Speaker 1: Al Zone Media. Oh boy, howdy, welcome back to it
Speaker 1: could happen here? A podcast about it happening here, and
Speaker 1: it is different most episodes. But today the thing that
Speaker 1: is happening here is discussion about the growth of self
Speaker 1: immolation as a form of protest from the twentieth to
Speaker 1: the twenty first century. Obviously, we are recording this less
Speaker 1: than a week after Aaron Bushnell, a twenty five year
Speaker 1: old serviceman in the United States Air Force, let himself
Speaker 1: on fire in front of the Israeli Intimacy in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. And you know, repeatedly stated free Palestine as
Speaker 1: he was doing it. He said more than that, obviously,
Speaker 1: he wrote, you know, I think very clearly about why
Speaker 1: he did what he was doing. This is something that
Speaker 1: you'll have heard a lot of debate about. There's a
Speaker 1: certain kind of person, particularly in the media, who feels
Speaker 1: obligated to say this is mental illness and we shouldn't
Speaker 1: discuss it as anything else. I think that's wrong for
Speaker 1: the same reasons, by the way that it's wrong to
Speaker 1: dismiss you any sort of mass shooter or whatever as
Speaker 1: mentally ill not that either of those are similar in
Speaker 1: terms of the actions they're not. But that attempt to
Speaker 1: dismiss it because it's something it makes you uncomfortable to
Speaker 1: consider that somebody could do something so incomprehensible to you
Speaker 1: for a logical reason. Now, when I say a logical reason,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean I'm arguing this is something more people
Speaker 1: should do. It doesn't mean that I'm arguing that this
Speaker 1: was the best thing that Bushnell could do. What I
Speaker 1: am saying is that, from everything that is available, this
Speaker 1: was a rational act. He understood what he hoped to
Speaker 1: accomplish with this, and he took concerted steps to ensure
Speaker 1: that he succeeded and that attention was drawn to it.
Speaker 1: His reason for doing it was clear. He took actions
Speaker 1: like to set up a will and whatnot. This seems
Speaker 1: to have been a rational and principled action, and we
Speaker 1: are I'm not really primarily going to be discussing what
Speaker 1: Bushnell did because I don't really know that there's much
Speaker 1: to say. You know, it's it's everyone here's stance that
Speaker 1: what's being done to Gaza is a genocide. I don't
Speaker 1: know that this will help. I certainly hope that somehow
Speaker 1: it does, but we're simply not at a point where
Speaker 1: we can say what the impact of this on the
Speaker 1: overall you know, situation in Gaza is going to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean I guess like the thing we
Speaker 2: can say off the bat is like whether or not
Speaker 2: this matters is to a larger scent up to you
Speaker 2: because like someone someone like I mean, this is the thing, right,
Speaker 2: Like that.
Speaker 1: Matters in the sense that it has an impact on
Speaker 1: the Obviously, I think it matters because he was a
Speaker 1: person well that too, right, Yeah, but like yeah, in
Speaker 1: the in the in the in the sense of whether
Speaker 1: its accomplishes political objectives, like that's up to.
Speaker 2: Us figuring out how we're going to run a political
Speaker 2: movement in such a way that the Shannisi gets stopped.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that is It's not something I have a
Speaker 1: clear answer for you on right now, but I think
Speaker 1: there I think so, I think the thing we're going
Speaker 1: to try to do that I think can be helpful
Speaker 1: in This is a tempt to provide some context on
Speaker 1: what is the history of self immolation as a protest tactic,
Speaker 1: How does it tend to work in the past and
Speaker 1: in the present, and in what sort of situations has
Speaker 1: it been more or less effective as an instrument of protest.
Speaker 1: That's what we're going to try to cover today. Obviously,
Speaker 1: this should not be seen as a totally comprehensive look
Speaker 1: at the entire history.
Speaker 2: Of goodcast as I'm about to come.
Speaker 1: This is what we can get for you in about
Speaker 1: a week, and I think I think it will help
Speaker 1: and provide a broader sense of context as to how
Speaker 1: this sort of thing has worked in other situations around
Speaker 1: the world and throughout time. Self immolation goes back very
Speaker 1: far as a protest tactic. There were Christians who are
Speaker 1: being persecuted by the Roman government in Nicodemia in three
Speaker 1: hundred AD who lit a fire in front of the
Speaker 1: Emperor's palace and threw themselves into a bonfire as an
Speaker 1: active protest. In Russia, I think in like the sixteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: Orthodox I don't know there was an Orthodox sect. I
Speaker 1: don't really know much about them, but they they locked
Speaker 1: themselves pro in churches as a protest for some of
Speaker 1: the czar's reforms and then lit those churches on fire,
Speaker 1: so like died inside the churches that they were in.
Speaker 1: So this is a kind of thing that goes back
Speaker 1: quite a while. I'm sure there are other cases in
Speaker 1: you know, ancient history that go well before that, but
Speaker 1: it's it's not a new thing. However, when we talk
Speaker 1: about kind of twentieth and twenty first century self immolation,
Speaker 1: the first sort of really famous case of this and
Speaker 1: the one that gets brought up every single time people
Speaker 1: talk about self immolation as a protest tactic was one
Speaker 1: that occurred during the Vietnam War, and it was the
Speaker 1: self immolation of a Buddhist monk named tish Quang Duk.
Speaker 1: I believe that's Thhi. I think that's how that's pronounced.
Speaker 1: I lestn't do it before we started recording this, but
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff slips out of my head, so
Speaker 1: I apologize if that is the case. He's an interesting guy.
Speaker 1: I think pretty his early life is probably pretty common
Speaker 1: for people who become Buddhists, who became Buddhist monks and
Speaker 1: kind of Central Vietnam in this period of time. He
Speaker 1: left home when he was like seven, he became a
Speaker 1: novice at fifteen. By twenty he was a full monk.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that's happening during this period
Speaker 1: of time is the South Vietnamese government is this guy
Speaker 1: he's called a president. The president he is a dictator.
Speaker 1: I think everything but name No Din DM and he's
Speaker 1: a terrible guy. He's a French educated Catholic. And if
Speaker 1: you know anything about the French history and into China
Speaker 1: right like that, that does not suggest somebody whose role
Speaker 1: before Vietnam got its independence from France was particularly great.
Speaker 1: His brother No Din knew what is the head of
Speaker 1: the secret police, And they are despite the fact that
Speaker 1: Vietnam South Vietnam is a Buddhist majority country, they're passing
Speaker 1: a lot of policies that are like actively cracking down
Speaker 1: on and reducing the right of a Buddhist people to
Speaker 1: worship right. And you know, this is there's a lot
Speaker 1: of reasons for this, but they kind of boiled down
Speaker 1: to the fact that Dim was was horrible, was just
Speaker 1: a fucking dog shit. Yeah, really really trash. Now I've
Speaker 1: heard it said online when people bring up this self immolation,
Speaker 1: you know, within kind of the context of of what's
Speaker 1: happened recently, like this wasn't a you know, people are
Speaker 1: wrong when they say this was an act of protest
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War. It wasn't. And that is technically true
Speaker 1: because like the thing that that duke was was protesting
Speaker 1: was not US involvement in Vietnam, but he was protesting
Speaker 1: the US backed government of South Vietnam, and that government
Speaker 1: is very relevant to why there was a Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: So I do kind of think it's it's not entirely
Speaker 1: accurate to be like, well, this wasn't a Vietnam War protest, No, no,
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 2: It was. It was just about the fact that, like
Speaker 2: the Catholic theocratic, drug dealing fascist government, it was like murdering.
Speaker 2: It seems like you're splitting the hair there, bro.
Speaker 1: I feel like the murdering Buddhist thing might have been
Speaker 1: part of why there was so many people willing to
Speaker 1: fight the South Vietnamese government.
Speaker 2: Not a zero percent part of that equation.
Speaker 1: Maybe, but yeah, So these guys, these Buddhists, I mean
Speaker 1: Buddhist religious leaders in the country get increasingly angry about
Speaker 1: what's happening. There are debates, I think for several years,
Speaker 1: kind of within sort of the more highly ranking kind
Speaker 1: of leaders in the faith as to like, what do
Speaker 1: we do about this crackdown on our rights and like
Speaker 1: should we They were talking for quite some time about
Speaker 1: having a self immolation protest, right Like. It was the
Speaker 1: kind of thing where there was a decent amount of
Speaker 1: like discussion earlier, and Duck is actually the one who
Speaker 1: I think suggested it initially to like other leaders in
Speaker 1: the church. And yeah, while there was like for a
Speaker 1: while they tried to push back against this, eventually the
Speaker 1: level of prosecution just became so clear that you know,
Speaker 1: they basically said, Okay, let's like you can do this.
Speaker 1: And Duck is going to be the guy who is
Speaker 1: going to like physically, you know, destroy his body in
Speaker 1: order to carry out this active protest, as is always
Speaker 1: going to be the case when we talk about these
Speaker 1: famous self immolation cases, half of the story is the
Speaker 1: guy who does or the individual who lights himself on fire,
Speaker 1: and half of the story is the reporter who happens
Speaker 1: to be there. And in this case it was a
Speaker 1: guy named Malcolm Brown. He is, I believe he's an
Speaker 1: American reporter. He's stationed in you know, Saigone, and he's
Speaker 1: you know, doing what a lot of journalists were doing
Speaker 1: at the time. And in the springtime of nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: there start being like these kind of messages put out
Speaker 1: by the Buddhist Church that are sort of he describes
Speaker 1: it as hinting as some kind of spectacular protest. His
Speaker 1: guess was that it would quote most likely be a
Speaker 1: disembowlment of one of the monks or an immolation, and
Speaker 1: either way, it was something we had to pay attention to.
Speaker 1: And like a lot of journalists, he's got some sources
Speaker 1: within the church. He gets a call one day and
Speaker 1: they're like, you should show up at this pagoda at
Speaker 1: this specific time. And here is how Malcolm describes what
Speaker 1: he saw. By the time I got to the pagoda
Speaker 1: where all this was being organized, it was already under way.
Speaker 1: The monks and nuns were chanting a type of chant
Speaker 1: that's very common at funerals and so forth. At a
Speaker 1: signal from the leader, they all started out into the
Speaker 1: street and headed toward the central part of Saigon on foot.
Speaker 1: When we reached there, the monks quickly formed a circle
Speaker 1: around a precise intersection of two main streets in Saigon.
Speaker 1: A car drove up, two young monks got out of it.
Speaker 1: An older monk, leaning a bit on one of the
Speaker 1: younger ones also got out. He headed right for the
Speaker 1: center of the intersection. The two young monks brought up
Speaker 1: a plastic jerry can, which proved to be gasoline. As
Speaker 1: soon as he seated himself, they poured the liquid all
Speaker 1: over him. He got out a matchbook, lighted it and
Speaker 1: dropped it in his lap and was immediately engulfed in flames.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's you know what happened that day. Malcolm
Speaker 1: takes a picture of He takes a bunch of pictures.
Speaker 1: You can see all of them. There's a Good Time
Speaker 1: article Malcolm Brown, the Story behind the Burning Monk, that
Speaker 1: has all of the pictures that he took, or at
Speaker 1: least like a long list of them, and they are
Speaker 1: worth seeing. They aren't. I shouldn't have to put a
Speaker 1: trigger warning in here, right, these are photos of a
Speaker 1: burning to death.
Speaker 2: Like that shit sucks, say from me? Yeah, yeah, yeah, God,
Speaker 2: it doesn't look good. It looks really bad. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now obviously one of specifically one of the photos you've
Speaker 1: probably seen it where like half of the monk's face
Speaker 1: looks okay and the other half is just like wreathed
Speaker 1: in fire. This goes like the sixties equivalent of viral right.
Speaker 1: President Kennedy said of the photograph. No news picture in
Speaker 1: history has generated so much emotion around the world is
Speaker 1: that one. And at the time it may have been true,
Speaker 1: and it is. It is number one. It does have
Speaker 1: a role in the anti war movement because you know,
Speaker 1: this is related to a protest against the government we
Speaker 1: were backing. But this is also one of the more successful,
Speaker 1: maybe the most like directly successful cases of self immolation
Speaker 1: I've seen, because this does play a significant role in
Speaker 1: the end of Deem's presidency and his life.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So Duck leaves a note like a lot of these
Speaker 1: people do. In his note, again is very clear minded.
Speaker 1: He ends it by saying, before closing my eyes and
Speaker 1: moving towards the vision of the Buddha, I respectfully plead
Speaker 1: to President no d indem to take a mind of
Speaker 1: compassion towards the people of the nation and admit implement
Speaker 1: religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland eternally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when this kind of happens, as I quoted earlier, Kennedy
Speaker 1: is like shocked and furious. He yells to his national
Speaker 1: security advisor, who the fuck are these people? Like? How
Speaker 1: did we not know this was going to happen? He's
Speaker 1: he's very angry about all this. Buddhist is like, I
Speaker 1: feel like, like that's the kind of big clue I
Speaker 1: actually have trouble imagining like JFK, having a significant amount
Speaker 1: of context, aest to like what buddhismiss.
Speaker 2: God.
Speaker 1: But maybe maybe I'm wrong. So I want to quote
Speaker 1: from this really good medium article the suicide that changed
Speaker 1: American policy in Vietnam by a poor Va Tadepali, And
Speaker 1: this is for a series they write called near Pot,
Speaker 1: which is an interactive classroom tool for students. And I
Speaker 1: found this a very readable and concise description of kind
Speaker 1: of what happened after Douk's self immolation quote. The publicity
Speaker 1: of the incident increased pressure on DIM's government to deal
Speaker 1: with the crisis, but he did not take the incident
Speaker 1: seriously enough. His response to the death was an announcement
Speaker 1: on the radio later that day that wildly missed the point.
Speaker 1: The state of affairs was moving forward so smoothly, he said, bizarrely,
Speaker 1: when this morning acting under extremist and truth concealing propaganda,
Speaker 1: that's so doubt about the goodwill of the government. A
Speaker 1: number of people got intoxicated and caused an undeserved death
Speaker 1: that made me very sorry.
Speaker 2: OK, I feel a lot of terrible statements. A it
Speaker 2: is this guy.
Speaker 1: We need to do the Bastards episode on him because
Speaker 1: DM is like he's horrible. He causes a lot of
Speaker 1: damage to a lot of people, but he's that's a
Speaker 1: fucking scrub, right yeah, like fucking Stalin would never you know,
Speaker 1: like the o Geese very sad you like Saddam Hussein
Speaker 1: would have gotten caught.
Speaker 2: Up in that shit. No, not my man. Listen, this
Speaker 2: is like this is bush league shit even by like
Speaker 2: fucking like East Asian dictators, like can.
Speaker 1: You get che Shek, Like no way, oh no, Kai
Speaker 1: Shek wouldn't have gotten caught up in this shit.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, ny Sheck. If someone had tried to do this
Speaker 2: specifically in chink she Chanky Sheck would have shot the
Speaker 2: guy himself.
Speaker 1: Absolutely yeah, oh my god. So anyway, this scrub he makes,
Speaker 1: he makes like a promise that they're going to do
Speaker 1: reforms and stuff, and like while he's doing this, his family,
Speaker 1: including his brother Knew, who's like the head of the
Speaker 1: Saigon Secret Police, is basically is saying like like literally says,
Speaker 1: if the Buddhists want to have another barbecue, I'll be
Speaker 1: glad to supply the gasoline. Christ and his wife, who's
Speaker 1: like a very merry Antoinette figure. Madam Knew who is.
Speaker 1: It's his brother's wife, but she's basically the first lady
Speaker 1: right of South Vietnam. She's like, let them burn, We'll
Speaker 1: clap our hands. Oh god, So it's pretty it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Like DM is actually kind of the smart one in
Speaker 1: the family because he's trying to like tell his sister
Speaker 1: in law and his brother in law like nah, bra Or,
Speaker 1: and his brother and his sister in law, like, you
Speaker 1: guys don't understand. We have to be a little bit
Speaker 1: careful here. This could really go badly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It really seems like like they haven't figured out
Speaker 2: the playbook for dealing with this yet. No, because like
Speaker 2: the successive governments, like everyone has like the same line
Speaker 2: that they say when it happens, and these people, it
Speaker 2: looks like they're really kind of scrambling here. They didn't
Speaker 2: have any they'd never even considered that something like this
Speaker 2: could happen. There would be reactions to their policies like this.
Speaker 2: There are a bunch of protests by monks and nuns
Speaker 2: of the police arrest a bunch of people. This continues
Speaker 2: to draw outrage and make the system a situation worse
Speaker 2: new the secret police guy has his goons like ransack
Speaker 2: and destroy a bunch of like Buddhist basically a lot
Speaker 2: of people, like fourteen hundred people are like rounded up
Speaker 2: and arrested. DM accuses the monks of being part of
Speaker 2: the Viet Cong, which is again like sure, such a yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that is important to understand
Speaker 1: here is that this is at a very different part
Speaker 1: stage of the Vietnam War. The US has troops in
Speaker 1: the country, but not a lot, like very few compared
Speaker 1: to how many are going to be there, And at
Speaker 1: this stage, DM actually isn't happy that we have even
Speaker 1: though it's got to become very clear that like the
Speaker 1: US troops the only thing allowing this regime to stay
Speaker 1: propped up. He is like, I don't want them here.
Speaker 1: They don't even have passports, right, Like he's he's like
Speaker 1: weirdly anti the like. And part of it is because
Speaker 1: the US is about to act here finally to take
Speaker 1: support away from his regime. So three days after his buddy,
Speaker 1: his brother in law or his brother Knu has a
Speaker 1: bunch of raids on these Buddhist temples, there's a cable
Speaker 1: sent from DC to the US ambassador in Southern Vietnam
Speaker 1: that's like, we're not backing this guy anymore. And this
Speaker 1: ends with a bunch of South Vietnamese generals who had
Speaker 1: already been planning a coup being given the go ahead
Speaker 1: from the US basically saying like, we're not our guys
Speaker 1: are not going to take any actions to stop you
Speaker 1: from overthrowing this guy. And on November two, Dim and
Speaker 1: his brother are kidnapped while trying to escape and they
Speaker 1: are killed not long after. So this is, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty successful self emolation. You have to say, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: works seems like it works about as well as you
Speaker 1: could have hoped for that, right, like the at least,
Speaker 1: I'm sure aus as well as that monk hoped, because
Speaker 1: you know, Dim is not just out of power, but
Speaker 1: is fucking killed as a result of this.
Speaker 2: So ohough, the problem is the subsequent people he has
Speaker 2: put in charge of Yeah, also suck.
Speaker 1: But that's that's also part of a pattern, unfortunately, and
Speaker 1: there's like a weirdly there's like a history of self
Speaker 1: emolation leading to regime change. We're gonna talk about Tunia
Speaker 1: at the end of the episode, and that does tend
Speaker 1: to be the story of like, yeah, we got rid
Speaker 1: of the dictator and then a guy who sucked that's
Speaker 1: as much came into power.
Speaker 2: Hey, well, the the tai one one we're gonna talk
Speaker 2: about in a second actually gets pretty well. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and before we go into that, because we're
Speaker 1: gonna let you take over from hearing meat or at
Speaker 1: least for the next couple of parts of this. But
Speaker 1: first let's let our advertisers take over and we're back.
Speaker 1: All right, miya, you are on deck. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, I think I think people are kind of broadly
Speaker 2: aware kind of if you know anything more self immolations,
Speaker 2: about the self emilations in Vietnam, and then also the
Speaker 2: sort of the ones in the US, like as as
Speaker 2: anti Vietnam War protests, the ones that I don't think
Speaker 2: most people here know and that I only know about,
Speaker 2: like because like my mom was born in Taiwan, Right,
Speaker 2: is the Taiwanese self immolationis. Yeah. So this guy's name
Speaker 2: is Jian Yong Rong. He is he's also noticed the
Speaker 2: thing most people call him is Nylon Jung, for reasons
Speaker 2: that I guess will become clear when he lights himself
Speaker 2: on fire. So Nylon Jung is a very very influential
Speaker 2: Uh well, okay, I don't know, very very influential Quatro.
Speaker 2: But he's like a he's a pretty famous and very
Speaker 2: influential pro in dependence activist in Taiwan, dring the KMT's
Speaker 2: occupation there. And this is something I don't like. Americans
Speaker 2: tend to not understand this very well. So okay, So
Speaker 2: the the KMT is the Chinese nationalist party. They take
Speaker 2: power in Taiwan after just invading it effectively. They when
Speaker 2: when when they when they lose the civil war, the
Speaker 2: KMTS are cremating forces, and a bunch of their supporters
Speaker 2: like flee to Taiwan, and there are there are like
Speaker 2: three groups of people who the KMT like spend most
Speaker 2: of their time killing, and that is communist, feminists and
Speaker 2: Taiwanese independence activists. They also hate Presbyterians for reasons that are.
Speaker 1: Hey, hey, we all hate Presbyterians, Am I right?
Speaker 2: Okay to look look, I am not normally at Presbyterian
Speaker 2: like er. The Taiwanese Presbyterians like legitimately do good work
Speaker 2: in the sense that they are like one of the
Speaker 2: groups that's like pretty important in bringing down the KMT
Speaker 2: one party dictatorship. But okay, so Taiwan has this like
Speaker 2: really appalling like One Party dictatorship. Nylon Jung is actually
Speaker 2: born I think I'm remembering is right. He's born like
Speaker 2: during the February twenty eighth incident, which is this thing
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty seven. Actually we're we are two days.
Speaker 2: I think when this goes out will be two days
Speaker 2: after the seventy seventh anniversary of it, where there's there's
Speaker 2: a giant uprising in Taiwan because like people in Taiwan
Speaker 2: fucking hate the KMT because they suck and they murder people,
Speaker 2: and there's this giant uprising and the KMT eventually like
Speaker 2: their military forces get reorganized and they so the initial
Speaker 2: uprising takes most of the islands, and then the KMG
Speaker 2: just come back and kill everyone. They kill about twenty
Speaker 2: thousand people in a week. It's one of the sort
Speaker 2: of like I don't know, one of the kind of
Speaker 2: like defining incidents and what becomes sort of Talentese national culture.
Speaker 2: It's just this like massacre and then you know, it's
Speaker 2: basically it's legal to talk about afterwards. This is this
Speaker 2: is the beginning of the sort of white terror in China,
Speaker 2: and they're gonna you know, and this is the start
Speaker 2: of the KMT kidnapping and torturing like tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of people. One of the things that happens in this
Speaker 2: this is actually so this is this was my family's
Speaker 2: experience of it. Is that. Okay, so there's there's this
Speaker 2: up there's the uprising, right, but one of the things
Speaker 2: that starts happening pretty quickly is these like retaliatory killings
Speaker 2: against like against Chinese nationals, And that was stuff my
Speaker 2: family was like, yeah, we like couldn't go outside because
Speaker 2: if you leave your house, like you're gonna get killed
Speaker 2: by mobs and that stuff. That stuff like sucked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that that does sound like it sucked.
Speaker 2: No, it's not good because it's the thing because it's
Speaker 2: weird because it's like that uprising like broadly good, but
Speaker 2: it turns into like parts of it turn into race
Speaker 2: riots or like why it's weird, Like I don't know,
Speaker 2: it turns into these like like anti Chinese national like
Speaker 2: riots and that stuff. You know. So Jong is from
Speaker 2: a Chinese like like just from like a sort of
Speaker 2: like Chinese national family that like fled to Taiwan after
Speaker 2: the war, and his family is protected by other Taiwanese
Speaker 2: like like uprising people who are like no, like we're
Speaker 2: not going to fucking just kill these random Chinese people,
Speaker 2: Like what are you guys talking about? And that's this
Speaker 2: really formative thing for him where this is one of
Speaker 2: the things that caused him to grow up to become
Speaker 2: like the kind of Chinese like Taiwanese independence activist that
Speaker 2: he is, where he's one of these people who is
Speaker 2: really big on Taiwan as like like liberating Taiwan as
Speaker 2: a nation, but having it be like a nation of
Speaker 2: ideals and not a nation of blood because his you know,
Speaker 2: because he sees how badly this kind of like ulternational
Speaker 2: bloodline like shit can go. And so he becomes like
Speaker 2: a pretty prominent independence activist. He runs one of the
Speaker 2: anti party newspapers, like anti Canteen newspapers, and he's mostly
Speaker 2: doing a lot of this stuff in the eighties where
Speaker 2: so basically like you have two consecutive like like the
Speaker 2: Shanki check and then you have like more guys from
Speaker 2: that family. By the eighties, you're like democratization is kind
Speaker 2: of like slowly moving forward because the time when he's
Speaker 2: ruling class, he's losing American backing, they're losing backing overseas.
Speaker 2: But you know, even even by sort of nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: which is in the period in which people are talking
Speaker 2: about like well democratization's happening, like it's gonna go forward,
Speaker 2: the country still has likes they haven't had like real
Speaker 2: national elections, and they still have these really really intense
Speaker 2: what are called anti sedition laws and so one of
Speaker 2: the things that the pro independence activist and this is
Speaker 2: the period in which like Taiwan's like modern ruling party,
Speaker 2: the Democratic Progressive Party like comes into existence or like
Speaker 2: they're coming to existence as the anti KMT party. And
Speaker 2: this is the sort of milieu kind of in which
Speaker 2: Dylon Jung is sort of mobilizing, right, But he's also
Speaker 2: I don't know, he's like he's the kind of guy
Speaker 2: that doesn't exist anymore, which is like he's kind of
Speaker 2: like a like like liberal progressive national liberation supporter. So
Speaker 2: I actually I found a really interesting thing translated by
Speaker 2: jenhan Chan on this guy I kind of am aware
Speaker 2: of from Twitter, who translated this thing that he read
Speaker 2: about Palestine, where he is a pro Palestine guy. But
Speaker 2: it's interesting because he sees Palestine as like another nation
Speaker 2: that's been like subjugated in like a similar way to
Speaker 2: Taiwan has and you know, and he's like an anti
Speaker 2: armed struggle guy, but he's also very sort of he's
Speaker 2: very committed to Taiwanese independence as a national liberation movement
Speaker 2: and specifically, like the thing that you're liberating it from
Speaker 2: is the KMT, and so, you know, he he gets
Speaker 2: in the trouble constantly with like the KMT government. They
Speaker 2: arrest in a bunch of times, and eventually, in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nine, he gets charged with these by these anti
Speaker 2: sisition laws. He gets charged with insurrection for like spreading
Speaker 2: drafts of a potential new Taiwanese constitution, and so he
Speaker 2: barricades himself in his office, refuses to show up to code.
Speaker 2: He gives this giant speech about how like you'll never
Speaker 2: take me alive, and the police kind of take him serious.
Speaker 2: He's barricaded himself in like his newspaper offices, and he's
Speaker 2: there for like two months, and at the end of
Speaker 2: month two, a cop who is the current mayor of
Speaker 2: New Taipei City tries to burst down his door.
Speaker 1: That doesn't save my a job that you should be
Speaker 1: able to have.
Speaker 2: No, No, this is one of these things where it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: so like the KMT, this is one of these things
Speaker 2: about sort of Tony's politics. That's weird that the KMT
Speaker 2: is the modern sort of pro China promunification faction. Right,
Speaker 2: those guys suck like like they're they're not they're not
Speaker 2: the same sort of like just desk squad party they
Speaker 2: were in the sort of late in like the twentieth century.
Speaker 2: But they're also like yeah, no, it's literally they're mayor.
Speaker 2: They're mayor of PIPEI, which is okay, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to go into what the difference between Uchaipe and I
Speaker 2: pay is here. That's that's the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing. It's like the difference between you know, New
Speaker 1: York and Old York.
Speaker 2: Right, it's it's it's closer to the difference between New
Speaker 2: York City and New York.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, but that makes sense. Yeah that works.
Speaker 2: Like this guy, this guy who again like was elected
Speaker 2: like two years ago, tries to kick down his door
Speaker 2: and Nylon jungl likes himself on fire. And this has
Speaker 2: a enormous impact on the sort of subsequent course of
Speaker 2: Tiwan these politics, because this is a this is a like,
Speaker 2: this is a pr disaster for the like for for
Speaker 2: the ruling for like for for the current government, which
Speaker 2: had been trying to sort of like do its like ah,
Speaker 2: we're doing moderate reforms, blah blah blah, we're doing you
Speaker 2: have local elections. Now you're we're doing democratization. And suddenly,
Speaker 2: like their cops break down this guy's door and he
Speaker 2: lights himself on fire, and you know that the cop
Speaker 2: later says like, oh, yeah, we break down the door
Speaker 2: because we were trying to save his life. It's like, no,
Speaker 2: you didn't. What the fuck are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Like, I love things that have never happened, That's my
Speaker 1: favorite kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, so there this is one of
Speaker 2: these things that and this is actually think that that's
Speaker 2: become that's a very very common thing at protests like now,
Speaker 2: So no Alan Jung has he has this massive funeral,
Speaker 2: I mean, this is an absolutely enormous funeral march and
Speaker 2: the police attack it. And when the police attack it,
Speaker 2: another pro independence active also lights himself on fire like
Speaker 2: in front of the cops when they refuse to do it.
Speaker 2: And this that second guy is like a lot less
Speaker 2: remembered than Nlan Jung but this becomes a massive sort
Speaker 2: of rallying cry around, like you know, for the pro
Speaker 2: dependence people, but also for the sort of broader fight
Speaker 2: for like an actual like actual free democratic elections. Like
Speaker 2: the big thing these people were protesting like specifically was
Speaker 2: free speech because the thing about the sedition laws is
Speaker 2: if you you know, again, if you start passing around
Speaker 2: copies of the constitution, they try to arrest you and
Speaker 2: throw your in prison.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean nothing says sedition like the constitution of
Speaker 1: the country you're in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like you're changing it, I guess is sedition.
Speaker 2: It's like the KMD really suck, like cannot emphasize that
Speaker 2: it off. But the sort of the results of this
Speaker 2: is that, you know, okay, Like, so this is one
Speaker 2: of these actions that's kind of complicated because the the
Speaker 2: arc of Taiwanese politics was bending towards Democrats in some
Speaker 2: kind of like actual electoral system, and it probably would
Speaker 2: have happened even without this, but this supercharges the whole process.
Speaker 2: Within about two years, two or three years, all the
Speaker 2: position laws are appealed, and within well, it takes a
Speaker 2: while before you get I think I think it's like
Speaker 2: two thousand I think it's like really when you can
Speaker 2: what you can call like the first really free like
Speaker 2: Taiwanese national election, when when there's actually like a transition
Speaker 2: of power between the KMT and the Democratic Party. Sure,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it was to a large extent very successful.
Speaker 1: Like it.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Okay, so it accomplished the goal of
Speaker 2: knocking off the KMT sort of one party state. It
Speaker 2: knocked off the edition laws. The kind of Taiwanese independence
Speaker 2: like that's very very sort of national liberation driven is
Speaker 2: kind of not the same one that exists in Taiwan now.
Speaker 2: It's a bit different. But on the other hand, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: they they did it. It was it was really it
Speaker 2: was pretty effective, and yeah, I don't know, like this
Speaker 2: is this is I of the ones that I've seen.
Speaker 2: I think this was the most clear he won. Melan
Speaker 2: Jung's like is sort of to this day a pro
Speaker 2: dependence hero. There's there's a there's a statue of him.
Speaker 2: Uh so they they I think that I think I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure they turned the office re lit himself on
Speaker 2: fire like into a into a like into a museum,
Speaker 2: and there's there's a there's a very famous sort of
Speaker 2: like pictures of these the statue of his burned corpse,
Speaker 2: that's just horrowing. It's one of the symbols of the
Speaker 2: sort of Taiwanese democratic movements, and it's also it's also
Speaker 2: a sort of it matters a lot. This is also
Speaker 2: happening in the same year as Tianneman, Like, yeah, so
Speaker 2: there's that kind of like it's in the air, right yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and his his widow goes on to be DPP politician
Speaker 2: and it's one of it's one of the things that
Speaker 2: it's it's like his memories invoked dream like. So in
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, Taiwan had their own version of occupy that's
Speaker 2: like shittier called the Sunflower Movement. I'm sorry, this is
Speaker 2: this is where we're getting into the MIA has a
Speaker 2: bunch of political beefs with people in Taiwan where I
Speaker 2: think they're all libs, but it's yeah, like they have
Speaker 2: their own sort of they have like this this large
Speaker 2: series of the street protests and this like he's one
Speaker 2: of the figures that's you know, one of like brought
Speaker 2: up in as.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's gonna be the same thing with uh, the
Speaker 1: guy in Tunisia. We're about to talk about the two
Speaker 1: where where they become even to people that they would
Speaker 1: not you know, certainly we're not like expressing similar views,
Speaker 1: they still become this like icon that gets sided. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think I think the last thing too
Speaker 2: is he's the fact that the cop who kicked at it,
Speaker 2: who kicked his door down, is now the fucking mayor
Speaker 2: of New type A city is just like, oh, appalling stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the KMG absolutely suck. And those are the people who
Speaker 2: want Taiwan to be unified with China. So if that
Speaker 2: understands who you're making your bed with, if that's the
Speaker 2: kind of politics that you you want to be engaged in, Yeah,
Speaker 2: So that's that's that's that's that's the time we want
Speaker 2: self emulations. I guess kind of I don't know, not
Speaker 2: enough bad things happen to the cops who trigger this
Speaker 2: kind of stuff, which they also don't although I guess
Speaker 2: I guess the cops is Sofia nom didn't do great.
Speaker 1: No no, no, I mean, ultimately right, that doesn't immediately
Speaker 1: really cause them any problems. One of secret Police a bit.
Speaker 1: Speaking of secret police, this podcast is sponsored entirely by
Speaker 1: the Secret Police, so you know, check that out. And
Speaker 1: we're back. Yeah, we just got beaten by phone books
Speaker 1: because they don't leave any bruises by our sponsors at
Speaker 1: the Secret Police, So you know, the secret police like
Speaker 1: the police, but Secret Mia. Did you have another one
Speaker 1: you wanted to get into before we talk about Tunisia.
Speaker 2: Do we want to do Tibet first or do we
Speaker 2: want to do Tuenisia first?
Speaker 1: Why don't we do Tibet?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think other than Tunisia, I think the
Speaker 2: most famous wave of self immolations was the ones in
Speaker 2: Tibet that started in about two thousand and nine. There
Speaker 2: is actually a guy into better light stelf On fire
Speaker 2: in the late nineties, but that doesn't have the same
Speaker 2: kind of sort of doesn't have the same effect as
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine ones. So one of the things
Speaker 2: that's been periodically happening, I guess over the sort of
Speaker 2: course of the history of sort of occupied Tibet is
Speaker 2: the Dalai Lama. So the Dalai Lama, like Flees, there's
Speaker 2: this whole giant drama nineteen fifty nine. So so okay,
Speaker 2: I guess, I guess I should go back to the beginning.
Speaker 2: So Tibet is just like straight up invaded by China.
Speaker 2: When when the after the Communists win the civil war,
Speaker 2: this causes an enormous amount of shit to happen. One
Speaker 2: of the things that the Communist Party is trying to
Speaker 2: do is they are trying to gain control of the
Speaker 2: Tibetan religious system so that they can eliminate the religious
Speaker 2: system like they can they can eliminate like the Buddhist
Speaker 2: clergy is effectively, like they can eliminate Buddhist monks. They
Speaker 2: can eliminate like the religious institutions as a source of
Speaker 2: resistance to them. They're kind of foiled in this when
Speaker 2: the Dalai Lama makes this break and escapes to India.
Speaker 2: And this is one of the things that triggers eventually
Speaker 2: in the in the sixties China's war with India. But
Speaker 2: one of the things that I've been happening for a
Speaker 2: while was these kind of negotiations between the Dalai Lama
Speaker 2: and the Chinese government to try to like find a
Speaker 2: kind of resolution to like how bad things were in
Speaker 2: Ti Bet. And in two thousand and nine, Di Lama goes, yeah,
Speaker 2: none of this is fucking working, Like it's not nothing,
Speaker 2: Like we're not we're not getting anything. The Chinese government
Speaker 2: is not offering us any like any actual deal that
Speaker 2: we can live with, and pretty quickly this so, okay,
Speaker 2: you get this giant wave of self in relations. The
Speaker 2: first guy, this guy named Tape, he is a monk.
Speaker 2: He lights himself on fire in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 2: There's conflicting reports. Okay. So one of the one of
Speaker 2: the problems with talking about this is that in this period,
Speaker 2: the Internet is not as widespread as it is today,
Speaker 2: and there is a there is a giant like there
Speaker 2: was a Chinese like media cord and effectively on on
Speaker 2: Tibet in a very similar way to like West Papua
Speaker 2: with it like they won't let journalists in. It is
Speaker 2: very hard to get information out. So the thing that
Speaker 2: I'm about to say is something that is reported law
Speaker 2: on the time by people who try who are trying
Speaker 2: to smoke all messages out. And the thing they report
Speaker 2: is that as this guy is self immolating, the Chinese
Speaker 2: police shoot him like multiple times.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, as we've as we've seen recently, that
Speaker 1: is how cops tend to look at somebody like, yeah,
Speaker 1: someone has let themselves on fire. Clearly, what this situation
Speaker 1: needs is a gun.
Speaker 2: And you know, okay, so like the Chinese police, they
Speaker 2: I don't I don't have any evidence of them shooting
Speaker 2: people after that. They absolutely One of the things that
Speaker 2: so what happens after this is this wave of self
Speaker 2: immolations is protests across the bed. The thing that they
Speaker 2: absolutely do a lot is start beating the person who's
Speaker 2: on fire with a stick, like using like riot sticks
Speaker 2: sometimes they have these, They have riot sticks with like
Speaker 2: spikes on them, and they are absolutely beating people to
Speaker 2: death while they are burning to death. The Chinese police
Speaker 2: are like as psychotical, maybe not quite as like absolutely
Speaker 2: murderous as the American police, but they are like they
Speaker 2: are beating a burning man to death. Right, that is.
Speaker 1: Oh god, I will say that that is definitely I
Speaker 1: haven't that certainly. I can't think of anything I've ever
Speaker 1: seen US police do that is more violent than beat
Speaker 1: a man to death while he's on fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not there. That makes the cut. It's really bad.
Speaker 2: And this is the kind of thing that you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, this is the kind of thing that that
Speaker 2: sets off these self immlations in the first place, which
Speaker 2: is that Tibet has you know, like has has a
Speaker 2: colonial occupation, right, it has you know, the Chinese government
Speaker 2: has been attempting to suppress to Bet and Buddhism. There's
Speaker 2: been a massive, way, like systemic, massive ecological instruction of
Speaker 2: the Tibetan plateau so that the Chinese government can like
Speaker 2: mine gold and shit and in a way that's very
Speaker 2: similar to sort of like the ecological demonstation you get
Speaker 2: in places like the Amazon there are you know, they
Speaker 2: are intense police crack downs all the time. There's another
Speaker 2: very famous incident that's like kind of one of the
Speaker 2: things that leads to this, where in nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: there's there's a bunch of protests in Tibet and the
Speaker 2: cops just start shooting them. They kill a bunch of people,
Speaker 2: and so, you know, and people had been like Upu
Speaker 2: Twi two thousand and nine, people that kind of had
Speaker 2: this promise that things were going to get better because
Speaker 2: you know, you have these negotiations between the Chinese government
Speaker 2: and the Dalai Lama, and then the Dollai Lama turns
Speaker 2: around and goes, yeah, I no, they're not giving us anything.
Speaker 2: Like they're giving us nothing. The Chinese states policy on
Speaker 2: Tibet is that effectively we're going to like we're we're going,
Speaker 2: we're going, we're going to like we're going to try
Speaker 2: to make these people Han effectively. One of the things
Speaker 2: they spend they do this in Changhan too, is they
Speaker 2: spend a lot of there's a lot of resources invested
Speaker 2: in getting like Han settlers from other parts of China
Speaker 2: to booth to bet, you know, and you know, as
Speaker 2: as issue also in change on like the like the
Speaker 2: cadre jobs are basically all like government cadre jobs are
Speaker 2: basically all Hawn people, and so you know, you start
Speaker 2: getting you start getting attempts at sell disobedience. There are
Speaker 2: these giant protests in two thousand and eight, like attempting
Speaker 2: to make us sort of like a giant have a
Speaker 2: giant thing happened right before the Olympics in order to
Speaker 2: get international support. And those turn into riots and those
Speaker 2: are brutally suppressed. And once that happens, people are really
Speaker 2: kind of they're running out of options for civil disobedience
Speaker 2: because you know, this is one of these things about
Speaker 2: this kind of Buddhism is that it's it's very much
Speaker 2: a like the resistance tradition is nonviolence, right, like these
Speaker 2: people sometimes like very very rarely you get riots but
Speaker 2: they're not like they're not going to try or arm struggle,
Speaker 2: and so what they have is non violence civil disobedience.
Speaker 2: But the problem is that if you try to do
Speaker 2: non violence w disobedience in China, what happens to you
Speaker 2: is just the cops show up at arrest you all,
Speaker 2: and then they rest your families. And this is something
Speaker 2: that happens to the people who self emilate, is that
Speaker 2: there are like one hundred and sixty of them from
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine until now. And when someone lights
Speaker 2: themself on fire, what the Chinese government does is, well,
Speaker 2: a they beat the person to death while they're on fire.
Speaker 2: By they start arresting the people's family, they start arresting
Speaker 2: their friends, they start arresting people in the monasteries that
Speaker 2: they're at. They start doing these purges to like stop
Speaker 2: like to remove the sort of Buddhist monks that they
Speaker 2: think are going to be problems. And this this fuels
Speaker 2: this kind of cyclical wave of this because on the
Speaker 2: one hand, you know, there's this incredible repression going on.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, it's not possible to like wage
Speaker 2: really like wage other kinds of mass so it dis
Speaker 2: obedience campaigns and The thing about lighting yourself on fire
Speaker 2: is that the government can't stop it, right, Like in
Speaker 2: theory you could maybe train police to stop people from
Speaker 2: blighting people on fire. But the thing is, the actual
Speaker 2: thing that happens when you light when someone lights themself
Speaker 2: on fire, is the cop goes and beats them. And
Speaker 2: so it becomes this sort of it becomes the sort
Speaker 2: of like the cycle of self in relations. And also,
Speaker 2: I mean the other thing that's worth mentioning too is people.
Speaker 2: There are a few other cases of Tibetan Buddhists, like
Speaker 2: outside of outside of to bet you do it, there's
Speaker 2: a few people in India and you let themselves on fire.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, I think the Tibetan example is
Speaker 2: really bleak because it doesn't work. Like they lose. And
Speaker 2: this is one of these situations where I don't know,
Speaker 2: like I legitimately don't know how they could have won,
Speaker 2: because they were dealing with a enormous, a very very
Speaker 2: powerful state apparatus that was very invested in using all
Speaker 2: of its state capacity to oppress them, and it it fails,
Speaker 2: and it it like the thing that it mostly accomplishes
Speaker 2: is a bunch of is like just a generation of well,
Speaker 2: I mean some like the youngest kid who self Inlins
Speaker 2: is fifteen, right, and it mostly ACCOMPLI whish is a
Speaker 2: bunch of these kids like themselves on fire and die
Speaker 2: and everything is worse now than it was in two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine. Yep, I think, you know. So they're
Speaker 2: very recently they're been big. They've been protesting to bed
Speaker 2: again because the CCP is trying to build a damn
Speaker 2: that's going to flood and destroy a bunch of monasteries.
Speaker 2: And I don't think anyone's let themselves on fire over it,
Speaker 2: but the police just arrested everyone, and so I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's really bleak, and I think the the Fruz to
Speaker 2: Bat movement has become much weaker as the sort of
Speaker 2: like twenty tens went on to the point where now
Speaker 2: I think like most America, like most of the sort
Speaker 2: of like broad American far left basically just takes the
Speaker 2: Chinese line on it, which is that like the Dalai
Speaker 2: Lama was a slave owner and the Chinese occupation was
Speaker 2: a gift.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I want to take like two, like a
Speaker 2: couple like a minute to talk about this, because like
Speaker 2: that a lot, yeah, and it's this thing where, like,
Speaker 2: you know, it's really interesting looking at a lot of
Speaker 2: these people who are who are anti Tibet but pro Palestine,
Speaker 2: because you know, if you look at the originators oft
Speaker 2: CETA colonial studies, like people like Patrick Wolfe, right, who
Speaker 2: was like the godfather of Cetera colonialism studies, Tibet is
Speaker 2: one of the states that he holds up like as
Speaker 2: the paradigmatic example of what ceda colonialism is. It's Palestine
Speaker 2: and Tibet, right, And you know, I like the thing
Speaker 2: about oh it was because they were trying to like
Speaker 2: free the Tibetan search really pisses me off because if
Speaker 2: that was the actual thing the CCP wanted to do,
Speaker 2: they could have done a thing that happened all over
Speaker 2: the fucking world in communist countries, which is they could
Speaker 2: have moved in, they could have knocked off the government,
Speaker 2: and they could have set up a communist Tibetan state.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: This happens all over the fucking Eastern Bloc. There's precedents
Speaker 2: for it in East Asia, which you know, there's a
Speaker 2: president of Mongolia, which was also i mean a very
Speaker 2: different Buddhist society but also a largely Buddhist society where
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union went in knocked off the government and
Speaker 2: set off set up an independent at Mongolian state, right
Speaker 2: And I'm not going to say things like went great
Speaker 2: for Mongolia. But the thing is if if if your
Speaker 2: actual objective is just knock off a theocratic government that
Speaker 2: you don't like, you could have done that, and they don't,
Speaker 2: they don't.
Speaker 1: Do it, and pretty China, it's also worth like stating like, yeah,
Speaker 1: things maybe not like didn't work out great in the
Speaker 1: immediate term for Mongolia, but Mongolia is a state right now,
Speaker 1: is not like the worst. It's not doing as badly
Speaker 1: as like Tibet is doing, you know, like it's it's
Speaker 1: an independent country that functions more or less. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: who does better than functioning more or less?
Speaker 2: Really yeah, like and this I don't know and this
Speaker 2: is this is the sort of that's and that's one
Speaker 2: of the things that like Chinese nationalists tend not to
Speaker 2: really use that line. I mean, they use it a
Speaker 2: bit when when they're when they're personally like when they
Speaker 2: have to like specifically make arguments about Dalai Lama, that's
Speaker 2: something they do. But most of the arguments that the
Speaker 2: that the actual like supporters of the Chinese government in China,
Speaker 2: the arguments they make is like, oh, well, these people
Speaker 2: are like, these people are shitty barbarians and we have
Speaker 2: to like we have to civilize them, and like our
Speaker 2: invasion was a gift to them because we're going to
Speaker 2: civilize these people. And like it's it's literally it's like
Speaker 2: identical to the shit that like that the Israeli say
Speaker 2: about Palastinians. We should also very briefly mention that a
Speaker 2: lot of the surveillance technology that's used in Tibet, like
Speaker 2: our cameras, that the Chinese government sells to Palestine. So
Speaker 2: keep that shit in mind. Yeah, And I don't know,
Speaker 2: but it's it's this. This is one of the really
Speaker 2: bleak examples because the thing about self immolation as of
Speaker 2: politics is that, like it functions by mobilizing someone else, right,
Speaker 2: and in some cases that's that's you know, that's another government,
Speaker 2: in some cases that's your own government, in some cases
Speaker 2: that's the people around you. But if you're in a
Speaker 2: state where the government does not give a shit about you,
Speaker 2: and they have the ability to ruthlessly repress anyone who's
Speaker 2: inspe fired by your actions, it just it leads to
Speaker 2: a lot of people dying. And I don't know what
Speaker 2: this sort of lesson from that is other than it's
Speaker 2: really hard for and this is this was the thing
Speaker 2: with Hong Kong too, is it's it's really hard for
Speaker 2: any one, any one part of China to try to
Speaker 2: go into revolt against the government because there's so much
Speaker 2: more of the rest of fucking China and if if you,
Speaker 2: if you, if you alone are pitted against the entire
Speaker 2: miny of Chinese state that has broad popular backing your
Speaker 2: fucked yeah, and it's it's really bleak.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't have anything positive to
Speaker 1: say there. Hey, everybody, Robert here. Our discussion ran very long,
Speaker 1: so this is going to be a two parter. You'll
Speaker 1: be hearing about Tunisia and more in the next episode,
Speaker 1: but for now, please continue listening to our podcasts and
Speaker 1: not other podcasts because how would you do that? Who
Speaker 1: would do that? Nobody? I like.
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