Speaker 1: M what's starving my refugee population with zoid product. Jesus, Jesus,
Speaker 1: what a mess. Oh my god, Fuck Chris, you gotta
Speaker 1: you gotta pull me out of this tails. Then we're
Speaker 1: on a starting on a terrible, terrible note. Here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're it's okay, We're we're, We're We're back, Part two,
Speaker 1: Part two, The Rise of the Working Class. We're we're back,
Speaker 1: and we're back. We're back in warlords with hell fucking
Speaker 1: everybody gotta dick the size of a bunch of coins,
Speaker 1: just just a radi war criminal. And now we're gonna
Speaker 1: watch an awful part. Okay, good god, he does have
Speaker 1: it coming. He does have it. I like his I
Speaker 1: like his hotspah. But yeah, he's got it coming. Thrilled
Speaker 1: to hear that we are going to fuck him up.
Speaker 1: Let's go out, let's have his upants come first, We're
Speaker 1: gonna first. We're gonna sunk up a lot of other people.
Speaker 1: So yeah. On May nineteenth, a group of eight factory
Speaker 1: delegates representing striking workers at a Japanese controlled cotton plant
Speaker 1: in Shanghai met with their opposite number from the factory
Speaker 1: to discussed the workers demands. A brawl broke out in
Speaker 1: a Japanese foreman murdered a well established labor organizer, and
Speaker 1: the resulting fight injured the other seven delegates. Now this
Speaker 1: you know, for very obvious reasons, Piste off Shanghai's unions,
Speaker 1: and ten thousand workers, which was at that point one
Speaker 1: of the largest demonstrations of workers in Shanghai's history, showed
Speaker 1: up to his memorial service. On Now, protesters marched on
Speaker 1: a police station that had arrested some of their comrades
Speaker 1: in and when they got to the station, the British
Speaker 1: police opened fire into the crowd. When the slaughter was over,
Speaker 1: ten Chinese men, women, and children lay dead on the
Speaker 1: street to Shanghai. Another fifty were wounded. This moment, on
Speaker 1: this crowded street in Shanghai changed everything. Budgin, the great
Speaker 1: Chinese novelist and anarchist, wrote this description of a student's
Speaker 1: reaction to the slaughter in Shanghai. Quote at the entrance
Speaker 1: to Yunon Road, he saw the child who had been
Speaker 1: killed a short while before, he thought about half an
Speaker 1: hour ago. The crowd was marching peacefully towards the police
Speaker 1: station to ask the police to set free students who
Speaker 1: have been unjustly arrested. They thought the police were human
Speaker 1: beings endowed with reason and human sympathy, that human blood
Speaker 1: flood in their veins. They thought that uniforms and weapons
Speaker 1: could not have destroyed their human nature. But reality proved
Speaker 1: they were bloodthirsty beasts. On the most crowded street of
Speaker 1: the city, they deliberately slaughtered on armed people. For this,
Speaker 1: there was no precedent in Chinese history. The imperialist depression
Speaker 1: that had endured for so many years ached like a
Speaker 1: deep wound in his heart. He's gold Inwardly, he felt
Speaker 1: the time for patience was over. He felt he wanted
Speaker 1: to spill his blood, to sacrifice his young life, that
Speaker 1: he might show then not all among his people were
Speaker 1: lambs that allowed themselves to be led without resistance to
Speaker 1: the slaughter. He looked again at the corpse of the
Speaker 1: murdered child. His eyes shone with fire. His whole body
Speaker 1: began to burn, as though on fire. His heart beat violently. Now,
Speaker 1: I think this is a feeling that all of us
Speaker 1: know now, just the sheer, breathtaking rage of seeing the
Speaker 1: police murder a child, seeing a child's corpse lying dead
Speaker 1: on the pavement, And that is that is now a
Speaker 1: universal thing for sure, and I want to pause on
Speaker 1: that feeling for a second. I want to pause on
Speaker 1: the rage, on the grief, on the sort of the
Speaker 1: raw and mounting horror of the realization at the copsmer
Speaker 1: kids in the street. And I want you to hold
Speaker 1: onto those emotions because there's been an enormous effort to
Speaker 1: get Westerners to think that Chinese people are fundamentally different
Speaker 1: than they are, That Chinese people are inherently authoritarian, that
Speaker 1: we're all bound by a sort of traditional Confucian hierarchy
Speaker 1: that we all follow reflectively, that that it's baked into
Speaker 1: our culture, and even at the most extreme cases, are
Speaker 1: genetics at a level that makes us fundamentally different than
Speaker 1: the quote unquote freedom loving people of the West. And
Speaker 1: I want you to think about that student staring at
Speaker 1: a child's corpse in a bloody street in Shanghai, and
Speaker 1: I want you to think about how he felt the
Speaker 1: same despair, the same grief, the same rage that we do.
Speaker 1: And I want you to remember this single lesson without
Speaker 1: which you cannot understands what is about to happen. They're
Speaker 1: like us, and they fought like hell immediately after two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand workers joined the larger general strike in Shanghai's history.
Speaker 1: The next day, the communist labor organizers founded Shanghai's General
Speaker 1: Labor Union, or the g l U. Hundred and seventeen
Speaker 1: unions join. Almost immediately, every part of Shanghai society moves.
Speaker 1: Chinese business owners so outraged at the imperialist murders that
Speaker 1: for a second the class abandoned them, contributed to the
Speaker 1: strike funds, and took those streets themselves. So did Shanghai
Speaker 1: is incredibly powerful organized crime gangs, the Green and Red gangs.
Speaker 1: We're we're going to get into more of them. A
Speaker 1: bit um. Chong Jung Chong and Chong Ju Ling sent
Speaker 1: troops to suppress the uprising, but even their troops couldn't
Speaker 1: hold the city against the power of the entirety of
Speaker 1: Chinese Shanghai. A new force had taken the stage of
Speaker 1: Chinese history, the Chinese working class, and had driven all
Speaker 1: other classes into the streets and pitched them into open
Speaker 1: battle with the police and the warlords. It had in
Speaker 1: a single day, transformed Shanghai from the playground of the British, French,
Speaker 1: Japanese imperialist into the capital of the Chinese working class. Now, yeah, Robert,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know if you if you've read
Speaker 1: anything about Shanghai, there's anything about any large city that
Speaker 1: was written by a British dude before about They inevitably
Speaker 1: call any sort of large city in the East that
Speaker 1: the Paris of the Orient. Now Shanghai is one of
Speaker 1: the cities that's famously called this and on mat the
Speaker 1: meeting of those words changed completely. This uprising Shanghai, you know,
Speaker 1: did finally become the twentieth centuries Paris in that after
Speaker 1: made the thirtieth it was to go into full scale
Speaker 1: armed revolt five more times. The twentieth century. Shanghai's working class, Yeah,
Speaker 1: in every way, the equal, even the superiors of the
Speaker 1: Parisian mobs would single handedly drive the warlords and nationalists
Speaker 1: and the communist alike from the city. Yeah, yeah, there,
Speaker 1: it is incredibly impressive. Yeah, they just had no idea
Speaker 1: any of this had happened. Actually, yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: really this is one of like sort of the lost
Speaker 1: stories of the twentieth century, which is which is the
Speaker 1: story of Shanghai. Just Shanghai becoming indisputedly the world's great
Speaker 1: revolutionary city in the way that sort of Paris was
Speaker 1: in the ninetdreds. And this is because it starts because
Speaker 1: of fucking pop kills a kid, yep. And and I
Speaker 1: think and I think that's a as an entry point.
Speaker 1: It is helpful because you know, there there there's a
Speaker 1: tendency to sort of to to turn this whole period
Speaker 1: into something that was like inevitable by class forces or
Speaker 1: whatever that you know, this is some kind of weird
Speaker 1: historical object or that like the communists from behind all
Speaker 1: of this, and it's like no people, people, people go
Speaker 1: on strike, people in the streets because they watched, like
Speaker 1: they sold the physical bodies of children in the streets
Speaker 1: that have been killed by the police. Yeah, and these
Speaker 1: had all been people who had been dealing with um
Speaker 1: Jung and his bullshit and the other warlords and the
Speaker 1: violence and brutality that they carried out for a while.
Speaker 1: And it just I guess seeing a dead kid, you know,
Speaker 1: there is something like that that like you're just like, well,
Speaker 1: this is too much, Like I've been putted too far,
Speaker 1: We've all been pushed too far. It's time to fux
Speaker 1: some ship up. Yeah. And the other thing about this
Speaker 1: that I think is really important is that the they're
Speaker 1: not killed by like Chinese police or Chinese soldiers. These
Speaker 1: are originally it's a Japanese foreman and then it's it's
Speaker 1: British police, and that part of it just like it
Speaker 1: drives well, I mean, what we can you know, it
Speaker 1: starts this revolt that just spreads like wildfire. And you know,
Speaker 1: within a couple of days there's a huge protest another
Speaker 1: city near Shanghai, and the British open fire into the
Speaker 1: crowds with machine guns. They kill another eight people Jesus
Speaker 1: and this, yeah, this brings more people in the street
Speaker 1: with with it wasin three days, the revolt spreads to
Speaker 1: the north and there's thirty thousand students and workers on
Speaker 1: strike and Beijing. In nearby Tungin, there's two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: people show up to a protest and Tungeon this is
Speaker 1: the center of the power of the warlord armies and
Speaker 1: it's there in August that the movement sees his first
Speaker 1: real defeat uncture lyings armies working with British intelligence. And
Speaker 1: this is this is another thing. So so there's a
Speaker 1: complicated relationship between the imperialist powers and the various warlords
Speaker 1: they'll they'll sort of back factions. Dru Lings very often
Speaker 1: accused of being a sort of like a stooge of
Speaker 1: the Japanese imperialists, and it's not quite true, like he
Speaker 1: is supported by them, but he just sort of like
Speaker 1: disobeys them. But the one thing that happens immediately is
Speaker 1: at any time one of these strikes happens, like all
Speaker 1: of the warlords and all of the sort of imperial
Speaker 1: powers just like a lock step. And yeah, in August,
Speaker 1: du Ling's armies and a certain group of white Russian
Speaker 1: mercenaries with whom we are now all familiar, retake the
Speaker 1: city and slaughter dozens of workers. But even this doesn't
Speaker 1: stop the revolt, and it continues to spread into the south.
Speaker 1: Um in the nationalist heartland and Guangzhou in the very
Speaker 1: far south, were workers massed on the border with British
Speaker 1: occupied Hong Kong. The workers of Hong Kong rush to
Speaker 1: join them. Now, now Hong Kong is somewhat unique among
Speaker 1: Chinese cities in this period in that it's it's there.
Speaker 1: There have been general strikes going on in Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: I mean since the eighteen hundreds UM, and just three
Speaker 1: years before this there's something called there's there's a massive
Speaker 1: seamen strike, and I found this sort of yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was, I was just I was just gonna go
Speaker 1: past it. What I wrote that I knew was gonna happen. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I found this this great description of it lipcom Thow,
Speaker 1: which which I think is also useful to to understand
Speaker 1: the effects of the later strikes. And so it goes
Speaker 1: disaster for the bosses. Not only rail workers and Stevedor's,
Speaker 1: but baker's, cooks, clerks, coolies and servants joined the strike.
Speaker 1: The ruling class now had to cook its own food
Speaker 1: and que to buy it. No clothes were washed, no
Speaker 1: shirts were ironed. Ministers had to wander government buildings delivering
Speaker 1: their own messages, but there was no one to carry
Speaker 1: out their orders. The army was called out and commandeered
Speaker 1: food and vehicles. Workers were pressed into forced labor. Was
Speaker 1: their workforce disappearing. The boss has banned anyone from leaving
Speaker 1: Hong Kong, which meant no one could visit the graves
Speaker 1: of their ancestors in China, a fearful thing. A freedom
Speaker 1: march against the band led to confrontation right and massacre
Speaker 1: with a colony descending into dare we say it, anarchy,
Speaker 1: government crumbling, and business losses mounting. Merchants lost five hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars between the strike, a massive sum. The boss
Speaker 1: is capitulated. Now that strike had had I think about
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand people in it, and it pales in
Speaker 1: comparison to what's going to happen now. Um on, this
Speaker 1: is this is the beginning of what's called the Canton
Speaker 1: Hong Kong strike. On June, British police officers open fire
Speaker 1: into a crowd of a hundred and thirty thousands. They
Speaker 1: killed fifty two people, Yeah, including four children younger than sixteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is this is surprise bastard imperialism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, it always finds its way in yep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that is a very British thing, just firing into
Speaker 1: a crowd of thousands of people with yep. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: did a lot of that. Um yeah, okay, totally scans yep.
Speaker 1: And the workers in Hong Kong respond with the city's
Speaker 1: longest general strike. Two fifty thou workers just they just
Speaker 1: leave the city for guang Sho, which you know brings
Speaker 1: all of Hong Kong ko a stand still. Because almost
Speaker 1: their entire labor force it's just gone, like they did
Speaker 1: just leave. Um, there's further there's there's a kind of
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, And the everything to do is there's this
Speaker 1: board kott of British goods that reduces British revenue in
Speaker 1: the city by forty and this last for sixteen months,
Speaker 1: and the only reason Hong Kong survives is that, like
Speaker 1: basically the only thing the UK government is doing in
Speaker 1: this period is just shipping these massive bailout packages to
Speaker 1: Hong Kong. Now, I know I mentioned earlier that there
Speaker 1: was massive protests in Tungjin, and those are the first,
Speaker 1: that's the first movement to go down after sort of
Speaker 1: warlord truth movement to suppress it. But what's interesting about
Speaker 1: what happens in the rest of the country is that
Speaker 1: for the most part, these strikes aren't put down by
Speaker 1: the warlords at all. And so to understand why, we
Speaker 1: to look at sort of the class composition of these movements. UM,
Speaker 1: at the beginning of of the May thirtie movement, which
Speaker 1: is what this whole wave of unrest comes to be
Speaker 1: known after the thirty massacre, you have a really solid
Speaker 1: alliance of you know, everyone in Chinese society, and I mean,
Speaker 1: like everyone is piste off about the British soldiers just
Speaker 1: like slaughtering children in the street, and it produces this
Speaker 1: really unwieldly alliance of workers, business owners, and organized crime
Speaker 1: all sort of like fighting imperialism together. But like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's not a coalition that has any shared interest other
Speaker 1: than sort of just hatred of the British and you know, okay,
Speaker 1: hatred of hatred of the perfidious albion is a powerful force,
Speaker 1: but it's not enough to hold the political coalition together.
Speaker 1: And especially because you know this this is the period
Speaker 1: where like the general strike really enters into sort of
Speaker 1: like the protest vocabulary of China's working class, and this
Speaker 1: to just absolutely freak out the bosses. And then there's
Speaker 1: a lot of there's a lot of things that are
Speaker 1: very scary if if you're a boss in like Shanghai.
Speaker 1: One of the other ones is the workers in Shanghai
Speaker 1: start organizing what's called the dog Beating Brigade, which is
Speaker 1: this is this row of workers with axes who run
Speaker 1: around beating up scabs and people who don't what labor
Speaker 1: movements it rules. Yes, that's that's pretty rad. Dude with axes.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, nope, you better suppote the labor movement.
Speaker 1: If you want to keep a strike going, you're gonna
Speaker 1: need a couple hundred dudes with axes. Yeah. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's a lesson people should be taking for the general
Speaker 1: strike we should have and I don't know tomorrow or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think, frankly, like the fact that we no
Speaker 1: longer have people have have a dog beating brigades with
Speaker 1: with axes is like a real reason for the decline
Speaker 1: of the American of the sort of organized American working class. Well,
Speaker 1: bad pitch here, but we're gonna have to change the
Speaker 1: name because Americans are not going to get on board
Speaker 1: anything called the dog beating brigade. And that's true. We
Speaker 1: called the bat absolutely, Yeah, I think we I think
Speaker 1: you can get people back on the door. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know, is dogs is angry about the dog beating brigade.
Speaker 1: I mean that's fair. It's a different culture. Okay, don't worry.
Speaker 1: They only beat people, not dogs. Yeah, they're not beating people.
Speaker 1: They're not like or they're not beating dogs. They're not
Speaker 1: like Hitler. They're beating people, which is also like hitler um,
Speaker 1: but in a good way, all right, I don't, I've
Speaker 1: I've I've lost the thread. Now. Now, a big reason
Speaker 1: for the sort of level of militants and for the
Speaker 1: level of organization that the workers of Shanghai have is
Speaker 1: because both the Communists and the Nationalist Party have allied
Speaker 1: with Shanghai's powerful Green Gang. Now, the Green Gang is
Speaker 1: the single best organized political force in Shanghai by a
Speaker 1: very significant margin. Um. Most of what they're sort of
Speaker 1: fame is four is the fact that they control Shangha
Speaker 1: has opium trade. And you know, that makes them a
Speaker 1: lot of money. But in terms of organizational strength, the
Speaker 1: real power lies in their control over the workplace. The
Speaker 1: Greek Gang controls almost every shop floor in Shanghai, and
Speaker 1: you know the ones that don't control tend to be
Speaker 1: controlled by other gangs. And you know when when when
Speaker 1: I say they control the shop floor, what I mean
Speaker 1: is that they're almost completely in control of the hiring
Speaker 1: and firing process to the point where did you even
Speaker 1: come to Shanghai in the first place? Right, And this
Speaker 1: is important because Shanghai is the city that's like sev
Speaker 1: immigrants from other parts of China. So it's it's it's
Speaker 1: based almost entirely on migrant workers. And to even get
Speaker 1: into the city, you have to have someone who's in
Speaker 1: the gang to like vouch for you. And you know,
Speaker 1: once once, once you have someone that like a foeman
Speaker 1: to vouch for you, you have you have you have
Speaker 1: a friend vouch for you with the foreman, and they
Speaker 1: can hire you. But but this, this whole process means
Speaker 1: that almost the entire working class in Shanghai is like
Speaker 1: affiliated with one of these gangs, particularly the Green Gang.
Speaker 1: And it's sort of interesting. You can see attempts to
Speaker 1: sort of like defame some of these workers that that
Speaker 1: people will go be like, oh, they're they're affiliated with
Speaker 1: the gangs. And it's like literally every worker in Shanghai
Speaker 1: is affiliated something stept with a gang because that's the
Speaker 1: only way you can get a job, and this gives
Speaker 1: them an enormous amount of political power on top of show.
Speaker 1: Now the wealth reabled extract from Chinese workers in the
Speaker 1: opium trade, and they're significant enough that a big part
Speaker 1: of communist organizing and Shanghai becomes like infiltrating these gangs
Speaker 1: because the communists, you know, very quickly figure out that
Speaker 1: if you can't part of it. If you're not like
Speaker 1: part of the gangs, you can't get a job and
Speaker 1: you can't do any labor organizing. So so they turned
Speaker 1: into the strategy of like organizing the gang foreman, because
Speaker 1: the gang foreman can just like boot everyone out of
Speaker 1: a shop and like start a strike. And this this
Speaker 1: really kind of weirdly and surprisingly actually works and the
Speaker 1: communists are able to win over like a good number
Speaker 1: of four men. And this is this is one of
Speaker 1: the sort of the basis of organized labor in the city.
Speaker 1: But but this also means that even within the sort
Speaker 1: of communist unions, the gangs have like a decent level
Speaker 1: of influence because you know, the reliant on gang members
Speaker 1: to sort of bring people in. Now, at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the conflict, this works in organized labor's favor because
Speaker 1: you know, both both the gangs and the and the
Speaker 1: communists and like the labor organizers are all pulling on
Speaker 1: the same side, and that means they could just like
Speaker 1: pull everyone out of work. But as as the stricks
Speaker 1: go on, the largely communist control general labor union grows
Speaker 1: more and more powerful, and the Green Gang looks at
Speaker 1: this it starts to get worried about like you know,
Speaker 1: organized labor creating an independent base of power, which is
Speaker 1: a real threat to the control of the workplace, and
Speaker 1: they start looking for allies that put the strikes down. Now,
Speaker 1: Chinese business owners had initially like backed the protests, but
Speaker 1: you know, because they were piste off that the British
Speaker 1: were shooting people. But they very quickly realized that letting
Speaker 1: letting workers have unions is extremely bad for them, even
Speaker 1: if those unions were temporarily targeting foreign owners. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: so one one of their major complaints is that there's
Speaker 1: there's a strike. You know, one of the strikes is
Speaker 1: going on is at this like Japanese own power plants,
Speaker 1: but because the power plants, they like they can't be
Speaker 1: run by scab workers. This cuts off businesses. This cuts
Speaker 1: off like power to Chinese businesses too. The business owners
Speaker 1: get piste off and they get together with the Green Gang.
Speaker 1: They're trying to like start ending the strikes. Um The
Speaker 1: gang like storms the offices of the g l U
Speaker 1: with like knives and iron bars and just like beats
Speaker 1: the crap out of a whole bunch of the GILU organizers.
Speaker 1: And they're able to just like destroy the headquarters, and
Speaker 1: they also start to sort of like exert their influence
Speaker 1: over the workforce to like bring people back to work.
Speaker 1: And this eventually is able to do what the British
Speaker 1: government in the warlords couldn't, which is bring the strike
Speaker 1: to an end by forcing the GLU to sort of
Speaker 1: like settle with the Japanese government over conversation for like
Speaker 1: the original death of the labor organizer and a very
Speaker 1: similar process, although in Hong Kong it's more Chinese business
Speaker 1: owners acting the British then it is organized crime, like
Speaker 1: just beating the crap out of people. But there's a
Speaker 1: very similar thing plays out in Hong Kong. And after
Speaker 1: sixteen months to strike ends, and it's kind of a
Speaker 1: disaster because after this the Brits just like later in
Speaker 1: Hong Kong to a fortress, almost all British social policy
Speaker 1: for the next really hundred years specifically designed to make
Speaker 1: sure that this this kind of strike never happens again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like um I could name some other governments
Speaker 1: that took a little bit of a leaf out of
Speaker 1: their book in that regard, yep. And there's actually there's
Speaker 1: a fun a lot of fun I say fun but
Speaker 1: there there's an interesting thing about this where Shanghai, Hong
Speaker 1: Kong is basically the place where like most riot tactics
Speaker 1: are produced, are like like police anti riot techniques are produced.
Speaker 1: So there there's another bunch of riots in n seven
Speaker 1: and what the British police does against those riots are
Speaker 1: like that. That's where that's like the template for all
Speaker 1: riot police comes from is from the British police in
Speaker 1: Hong Kong sixty seven. And you see this with like
Speaker 1: waves of this with the earlier strikes too. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're fucking good at it. I can It's also I'm
Speaker 1: gonna guess where a lot of protester tactics for dealing
Speaker 1: with I mean, I can say that just in terms
Speaker 1: of like last year in Portland, people were using tactics
Speaker 1: they'd seen in Hong Kong. Uh do first, Um, yeah
Speaker 1: dude that I I had no idea it went back
Speaker 1: that fucking far. But yeah, and there's interesting stuff here too,
Speaker 1: because so basically, like the way the way this conflict
Speaker 1: always works at like both sides are constantly trading like
Speaker 1: tactics with they're sort of like equivalent numbers. So you
Speaker 1: have like the thin blue line international but then you
Speaker 1: also have you know, you have like the actual international
Speaker 1: in in this period, so you have sort of which
Speaker 1: is the kind of left socialist international. Yeah. Well by
Speaker 1: by this by this point you're sort of in like
Speaker 1: the the USSR Third International. But even before that, you
Speaker 1: have a lot of people who were like worker is
Speaker 1: in uh like for example, like the like one of
Speaker 1: one of the labor yins in Egypt, for example, starts
Speaker 1: because a bunch of like like Italian anarchists like show
Speaker 1: up and do a bunch of organizing. And this happens
Speaker 1: in Brazil to where you know, the general strike like
Speaker 1: just sort of spreads as workers move around the world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so you have these dynamics and they sort of
Speaker 1: clash here and in Hong Kong, like the ruling classes
Speaker 1: trade up wins. But in Shanghai, even though the strike
Speaker 1: collapses and like another Wollard takes the city and executes
Speaker 1: a bunch of the labor leaders, but it doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: because maybe the thirty had already sort of had changed
Speaker 1: everything about Chinese politics. And this this is one of
Speaker 1: the biggest factors behind the rise of the next phase
Speaker 1: of Chinese history, which is the rise of the nationalists.
Speaker 1: Now the KMT of the Nationalist Party is it's one
Speaker 1: of the oldest political factions left in China at this point.
Speaker 1: But you know, by time you hit about ninety, they
Speaker 1: they're a complete mess that they've had a series of disasters, revolts,
Speaker 1: like all their leaders keep fleeing the Japan and you
Speaker 1: know that they're sort of clinging on too, like a
Speaker 1: portion of Gloctial province, like the Far South, and you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, organizationally, it's a disaster. I mean they have
Speaker 1: they don't they don't have meetings, like, they don't have
Speaker 1: a party program, they don't have a constitution that they like,
Speaker 1: they don't even have like a newspaper, the party publication.
Speaker 1: And the Soviets look at this and are like this
Speaker 1: is a disaster. And so they send Michael Borden, who's
Speaker 1: like he's an old Bolshevik organizer, to to meet and
Speaker 1: advise the KMTS leader of Sony at Sin and this
Speaker 1: board in board and basically tell sny Aten like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you need to reorganize this party on like Latin his lines,
Speaker 1: and Snya send is like okay, so if I don't
Speaker 1: get Soviet aids, there's literally no way we can ever
Speaker 1: win this war. So he lets board In carry out
Speaker 1: as reforms within like within a series of matter of months.
Speaker 1: It's just completely transformed. They turned to this this really
Speaker 1: incredibly effective political organization that they suddenly they have branches
Speaker 1: all over the country. They have they're all holding meetings,
Speaker 1: they're spreading propaganda, and they're they're also sort of aided
Speaker 1: in this by the USSR. Wow. Yeah, the USR is
Speaker 1: gonna do a lot of things to help that. The
Speaker 1: CAMT in this period one of the one of the
Speaker 1: biggest ones that they dragged the Chinese Communist Party like
Speaker 1: literally kicking and screaming into an alliance with the KMT.
Speaker 1: The companies are just like hated the Nationalists for various
Speaker 1: doctronic reasons, and the uss are just like, you're gonna
Speaker 1: alley with them. And this is called the First United Front,
Speaker 1: and notably is the first United Front because there's going
Speaker 1: to be more United fronts because yeah, yeah, yeah, well
Speaker 1: we'll we'll we'll, we'll see, we'll see how this alliance
Speaker 1: turns out in a bit. But you know, like every
Speaker 1: member of the Communist Party joins the Nationalist Party and
Speaker 1: this gives them like a that this makes the nationalist
Speaker 1: like significantly more effective as a political organization. Um, you
Speaker 1: know in the KMT on top of the communists that
Speaker 1: they've always had a few other basis of support, like
Speaker 1: they're they have a bunch of backers in like the
Speaker 1: Chinese diasporain, like the U S and Indonesia, they have
Speaker 1: a lot of like they have a lot of banking
Speaker 1: support from people in Hong Kong and Guangzho. And with
Speaker 1: the reforms of the party nine three and they made
Speaker 1: the thirtieth movement, the CAMT gets three new extremely powerful
Speaker 1: basis support. They get the full military backing of the Soviets,
Speaker 1: who are going to pump more money into the CAMT
Speaker 1: than like any other international power is going to spend
Speaker 1: on this entire war. They get this one one of
Speaker 1: the one of the things that Soviets do is they
Speaker 1: they start helping to train this new officer corps for
Speaker 1: for for the for this the thing called the National
Speaker 1: Revolutionary Army that the canties sort of building up to
Speaker 1: go fight the warlords. And the third thing they build up,
Speaker 1: especially after the giant political shifts of of is they
Speaker 1: start gaining this huge base in the Chinese masses and
Speaker 1: when I say the Chinese masses, I mean they have
Speaker 1: the entire ideological spectrum in this organization. I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's it's the kind of coalition that you look at
Speaker 1: it and it's like something has gone wrong in history.
Speaker 1: There are too many people are agreed about the same things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like there's like proto fascists, there's like this right right
Speaker 1: wing like hardcore nationalists. There's these very like traditional sort
Speaker 1: of conservative Confucians, Like there's there's these conservative Chinese business owners.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of landlords, you have to have the
Speaker 1: sort of old revolutionary like republicans. And on the left
Speaker 1: you have a bunch of socialist communists and anarchists and
Speaker 1: they're all in this able work. And this is you know,
Speaker 1: you look at the coalition, it's like there's no way
Speaker 1: that like the fascist, the landlords and the communists are
Speaker 1: like all gonna be on the same side of this.
Speaker 1: It makes me think a lot about some of what
Speaker 1: you saw in Fume after World War One, where you've
Speaker 1: got these these anarchists and these communists and kind of
Speaker 1: every just like all of these different people and and
Speaker 1: and there's a similar are like Fume, which we talked
Speaker 1: about in our Gabrielle Benunzio two partner, which was like
Speaker 1: the city in Italy that was taken by this um
Speaker 1: madman uh artists kind of proto fascist guy, but like
Speaker 1: a bunch of people on the left and the right
Speaker 1: kind of started engaged in this utopian project there for
Speaker 1: about of year, and it was a reaction to the
Speaker 1: chaos and the violence of World War One and the
Speaker 1: fact that like all of these powers in the region,
Speaker 1: these great militant powers, had completely fucked society up. And
Speaker 1: I think you're seeing the same thing in China. These
Speaker 1: like the old government has gone, these warlords are not
Speaker 1: helping anybody but themselves. Um, they're just like fucking and
Speaker 1: drinking and murdering tens of thousands of people. And so
Speaker 1: you get this pretty broad coalition of people who are
Speaker 1: all able to be like, well, funk, how things are going? Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think the other part of this is that
Speaker 1: the KMT built like cells like nationalists like sell themselves
Speaker 1: like as as like the word of the Revolutionary Party,
Speaker 1: and it's like anyone who wants to revel lution like
Speaker 1: left or right, like doesn't doesn't matter, just join up
Speaker 1: and you'll you'll you'll get the revolution that like over
Speaker 1: that overthrows the wildlords and like restores the power of
Speaker 1: the nation, and that after that we can all fight
Speaker 1: over like you know, restaurant political differences. And they sure
Speaker 1: did you know who doesn't overthrow Chinese civil society and
Speaker 1: start a period of mass blood letting that will eventually
Speaker 1: lead to the deaths of millions. The products and services
Speaker 1: that support the show, they do not, none of them.
Speaker 1: None of them have yet done that. Um, maybe one day,
Speaker 1: maybe one day. I have a I have a good
Speaker 1: feeling about Blue Apron. I think they might go all
Speaker 1: the way. But we'll see. Ah, and we're back, all right,
Speaker 1: let's let's continue. So the nationalists have one more powerful
Speaker 1: basis support. And this base is one of the few
Speaker 1: bases that's going to that goes from like their origins
Speaker 1: in the early d late eighteen hundreds to like after
Speaker 1: they're the government of Taiwan. And this base is organized crime. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of historians don't really want to touch on this,
Speaker 1: and there's a good reason for that because up until
Speaker 1: the nineties, it was genuinely extremely dangerous to write about
Speaker 1: the k M T S. Tigest organized crime like it
Speaker 1: like it's bad enough that So there's a Taiwanese journalist
Speaker 1: named Henry Leo who who writes an unauthorized biography of
Speaker 1: like Chenkai Check's brother who's like the president of Taiwan.
Speaker 1: He's writing unauthorized biography and he gets assassinated by the
Speaker 1: KMT in California and like next two yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: they like they're they had they have a whole international network,
Speaker 1: they have all this sort of opium and heroin distribution.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's sadly we don't have enough time to
Speaker 1: do this whole story because it's it's a whole thing.
Speaker 1: But needless to say, one of the big ways that
Speaker 1: the KMT, especially the camp's right wing funds itself, is
Speaker 1: that they're there. They're just like up to their asses
Speaker 1: and the opium and the heroin trade and they have,
Speaker 1: you know, they have really deep ties to organized crime
Speaker 1: in ways they're gonna be very important in a second. Now,
Speaker 1: the KMT left also has tighest organized crime, like we
Speaker 1: talked about like the communists and like the sort of
Speaker 1: left nationalists are affiliated with like the Green Gang and
Speaker 1: Chinese organized crime because they have to for labor organizing
Speaker 1: the KMT right is just there there. They just are
Speaker 1: the opium trade. Um. Yeah. So if if you remember
Speaker 1: back last episode, Joeng has a Nationalist general named Chan assassinated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that guy. That guy was the head of the Green
Speaker 1: Gang at the time, and a large part of why
Speaker 1: he thought he could just like go back to Shanghai
Speaker 1: and started revolution was that he was you know, he
Speaker 1: was in control of the Green Gang, which means that
Speaker 1: he had control of the Green games opium like now
Speaker 1: well opium mapras, but he had he had control of
Speaker 1: the Green Gangs like labor apparatus. And so he was like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I can start a strike and then they'll be an
Speaker 1: on revolution. I could take the city. And you know
Speaker 1: it doesn't work because John like kills him. But you know,
Speaker 1: this is the like the level of ties between the
Speaker 1: cant right and organized crime. Like Shankai Check pledges his
Speaker 1: loyalty to like a later Green Gang leader in Shanghai,
Speaker 1: a Schenkai Check for those of you don't know, Check
Speaker 1: Check is bye. By the end of this story, Chanka
Speaker 1: Check is going to be the guy, the single person
Speaker 1: in control of the entire Nationalist Party, and he has
Speaker 1: pledged loyalty to a member of the Green Gang and
Speaker 1: makes another Green Gang guy the head of shank like
Speaker 1: Shanghai's director of opium suppression, which is extremely fun. I
Speaker 1: would disagree with that. I think opium should be allowed
Speaker 1: to thrive um in the open marketplace, and most importantly,
Speaker 1: uh in in my refrigerator. But please continue. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean Italy, so does Shankai check which is what?
Speaker 1: Which is? Which is why? Senka is what I'm learning.
Speaker 1: We're we're both on on the same page about the
Speaker 1: only thing that matters. Opium and heroin too. The heroin's
Speaker 1: a bit later. Yeah, I mean it's it's literally the
Speaker 1: opiate of the masses. Yeah, yeah, well no, because most
Speaker 1: people can't afford it. It's the opium of me, the
Speaker 1: opiate of me. In shang Kai scheck, it's our opiate
Speaker 1: and and yeah, all right, and it makes a lot
Speaker 1: of money. Yeah, I mean, if you're not a for
Speaker 1: some people, I I'm a purist. But you know, just
Speaker 1: in it for the love of the game, in it
Speaker 1: for the love of the opium. You know, why would you?
Speaker 1: Why would you? You don't want to com modify something
Speaker 1: you love. You know, It's like if you make your
Speaker 1: hobby your job and it ruins it, um, you don't
Speaker 1: want to you don't want to lose out on the
Speaker 1: love of the game. The game being opium makes sense. Now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Green Gang in their hand, like they're they're they're
Speaker 1: they're Green Gang in it for the love of the money,
Speaker 1: and you know that that so they funnel all of
Speaker 1: this into into like they funnel a bunch of their
Speaker 1: money into into the CAMT and you know, the KMT.
Speaker 1: With their best bases now solidifying their armies. Fueled by
Speaker 1: the power of Russia, heroin money and the Chinese masses,
Speaker 1: they set out the conquer all of China. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: a little bit pretty ambitious, but go off. Yeah yeah, now, okay,
Speaker 1: but before we fully get into what's become known as
Speaker 1: the Northern Expedition, there's one more person who we have
Speaker 1: to talk about who I believe am Sure is showing
Speaker 1: up for the first time ambassadors pot history as a character,
Speaker 1: and that is mause A Doung. Oh. Yeah, we talk
Speaker 1: a little bit during the the Lisanko episodes because of
Speaker 1: the you know, the famine and yeah, doing the great
Speaker 1: leap forward. But yeah, we really have and he's one.
Speaker 1: He's one of the guys who's I. I always get
Speaker 1: to um um uh, daunted by the sheer amount of
Speaker 1: ship to cover when you have to talk about that
Speaker 1: guy's life. Yeah, we yeah, obviously, like we cannot really
Speaker 1: get into Mao here. But he does one thing that's
Speaker 1: extremely important in this story, which is that he he's
Speaker 1: organizing a peasant movement in Kudan Province, and he's really
Speaker 1: good at this. The newly formed like Judan Provincial Peasant
Speaker 1: Association quickly grows to five million members and they start
Speaker 1: to seize land from wealthy landholders, and you know, they
Speaker 1: start to arm themselves in order to do this, and
Speaker 1: you know, credit where credit is due now grew on
Speaker 1: land reform. He's okay. Bad on sparrows, bad and workers democracy,
Speaker 1: bad on famines, but you know, land reform, he's pretty good.
Speaker 1: And the peasants, like the peasants, agree with this. But unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the local elites are extremely unhappy that the peasants are
Speaker 1: taking other land, and so they start to form their
Speaker 1: own malicious is not The peasants were taking more land,
Speaker 1: and pretty soon there's just another civil war going on.
Speaker 1: In non problems, the peasants and the large landowners. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know that we need to sords. Is you
Speaker 1: get one that you get a lot yep, and then
Speaker 1: they keep happening. It's great now, no sort of Interestingly,
Speaker 1: the CCP is actually extremely piste off that the peasants
Speaker 1: are taking all this land because you know, as I
Speaker 1: said earlier, right, part of the canties bases landlords, and
Speaker 1: these people not happy about the prospect of land reforhim.
Speaker 1: And you know this e CP is still trying to
Speaker 1: hold the like the CCP Camp United friend together And
Speaker 1: you know, Robert, you might be thinking to yourself, what
Speaker 1: kind of brain genius does look at a coalition that
Speaker 1: includes a bunch of landlords and mao and go, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a basis for a stable working relationship. And
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, he's not famed for his love of landlords.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And and and the answer to that is
Speaker 1: a bastard's pot of lum Joseph Stalin and also Trotsky. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's my boys, there's my good boys. Looks j stall looks,
Speaker 1: looks at mause Dung, reads up on this guy's background
Speaker 1: and says, you know, who can we get along with landlords?
Speaker 1: The funny thing about this, right, So, so okay, we'll
Speaker 1: get really fully into what like the brain trust in
Speaker 1: Moscow thinks about this later, but like, okay, so the
Speaker 1: fun part about what what's about to happen in China
Speaker 1: here is that so it's a complete fiasco all the
Speaker 1: communist Stalin looks at this and he sounds like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it gets worse, it gets worse. And this this runs
Speaker 1: into my theory of every every critical moment in world history,
Speaker 1: you can find a decision that Stalin made that made
Speaker 1: it worse, and this one. It's not just this. Stalin
Speaker 1: also is like, so he the lesson that he takes
Speaker 1: from from this conflict, he's he takes much a really
Speaker 1: weird lesson from and he tried and he tries to
Speaker 1: force the Communist party in Palestine to like take a
Speaker 1: completely weird line based off of what happened in China,
Speaker 1: and that's like one of the reasons that like it
Speaker 1: completely fails and is like one of the reasons everything
Speaker 1: goes as ship in Palestine. So yeah, good good job Stalin.
Speaker 1: He's gonna sunk everything up in China and then he's
Speaker 1: gonna do it again in Palestine. And it's it's great,
Speaker 1: it's it's a good time. He's he's he's he really he.
Speaker 1: I mean he was good at staying in power he had.
Speaker 1: He was less good at everything that was not directly
Speaker 1: related to staying and it up. But man was he
Speaker 1: good at staying And you can't fault him on that,
Speaker 1: all right? So J Stall J Stall focks around and
Speaker 1: gets a whole lot of Communist skilled. Yeah, well we'll we'll, we'll,
Speaker 1: we'll get we'll get to all of them dying in
Speaker 1: a bit. But you know the problem at the moment
Speaker 1: is that once the peasants gonna taste for lander form,
Speaker 1: they just start doing it themselves. And the CCP like
Speaker 1: tells him to stop the passenger like no, like we're
Speaker 1: gonna take this land now. And you know, as as
Speaker 1: as a skill as this escalatortion to like a full
Speaker 1: scales sip war, this this starts to it's crush to
Speaker 1: create this huge rift. There's a few other things that
Speaker 1: are happening to in this period that's started that like
Speaker 1: there there starts to be sort of these huge battles
Speaker 1: between the CCP and like the cants left and the
Speaker 1: right wing of the CAMT and this what everything Mao
Speaker 1: is doing is sort of like escalating this now. The
Speaker 1: other reason I bring up Mao is that I think
Speaker 1: there's more similarities between Mao and Jong than you'd expect.
Speaker 1: You know, they're they're they're both men who were born
Speaker 1: sort of the outskirts of Chinese society, who are both you,
Speaker 1: and they're most sort of nobodies until they swept up
Speaker 1: in the revelu and the tumult of early century revolutionary politics,
Speaker 1: and basically, by sheer chance, they go on to become
Speaker 1: extremely important historical figures. Now most importantly for our purposes,
Speaker 1: Mao and Jong are probably the two most famous poets
Speaker 1: in China in this period. And I don't think a
Speaker 1: lot of people know this about Mao, but by like
Speaker 1: an incredible quirk of history, Mao is one of the
Speaker 1: great Chinese classical poets. Like if he studied Chinese poetry
Speaker 1: in university, like you read Mao's that that's that's also
Speaker 1: true of Stalin, like he wasn't he didn't write nearly
Speaker 1: as many poems, but he was a very well regarded
Speaker 1: Georgian poet. And they're both leaders of the two big
Speaker 1: communist parties like that, that's that's I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe there's something about controlling of an all powerful
Speaker 1: party apparatus that also makes you good at meter. Actually,
Speaker 1: that does kind of make sense. Okay, I can see
Speaker 1: I can see it. We're so we we we've developed
Speaker 1: the like let them go to art schools theory of fascists.
Speaker 1: Now we're developing the never let the poem to somebody
Speaker 1: writing a poem, just start hitting them. You know. I
Speaker 1: do think Mao is like he's I think it's a
Speaker 1: really interesting example of this. There's like, that's a famous
Speaker 1: like Stephen J. Gould quote that goes like, I'm somehow
Speaker 1: less interested in the weight in convolutions of Einstein's brain
Speaker 1: than near certainty that people of equal talents have lived
Speaker 1: and died in cotton fields with sweatshops, and like ma
Speaker 1: Mao is one of those people who very easily could
Speaker 1: have died just like completely unknown peasants, and instead, you know,
Speaker 1: he becomes a world redound poet. It's and some other stuff. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just a shame that he also wound up being Mao. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he has, he has, He does a couple of things
Speaker 1: in his life. Yeah. Now, now, and this is important
Speaker 1: for our purposes. Jong is also a famous Chinese poet,
Speaker 1: and I've okay, Robert, I want you to read this poem.
Speaker 1: War poet is Yeah, I want you to read this
Speaker 1: poem that I've just put in the chat that's called
Speaker 1: poem about bastards. Oh oh fuck yeah, Okay, is this
Speaker 1: the whole poem? This is the whole poem. You tell
Speaker 1: me to do this, he tells me to do that.
Speaker 1: You're all bastards, Go fuck your mother. That's a good poem.
Speaker 1: I assume that. I assume it rhymes more in the
Speaker 1: original language. Here's the thing, right, so you would think
Speaker 1: that it sounds better in Chinese, And no it doesn't,
Speaker 1: because that's I'm gonna say it. Then that's not really
Speaker 1: a poem. That's that's that's a guy telling someone to
Speaker 1: go fuck his mother. Yeah, that's like a running theme
Speaker 1: for him. He's really into that. He's really into the
Speaker 1: motherfucking stuff. Okay, I mean it's not bad, you know,
Speaker 1: I I get it's the kind of thing. If he were, like,
Speaker 1: for example, an actual like revolutionary fighting for liberty as
Speaker 1: opposed to a vicious warlord um rapes women, this would
Speaker 1: have a little bit more bite because he's the one
Speaker 1: telling people to do things, like nobody's told this guy
Speaker 1: what to do in quite a while at this point
Speaker 1: in the story. No, no, he he writes a lot
Speaker 1: of poems. I'm going to do one more because it's
Speaker 1: great and this one, this one has a story behind it.
Speaker 1: So we've talked about this a bit. There's there's this
Speaker 1: big drought in Shandong, and so John goes to basically
Speaker 1: he goes to like a local local temple of the
Speaker 1: Dragon Emperor, and he prays for rain, and he writes
Speaker 1: this just spectacular poem about the ordeal. The dragon Emperor
Speaker 1: is also named Jong. Why does he make life hard
Speaker 1: from me? If it doesn't rain in three days, I'll demolish.
Speaker 1: I'll demolish your temple, and then I'll have cannons bombard
Speaker 1: your mom. Can't can't cannon, I will shoot your mom.
Speaker 1: Is the gist I'm taking out of you know, too
Speaker 1: solid flex all right, well, you know, and here's here's
Speaker 1: here's the phone part about this. So so he writes
Speaker 1: this poem while he's waiting for three days for it
Speaker 1: to rain. It doesn't rain. So he goes back to
Speaker 1: the temple and he like he like, there's like a
Speaker 1: massive people praying to this idol of the of the
Speaker 1: Dragon network. He's like walks up to the idol, slaps
Speaker 1: it and yells, fuck your sister, how dare you make
Speaker 1: Shan Young's people suffer by not giving us rain? And
Speaker 1: then he brings a bunch of cannons up to the
Speaker 1: temple and just start shooting them at the sky to
Speaker 1: bombard the heavens. In what I can only read is
Speaker 1: one of the earliest attempts to attack and to thrown God. Now,
Speaker 1: the next day it rains, and I will let you
Speaker 1: all make of that what you will. I mean, we're
Speaker 1: in the middle of a drought in Oregon here, so
Speaker 1: I may I may steal that one I may steal.
Speaker 1: Look the things from this guy. I'm gonna be entirely honest.
Speaker 1: I'm going to steal a number of things from this guy. Hey,
Speaker 1: shoot cannons at this guy will make it rain. I
Speaker 1: I already do like shooting at this guy. I mean
Speaker 1: there are some like, there are some like I mean
Speaker 1: that that's something China is today, right, Like there's some
Speaker 1: attempts to kind of like see now it's not just
Speaker 1: shooting guns it but like to seed clouds in order
Speaker 1: to kind of bring rain on, like that's the thing
Speaker 1: that gets done. Yeah, and there's a theory I don't
Speaker 1: buy it. Well, again, I'm not a chemist, but there's
Speaker 1: actually a theory that like, because of like the residue
Speaker 1: on the gunpowder something of the cannons that like this
Speaker 1: like replicated the effect of the cloud seating stuff. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it says that I'm just looking at this
Speaker 1: up now, it says they they use silver iodide rockets,
Speaker 1: and it looks like, um, it looks like the actual
Speaker 1: science on this is kind of um not not settled.
Speaker 1: I don't I certainly don't know enough to say whether
Speaker 1: or not it is. But I could see how silver
Speaker 1: iodide could also be a byproduct of firing cannons in
Speaker 1: this guy. Yeah, I mean things happen. I don't know
Speaker 1: sure what I'm hearing is that to deal with this drought, Um,
Speaker 1: Oregon needs me to shart start shooting at the sky.
Speaker 1: Isn't it legal to just like wheel cannons around? Like
Speaker 1: there's no law against cannons at all that I'm aware of.
Speaker 1: Most states stay count as a curio in relic, which
Speaker 1: means they're unregulated. Oh, this is this is okay, as
Speaker 1: long as the ball they fire does not itself explode.
Speaker 1: I'm fairly certain you can do anything you want with
Speaker 1: a cannon. Now I'm having I'm having a series of
Speaker 1: visions that involve you in a bunkers. Yeah, I'm starting
Speaker 1: to go fund me right now, and they'll fund me
Speaker 1: several cannons so that Oregon will have a rainy season again. There, Robert,
Speaker 1: you know who else will fund you? Wow, I was
Speaker 1: a good one. I mean, they absolutely do, Sophie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the products and services that support this podcast, and they do.
Speaker 1: They have bought me a number of things that are
Speaker 1: similar in nature to cannons. Anyway, here's ads, motherfucker's we're back. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're all just having a real zip bang wow hoosily
Speaker 1: doosily do of a time. So he shoots some clouds,
Speaker 1: which I think we've decided was a good decision. What's next? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So so okay, unfortunately or unfortunately, depending on whose side
Speaker 1: you're on. Uh, this is shooting shooting guns at clouds
Speaker 1: is not the only thing in nationalist I've been doing
Speaker 1: in this period, and that's not the only thing the
Speaker 1: world lords have been doing in this period either. So
Speaker 1: the warlords like look south and are like, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is a large army with a lot of Soviet support.
Speaker 1: We need we need to sort of you know, we
Speaker 1: need to start getting ready to fight them. So in
Speaker 1: Jung Chilling and his allies form something called the National
Speaker 1: Pacification Army, Which is the best explanation of that I
Speaker 1: can give is it's like the United Frind for warlords.
Speaker 1: It's like like a all the warlord solidarity for guys
Speaker 1: with armies. Yeah. Yeah, But you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: remarkable because all of these people hate each other and
Speaker 1: I've spent the last what is this is twenty six
Speaker 1: by now, so ten years just like murdering each other
Speaker 1: over nothing. But you know, when when, yeah, when when
Speaker 1: when they're asses on the line, they come together and
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. And so you get Junk Chilling, Jung Jung
Speaker 1: Chong and the Jade Marshall who pay Fo who is
Speaker 1: back after somehow managing to pull together enough of his
Speaker 1: territory and his troops to like be a kind of
Speaker 1: significant power again, but is now fighting on the side
Speaker 1: of his former rival and the man who sent him
Speaker 1: into exile because warlord period. And you know, they at
Speaker 1: first looked like a pretty forbidable army, but they're immediately
Speaker 1: weakened when we'll pay for who who really like this
Speaker 1: man should honestly be called the marshal of getting owned
Speaker 1: by his own subordinates because so she goes to fight
Speaker 1: the nationalists and then his army immediately collapses because he's
Speaker 1: betrayed by one of his generals again for the second
Speaker 1: time in two years. Yeah, class solidarity only goes so
Speaker 1: far when your classes guys with armies, uh and no conscience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, and this is this is the other
Speaker 1: thing like this, The single best strategy that you can
Speaker 1: possibly have in the Willard period is to defect m hm.
Speaker 1: Now this this leaves the world lords in a pretty
Speaker 1: bad position. And it's here with the national passification army
Speaker 1: just like completely unable to stop the Nationalist advance that
Speaker 1: John makes the first of two mistakes that would cost
Speaker 1: him everything. So John had been given two jobs by Drilling.
Speaker 1: One of them was to defend Shanghai. The the other
Speaker 1: one was to confronts nationalist advance around Nanjing and to
Speaker 1: reforce reinforce the troops of one of the sort of
Speaker 1: more unreliable worlords in the coalition. Now that Worlord's troops
Speaker 1: have been doing okay against the nationalists. But Jong, like
Speaker 1: I think justifiably worried that this guy is going to
Speaker 1: defect for the fourth time in two years. He's like, okay,
Speaker 1: this this guy, this guy seems like the thing to do.
Speaker 1: It seems like everyone defects, Like he's gone traded three times. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So so Jong is as strong is worried this guy
Speaker 1: is gonna effect again. So so he sends most of
Speaker 1: his army to reinforce like that guy. By by reinforced,
Speaker 1: I mean he wants to put an army next to
Speaker 1: him he doesn't affect. And but this this is a
Speaker 1: complete disaster um. The part of his army that John
Speaker 1: sends to defend Shanghai just gets completely destroyed. And the
Speaker 1: other warlord subordinates hate Jong so much that like they
Speaker 1: defect to the KMT rather than like be on the
Speaker 1: same side as him. Yeah, it's pet It sounds like
Speaker 1: he piste off some people. Yeah, but it's funny because
Speaker 1: it's not like like the other warlords. Like the other
Speaker 1: warlord isn't good either, but like man John John, John
Speaker 1: is a tier above all of the rest of the
Speaker 1: war lords when it comes to just war word ng mhm, yeah,
Speaker 1: Joan like he wins the Battle of Nunjan. But it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's the definition of a feric victory because
Speaker 1: in the middle of all of this sort of inconclusive fighting,
Speaker 1: the workers take Shanghai, now exactly where you don't want
Speaker 1: the workers if you're this guy. Nope. So so to
Speaker 1: understand what this means or of how this happened, we
Speaker 1: need to go back a little bit. So. So after
Speaker 1: the General's record ends, the General Labor Union and the
Speaker 1: communists they started working on this plan to take the city,
Speaker 1: and they make their first attempt, which is called the
Speaker 1: First Armed Uprising in late n This this doesn't work
Speaker 1: at all. It's it's a complete failure. And here you
Speaker 1: get to see just the unbelievable brutality of the warlord governments.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read this passage from the delightfully named
Speaker 1: Hans J. Van der Ven this book called War and
Speaker 1: Nationalism in China, which describes aftermath of the failed First
Speaker 1: Armed Uprising. Okay, a judge went about the streets accompanied
Speaker 1: by someone carrying a shield with the martial law text
Speaker 1: on it. Anyone suspected of revolutionary activity, even something like leafletting,
Speaker 1: was executed on the spot by two broadswordered executioners, after
Speaker 1: which their heads were just played on bamboo pikes. Smith
Speaker 1: recalls a story that one street hawker shouting by my
Speaker 1: Cakes was stabbed by a soldier who thought he was
Speaker 1: crying defeat the army. Several hundred people were killed. I
Speaker 1: don't speak Mandarin or um any other languages but English,
Speaker 1: which I also barely speak. In the language this guy
Speaker 1: was speaking, does buy my Cakes sound at all like
Speaker 1: a literally Okay, okay, it's kind of like it's kind
Speaker 1: it's not I don't know, like it's similar enough that
Speaker 1: that like I can like I'm pretty sure this's happened,
Speaker 1: it's not. Yeah, but but it's not similar enough that
Speaker 1: like anyone who's not just completely hyped up on murder
Speaker 1: is going to mistake them. Well, I mean, look, if
Speaker 1: you've never murdered anybody, it it's who. I don't know
Speaker 1: where I was going with their continue it's very scary.
Speaker 1: What So you know, the motto of this podcast is
Speaker 1: a B M always be murderer. No, it's cut what
Speaker 1: Robert says, so I can keep Yeah. That that is
Speaker 1: the motto of the podcast. Thank you, Let's let's move
Speaker 1: right along. Now, you know, in the face of all
Speaker 1: this violence, it is a genuinely incredible testament to the
Speaker 1: raw capacity that are for like the raw power of
Speaker 1: our capacity for resistance. That this doesn't work. Like people,
Speaker 1: people see their friends, their neighbors, their coworkers, their families
Speaker 1: decapitated in the street and impaled on pikes. And the
Speaker 1: next month they do it again. In February, there's a
Speaker 1: second armed uprising, three hundred thousand workers, undeterred by the
Speaker 1: possibility that they too could end up on a pike.
Speaker 1: Stage what was to that point the largest striking Chang
Speaker 1: High history. Now this too fails because the armed uprising,
Speaker 1: the strikes weren't coordinated enough. But the third armed up
Speaker 1: rising on March finally takes the city. See guys, third
Speaker 1: times to charm with armed uprising? Were we We did
Speaker 1: one and that's all I'm going to say on the matter.
Speaker 1: And well, and that one that what was barely armed,
Speaker 1: that was barely armed, one side was very heavily armed. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: eight hundred thousand workers just blow the previous, all previous
Speaker 1: records for the largest strike and sang history out of
Speaker 1: the water. And that's a protest the size of the
Speaker 1: city I live in. Yeah. And and the Woolard troops
Speaker 1: like somewhat understandably, just like flee rather than face them.
Speaker 1: Yeah that makes sense. Again, I've I've seen cops do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was pretty good. Yeah. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to the triumphant workers,
Speaker 1: who were in the process of setting up an elected
Speaker 1: citizens government to run the city, they had already been betrayed.
Speaker 1: Oh well, yeah, that's yeah. As March turned to April,
Speaker 1: open battles between the left and right wing of the
Speaker 1: KMT were raging across China. Yeah. The right wing of
Speaker 1: the Nationalists began to slaughter workers everywhere they found a union.
Speaker 1: But even as their nominal comrades fell to the machine guns,
Speaker 1: communists and left KMT leadership told the workers of Shanghai
Speaker 1: to let Changai Check's army into the city. The workers
Speaker 1: greeted the nationalists with jubilation. Chang, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: immediately went to go meet with the head of the
Speaker 1: Green Gang, the guy, the guy you'd freads a legiance
Speaker 1: to several years earlier, and with weapons provided by the
Speaker 1: French and intelligence provided by the British. The Green Gang
Speaker 1: and the nationalist troops began to slaughter the striking workers.
Speaker 1: Now the workers aren't pickets fought back, and two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand workers went back on strike, even in the midst
Speaker 1: of the confusion of the sort of nationalist communist split,
Speaker 1: but disorganized by the surprise attack and with with right
Speaker 1: wing nationalist troops already in the city, the workers were
Speaker 1: defeated in Shanghai, check's white terror. At first white terror
Speaker 1: had begun, and I say first year. That's very important
Speaker 1: because uh chain is going to do a second white
Speaker 1: terror in Taiwan in the late forties. But that that
Speaker 1: that's another story for another time. By by the end,
Speaker 1: like a nice guy, yeah, hope boy. But by the
Speaker 1: end of the purgase, somewhere between three hundred thousand and
Speaker 1: a million people lay dead in the dirt, at the
Speaker 1: hands of men their leaders had told them the trust.
Speaker 1: The source of this disaster was Moscow, which, by the
Speaker 1: structure of the Leninist Party and through the discipline of
Speaker 1: the Third International, maintained near total supremacy over the communist
Speaker 1: political line. It had been Moscow that had forced the
Speaker 1: Communists into the alliance with the Nationalists in the first place,
Speaker 1: Moscow and their handpicked leaders that had told the Communists
Speaker 1: to stay in the United Front as it collapsed around them,
Speaker 1: and now as a situation continued to worsen, the surviving
Speaker 1: Communists waited with bated breath for the master stroke from
Speaker 1: Moscow I could save them from this disaster. What they
Speaker 1: got was that one and trotzy bickering. Yeah, that also
Speaker 1: completely scans. Yeah, the order from Moscow, I'm going to
Speaker 1: reason the provisions of it because it it's completely incoherent.
Speaker 1: So okay, So the order is, okay, you have to
Speaker 1: get you have to ask the peasants to start doing
Speaker 1: land seizures, but also you must prevent them from taking
Speaker 1: any land from any soldier, which is like a lot
Speaker 1: of the land is owned by soldiers. And then also
Speaker 1: simultaneously they're they're supposed to raise an army of seventy
Speaker 1: communist troops, but also like that's like an independent communist army,
Speaker 1: but also stay in the Nationalist Party and the United Friends.
Speaker 1: But then also while being in the Nationalist Party opposed
Speaker 1: Shankai check. At the same time, it's the assembled leaders
Speaker 1: as Shanghai, as as Elizabeth Perry described in Shanghan strike
Speaker 1: quote didn't know whether the laugh or cry. The head
Speaker 1: of the CCP described the telegram as quote taking a
Speaker 1: bath and a toilet. Yeah, Moscow in the final critical
Speaker 1: hour had delivered nothing but ruined in the years that followed,
Speaker 1: almost the entire urban workers who will be annihilated. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the folks. This is why. Yeah, don't don't have an
Speaker 1: organization who that that can be entirely destroyed because Stalin
Speaker 1: and Trotsky were bickering. Bad organizational structure. As a general rule,
Speaker 1: one of the things we advise our listeners is don't
Speaker 1: don't don't trust Stalina, don't don't rely on Stalin. Um.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of our listenership are in nineteen
Speaker 1: nineteen Russia right now. Um, but it's not going to
Speaker 1: end well. Guys, don't find out drink him, you know.
Speaker 1: In fairness to our listeners in nineteen nineteen Russia, pretty much,
Speaker 1: no matter what you do, it's going to end badly.
Speaker 1: So just um, I don't know. We go to Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Ukraine seems like it's it's just gonna be a solid, solid, upward,
Speaker 1: upward trajectory for for the next years. Famous, famously a
Speaker 1: country having a great time, has no problems ever, famously
Speaker 1: stable Ukraine. Yeah, okay, so yeah, So so in the
Speaker 1: chaos of this, you know, the next Chinese Civil war,
Speaker 1: you know, it's called the Chinese Civil War. But like,
Speaker 1: there's already so many civil wars. So the next Chinese
Speaker 1: Civil war between the Nationalists the Communists should have been
Speaker 1: a godsend to the warlords. And in the immediate aftermath
Speaker 1: is supression of Shanghai Uprising. Worldlord forces were temporarily able
Speaker 1: to halt the Nationalist advance, but then disaster struck. After
Speaker 1: one his allies suffered a devastating defeat, Chong was ordered
Speaker 1: to invade Hanan Province, and and okay, I want to
Speaker 1: make clear here that what's about to happen isn't entirely
Speaker 1: Jong's fault. Dueling like refused to send him any reinforcements,
Speaker 1: and so Jong is left to attack this whole province
Speaker 1: like by himself with only one just like incredibly unreliable
Speaker 1: minor warlord as his ally. Now his ally almost immediately
Speaker 1: proceeds to make just like a series of incredibly reckless,
Speaker 1: over reckless attacks, and it's just destroyed by Nationals kind
Speaker 1: of attack, and in response, Jong makes the single largest
Speaker 1: tactical blunder of his entire career. He he launches this massive,
Speaker 1: full scale assaulid on Kaifeng, and it's just it's just
Speaker 1: completely destroyed by the Nationalists. And the kind of attack
Speaker 1: national kind of attack kills not just like his troops,
Speaker 1: this attack kills most like a pretty good portion of
Speaker 1: his senior commanders, which is extremely rare in battles in
Speaker 1: this period. You almost never like lose your scene commandit.
Speaker 1: But he loses a bunch of them, and he also
Speaker 1: loses four of his six beloved armored trains, several of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it loses there with trains and a bunch of the
Speaker 1: white Russians like get slaughtered when a bunch of Chinese, yeah,
Speaker 1: like piste off Chinese people like they met they finally
Speaker 1: managed to cut off the rail lines and they just
Speaker 1: like walk into the car and just like murder all
Speaker 1: the white Russians. Yeah, fine with that more or less. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, good, good, good on good and good on
Speaker 1: the Nationalists. One of the few times I'll ever say this,
Speaker 1: but good on them. Yeah, I'm fine with that. The trains, though,
Speaker 1: do anything well okay, but what I say, a lot
Speaker 1: of people, but there were trains, yeah, yeah, but okay,
Speaker 1: but okay, but here's the thing. When I say lost,
Speaker 1: I mean they were like they're all captured and because
Speaker 1: because of armored trains, ye train, who's who they're killing
Speaker 1: as long as they get to kill, Like some of
Speaker 1: some of these trains are like on their seventh owner already,
Speaker 1: So yeah, they're gonna the trains will be in service
Speaker 1: until the destroyed. But the Japanese neck and Tarty one,
Speaker 1: yeah they were the Toyotas of their day. But unfortunately, yeah,
Speaker 1: without his trains, Jong is Jong is in a bad spot. Um,
Speaker 1: He's able to sort of cobbled together some of his army,
Speaker 1: but like this is not the army that like the
Speaker 1: baby squad had led. This is yeah, it's it's completely demoralized.
Speaker 1: And you know, without the trains very important. The speed
Speaker 1: of the trains just what basically allows him to counter attack.
Speaker 1: And a lot of Jong success have been from just
Speaker 1: sort of like being able to outposition and sort of
Speaker 1: out maneuverous opponents. But when he returns to Shendong, he
Speaker 1: can't do this anymore because you know, the trains are gone,
Speaker 1: and because he instead digs this like giant series of trenches,
Speaker 1: is like this, this is like, you know, he has
Speaker 1: a determination, just like he's gonna fight this out, and
Speaker 1: the Nationalists just go around them. Yeah, they attack of
Speaker 1: him behind his armies routed again. Um Jong attempts to
Speaker 1: flee to Manchuria with the remains of his army to
Speaker 1: continue the war, but Jong dueling his armies are likewise
Speaker 1: and shambles after a series of defeats. But the Nationalists
Speaker 1: gets assassinated by the Japanese in late sorry late and
Speaker 1: this is a problem for Jong because control of materia
Speaker 1: passes to Jo Ling's son, who very quickly looks at
Speaker 1: the map and it is like the Nationalists have taken
Speaker 1: literally all the countries that from Manchuria. They're going to
Speaker 1: win this war. And so he starts preparing to flip sides,
Speaker 1: and he so you know, but because he's preparing to
Speaker 1: like flip sides, he refuses to let Jong into Manchuria.
Speaker 1: And John like tries to fight his way, but he
Speaker 1: can't do it. And so Jong as like he's basically
Speaker 1: like the like one of the last moments, like Woodlord
Speaker 1: standing makes this like heroic triumphant final stand with his
Speaker 1: back to the Great Wall of China, and his army
Speaker 1: is promptly completely destroyed by the Nationalists after his white
Speaker 1: Russian mercenaries defect and he flees to he's able to
Speaker 1: he turns right before he loses the battle. He turns
Speaker 1: the city over the Japanese and then flees to another
Speaker 1: Japanese control part of China. And so for for for
Speaker 1: you know, for like a few months, Jongs like kind
Speaker 1: of out of it. But in Jong apparently still very
Speaker 1: much believing that this was all a temporary setback and
Speaker 1: that he was in fact still going to do this.
Speaker 1: They've all been temporary setbacks before, you know, so you
Speaker 1: can't fall to him. It's like, you know, whatever, if whope,
Speaker 1: fruit can come back, like yeah, maybe you can do
Speaker 1: it too, so you know, and he a bunch of
Speaker 1: the fift so okay. So so when when the Nationalists
Speaker 1: take Shandong, they they do like basically a version of
Speaker 1: deep pathification, except they can they do the worst of
Speaker 1: both worlds where they put like Jong subordinate in charge
Speaker 1: of the province as the warlord. But then also they
Speaker 1: fire all of his troops. So you have a warlord
Speaker 1: still ruling Shendung who everyone hates. And then also all
Speaker 1: of these troops are just like doing the bath party
Speaker 1: thing where they've just been fired and have no jobs.
Speaker 1: And so in Jong like returns to Shendong Province with
Speaker 1: two of his former allies and some backing by the Japanese,
Speaker 1: WITHO what sketchy to what has sent that. Exactly how
Speaker 1: much back he got from the Japanese is unclear, but
Speaker 1: he's usually gotten some backing, and he starts rebellion with
Speaker 1: his former troops. Tens of thousands of his ex soldiers
Speaker 1: flocked to his banner, but he's eventually defeated and forced
Speaker 1: to flee, like so many before him. The japan now
Speaker 1: Joon spends about four months living quietly in Japan until
Speaker 1: a cousin of the last Chinese emperor who seems to
Speaker 1: have pisted him off by sleeping with one of what
Speaker 1: are now being called Jong's wives. John is consideredly mad
Speaker 1: at this guy, and so one night he sits He's
Speaker 1: sitting like next to the window of his hotel room
Speaker 1: when the guy walks into the garden below him and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna read the description from Time because
Speaker 1: it's one of the most incredible things that ever been printed.
Speaker 1: This is from Time quote. At that moment, a bonut,
Speaker 1: a pistol with Marshall Jong happened to be holding, happened
Speaker 1: to go off, the bullet happened to strike the prince
Speaker 1: in the back, happened to kill him. John claimed this
Speaker 1: whole thing was an unfortunate accident happened. This is like,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's like the most it's the it's the
Speaker 1: single greatest example of they can't say he shot this
Speaker 1: guy that I've ever encountered in a media organization. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. Yeah, And you know the other incredible thing
Speaker 1: about this is that, Okay, so she has just clearly
Speaker 1: murdered a dude. She has told the police that he
Speaker 1: was staying on a balcony and he fired a bullet
Speaker 1: and happened to go off, And the Japanese police, after
Speaker 1: again murdering a dude, are just like, yeah, whatever, just
Speaker 1: paying a hund fifty dollar fine. That's amazing. He really
Speaker 1: did just chaney that guy. And then like, you know,
Speaker 1: this is like I don't know this, this this is
Speaker 1: some just like incredibly weird, corrupt petty like petty police
Speaker 1: stuff too, where it's like, yeah, you murdered this guy,
Speaker 1: but like how do you deal? Are fine? It's fine?
Speaker 1: M hm oh no, that's that's fair because like what
Speaker 1: the hundred and fifty dollars was, like, I don't know
Speaker 1: worth a human life back then. I mean, okay, to
Speaker 1: be to be fair, this guy is a cousin of Pooyee,
Speaker 1: who's like one of the great world historical monsters, our
Speaker 1: arch trader demand kinds like enemy of all humanity, so
Speaker 1: you know he's related to him. So yeah, hundred it's fine.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, if if we developed a system of
Speaker 1: murder penalties where it was based on how shitty the
Speaker 1: person you shot was, um, why not? Yeah. So, you know,
Speaker 1: having having escaped this Jong, you know, he lives a
Speaker 1: fairly uneventful life with his mom and his quote wives
Speaker 1: for a few more years until the Japanese invaded Macharian
Speaker 1: one to destroy your precious armored trains. Now, Jong Soul
Speaker 1: yet another opportunity to make a comeback, and he travels
Speaker 1: to China touting his ability to lead the anti Japanese resistance.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately for him, in a train station at his home province,
Speaker 1: the nephew of a nationalist officer that John had executed
Speaker 1: like some years before, jumped out and shot him. Jong's
Speaker 1: final words were quote, no good, which you know, I
Speaker 1: think that's as good of a closing room work on
Speaker 1: John as you can get. I mean, you can't argue
Speaker 1: with the man that that's a fair thing. Been murdered. Oh,
Speaker 1: no good? You know what? Not on board with this.
Speaker 1: It's kind of my favorite thing. This is cancel culture.
Speaker 1: Oh what a rat dude? Um, No notes, great life,
Speaker 1: A couple of notes, A couple of notes, A lot
Speaker 1: of notes actually, But I like the trains, um And
Speaker 1: I like that his dick was the size of eight
Speaker 1: six paces. It's a lot of paceos for a dick. Well, Chris,
Speaker 1: this has been a wonderful journey um into history that
Speaker 1: I did not know, um, and it has taught me
Speaker 1: against more about paceos than I knew. So I'm I'm
Speaker 1: very pleased with how today has gone. How are you feeling, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm doing pretty good. You know this this is kind
Speaker 1: of like you know, I wanted to say, this is
Speaker 1: like this is like the bad part of Chinese history,
Speaker 1: but like, no, every part of Chinese history is also
Speaker 1: the bad part of Trainese history. So the thing about history.
Speaker 1: Every now and then you get a guy who I
Speaker 1: don't know invented sea monkeys in order to fund national
Speaker 1: socialism and we have a laugh. But at there is
Speaker 1: a lot more, a lot more I don't know, uh,
Speaker 1: gangs of vibes being forced against their will to be
Speaker 1: concubines and um people being force fed uh soy pucks
Speaker 1: while they starve to death. More of that most of history. Good, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is why why why this podcast exists and why
Speaker 1: you've all just finished listening to two and a half
Speaker 1: hours a real this podcast. Good koukie character. I liked
Speaker 1: my joke, Thank you so well. Have any plug as
Speaker 1: here it behind the bastards? Yeah, I am, I am
Speaker 1: at it me c hr three on Twitter or the
Speaker 1: isms be destroyed? Dude, Um, I have I have a
Speaker 1: substatis are known? Yes to your family? Yes, from from
Speaker 1: from from along an illustrious line of vice must be destroyed.
Speaker 1: Actually pre dates Ice by quite a bit um baffling
Speaker 1: story when you really get into it. Yeah nice, no
Speaker 1: good yes? Also yes, no good? Thank you well yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you thank you at home for listening. Um, that's
Speaker 1: going to do it. For us here behind the bastards
Speaker 1: for the week until next week. Grab an armored train
Speaker 1: press getting a bunch of people, enforced them into your militia. Uh,
Speaker 1: get dozens of concubines and you know, eventually get shot
Speaker 1: to death. No good. Well, okay, you could do other
Speaker 1: things if you prefer. Okay, by now,