Speaker 1: Hello, this is it could happen here? Oh boy? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can't rob it into being here for Civil War
Speaker 1: Week no less. We're also joined by special guest Margaret
Speaker 1: Killjoy uh and Sophi and get who are less special
Speaker 1: were whole week. Yeah, that's we're here to start a
Speaker 1: civil war, right, that's what I've read and read start
Speaker 1: a civil war, Sophie. We we cleared that. We cleared
Speaker 1: that with corporate right. Yeah, I officially backing the start
Speaker 1: of a of a civil war. Yeah, essentially corporated you know,
Speaker 1: go go go ahead, cool zone media, start a civil war,
Speaker 1: start a civil war? Do we be civilly and criminally
Speaker 1: liable for all violence that occurred? That's the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio guarantee. Yeah, and we've been listed the people on
Speaker 1: this call who are Margaret kill Dry Heavens, Garrison Davis,
Speaker 1: James Stout, and myself, Sophie. They are also all civil
Speaker 1: and criminally liable. But do we get to collectivize a
Speaker 1: huge maybe, like or so of all the industry obviously,
Speaker 1: I mean some of us do. Okay, Okay, what it's
Speaker 1: like any civil war. You're gonna find out who later, Okay,
Speaker 1: We're going to find out who today, Robert, this is
Speaker 1: my death guy into how to beat a coup, start
Speaker 1: a civil war and win the first part of it. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the only part of it you really need to win. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. You don't want to get too bugged down
Speaker 1: in the latest staff because it's just depressing. So we
Speaker 1: we just want to focus on how to win the
Speaker 1: first four year hours and from there you can taper it.
Speaker 1: Take a week, take the weekend off, yeah, break off,
Speaker 1: chill out, yeah fine, or just go down as a
Speaker 1: hero and let everyone else sort everything else out afterwards.
Speaker 1: And that's pretty the best option that's going to learn
Speaker 1: about a guy who dies within twenty four hours at
Speaker 1: the wars starting as a hero and gets a gun
Speaker 1: named after him, which is all we can really want
Speaker 1: for ourselves. Ah, that does sound like the dream. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a that's the way Robert Evans needed to go,
Speaker 1: not suggesting that anytime soon, of course. All right, I'm
Speaker 1: sure to imagine would it be the Robert or would
Speaker 1: it be there, Yeah, Robert, just give him a good
Speaker 1: old bobbin. It would be named after my nick name,
Speaker 1: my nickname, the Jesus Christ of podcasting, right, Sophie now. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: Sophie says, yes. If there's not already a gun named
Speaker 1: after Jesus, I will be shocked. Yeah, it's probably not
Speaker 1: a kind of company you want to. We've we've really
Speaker 1: gotten off, and I think, in all fairness, it's not
Speaker 1: my fault. I think it's Garrison's fault. Yeah, that's who
Speaker 1: I was going to blame. I think we've all agreed
Speaker 1: on that. What are we talking about, Jim talking about
Speaker 1: the Spanish Civil War today will be be desecrating the
Speaker 1: name of Jesus Christ a little bit later as well.
Speaker 1: So desecrating the name of Jesus Christ, i'd gathered, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll do. That's just some more for you today. I'll
Speaker 1: send you some pictures afterwards that you will enjoy. All Right,
Speaker 1: So we're talking about the Spanish Civil War. We're not
Speaker 1: talking about all of it, because that's a lot, and
Speaker 1: because I think it's important when we talk about the
Speaker 1: Spanish Civil War to talk about like the moments when
Speaker 1: revolutionary things happened, because they are as important as the
Speaker 1: moments when terrible things happened and the moments when the
Speaker 1: people in arms defeated the coup, because that's both instructive
Speaker 1: and inspiring and interesting. Well, they have a question, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's the Spanish Civil War? That's a great question, and
Speaker 1: when I've failed to address thus far. It is a
Speaker 1: war that happened in Spain. It wasn't very civil, so
Speaker 1: only two three remarkably uncivil. Actually, so we're looking at
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six today, we're looking at July twentieth ninety six. Right,
Speaker 1: But you can see it as like the precursor to
Speaker 1: the Second World War. You have people who are fascist
Speaker 1: or fascist, a jacent you have people who are explicitly
Speaker 1: anti fascist, and they are killing each other from nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, and the anti fascists win, right, not entirely, unfortunately, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that they have some wins along the way, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some moments, the friends that you meet along the way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what is civil war if not the friends that you
Speaker 1: make along the way. Don't answer that at home because
Speaker 1: it's sad. But yeah, these these are some friendly times,
Speaker 1: These are some good times. These are the first forty
Speaker 1: year hours of the Spanish Civil War. We're going to
Speaker 1: start with an anecdote about the popular Olympics, which you
Speaker 1: probably have never heard of unless you're me because it's
Speaker 1: a it's a thing that I've written about ship Ton,
Speaker 1: but not many folks have read about. It's the anti Olympics.
Speaker 1: It's the best way to understand the popular Olympics. It
Speaker 1: was a gathering held in nineteen thirty six in Barcelona
Speaker 1: in opposition to the Berlin Olympics. So the Olympics are
Speaker 1: given to uh Weimar Germany, right, they're not given to
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany. But when Germany, yeahsmar Germany is the pre
Speaker 1: Nazi it's before Hitler takes power. Yeah, when they were
Speaker 1: actually pretty cool in some ways. It's pretty pretty progressive
Speaker 1: for the time period, right in lots of ways. And
Speaker 1: it's woke Germans. Yes, it is the work Germans. It's
Speaker 1: it's like if if if AOC was running nineteen thirties Germany,
Speaker 1: that's what you get. I bet they had a whole
Speaker 1: institute that trans people got to hang out at and
Speaker 1: learn about themselves. I've heard that, Yeah, what happened to
Speaker 1: the institute? I can't remember. The Nazis game and killed
Speaker 1: the first woman to medically transition in the Western Hemisphere
Speaker 1: and burned all of the books and then stole the
Speaker 1: records that the people had been keeping about all the
Speaker 1: gay people and then rounded up all the gay people
Speaker 1: and murdered them in camps. That's that's what happened. Well,
Speaker 1: it's disappointing. Well, good thing. That will good thing, that
Speaker 1: will never happen again. Anyway, we've learned our lesson. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's absolutely no echoes of that in current political discourse.
Speaker 1: So that's fine. Hey, let's learn how to kill fascists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: buck them. Okay, So we're talking about the popul Olympics,
Speaker 1: the anti for Olympics, the Olympics that happened because the
Speaker 1: Nazis are ship and you shouldn't play games with ship
Speaker 1: people to include the Olympics, even if you very much
Speaker 1: want to win a medal. Uh take note, athletes doing
Speaker 1: sports and dictatorships, and so a lot of people, about
Speaker 1: twenty people instead decided to go to Barcelona where they're
Speaker 1: going to host this alternative games. And the sebtext of
Speaker 1: the popular Olympics it's not just that like shouldn't have
Speaker 1: the Olympics, it's that gasp shouldn't exist, and the anti
Speaker 1: fascism is strong and youthful and perfectly capable of fighting
Speaker 1: a war and killing the fascists right. That that's sport
Speaker 1: Georgia Will called sport war without the shooting, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: this is a war with the shooting. It's a good quote.
Speaker 1: George Orwell pops up a few times in this One's
Speaker 1: not always right. Bad everything that he was read about
Speaker 1: that we passed up at the wrong time. It's never
Speaker 1: mind trying to make a George or Will gets shut
Speaker 1: shut in the throat. Now I just feel bad about
Speaker 1: it because at least that's the least. I mean, before podcasting,
Speaker 1: the throat was the best place to get shot as
Speaker 1: a writer. That's true, that's true. Yeah, it didn't go
Speaker 1: well for him in the end. It sort of did
Speaker 1: end his life prematurely, I guess. But he got some
Speaker 1: bangers out in terms of books. First. Yeah, it can't
Speaker 1: fault him. Alright. So we're talking about pot Olympics, talking
Speaker 1: about the night before the Popular Olympics. You're gonna learn
Speaker 1: why you haven't heard of the Popular Olympics. So I
Speaker 1: guess keep listening, Okay. Eighty six years ago in Barcelona, Paucas,
Speaker 1: the father of modern cello, was leading the final rehearsals
Speaker 1: for the opening ceremony of the Popular Olympics. They had
Speaker 1: already practiced him. Of the popular picks was a song
Speaker 1: co written by a Catalan composer and an exiled Jewish
Speaker 1: one who had fled oppression in Germany. Now they moved
Speaker 1: to beethoven Tonight's symphony. You might know it as you
Speaker 1: know too. Joy Cassals recounted what happened next in his memoirs.
Speaker 1: I just called the chorus on stage to sing the korral.
Speaker 1: When a man rushed into the hall. He handed me
Speaker 1: an envelope, saying, breathlessly, this is from Minister Gasol. An
Speaker 1: uprising is expected in the city at any moment. I
Speaker 1: read Gasol's message. It said our rehearsal should be discontinued
Speaker 1: immediately or the musicians should go straight home, and that
Speaker 1: the concert schedule for the following day had been canceled.
Speaker 1: The messenger told me that since the message was written,
Speaker 1: an insurrection had started in Madrid and fascist troops were
Speaker 1: now marching on Barcelona. I read the message aloud to
Speaker 1: the orchestra and to the chorus, and then I said,
Speaker 1: dear friends, I do not know when we shall meet again.
Speaker 1: As a farewell to one another, shall we play the finale?
Speaker 1: And they shouted yes. Let us finish it. Then the
Speaker 1: orchestra play and the chorus sang that's never before I
Speaker 1: could not see the notes because of my tears. So
Speaker 1: that's how Powker South starts to civil war. They finished
Speaker 1: that concert in sixteen. Incidentally, they came back to the
Speaker 1: same place, and yeah, it was very the same people.
Speaker 1: Uh no, no, well the same institutions. Right, these are
Speaker 1: called or fails, Like I guess popular chorus is popular
Speaker 1: kind of city orchestra kind of thing. So they finished
Speaker 1: it in the same place because in the intervening eight
Speaker 1: years there was a little issue with the Frank I dictatorship,
Speaker 1: which there still is in Spain incidentally, But yeah, Barstilona
Speaker 1: has very much reclaimed its memory as an anti fascial
Speaker 1: city following the dictatorship. I could really, I can really
Speaker 1: see myself in those musicians, you know, like it just
Speaker 1: feels like a very possible thing. Unfortunately, to just be like, okay,
Speaker 1: well we're going to do this thing and then well,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know, should we finish? Like yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: like at some point maybe not, like like all of
Speaker 1: us were doing something else when we learned that a
Speaker 1: bunch of Chud's had stormed Congress, right, and that the
Speaker 1: the yak hatman was inside the Senate chamber. Um like
Speaker 1: like it and some of us going. I was on
Speaker 1: a bike ride. I kept riding my bike like there's
Speaker 1: not there's not much I can do. Uh. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: have to take the moments of joy because there might
Speaker 1: be much joy available for the next little while. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's easy to see myself and a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff. Perhaps that's why I'm drawn to it
Speaker 1: all right. The following morning, the city woke up before
Speaker 1: dawn to the sound of gunfire. To most of the
Speaker 1: Catalan working classes wasn't surprised. The cured begun two days
Speaker 1: earlier in Morocco, and word traveled quickly among the anarchists.
Speaker 1: By the time the men of the Fourth Division and
Speaker 1: the General Fernandez Bodiel began their march to the central
Speaker 1: Plataa Catalunia, the people of the Popular Front were ready.
Speaker 1: The uprising had begun in Morocco on the seventeen an
Speaker 1: all day tension a bit building Union radio had called
Speaker 1: a general strike, and despite the refusal of the Republican
Speaker 1: government to acknowledge how deep of trouble they are in
Speaker 1: their union to render no allusion as to the stakes.
Speaker 1: By entertime on the nineteen Spain had gone through three
Speaker 1: prime ministers since breakfast, and Barcelona had defeated the coup.
Speaker 1: So what happens to the other prime ministers, Like, okay,
Speaker 1: you be prime minister and you're like, oh, funk, No,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be prime minister. Or are they
Speaker 1: getting killed by the fascists or no, no, Madrid is
Speaker 1: is very it's not very safe. It's safe. They basically
Speaker 1: your first guy. It's like, I've done funked up here.
Speaker 1: I should have seen this one, counting given that I
Speaker 1: was explicitly warned about it for weeks. He's like, peace,
Speaker 1: I'm out. Second guy, Popsy and he's like, don't worry, guys,
Speaker 1: we can fix this. We need to do is call
Speaker 1: the call the General's talk it out. It's interesting, yeah,
Speaker 1: give them just so, just like a reason with them.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because what happens is in that conversation
Speaker 1: it's the fascist general. I think it's capable. The young know.
Speaker 1: He calls I can't remember good d maybe maybe good head. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it says like you have your people and I have mine,
Speaker 1: and in that moment, what's happening is a fascist general
Speaker 1: who is leading a coup is reminding an elected politician
Speaker 1: that he has an obligation to serve the people who
Speaker 1: elected him and and not just to make like unilateral
Speaker 1: compromises with fascists, right, So that the what a country
Speaker 1: at a time at that moment that second prime ministers
Speaker 1: also doomed. Right. So then we move on to number three.
Speaker 1: And at that point we opened up the armories to
Speaker 1: the working class, right, which is what they should have
Speaker 1: done earlier. In in every city where the working class
Speaker 1: US is armed, the coup is defeated. In every city
Speaker 1: where it's not armed, the coup succeeds. And that doesn't
Speaker 1: have any ramifications for today, So keep going. No, absolutely none,
Speaker 1: um know. And it's something that we can't learn from,
Speaker 1: so we shouldn't We shouldn't try, um And obviously it's
Speaker 1: some direct parallel. There are some really interesting moments in
Speaker 1: this particular arming of the working class. One that I
Speaker 1: to come back to is that the there are the soldiers, right.
Speaker 1: It's obviously the weapons are in the hands of the military,
Speaker 1: and obviously the military has just done a coup, but
Speaker 1: not all the military has just done a coup. So
Speaker 1: you have some generals or colonels who are in charge
Speaker 1: of barracks, um, who are armories, and they will be like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I've got the order. That's what I'm going to do.
Speaker 1: I think it's coup is kind of bullshit, like it
Speaker 1: hasn't succeeded yet, it might not succeed. Here are the
Speaker 1: rifles union members. But in Madrid you have another colonel
Speaker 1: who's a die hard cou coup guy, big, big coup
Speaker 1: person who is in control of the bolts are the rifles.
Speaker 1: So like, the rifle doesn't work without the bolt, right.
Speaker 1: The bolt is a bit like plugs a hole and
Speaker 1: makes the bullet go bang. I've explained that properly, right, Robert.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a technical terminology. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just the piece that makes the gun go bang. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the about critical to the functing the rifle held
Speaker 1: by another guy who turns out to be a fashion
Speaker 1: and so he doesn't issue them the bolts. So you
Speaker 1: have all these working class militiamen being like, how rifle
Speaker 1: worked with no bolt? Just like entering the streets anyway, right,
Speaker 1: slapping on the bayonet. Now you have a pike. You
Speaker 1: have other people who have never operated a rifle before.
Speaker 1: So like allegedly everyone's calling the Socialist Union headquarters in
Speaker 1: Madrid being do this, do that, and they're like, I
Speaker 1: can't hear ship. There's just hundreds of people behind me
Speaker 1: trying to operate the bolt on, the bolt action rifle,
Speaker 1: trying to learn how to do this, and like they're
Speaker 1: taking their newsprint from their union newspaper, right and trying
Speaker 1: to wipe the cosmoline off the rifles because they've been
Speaker 1: in like deep storage. It's very evocative scene, like you
Speaker 1: could smell it, you can hear it of these people
Speaker 1: being like, well, we never used these before. They've been
Speaker 1: a deep storage for a long time. They're covered in grease,
Speaker 1: but fuck it, like it's now or never. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it was right. So if we go back to what
Speaker 1: happened in Barcelona, they had radios in public places, right,
Speaker 1: it's very common whole books about how Nazis use radios,
Speaker 1: but it's common in the thirties parts of the city.
Speaker 1: The paving stones had barely been relayed from October fighting.
Speaker 1: Then they were quickly pulled up again. Barricades were constructed
Speaker 1: old rifles and pistols, and the bombs that the anarchists
Speaker 1: particularly love were dragged out of the bottom of drawers.
Speaker 1: These people fucking love throwing bombs, like the just the Yeah,
Speaker 1: there there's a there's a lady later on in the
Speaker 1: world called rosal Ladina Mitra like Rows of the Dynamiter
Speaker 1: who who just like it, becomes the legend right for
Speaker 1: just throwing dynamite fascists. She us. Yeah, like, there's so
Speaker 1: much awesome ship that happens, that gets lost because ultimately,
Speaker 1: like Hitler and Mustelini win the Spanish Civil War basically,
Speaker 1: right spoiler. Yeah, So, actually, that night before the before
Speaker 1: the troops march on the city, the u g T
Speaker 1: the socialist control the dock union, the dock workers union,
Speaker 1: and they're like, hey, hang on, I'm pretty sure there's
Speaker 1: a ship in the harbor that has dynamite on it.
Speaker 1: Let's raid it. So they raid the ship, Okay, steal
Speaker 1: the dynamite and drive through the city, distributing it to
Speaker 1: union members who spend the entire night making bonds. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that went badly for several of them, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it went badly, so fascist too, but well, yeah, almost undoubtedly.
Speaker 1: Like Robert and I have talked to some people in
Speaker 1: some other contexts who have made homemade bonds and don't smoke.
Speaker 1: It is what I will say, do not smoke if
Speaker 1: you're in the process of making bombs, are explosives whatever.
Speaker 1: That's the same people say that you can't smoke wire
Speaker 1: fueling up your car. Yeah, cowards, Yeah, go down like
Speaker 1: a chat. Yeah, that's my message to you. The other
Speaker 1: thing they did was they put on like their mono,
Speaker 1: so like a mono is like a like a onesie, right,
Speaker 1: like an overall blue mono was kind of the militia
Speaker 1: uniform because they weren't an army. They were just working
Speaker 1: class people who worked at factories who are not taking
Speaker 1: any ship from the army that day, and they put
Speaker 1: on their little union hats, which you can see in
Speaker 1: all the photos. They look very cool, very quaint. Um.
Speaker 1: So to understand why the conflict they fought that day began,
Speaker 1: it's probably beyond the scope of this podcast, and to
Speaker 1: understand where ended the way it did will infuriate just
Speaker 1: about everyone listening, which is fine, but we don't have
Speaker 1: all day. Okay, If you want to know more about
Speaker 1: some of the People Involved killeds podcast on his Banic
Speaker 1: Anarchist is a great place to start. What. Yeah that
Speaker 1: it was wonderful to check that out. Yeah I do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: great podcast, great, I love it. If you listened to
Speaker 1: look at that, Yeah, yep, you should like and subscribe.
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that still the thing? Cool people who
Speaker 1: did stuff? Yeah? I think I've heard of that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The host is brilliant. Yeah, she's amazing. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: make the clever, but instead I'm probably blushing. You deserve
Speaker 1: Oh okay, Yeah, if you want to read some books,
Speaker 1: I'm going to list some books at the end, probably
Speaker 1: far too many because this is my ship. But I
Speaker 1: think there was more books written about the Spanish Civil
Speaker 1: War than um, I guess war in general. But I
Speaker 1: think anarchists have written more about the Spanish Civil War,
Speaker 1: though maybe undoubtedly anything else combined. Yeah. The device we
Speaker 1: are speaking on is currently propped up on a large
Speaker 1: stack of them, actually most of my material possessions. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's nice. It's the way your life should be. It's
Speaker 1: I've written one to uh and it's heinously expensive, but
Speaker 1: you know, I'm happy with it. If if you struggle
Speaker 1: to obtain it materially. Please just shoot me a direct message,
Speaker 1: unless you kind of have some kind of gross disagreement
Speaker 1: because you're fascist or something, in which case please don't bother.
Speaker 1: And Okay, I don't know how you got this far.
Speaker 1: If you are a fascist, I guess yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I probably have some uh funk off Nazis. I guess.
Speaker 1: I think I think fewer people hate listen. I okay,
Speaker 1: my theory. I know that we wanted to hear my
Speaker 1: theory about why podcasting, um is because it's harder. People
Speaker 1: don't have the attention span to hate listen the same
Speaker 1: way that they can like hate skim or like hate
Speaker 1: read tweets and reply. And so I've made a lot
Speaker 1: of different media in a lot of different ways over
Speaker 1: the past couple of decades, and I get less hate
Speaker 1: mail about podcasts than most other forms. Um So, that's
Speaker 1: my theory is that people podcast because no one wants
Speaker 1: to sit there and like hate listen. I mean people
Speaker 1: like hate listening to clips. That's why we all listen
Speaker 1: to those like clip shows where they take the right
Speaker 1: wing person and you know, yeah, show them saying something
Speaker 1: that we all I think it's not an intelligent thing
Speaker 1: to say and then we laugh or whatever. But so anyway,
Speaker 1: if you're the person who has been put on this
Speaker 1: earth to hate, listen to it could happen here in
Speaker 1: order to I don't know, um, make fun of it
Speaker 1: to your audience. Um, thanks for the listens. I guess
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, I'm weak getting that that sweet revenue.
Speaker 1: I know, where does that revenue come from? It just appears.
Speaker 1: It's like like liking it grows on the side of
Speaker 1: a wet bill. Being it doesn't come from ads. I
Speaker 1: think ads do. Organic could grow a lot, a lot
Speaker 1: like like and they just start showing up um and
Speaker 1: replicating we really have no choice. But yeah, anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a fact of nature. If you have that person,
Speaker 1: I would say that my messages stop being a Nazi. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's me being polite. On the night of the eighteen,
Speaker 1: some assault guards, members of elite paramilitary police force it
Speaker 1: was founded by and sometimes mostly loyal to the Republic,
Speaker 1: went against the order their officers has sneaked rifles out
Speaker 1: to members of the c NT an anarchist union. And
Speaker 1: that's pretty uh, that's pretty based. It's the one day,
Speaker 1: as you will learn this is the one day all
Speaker 1: cops took off from being bastards. Some of them, it
Speaker 1: turns out, are capable of doing the right thing, or
Speaker 1: were in I should say, yeah, of corps were handing
Speaker 1: out rifles to anarchist. That would be not a parallel
Speaker 1: that I can easily imagine in the modern context. Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: somewhat unique. Right. It doesn't mean that these people had
Speaker 1: not spent the past decades killing each other. It does
Speaker 1: not mean that they would not return to doing so
Speaker 1: within less than a year. But just for a day,
Speaker 1: everything was hunky dorry And it's leftist Christmas. Yes, this
Speaker 1: pretty yeah, this more or less is leftist Christmas, like
Speaker 1: because there's even like there's gifts. They call them proletarian
Speaker 1: shopping trips um. But what they do is requisition merchandise
Speaker 1: from stores and uh and distributed to people who need it.
Speaker 1: Are you just are you referring to armed robbery? Is
Speaker 1: that that's different thing? That was only armed robbery. If
Speaker 1: somebody tries to fight back shopping with a gun, that's it.
Speaker 1: And what if there is no law, is it really
Speaker 1: a crime? M hm M. I don't know. No one,
Speaker 1: No one can say. I will say that they only
Speaker 1: it seems like they only robbed the shopkeepers who were turds,
Speaker 1: people who like lent a lot of money at a
Speaker 1: very high interest rate, things like that in these predetorian
Speaker 1: shopping trips, which I'm not being against what happened. I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm stripping away some of the nicelies. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: people hadn't gathered, they weren't picking up when I was
Speaker 1: putting down. Yes, it is going into a shop with
Speaker 1: guns and taking things and giving them to people who
Speaker 1: need them. Whether or not that's bad. Who can say,
Speaker 1: Robin famous villain in history. Yeah that's right, Yeah, bad
Speaker 1: bad dude. Sheriff of Nottingham, on the other hand, would
Speaker 1: have been big into crypto, I'm sure, all around legend.
Speaker 1: So when I said if there is no law, I
Speaker 1: wasn't really joking. Like at this point, Luis compounds who's
Speaker 1: Catalan leader. He's a liberal leftist politician and earlier that
Speaker 1: evening he'd refused to open the armories. He realizes that
Speaker 1: things are out of his control, and so he sets
Speaker 1: off for a walk and he walks down the Rambler. Right,
Speaker 1: if you've been to Barcelona, it's his big old street
Speaker 1: now it's full of the kind of restaurants to have
Speaker 1: photographs on their menus so that German people can understand
Speaker 1: what they're going to eat. UM, which is much of
Speaker 1: Barcelona and American people. But yeah, people who don't speak
Speaker 1: Catalan or Spanish who go to Barcelona can eat very
Speaker 1: well there for lots of money. If you've been on
Speaker 1: hol Day, you've probably been there. I did not eat
Speaker 1: very well in Barcelona. Really. I had almost no money
Speaker 1: and was vegan, and my Spanish and my Cotys non existent,
Speaker 1: so I mostly were hang out and cooked pasta. There
Speaker 1: are not a lot of cities I've been to where
Speaker 1: it's harder to eat vegan than Barcelona. That is, that
Speaker 1: is a challenge. Maybe Belgrade, where then where the national
Speaker 1: dishes thirty pounds of meat on a plate. Yeah, Sophia
Speaker 1: knows Sophia, so I can't remember I pronounced the name
Speaker 1: of the capital of Bulgaria. Um also a hard place
Speaker 1: to eat vegan. That was hard for me. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: does not surprise me. Yea, yeah, surprise me. It's a
Speaker 1: big part of the cattle in cuisine. You'll be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm having some lentils, and then they'll be like psych
Speaker 1: there's a pig in here. We put a whole fucking
Speaker 1: pig in this thing. We did reverse vegan. We made
Speaker 1: lintels out of pig. I just ate everywhere I go,
Speaker 1: you can crush and falafel. And one of the Catalan
Speaker 1: national dishes is called kappi potta, which means head and
Speaker 1: foot because those are the ingredients, and it's it's a
Speaker 1: bit of a pig that no one else wanted. One
Speaker 1: of the American national dishes, it's also the head and
Speaker 1: feet of the face of a pig, but they call
Speaker 1: it a hot dog. At least the Catalans are honest
Speaker 1: about it, that's true. But yeah, if they's better now
Speaker 1: to eat vegan, I'm vegan, and now was there in
Speaker 1: have to move among the right circles. But yeah, on
Speaker 1: the rambler it would be hard. And so that night, companies,
Speaker 1: he's walking down the rambler. He's got his hat across
Speaker 1: his face so no one could see him, and he's
Speaker 1: pulled up his color kind of like an old timey
Speaker 1: private eye. H and up and down the rambler. Anarchists
Speaker 1: and socialists are stealing cars and welding armor plates to
Speaker 1: the front of them. Yeah, yeah, yes, another time honored
Speaker 1: anarchist tradition. Yeah. King of war is the improvised technical
Speaker 1: and so what they do here is, well these steel plates, right,
Speaker 1: and then they write the name of the union on top,
Speaker 1: just so people can know who's killing them. Well, and
Speaker 1: so they could keep track of their stolphin cars. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, Like, yeah, you don't want anyone stealing your
Speaker 1: stolen car. Yeah yeah. There comes a point in the
Speaker 1: next couple of weeks where some of the more ideologically
Speaker 1: committed anarchists will stop or take down traffic signals because
Speaker 1: they feel they're an unwarranted restriction on individual liberty. Those
Speaker 1: Twitter discourse yeah yeah, get on that tank you Yes,
Speaker 1: time was a flat circle. Yeah, it's it's very funny. Um.
Speaker 1: I'll bet they. I bet there were was a contingent
Speaker 1: of them that were taking down libraries to for gatekeeping knowledge. Libraries.
Speaker 1: Libraries are big prisons, book pigs. Yeah yeah, they burned
Speaker 1: just in a class of anarchist fashion. Or we all
Speaker 1: know that libraries are better served under a free market
Speaker 1: system like that. One guy tweeted, Yes, Amazon should run
Speaker 1: the library and every book should cost you ten dollars. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's uh. That's the only way we can grow as
Speaker 1: a society. And if you don't like it, well something
Speaker 1: in front of your truck. All So, if you have
Speaker 1: an idea that's based on a book in Amazon owns
Speaker 1: the copyright, they know own the idea, that's the only
Speaker 1: thing that's fair. No thinking without proper copy right, Is
Speaker 1: it okay to use words if Jeffrey Bezos already owned words? No?
Speaker 1: Does that mean that we're going to be fighting the
Speaker 1: next one of these situations with instead of spray painting CNT,
Speaker 1: someone's going to come by and spray paint Amazon basics
Speaker 1: onto them with a third chose I'm doing that tonight.
Speaker 1: I would be upper armoring my truck as soon as
Speaker 1: we're finished, yeah, and spray painting Amazon Basics and then
Speaker 1: just going to the beach after that. And actually what
Speaker 1: they spraints painted on the there was CNT, there was
Speaker 1: u g T, there was PHI. These are CNT Confederal,
Speaker 1: a nationalit TRABAJO right National Labor Confederation. This is an
Speaker 1: Anarcho Syndicalist Union uh FI. Uh Federal Anarchist Barrier is
Speaker 1: the Iberian Anarchist Federation. They're a group with in the
Speaker 1: c NT that is more committed to a hardline, illogical
Speaker 1: ideological anarchism, the hug Tier or Socialist Union. You have
Speaker 1: other groups to the pom Is probably any other one
Speaker 1: you need to know. They are not trotsky it's Trotskyites.
Speaker 1: Anyone who tells you they are either doesn't know what
Speaker 1: they're talking about or is consciously misleading you. And they
Speaker 1: were in open beef with trotsky right like that they are.
Speaker 1: They are writing letters to trotsky beefing about whether they
Speaker 1: should exist, which trotsky Is is a no on that question. U. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not trotsky As. They just get called trotsky Is
Speaker 1: by Stylinists because everyone who they didn't like is a Stylinist.
Speaker 1: Right that they are anti Stylinist Marxists. Um, that's what
Speaker 1: I will call them. What some folks do, though, is
Speaker 1: they paint you HP on top of their cars. You
Speaker 1: nedos armanos Protario. So I think it stands for United
Speaker 1: Proletarian Siblings, I guess. And that's important, right, because these
Speaker 1: groups had been fighting among themselves and with each other
Speaker 1: for a very long time and having like what appeared
Speaker 1: today to be kind of comical beefs about inconsequential things.
Speaker 1: But they were important, and then you know, this ideological
Speaker 1: commitment is what gets them through this period of time.
Speaker 1: But the uh P comes from a studius where anarchists
Speaker 1: and socialists had come together to fight against the state
Speaker 1: rank to fight as part of a minor strike minors
Speaker 1: particular love for dynamite, by the way, that's how they, yeah,
Speaker 1: kings of the dynamite throw that. That's how they dealt
Speaker 1: with the local garrison. Really, and actually the first use
Speaker 1: of a combat helicopter was against the Popular Front, the
Speaker 1: uh P in a studius, and that strike was eventually
Speaker 1: put down by one Francisco Franco, who will learn about later.
Speaker 1: Nice guy, No problems with him. That's a lie. Yeah, shocking,
Speaker 1: I know it turns out to be a total turd
Speaker 1: of a human being. But he was, wasn't he? Um?
Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm going down a rabbit hole. Wasn't he
Speaker 1: like some sort of vaguely wasn't he like a right
Speaker 1: wing syndicalist for a while? Yeah, he had all kinds
Speaker 1: of sort of. I don't think Franco had any convinced
Speaker 1: political views other than like that he wanted to be
Speaker 1: in charge. But yes, he was a radical syndicalist m
Speaker 1: I said, right wing syndiclast but yeah, no, but so
Speaker 1: a number of officers. I don't know if Franco was with,
Speaker 1: but there were like a group called the Trial Party whoever, Okay,
Speaker 1: I see, I'm not sure if Franco was one, now
Speaker 1: that I think about it. I try not to learn
Speaker 1: too much about the person of Francisco Franco, because he
Speaker 1: is a turd. He he does pivot. He pivots when
Speaker 1: he's in power, right from like a sort of more
Speaker 1: totalitarian project to this national Catholic project to sort of yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a problematic dude with yeah, with no clear ideology,
Speaker 1: and then he should be in parent He doesn't care
Speaker 1: who he has to roll over to get there. Um,
Speaker 1: that's a common political ideology, it is. Yeah, it pops
Speaker 1: up a lot on the right, something something there with
Speaker 1: dudes on the right that maybe we should think about. No,
Speaker 1: it's never happened again, and and never in this country
Speaker 1: of course. Fortunately we're saying it could never happen right
Speaker 1: where we are. Yeah, that's not in my backyard. That's
Speaker 1: the real name. Yeah, America is different, I think is
Speaker 1: the subtitle. Okay, so sorry, no, no, I'm just sad. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the people in Barcelona that day were even more numerous
Speaker 1: and diverse, and the already bustling city was used to
Speaker 1: the n July was slater to be the start of
Speaker 1: the largest anti fascist spectacle the world ever seen. That's
Speaker 1: a direct quote from a publicity artical about the Popular Olympics, right, uh,
Speaker 1: As I said, these games aim to show the strengths
Speaker 1: of the popular front with a series of events. Some
Speaker 1: of those events tore the ones you might expect, but
Speaker 1: some of these events were designed to reward nations with
Speaker 1: a healthy working class rather than nations with a few
Speaker 1: exceptional athletes. Right. So we look at the Olympics today,
Speaker 1: having one or two exceptional athletes, especially in certain areas,
Speaker 1: can like vault you to the top of the medal table. Right.
Speaker 1: Medal table, of course, invented by the Nazis to illustrate eugenics.
Speaker 1: Uh wold really yeah yeah, Before most six there was
Speaker 1: no Olympics table. Uh, not in the famble way that
Speaker 1: we see it now. So much of the pageantry that
Speaker 1: we associate with the Olympic Games was invented by Carl D.
Speaker 1: M uh The torch relay, the parade, of flags in
Speaker 1: the opening ceremony, Like, yeah, the the Olympics are fucking Nuremberg,
Speaker 1: like with the rainbow rings. It's wild. Much of that
Speaker 1: ship is cribs straight from Nazi pageantry. Oh um. The
Speaker 1: book called The Nazi Game is pretty good on that
Speaker 1: if you want to read it. Um. Lots of books
Speaker 1: about the thirty six Olympics. But yeah, um, I should
Speaker 1: just acknowledge that the the International Olympic Committee did fund
Speaker 1: a lot of my research for reasons that mayde becoming
Speaker 1: clear have since ceased. Also, Clays didn't think I was
Speaker 1: very good, I guess. But anyway, institution that has some
Speaker 1: ship to deal with that it hasn't dealt with, I
Speaker 1: would say, um. And yet it was on its bullshit
Speaker 1: heavily in X right. Um. So one of the things
Speaker 1: they did at the Popular Olympics was they had a
Speaker 1: ten by hundred meter relay. And it's just like, I
Speaker 1: don't know if the Americans have school sports days. Yes,
Speaker 1: I tried to, well, I I don't remember anything about
Speaker 1: public school sporting events. Okay, at the risk of sort
Speaker 1: of unveiling more trauma, what happened, Yeah, that's fine, Okay,
Speaker 1: what happens here? Is that. Uh, you line up right
Speaker 1: in groups of five and you just run back and forth,
Speaker 1: passing a bat on to each other, and much like
Speaker 1: school sport today, with the caveat being that the people
Speaker 1: in this event had to already be entered in other
Speaker 1: events at the games, and so like you just get
Speaker 1: like weightlifters, and there was a chess event at the games, right,
Speaker 1: so you get the chess athletes and they're just hauling
Speaker 1: ass as fast as their chess playing legs can carry
Speaker 1: them back and forth to prove the like superior health
Speaker 1: of their nation's working class. Chess chess leads, chess chess leads,
Speaker 1: chess leads. Yeah, thanks, Yeah, I really saved with that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you pulled the back. Yeah, I'm proud of you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They didn't have any mathletes sadly. Yeah, they did have
Speaker 1: people who built human castles. It's another event and really
Speaker 1: wait wait wait wait a castle made out of humans?
Speaker 1: Whoa wait, you are not familiar with Cashtel's the like
Speaker 1: the the Great cathol And tradition of building human towers. No, okay,
Speaker 1: like pivot. Uh it's fucked now. One of my friends
Speaker 1: wrote her PhD on these uh about that they just
Speaker 1: made up. Just now listen, okay, A you can write
Speaker 1: your history PhD about literally anything, as long as no
Speaker 1: one else has written it before that. The scene a
Speaker 1: quand of history PhDs. And I wrote my PhD about
Speaker 1: the anti for Olympics, right, I wrote my master's about
Speaker 1: predatarian shopping trips. Uh that's cool, yeah, I thought so
Speaker 1: um at the time. The yes, So Cashel's right. You
Speaker 1: you get your people at the bottom, right, and they
Speaker 1: sort of wrap a ribbon around their waist and then
Speaker 1: they often bite the corners of their shirt. I'm aware
Speaker 1: that I'm biting my shirt, and this is mainly an
Speaker 1: audio medium. But they'll wrap their hands over the other people, right,
Speaker 1: men and women, non binding people, I'm sure to form
Speaker 1: a big old circle. And then the next layer climb
Speaker 1: up them right and stand on top of them. It's
Speaker 1: slightly fewer people, and the people get smaller, and the
Speaker 1: layers have fewer people in them, like concentric circles. Right,
Speaker 1: as you get higher and higher, and then a small
Speaker 1: child wearing always a horse riding helmet for reasons that
Speaker 1: are not entirely clear, as sends, and this ship is high,
Speaker 1: like if you're standing on your balcony, like you are
Speaker 1: eye to eye with this fucking toddler who climbs up
Speaker 1: the top, get to the top like arm in the air,
Speaker 1: and then climbs back down. And and these groups people
Speaker 1: do people do this all the time. Yeah. Look, American's
Speaker 1: national sport is is this thing where like young young
Speaker 1: men give each other brain damage. So I'm not anti this,
Speaker 1: and I'm just well, I'm actually impressed by it because
Speaker 1: we do the human pyramid thing, which is the same thing.
Speaker 1: All they're not nearly as impressive or interesting. No, checkout casts.
Speaker 1: The cool thing about them as they exist within communities, right,
Speaker 1: these colds, these groups of castodiers are groups of people
Speaker 1: who do this from a neighborhood, right, so that they'll
Speaker 1: all be from a certain town, like the Talagona group
Speaker 1: was the one near me and my friends. Dissertation Ida
Speaker 1: reports a name, you can probably look it up. It
Speaker 1: was about like how this this practice has been integraling
Speaker 1: into incorporating migrants into Catalan us, right, like Catalana identity
Speaker 1: by being like yeah, come and come and stand on
Speaker 1: us or be stood on by us, and you two
Speaker 1: can be Catalan. Oh that seems like that would Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would bring a community closer together into a heap
Speaker 1: on the ground. Yeah, and it has all kinds of
Speaker 1: other uses, right, catch stuck up a tree, just call
Speaker 1: those guys water rubber house. Yeah, famously ladders a band
Speaker 1: in Catalonia because there for cowards. Yeah yeah, just all
Speaker 1: day pasts. But yeah, this was part of the popular Olympics, right,
Speaker 1: human castles. I'm glad we went there for everyone who
Speaker 1: didn't know. People googling that it's part of the u
Speaker 1: n like United Nations Protected Human Patrimony or something like.
Speaker 1: It's a it's it's a bit important. So do you
Speaker 1: ever just like make up stuff to tell Americans about
Speaker 1: and then we believe you because you have an accent?
Speaker 1: I mean we have an accent too, sure, but like yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: luckily your accents are all neutral and vanilla, yeah exactly
Speaker 1: voice yeah yeah, um uh no. I did I think
Speaker 1: I've told this story on the internet before that. One
Speaker 1: time I was giving a talk about diabetes in the
Speaker 1: Bronx and I asked if this kid wanted to ask
Speaker 1: These kids they wanted to ask any questions, and young
Speaker 1: women itching to ask a question just goes, do you
Speaker 1: guys really have pies? With meeting them, like as if
Speaker 1: she hadn't misled her whole life. I was able to
Speaker 1: confirm that what I savory pies like fucked me up.
Speaker 1: When I was in France, I was completely unprepared for
Speaker 1: the existence of these things. I volunteered to cook for
Speaker 1: a bunch of um, a bunch of activists who are
Speaker 1: busy having their meeting, and I was like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I'll come cook for you. And I figured I would
Speaker 1: just like show up and make pasta burritos because I'm
Speaker 1: an American. And they gave me a lemonnu and on
Speaker 1: it was tarte legume and I was like, I know
Speaker 1: what those words mean. That means pie, vegetables, and that
Speaker 1: isn't that doesn't exist. I don't know what the funk
Speaker 1: you're talking about. Um, this is not a very interesting
Speaker 1: story and now everyone's heard it. But I learned how
Speaker 1: to make a vegetable pie on no notice because that
Speaker 1: was what the menu insisted upon. And yeah, I I
Speaker 1: feel for this person in the Bronx who wasn't convinced
Speaker 1: that you were telling the truth about meat pies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm if they're listening. I was a promise looking up.
Speaker 1: Now they got Google. Yeah, the lesson we've learned there
Speaker 1: is and cook for French people, so other games. One
Speaker 1: of the cool things is that nations competing instead of states, right,
Speaker 1: And we can fucking go off on the difference between
Speaker 1: nations and states. The state is the entity the that
Speaker 1: has political control and exercise of monopoly on the gitimate
Speaker 1: violence in the geographic area. A nation is an imagined
Speaker 1: community that exists across base and time. That's the shortest
Speaker 1: I'm going to do that, and I'm not going to
Speaker 1: say anything that what's a country between those country is
Speaker 1: it's a geographical area that is state controls, but sometimes
Speaker 1: it's mapped onto nation as well, right, like Catalonia being
Speaker 1: a good example. But for most of the time people
Speaker 1: use it synonymously with state. So countries aren't competing. Nations are, right.
Speaker 1: The exiled Jews of Europe are competing, right, because if
Speaker 1: you're Jewish and it's nineteen thirty six, don't want to
Speaker 1: fucking like marching there with the German flag, I would
Speaker 1: imagine doesn't feel good like negative vibes, so they don't
Speaker 1: do that. There. They are the exiled Jews, right, and
Speaker 1: the anti fascists who are exiled from Germany Italy. They
Speaker 1: also come in with their own different flags. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: Initially there was some rumblings about the U a CP
Speaker 1: sort of competing in the end of the United States team,
Speaker 1: which is made up of trade unionists, had black and
Speaker 1: white folks on it. The organizers are actually so invested
Speaker 1: in like um, the I guess including a pressed black
Speaker 1: people from the United States within the remit of people
Speaker 1: who sort of anti fascism wanted to advocate for that.
Speaker 1: They threw this whole Olympics together in like three or
Speaker 1: four months. It was shoestring budget. It's funded by the
Speaker 1: French government, Spanish government, the Catalan government, individual donors, and
Speaker 1: some trade unions from Norway. And they took their very
Speaker 1: sparse money and we're like, we will pay your way
Speaker 1: if you if you're black people from America want to
Speaker 1: come over here, cause we understand its ship over there
Speaker 1: if you want to come and play with us, and
Speaker 1: that's fine, which is cool, Like fuck you to the
Speaker 1: fact that because the whole Olympics is a fuck you
Speaker 1: to to Nazi Germany, right, and so it's cool that
Speaker 1: it also was like and fuck you too. Racism in
Speaker 1: the United States also like I like that, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: like it's also worth noting, actually, look, why are we
Speaker 1: saying fuck you to the Nazis and that like the
Speaker 1: people at the popular Olympics like ran faster, jumped higher,
Speaker 1: worre stronger, like the Olympics are extremely gate kept by class.
Speaker 1: We see that. We see that kind of crumbling like
Speaker 1: with your with your man Jesse Owens and stuff like that. Right,
Speaker 1: but at this point there were still workers sports and
Speaker 1: bourgeois sports and bourgeois sports twins the Olympics, right, Like
Speaker 1: the Olympics still had an amateurism rule. If you got
Speaker 1: paid for exercising, you couldn't go. H So yeah, which
Speaker 1: meant that like working class people, right, like if you
Speaker 1: don't get paid time off, and one gets paid time
Speaker 1: off it's six then they can't go and compete. Right
Speaker 1: Like if even if you work full time and I say, hey, Margaret,
Speaker 1: I'll pay for a couple of weeks, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: make sure I take care of your rents so you
Speaker 1: can go and do the Olympics, Nope, if you run
Speaker 1: a benefit race after the Olympics, they will take your
Speaker 1: medal away. Tom Longboat who they did that too. They
Speaker 1: do that a whole lot to people who aren't white, shockingly. Um, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: Olympics not great. Actually, maybe we'll do a whole left
Speaker 1: bird and the Olympics do some bad ship. But yeah,
Speaker 1: these people come from America right on the team. It's
Speaker 1: Charlie Burley. Charlie Burley goes on to be kind of
Speaker 1: a legendary boxer, right, he's biracial man from Pennsylvania. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Dot Tucker she's a black woman. She ran her
Speaker 1: union in the Bronx and she ran hardromiters as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fucking planned that one out. Yeah, I love And they've
Speaker 1: written into the script like planned out. It's good, don't
Speaker 1: we It sounds sarcastic, but I actually mean it really honestly.
Speaker 1: You can appreciate the joy I'm feeling right now. And
Speaker 1: so that games brings twenty thou anti fascist to Barcelona, right,
Speaker 1: and some of them are watching, some of them are competing,
Speaker 1: some of them are staying in hotels. The Hotel Olympic
Speaker 1: is where most of them stay. But they ran of space.
Speaker 1: So about two weeks before the games, they went around
Speaker 1: random houses and we're like, hey, can you have someone
Speaker 1: to stay? So lots of the athletes are just like
Speaker 1: crashing with people. It's kind of cool. If you go
Speaker 1: to the archive in Barcelona, you can see the little
Speaker 1: forms where they go up to a house and be like, okay,
Speaker 1: this person has two beds and they can take care
Speaker 1: of breakfast. And that's two athletes who can stay here.
Speaker 1: They went door to door. Yeah, it's heartbreaking seeing that
Speaker 1: ship and then knowing what happened. Um, I was thinking
Speaker 1: it was like a better way to Um. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: that's what Airbnb should be, you know, yes, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think if the Airbnb, if we compare this to the
Speaker 1: Berlin Olympic village where the Condor legions stayed before they
Speaker 1: headed off to bomb people in Spain, we will see
Speaker 1: that one side is better than the other side. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so these people are staying all across Barcelona, right. They's
Speaker 1: trained in the stadium the day before they distriputed all
Speaker 1: around the city. So in the morning of the these
Speaker 1: are kind of hardcore Catholic conservatives. Um, they report to
Speaker 1: the stand Indario barracks outside of Barcelona. Meanwhile, at the
Speaker 1: pedroal Bes barracks, officers get their troops up, but think
Speaker 1: a four in the morning serve them a ration of
Speaker 1: rum for breakfast and tell them that there's been an
Speaker 1: anarchist uprising in the city that they have to put down,
Speaker 1: and so they send them my right, this is a lie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the uprising is in fact what they are doing as
Speaker 1: they march into the city. It's telling that they lie
Speaker 1: because the troops are conscripts and are not really brought
Speaker 1: into their nationalist crusade at this point. And it's worth
Speaker 1: always remember, and they're like working class people get trapped
Speaker 1: up in wars, often not by their own choosing. Well,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of like how they're like, you have
Speaker 1: to go out and fight Antifa, you have to go
Speaker 1: out and do a coup against the United States because
Speaker 1: otherwise Antifa, who are all Stalinists, are going to turn
Speaker 1: the US into the uss are. Yes, yeah, yeah, that's yeah,
Speaker 1: there are there's no parallel. No, that's that's not a parallel. Sorry, Okay,
Speaker 1: it could never happen here, and that's that's our big
Speaker 1: message for today. So these guys they start heading down
Speaker 1: Abgnula Diagonal right towards Plastic Cataluniar at the heart of city,
Speaker 1: the cavalry or on a different street, Kara Tarragona. There
Speaker 1: are dragoons on a different street. They leave a little
Speaker 1: later because the Spanish armies something of a clusterfuck, and
Speaker 1: they all plan to join up, but they never did. Instead,
Speaker 1: all across the city, sirens sound the alarm in factories
Speaker 1: and where these troops have been planning to meet up
Speaker 1: with one another. They met up with sniper fire and
Speaker 1: those homemade bombs we talked about. Yeah, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: where ship gets gets good. At the barricades, they met
Speaker 1: men and women with everything from modern machine pistols to
Speaker 1: blunderbusses and slingshots. Yeah, the blunderbusses are pretty cool. You
Speaker 1: can find some pictures. Many troops were forced back into
Speaker 1: their barracks. Some made it as far as a telephone
Speaker 1: exchange and the hotel's riots and cologne in the middle
Speaker 1: of the city. What the troops, who are incredibly poorly
Speaker 1: trained consecuts with little or no combat experience and even
Speaker 1: less willingness to fight, ran into it was the most
Speaker 1: unlikely of alliances. Catalonia's Nationalists had governed the autonomous region
Speaker 1: since the declaration of the Republic in nineteen thirty one.
Speaker 1: They formed a broad leftist alliance called the ESCO Republic
Speaker 1: Canada Catalonia. That means Catalan Republican Left. I was calling
Speaker 1: the e r C to avoid that. It's a bit
Speaker 1: of an alphabet soup, but I'll try and explain where
Speaker 1: I need to. So before the Popular Front existed, they're
Speaker 1: kind of a proto popular front. They could bind the
Speaker 1: liberal and leftist parties who share agreement on autonomous and
Speaker 1: progressive Catalonia. And they tend to be either aligned with
Speaker 1: or to the left of the government in Madrid, most
Speaker 1: often to the left of UM. They don't cover support
Speaker 1: of the anarchists. Right, that's important, um luis compounds who's
Speaker 1: the leader right there, the Catalan leader of the generality
Speaker 1: that at that point has been a lawyer for the
Speaker 1: anarchist before, so he may have more personal support than
Speaker 1: the party as a whole, hands among the anarchists. UM.
Speaker 1: For decades, right, the police in Barcelona have acted on
Speaker 1: behalf of capital against labor. They do violence for the
Speaker 1: people who aren't stuff against people who make stuff. And
Speaker 1: even under the Republic, this has continued. Right they had
Speaker 1: called it the Republic of order, and Margot, I think
Speaker 1: you covered the like the pistosema right there. The years
Speaker 1: of the pistol in the nineteen twenties. Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: um it was yeah, they like shooting the anarchists in
Speaker 1: order to bring about order. They and they it wasn't
Speaker 1: like a legal thing. They weren't like, oh, is there
Speaker 1: a egal strategy. It was just like we're in charge,
Speaker 1: so we will assassinate the anarchists. And then the other
Speaker 1: thing that like, I feel like it's like we're thinking
Speaker 1: about because if if someone's hearing, you might be like,
Speaker 1: why does the government care if the anarchists are on
Speaker 1: their side? And it's to my understanding and correct me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong. The anarchists are like a huge chunk
Speaker 1: of the working class of Barcelona at this point, so
Speaker 1: it's like they actually do care because it's a huge,
Speaker 1: huge swaths of people. The anarchists by the end of
Speaker 1: the night will own the city, right, and they have
Speaker 1: always been the majority of the Catalan working class in
Speaker 1: this period. They they control the way elections go. Right.
Speaker 1: When the anarchists abstained, then the right winds when the
Speaker 1: anarchists they don't say, don't vote, like they don't like
Speaker 1: they're not like, yeah, I go vote, They're like they
Speaker 1: don't maybe consider not abstaining, then the popular front winds. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very funny how they how they use words. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the the anarchists are the working class for the most
Speaker 1: of the most of the industries, most of the unions
Speaker 1: are anarcho synicalist. Right, so you don't have support the anarchists,
Speaker 1: you don't have support the working class. In the twenties,
Speaker 1: the cops called the anarchists. The anarchists called the cops. Right.
Speaker 1: This is how we get the famous affinity groups, right
Speaker 1: Lost Darios, los Quixotes, Delidiale and being some famous ones. Right,
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about them a little bit in the
Speaker 1: next episode how that works and what they mean. Uh.
Speaker 1: So ninety one, their declaration of Republic was a massive
Speaker 1: boost for the anarchists. More people have joined anarchist unions.
Speaker 1: They felt safe for doing so. Primo de Rivera, the
Speaker 1: previous dictator had been very harsh an anarchists. They actually,
Speaker 1: briefly in the out job the GAT secured like libertarian
Speaker 1: socialists and they just took over some towns. Uh and
Speaker 1: like they they see his weapons from the cops and
Speaker 1: abolished currency for a week and it was just like
Speaker 1: get it's on it's it's anarchism. And so for five
Speaker 1: days for goals belonged to the people of the gold.
Speaker 1: And this is before we're talking about, before the the
Speaker 1: coup and all of that. Yeah, this is republic begins
Speaker 1: in n So there's a number of these early on
Speaker 1: in the Republic, when the state is less violently postured
Speaker 1: towards anarchism, the anarchists really fucking send it um. You
Speaker 1: see it in Casas via hearsts, you see in fig goals.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they more people joining because they feel safe
Speaker 1: for joining, and that leads to more open conflict with
Speaker 1: the sort of civil order I guess. But with the
Speaker 1: threat of fascism looming, the CNT establishes defense committees and
Speaker 1: these become like a quick reaction force for the city. Right,
Speaker 1: so by the time the troops leave their barracks, activists
Speaker 1: within the CNT were ready for them. Barcelona's reval, the
Speaker 1: densely populated district just off the more tourists friendly Rambler
Speaker 1: have become known as a Bari Chines and that means Chinatown,
Speaker 1: not because Chinese people are people of any Asian extraction
Speaker 1: lived there. That's because they watched gangster movies about Chicago's Chinatown,
Speaker 1: and they were like, oh yeah, we're we can go
Speaker 1: that hard. Okay, they just called it that. Chris Elum
Speaker 1: has a great book on the construction of Chinatown. Now,
Speaker 1: people have been shooting each other in those streets for decades, right,
Speaker 1: But for once everyone in the revol was pointing their
Speaker 1: guns out every balcony, and the raval becomes a sniper's nest,
Speaker 1: and by the time the sun came up, it was
Speaker 1: an impenetible fortress of the working class. And at this
Speaker 1: time the state would find itself begging the anarchist for
Speaker 1: support and not the other way around. And I think
Speaker 1: that's maybe where we'll end it today, so that people
Speaker 1: can be sort of teetering on the edge of the
Speaker 1: seat to know what happened next. Thank you very much
Speaker 1: for joining me, Margaret. Would you like to plug anything?
Speaker 1: Do you have any plug dobles? Well, I have a
Speaker 1: book that's available for pre order. It's called We Won't
Speaker 1: Be Here Tomorrow. And if you like um trans woman
Speaker 1: who robs guys and then feeds them to her mermaid lover,
Speaker 1: or you like the Um the Dead and Valhalla coming
Speaker 1: back and joining in an American Civil War, to fight
Speaker 1: against Nazis, then you might like this book. Um actually,
Speaker 1: I think I read that story on this podcast. Um
Speaker 1: fucking ruin the next episode, because that's what happened as well,
Speaker 1: I know, I know. Well, actually there's a different story
Speaker 1: that I didn't write. I think. Oh no, there's one
Speaker 1: about um velociraptors in the Spanish Civil War. Um that
Speaker 1: that anyway, that's completely unrelated. Okay, So that is where
Speaker 1: you I am. The book is currently available for pre
Speaker 1: order and if you get it from a k Press
Speaker 1: or a couple other different independent bookstores, then it comes
Speaker 1: with a free art print that comes from the book.
Speaker 1: And so if you like that, you could consider getting
Speaker 1: it or ask your library to get it. And you
Speaker 1: can follow me on the internet at Magpie killed Joy
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Margaret killed on Instagram. That's I have
Speaker 1: a podcast, I do. I actually have two podcasts. I
Speaker 1: have a podcast called Live Like the World Is Dying,
Speaker 1: which is an individual and community preparedness podcast, and I
Speaker 1: also have a podcast on this very network. Um I do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you all haven't noticed it yet. I've just been kind
Speaker 1: of uploading my stuff without checking with you all called
Speaker 1: cool people who did cool stuff, which is all about history,
Speaker 1: but in a fun way about stuff that cool. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm exciting begin right now. Thank you very much, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. It could Happen Here as a production
Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
Speaker 1: for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone
Speaker 1: Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.