Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People did Cool Stuff. You're
Speaker 2: a weekly reminder that sometimes when bad stuff happens, people
Speaker 2: use that opportunity to do good stuff in response to
Speaker 2: the aforementioned bad stuff. I'm your host, Margaret Kildroy, and
Speaker 2: with me today is my guest, James Stout.
Speaker 3: Hi James. Hi, Margaret. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 2: I'm happy you're here too, and I'm happy that Sophie's here.
Speaker 2: Who's our producer?
Speaker 3: Hi Sophie.
Speaker 1: Hi mag Hi Hi James. Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm also happy that Daniel is not here. No, that
Speaker 2: comes across badly. Our audio engineer is Daniel, who is
Speaker 2: not here, but we'll hear this.
Speaker 1: Hi Daniel, Daniel, You're always here in our hearts. Hi Daniel.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Everywhere I go I carry down in my heart. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Our theme music was written for us by un woman
Speaker 2: and this week is d next week because it's a
Speaker 2: four parter, because it started as a two parter and
Speaker 2: then it didn't fit. Because it's a big thing that
Speaker 2: we're talking about, but it's an I can't sell this
Speaker 2: as exciting. It's mostly bad, but there's good stuff within it.
Speaker 2: This week and next week we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: one of the least discussed worst things that has happened
Speaker 2: in the history of the world, the Armenian genocide, And
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about the well, the scrappy, poorly
Speaker 2: funded Armenians who set out to and successfully killed basically
Speaker 2: everyone responsible for that particular nightmare, which is an impressive feat. Yeah, James,
Speaker 2: I know the answer to this question because I already
Speaker 2: asked you, have you heard much about the Armenian Genocide.
Speaker 3: I've had a little bit. Yeah. I used to teach
Speaker 3: a world's history course at the University of California and
Speaker 3: we talked a little bit about the Armenian genocide, and
Speaker 3: I was kind of shocked how most folks coming into
Speaker 3: that course who are really genuinely unaware that anything bad
Speaker 3: had happened to the Armenian people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I knew the words Armenian genocide. I mean I
Speaker 2: knew the cliff notes of what had happened, right, but
Speaker 2: I didn't I didn't know as much as i've known.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how about Operation Nemesis. You heard Operation Nemesis?
Speaker 3: Is this when they go about splatting all the people
Speaker 3: who did the Armenian genocide.
Speaker 2: There's so many there's yeah, yeah, yeah, can I do this?
Speaker 3: Yeah? This one is pretty cool. Ways to respond to
Speaker 3: a genocide go not a bad one. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was just so cut and dry. I mean, there's
Speaker 2: a lot, there's a lot that's going on, right, it's
Speaker 2: the forethar we're going to talk about it. But like, yeah,
Speaker 2: they're like, well, that can't happen. And and there's a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff that came up during this that I
Speaker 2: didn't realize that even like complicates it more. It wasn't
Speaker 2: just revenge. It was actually political actions that had a
Speaker 2: real and direct impact on people who are still living.
Speaker 2: Because well, we'll get into it, yeah, because it's also
Speaker 2: going to be a story about how socialist revolutionaries of
Speaker 2: every stripe and the presence of women in general in
Speaker 2: revolutionary struggle has been left out of the mainstream retellings
Speaker 2: of this story, Like most of the mainstream retellings of
Speaker 2: this story I've heard, basically come down to, Oh, some
Speaker 2: middle class Armenian Americans with no connections to power at
Speaker 2: all got together and killed all these people, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's meant to be like this like scrappy underdog
Speaker 2: story because of the fact that they're like all detached,
Speaker 2: but it removes them from a lineage of struggle and
Speaker 2: actually specific actors who were involved. So I disagree with
Speaker 2: that way of telling it. And I want to shout
Speaker 2: out the Armenian listener who wrote to suggest this story,
Speaker 2: so thank you. The shortest version of this story is
Speaker 2: that in nineteen fifteen, a pseudo revolutionary nationalist Turkish force
Speaker 2: called the Young Terms led a genocide of somewhere between
Speaker 2: a million and two million Christians, particularly Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians.
Speaker 2: The numbers are hotly contested. Mostly they're tracked separately by ethnicity,
Speaker 2: but it was an absolute nightmare, and folks did not
Speaker 2: take a line down, which brings me the question. I
Speaker 2: feel like you two probably know more about modern political
Speaker 2: media landscape. There's an influential group called the Young Turks
Speaker 2: that's around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is one of those things that, like I
Speaker 3: if people aren't guessing from the way I speak, I
Speaker 3: didn't grow up in the United States, and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: get crazy, I did, I see? I just mainlined Harry
Speaker 3: Potter movie. It's why I'm a terrible fucking person. That's
Speaker 3: not true. I didn't grow up here and I wasn't
Speaker 3: always like a heavy user of the Internet, like I'm
Speaker 3: PULHDM now, but I remember having a distinct moment and
Speaker 3: someone being like, oh, yeah, man, you check this thing out.
Speaker 3: They called the Young Turks not but they called fucking
Speaker 3: what And apparently it's this left liberal media network, which,
Speaker 3: like unsurprised me, has terrible takes on things. I have
Speaker 3: now become sadly very aware of how terrible they are.
Speaker 3: But why what the fuck are you going for with that?
Speaker 2: It? As best as I can understand, I have not
Speaker 2: really consumed any of the Young Turks content, as best
Speaker 2: as I could understand. If you're like kind of stuck
Speaker 2: in a specific nationalist lens, you can ignore all of
Speaker 2: the bad stuff and stick to like the like ten
Speaker 2: minutes that the Young Turks in the eighteen nineties was
Speaker 2: like vaguely progressive or something. But it's like naming your
Speaker 2: media network the Nazi, Like if this is like yeah media.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's insane, Like it speaks I think to
Speaker 3: the fact that people don't like when I would when
Speaker 3: I would lecture about the Armenian genocide. If students who
Speaker 3: are aware at all, they were aware through the medium
Speaker 3: of the Kardashians, which is I know nothing else. I
Speaker 3: know the Kardashian are educators about the Armenian genocide, and
Speaker 3: I know that one of them is married to one
Speaker 3: of the dudes from Blink one A two, And this
Speaker 3: is all I know about them.
Speaker 2: Two facts more than I had. But Sophie is probably
Speaker 2: laughing at both of us for our pop culture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Sophie's going to do her own podcast about.
Speaker 2: Explain yea explaining pop culture to the people who live
Speaker 2: under rocks on my network is that.
Speaker 3: We found some anarchists and explained television to Yeah.
Speaker 2: I would listen to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would just do that. Should be really fun.
Speaker 2: Do me some good, because I'm not proud of the
Speaker 2: fact that I have no idea what's going on unless
Speaker 2: it happened in eighteen ninety six.
Speaker 3: In my points of reference stop at the end of
Speaker 3: the Spanish Civil War and from there, I'm just going
Speaker 3: off context on Twitter. Yeah, but no Young Turks really
Speaker 3: shit name, Like if you didn't see like all of
Speaker 3: their other terrible stuff coming, I feel like the name
Speaker 3: should have been a massive clue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean I had never heard of the
Speaker 2: Young Turks, the original movement, you know, even in as
Speaker 2: little as I knew about anything else, and so I
Speaker 2: assume that that's what it is, is that people just
Speaker 2: don't know, you know, and like, Okay, this is really petty.
Speaker 2: There's this Armenian composer that I learned about this week
Speaker 2: named Gomitas, and it's transliterated different ways, different times, and
Speaker 2: the music is so beautiful, and there's like all of
Speaker 2: these like long importance is very important. Composer. He loses
Speaker 2: his mind in the Armenian genocide. He's considered one of
Speaker 2: the victims of the genocide. He lives for a while longer,
Speaker 2: but he, you know, he loses his mind completely. And
Speaker 2: my metal band has more listeners on Spotify than this guy.
Speaker 2: And it was just this moment of like, oh, people
Speaker 2: don't know about the past. Yeah, you know, I didn't
Speaker 2: know about this guy. It's amazing. This is completely up
Speaker 2: my alley. It is like crazy, dramatic, dark and beautiful.
Speaker 2: I'm so into it. But this is start the story.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say to get back to the story,
Speaker 2: but we haven't started it yet. So just to make
Speaker 2: soph happy, I'm going to start this story in the
Speaker 2: year three hundred and one.
Speaker 3: I have a triple digit Yeah, yeah, use a full
Speaker 3: pot of ass.
Speaker 2: The Armenian genocid was both ethnically and religiously motivated, but
Speaker 2: especially religiously motivated. To say that Armenia is a Christian
Speaker 2: nation is to understate the case dramatically. Armenia is the
Speaker 2: first Christian nation in the history of the world in
Speaker 2: the year three hundred and one, seventy nine years before Rome,
Speaker 2: years before Ethiopia. I think Georgia was also up there.
Speaker 2: In general, most Armenians belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church,
Speaker 2: which is part of the Oriental Orthodox tradition, which is
Speaker 2: distinct from the Eastern Orthodox tradition.
Speaker 1: For us, I think it's a Postolic.
Speaker 3: Apostolic Okaystal, you should include me getting that wrong and
Speaker 3: you're fixing me, I think.
Speaker 2: I think so fixing.
Speaker 1: I'm like going back to going to Catholic church Apostolic.
Speaker 2: And the reason it is an Apostolic church is because
Speaker 2: tradition holds that it was Saint Jude, one of the
Speaker 2: original apostles of Jesus, who traveled to Armenia and started
Speaker 2: converting people. So it's real Christian. What exactly Armenia means
Speaker 2: as a political entity versus as a people is a
Speaker 2: complicated issue that has changed many, many times over the
Speaker 2: course of history. There's a country called Armenia right now
Speaker 2: in West Asia. It's sort of sandwich between Turkey and Georgia.
Speaker 2: This is sort of a rump state. It is the
Speaker 2: remnant of a larger previous state. Most modern Armenians have
Speaker 2: a heritage that more directly comes from modern day Turkey,
Speaker 2: as someone from Armenia explained to me, or rather an
Speaker 2: Armenian person explained to me earlier today when I was
Speaker 2: trying to sort out exactly this question. Armenia has been
Speaker 2: doing this thing for thousands of years at this point,
Speaker 2: but it hasn't always existed as a distinct political entity,
Speaker 2: although the culture and the people have been around for
Speaker 2: a very long time. But we're not going to track
Speaker 2: Armenia as it comes and goes as a country. Instead,
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about the Armenian people. And I
Speaker 2: just want to point out that this is they are
Speaker 2: in some ways distinct, right. I had always assumed, like, oh, Armenians,
Speaker 2: those are people who live in Armenia, and that's my
Speaker 2: white Americans, like Irish people are from the island of
Speaker 2: Ireland and everything simple, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Americans really often conflate like nation and state because
Speaker 3: of the nature of American nationalism and stayhood. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I think a lot of it. Even if you're from Europe,
Speaker 3: break you can understand the Catalonius a nation but not
Speaker 3: a state, and you have some kind of lived experience
Speaker 3: of that. Yeah, And it can be again venturing into
Speaker 3: things that I used to teach about when I would
Speaker 3: still being a historian.
Speaker 2: I mean that is part of why you were the guests.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that you know a lot.
Speaker 3: Of this stuff. Thank you. Yeah, people should read Benedict
Speaker 3: Anderson if they want to know more about that.
Speaker 2: So now we're going to jump over to a recent
Speaker 2: friend of the pod, or at least recurring character of
Speaker 2: the pod, the Ottoman Empire. And we talked a bunch
Speaker 2: about the Ottoman Empire on the show. So I'm not
Speaker 2: going to do a lot of it, but I'm going
Speaker 2: to drill down a little bit further into how it
Speaker 2: worked as a multi ethnic empire. I was talking to
Speaker 2: an Armenian Greek friend about doing this episode, and the
Speaker 2: way he put it was basically like, look, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to go to bat for empires in general, but
Speaker 2: the Ottomans just wanted your taxes and didn't give a
Speaker 2: fuck what else you did. And this is an exaggeration,
Speaker 2: and we're going to talk about some of the exceptions
Speaker 2: to that over all, Like as far as empires go, you.
Speaker 3: Know, big Empire fan Margaret Kiljoy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, they they're yeah, they're a minarchist, they're
Speaker 2: not minarchist, but you know they do not begin that
Speaker 2: discourse from da oh wow, let's start an Ottomans as
Speaker 2: a discourse subject. I don't anyway. If anyone wants to
Speaker 2: bring it up to me, just at me at.
Speaker 3: I right, okay, on Twitter, and so she could be found.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Ottoman Empire has a distinct advantage and a
Speaker 2: distinct disadvantage of being on the Anatolian Peninsula aka Asia
Speaker 2: Minor aka more or less what we call Turkey. Now,
Speaker 2: this is an advantage because it's at the crossroads of
Speaker 2: the world. It's at a disadvantage because it's at the
Speaker 2: crossroads of the world. I am honestly not sure if
Speaker 2: there's ever been a more invasion prone place. I got
Speaker 2: really lost and sidetracked for a long time reading about
Speaker 2: centuries of backs and forth of people invading this place.
Speaker 2: My main takeaway was people really like invading this place.
Speaker 2: The Turks, who are a distinct ethnic group from the
Speaker 2: also generally Muslim Arabs, formed the Imperial Core, and they
Speaker 2: won their empire by being seriously good warriors, highly mobile
Speaker 2: cavalry with composite bows which are just basically like a
Speaker 2: better bow technology, would go around and conquering and demanding
Speaker 2: total surrender and bringing people into this empire. They ruled
Speaker 2: huge trunks of Southwest Asia, North Africa, and Eastern Europe
Speaker 2: for centuries. The Crusaders would like, comment and conquer shit,
Speaker 2: and to be clear, the Crusaders also really like killing
Speaker 2: non Catholic Christians. That crusaders not great people, not that
Speaker 2: it would have been okay if they were. What I'm trying
Speaker 2: to say is a crusader sucked. The Mongols would comment
Speaker 2: and conquer shit. And the Ottoman Empire was at war
Speaker 2: with Russia like basically always any pick a random year
Speaker 2: and they were probably at war with Russia. But once
Speaker 2: they conquered Constantinople from the Christians in fourteen fifty three
Speaker 2: what's now Istanbul, they managed a pretty stable empire. That
Speaker 2: particular battle was apparently very wild, like one day when
Speaker 2: I've like completely lost all interest in everything else and
Speaker 2: I'm entirely cynical. I'm absolutely going to run a history
Speaker 2: podcast where I talk about people carrying boats over and
Speaker 2: putting them down in harbors and shit.
Speaker 3: But portage podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, it's actually specifically going to be about portage, Sophie,
Speaker 2: Is that all right? We could do that, the portage
Speaker 2: portage cast always be portaging.
Speaker 3: Putage, always carry a boat. I see, I love it? Yes, please,
Speaker 3: I love it? Yeah, great, Wow, this is perfect We
Speaker 3: Narco Ottomans did. Anyway, there are authoritary bucks.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to bat for them here, all right,
Speaker 2: and now I'm about to say nice things about them.
Speaker 2: As soon as they had constants noble, they were honestly
Speaker 2: comparatively chill about it compared to the Christians. Jews and
Speaker 2: Christians were immediately invited and sometimes maybe forced to come
Speaker 2: live in the city alongside the Muslim population. By the
Speaker 2: early five to fifteen hundreds, they kind of rule what's
Speaker 2: the sort of known world? Because Western Europe is a
Speaker 2: dinky little backwater, It is poor as fuck, and it
Speaker 2: is not too politically powerful on the world stage at
Speaker 2: this point. And what turned it around is that they
Speaker 2: quote unquote discovered the New World and then robbed the
Speaker 2: shit out of it. And it turns out that if
Speaker 2: you rob a whole bunch of people of a bunch
Speaker 2: of gold and enslave a bunch of people, you can
Speaker 2: make money doing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not the best way to make money, no, But
Speaker 3: you know what the best way to make money is, James,
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I do bug it. It's inserting adverts for
Speaker 3: brands that are not at all problematic and your podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. I'm sure every thing that is about to
Speaker 2: be advertised to you is something that I would wholeheartedly support.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe it's a pocket boat, like a tiny yeah,
Speaker 2: so that you can carry it yep, brought to you
Speaker 2: by pocketboat.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: I actually really kind of want one of those, like
Speaker 2: folding kayak or canoes.
Speaker 3: I ate shit so fucking hard in an inflatable canoe
Speaker 3: on the fifty July, like I got fucking tumbled. It's
Speaker 3: broken half like it folded. Okay, so they're not the
Speaker 3: most reliable canoes. I gave mine to the folding one.
Speaker 3: It gave to my friend in Moab who also stuffed
Speaker 3: it in a fucking pocket and it folded on him.
Speaker 3: I like, oh, yeah, he could have drowned.
Speaker 2: Was this like white watering or what?
Speaker 3: So he was white watering? I was surf kayaking. Okay.
Speaker 2: See my plan is to go to this like small
Speaker 2: lake that has toads and put my dog in the
Speaker 2: canoe and then put me in the canoe and move
Speaker 2: around at like two miles an hour.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think you're more of a target demo. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you've made like kayak Twitter really mad now by conflating
Speaker 3: kayak and canoe.
Speaker 2: I know, although I do know how to do both,
Speaker 2: I'm not very good at many sports. But I once
Speaker 2: won a kayak race. Wow, And that's why I am
Speaker 2: shelling for whatever comes next, because there wasn't a lot
Speaker 2: of money in winning kayak race when I was thirteen.
Speaker 2: Here you go, hi, Margaret Kiljoy. Here boy, the world
Speaker 2: sure is a mess right now?
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 2: Seems like every day there are more and more reasons
Speaker 2: to get out into the streets and protest. That's why
Speaker 2: when I get arrested, there's only one strategy, I trust.
Speaker 2: I shut the fuck up. I say, I would like
Speaker 2: to remain silent. I would like to talk to my lawyer,
Speaker 2: and then I shut the fuck up. In the United
Speaker 2: States of America, it's constitutionally protected and recommended by the
Speaker 2: National Lawyers Guild. That's shut thg f u c k
Speaker 2: up once again, Sahu t thche fuc k up, because
Speaker 2: you can't talk yourself out of custody, but you can
Speaker 2: talk yourself into a conviction.
Speaker 4: Providing identification to law enforcement required in some states and situations,
Speaker 4: giving them an address expedient in most circumstances. Never discuss
Speaker 4: the events leading to arrest with anyone except your lawyer, doctor,
Speaker 4: or therapist. Posting pictures of protests and actions on social
Speaker 4: media may lead to complications. If you have already talked
Speaker 4: to cops or experienced confusion about talking to cops, call
Speaker 4: your attorney immediately, as these may be signs of more
Speaker 4: serious legal problems. The concept of not talking to cops
Speaker 4: does not provide legal advice, and the foregoing statements are
Speaker 4: for informational purposes only. If you have specific legal questions,
Speaker 4: consult an attorney.
Speaker 2: And we're back. And So Europe went from warring kingdoms
Speaker 2: to really really wealthy kingdoms because they took advantage of
Speaker 2: the great deals that we offer heracles on media, and
Speaker 2: they started modernizing their warships with new pocket boats and
Speaker 2: forever change to the war. The Ottoman Empire, their main
Speaker 2: advanced technology was basically bureaucracy. They were pretty good at it.
Speaker 2: The ability to actually rule a massive empire and pull
Speaker 2: taxes out of everyone took a lot of work, and
Speaker 2: they had a really elaborate millet system for how they
Speaker 2: handled ethnic and religious minorities. All of the different millets,
Speaker 2: all of the different groups of people. They all had
Speaker 2: different costumes that I think they had to wear. I
Speaker 2: know they weren't allowed to wear a bunch of different
Speaker 2: colors very specifically. I ended up with like kind of
Speaker 2: mixed answers about whether or not they had to wear these.
Speaker 2: But Greeks wore sky blue hats with black slippers, Armenians
Speaker 2: wore dark blue and later red hats with violet slippers,
Speaker 2: and Jews wore yellow hats with blue slippers. Wow, they
Speaker 2: color coded their minorities. Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure I
Speaker 2: love that. No, I'm going to say all the bad
Speaker 2: stuff now. Yeah, non Muslim men couldn't marry Muslim women.
Speaker 2: Church steeples couldn't be higher than the minarets on mosques,
Speaker 2: church bells were banned Christians, couldn't dress like Muslims. They
Speaker 2: couldn't build tall houses or buy slaves truly in oppression,
Speaker 2: that last one. Yeah, and most importantly in a way
Speaker 2: that'll come up as a major problem. They couldn't carry weapons.
Speaker 2: They also paid a millet tax, which was a tax
Speaker 2: that Muslims didn't have to pay. Yeah, but this tax
Speaker 2: also exempted them from military service. Partly, we'll get into it. Overall,
Speaker 2: the Ottoman Empire, like basically, this was so much better
Speaker 2: than Europe for religious minorities, and it's just incredibly shameful
Speaker 2: that that's the case, right, Europe was in a kill
Speaker 2: the heretic phase where for really long time they were
Speaker 2: in this phase. If you disagreed about like the Third Council,
Speaker 2: the Nicean Commission on the Nature of the Trinity or whatever,
Speaker 2: they would fucking burn you alive. So I'd rather wear
Speaker 2: a silly hat. Yeah, Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I lame as Yes.
Speaker 2: And they were allowed their own legal systems and autonomous
Speaker 2: structures as long as they stayed loyal to the Sultan.
Speaker 2: Leaders of these millets were often powerful actors within the
Speaker 2: Ottoman Empire, And of course we're talking about a huge
Speaker 2: swath of land over the course of like six hundred years,
Speaker 2: so things ebbed and flowed. Author Eric Bogosian who wrote
Speaker 2: the book Operation Nemesis, which is a very good book
Speaker 2: that does a lot better of a job than anything
Speaker 2: else that I read about Operation Nemesis. It lays it
Speaker 2: out that words like Armenian and Turk really only started
Speaker 2: getting used regularly at the end of the nineteenth century. Quote.
Speaker 2: Aside from their respective religious faiths, the two peoples are
Speaker 2: in many ways congruent in their culture and style. Both
Speaker 2: people call roughly the same vast territory home, and for
Speaker 2: a thousand years they would intermarry and there's just a
Speaker 2: ton of intermingling and the thing about like they called
Speaker 2: the same area home. I feel like it's important because
Speaker 2: we have this idea like ethnanationalism. It's like, oh, everyone
Speaker 2: gets an Ethno state and it's all distinct areas because
Speaker 2: everyone grew up in different areas and they just have
Speaker 2: to go back to their corner. I don't like ethno nationalism.
Speaker 2: You'll be shocked to learn. And it's just not true
Speaker 2: right that Armenia and Turkey are like separate. I mean,
Speaker 2: they're separate they're distinct, right, they're culturally distinct, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they know distinct geographical entities with like this fictive
Speaker 3: ethnicity that. Yeah, people are tied by their blood to
Speaker 3: the soil.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And like a little like shot Collars where if
Speaker 2: you go past the electric fence, the invisible fence, you know,
Speaker 2: like you.
Speaker 3: Get a beep thin a zapp. Yeah, and don't give
Speaker 3: Joe Biden any ideas he's already doing it. No, that's true.
Speaker 2: A big listener of this podcast Joe Biden, because he
Speaker 2: got really confused and he was like, I think I
Speaker 2: like stuff. I don't know what I like anymore.
Speaker 3: People I like ice cream?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do like ice cream? So much in common
Speaker 2: with that man anyway. Okay, have you heard about this
Speaker 2: system where Christians had to give up a certain percentage
Speaker 2: of their kids to the Ottoman Empire?
Speaker 3: I have, unfortunately, h once again, this is this is
Speaker 3: a thing that uh, like, world history is informed by
Speaker 3: like this idea. The teaching of world history in the
Speaker 3: Mode University is informed by the idea that, like the
Speaker 3: state is the final and best organization of mankind, and
Speaker 3: therefore we have to study these giant, massive states and
Speaker 3: empires and that's how we understand human history. Right I am,
Speaker 3: as an anarchist, don't believe that. But yes, unfortunately, this
Speaker 3: is a thing that was on Sidyby.
Speaker 2: It's it's interesting. And when I say interesting, I mean
Speaker 2: that is like a literal sense in that is a
Speaker 2: a different way of doing things than that than what
Speaker 2: like Western Europe was doing. Right. Yeah, there was a
Speaker 2: system where starting in the fourteenth century, a certain percentage
Speaker 2: of boys born to Christian homes were requisitioned as slave labor.
Speaker 2: Kids as young as seven and as old as twenty
Speaker 2: were taken over to Constantinople and raised in Muslim families
Speaker 2: and converted to Islam and then became slaves to the state.
Speaker 2: And slavery is always always bad, but American listeners will
Speaker 2: conflate all slavery with the unique cars of chattel slavery
Speaker 2: in the US, and it's important to understand that these
Speaker 2: are distinct without putting moral positions on it. Many of
Speaker 2: these formerly Christian boys became like the sultan's personal guards.
Speaker 2: Many wound up with power and prestige. They would become
Speaker 2: government ministers, which were called slave administrators and provincial governors,
Speaker 2: and there were several Grand viziers, which is the position
Speaker 2: just below sultan, and sultan was often just a figurehead
Speaker 2: except for a few forceful, powerful personalities throughout history. So
Speaker 2: sometimes these literal civil servants, these these slave iministrators, were
Speaker 2: the most powerful political actors in the empire. Some Muslim
Speaker 2: families would pretend their kids were Christian so that they
Speaker 2: could taken up by this, because it was a path
Speaker 2: to prestige. And now mostly this is like, well, if
Speaker 2: only everyone wasn't so poor that this seemed like the
Speaker 2: way to do things. But whatever, And while they're supposed
Speaker 2: to cut ties with their families, many of them use
Speaker 2: their positions of power to help out their families. This
Speaker 2: system declined in the seventeenth century. It ended by sixteen
Speaker 2: forty eight because Ottoman soldiers wanted to recruit their own
Speaker 2: kids into the army instead of the sons of Christian families. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: the Ottoman Empire is in a state of perpetual war
Speaker 2: because they're basic philosophy and this like whenever I read
Speaker 2: shit from like Western authors, even like Armenian American authors
Speaker 2: and stuff like that, whenever I read stuff that says
Speaker 2: things like this, I get a little bit like is
Speaker 2: this Orientalysm, like what's going on? Right, because because you're
Speaker 2: Europe is obsessed with like this like fantasy version of
Speaker 2: the Ottoman Empire, right, yeah, and some of it is
Speaker 2: based on reality, like you know, the Harem system and
Speaker 2: all kinds of things, right, but best as I can tell,
Speaker 2: and so like I have a like second guess and
Speaker 2: a doubt right that I want to sow the seeds
Speaker 2: of doubt about the things that like almost anything written
Speaker 2: in English, you know, Yeah, the Ottoman Empire is in
Speaker 2: a state of perpetual war because their basic philosophy divides
Speaker 2: the world into the House of Islam aka their empire
Speaker 2: and the House of War aka everywhere they haven't yet conquered.
Speaker 2: By the end of the Ottoman Empire, about a third
Speaker 2: of its population was European, a third Anatolian like what's
Speaker 2: now Turkey, and one third Arabian and or North African.
Speaker 2: And this was almost evenly split between Muslims and Christians,
Speaker 2: with a sizable minority of Jews. The Christians and the
Speaker 2: Jews in the Ottoman Empire filled similar rules as Jews
Speaker 2: wound up leaning Christian Europe basically like non aristocratic trades
Speaker 2: that Muslims were more likely to avoid artisans, merchants, traders, bankers.
Speaker 2: This is not to say that most Armenians were middle class.
Speaker 2: Most of them were dirt poor peasants. We'll get into it,
Speaker 2: but a lot of this middle class did was filled
Speaker 2: by Christians. Social class, which had religious and ethnic components,
Speaker 2: was the division talked about more often than religion, although
Speaker 2: religion determined your access to social class. The Askiri were
Speaker 2: a class of military administrators aka the professional Ottoman and
Speaker 2: they were exclusively Muslim and this included court officials and
Speaker 2: clerics as well as the military, whereas the rahea were
Speaker 2: basically the tax paying class, and these include Christians, Muslims,
Speaker 2: and Jews. Then about a fifth of the Ottoman Empire,
Speaker 2: at least in the sixteenth and seventeenth century were the
Speaker 2: cool the slaves, and some of those were high class,
Speaker 2: but not all of them, like we talked about, And
Speaker 2: that's the Ottoman Empire and how Armenians were living for
Speaker 2: centuries in this kind of relative peace. But you know,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be mad at someone who was like, I
Speaker 2: don't like living this way and I don't want to
Speaker 2: live this way anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, can I drop you my favorite random Ottoman Empire fact.
Speaker 3: Please do I feel like that's one day I'll do
Speaker 3: a whole episode on this. But so, Suliman Shah is
Speaker 3: like the kind of fictive father of the Ottoman Empire, right,
Speaker 3: and I guess it is one of the notable founders,
Speaker 3: not not necessarily the founder, but one of the notable
Speaker 3: kind of founders the Automo Empire. His tomb is like
Speaker 3: supposed to be the site in Syria twenty fifteen, in
Speaker 3: the peak of the civil war in Syria, Turkey sent
Speaker 3: an entire fucking army column to scoop up the tomb
Speaker 3: and the forty dudes who are guarding it, forty Turkish
Speaker 3: guys just hanging out around this tomb and move it
Speaker 3: back too closer to the Turkish border. Whoa like just
Speaker 3: a unilateral military operation to find a dead guy? Like,
Speaker 3: I know it would be a great film, and I
Speaker 3: think that it's like, especially when we talk about like
Speaker 3: modern Turkey denying the Armenian genocide, you can see a
Speaker 3: lot of like it's not I don't know whatever, I'm
Speaker 3: not enough of an expert on current affairs, but like, yeah,
Speaker 3: there's a lineage. Yeah, Ottomanism is not like absent from
Speaker 3: the discourse and identity in Turkey.
Speaker 2: Now, so the nineteenth century hits and I feel like
Speaker 2: the subtext of the show besides, everyone dies of tuberculosis
Speaker 2: if you don't get murdered by the state is the
Speaker 2: nineteenth century changes everything in the world. Everything started changing
Speaker 2: and fast. In the mid nineteenth century, rebellion broke out
Speaker 2: in the Balkans against the Ottoman Empires. This is where
Speaker 2: the word Balkanization comes from. Where things break up, and
Speaker 2: you famously get the rise of nationalism, which buy and
Speaker 2: large made everything worse. And this is when media started
Speaker 2: doing things like Turkey is mad or well, I guess
Speaker 2: they would have said the Ottomans are mad.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's when we start like like Britain will raise his
Speaker 2: mighty I don't know how they do to Britain her
Speaker 2: mighty fists Britannia or John Bull depending okay, And so
Speaker 2: you start having this idea that like, nations are people,
Speaker 2: not just that people make up nations or whatever. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: most Armenians at this point are poor, rural peasants, although
Speaker 2: in larger towns and cities you have that modern class
Speaker 2: of artisans and merchants. But most Armenians are living medieval
Speaker 2: lives in the nineteenth century, Like they are not hanging
Speaker 2: out under electrical light or glass windows. There's even this
Speaker 2: thing where like when they talk about like westernization, they're like,
Speaker 2: they're trying to come in here with their glass windows.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, it's one of those things that I
Speaker 2: like don't.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 2: Every now and then I'm trying to like write like
Speaker 2: medieval era fantasy, and I'm like, I don't think they
Speaker 2: had windows, like we understand them, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it wouldn't be practical in the absence of a
Speaker 3: good glass.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like in colder places you had scraped hide I think, okay,
Speaker 2: in warmer places you were like, that's a hole in
Speaker 2: the wall.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we just made a hole here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they're living medieval lives. They're using hand looms,
Speaker 2: blacksmiths are fixing plows. They live in mud walled houses
Speaker 2: and all that shit. Even bigger towns might not have
Speaker 2: a single telephone. There's no paved roads, no railroads. A
Speaker 2: lot of the folks, the Christians in the countryside are
Speaker 2: essentially surfs. When the land was sold, the peasants came
Speaker 2: with the sale. Meanwhile around them were the Kurdish tribes,
Speaker 2: another distinct ethnic group in the area, but one that
Speaker 2: was pastoralist and nomadic, and things were famously not great
Speaker 2: between these two groups. The Muslim Kurds were allowed to
Speaker 2: take more or less any liberties they wanted with the Christians,
Speaker 2: often like moving into people's houses for the winner without
Speaker 2: asking and things like that. This antagonism was set up
Speaker 2: on purpose by the Ottoman rulers to have the Armenians and.
Speaker 3: The Kurds at each other's throats and such cases. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is how empires work. Like, Yeah, I was just
Speaker 3: talking to some friends in Mema right now about how
Speaker 3: like the Hunter is very clearly trying to set up
Speaker 3: the Rahingia against other people in Rakine. Like it is
Speaker 3: a tale as old as time with empire, and it works.
Speaker 3: It worked for a very long time. I'm happy to
Speaker 3: say that all the Kurdish organizations that I pay attention
Speaker 3: to have all talked about this openly and admitted the
Speaker 3: role of Thirds in the Armenian genocide. Yeah, unlike the
Speaker 3: country of Turkey. Yes, Turkish individuals, many Turkish individuals are
Speaker 3: very aware of it and are sorry.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, what were we gonna say?
Speaker 3: No? I met a really interesting guy not so long
Speaker 3: ago at the border who essentially was his grandparents I believe,
Speaker 3: had been Armenian but had given their son to a
Speaker 3: Kurdish family at the time of the Armenian genocidekind and
Speaker 3: did like look after my little baby, like they're genociding us.
Speaker 3: And yeah, he had only found this out in his
Speaker 3: attempt to document his family as part of his asylum application,
Speaker 3: and was like trying to explain, like as someone who
Speaker 3: identified as Kurdish, Like that's a really fucking the weird
Speaker 3: situation to be in, right, you're finding that, like your
Speaker 3: identity is Kurdish and you know, but yeah, your grandfather,
Speaker 3: I guess your grandfather was as a little baby like
Speaker 3: given to a Kurdish family. But then like Kurdish people
Speaker 3: are also complicit in this.
Speaker 2: Right, No, this is actually this comes up a lot
Speaker 2: in that a lot of Armenian survivors of the genocide
Speaker 2: survived by either I hadn't read about. I believe it.
Speaker 2: I believe this man's version. I believe this man's story,
Speaker 2: but most of what I've read about our survivors who
Speaker 2: have been like taken into Muslim families by force, and
Speaker 2: so you have and then also just like if you
Speaker 2: say you are now Turkish and change your religion, we
Speaker 2: won't kill you. And so there's this whole thing in
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighties I think where a ton of Turkish
Speaker 2: folks were like, holy shit, my grandparents were Armenian, and
Speaker 2: like we only found out when they were like dying
Speaker 2: and on their deathbeds being like, you know, hey, actually
Speaker 2: I was a Christian, you know.
Speaker 3: Damn yeah.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so in the countryside in nineteenth century, the
Speaker 2: Kurds and the Armenians are being played against each other.
Speaker 2: The country wanted to modernize to have a chance militarily
Speaker 2: and economically against Europe. And one of the things that
Speaker 2: keeps coming up in nineteenth century history is you start
Speaker 2: being like, oh, everyone in a constitution because it's like
Speaker 2: good for liberty and stuff, and like slowly you start
Speaker 2: being like the power. I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: did want it for good reasons. A lot of people
Speaker 2: were like, oh no, that's a that's the better system
Speaker 2: by which to create a modern military and be able
Speaker 2: to like continue to exert power on the world stage
Speaker 2: and not be conquered is to have a constitution.
Speaker 3: Yeah, generally, liberally, like nineteenth century liberalism was heavily tied
Speaker 3: to like militarism, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So in eighteen seventy six, this secret society called
Speaker 2: the Young Ottomans that had been around for a while,
Speaker 2: and this is different than the Young Turks. They managed
Speaker 2: to get a constitution in a parliament set up, and
Speaker 2: their name was inspired by a similar movement, the Young Italians,
Speaker 2: which at some point I'm going to cover the unification
Speaker 2: of Italy and because a lot of leftists were really
Speaker 2: excited about at the time and now it's really awkward.
Speaker 2: But that same year, the new sultan, who had agreed
Speaker 2: to the constitution was like, nah, never mind, that's enough
Speaker 2: of that. I thought I wanted a constitution, I actually don't.
Speaker 2: Democracy sucks. I'm in charge. By eighteen seventy eight, the
Speaker 2: pretense of democracy was gone. Three years later, the Empire
Speaker 2: basically went bankrupt. European bankers stepped in and the Empire
Speaker 2: became an economic colony of the West. European powers had
Speaker 2: rights over railroads, shipping, mining, water banks, mineral rights, just everything.
Speaker 2: But you know what else is an economic colony of
Speaker 2: Western corporate interests US.
Speaker 5: Sadly, yes, it's us, good, good, great here's some ads.
Speaker 3: Welcome back.
Speaker 2: I think that was my most cynical a transition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that one.
Speaker 2: From its brief flirtation with constitutional monarchy, the seeds of
Speaker 2: change had been sown because like, Okay, as much as
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, like it's all like as cynicals I
Speaker 2: am about constitutional monarchy, whatever it's it's still better than autocracy.
Speaker 2: Like I get why people fought for this, you know.
Speaker 2: And new groups popped up to modernize the empire. Most
Speaker 2: at the beginning wanted to continue to have a religiously
Speaker 2: pluralistic but still Islamic society. That's like they were like, look,
Speaker 2: our vibe kind of works for us, Like why would
Speaker 2: we fuck that up? Like, of course the Christians are
Speaker 2: allowed here as long as we get to like our
Speaker 2: minarets are taller.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: One of these new groups was called the Young Turks,
Speaker 2: and they start off kind of good. Then they turn
Speaker 2: out to be more or less the precursors of the
Speaker 2: Nazis in terms of should we genocide religious minorities. We'll
Speaker 2: come back to them. The Sultan he had a problem.
Speaker 2: He's trying to do this autocracy thing right, and the
Speaker 2: problem is that ethnic minorities weren't being ruled well enough.
Speaker 2: And I think the first problem he tried to solve
Speaker 2: in this way was the quote unquote Kurdish problem.
Speaker 3: When you're referring to a group of people and then
Speaker 3: using the word problem afterwards, bad sign.
Speaker 2: This is part of why I'm going to call them
Speaker 2: the precursors of the Nazis. All of the like phrasing
Speaker 2: of like the following problem and the solution to that problem.
Speaker 2: Like it just I mean there's literally German officers taking
Speaker 2: notes ding.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, there's yeah, there's more than a
Speaker 3: rhetoric shed between these two.
Speaker 2: Uh so, yeah, this Kurdish problem. Nomadic people are hard
Speaker 2: to rule. The best chance most dictators have is to
Speaker 2: leverage the militaristic society of nomadic people for their own aims.
Speaker 2: So Hamid the Sultan broke up the largest tribes of
Speaker 2: the Kurds and killed a bunch of their leaders, and
Speaker 2: then co opted a bunch of them into a paramilitary
Speaker 2: force called the Hamadie, which he named after himself. And
Speaker 2: if yeah, and if this sounds familiar to what the
Speaker 2: Czar did or the Cossacks, because you've been found along
Speaker 2: a cool zone media book club and I was reading
Speaker 2: about that a while ago. It's because it's the same
Speaker 2: fucking thing, and this is okay, this is a rabbit
Speaker 2: hole I want to ask you about. Yeah, the overlap
Speaker 2: between the Kurds and the Cossacks is really interesting because
Speaker 2: both are nomadic horse tribes that wind up being the
Speaker 2: shock troops of reaction and then wind up being the
Speaker 2: core of two of the most impressive, large scale anti
Speaker 2: authoritarian socialist societies the world's ever seen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is an interesting parallel.
Speaker 2: And during that one, Makno was a Cossack and he
Speaker 2: led the anarchist Ukrainian Project, while the Kurds have spearheaded
Speaker 2: the autonomous region of Northeast Syria that exists currently, and
Speaker 2: their pluralistic society is built on democratic and federalism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's nice. And there are like, I know, there
Speaker 3: are like Havalds from Curtis Dan who are fighting in
Speaker 3: Syria now I'm sorry, in Syria in Ukraine, now okay
Speaker 3: with there, And there are also Cossack folks playing there,
Speaker 3: and there were like horizontally organized units that might comprise
Speaker 3: both of them. I don't know. I'm talking to one
Speaker 3: of them soon, so we'll find out.
Speaker 2: And it's like interesting because like a lot of people,
Speaker 2: whenever you have like these, you know, a nomadic culture
Speaker 2: that becomes like shock troops of reaction, people are like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's because they're so fighty, but you're like, well, also
Speaker 2: they're like refusal to be ruled. Also has a cultural
Speaker 2: tendency towards anti authoritarian socialism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like the idea of like martial races is inherently
Speaker 3: tied to empire, right, Like, at some point everyone was fighty,
Speaker 3: and then yeah, they're totally the folks that they couldn't
Speaker 3: subdue became the ones who they painted as barbarians totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's just so interesting the way that that
Speaker 2: sometimes those groups are still like the more privileged group
Speaker 2: within within a system, like on some level the Kurds.
Speaker 2: But then again you can see how much good it
Speaker 2: did them to be slightly more privileged, because then in
Speaker 2: the eighteen nineties the sultan was like, eh, let's just
Speaker 2: kill you all, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it has continued.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so these broken up Kurdish tribes get even more
Speaker 2: violent and banditry prone because their society has been disrupted, right,
Speaker 2: and they're largely taking it out on the rural Armenians.
Speaker 2: Then in eighteen ninety four eighteen ninety six, the Sultan
Speaker 2: was like, hey, would you just go crush the Armenians.
Speaker 2: They're too friendly with Russia. So hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 2: Armenians were slaughtered. They were burned alive, they were aflayed,
Speaker 2: they were raped, they were dismembered. It's a really bad time.
Speaker 2: This is sometimes called the first Armenian genocide. And this
Speaker 2: started what's also to be uh has been called if
Speaker 2: if this was Wikipedia, people will be very angry because
Speaker 2: I'm saying has been called and saying I'm saying who
Speaker 2: called it that? And the answer is a bunch of
Speaker 2: books I read. They started a culture of massacre, and
Speaker 2: since the Christians weren't allowed to bear arms, there wasn't
Speaker 2: a time they could do about it, at least not legally.
Speaker 2: They did do quite a lot about it through friend
Speaker 2: of the pod crime, Crime that we'll talk about on Wednesday.
Speaker 3: That's my that's my Cliffhanger. I promise you crime. Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: very rare to have crime on this podcast. So exciting
Speaker 3: for us.
Speaker 2: But I don't know, how are you feeling so far?
Speaker 3: Well, it's a part of the world I've recently visited,
Speaker 3: so yeah, yeah, and then I've been watching the football
Speaker 3: recently and seeing a lot of a lot of a
Speaker 3: lot of Gray Wolf salutes, which is really a stadium
Speaker 3: full of people doing a fascist salute. Is not a
Speaker 3: thing that I'd expected to see in Germany again, but
Speaker 3: here we are. Wait, were the Gray Wolves in Germany
Speaker 3: doing it? Yeah? The Grey Wolves is the largest right
Speaker 3: wing group in Germany, which is impressive given that Germany
Speaker 3: is Germany.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, right, what's the German So the Gray Wolves,
Speaker 2: which I only vaguely know about, but anyone who's listening,
Speaker 2: it's a Turkish far right nationalist group, right, yeah, ultranationalists
Speaker 2: pan Turkish.
Speaker 3: They conceive of Turkey that being a mono ethnic Sunni
Speaker 3: Islamic state that expands across much of the old Ottoman
Speaker 3: Empire to unite Turkic people, right, Okay, they are Yeah,
Speaker 3: the street fighters at MHP they people can listen to
Speaker 3: a podcast what it could Happen here where my friend
Speaker 3: Sherien and I talk about the Mirage massacre and the
Speaker 3: Gray Wolves and why Turkish bobs are beating Syrian refugees
Speaker 3: this week in Turkey. It's great, It's very affirming stuff.
Speaker 3: But yeah, the Gray Wolves are the right wing ultranationalists,
Speaker 3: street fighting kind of movement of Turkish ulter nationalism. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And if you're a metal head and you want to
Speaker 2: be mad, their salute is distinct from throwing the horns,
Speaker 2: but hard to tell. Yeah, it's distinct from throwing the horns.
Speaker 3: It's close. Or if you're a shadow puppetella, then really
Speaker 3: if you've been previously doing the little dog, yeah, problematic now.
Speaker 2: Which is really low on the list of reasons why
Speaker 2: we need to destroy them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just imagining like a just a street fighting branch
Speaker 3: at a shadow puppet movement, fucking them up.
Speaker 2: I mean I think about like like twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: I would like go to these anti Trump rallies in
Speaker 2: like a small southern town, and the localhema groups, the
Speaker 2: historical European martial arts books who are just like poor
Speaker 2: rural biker nerds who are amazing and lovely people would
Speaker 2: show up with their like heathens against hate signs and
Speaker 2: like they're like you know, medieval kit right, Yeah, And
Speaker 2: part of it is just like get those runs out
Speaker 2: of your fucking mouth. Yeah yeah, yeah, like fuck you, yeah,
Speaker 2: again like I can't see that and not have a
Speaker 2: certain reaction.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, yeah, those people were they
Speaker 3: were first on the ruin shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And so I appreciate the work that people
Speaker 2: have put into and not like because there's one version
Speaker 2: of the putting in the work where you're like, hey,
Speaker 2: no one should use runes anymore because Nazis have them,
Speaker 2: and another that's like, we will fucking take those back
Speaker 2: from the Nazis by before all the Nazis and having
Speaker 2: the fact that we street fight Nazis while using these
Speaker 2: change what people's perception is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that for them. Yeah, be a Viking
Speaker 3: against fascism.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, but don't throw the horns in the wolf way.
Speaker 3: That's my keep those two middle fingers tight tight into
Speaker 3: the palm you did, or do it like the really
Speaker 3: awkward way where you kind of have the thumb out
Speaker 3: even though you're like not supposed to.
Speaker 2: But it doesn't only matter, you know, Yeah, the.
Speaker 3: Ship is sailed now, but at least people know what
Speaker 3: you're doing, I guess.
Speaker 2: Anyway, when we come back on Wednesday, we will talk
Speaker 2: about how the Armenians formed massive revolutionary socialist organizations committed
Speaker 2: to doing terrorism against the people who were murdering them,
Speaker 2: which is classic cool people coose Yeah, stand by of
Speaker 2: the show. Well, yeah, I mean thing you could plug.
Speaker 2: I guess you'd just plugged her.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I do a podcast, but it could happen here.
Speaker 3: It's also on cool Zone Media. You can listen to
Speaker 3: it by typing it could happen here podcast into your
Speaker 3: machine as search as the Internet and it will come
Speaker 3: up and you will find a podcast every day. And
Speaker 3: I am writing a book for ak Press about anarchist
Speaker 3: at War that involves some of the people we've spoken
Speaker 3: about today, and you can read it eventually when I
Speaker 3: finish it.
Speaker 2: Does that have a working title?
Speaker 3: So I wanted to do We renounce everything but victory,
Speaker 3: which is the last words that Buenaventors Luti spoke well,
Speaker 3: which I think is cool but still unsure. I always
Speaker 3: feel like any any really cool speech which is attributed
Speaker 3: to de Ruti, you have to work really hard to
Speaker 3: ascertain if he actually said that or anything like it,
Speaker 3: or some Dutch dude made up.
Speaker 2: I know, because his best quote wasn't actually probably said
Speaker 2: by him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I don't care.
Speaker 2: He would have said it.
Speaker 3: Fuck it, yeah, fuck it, yeah, he he hated a fascist,
Speaker 3: and yeah, there's a new there's a new quote growing
Speaker 3: in her hearts.
Speaker 2: It's growing in anyway. I have a book coming out
Speaker 2: in September. You can pre order it. I'm the Kickstarter
Speaker 2: is done, but I'm still signing book plates for all
Speaker 2: of the pre orders that go through Firestorm Books. The
Speaker 2: book is called The Sapling Cage That September twenty fourth.
Speaker 2: It's about a young trans witch who goes off and
Speaker 2: joins the Witches, which implies that she didn't start as
Speaker 2: a witch, which is true. She didn't even start off
Speaker 2: knowing that she was a girl.
Speaker 1: I'm really enjoying it. Oh yeah, cool, that makes it
Speaker 1: surfe endos my. It's my current plane book where I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, I need to be distracted from the fact
Speaker 1: that I'm in this horrible metal death trap.
Speaker 2: Let's escape to another world.
Speaker 3: That's where Margaret's books are always stocked in tiny submarines
Speaker 3: that billionaires go on.
Speaker 1: Now, oh yeah, they give that to them instead of like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, something that could help them survive, like
Speaker 1: maybe not getting in one of those.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a brain, They're going to get down to the
Speaker 2: bottom and be like, wait a second, I've been living
Speaker 2: my life all wrong. This capitalism thing is terrible for people.
Speaker 2: But by then it's too late they hear the rivets popping.
Speaker 2: I should mention that Margaret I am doing. I did
Speaker 2: a translation for Margaret Strange in a Tangled Wilderness zine
Speaker 2: as well, which that'll be out at some point to
Speaker 2: our Patreon backers and on our website Tangled Wilderness dot org.
Speaker 2: I'm part of a collectively run publisher called Strangers in
Speaker 2: a Tangledilderness and we are publishing some of James translations
Speaker 2: about the Spanish of war and how people romanticize it
Speaker 2: too much, including us. Yes, and we'll see you on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
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