the only one that hit that
Speaker 3: is really focused on that.
Speaker 2: No, you're right, that is such a good point. That
Speaker 2: is where you're h Yeah, that's that's uh. You're going
Speaker 2: too far yet, Yeah, but you know what doesn't go
Speaker 2: too far except some of the ads we've been getting lately.
Speaker 3: Occasionally handled yes, yes, the other.
Speaker 2: Ads that aren't in support of genocidal regimes or becoming
Speaker 2: jailers don't do either of those two things.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: But anything else that's being sold, you should buy it.
Speaker 2: And we're back.
Speaker 3: I feel bad Margaret because you said jailor, and I
Speaker 3: forgot to immediately respond jailor. I hardly know her. That's
Speaker 3: my bit, a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2: It's a good bit. It's pretty original, it's.
Speaker 3: Great, it's great. Sophie loves it. Sophie loves that. I
Speaker 3: do it. Anytime someone says anything with an er at
Speaker 3: the end, Yeah, that's Robert. I barely know air that
Speaker 3: to see perfect. It always does.
Speaker 1: Don't encourge this magfi.
Speaker 4: Sorry.
Speaker 3: Sorry.
Speaker 2: By the mid seventeen hundreds, you've got what's called a
Speaker 2: spinning Jenny, which automates a lot of yarn spinning inventors
Speaker 2: saw this machine smashed in front of him, and he
Speaker 2: had the fleetown.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking back to when those local youths in Oakland
Speaker 3: destroyed that self driving car the other week. Oh hell yeah,
Speaker 3: I haven't seen this yet, lit it on fire. Yeah good.
Speaker 2: And it's not that the concept of a car that
Speaker 2: drives itself is inherently bad. But within the system that
Speaker 2: we live in, it's going to drive you to jail.
Speaker 3: It's going to drive you to jail. It's going to
Speaker 3: take money from poor people and give all of it
Speaker 3: to the same four guys who were already taking money
Speaker 3: from poor people. Like that is the issue.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and that is what is happening here with industrialization.
Speaker 2: You're not like a lot of people at this point
Speaker 2: are using machines for their work, and they've found ways
Speaker 2: to be skilled laborers using these machines.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I know a lot of people who get wool, either
Speaker 3: from their own animals or from other people animals in
Speaker 3: spin it and use it to make clothing. And they
Speaker 3: don't have to spend eighty hours a week to barely
Speaker 3: maintain one guard because they use modern tools to do
Speaker 3: all that. They just are also artisans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and so soon enough the spinning jenny
Speaker 2: is attached to a water wheel, and then you get
Speaker 2: the steam engine. And suddenly, because you have a steam engine,
Speaker 2: you have way more coal mines, and then you have
Speaker 2: to build canals to connect them all with convict labor.
Speaker 2: And there's factories with smoke stacks all over the countryside.
Speaker 2: And who worked the factories. Well, it's fucking England, so
Speaker 2: it's children as young as six years old. Two thirds
Speaker 2: of the workers in these early factories were children, especially
Speaker 2: orphans hired out essentially slave labor, hired from orphanages and workhouses. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so people are like, oh, we don't like this,
Speaker 2: and later people are like, oh, they clearly just hate
Speaker 2: not working all the time. They're like, no, the smoke stacks,
Speaker 2: the child slavery anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't really know what the cancer is, but
Speaker 3: we're pretty sure this is causing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we shouldn't be breathing this, that's all I know.
Speaker 2: So the comments are enclosed and people start seeing their
Speaker 2: way of life disappear and their quality of life drop dramatically,
Speaker 2: and they didn't accept it. They fought back. Sometimes they
Speaker 2: did it chaotically. Sometimes they did it in an organized fashion,
Speaker 2: and they did this all over the world. I hate
Speaker 2: to give the US Revolution much credit. If you've heard
Speaker 2: any other episode, it just me talking shit on the
Speaker 2: US Revolution. But it really did change the world, and
Speaker 2: this wave of republicanism spread over Europe, inspiring the French
Speaker 2: Revolution soon after, and people started being like, hey, what
Speaker 2: if we had like rights?
Speaker 3: Like what if? Like what an idea?
Speaker 2: You know? And by seventeen ninety two you have the
Speaker 2: London Corresponding Society, which is one of the first working
Speaker 2: class organizations. It is basically a proto trade union. It
Speaker 2: was started by a shoemaker and some buds. It was
Speaker 2: open to everyone and it fought for democracy. So the
Speaker 2: government passed the Combination Acts that made union organizing illegal.
Speaker 2: And uh, one thing we've seen time and time again
Speaker 2: is that if you make union organizing illegal, people don't
Speaker 2: sit down and shut up. They start sabotaging things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you have, you have you have taken the
Speaker 3: option of them to fight without destroying your property or
Speaker 3: your body. So they're going to do one of those
Speaker 3: two things right, and they usually even start with just property.
Speaker 3: And the lights are an absolute example of this. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Thomas Hardy was the shoemaker that helped found that organization. Well,
Speaker 3: I know the only cast for that guy if we're
Speaker 3: making a movie about this. Oh, I don't know Tom Harwait.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I don't know any Yep, Okay, that's an actor.
Speaker 3: That's Mad Max and in Fury Road. Oh ship, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, yeah,
Speaker 3: he can do this job. Sure.
Speaker 2: I think sometimes people would like, Oh, Margaret, don't any
Speaker 2: pop culture references. I watch a ton of movies and TV.
Speaker 2: I'm just face blind and don't remember names.
Speaker 3: That's fine.
Speaker 2: So Thomas Hardy from Mad Max is saved by the
Speaker 2: work of a man who is often called the first
Speaker 2: anarchist in Western society, William Godwin. He comes way or
Speaker 2: before Prudin, and he's way less of a dick. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because there's this click of aristocracy around this time, connected
Speaker 2: with the Romantic poets who are going to fight hard
Speaker 2: and at personal expense and risk for the working class,
Speaker 2: including fighting for the Luddites. One day, I'm going to
Speaker 2: do this whole episode where I talk about William Godwin
Speaker 2: and his wife Mary Wolstoncraft, who wrote one of the
Speaker 2: foundational feminist books. And I had a kid named Mary Shelley,
Speaker 2: who invented science fiction, who married Percy Shelley, the romantic poet,
Speaker 2: and upstart. But that'll be another episode, although most of
Speaker 2: those characters are going to come in today because they're
Speaker 2: all part of the lodge shit in some weird way.
Speaker 2: So Godwin puts pressure on is like use of the fact.
Speaker 4: That he's like a rich bastard or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, to put pressure and be like, hey, maybe
Speaker 2: don't hang a guy for starting to work in men's association.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's gonna cause some trouble. And people are fighting
Speaker 2: back because people are always fighting back. And one of
Speaker 2: the people who fought back was his kid who probably
Speaker 2: didn't exist. And his name's Ned lud Ah. Yeah, he's
Speaker 2: a Robin Hood figure, partly in that he probably didn't exist.
Speaker 2: But it's seventeen seventy nine. According to most versions of
Speaker 2: this story. You've got this kid named Edward Ludd who
Speaker 2: lives in the Midlands in England, and he's apprentice. He's
Speaker 2: learning the knitting frame and he has a shitty boss
Speaker 2: sometimes it's his dad, and he's not so sure that
Speaker 2: doing the same repetitive motion his entire life is like
Speaker 2: his best plan and so he's a bit of a slacker,
Speaker 2: so he's whipped for slacking. So he gets a big
Speaker 2: old hammer, he smashes up the machine, and he fucking
Speaker 2: takes off to Sherwood Forest. Because this happens in fucking Noddingham.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean this is very familiar, though, Sophie and
Speaker 3: I have ot with a very similar labor problem here
Speaker 3: at cools Out.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmmm m.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that Garrison's not allowed a hammer anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and is only allowed in the four is living
Speaker 2: in the forest.
Speaker 3: Yes, that was happening before as well.
Speaker 2: But oh, okay, so young Gearet disappears into legend or
Speaker 2: is entirely made up and is sort of the paragon
Speaker 2: of machine smashing. By eighteen oh two, you've got another
Speaker 2: machine smashing that we can say isn't legend. There's been
Speaker 2: a bunch of machine smashings before this. Oh there's actually
Speaker 2: this thing. It didn't make it in my script, but
Speaker 2: I had this conversation with a friend of mine who's
Speaker 2: like a historian. He knows a lot about like the
Speaker 2: revolutions of eighteen forty eight and the birth of socialism
Speaker 2: and all this stuff. And he was telling me about
Speaker 2: how the old heads the old Blood Heights when they're
Speaker 2: like showing up to the eighteen forty eight revolution and
Speaker 2: they're like, ah, it's time to throw it down, it's
Speaker 2: time to smash machines. And everyone from the eighteen forty
Speaker 2: eight revolution is like, seize the machines. We're gonna seize
Speaker 2: the machinery. And everyone from eighteen forty eight is like,
Speaker 2: that's what we said, smash it. And there's just a
Speaker 2: culture difference, a generation.
Speaker 4: Gap, if you will.
Speaker 2: Eighteen oh two, there's another machine smashing that is not legend.
Speaker 2: Some folks torched a whole less factory, doing nearly a
Speaker 2: million dollars of damages in today's money. The owner claimed
Speaker 2: that an apprentice had held him at gunpoint while his
Speaker 2: friends burned the place. More power to that kid if
Speaker 2: it was true, but it probably wasn't. Despite lack of evidence,
Speaker 2: the kid was arrested, he refused to talk or confess,
Speaker 2: and he was hanged on his nineteenth birthday Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: Thousands of people came to his funeral. They loved hanging
Speaker 2: we'll talk about it actually a little bit later. England
Speaker 2: loved hanging people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 2: He died in early martyr of the war against capitalism. Yeah,
Speaker 2: more sabotage abound, and sometimes workers successfully won things like
Speaker 2: not taking a pay cut and not being replaced by machines.
Speaker 2: And this fight for the commons was happening all over
Speaker 2: the world. It ties into all kinds of struggles. The
Speaker 2: real MVP toolbreakers are the slaved black people of North America,
Speaker 2: and slave people in the South broke their tools so
Speaker 2: much that Southern tools weighed three times what northern tools
Speaker 2: did because they had to make them so that people
Speaker 2: couldn't break them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, in eighteen eleven, with that comet in the sky,
Speaker 2: the US saw the largest slave uprising in its history,
Speaker 2: at least by numbers of participants. The eighteen eleven German
Speaker 2: Coast Uprising said hundreds of folks, including a lot of Maroons,
Speaker 2: people who are already living free, who are like leaving
Speaker 2: their Maroon communities to come put their lives on the
Speaker 2: line free more people. They marched on New Orleans. It
Speaker 2: didn't go well. Ninety five of them died.
Speaker 3: I mean, most trips to New Orleans don't go well. Right,
Speaker 3: We can all be honest about that great city.
Speaker 2: But yeah, a lot of people die, A.
Speaker 3: Lot of people die there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they only killed two white people and the slavers
Speaker 2: put their heads on pikes and left them by the
Speaker 2: side of the road and shape full.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh wow, Like, well Roman, that's that's pre medieval.
Speaker 2: That's okay.
Speaker 3: I mean it wasn't heads. But like when the Romans
Speaker 3: defeated Spartacus's army, they crucified I mean presumably, I think
Speaker 3: it was for miles and miles, like on the road
Speaker 3: for miles leading to Rome. They just lighted it with
Speaker 3: crucified bodies.
Speaker 5: Now tell me how to open a PDF document.
Speaker 2: See, I was just thinking. I was like, well, I
Speaker 2: really like having Robert on because because Robert's deep dives
Speaker 2: of history are slightly temporally and geographically different than mine.
Speaker 2: Mine lean a little bit more towards like Ireland and
Speaker 2: Norway or like Finland and you know, dark ages, and
Speaker 2: yours are a little bit more Grecian and Roman.
Speaker 3: I absolutely am one of those people who thinks about
Speaker 3: the ancient Roman Empire every single day of my life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but no neither of us know how to know
Speaker 2: anything useful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you yell at Garrison until they fix it.
Speaker 2: You can't. Garrison's living in the forest, so now I
Speaker 2: yell at my roommates. Oh true, it's true.
Speaker 3: He doesn't work, he doesn't pay rent. He just fixes
Speaker 3: my machines when they break every day.
Speaker 2: That's not a bad deal. It's a solid deal, I think, yeah,
Speaker 2: for everyone. So the same year, eighteen eleven, you've also
Speaker 2: got the Red Sticks, who've covered a bit in the
Speaker 2: episode about negro Fort in Florida, and they are indigenous
Speaker 2: warriors fighting for their way of life, and it's it's
Speaker 2: tied in with this indigenous man named Tokumsa who was
Speaker 2: trying to create a pan tribal alliance to drive out
Speaker 2: all the white people and reclaim a way of life
Speaker 2: best based on sharing things in common. He talked specifically
Speaker 2: about this, saying that indigenous folks saw quote their lands
Speaker 2: as common property of the whole. So one white kid
Speaker 2: who is raised by the osage at this time, Salta,
Speaker 2: comes to speak, and later he wrote about it, and
Speaker 2: he also wrote about the economy of those age people
Speaker 2: at the time. He wrote, quote, all their various products
Speaker 2: are in general distributed in proportion to the members of
Speaker 2: each family concerned in their vironment, though sometimes no distribution
Speaker 2: takes place, but all draw as they want from the
Speaker 2: supplying source as a common reservoir till it is exhausted.
Speaker 2: Whenever a scarcity prevails, they reciprocally lend, or rather share
Speaker 2: with each other their respective stores till they are all exhausted.
Speaker 3: Oh, that seems like a good way to live.
Speaker 2: No, I know, right, it's just realizing that like a
Speaker 2: lot of cultures all over the world, including a bunch
Speaker 2: of European ones, were doing this until capitalism and enclosure.
Speaker 3: It's this thing you obviously, you get a lot in
Speaker 3: American culture and then European culture of like idolizing indigenous
Speaker 3: peoples and like, no, they were not like angels, right, Like,
Speaker 3: no one is. You know, they had their wars, they
Speaker 3: had their war crimes. It's just that because for a
Speaker 3: wide variety of reasons, they all tended to embrace the
Speaker 3: idea that members of a community had responsibilities in common
Speaker 3: to each other, which is like and nehema to large
Speaker 3: aspects of Western civilisation, and particularly American Western civilization. Like no,
Speaker 3: you will you have no responsibilities, only only to get
Speaker 3: ahead personally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, which is wild because that is where the
Speaker 2: tension is strongest, right, yeah, you have yeah, down in
Speaker 2: South America. So the Napoleonic Wars are going on in Europe. Right,
Speaker 2: Napoleon invaded Portugal and Spain in eighteen oh eight. He
Speaker 2: installs his brother as the king. This causes a crisis
Speaker 2: in Latin American colonies, or rather opportunities for wars of independence.
Speaker 2: And among the many factions involved in these struggles are
Speaker 2: groups that were dismissed as hopelessly utopian for like not
Speaker 2: being moderates. Right, and these were groups of indigenous folks,
Speaker 2: black folks, and European idealists fighting alongside one another to
Speaker 2: maintain pastoralism and a culture of hunting to defend the
Speaker 2: fucking commons. You have this first Republic of Venezuela that
Speaker 2: only lasted from eighteen eleven to eighteen twelve. And Simon Boulevard,
Speaker 2: who is the Great South America. In eighteen twelve he
Speaker 2: wrote this manifesto where he blames the failure of this
Speaker 2: republic on quote certain worthy visionaries who, conceiving in their
Speaker 2: minds some ethereal republic, have sought to attain political perfection,
Speaker 2: assuming the perfectibility of the human race. So I'm gonna
Speaker 2: have to know mull on that. Okay, I don't know
Speaker 2: much about Boulevard much. I only know, like, yeah, I
Speaker 2: have all these like holes in my history research that
Speaker 2: I'm slowly filling.
Speaker 3: You know, from what I can tell, he was pretty rad.
Speaker 3: He was also like a direct inspiration or at least
Speaker 3: his image, and it was used by a lot of
Speaker 3: people who sucked ass. Like that makes sense, Yeah, one
Speaker 3: of those lots.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure no right wing people have fought against
Speaker 2: maternity like the lines. And I point out all these
Speaker 2: people to because people tend to view the Luddite is
Speaker 2: either these hopelessly isolated flash in the pan rebels, or
Speaker 2: they tend to view them as like the smartest and
Speaker 2: uniquely best rebels. The only people who could have saved us.
Speaker 2: The English are the only people who could figure out
Speaker 2: this whole rebellion thing. But their tactics and some of
Speaker 2: their ideals came from the colonies, and at least partly
Speaker 2: they came from Ireland. Much like all of our sponsors,
Speaker 2: we are sponsored only by Irish companies. Any of the
Speaker 2: following accents, you should just assume that they use a
Speaker 2: leprechaun as their.
Speaker 3: Logo, and you know, drink Guinness. If you have any
Speaker 3: water in your house, throw it out block your taps
Speaker 3: with concrete and pure Guinness diet. Yeah, breakfast to champions.
Speaker 3: Also Guinness water balloons. Okay, it's nice out now, you know,
Speaker 3: with global warming and the way to keep cool is
Speaker 3: to fill water balloons up with any alcohol. I'm just
Speaker 3: gonna go do a marathon with a camelback of Guinness. Okay.
Speaker 4: True story.
Speaker 3: Today.
Speaker 2: Today, I was, I was trying to look something up.
Speaker 2: I was, I was looking at something about preparedness, and
Speaker 2: I was I was thinking about how hard tack. Honey
Speaker 2: and liquor are the things that like last forever, right, Yeah?
Speaker 2: And I so I typed into Google can you live
Speaker 2: off of only liquor? And the answer that popped up
Speaker 2: was the suicide in Crisis health hotline.
Speaker 3: That's fun. I was like, I don't know that that's good.
Speaker 3: That's good stuff. You really you really don't?
Speaker 2: I drink for ritual purposes, that's my current line. I do.
Speaker 3: I just do a lot of rituals. Yeah, you're very spiritual.
Speaker 3: I'm a very spiritual kind of guy. One time I
Speaker 3: had this ritual in San Francisco where we just we
Speaker 3: poured two handles of tequila into a camelback and then
Speaker 3: threw a bunch of lime popsicles in there, so it
Speaker 3: just melted throughout the day and you can go into
Speaker 3: stores with a camel back nobody notices.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Total, I saw this video on TikTok and I know
Speaker 5: how to use it.
Speaker 1: Sorry.
Speaker 5: Olds of this person who was going somewhere but didn't
Speaker 5: want to spend money on expensive drinks, so she brought
Speaker 5: a glass purse and filled it up with different layers
Speaker 5: of jello, like alcoholic jello.
Speaker 3: But you have to know, I'm sorry, you have to
Speaker 3: stop first. Glass.
Speaker 5: So it was like it was you know, I sorry,
Speaker 5: this is you don't seem to know how to explain
Speaker 5: this to us. It was a bat so it was
Speaker 5: made out of glass in the shape of a purse.
Speaker 5: I will send it to you so you can what
Speaker 5: I'm sayings. And then they didn't have to pay for
Speaker 5: drinks the whole night, and it was in the and
Speaker 5: it was in a rainbow. It was a rainbow jel
Speaker 5: alcoholic jello shots. See that's what I said. I was
Speaker 5: with I was with them. But then they decided in
Speaker 5: order to blend in said beverage, said said beverage things
Speaker 5: so they don't get caught bringing in something like that.
Speaker 2: Usually opaque containers would be one's first go to.
Speaker 5: Well, a lot of a lot of like bigger places
Speaker 5: make you bring clear bags.
Speaker 2: Oh so interesting, it was, so that was the part.
Speaker 1: They like put regular objects in it to make it
Speaker 1: look more real. And then they put like fingernail clippers
Speaker 1: in there, and I was, I was like you.
Speaker 2: I was like you, I appreciate the work. I appreciate
Speaker 2: people putting in the work. Yeah, I was. I appreciate too,
Speaker 2: But you lost.
Speaker 1: Me with the fingernail clippers, respectfully.
Speaker 2: I just had the leather jacket where the pockets went
Speaker 2: straight into the lining, so I could fit an entire
Speaker 2: six pack in the lining of my jacket. And I
Speaker 2: was a wraith thin nineteen year old, so it didn't
Speaker 2: affect Myselfette.
Speaker 3: I bought from a place in Dublin, actually River Island.
Speaker 3: They had this like pirate jacket, was like a peacoat
Speaker 3: that was slightly pirate styled enough that like it looked neat,
Speaker 3: but not enough that you looked like you were like
Speaker 3: going to a rin fair while wearing it. And I
Speaker 3: had a friend tear out the lining and replace it
Speaker 3: with twenty different kinds of pockets. Made out of twenty
Speaker 3: different kinds of fabric, including it had two pockets in
Speaker 3: the back, each of which could fit a handle a liquor.
Speaker 3: So when I was living in India, you can't take
Speaker 3: liquor on the subway to get to like parties and stuff,
Speaker 3: I would just throw a couple of handles in the
Speaker 3: back of my pirate jacket and like, yeah, roll on
Speaker 3: out exactly.
Speaker 2: And so I hope that all of the ads are
Speaker 2: for things that will destroy you, like glass purses and liquor.
Speaker 3: Here they go and we're back. Yeah, if any one
Speaker 3: makes bespoke coats, I missed my old pirate jacket and
Speaker 3: I don't know where to get a new one. Hit
Speaker 3: me up.
Speaker 2: So in seventeen ninety eight, Ireland had tried to do
Speaker 2: a rising, and we've mentioned it basically every episode for
Speaker 2: the past year.
Speaker 3: Is this the Fenians?
Speaker 2: No, the Fenians are the eighteen fifty ish, Yes, I think, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: although actually now I'm not actually sure. I think this
Speaker 2: is God. They kept having so many uprisings. This is
Speaker 2: the one that I mostly remember as the one where
Speaker 2: the Catholics and the Protestants were one hundred percent, were
Speaker 2: very much together, and then after this. The way that
Speaker 2: it was put down is that the Protestants were given.
Speaker 4: Special treatment by the English.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a ton of Irish people had to emigrate
Speaker 2: as a result of this failed rising, and a fuck
Speaker 2: ton of them ended up in these working class towns
Speaker 2: in northern England. And the Irish had this traditional method
Speaker 2: of solving certain problems, which is that you send a
Speaker 2: threatening letter letter that says stop the shit or kill you,
Speaker 2: and then you swear an oath of secrecy and valor
Speaker 2: to your friends at the pub. You put on a dress,
Speaker 2: you paint your face to disguise it, and you go
Speaker 2: break things or burn things or kill people in the
Speaker 2: name of these secret societies that have declared allegiance to
Speaker 2: folkloric and mythic heroes. We covered this most extensively on
Speaker 2: the Molly McGuire's episodes Ribbon Men or another one of these.
Speaker 3: They really had it all figured out, I really did.
Speaker 2: And that's the Luddite style. And so they had King
Speaker 2: lud And if you're going to have a king, it
Speaker 2: should be a king who doesn't exist, just saying absolutely.
Speaker 3: Tolkien understood this more or less. I know, I know
Speaker 3: this is sort of accidentally the yeah to anarchism.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, so there's two more side characters. I want
Speaker 2: to cover the poets you have William Blake. I love
Speaker 2: William Blake. My dog Rentrew is named after a character
Speaker 2: from William Blake. Blake is like Godwin in this proto
Speaker 2: a tradition. He is a printmaker who does engravings and
Speaker 2: on the side he writes weird fucking theological political tracks
Speaker 2: and illustrated strange limited edition zines. And read the Marriage
Speaker 2: of Heaven and Hell. You can't go wrong. He wrote
Speaker 2: a poem called Jerusalem in eighteen ten, the year before
Speaker 2: the Luddite Rising, and it's basically about the Luddite Rising,
Speaker 2: just a year before it happened. It is a poem
Speaker 2: that is a call to arms to destroy the dark
Speaker 2: Satanic mills and build heaven on earth in England, and
Speaker 2: it ends with I will not cease from mental fight,
Speaker 2: nor shall my sword sleep in my hand till we
Speaker 2: occupy the commons to green and chill our baked lands.
Speaker 2: Ju isn't like factories.
Speaker 3: People used to be able to, used to be better
Speaker 3: at writing, like on a per cap at a basis,
Speaker 3: good writers are are still good writers. But man, yeah,
Speaker 3: on a bike.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because even like we'll talk about a little bit later,
Speaker 2: some of the like random working class Ludites also just
Speaker 2: put out amazing and other ones wrote amazing prose that
Speaker 2: was like, oh, we're gonna kill you, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just cause you didn't have a lot else
Speaker 3: to think about at night other than like, how can
Speaker 3: I best describe my feelings? Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of fermented things and not a lot
Speaker 2: of TV.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the next year, the comic comes to the sky,
Speaker 2: which the Luddites called a bright flaming sword, which and
Speaker 2: everyone knew it was a comment because they're smart, but
Speaker 2: it was more than that to them. And let it
Speaker 2: be Blake's sword that would not sleep in his hand
Speaker 2: until we occupy the Commons. Then you have Percy Shelley.
Speaker 2: Percy Shelley is in that family of nobility who are
Speaker 2: like trying to do good. His father's William Godwin, who
Speaker 2: helps save the life of Tom Hardy. Percy wrote ozy Mandaeis,
Speaker 2: which is one of my favorite poems. His wife is
Speaker 2: way cooler and more interesting than overall, and she's way
Speaker 2: better remembered. She's Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein and
Speaker 2: Frankenstein comes out in eighteen eighteen and is almost certainly
Speaker 2: inspired by the Luddite rebellion and the war against machinery
Speaker 2: in general. At the end of it, the Monster says
Speaker 2: to Frankenstein, you are my creator, but I am your master.
Speaker 2: And so my like red strings connecting history board that
Speaker 2: I keep in my mind at all times. It's basically like, well,
Speaker 2: the genre of science fiction exists because of a working
Speaker 2: class people with hammers and matches who tried to stop
Speaker 2: the industrial revolution.
Speaker 3: That actually makes complete sense. Yeah, that makes total sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And Percy's all right, or at least
Speaker 2: super interesting. They're all Polly, they're all a polycule and
Speaker 2: like it just kind of and like, I do.
Speaker 3: Love how this this makes me appreciate the character of
Speaker 3: Miles O'Brien even more, like a working class Irish union
Speaker 3: man in the future of space.
Speaker 2: Oh totally totally. And so Percy's important part of the
Speaker 2: story comes after the Luodites, because it's stuff he writes
Speaker 2: and publishes in eighteen twelve, so kind of in the
Speaker 2: middle of it, and it's a good way to get
Speaker 2: a sense of what's going on and what impact the
Speaker 2: Luddites had and some of the ideological framework of the time. Also,
Speaker 2: he's a vegetarian and sober. If you need another XVX hero,
Speaker 2: there's just way more of them in history than I expected.
Speaker 2: He is super young during all of this, but he
Speaker 2: dies at twenty nine in a boting accident, so he
Speaker 2: really crammed a lot of living into those three decades.
Speaker 2: He's all about the rights of the people and he's
Speaker 2: all about defending the commons. He wrote a manifesto called
Speaker 2: Declaration of Rights that starts off government has no rights.
Speaker 2: It is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose
Speaker 2: of securing their own and he goes on to say
Speaker 2: the rights of man are liberty and an equal participation
Speaker 2: in the commonage of nature because again the commons.
Speaker 3: Man. I love the economy of his word usage totally.
Speaker 3: He gets everything that matters in such so succinct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally. And he's a strange poet guy. So
Speaker 2: the first thing he does when he writes his manifesto
Speaker 2: is he puts a copy into a bottle and throws
Speaker 2: it into the sea. And then he takes another one
Speaker 2: and he puts it in a hot air balloon and
Speaker 2: like sets it up into the air, but he also
Speaker 2: publishes it and distributes it based and the next the
Speaker 2: next year he writes a poem that becomes, according to
Speaker 2: author Peter Liinbow, the Bible of the working class for
Speaker 2: the next two generations. It's called Queen Mave and it
Speaker 2: gets its name from the female warrior deity from Ireland,
Speaker 2: mave M. It's spelled ma Ab, but I believe it's
Speaker 2: pronounced mave cool. All the rebels at the time, the
Speaker 2: smart ones, anyway, are tying everything into colonialism. Folks used
Speaker 2: Queen Mave to represent indigenous resistance in North America and Ireland,
Speaker 2: as well as English resistance the enclosure of the commons.
Speaker 2: And what's interesting is every now and then I hear
Speaker 2: people say, and I sometimes find myself saying that the
Speaker 2: you know, enclosure of the commons is the English rich
Speaker 2: colonizing the English poor. But this isn't my interpretation. This
Speaker 2: is how the English royalties saw their work at the time.
Speaker 2: There is this asshole Johnsonclair, sorry, Sir John Sinclair, who
Speaker 2: wrote in eighteen oh three, let us not be satisfied
Speaker 2: with the liberation of Egypt or the subjugation of Malta,
Speaker 2: but let us subdue Finkley commons. Let us conquer houndslow heath,
Speaker 2: let us compel at being forest to submit to the
Speaker 2: yoke of improvement. Great, And yeah it's just colonization. There's
Speaker 2: doing it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeahs as they always do. You know, I'm
Speaker 3: looking at just read a story the other day about
Speaker 3: how under Biden we're looking at like building this AI
Speaker 3: powered like border monitoring thing to like monitor all movement
Speaker 3: on the border, and like, yeah, they'll put those in
Speaker 3: cities if they can, if we let them, you know,
Speaker 3: if we don't stop them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the people who claim to care about government
Speaker 2: overreach are the people who really want them to exis Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: so Queen May of this poem, it talks about and
Speaker 2: has like prose sections, and I only read part of
Speaker 2: it for this, I have to admit, Queen May have
Speaker 2: talks about the labor theory of value, about atheism, about
Speaker 2: free love, about vegetarianism and all the revolutionary shit. But
Speaker 2: like two hundred years ago, and his atheism did not
Speaker 2: stop him from giving a speech in favor of Catholic
Speaker 2: emancipation as a matter of ending the oppression of the
Speaker 2: Irish people. He very much She had a lot to
Speaker 2: say about ending the colonization of Ireland and Shelley. In
Speaker 2: this poem, he gets at something that I think best
Speaker 2: captures the spirit of the Luddites. And this is the
Speaker 2: most Tolkien thing I'm going to read today. Power like
Speaker 2: a desolating pestilence pollutes whatever it touches, and obedience bane
Speaker 2: of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth makes slaves of men
Speaker 2: and of the human frame a mechanize automaton.
Speaker 3: Wow, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: there's a there's a line. I think back to a
Speaker 3: lot of Charlie Chaplin line from The Great Dictator describing
Speaker 3: he was describing the fascist of his day. But I
Speaker 3: think about it a lot in context of tech industry.
Speaker 3: People in AI machine men with machine minds and machine hearts. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you were not machines, you were not cattle.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That scene is so good. That is when you need
Speaker 2: to pick me up. Watch that scene from the Great
Speaker 2: Dictator and don't think too hard about his personal life.
Speaker 3: No, or probably even a bad man can channel the
Speaker 3: mystic from time to time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, total least a flawed one. Yeah yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: flawed people do it all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not that way. Ideally, but yeah.
Speaker 2: So the working class didn't just get its theory from
Speaker 2: the rich, educated folks on their side. They also were
Speaker 2: generating it themselves. Among the Luddites were working scholars. They
Speaker 2: were like studying ancient Greek when they're coming home from
Speaker 2: their shifts at the factory and all of that, and
Speaker 2: they're studying the modern proto socialism and the proto anarchism
Speaker 2: that's going on. Either of those words are really doing
Speaker 2: anything at that point, and they're going to do a
Speaker 2: lot of threatening and fighting and oath swearing and being
Speaker 2: really cool. And we'll get to it all on Wednesday,
Speaker 2: because that's the cool people did cool stuff. Promise is
Speaker 2: that the first half is context.
Speaker 3: And that's my promise to everyone I know about everything
Speaker 3: any day, but Wednesday, I'll get to it Wednesday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Wednesdays the day when I do No. Wait, Thursdays,
Speaker 2: the day I do all my work. Wait, no, I
Speaker 2: work all the time. Wait a second, am, I like
Speaker 2: those people working in the factory.
Speaker 3: Sophie, cut the feed, Cut the feed.
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking of all the things that I'm waiting
Speaker 1: for you to do, Robert.
Speaker 2: But speaking of things that Robert, Robert Evans, if you
Speaker 2: would like to is your podcast available in English now
Speaker 2: as well?
Speaker 3: It is? It is, it is. It's actually always been
Speaker 3: available in English. It's just my very strong Bostonian accent.
Speaker 3: It's hard for some people to understand. I see, I see.
Speaker 3: But yeah. You can listen to Behind the Bastards every
Speaker 3: week Tuesday and Thursday. And you can find my novel
Speaker 3: After the Revolution. Just type After the Revolution Evans into
Speaker 3: Google and it'll come up. Or you can go to
Speaker 3: atrbook dot com and read it on the interwebs for free,
Speaker 3: but it's also sold all the places that sell books.
Speaker 2: Or'll type it into Google and bring up the crisis hotline.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, it's not been necessary for my readers.
Speaker 2: And if you want to read more of what I write,
Speaker 2: I write on substack every week. I write about preparedness,
Speaker 2: I write about living in times of crisis, and some
Speaker 2: of it is free and then the more personal stuff
Speaker 2: you have to pay me for.
Speaker 4: But half of it's free.
Speaker 2: So what are you complaining about, Sophie?
Speaker 3: What do you got?
Speaker 5: I'd like to plug cool Zone Media's newest podcast, Better
Speaker 5: Offline and just follow out cool Zone Media because we're
Speaker 5: gonna have a couple additional new shows coming soon this year.
Speaker 4: I'm so excited.
Speaker 2: I get really sad when I like I listen to
Speaker 2: podcasts while I do all the manual work that I
Speaker 2: like to do and or have to do. And sometimes
Speaker 2: I run out of cool Zone Media podcasts for the week,
Speaker 2: and I get sad, and I look at other shows,
Speaker 2: and some of them are good.
Speaker 1: But if I had told you there will be more,
Speaker 1: I'll be excited.
Speaker 2: Oh cool, Just as excited as you'll be on Wednesday
Speaker 2: when you hear more about the people breaking stuff.
Speaker 5: Bye cool People Who did Cool Stuff is a production
Speaker 5: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
Speaker 5: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com
Speaker 1: Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or ever you get your podcasts.