Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who
Speaker 1: Did Cool Stuff your podcast that reminds you when there's
Speaker 1: people doing bad things, there's people trying to do good things,
Speaker 1: and sometimes the people who are try and do good
Speaker 1: things have bad things happen to them, but then they
Speaker 1: go somewhere else and then they keep doing good things.
Speaker 1: That's always what the show's about, including this week. And
Speaker 1: my guest is Cody Johnston, who we've never had on
Speaker 1: this show, and this surprises me. How are you?
Speaker 2: I'm good, Thank you so much for having me for
Speaker 2: the first time. I'm excited to be here. I love
Speaker 2: the concept of the show. Thanks something we need more
Speaker 2: and more of.
Speaker 1: We do need more people doing cool things. And then also, yeah,
Speaker 1: like being reminded that there's a point to fighting even
Speaker 1: when we lose all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: They're gonna win at the end of this one. Actually,
Speaker 1: but spoilers all right, Yeah, spoilers for that. The bio
Speaker 1: I wrote for you is host of some More News
Speaker 1: and one of the best shit posters left on Twitter.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you so much. I've internalized that. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: let that cook and warm me up a little bit.
Speaker 1: It was like an hour ago, right before I recorded that,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, there's Cody doing an antagonistic reply
Speaker 1: guy to shitty people.
Speaker 2: I did literally just tell Denesh Desuza to shit in
Speaker 2: his own mouth. Yeah that was so that's accurate description. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's about it. That's what I do. Yeah, I'm slowly
Speaker 2: leaving Twitter because it's really bad.
Speaker 1: That's what we all say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I'm trying to keep it to just
Speaker 2: that and like I'll post on like blue Sky or
Speaker 2: some things, but like, you can only yell at people
Speaker 2: on Twitter.
Speaker 1: That's true, you know.
Speaker 2: So I can try to focus on that when I'm
Speaker 2: there and then actual posts elsewhere.
Speaker 1: But play to the strength of the platform exactly. It's
Speaker 1: the everything appens got everything. Yeah, it can be mean
Speaker 1: to people. Sharene You're our producer and we wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to be mean to you. So that's why we're talking
Speaker 1: by zoom instead of Twitter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for that podcast on Twitter sounds hard or
Speaker 3: guess X.
Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, don't dead name it, jeez, no whatever.
Speaker 3: Even as someone who books the show, I'm surprised Cody
Speaker 3: hasn't been on it and that makes me feel crazy.
Speaker 3: So I'm glad you're here about time.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: I genuinely like, I was like, what was the last
Speaker 1: thing Cody was on? And then I like googled your
Speaker 1: name plus cool people did cool stuff, and then I
Speaker 1: was like, wait a second, yeah, And then I at
Speaker 1: this moment where I was like, do I just have
Speaker 1: a parasocial relationship with you? But then I remember, and
Speaker 1: I've been on your show exactly.
Speaker 2: I was trying to think too. It was like, I
Speaker 2: don't think because I know Katie has and I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't think I've actually been there, and I was
Speaker 2: thinking of when you were on even more news.
Speaker 3: For me, it's like a Berenstein Bear situation. I think
Speaker 3: you were on, Like.
Speaker 2: It's possible I would. I would be easily convinced.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen ninety eight, the first episode, our audio
Speaker 1: engineer is Rory. Everyone has to say hi to Rory.
Speaker 2: Hi. Rory, Hi, Rory Hi, Rory.
Speaker 1: Our theme musical is written force by Unwoman And this
Speaker 1: week I'm going to tell you one of my favorite
Speaker 1: kinds of stories. It's a story that starts with a
Speaker 1: bunch of revolutionaries and ends up with them fighting to
Speaker 1: the death against slavery, and they even win in the
Speaker 1: end because American chattel slavery is no longer legal, so
Speaker 1: we did it. Yeah, everything's fine, we didn't do it,
Speaker 1: but like, yeah, fair enough the story. Yeah yeah, they
Speaker 1: win some of what they wanted. We're talking about some
Speaker 1: folks who wanted way more than just the current capitalist
Speaker 1: hell world with still legalized slavery. It's just prison slavery,
Speaker 1: and said chattel slavery. This week's story. I'm curious if
Speaker 1: either of y'all have heard of the forty eight ers. No,
Speaker 1: I admit I wasn't expecting you to not, because yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is this is I feel like about half the
Speaker 1: time I do things that are like this person you've
Speaker 1: totally heard of was more radical than you think, like
Speaker 1: my Oscar wild episode or something right, And then the
Speaker 1: other half is like, here's how these people you never
Speaker 1: heard of like changed the way that you currently live today.
Speaker 1: Love those and who we could learn something from?
Speaker 2: And also who's the fuck is Oscar Wilde? And oh
Speaker 2: yeah no he's just this, uh, just some guy.
Speaker 1: I never did anything of any I won't be looking
Speaker 1: yeah no, yeah, yeah, no, totally Yeah, the forty eight
Speaker 1: ers are, well, the forty eight is we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about are mostly German immigrants that came over to
Speaker 1: the US after the failed revolutions of eighteen forty eight
Speaker 1: forty nine. Basically, the super short version is that there
Speaker 1: was almost a worldwide revolution in eighteen forty eight. Fifty
Speaker 1: different countries had revolutions in eighteen forty eight eighteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: most of them lost, and the people who then had
Speaker 1: to flee the countries that they came from are called
Speaker 1: the forty eight ers. So after the revolution failed in Germany,
Speaker 1: a ton of them just hit the ground running and
Speaker 1: joined the abolitionist movement in the United States, and it
Speaker 1: opened a kind of new front in war against slavery.
Speaker 1: It's a war that would eventually not too long after
Speaker 1: that become less metaphorical and more literal. But since the
Speaker 1: forty eight ers were not strangers to sword and rifle,
Speaker 1: they got right up into that too. Spoiler to the
Speaker 1: very end of the episode, about ten percent of the
Speaker 1: Union troops were born in Germany. Oh yeah, I had
Speaker 1: no idea on fact. It's gonna be really funny to
Speaker 1: tell this really long story about how great the Germans are.
Speaker 1: Russian special thanks to the Germans. I know, because there's
Speaker 1: like a meme going around right now, right because like
Speaker 1: the German left is being really embarrassing and not pro
Speaker 1: Palestine by and large because of this movement called the
Speaker 1: anti Deutsch that is like everything that is whatever anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm not getting to anti Deutsch. You just don't want
Speaker 1: to be angry. So there's like a meme that's like,
Speaker 1: congratulations Germany for continuing to be on the wrong side
Speaker 1: of history of everything forever, right side of the history
Speaker 1: this episode time this, yeah, time.
Speaker 3: Maybe the one and only. Maybe maybe I shouldn't say that.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of times. I mean, like probably
Speaker 1: invading Rome was good, but I don't know. Maybe I'll
Speaker 1: like go back and learn more about the Goths and
Speaker 1: be like, eh, actually at all.
Speaker 2: But this is up there in terms of like importance.
Speaker 2: It's this is a good one. It's not just like
Speaker 2: it's not an easy right side of history. I mean
Speaker 2: should be, but.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, they did better than the Irish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so but you know, good for them for choosing
Speaker 2: this one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. The Revolutions of eighteen forty eight stand out
Speaker 1: maybe the most dramatically as like the thing that kind
Speaker 1: of kicked off about half of what I care about.
Speaker 1: But I don't really know as much about right because
Speaker 1: I've been hearing about the revolutions of eighteen forty eight forever.
Speaker 1: But I suspect that that's not a universal experience of
Speaker 1: my hosts and listeners. They're the precursor to all the
Speaker 1: revolutions that I know way more about. Like all the
Speaker 1: like old heads in the eighteen seventies would be like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, eighteen forty eight, you know, sort of the
Speaker 1: equivalent of like people talking about the seventies right now,
Speaker 1: only people went even harder. Anyway, this isn't an episode
Speaker 1: about the revolutions eighteen forty eight. One day I'll cover it,
Speaker 1: but that's going to be all, like more than two parts.
Speaker 1: There's fifty different countries, and it's the closest to a
Speaker 1: revolutionary world war that I think the earth has ever seen.
Speaker 1: I could be wrong about that. I think once I
Speaker 1: like dive more into it, i'll know a little bit more.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna talk about the exiles mostly, but first
Speaker 1: I have to talk a little bit about the revolutions
Speaker 1: of eighteen forty eight. I was really sad because sometimes
Speaker 1: I know more about nineteenth century politics than twenty first
Speaker 1: century politics because I live in books. So there's this
Speaker 1: thing that I run across sometimes people talk about the
Speaker 1: Spirit of forty eight, you know, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm gonna call this episode the Spirit of forty eight.
Speaker 1: And then I googled spirit of forty eight and it
Speaker 1: is Zionism complaining. Oh because they're about nineteen forty eight.
Speaker 3: Oh haha, Yeah, that's so fortunate. They really fucked up
Speaker 3: that number.
Speaker 2: I know, you could be specific spirit of eighteen forty eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. We'll see what it ends up called.
Speaker 2: Spirit of forty eight parentheses, No, the other one, the other.
Speaker 1: The one that Margaret pays more attention to the old one.
Speaker 1: In eighteen forty eight, a wave of revolution spread across
Speaker 1: Europe and to a lesser extent, around the world. About
Speaker 1: fifty countries were up in that and this wasn't a
Speaker 1: big mass planned thing, nor was it internationally coordinated. Each
Speaker 1: country was doing its own thing, but they were like
Speaker 1: looking over and being like Italy's doing it, we can
Speaker 1: do it, you know, which is the way things happened.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what I say.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was the kind of the biggest revolution of
Speaker 1: the Enlightenment. Maybe I don't know if people were gonna
Speaker 1: get mad when I used hyperbolic whatever. It was a
Speaker 1: big revolution that was enlightenment. Thinking it was pro democracy
Speaker 1: is anti aristocracy. People wanted constitutions instead of kings. They
Speaker 1: wanted freedom of the press. Working class people wanted to
Speaker 1: not starved to death. Nationalism was all the rage, and
Speaker 1: I've talked a bunch on the show before about how
Speaker 1: nationalism meant a fairly different thing in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: and than it does now. But it it was probably
Speaker 1: always a mistake, but we know why they came up
Speaker 1: with it. They were like, what if Ukraine wasn't part
Speaker 1: of Russia anymore? You know, and shit like that.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Socialism was also all the rage during this but socialism
Speaker 1: wasn't as codified and specific as it would be thirty
Speaker 1: years later. The working class in a lot of Europe
Speaker 1: was spending half its wages on food, mostly potatoes and bread,
Speaker 1: and only two years earlier the potato crap had failed,
Speaker 1: most famously of course, in Ireland, but you know, it
Speaker 1: failed everywhere across Europe, and people sure weren't happy. They
Speaker 1: were hungry, they weren't happy. Capitalism had just come through
Speaker 1: and destroyed the traditional guild system for skilled labor, and
Speaker 1: the labor movement hadn't quite kicked into gear yet. This
Speaker 1: is kind of like, in some ways, is the labor
Speaker 1: movement kicking into gear. The political landscape is almost entirely
Speaker 1: different than it would be by the end of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. And it's funny to pretend like, oh, everyone
Speaker 1: understands totally the ins and outs of leftism at the
Speaker 1: end of the nineteenth century. That's probably not true. But
Speaker 1: the left in eighteen forty eight was a mix of
Speaker 1: like republicans as in, we want a republic and socialists,
Speaker 1: some of whom are what we would understand is modern
Speaker 1: socialists more or less, and those will tend to like
Speaker 1: lean more towards like atheism and enlightenment thinking. You also
Speaker 1: have these utopian socialists that were actually very religious and
Speaker 1: they kind of just go away after a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's not a lot of that.
Speaker 1: No, France overthrew their monarchy and went back to having
Speaker 1: a republic for a little while. Every now and then
Speaker 1: people are like, oh, you're going to do the French Revolution,
Speaker 1: and like maybe, but like which one? And I can't
Speaker 1: keep track. There's too many of them. And they always
Speaker 1: put rich people in charge, so like just to all
Speaker 1: of them, Yeah, that's true, you'd be like, and then
Speaker 1: they put rich people in charge and they killed too
Speaker 1: many people. Italy and Germany were heading towards unification, which
Speaker 1: was like a big part of the nationalism.
Speaker 2: Love when Italy and Germany get together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well not with each other, but like Italy didn't exist, right,
Speaker 1: Germany didn't exist. They were like what if, Like there
Speaker 1: are these ideas, which again didn't work out great for
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, like, because they do later get more
Speaker 1: directly together, you're oal. The Austrian Empire conceded a bunch
Speaker 1: of power to some of its conquered people, like the
Speaker 1: Hungarians and the Czechs, and these revolutions. I hate to
Speaker 1: give credit to the American Revolution. It's like a thing
Speaker 1: that causes me physical discomfort, but the American Revolution was
Speaker 1: a major source of inspiration for the revolutions of eighteen
Speaker 1: forty eight for a lot of the revolutionaries. Their heroes
Speaker 1: were the founding fathers of the United States, because this
Speaker 1: is like kind of the first Western country being like
Speaker 1: what if republic? Though, right, they created a slave republic,
Speaker 1: and that's going to come up as an issue, so
Speaker 1: revolutionaries and like random European countries would fly the French
Speaker 1: tricolor flag of the First French Revolution right next to
Speaker 1: the stars and stripes of the US as being like,
Speaker 1: the revolutionary flags don't bring this back. German pamphlets would
Speaker 1: go around with the slogan Germany must become a free
Speaker 1: state like America because all men are created equal. Looked
Speaker 1: good on paper.
Speaker 2: Does it's a good sentence.
Speaker 1: But even back then people were like, well, except the
Speaker 1: US isn't really free though, right They enslave people there.
Speaker 1: That seems like not freedom. So the forty eight ers
Speaker 1: took their ideas of liberty way further than the US did.
Speaker 1: The Second Republic of France abolished slavery at home and
Speaker 1: in the colonies on April twenty seventh, eighteen forty eight.
Speaker 1: Sweden abolished slavery in eighteen forty seven. Denmark abolished slavery
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty eight. But whenever you like read the
Speaker 1: quick version, it's like, oh, and then these countries abolish
Speaker 1: slavery because white Europeans are cool and good and right right.
Speaker 1: The reason that Denmark abolished slavery was because of an
Speaker 1: uprising that is left out of the story, usually because
Speaker 1: it wasn't white people who abolished slavery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was told that white Americans were the first
Speaker 2: to abolish slavery. Actually, so I feel like maybe you're
Speaker 2: misrepresenting history right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, yeah, absolutely, your word for it. In eighteen
Speaker 1: forty seven, Denmark was like, oh, we're going to phase
Speaker 1: out slavery over the next twelve years, starting with newborn babies.
Speaker 1: And this is really common. No, I know, isn't that dark?
Speaker 2: You could Yeah, you got to start with the babies. Definitely,
Speaker 2: don't have the babies be slaves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, insane, Yeah, weirdess like victory, we did it. Reformists
Speaker 1: from one hundred years ago plus always looks so weird.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I recently did an episode where people were fighting really
Speaker 1: earnestly for the fifty two hour work week. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm like, where does that even fit? Yeah, what's the
Speaker 1: math on that?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: But you know, I mean one of the main things
Speaker 1: that abolitionists were trying to do because they were like, well,
Speaker 1: obviously we can't get out of slavery tomorrow, but we
Speaker 1: can start by phasing it out, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: that seemed like a radical sure.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, again, it's in context. Totally get it, phase
Speaker 2: it out. I feel like so much of this is
Speaker 2: just like, here's like moral clarity, but we have to
Speaker 2: kind of eskew that moral clarity and like do this
Speaker 2: other path. It's a lot harder, and in retrospect seems
Speaker 2: like very silly, honest face.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, because over and over again people learned that
Speaker 1: the way to get rid of slavery was to demand
Speaker 1: that slaves are free and then shoot everyone who tries
Speaker 1: to ll slave people. And that's how they did it
Speaker 1: in Denmark in the end, because in July eighteen forty eight,
Speaker 1: people on the Danish island of Saint Croix in the
Speaker 1: Virgin Islands were like, yeah, we're not fucking waiting around
Speaker 1: for that. So when slave folks rose up and took
Speaker 1: over the town of Frederick's and the Governor General of
Speaker 1: the Danish West Indies looked at the situation and decided
Speaker 1: reasonably enough that the best way out of the situation
Speaker 1: was to abolish slavery immediately.
Speaker 2: H I mean, kind of the perfect series of events.
Speaker 2: It's what you want, right.
Speaker 1: No, totally, it worked perfectly. And what was funny is
Speaker 1: he didn't have the authority to do this because property
Speaker 1: writes blah blah blah. But he just did it even
Speaker 1: though he didn't have the authority to and it worked.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a lesson there. Yeah, sometimes you can just
Speaker 1: do stuff.
Speaker 3: I mean, why did they choose twelve years anyway? Like
Speaker 3: why and why decide that number? And of course they
Speaker 3: wouldn't wait that long or no one would wait that
Speaker 3: long twelve years.
Speaker 1: I know they're like, it's right around the corner, but
Speaker 1: it's twelve years from now.
Speaker 2: Well, you want the non babies, you're, like the one
Speaker 2: two year olds to be able to like be slaves,
Speaker 2: so like you can train up the slave children one
Speaker 2: more generation of slave children. Yeah, yeah, and then when
Speaker 2: it's abolished, then you have like some you know, strong
Speaker 2: younger folks.
Speaker 4: They really they really thought they did something with that number,
Speaker 4: which is funny because it's still more radical than like
Speaker 4: everything that all of the white abolitionists and power were doing.
Speaker 1: They were like, well, you know, they abolished the slave trade,
Speaker 1: so then you just had to be born in America
Speaker 1: to be a slave, and then yeah, you know, and
Speaker 1: then they were like, you know that's yeah. Third, So
Speaker 1: the governor who did this like totally illegal thing where
Speaker 1: he abolished slavery in Denmark. He then had a nervous
Speaker 1: breakdown and just like fled the islands. But it also
Speaker 1: meant that the people he just pissed off completely couldn't
Speaker 1: get to him.
Speaker 2: That's right to do it.
Speaker 1: Successfully, Yeah, I think so. I think he lived out
Speaker 1: of the rest of his days. I didn't track him specifically,
Speaker 1: but like no one apparently did. Yeah, I know, right,
Speaker 1: Because yeah, the US of course did not abolish slavery
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty eight. It took a whole lass war
Speaker 1: and a quarter of a million dead confederates for us
Speaker 1: to do that. But the abolitionist movement was feeling optimistic
Speaker 1: because they were looking Europe, and abolitionist groups started talking
Speaker 1: to the forty eight ers, and especially black abolitionists were
Speaker 1: like going to Europe and joining these struggles and like
Speaker 1: going to these like World Peace Conference, and you've got
Speaker 1: like this guy whose name was in an earlier version
Speaker 1: of the script. It didn't end up being in this
Speaker 1: version of the script where he like became the first
Speaker 1: black man to get an honorary doctorate anywhere in Europe.
Speaker 1: Because they were got a doctor of theology and I
Speaker 1: think eighteen forty nine, and when speakers from Germany would
Speaker 1: come through the US, especially Ohio, black folks in Ohio
Speaker 1: would fund raise and send them home with money for
Speaker 1: their revolution. So it wasn't just this like, oh, as
Speaker 1: poor black people need to be saved by the white Europeans.
Speaker 1: It was a really conscious thing that, like Frederick Douglass
Speaker 1: was like going to Europe and talking to folks, it
Speaker 1: was as conscious, like we are all trying to end
Speaker 1: this stuff together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this sort of integration and like collaboration solitary already
Speaker 2: across the ocean to yeah, acknowledge the horror that was
Speaker 2: going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And like I wouldn't blame people in the United
Speaker 1: States who are like, we need our money here because
Speaker 1: we have slavery here, but like they you know, felt
Speaker 1: as important and supported it in thanks. The German revolutionaries
Speaker 1: announced that quote the German people, as soon as they
Speaker 1: have obtained the democratic republic and the coming struggle, we
Speaker 1: use all means which are available to abolish slavery in institution,
Speaker 1: which is so wholly repugnant to the principles of true democracy.
Speaker 1: And they actually, in the end they did better than
Speaker 1: their word. Because they said, once we get a democratic republic,
Speaker 1: will come back and help you. They did not at
Speaker 1: this stage get a democratic republic in Germany, and they
Speaker 1: still showed up in the like tens or maybe hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands in the American Civil War with Germans. Yeah again,
Speaker 1: eventual Germans, I guess, yeah. Like Black O'hians held a
Speaker 1: state convention in eighteen fifty two and they passed a
Speaker 1: resolution that said, tyranny in Russia, Austria and America is
Speaker 1: the same, and therefore the Russian surf, the Hungarian peasant,
Speaker 1: and the American slave and all other oppressed people should
Speaker 1: unite against tyranny and despotism. But what they should have
Speaker 1: offered is ads. They should have offered products and services.
Speaker 2: Would have gotten a lot more done, a lot quicker,
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if they just interrupted their own shows by going
Speaker 1: to ads, like we're doing right now, because we know better.
Speaker 2: Here they are.
Speaker 1: And we're back. So the revolutions don't win overall, some
Speaker 1: of them do. After winning some stuff really quickly, the
Speaker 1: revolutions start petering out or just losing the war. Modern
Speaker 1: soci list's thought was born in the crucible of these
Speaker 1: failed revolutions. Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty eight, and I think that man was wrong about
Speaker 1: a lot of things. I'm gonna talk about somethe in
Speaker 1: this episode because that's what I live to do. But
Speaker 1: he could fucking write the first words of the Communist
Speaker 1: Manifesto is the sentence a specter is haunting Europe, the
Speaker 1: specter of communism. And that's just good writing.
Speaker 2: It's good, solid.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm sold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do it, diving right in, I mean, stateless,
Speaker 1: classicist society I'm in for. I just disagree with some
Speaker 1: of his specific, weird strategic ideas like authority, but whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 1: besides the point, what Karl Marx did it do was
Speaker 1: actually fighting the revolution. See I told you I talk shit.
Speaker 2: Here you go.
Speaker 1: Even though he was in Colm as workers went off
Speaker 1: to fight and die for what he said he believed in,
Speaker 1: he was like, ah, I got out of here. It's
Speaker 1: getting get a little spicy as compared to this is
Speaker 1: the pettiest I'm going to be all episode. I promise
Speaker 1: the main person he got into arguments with a couple
Speaker 1: years later, anarchism's founding father in many ways, Mikhail Bakunin
Speaker 1: also was in these revolutions. He was four years older
Speaker 1: than Marx. He was thirty four when they broke out,
Speaker 1: and he actually fought in two of them. He fought
Speaker 1: in two countries revolutions. He fought in the Prague Uprising
Speaker 1: of eighteen forty eight, and he fought in the Dresden
Speaker 1: Uprising in eighteen forty nine. He was arrested in Dresden,
Speaker 1: he was sentenced to death, He was extradited a bunch
Speaker 1: of times. He winds up in Siberia, losing all of
Speaker 1: his teeth and fleeing across the world through Japan and
Speaker 1: the US to wind up in London, where he then
Speaker 1: gets into a huge power struggle with Marx about whether
Speaker 1: the internationalisms what should be, that's association should be Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but that hasn't happened yet. What matters, besides me getting
Speaker 1: my little jabs in when I can, is that in
Speaker 1: this period, the eighteen forties and eighteen fifties, this is
Speaker 1: the fire from which the modern Left was formed, as
Speaker 1: well as a lot of the petty and not so
Speaker 1: petty grievances between all these various factions. And I will
Speaker 1: leave it to the listener to decide which ones are witch,
Speaker 1: some of mineor petty. I admit that the second French
Speaker 1: Republic that they just won in this revolution, it only
Speaker 1: lasted for four years. The Irish revolution that happened during
Speaker 1: this was called the Young Irelander Rebellion. I hope it
Speaker 1: sounds better than Irish. It's just hard to say Irelander.
Speaker 1: It didn't get too far. This is, incidentally, where the
Speaker 1: current Irish flag comes from. Is this revolution of eighteen
Speaker 1: forty eight. Some Irish revolutionaries went to France to congratulate
Speaker 1: them on the new republic and then came back with
Speaker 1: their like, we need a trycolor of our own. So
Speaker 1: that's why the Irish flag looks like the French flag.
Speaker 1: It's intentional. And they were like, we want to reconcile
Speaker 1: green Catholic Ireland with orange Protestant Ireland into a single
Speaker 1: national identity free from England. So actually a pretty cool flag.
Speaker 3: Sorry, green and orange? Am I aware those colors? Am
Speaker 3: I supposed to know why they're that colored?
Speaker 1: Everyone needs to have like their little weird symbolic colors
Speaker 1: for their factions and teams in this world, right, And
Speaker 1: so like the Irish Catholics were like green and then
Speaker 1: the like Anglo Protestants, mostly in Northern Ireland, but elsewhere
Speaker 1: we're like orange, and we're like, where are the orange?
Speaker 1: Where are the green? We should fight in the streets.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting. Yeah, thanks for explaining that. That seemed
Speaker 3: very random to me.
Speaker 1: I guess it would be like the equivalent of oh
Speaker 1: my god, if the American flag was red, white and blue,
Speaker 1: but like a little bit more directly where it was
Speaker 1: like here's the Republicans and here's the Democrats, and then
Speaker 1: they're all going to get along, which in the middle
Speaker 1: would just be a bomb. And maybe over Palestine that
Speaker 1: would be the middle of the American flag because that's
Speaker 1: what they agree on. Yeah, getting my jabs in anyway,
Speaker 1: we're recordings during the DNC. It's good, we got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fine. The eighteen forty eight revolutions, they get a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff. They end absolute monarchy in Denmark, they
Speaker 1: get democracy in the Netherlands, they ended serfdom in Austria,
Speaker 1: in Hungary. Slavery was abolished in all those places I mentioned,
Speaker 1: also in Colombia, but the forces of reaction also came
Speaker 1: down really hard and people fled. And our story is
Speaker 1: mostly going to follow the Germans who fled to America
Speaker 1: and they joined the abolitionists. Well, who are the abolitionists,
Speaker 1: you might ask?
Speaker 2: Did you know?
Speaker 1: I did not know this one of the petty discourse
Speaker 1: not really petty, one of the discourse arguments that they
Speaker 1: had in nineteenth century. Do you know there's a difference
Speaker 1: between an anti slavery activist and an abolitionist. There's no
Speaker 1: reason for you to know this. Well I could guess,
Speaker 1: but you just say, anti slavery is like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: gotta get rid of slavery, but white supremacy rules, we
Speaker 1: should keep racist divided, blah blah blah. Abolition is a
Speaker 1: little bit more like more full throated of a condemnation
Speaker 1: of white supremacy and slavery.
Speaker 3: That makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with one more than the other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder which which is funny though, because you
Speaker 1: can still you wich okay, yeah, you can still get
Speaker 1: killed for being an anti slaver who's still a white supremacist.
Speaker 3: Like, as a white supremacist, why would you want to
Speaker 3: be anti slavery?
Speaker 1: So some of its economic arguments and some of it's moral.
Speaker 1: A lot of it's moral because they're like a lot
Speaker 1: of it's like, well, you still can't enslave them even
Speaker 1: though they are less than us and we're better, you know,
Speaker 1: like you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just like I don't want them around, So like.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a whole side of it that comes up
Speaker 1: every now and then. It's like some of the whitest
Speaker 1: places would be the places without slavery, right.
Speaker 2: Right, exactly.
Speaker 1: But there's also this thing a big part of why
Speaker 1: surfdom ended in Russia because capitalism with wage labor makes
Speaker 1: economies more modern, robust, militarily competitive, and richer than slave states.
Speaker 1: Do you think that slavery is like the ultimate way
Speaker 1: to have a rich country because you're like, well, those
Speaker 1: people aren't even getting paid, right, But what it's good
Speaker 1: at is propping up a specific type of like aristocracy
Speaker 1: who doesn't work. I mean, capitalism is pretty good at
Speaker 1: that too, but like, yeah, it just basically isn't as
Speaker 1: economically competitive in the modern world.
Speaker 2: I mean that makes general sense also, like treatment of
Speaker 2: your slaves, and like there's so many horrific things about
Speaker 2: slavery that would make just basic like economic factors and efficiency.
Speaker 2: If that's something you're concerned about in terms of slavery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you gotta give them healthcare because they're an investment.
Speaker 2: Oh exactly, all these sort of things that you know,
Speaker 2: over time, of course that's going to not be sustainable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And a lot of the reason why the US,
Speaker 1: the North was more industrialized and therefore kind of never
Speaker 1: was going to lose the Civil War was because modern city,
Speaker 1: industrialized capitalism is better at making war. But by and large,
Speaker 1: prior to eighteen forty eight, you can draw the abolitionist
Speaker 1: into two broad categories. These are the abolitionists at the
Speaker 1: anti slavery people. We're going to leave them out of it.
Speaker 1: And the two broad categories are not going to surprise you.
Speaker 1: It is black abolitionists and white abolitionists. And sometimes the
Speaker 1: white abolitionists get called the Northern abolitionists because more of
Speaker 1: them are white, But there are black abolitionists in the North.
Speaker 1: They just had to get there right, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them started there whatever. Anyway, both groups framed the
Speaker 1: need for abolition in moral and religious terms, but in
Speaker 1: fairly different ways. White Northern abolitionists were largely Wasps, white
Speaker 1: Anglo Saxon Protestants, and every word of that acronym matters
Speaker 1: in this context to them, because they saw the world
Speaker 1: through racialize lenses. To be fair, so did kind of
Speaker 1: everyone at this point in history. They all just like
Speaker 1: reached different conclusions about what to do. Everyone believed in
Speaker 1: these ethnic racial categories, like the difference between the Celts
Speaker 1: and the Anglo Saxons and the Teutonics whatever bullshit. By
Speaker 1: and large, the white Protestant abolitionists were like slavery goes
Speaker 1: against the Protestant work ethic, and many of them were capitalists.
Speaker 1: I had always assumed that kind of all of them were,
Speaker 1: but actually during my reading for this episode, a lot
Speaker 1: of people were like, well, we believe in hiring people
Speaker 1: for wage labor. Some people were like, hell, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a great way to get rich. We're just going
Speaker 1: to own factories and hire people. It rules fuck work.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, good work you can get. It is
Speaker 1: not working and having other people to your work. But
Speaker 1: an awful lot of them with the Protestant work ethic thing,
Speaker 1: were more like, we believe in small scale production where
Speaker 1: people exchange things freely that they make by their own hands.
Speaker 1: So if you have wage labor, it should just only
Speaker 1: be like the start of your career, it should be
Speaker 1: this temporary thing w you can get your own means
Speaker 1: of production. You can have your own workshop, you can
Speaker 1: have your own little farm whatever. You know, that's not
Speaker 1: how capitalism ended up.
Speaker 2: ORGA doesn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the black abolitionists, their motives are pretty obvious. An
Speaker 1: awful lot of them escape slavery themselves or descended from
Speaker 1: those who had. And it was also framed in religious
Speaker 1: and moral grounds, which is different ones. And then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden there's now a third group that shows
Speaker 1: up in mass the wild Eyed Socialists who are Atheists,
Speaker 1: Lutherans and Jews, and they pour into the country from Germany.
Speaker 1: I swear I'm going to get to the people like
Speaker 1: fighting people in the streets, but I do a lot
Speaker 1: of context on this show.
Speaker 2: That was great.
Speaker 1: The waves of immigration from Ireland and Germany were the
Speaker 1: first really big non wasp in immigration waves in the US,
Speaker 1: and it caused an awful lot of turmoil. I'm afraid
Speaker 1: to say that by and large, the Irish immigrants behaved
Speaker 1: themselves abysmally. They're going to be a bad part of
Speaker 1: most of this story. The Germans are going to stand
Speaker 1: out in shining counter example. No dislike it, but it
Speaker 1: is just true. Boo Irish immigrants were treated like shit.
Speaker 1: They were treated like shit for being Celtic instead of
Speaker 1: Anglo Saxon, and for being Catholic. And a lot of
Speaker 1: the anti Catholic shit comes from this, like, oh Rome
Speaker 1: is going to be in charge if we let the
Speaker 1: Catholics in divided loyalties. And they were soon more or
Speaker 1: less at war with the nativist No Nothing Party. Do
Speaker 1: you know we had a political party called the No Nothings. No,
Speaker 1: but they're just maga but like in the eighteen forties
Speaker 1: and fifties.
Speaker 3: No Nothing Party. I mean myself, that's good.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: They're the anti immigrant party. That is like their thing.
Speaker 1: Their whole shtick is that they're anti immigrant and they're
Speaker 1: anti drinking. Okay, because immigrants drink good Protestants don't drink.
Speaker 1: Oh I see. Of course, the German immigrants were treated
Speaker 1: slightly better than the Irish immigrants because they were closer
Speaker 1: to white by Anglo Saxon racial purities andards, and more
Speaker 1: of them had a little bit more of a work
Speaker 1: ethic or whatever than the lazy Irish because they're all pastoralist.
Speaker 1: It gets back in a weird shit about being a
Speaker 1: colonized nation. Anyway, the very first episode of this show,
Speaker 1: we covered the logger beer Riots of Chicago of eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty five, and that's when basically you weren't allowed to
Speaker 1: have your like beer hall open on Sunday because of
Speaker 1: these Sabbath laws that the Protestants were all about, and
Speaker 1: it was partly to defeat the immigrant culture. Right the
Speaker 1: only day people had off work was Sunday. If they
Speaker 1: were lucky, they had Sunday off work. And so now
Speaker 1: they're not even allowed to gather on the one day
Speaker 1: they have off work. So they had these like riots
Speaker 1: and kind of took over Chicago and a lot of
Speaker 1: them got shot by cops and right wing militia, and
Speaker 1: the history doesn't change. But the Germans in the race
Speaker 1: sciencey minds of the nineteenth century were Teutonic people, which
Speaker 1: is close cousins to the Anglo Saxons. They come from
Speaker 1: the same branch of the tree of good white people.
Speaker 2: You know, he system is so stupid, it's so dumb.
Speaker 3: It's the dumbest thing, even when they're trying to be
Speaker 3: smart and science y.
Speaker 1: I know, sid there's this thing that lives rent free
Speaker 1: in my head where my ex boyfriend once told me
Speaker 1: about the guy who had to dedicate his life to
Speaker 1: measuring the skulls of different dead people, white and black
Speaker 1: to prove something he knew, which was that white brains
Speaker 1: aren't bigger, but he still had to Like he was like,
Speaker 1: you gotta get.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the Germans are treated a little bit better, but
Speaker 1: a third of the immigrants are Catholic, and none of
Speaker 1: them are the right kind of Protestants and they like
Speaker 1: to drink, so they're on thin ice. At first, the
Speaker 1: abolitionists are like, hell, yeah, these like not quite white
Speaker 1: immigrants are totally going to get the job done. We're
Speaker 1: like totally going to have all these new people. Because
Speaker 1: Irish revolutionaries in Ireland emphasis on in Ireland, we're already
Speaker 1: talking about the need to end slavery in the United
Speaker 1: States and all racial discrimination. But the flood of imigrants,
Speaker 1: especially the Irish, soon got promised whiteness in exchange for
Speaker 1: hating black people, and overall they kind of took that deal.
Speaker 1: They were like, we don't belong in terrible working conditions
Speaker 1: like black people do, and they started calling their situation
Speaker 1: white slavery in the nineteenth century, because white slavery is
Speaker 1: bad in contrast to black slavery, which is fine, even
Speaker 1: though the white people weren't enslaved, they.
Speaker 2: Just reversed slavery.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so the Irish were at the forefront of
Speaker 1: basically every northern anti black riot in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: killing black people in the streets.
Speaker 3: Great, that's great.
Speaker 1: Ireland didn't send their best, Is that way or not?
Speaker 1: One abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison wrote in eighteen forty five,
Speaker 1: and this is actually Garrison, who's on it could happen here.
Speaker 1: Who's a vampire?
Speaker 3: Oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, they look really young and
Speaker 3: that makes sense.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, yeah, they transitioned to vampire very young. But
Speaker 1: Gare wrote in eighteen forty five it is a most
Speaker 1: deplorable circumstance that religiously and politically almost the entire body
Speaker 1: of Irishmen in this country are disposed to go with
Speaker 1: the accursed South for every purpose and to any extent.
Speaker 1: They are a mighty obstacle in the way of negro
Speaker 1: emancipation on our soil.
Speaker 2: Get the Irish, go get them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Veteran of the pod Frederick Douglass said, now, I
Speaker 1: am far from finding fault with the Irish for coming
Speaker 1: to this country, but I met with an irishman a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago who told me that it was his
Speaker 1: deliberate opinion that the colored people in this country could
Speaker 1: never rise here and ought to go to Africa. What
Speaker 1: I have to say to Ireland is send no more
Speaker 1: such children here.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 1: He was like, you're not sending your best.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The German immigrants, they stand in contrast, not all of them,
Speaker 1: Many of them are racist pieces of shit, and also
Speaker 1: a ton of the Irish people are cool as hell.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It turns out, actually, if you make sweeping generalizations about
Speaker 1: people are based on where they were born and what
Speaker 1: ethnicity they are, you're usually wrong.
Speaker 2: Oh it's funny how that works out. Yeah, it's never
Speaker 2: even the reverse reverse reverse race. Yeah, totally, it never
Speaker 2: works out.
Speaker 1: The forty eight ers in particularly, were not too keen
Speaker 1: on what they saw when they arrived. One German newspaper
Speaker 1: editor wrote, Anglo Saxon civilization, which measures the value of
Speaker 1: a human being only on the basis of income, in
Speaker 1: which outer appearance is everything, truth and honor nothing, leads
Speaker 1: to moral servitude, material slavery, and anti social barbarity. It
Speaker 1: destroys all bonds of society, consolidates the monarchical principle wherever
Speaker 1: it exists and undermines the republic. Yeah, that's true. Another
Speaker 1: German journalist put it a little less politely. I would
Speaker 1: feel more comfortable here if there were more paintings, better drama,
Speaker 1: and less religion. This disgusting garlic smell and the stench
Speaker 1: of religion permeate all of life.
Speaker 2: Yep. You need different writers for different purposes. You need
Speaker 2: some is going to be more effective.
Speaker 1: Than Yeah, yeah, totally, and the best of all of
Speaker 1: these writers continues to be Frederick Douglass, in contrast to
Speaker 1: how he viewed that the Irish immigrants, said of the Germans,
Speaker 1: a German has only to be a German to be
Speaker 1: utterly opposed to slavery. This is why you know that
Speaker 1: you can't judge nations by what you assume is their
Speaker 1: national character. Because the national character of Germans looked really good.
Speaker 1: One hundred years later it didn't look as good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what does look good one hundred years from now
Speaker 1: is looking back on all those receipts and thinking, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm glad I spent my money on products
Speaker 1: and services. There's services too, there's services as well. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you even get ads for podcasts, which is neither a
Speaker 1: product nor a service, just a thing.
Speaker 2: Yes, entertainment.
Speaker 3: Is that a service?
Speaker 1: I guess you're the product.
Speaker 3: Oh, here's a product, and you're doing a service.
Speaker 1: Yeah, by listening to these ads, here they are yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're back. And so the forty eight ers they
Speaker 1: show up just as abolitionism is heating up, because in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty, the US passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which
Speaker 1: basically gave Southerners way more rights recovering their like property
Speaker 1: in the North. And we recently did an episode where
Speaker 1: I talked about how this started, but I can't remember
Speaker 1: which fucking episode it was. You should just listen to
Speaker 1: all one hundred and something episodes that we've done in
Speaker 1: the show, and you'll know where the Fugitive Slave Act
Speaker 1: started from.
Speaker 2: Pause this real quick, I guess, and then guilds and
Speaker 2: all those yeah, yeah, and then come back.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're back, Okay, cool, glad you're still with us?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: And for people who didn't have to pause because they've
Speaker 1: already listened to all of them, are you okay? I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I've listened to all of them. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I'm okay, oh yeah, if you have.
Speaker 2: Listened all them, I guess pause and then just sort
Speaker 2: of listened to silence for as long as it would take,
Speaker 2: and then come back as well totally.
Speaker 1: Okay, now you're back from that. Okay, I really appreciate that.
Speaker 1: So the Fugitive Slave Act united the disparate and like
Speaker 1: the abolitionist movement, has never been a centralized thing. It
Speaker 1: will never be a centralized thing except when it's like
Speaker 1: the United States Army and it's you know, at war, right,
Speaker 1: But all of the different factions are fighting a lot
Speaker 1: until the Fugitive Slave Act, which in some ways hastened
Speaker 1: the decline of slavery because it got people to get
Speaker 1: their shit together. Because what it did is now the
Speaker 1: North is a battleground too, right, because now you could
Speaker 1: be like a white liberal in Boston and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you are culpable because this fugitive person
Speaker 1: can be arrested in front of you. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people fought, and we've talked about this on
Speaker 1: the show. A lot of people were like, no, we're
Speaker 1: gonna we don't care about the law. We will pull
Speaker 1: guns and shoot people who try to recover their quote
Speaker 1: unquote property. That's a guy. You can't convince me otherwise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense that that's going to galvinize me.
Speaker 2: You bring it even closer to them and blurring the
Speaker 2: lines of that, and it's like, yeah, any aggressive law, like,
Speaker 2: that's an aggressive law. Yeah, and that's going to get
Speaker 2: pushed back, especially with ideally hopefully with an issue such
Speaker 2: as slavery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a big it's a big one. It's one
Speaker 1: of the bigger issues.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Forty eight ers in particular sort of pressured their own
Speaker 1: to take sides in the struggle because they show up
Speaker 1: right and they're like, well, our revolution failed, we're here now,
Speaker 1: we've got to keep going. We've got to keep trying
Speaker 1: to make the world better. And they were like, so
Speaker 1: when people showed up and we're like, oh, we're grateful
Speaker 1: to America for taking us in and we won't meddle
Speaker 1: in its political affairs, everyone just attacks the shit out
Speaker 1: of them. They are just hated as the hypocrites they are.
Speaker 1: There's endless press about these piece of shit, coward hypocrite
Speaker 1: forty eight ers, Like there's only a couple of them too,
Speaker 1: but everyone's like, fuck these people. Their public support is
Speaker 1: immediately taken away. Cancel culture strikes again eighteen fifty time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: cancel culture came for father Theobald Matthew from Ireland, who
Speaker 1: was more concerned with temperance than anti slavery, and he
Speaker 1: was like, well, you know, the pro slavery people are
Speaker 1: the ones who were like, like, if I'm trying to
Speaker 1: build all the support for no one should be allowed
Speaker 1: to drink, and so if I start talking shit on slavery,
Speaker 1: I'll lose a lot of my supporters because a lot
Speaker 1: of the people who don't think you should be able
Speaker 1: to drink think it's okay to own people.
Speaker 2: We all have to compromise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it is wild to me how much
Speaker 1: old US politics were revolved around whether or not drinking
Speaker 1: is okay.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and.
Speaker 3: Now looks like a national identity. It feels like just
Speaker 3: Americans and Americans just have a beer.
Speaker 1: I know. It would be like, yeah, like the KKK
Speaker 1: in the twenties was the armed wing of the fucking
Speaker 1: temperance movement. They were like running around specific trying to
Speaker 1: stop people from drinking.
Speaker 3: The rebrand of alcohol is something fascinating. It should be studied.
Speaker 3: We should do that, We should do the rebrand of.
Speaker 1: That's probably a bastards.
Speaker 3: But yeah, no that I read, I guess I just
Speaker 3: met like I should learn about that, and I just
Speaker 3: know that you teach me things, and so that's what
Speaker 3: I meant.
Speaker 1: But oh, you should do it on food could happen here,
Speaker 1: he can have been here.
Speaker 3: It's a drink happen fascinating because that's an incredible one
Speaker 3: to eighty rebrand, you know, like.
Speaker 2: It's I know, oh yeah, fully like embraced the idea
Speaker 2: of getting rid of that now that would start another.
Speaker 3: That wasn't even that long ago, like that, it wasn't
Speaker 3: nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties. Very fascinating.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting too because you also run across like
Speaker 1: basically straight edge revolutionaries all throughout history where people are like, hey,
Speaker 1: stop drinking so we can get some shit done, you know.
Speaker 1: And so it's been like both a radical and an
Speaker 1: anti radical stance to drink or not drink like forever,
Speaker 1: because like I read all this and it's like, man,
Speaker 1: I should drink more. Like That's what I with. Whenever
Speaker 1: I read about the Temperance movement, my oppositional sidekicks in
Speaker 1: and I'm like, you know, who hated drinking slavers.
Speaker 2: We gotta exactly got to show them, Yeah, you're dead now,
Speaker 2: but I gotta show them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Temperance being like the precursor to straight edge, Like
Speaker 3: it didn't I didn't realize it was so old.
Speaker 1: Well, but so what's funny is it comes from a
Speaker 1: slightly different thing because what you have specifically is you
Speaker 1: have XBX straight edge vegans, the kind of revolutionary who
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century didn't drink, but not because of
Speaker 1: the temperance movement, not for religious reasons, because of the revolution.
Speaker 1: Usually was also like strict vegetarian aka vegan. That's interesting,
Speaker 1: And so there's like all of these like XBX heroes
Speaker 1: all throughout this whole thing, and then there's other people
Speaker 1: who are like fuck that, I'm drinking and eating meat
Speaker 1: on my way to revolution, you know, right, thanks.
Speaker 2: All kinds everybody. You know, everybody deals with that in
Speaker 2: different ways. If you need to stay focused, that's fine.
Speaker 2: If you need to drown yourself, that's fine too.
Speaker 1: We gotta yeah, because the world is a fucking nightmare
Speaker 1: and whatever helps you through it, exactly. So the father
Speaker 1: Theobald Matthew from Ireland got a hard time of it,
Speaker 1: as did Lajos Losith, a Hungarian revolutionary, would initially because
Speaker 1: he's a big deal revolutionary. He shows up and he's
Speaker 1: greeted with like parades and shit by the abolitionists in
Speaker 1: the US. They're like, here's our fucking guy. The forty
Speaker 1: eight ers are here. We're gonna get some shit done.
Speaker 1: And then he was the one who said basically like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're grateful to America and we don't want to meddle,
Speaker 1: and it's domestic political affairs. And so someone published a
Speaker 1: one hundred and twelve page pamphlet called Letter to Kosith
Speaker 1: attacking his hypocrisy. Well, just like all these like bloggers.
Speaker 3: Just I'm just imagine this long reddit thread like.
Speaker 1: Exactly. That is, the people haven't changed the way that
Speaker 1: we do. What we do changes, But on this Tumblr
Speaker 1: thread it said, quote, how could you expect to neutral
Speaker 1: ground to please alike the traffickers of human flesh and
Speaker 1: those who execate that traffic to skulk behind the flimsy
Speaker 1: subterfuge of foreign non intervention, Which is just I read
Speaker 1: that in my snarky voice, but I actually agree with
Speaker 1: what I just read. Oh yeah, so.
Speaker 2: You know they're in their little basement typing away like
Speaker 2: that's what yeah they sound like, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well they're handsetting type right, sure, right, but one
Speaker 1: hundred and.
Speaker 2: Disturbing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. In response to the first of what do
Speaker 1: you have to say on page seventeen of the pamphlet,
Speaker 1: I am a coward, I would like to say, yes, sir,
Speaker 1: you are. And so German immigrants actually got together and
Speaker 1: they put together a platform. They were going to start
Speaker 1: a party called the German Reform Party, and then they
Speaker 1: were quite came together, but they could put together a
Speaker 1: platform that was way too radical for like basically everyone else.
Speaker 1: It was pro labor, it was anti clergy, it was
Speaker 1: anti slavery, it was pro women's rights. And while we're
Speaker 1: at it, let's abolish the presidency. Yeah. Interesting, not a
Speaker 1: demand run across anywhere else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't see that because.
Speaker 1: Like anarchists want to abolish the whole government. But I
Speaker 1: haven't met anyone who's like the executive branch has got
Speaker 1: to go, right, like.
Speaker 2: Democracy, good, we're gonna have government. We have like all
Speaker 2: this like assistem in place, but like no presidents.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, considering the way the US works, they
Speaker 1: were probably onto something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not a bad idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, their party never formed, but this platform that they
Speaker 1: wrote it was widely disseminated, and it just fucking threw
Speaker 1: open the Overton window because it was like someone finally
Speaker 1: was just like, yeah, what if we want all of this?
Speaker 1: And so people had to suddenly if they were moderate,
Speaker 1: they were now speaking in response to the more radical
Speaker 1: and they changed what it meant to be radical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you kind of have to like pick like, not everything.
Speaker 2: I'll pick one or two of these things. Keep the presidency, Yeah,
Speaker 2: we get the presidency, and like these are okay, and yeah,
Speaker 2: sort of sifting through to try to be still be
Speaker 2: a part of the discourse.
Speaker 1: Oh god, if I come full circle on being positive
Speaker 1: on discourse, it's like usually my pin Twitter threat is
Speaker 1: I must not discourse discourses, the mind killer discourses, the
Speaker 1: little death of Prince aliteration. So that said, while they
Speaker 1: were not as pro slavery as the Irish overall, again
Speaker 1: a ton of Irish people are going to fight for
Speaker 1: the union also and because they care about slavery, right,
Speaker 1: But the average German immigrant was more like, I guess
Speaker 1: slavery is bad, but I'm more concerned about protection from
Speaker 1: the sabbath and temperance laws, like I want to be
Speaker 1: able to drink and I want to be able to
Speaker 1: drink on Sundays because the only day I don't work,
Speaker 1: and I want better wages and shit. That was like
Speaker 1: the average German immigrant was basically anti slavery instead of abolitionist,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, or maybe they were abolitionists, but a
Speaker 1: little bit more wasn't their primary thing. Most German immigrants
Speaker 1: with the non forty eight ers were joining the Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: which is the more racist party at this time. Right,
Speaker 1: they're both neck and neck for us while because the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party stands in opposition to that Northern Wasp thing
Speaker 1: that was trying to ban alcohol and force everyone to
Speaker 1: observe the sabbath and like, had closer ties to the nativists,
Speaker 1: the people who were shooting them in the streets for
Speaker 1: being from another country. So that is the America that
Speaker 1: the forty eight ers show up in. As for what
Speaker 1: they did, which was really impressive, and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to tell you about it, well i am, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tell you about it on Wednesday, so today, well YouTube,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you too today, but everyone else you got
Speaker 1: to keep it quiet. Okay til Wednesday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, suckers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So come back on Wednesday and I will talk
Speaker 1: about abolitionists in Texas, which sounds scary and it was,
Speaker 1: and they needed guns to get away with not dying,
Speaker 1: and also in Ohio, which is also cool. And we'll
Speaker 1: talk about them on Wednesday. But first we should talk
Speaker 1: about you and the things that you do.
Speaker 2: What do you? Who are you?
Speaker 1: How'd you get here?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: Jeez? Oh, thanks so much. I was invited. You invited me? Great? Yeah? No, huh.
Speaker 2: It'me's Cody Johnston. I host a show called some More
Speaker 2: News on YouTube. I cost a show called even More
Speaker 2: News on Place where Podcasts Live that's now on YouTube
Speaker 2: as well. I'm in a band called the Hot Shapes.
Speaker 2: I have to mention go check that out on the
Speaker 2: band camp soundclouds.
Speaker 3: There's a drum set currently right behind Cody.
Speaker 2: So there is a drum set currently that's true, a
Speaker 2: mandolin and a mandlin. I don't actually play the drums
Speaker 2: in the band.
Speaker 3: Damn.
Speaker 1: Sorry, oh you have like a park Those are like
Speaker 1: those are quiet practice drums. The symbols look like the
Speaker 1: rubber or something. They are nice, smart.
Speaker 2: They're serviceable for what I need them for which yea, yeah,
Speaker 2: make that phones and doing that. Yeah, so check out
Speaker 2: the hot shapes. I like us were going on a
Speaker 2: new album right now. And I think that's probably all
Speaker 2: the stuff I do. Tell thea to shit in his
Speaker 2: own mouth sometimes on Twitter, uh the everything X or
Speaker 2: whatever the fuck. But yeah, I'm doctor mister Cody.
Speaker 1: I learn about new people to hate, buy your shit
Speaker 1: talk because I don't keep up with modern politics. For shit,
Speaker 1: I like think I do, but then I like every
Speaker 1: day there's like a new guy that everyone's been mad
Speaker 1: at for ten years that I've never heard of. But
Speaker 1: I haven't seen you tell the wrong person to shit
Speaker 1: in their own mouth. So I'll take it, thank you.
Speaker 2: I will. I will do my best to continue that streak.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I'm doctor mister Cody. And all the social stuff.
Speaker 2: If you want to see that kind of thing. Hell yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm nice sometimes too.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, I yeah, I feel bad that I am
Speaker 1: highlighting this part of you. Also, I want to make
Speaker 1: it clear I don't think that you have pos your drums.
Speaker 1: They are awesome. It is cool that you have drums
Speaker 1: that are not designed to antagonize your neighbors. But still,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, no.
Speaker 2: I try to. Yeah, yeah, one day. If I have
Speaker 2: a you know, real house, like a basement or roge
Speaker 2: or something, I might do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have a drum set in my basement, but it's
Speaker 1: mostly there to antagonize my dog totally. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: want to hear my uh oh. I have bands. I
Speaker 1: do band called Feminosgical, where I also don't play the drums,
Speaker 1: but I do program the drums and people every now
Speaker 1: and then like, oh, it's a black metal but all
Speaker 1: these things are synthetic. Okay, so most black metal bands
Speaker 1: have fake accordions and real drums and guitars. We have
Speaker 1: fake guitars and drums, but we have real accordions, piano, mountain, dulcimer.
Speaker 1: I play a Dane axe on one song. Everything that's
Speaker 1: a weird instrument is real, and then all the basic
Speaker 1: instruments are fake. And it's called and we're on wherever
Speaker 1: you want to listen to it.
Speaker 2: I have a dulcimer in the other room. Oh hell yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to get a new strings for it because
Speaker 2: it's old made. It's not the right type. I keep
Speaker 2: ordering them. It's never the right type. But huh.
Speaker 1: One day harpkit dot com. This is a free plug.
Speaker 1: Is where I get my strings for weird folk instruments,
Speaker 1: and also it's where I get kits to build instruments from.
Speaker 2: Oh that's exactly my next thing I'm gonna do. Oh yeah, no,
Speaker 2: this is perfect. This is my pandemic copy. This is
Speaker 2: my free plug for this company that I have no
Speaker 2: affiliation with, but I've made like six of their instruments
Speaker 2: from kits and they're really high quality and like they
Speaker 2: make me feel like I'm a really good woodworker, except
Speaker 2: for the ones that I completely fuck up and break
Speaker 2: and then I feel like a shitty woodworker and out
Speaker 2: a bunch of money because they're not cheap kits because.
Speaker 1: They may just do it againstruments. That's what I did actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: actually was Mike Dulcimer. I built it from a kit,
Speaker 1: and the first one I built, I just didn't know
Speaker 1: what I was doing, and I like ripped up the
Speaker 1: soundboard while I was trying to cut sound holes in it,
Speaker 1: and then I had to Also.
Speaker 2: Those like Dulsons are pretty like thin, yeah, supervisually, so
Speaker 2: it's hard to imagine. I imagine it's hard to construct
Speaker 2: one anyway.
Speaker 1: Is showing you guy, I think you want to plug. No, okay,
Speaker 1: well you can catch serene on. It could happen high.
Speaker 3: I know, I always try to avoid it.
Speaker 1: You do it anyway.
Speaker 3: I am one of the rotating hosts that it could
Speaker 3: happen here. I usually cover Middle East stuff right now.
Speaker 3: It's a lot about Palestine, or I do silly food
Speaker 3: episodes or history episodes to keep myself sane. So you
Speaker 3: can see me or hear me there. You will not
Speaker 3: see me anywhere.
Speaker 1: That's the dream, all right, See you all on Wednesday. Bye.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website
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