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Speaker 1: I fucking hate headphones. Still behind the bastards, And we

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Speaker 1: just spent another like forty five minutes having to figure

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Speaker 1: out how to reconnect the earbuds were using for this.

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Speaker 1: Very frustrating. But you know what also is frustrating, it's

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Speaker 1: frustrating to live under a dictatorship also, And in a way,

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Speaker 1: isn't bluetooth a kind of authoritarianism? I don't know. We're

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Speaker 1: going to do part two of our episode, Kushenko, and

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Speaker 1: who is your gus? You have to introduce Jesus. I'm

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Speaker 1: just so frustrated by the headphone issues that I forgot

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Speaker 1: to introduce the person who fixed the headphone issues, Local youth,

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Speaker 1: Garrison Davis. Yeah, that's my that's my new Twitter handles,

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Speaker 1: and locally, it's not at hungry about tie from Twitter.

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Speaker 1: Tear gas proof Garrison, Hi, local youth headphones are terrible. Look, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that would be good until I'm no longer I know

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Speaker 1: what he was around that. I don't know that your youth.

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Speaker 1: That could be your TikTok handle for however many more

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Speaker 1: days Trump allows TikTok contact me to be a yeah, right, yeah, okay, alright,

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Speaker 1: we're moving on right now, right now, right now, God

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Speaker 1: damn it. Okay, So we talked about in the last

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Speaker 1: episode how Lukashenko is most well named. No nickname was Vodka,

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Speaker 1: which kind of means daddy, which is a little weird.

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Speaker 1: I just daddy, ladies. Uh yeah, no, not that kind

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Speaker 1: of dad, Maybe that kind of daddy. His opponents, though,

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Speaker 1: have another nickname for him that basically translates to farm

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Speaker 1: Hitler that sounds more fun. Yeah, yeah, which is a

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Speaker 1: fun nickname. And speaking of Hitler, like any self respecting autocrat,

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Speaker 1: Lukashenko has a history of saying really weird things about Hitler.

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Speaker 1: Um are yeah, kind of baffling. On one occasion, the

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Speaker 1: Bell Larusian dictator told an interviewer quote, Hitler created a

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Speaker 1: powerful Germany owing to the strong presidential power. After all,

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Speaker 1: the German order has been developing for centuries. Under Hitler,

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Speaker 1: this process reached its highest point. This is how we

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Speaker 1: understand the presidential republic and the role of the president. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's that's that's that's not not problematic. Yeah when when

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Speaker 1: I when I become president of every country, I will

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Speaker 1: make sure to model my presidency after Hitler. I prefer

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Speaker 1: to that. I prefer to be a strong president like Hitler,

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Speaker 1: a guy with whom I have less disagreements than you

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Speaker 1: might expect. Obviously, these remarks caused a bit of a

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Speaker 1: stir um, as it ought to when your head of

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Speaker 1: state compares himself favorably to Hitler. Lukashenko found it necessary

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Speaker 1: to justify himself by semi backpedaling and telling people that

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Speaker 1: he thought Hitler was quote a real fascist, a real

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Speaker 1: idiot in power who destroyed a lot of people. But

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Speaker 1: and this is where he goes wrong. Whatever that and

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Speaker 1: then at a but yeah, you know you're doing with

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Speaker 1: just write a lot of people ended there, don't add

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Speaker 1: the butt. But he continues, but managed to unite the

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Speaker 1: nation by means of tough policy. At that stage, the

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Speaker 1: result was obvious. Therefore, there is no need to reproach

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Speaker 1: me that we wished to have the serious tough power

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Speaker 1: in Belarus. Um, the result was obvious. I don't know

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Speaker 1: if we saw the same obvious thing and the results there, Alexander,

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Speaker 1: But yes, Lukashenko has one other weird Hitler statement, uh

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Speaker 1: that he's repeated a number of times, which is the

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Speaker 1: line not everything Hitler did was bad, which again you

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Speaker 1: shouldn't need to point out. You don't need to say that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like it's one of those things. Yes, we could split

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Speaker 1: hairs and discuss the extent to which the Nazi Party

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Speaker 1: deserves credit for the auto bon or whatever, you know,

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Speaker 1: but it really isn't important. But here we go this. Honestly,

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Speaker 1: Hitler did do one good thing. That's that's killing Hitler

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Speaker 1: was the one. Yeah, that was the only thing he

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Speaker 1: did that. Uh other governments had proved unable to do

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Speaker 1: so far. Um, yeah, gotta give him credit, Gotta give

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Speaker 1: him credit for that. Uh So yeah, anyway, Lukashenko weird,

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Speaker 1: weird Hitler opinions. So yeah. Lukashenko repeatedly admits to having

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Speaker 1: authoritarian tendencies, but he also again gets really pissed when

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Speaker 1: people call him a dictator. In two thousand twelve, Germany's

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Speaker 1: foreign minister Guido Westervel used the term dictator to describe

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Speaker 1: Lukashenko's regime. Um, and I should note here that Guido

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Speaker 1: is homosexual. And the fact that I'm noting that he's

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Speaker 1: homosexual is not a good sign for what's about to

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Speaker 1: come next, because as soon as Guido called Lukashenko a dictator,

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Speaker 1: Lukeshenko responded, better to be a dictator than gay, which

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Speaker 1: is like a ninth grade level. That is ninth grade

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Speaker 1: in two thousand and four. It's a very four school grade. No,

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Speaker 1: but at least I'm not gay. Yeah, you're yeah, it's good. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's literally the thing that like he moved on

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Speaker 1: from at like age fourteen. Uh, when I was a kid.

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Speaker 1: Your generation is much better about that sort of little Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So in another interview, Lukashenko made it clear that he's

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Speaker 1: capable of some nuance when it comes to LGBT issues. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote now from an interview he gave

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Speaker 1: to the Independent lesbians are bad, but I do not. Again,

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Speaker 1: that's a great clause to start us out with. He

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Speaker 1: has a lot of good add the word, but it

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Speaker 1: seems to be a recurring theme. Lesbians are bad, but

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Speaker 1: I do not condemn them as with gays. This is

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Speaker 1: not my understanding. I think it's absolutely unacceptable and negative. Okay,

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Speaker 1: that's good. So at least he makes a distinction. He

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Speaker 1: is fine with leslie, he's not fine. Lesbians. They're not great.

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to condemn them. There used to take

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Speaker 1: a strong anti lesbian state. I think they're hot. Those

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Speaker 1: gays I look at I feel fine condemning those. Yeah, again,

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Speaker 1: Lukashenko is like a lot of people. You grew up

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Speaker 1: with your small southern community. Anyway, Lukashenko's cultural conservatives and

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Speaker 1: manifest itself in his attitudes towards the Russian Orthodox Church,

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Speaker 1: summed up by the statement he made to a church

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Speaker 1: patriarch quote, thank god our church does not suffer from

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Speaker 1: the infections that have crushed the Western church. He's referring

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Speaker 1: to the Catholic Church. There. We have heard it all. Pedophilia, gainnus, environmentalism.

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Speaker 1: What the hell is going on? The trifecta of pedophilia,

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Speaker 1: gainness and environmentalists the three evils of society. Yeah, you're

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Speaker 1: getting sick here too. So I think that the Orthodox

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Speaker 1: Church and state are not working well enough here. We

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Speaker 1: cannot afford to lose a whole generation of people. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we can't afford to lose that to environmentalism and environmentalism

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Speaker 1: and its cousin gainness. You couldn't really just ruin the

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Speaker 1: youth with those, yeah. Uh. In two thousand fourteen, after

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Speaker 1: Russia's annexation of Crimea, Lukashenko offered to share control over

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Speaker 1: a United Russia slash Belarus with Vladimir Putin telling an

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Speaker 1: interviewer on Ukrainian TV, I told Putin that after the

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Speaker 1: Crimea annexation, people might no longer call me Europe's less dictator. Um. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And I don't know. It's interesting because he also held

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Speaker 1: like piece a piece SMA in Minsk that helped bring

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Speaker 1: him closer to NATO over the whole issue. He kept

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Speaker 1: doing that whole weird like jumping into both sides with

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Speaker 1: both feet sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't

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Speaker 1: pretend to have any particularly deep sight into Lukashenko's mind

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Speaker 1: and like who he is as a person, because he

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Speaker 1: kind of plays a lot of his ship pretty close

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Speaker 1: to the vest. But studying him you do really get

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Speaker 1: the opinion that he thinks it's important to be seen

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Speaker 1: as legitimately popular. Um. After in two thousand six, after

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Speaker 1: a blatantly false election gave him eighty six percent of

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Speaker 1: the vote, in the international community, you know, decried the

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Speaker 1: fact that he was falsifying the elections. He actually admitted

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Speaker 1: to falsifying the results of the election, um, but kind

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Speaker 1: of lied about the direction in which he faked things, saying, quote, yes,

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Speaker 1: we falsified the results. I've already told this to Westerners

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Speaker 1: In fact, ninety three and a half percent of ballots

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Speaker 1: were for President Lukashenko. People say this is not a

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Speaker 1: European results, so he changed it to this truly happened.

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Speaker 1: So his argument is like, people are accusing me of

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Speaker 1: lying and falsifying an election. The way to respond to

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Speaker 1: this is to say, yes, I lied and falsified an election,

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Speaker 1: but just to make myself seem less popular. Um, that's good.

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Speaker 1: I don't think that has the impact that he thinks

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Speaker 1: it has. No, it's not it's not a good way

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Speaker 1: to build up trust. No. Um. Outside of the official propaganda,

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Speaker 1: a series of local rumors have propped up around Lukashenko.

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Speaker 1: The most common one is that he's mentally ill, suffering

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Speaker 1: from a variant of anti social personality disorder called mosaic psychopathy.

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Speaker 1: His opponents will generally declare that Stalin, Hitler, and mau

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Speaker 1: were all diagnosed with the same disorder, and this is

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Speaker 1: like it's a meme in Belarusian sort of opposition groups.

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Speaker 1: But I don't think it's true at all. For one thing,

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Speaker 1: I on think he's been diagnosed with anything. I know Hitler,

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Speaker 1: Stalin and Mao weren't diagnosed with anything, and Hitler Stalin, Mao,

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Speaker 1: and Lukashenko are all like broad the different kinds of shitty. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they all they all definitely, they're not all the same

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Speaker 1: type of dictator. No, No, they're not very different. And

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Speaker 1: in fact, if you're picking Hitler, Stalin and now you're

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Speaker 1: picking like three guys who are actually like the most

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Speaker 1: different three dictators like Stalin and Saddam same kind of guy. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, but but Hitler, Stalin, maw all pretty different

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Speaker 1: dudes in terms of the way they utilized power and

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Speaker 1: the way that they came into power. Weird that he

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Speaker 1: picks those. I guess they it's just like they're the

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Speaker 1: they're the big dictators. You could add Musolini there, I guess,

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Speaker 1: but I guess Musolini is a little bit similar to Hitler.

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Speaker 1: Mussolini is the most similar. More is like pretty similar

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Speaker 1: to Lukashenko comparatively, Like he's closer to Mussolini than he

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Speaker 1: is to Hitler, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, um yeah, so

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Speaker 1: I don't know whatever. Um. Alexander Lukashenko does have a wife,

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Speaker 1: but she very conspicuously doesn't carry out the job of

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Speaker 1: first Lady. Belarus has no equivalent to Asthma assad or

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Speaker 1: Melani A. Trump Uh. This is also in line with

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Speaker 1: traditions for Eastern European despots. Stalin was conspicuously single for

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Speaker 1: most of his time in power. There are rumors that

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Speaker 1: Lukashenko's wife lives in a monastery or a mental institution. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And likewise, there are rumors about his children. Were not

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Speaker 1: really sure how many he has. People are pretty confident

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Speaker 1: that about three of his sons, Nikolai, Dmitri and Victor um.

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Speaker 1: And it's kind of worth noting that while these guys

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Speaker 1: are sometimes portrayed as particularly his youngest son Nikolai, Like

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Speaker 1: we talked about this on the Children of Bastard's episode,

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Speaker 1: he's the kid who got given a golden handgun. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: his his Putin gave him a gigantic golden handgun that

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Speaker 1: he carries everywhere. So there's all these very funny pictures

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Speaker 1: of him, like meeting the President of Venezuela, which mess

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Speaker 1: of Bulgian gun and his his little little kids suit

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Speaker 1: for him. It's very funny him. It's exactly what you

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Speaker 1: do if you were eleven years old, got to and like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you can carry everywhere you want, but it's a giant

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Speaker 1: gold it's awesome. Yeah, but so there's this kind of

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Speaker 1: idea that because of the ship that that Nikolai poll's

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Speaker 1: um and and because of like the reputation he has,

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Speaker 1: that he's being groomed as the the like following in

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Speaker 1: his dad's footsteps. And this is actually pretty heavily debated

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Speaker 1: by people who know anything about the country. There's a

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Speaker 1: lot of argument as to whether or not Lukashenko's children

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Speaker 1: are kind of expecting to follow in his footsteps. For

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Speaker 1: his part, the president himself has repeatedly publicly stated that

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Speaker 1: his children don't want to to go into politics and

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Speaker 1: that he doesn't consider them airs um. And Yeah, nobody

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Speaker 1: really knows how true this is, but a lot of

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Speaker 1: reputable academics do think that he's kind of being broadly

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Speaker 1: sincere there um and yeah, it's it's hard to say

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Speaker 1: kind of what he wanted for the future. Prior to

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Speaker 1: this last election, in the late oughts, that were persistent

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Speaker 1: rumors that he felt trapped as dictator of Belarus and

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Speaker 1: kind of was looking for a way out but couldn't

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Speaker 1: find it. Uh. And I'm gonna quote now from an

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Speaker 1: article in Deutsche Well uh to uh kind of elaborate

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Speaker 1: on that Lukashenko's biggest challenge, meanwhile, still lies ahead his

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Speaker 1: exit from the political stage. He recently announced that presidential

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Speaker 1: elections will be held as planned, and he's expecting to

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Speaker 1: run again. In his biography on Lukashenko, Valerie Karboalovitch described

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Speaker 1: the leader as a hostage trapped in a political system

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Speaker 1: of his own making. Lukashenko, he writes, has no choice

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Speaker 1: but to try to remain in power indefinitely, with no

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Speaker 1: viable successor in sight. Karbolovitch says Lukashenko's electoral defeat would

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Speaker 1: lead to radical regime change. Um. So that's interesting. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I wonder. I always wonder how much to believe it

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Speaker 1: when people talk about like these guys wanting a way

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Speaker 1: out or being trapped, because it does happen. Like Saddam

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Speaker 1: before the invasion was like wind all the time about

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Speaker 1: how he didn't want to be dictator anymore. Um, And

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Speaker 1: you do have to think that, like for the guys

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Speaker 1: who kind of are less ideological about it and just

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Speaker 1: wanted power, there's a certain point at which you're old

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Speaker 1: and you're rich, and maybe you just like to enjoy

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Speaker 1: being old and rich and not have to constantly worry

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Speaker 1: about being overthrown um by angry activists. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's also like he has a credible there's

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Speaker 1: another person that can run the country, which is his

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Speaker 1: opponent the election. So if he wants to step down,

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Speaker 1: he can. He doesn't need to be dictator forever. But

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Speaker 1: here's the problem. Once you've been the dictator and you've

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Speaker 1: had a bunch of people disappeared and executed for exercising

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Speaker 1: their political rights, um, and you've stolen huge amounts of

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Speaker 1: money from the country, then if you leave power, you're

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Speaker 1: in a little bit of a pickle. Yeah right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's the cage of your own making. Yeah, that's the case.

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Speaker 1: The cage of your own making is made with the

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Speaker 1: bones of your enemies because at a certain point you've

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Speaker 1: killed too many people to um, to retire peacefully. Um.

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Speaker 1: Because we don't just have an island where dictators can go. Well,

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Speaker 1: we do, and it's Jamaica. But um, I don't think

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Speaker 1: he likes the heat. So yeah, it's he's he's in

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Speaker 1: a complicated situation. UM. And as with any controversial political leader,

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Speaker 1: there's numerous rumors about how Lukashenko fox both his detractors

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Speaker 1: and supporters. Close your close your ears at this point, Garrett,

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Speaker 1: I'm covering my ears. There we go, both his detract

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Speaker 1: we know that the teens don't don't ever hear about

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Speaker 1: dictators um doing. I don't know, I don't know. I

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Speaker 1: lost track of the joke here. Um yeah. So both

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Speaker 1: of his detracts, both his detractors and supporters feel it

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Speaker 1: necessary to tell stories about Lukashenko's supernatural, uh sexual and

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Speaker 1: erotic sexual prowess and his titanic erotic appetite. So like,

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Speaker 1: both people who like him and hate him need you

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Speaker 1: to know how fun hungry he is, which is kind

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Speaker 1: of a weird. I don't know. I guess that's just Belarus.

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Speaker 1: Um yeah. One tabloid newspaper clearly put like pushing a

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Speaker 1: government line of propaganda described to the president's described an

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Speaker 1: alleged adulterous relationship by the president, and wrote that Lukashenko

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Speaker 1: is the only candidate who was potent like is basically like, look,

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Speaker 1: he's he focks around on his wife because he's the

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Speaker 1: only person in Belarusian politics, um who can get it,

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Speaker 1: which is an interesting line to take. Um yeah. And thirteen,

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Speaker 1: Lukashenko was asked by his Phobota journalist how long he

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Speaker 1: felt his political career would last. This was a polite

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Speaker 1: way of asking do you plan to be dictator for life?

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Speaker 1: Lukashenko responded, if people will elect me, then you have

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Speaker 1: will have Lukashenko for as many terms as you elect him, if,

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Speaker 1: of course, health will allow him. He then added, if

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Speaker 1: you have any doubts about my health, let's take skates

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Speaker 1: and skis and tomorrow we will try. Let's run ten kilometers.

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Speaker 1: If you come first, then tomorrow you will be president. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I love the system, dictatorship of the marathon. It's my

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Speaker 1: favorite political system. It would be cool if I could

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Speaker 1: just challenge the president to fucking tin k um and

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Speaker 1: then this is what I hope that I would. I

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Speaker 1: would so beat the president at any k The thing

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Speaker 1: is now is because the election here is such a

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Speaker 1: big mass, we could just have Biden challenge Trump to

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Speaker 1: push up contest and then the winner just be president.

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Speaker 1: I mean, has he kind of always he already had

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Speaker 1: he already talked about that, But now that could just

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Speaker 1: be the way we win the presidency. I don't have

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Speaker 1: up and see what happens. No, I don't think either

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Speaker 1: of them could. I don't know if I think either

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Speaker 1: of them could do one good push up. I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: be honest, I don't think so either. But if we want,

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Speaker 1: they're so trash, they're so old in trash. But Kamala,

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Speaker 1: Kamala could could do more push ups than Pence, I'm

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Speaker 1: fairly sure. Yeah, probably, um but no, but they can't

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Speaker 1: be on the stage together because it's against his religion

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Speaker 1: to sweat near a woman he's not married to. Um So,

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Speaker 1: I don't think he's going to agree to that in

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Speaker 1: the first place. Uh So, Yeah, that that's a weird one.

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Speaker 1: Um Now, I think the best Lukashenko propaganda I've come

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Speaker 1: across is again from that Belarush Country study guide that

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Speaker 1: was produced with help from the Belarusian government. Uh And

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Speaker 1: I wanted to read a few fun, fun Lukashenko facts

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Speaker 1: that they put out in their like broken Belarusian to

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Speaker 1: English translated text, because it's it's fun. Lukashenko has always

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Speaker 1: willingly indulged in sport. The head of the state is

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Speaker 1: sure that enormous psychological strain he undergoes every day, a

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Speaker 1: nervous stress, can only be removed by activity going in

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Speaker 1: for sport. Yeah. Although every minute of President's time schedule

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Speaker 1: is entered in the records, he tries to find time

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Speaker 1: and meets the state affairs to come up to a bookshelf.

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Speaker 1: To come up to a bookshelf, reading books for him

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Speaker 1: is a most pleasant occupation. He obtained satisfaction whenever he

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Speaker 1: gets acquainted with technological novelties, with latest achievements of the

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Speaker 1: scientific mind. It seems like a real eccentric fell out.

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Speaker 1: You obtain satisfaction from a technological novelty earlier today and

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Speaker 1: then it broke Amedia never my headphone. Yeah. I love

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Speaker 1: the way they describe coming. When he needs a relaxation,

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Speaker 1: he comes up to a bookshelf. That's what I do

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Speaker 1: when I do you feel relaxed? I go up to

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Speaker 1: my bookshelf, and for him is the most pleasant occupation.

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Speaker 1: So over the last twenty some years, Lukashenko's political agenda

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Speaker 1: has evolved from a vague platform of anti corruption to

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Speaker 1: more or less supporting return to the old Soviet economic

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Speaker 1: system with minor market elements. The private sector has been

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Speaker 1: kept pretty consistently at of the GDP, and Belarus's industry

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Speaker 1: has kept chugging along, duing large part to Russian support. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Not only did Russia cell cheap oil to Belarus, but

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Speaker 1: they bought the Soviet style products still made in its factory.

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Speaker 1: So like all of the like the like the Kirkland

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Speaker 1: brand products in Russia are all from Belarus. So like

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Speaker 1: you can get like a stove that's made somewhere else

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Speaker 1: in the world, or if you want a cheap stove

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Speaker 1: that just works, you get the BELARUSI get the Belarus brand.

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Speaker 1: Yeah and yeah they were like and that that's part

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Speaker 1: of what has kept their economy chugging along. UM. So Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Lukashenko pretty much based his entire political capital on stability UM.

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Speaker 1: But most of that stability has been an illusion. For example,

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Speaker 1: for most of his time in power, Belarus shot to

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Speaker 1: provide workers with an average monthly wage of around five

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Speaker 1: dred u s dollars. Unfortunately, the state was rarely able

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Speaker 1: to afford more than about half of this, so they

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Speaker 1: came to rely on regular loans from Russia, particularly in

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Speaker 1: years like two thousand eleven, when Belarusian inflation topped a

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Speaker 1: hundred and nine percent. Oh good, Yeah, that's not good

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Speaker 1: in amounts of inflation, UM. But Russia said no sometimes,

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Speaker 1: which is again part of why, like Lukashenko started making

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Speaker 1: more overtures for the EU UM and he's also gotten

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Speaker 1: loans from the I m F and the European Union um,

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Speaker 1: which means he's kind of in debt to everybody a

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Speaker 1: little bit um, which is, I don't know, in an

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Speaker 1: interesting situation to be in now. In general, Putin and

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Speaker 1: Lukashenko have had kind of a more of a tumultuous

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Speaker 1: relationship than most media tends to present. Belarus and Russia

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Speaker 1: are on paper, part of that economic union that was

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Speaker 1: always meant to progress, being a political one, and it

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Speaker 1: first folks assumed that Lukashenko was a puppet of Putin's

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Speaker 1: kind of inevitably bringing his country into this like union

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Speaker 1: of Russia and Belarus. But over the years, Lukashenko's like

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Speaker 1: repeatedly pulled back, like right at the moment where they

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Speaker 1: might take a step forward towards that. And again it's

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Speaker 1: kind of like he's been a little bit of a

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Speaker 1: cock tease with Belarus, like, Oh yeah, we're totally gonna

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Speaker 1: like we're gonna get hitched. Don't worry, don't worry. I

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Speaker 1: just gotta go see I gotta go see my like

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Speaker 1: Bay over the the I m F. We're just gonna

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Speaker 1: like hang out for a night, like but it doesn't

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Speaker 1: mean anything. Yeah. So last Christmas, Lukashenko presented Putin with

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Speaker 1: a gift that some people see as a fuck you

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Speaker 1: to Russia over the fact that they started like demanding

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Speaker 1: repayment of things and kind of anyway, the gift was

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Speaker 1: three sacks of potatoes and a bunch of like rendered

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Speaker 1: fork pork fat um, which is a weird thing to

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Speaker 1: like bring to your buddies house as a Christmas gift. Um. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Putin seems to broadly be kind of have been relatively

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Speaker 1: pissed in recent years, particularly in the last year. Um

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Speaker 1: And has responded by jacking up oil prices against towards

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Speaker 1: Belarus and fucking with the state of their exports to Russia,

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Speaker 1: which has kind of helped to created the Belarusian economy. Now,

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Speaker 1: all of this has meant that for the last few

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Speaker 1: years Belarus has been anything but stable. Lukashenko has continued

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Speaker 1: to talk a good game about socialism, but he's reverted

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Speaker 1: to the same sort of austerity measures that we see

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Speaker 1: in western countries. He's raised the age for drawing out

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Speaker 1: your pension basically like raised the retirement age. Uh. He

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Speaker 1: started permitting moderate unemployment. It used to be like impossible

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Speaker 1: basically to be unemployed in Belarusia are belarus And Um, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he's allowed unemployment as a result of the fact that

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Speaker 1: there just was not enough money to force it. Um.

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Speaker 1: And that's brought you know, political turmoil because people are

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Speaker 1: seeing themselves losing access to some of these like state

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Speaker 1: institutions that had at least been like kind of a

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Speaker 1: sav on the fact that they didn't have much freedom. Um.

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Speaker 1: Since two thousand eight, lukashenko solution to this has been

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Speaker 1: to periodically loosen up the rules and allows political opponents

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Speaker 1: to organize and advocate for whatever it is they happen

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Speaker 1: to want. Is like a safety valve. You know, things

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Speaker 1: are getting worse and worse, so I might as well

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Speaker 1: give them an opportunity a little bit of esteem. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and you also get to figure out who's the best

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Speaker 1: at organizing resistance and throw them in dark cells. Um.

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Speaker 1: And he kind of developed he had a history of

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Speaker 1: being relatively smart about approaching some of these protest movements. So,

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Speaker 1: for example, when mine workers went on strike over delay

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Speaker 1: in wage payments and demanded to be allowed to join

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Speaker 1: a new non state owned union, Lukashenko made sure that

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Speaker 1: they got their money and they got a fifty percent raise.

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Speaker 1: But then as soon as that was done, he fired

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Speaker 1: all of the leaders who had organized the strike, and

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Speaker 1: he also fired all of the heads of the new union. Likewise, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but you know what is really healthy, Sophie, I do, Robert,

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Speaker 1: I think I do. Yeah, the products and services that

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Speaker 1: support this podcast extremely healthy, you know, yeah, very healthy.

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Speaker 1: Never fired the head of a mining strike. Well maybe

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Speaker 1: maybe probably no comment, We're back, so uh yeah. Lukashenko,

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Speaker 1: so he was. He kind of developed over time a

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Speaker 1: pretty canny way of responding to dissent um. Every now

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Speaker 1: and then he would loosen the rules for political activism

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Speaker 1: to sort of let people gather in the streets more.

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Speaker 1: But he never actually changed the laws so that at

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Speaker 1: any point in time he could just like have his

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Speaker 1: police start enforcing the laws again. Um. And that gave

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Speaker 1: him an opportunity to like, uh kind of trap people

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Speaker 1: and funk with them, um, but also do the safety

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Speaker 1: velops sort of thing when he needed to. I'm gonna

420
00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:46,600
Speaker 1: quote now from a write up in the Carnegie Moscow

421
00:23:46,760 --> 00:23:50,119
Speaker 1: Center about the way in which the regime dealt with dissent. Quote.

422
00:23:50,760 --> 00:23:53,159
Speaker 1: The resume has several tools to minimize the likelihood of

423
00:23:53,200 --> 00:23:55,639
Speaker 1: mass protests that might escalate to the point of threatening

424
00:23:55,640 --> 00:23:59,240
Speaker 1: its survival. First, a significant proportion of Belarusians are excluded

425
00:23:59,280 --> 00:24:02,880
Speaker 1: from politics, is a consequence of the state sectors economic dominance.

426
00:24:03,240 --> 00:24:06,040
Speaker 1: The country has a widely used system whereby employers are

427
00:24:06,080 --> 00:24:08,680
Speaker 1: not obliged to extend labor contracts when they run out,

428
00:24:08,920 --> 00:24:11,440
Speaker 1: usually after one year, so the authorities have a powerful

429
00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:15,919
Speaker 1: lever lever for influencing the majority of the working population. Similarly,

430
00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:18,920
Speaker 1: students risk being expelled from institutions of higher education, the

431
00:24:19,000 --> 00:24:21,240
Speaker 1: majority of which your state run, if they express political

432
00:24:21,320 --> 00:24:26,080
Speaker 1: satisfact dissatisfaction. So yeah, it's a pretty pretty sweet situation

433
00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:28,679
Speaker 1: when you own the state and the state is everything um,

434
00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:31,920
Speaker 1: and you can just shut down people's lives. Maybe maybe

435
00:24:32,240 --> 00:24:35,840
Speaker 1: one body shouldn't control all those things. I don't know. Now.

436
00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:38,840
Speaker 1: Protests are allowed in Belarus, but they have to receive

437
00:24:38,920 --> 00:24:42,600
Speaker 1: state approval first. Yeah, my favorite type of protest is

438
00:24:42,640 --> 00:24:44,560
Speaker 1: state approved approach. Yes, when they tell you where you

439
00:24:44,640 --> 00:24:47,639
Speaker 1: can be um, which they always want to do, like

440
00:24:47,800 --> 00:24:50,680
Speaker 1: the police and the authorities always want to be able

441
00:24:50,720 --> 00:24:53,000
Speaker 1: to tell people where you can protest. Yeah, it's something

442
00:24:53,040 --> 00:24:55,000
Speaker 1: we're seeing in Portland. A lot is still just close

443
00:24:55,040 --> 00:24:58,040
Speaker 1: off areas of gentime, Like, Nope, you can't proticey anymore. Yeah,

444
00:24:58,160 --> 00:25:00,119
Speaker 1: it's a thing you have to be really unguardful or

445
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:02,320
Speaker 1: because you know, it's exactly the kind of thing you

446
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:04,719
Speaker 1: do if you want to be able to run an

447
00:25:04,720 --> 00:25:08,119
Speaker 1: authoritarian state and stop people from resisting it. Uh. In

448
00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:12,320
Speaker 1: two thousand from seventeen, Belarus's rules about when people could

449
00:25:12,359 --> 00:25:16,359
Speaker 1: protest and where we're briefly loosened. Um. And basically people

450
00:25:16,440 --> 00:25:20,439
Speaker 1: just got fined for partaking an unapproved protests rather than arrested. Uh.

451
00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:22,880
Speaker 1: And this state of affairs lasted for a little less

452
00:25:22,880 --> 00:25:26,040
Speaker 1: than two years until Lukashenko instituted a new law that

453
00:25:26,320 --> 00:25:30,520
Speaker 1: taxed the unemployed. Um, just the unemployed, who he called

454
00:25:30,640 --> 00:25:34,959
Speaker 1: social parasites. When protests against this got serious, he cracked

455
00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:37,600
Speaker 1: down again and started stopped letting people go out of

456
00:25:37,640 --> 00:25:44,320
Speaker 1: the streets without getting arrested. Um. Yeah, so that's interesting. UM.

457
00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:49,399
Speaker 1: Lukashenko has shown sort of a a habit of giving

458
00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:53,280
Speaker 1: in and giving concessions to protesters in certain situations in

459
00:25:53,359 --> 00:25:55,440
Speaker 1: which he felt like it was kind of necessary. So

460
00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:58,000
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven, drivers who got angry at a

461
00:25:58,080 --> 00:26:02,080
Speaker 1: rise in gas prices blocked men central thoroughfare, claiming that

462
00:26:02,119 --> 00:26:04,600
Speaker 1: their vehicles had broken down. A bunch of them were

463
00:26:04,680 --> 00:26:06,959
Speaker 1: detained and fined. But on the same day the president

464
00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:10,159
Speaker 1: lowered the fuel price. Now the fuel price crept up

465
00:26:10,160 --> 00:26:13,000
Speaker 1: again very quickly thereafter, back to the levels that had

466
00:26:13,040 --> 00:26:16,080
Speaker 1: been before the protests. Um. And he basically just used

467
00:26:16,119 --> 00:26:18,879
Speaker 1: that as an opportunity to like stop the protest, temporarily,

468
00:26:19,240 --> 00:26:21,320
Speaker 1: throw all of the people who organized them in prison,

469
00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:23,920
Speaker 1: and then gradually raise the fuel tax back up to

470
00:26:23,960 --> 00:26:27,840
Speaker 1: the level it had been before. Um. Yeah, very very sneaky,

471
00:26:28,040 --> 00:26:30,840
Speaker 1: very sneaky. The kind of the smart dictator way to

472
00:26:30,880 --> 00:26:32,600
Speaker 1: do is the smart wave if you want to be dictator,

473
00:26:32,960 --> 00:26:34,760
Speaker 1: a smart way to handle the protests. Yeah, it's risky

474
00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:37,280
Speaker 1: to confront protesters in the street and beat the ship

475
00:26:37,320 --> 00:26:39,600
Speaker 1: out of them, because that can lead to huge mobs

476
00:26:39,640 --> 00:26:42,240
Speaker 1: of protest. Yeah, and then more people will be on

477
00:26:42,240 --> 00:26:44,240
Speaker 1: the street. Whereas you give them what they want, you

478
00:26:44,359 --> 00:26:46,639
Speaker 1: throw their leaders in prison, and then you fuck them

479
00:26:46,680 --> 00:26:48,240
Speaker 1: over again and see if they're going to be bold

480
00:26:48,359 --> 00:26:51,680
Speaker 1: enough to come back out. Smart guy. Likewise, President Lukashenko

481
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:54,639
Speaker 1: is deeply cautious about promoting charismatic or ambitious men to

482
00:26:54,760 --> 00:26:58,280
Speaker 1: positions in government. Um. The only thing more dangerous than

483
00:26:58,359 --> 00:27:01,439
Speaker 1: being a protester in Belarus is being a politician who

484
00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:04,080
Speaker 1: works with the president and stands out in some way.

485
00:27:04,600 --> 00:27:08,960
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote again from that Carnegie Russia piece quote.

486
00:27:09,400 --> 00:27:11,600
Speaker 1: Those who occupy senior posts know this and try not

487
00:27:11,720 --> 00:27:14,840
Speaker 1: to stand out, give too many interviews, or develop public profiles.

488
00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:18,040
Speaker 1: Lukashenko's aim is to ensure that neither elites nor ordinary

489
00:27:18,080 --> 00:27:20,560
Speaker 1: citizens get the impression that someone has a stable hold

490
00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:23,040
Speaker 1: on the number two position in the power vertical. There

491
00:27:23,119 --> 00:27:25,159
Speaker 1: is no clear air or favorite in the eyes of

492
00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:28,000
Speaker 1: the elite, and one should not be allowed to appear. Moreover,

493
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:31,000
Speaker 1: to prevent officials from thinking that they are becoming untouchable

494
00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:35,040
Speaker 1: and to keep them in line, Lukashenko regularly initiates criminal cases,

495
00:27:35,160 --> 00:27:37,680
Speaker 1: usually in charges of corruption against some of them. The

496
00:27:37,800 --> 00:27:39,920
Speaker 1: rare cases tend to fifteen years ago in which high

497
00:27:40,080 --> 00:27:42,879
Speaker 1: profile officials went over to the opposition, ended with various

498
00:27:42,920 --> 00:27:45,600
Speaker 1: criminal charges being brought against them. To make sure others

499
00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:48,600
Speaker 1: got the message. In this system, betraying the president's trust

500
00:27:48,760 --> 00:27:51,239
Speaker 1: is the greatest sin. It seems this country stability has

501
00:27:51,280 --> 00:27:54,320
Speaker 1: been sorely based off of this guy trying to keep

502
00:27:54,359 --> 00:27:57,280
Speaker 1: the country as boring as possible. Yeah, yeah, you really

503
00:27:57,359 --> 00:28:00,200
Speaker 1: get that like that impression from it. And that's kind

504
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:04,199
Speaker 1: of why Belarus had a hard time. Like Belarusians who

505
00:28:04,240 --> 00:28:06,920
Speaker 1: were pro like trying to actually fight against state repression

506
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:10,160
Speaker 1: have consistently had a hard time getting any getting anyone

507
00:28:10,200 --> 00:28:13,119
Speaker 1: to give a fuck, Like right now because of the

508
00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:15,600
Speaker 1: violence in the streets has been the first time anyone's

509
00:28:15,640 --> 00:28:18,600
Speaker 1: really cared about Belarus on an international level in quite

510
00:28:18,640 --> 00:28:24,040
Speaker 1: a while. Because people are terrible, um, and Lukashenko was

511
00:28:24,119 --> 00:28:26,280
Speaker 1: good at being like, he was smarter than like an

512
00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:28,960
Speaker 1: assad where it's like, oh, you don't want torture tens

513
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:30,960
Speaker 1: of thousands of people to death, you just torture the

514
00:28:31,160 --> 00:28:34,680
Speaker 1: right few dozen people and kill a handful of those people,

515
00:28:34,960 --> 00:28:38,239
Speaker 1: and everybody else gets the message and you let them

516
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:40,760
Speaker 1: do their little marching and stuff unless they go too far,

517
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:42,720
Speaker 1: and then you just you know, there has to be

518
00:28:42,880 --> 00:28:45,760
Speaker 1: enough allowed that people feel like they have a little

519
00:28:45,760 --> 00:28:48,880
Speaker 1: bit of control so that they don't fully rise up exactly. Yeah,

520
00:28:49,040 --> 00:28:51,280
Speaker 1: and he he kind of it's a balancing act, and

521
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:53,000
Speaker 1: he seemed to be pretty good at it for almost

522
00:28:53,080 --> 00:28:56,080
Speaker 1: thirty years. Um. One of the things that kind of

523
00:28:57,240 --> 00:29:02,080
Speaker 1: disrupted his ability to add a actively hide from that

524
00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:03,960
Speaker 1: or two. It was one of the things that seems

525
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:06,800
Speaker 1: to have disrupted his ability to successfully balance is the

526
00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:11,560
Speaker 1: coronavirus um. So Lukashenko made an interesting call when the

527
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:15,200
Speaker 1: virus hit, which is that he just refused to acknowledge

528
00:29:15,240 --> 00:29:18,920
Speaker 1: that it was dangerous. We've never seen this before, we

529
00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:23,480
Speaker 1: haven't like he makes the president look responsible, and yeah,

530
00:29:23,560 --> 00:29:27,120
Speaker 1: it's not it's not good. He told his people that

531
00:29:27,200 --> 00:29:29,600
Speaker 1: the virus was a mass psychosis and that if they

532
00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:32,080
Speaker 1: got sick, they should all go to the sauna and

533
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:34,680
Speaker 1: get drunk to poison the virus. Yeah. Yeah, let's all

534
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:36,520
Speaker 1: go to the sauna in a moist room where all

535
00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:39,000
Speaker 1: the airs going around. Yeah yeah, that's a great plan.

536
00:29:39,120 --> 00:29:42,520
Speaker 1: Let's drink lots of straight vodka to lower our immune systems.

537
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:46,280
Speaker 1: You get a poison of virus um. Yeah. In late May,

538
00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:49,240
Speaker 1: he insisted he'd been right not to lock down, stating,

539
00:29:49,560 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 1: you see that in the affluent West, unemployment is out

540
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:54,640
Speaker 1: of control. People are banging on pots, people want to eat.

541
00:29:54,760 --> 00:29:58,280
Speaker 1: Thank god we avoided this. We didn't shut down. You

542
00:29:58,320 --> 00:30:01,080
Speaker 1: wanna you wanna guess what happened next. I'm guessing thousands

543
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:03,120
Speaker 1: of thousands people have died. We don't know how many

544
00:30:03,160 --> 00:30:07,320
Speaker 1: people have died because it's Belarus, but the president absolutely

545
00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:13,280
Speaker 1: got coronavirus. You could see a pattern States, Russia, Brazil.

546
00:30:13,840 --> 00:30:18,200
Speaker 1: All authoritarian kind of leadership styles are so incompetent at

547
00:30:18,280 --> 00:30:20,920
Speaker 1: handling an actual crisis of this scale. And he he

548
00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:24,280
Speaker 1: absolutely refused to make any changes to his life. They

549
00:30:24,360 --> 00:30:28,160
Speaker 1: continued to hold all of his public appearances. Government meetings

550
00:30:28,240 --> 00:30:31,840
Speaker 1: continued without masks. He continued to play hockey and go

551
00:30:31,960 --> 00:30:35,440
Speaker 1: to hockey games. UM. In late March, he was interviewed

552
00:30:35,480 --> 00:30:38,960
Speaker 1: in full hockey gear uh, saying it's better to die

553
00:30:39,160 --> 00:30:43,840
Speaker 1: standing than live on your knees. Oh boy, and yeah,

554
00:30:43,880 --> 00:30:48,000
Speaker 1: then he caught the coronavirus. UM. He says he was asymptomatic,

555
00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:51,080
Speaker 1: but he does not describe being a symptomatic and he

556
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:53,960
Speaker 1: told an interviewer, I apologized for my voice. Lately, I

557
00:30:54,080 --> 00:30:56,000
Speaker 1: have to talk a lot. But the most surprising thing

558
00:30:56,080 --> 00:30:58,000
Speaker 1: is that today you're seeing a person who managed to

559
00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:02,480
Speaker 1: power through the coronavirus standing on his feet. Doctors made

560
00:31:02,520 --> 00:31:06,640
Speaker 1: this conclusion yesterday. It was asymptomatic, like I said, of

561
00:31:06,680 --> 00:31:09,200
Speaker 1: our people go through this symptom illness without symptoms. And

562
00:31:09,320 --> 00:31:11,200
Speaker 1: thank god I've managed to get into this group of

563
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:16,760
Speaker 1: asymptomatic people, which is not true. There's no he cited.

564
00:31:16,840 --> 00:31:20,600
Speaker 1: He cited no actual statistics from his health ministry or

565
00:31:20,640 --> 00:31:23,560
Speaker 1: whatever to make this claim. Um. But also he was

566
00:31:23,640 --> 00:31:27,040
Speaker 1: clearly apologizing for the fact that his throat sounded shitty,

567
00:31:28,000 --> 00:31:34,880
Speaker 1: gotten sick. Very funny. Um, not funny because an unknown

568
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:38,600
Speaker 1: number of Belarusians died from the virus. Again, we have

569
00:31:38,760 --> 00:31:41,240
Speaker 1: no actual data on how many of them got sick,

570
00:31:41,680 --> 00:31:44,600
Speaker 1: but we do know that Belarusians were so desperate at

571
00:31:44,640 --> 00:31:47,560
Speaker 1: the complete lack of support provided by their government that

572
00:31:47,640 --> 00:31:50,520
Speaker 1: they started taking to go fund me in massive numbers.

573
00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:53,000
Speaker 1: One campaign purchased more than a hundred and thirty thousand

574
00:31:53,040 --> 00:31:55,760
Speaker 1: dollars worth of respirators for doctors and nurses, which were

575
00:31:56,080 --> 00:31:59,680
Speaker 1: like sixteen dollars a piece on the streets because like

576
00:31:59,760 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 1: they're just weren't masks available. Um. So people, people have

577
00:32:03,760 --> 00:32:08,080
Speaker 1: been crowdfunding basic medical supplies for their doctors in Belarus,

578
00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 1: a supposedly socialist state, because the government just refused to

579
00:32:12,520 --> 00:32:15,960
Speaker 1: admit that the coronavirus was a thing. Um. And it

580
00:32:16,160 --> 00:32:18,719
Speaker 1: is weird that, like, you've got Belarus the closest thing

581
00:32:18,760 --> 00:32:20,960
Speaker 1: we have to the USSR left on the planet except

582
00:32:20,960 --> 00:32:24,320
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe Cuba or something. Um. And you've

583
00:32:24,360 --> 00:32:27,240
Speaker 1: got the United States, which is you know, this bastion

584
00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:30,440
Speaker 1: of capitalism. Um. And they both kind of wound up

585
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:35,760
Speaker 1: in the same position where civilians were crowdfunding doctor. This

586
00:32:35,920 --> 00:32:38,400
Speaker 1: is this. This is a sign of a perfect working

587
00:32:38,440 --> 00:32:40,920
Speaker 1: system when you have people having to use a crowdfunding

588
00:32:40,920 --> 00:32:43,360
Speaker 1: site for their medical care. This is this is a

589
00:32:43,560 --> 00:32:47,360
Speaker 1: sign that everything is everything is fine, nothing is wrong. Yeah,

590
00:32:47,600 --> 00:32:52,360
Speaker 1: it's it's great. Um. For his part, Lukashenko, yeah, refused

591
00:32:52,400 --> 00:32:55,320
Speaker 1: to cancel and like he just yeah anyway. Over the years,

592
00:32:55,880 --> 00:32:58,560
Speaker 1: Lukashenko clearly grew comfortable with the idea that his words

593
00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:01,480
Speaker 1: could manipulate and dictate reality. You know, he could change

594
00:33:01,520 --> 00:33:03,640
Speaker 1: his own birth date, like the nature of his dad

595
00:33:03,760 --> 00:33:07,040
Speaker 1: or whatever, like at a whim for whatever was politically convenient.

596
00:33:07,600 --> 00:33:09,840
Speaker 1: And again kind of like we saw with Trump, he

597
00:33:10,040 --> 00:33:12,240
Speaker 1: ran into the coronavirus, which is this thing that like

598
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:17,680
Speaker 1: you can't manipulate, you can't lie to it. Yeah, it's

599
00:33:17,760 --> 00:33:21,360
Speaker 1: just a virus and it will get you sick if

600
00:33:21,440 --> 00:33:26,520
Speaker 1: you don't take certain precautions. Um, but you know it,

601
00:33:26,840 --> 00:33:30,360
Speaker 1: he let it spread like wildfire through Belarus and that sucked. Uh.

602
00:33:30,760 --> 00:33:33,200
Speaker 1: And it happened to be also that this year was

603
00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:37,440
Speaker 1: a presidential election UM, and so the kind of campaigning

604
00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 1: season started just as the coronavirus was really biting and

605
00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:43,160
Speaker 1: the economy was hitting a nose dive, and there was

606
00:33:43,320 --> 00:33:45,840
Speaker 1: no way for him to hide the rod. Right. You can't,

607
00:33:45,920 --> 00:33:49,000
Speaker 1: as the president claim, I kept everything stable while people

608
00:33:49,080 --> 00:33:50,840
Speaker 1: are sick and out of it. It's hard to just

609
00:33:50,920 --> 00:33:54,160
Speaker 1: propaganda this one away exactly. There's a certain point at

610
00:33:54,200 --> 00:33:57,400
Speaker 1: which the lying does not work. A government poll taken

611
00:33:57,440 --> 00:34:01,160
Speaker 1: in April of found that only a third Belarus trusted

612
00:34:01,200 --> 00:34:04,880
Speaker 1: the president UM Opposition Canada and this is again a

613
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:10,799
Speaker 1: pole his own government RELI. Yeah, not great results. Opposition

614
00:34:10,880 --> 00:34:13,000
Speaker 1: candidates began to come out of the woodwork to oppose

615
00:34:13,080 --> 00:34:16,560
Speaker 1: his rule. There were three of them initially. UM. One

616
00:34:16,600 --> 00:34:19,360
Speaker 1: of them was a guy named Sergei Tekanowski who's a

617
00:34:19,400 --> 00:34:22,120
Speaker 1: famous YouTuber who grew to local fame by putting out

618
00:34:22,200 --> 00:34:25,319
Speaker 1: video's highlighting corruption and incompetence within the government. And then

619
00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:28,560
Speaker 1: there were two other like opposition politicians who were kind

620
00:34:28,600 --> 00:34:31,040
Speaker 1: of prominently running against the president and they all get

621
00:34:31,120 --> 00:34:34,680
Speaker 1: arrested almost immediately. And then which is like normal, right,

622
00:34:34,760 --> 00:34:38,400
Speaker 1: that's what happens. That's happening. Um. But then something weird happens.

623
00:34:39,040 --> 00:34:42,480
Speaker 1: The wives of all three of these opposition politicians get

624
00:34:42,560 --> 00:34:46,719
Speaker 1: together and decide to run one single campaign together. Um.

625
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:50,239
Speaker 1: So they merged their support in campaign, and they throw

626
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:53,160
Speaker 1: all of their support behind the wife of the YouTube

627
00:34:53,360 --> 00:34:57,080
Speaker 1: star who got arrested, a woman named fet Lana, and

628
00:34:57,200 --> 00:35:00,759
Speaker 1: they start running a really credible campaign. Well, in a

629
00:35:00,840 --> 00:35:03,840
Speaker 1: matter of days, they collect a hundred thousand signatures necessary

630
00:35:03,920 --> 00:35:07,840
Speaker 1: to register as a campaign with regime controlled election authorities,

631
00:35:08,280 --> 00:35:10,400
Speaker 1: and the regime lets them. And you get the feeling

632
00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:13,480
Speaker 1: it's because they thought that it's yeah, they thought it

633
00:35:13,520 --> 00:35:17,480
Speaker 1: was just like there's no chance. Yeah, would kind of

634
00:35:17,640 --> 00:35:21,839
Speaker 1: like uh crudely say something along the line like mockingly say, oh,

635
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:25,160
Speaker 1: I don't think we're ready for a female president in Belarus.

636
00:35:25,600 --> 00:35:28,759
Speaker 1: But she kept getting more popular and more popular and

637
00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:33,880
Speaker 1: more popular. Um, and something really neat happened. Where As

638
00:35:34,000 --> 00:35:36,800
Speaker 1: this is all going on, starting with like you know,

639
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:41,160
Speaker 1: the coronavirus pandemic, people in Belarus started getting onto apps

640
00:35:41,200 --> 00:35:44,160
Speaker 1: like Telegram in increasing numbers, hundreds of thousands of them

641
00:35:44,200 --> 00:35:46,600
Speaker 1: who hadn't been before, to organize these like drives and

642
00:35:46,680 --> 00:35:50,600
Speaker 1: donations and providing like to organize the providing basic medical

643
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:54,799
Speaker 1: supplies to um medical professionals. And they were on all

644
00:35:54,840 --> 00:35:57,840
Speaker 1: these platforms when the campaignings started up. So they began

645
00:35:58,080 --> 00:36:00,920
Speaker 1: like there was this one app created that allowed them

646
00:36:00,960 --> 00:36:04,040
Speaker 1: to like track votes, um and like track what people

647
00:36:04,080 --> 00:36:06,840
Speaker 1: were voting for us that they could have like an accurate,

648
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:10,040
Speaker 1: updated by the minute account of how people were really voting,

649
00:36:10,080 --> 00:36:13,359
Speaker 1: to compare to the government talies on the election, UM

650
00:36:13,680 --> 00:36:16,359
Speaker 1: and so. And also like you have all these people

651
00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:20,000
Speaker 1: who were able to get like organized voter drives and

652
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:23,520
Speaker 1: stuff like that to actually like run a really competent

653
00:36:23,719 --> 00:36:28,759
Speaker 1: campaign that very quickly overwhelmed the president's uh, like all

654
00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:32,279
Speaker 1: of the state repressive measures he'd spent decades building up

655
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:35,680
Speaker 1: UM and it kind of works. I'm gonna quote next

656
00:36:35,719 --> 00:36:38,200
Speaker 1: here from a rite up in vox quote. Experts told

657
00:36:38,239 --> 00:36:41,640
Speaker 1: me Lukashenko usually allows some opposition candidates to run against him.

658
00:36:41,680 --> 00:36:43,440
Speaker 1: Doing so let's the regime keep the appearance of a

659
00:36:43,480 --> 00:36:46,200
Speaker 1: fair election, and also allows those with grievances to address

660
00:36:46,239 --> 00:36:48,480
Speaker 1: them once in a while, hoping complaints died down soon

661
00:36:48,520 --> 00:36:50,680
Speaker 1: after the vote. That seems to have happened in this case,

662
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:53,680
Speaker 1: but the president also didn't seem too threatened by takenof

663
00:36:53,760 --> 00:36:57,960
Speaker 1: Skaya's candidacy. One reason was that Takenovskaya had no political

664
00:36:58,040 --> 00:37:00,160
Speaker 1: experience at all. In fact, she'd never spoken at a

665
00:37:00,200 --> 00:37:03,520
Speaker 1: political rally before. The other was that Lukashenko holds sexist,

666
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:06,239
Speaker 1: outdated views of women. Society is not mature enough to

667
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:08,560
Speaker 1: vote for a woman, he said in July, adding that

668
00:37:08,640 --> 00:37:11,560
Speaker 1: the weight of the presidency would leader to collapse the

669
00:37:11,600 --> 00:37:15,400
Speaker 1: poor thing. But taken off Skaya didn't collapse under pressure. Instead,

670
00:37:15,480 --> 00:37:17,840
Speaker 1: she united the opposition and brought hundreds of thousands of

671
00:37:17,880 --> 00:37:22,640
Speaker 1: people into the streets and support UM. So yeah, they

672
00:37:24,040 --> 00:37:25,960
Speaker 1: put together this campaign like they have that. Like the

673
00:37:26,040 --> 00:37:27,840
Speaker 1: sign for this campaign was like a heart and a

674
00:37:27,920 --> 00:37:30,920
Speaker 1: fist in a fist pumping position and a V for

675
00:37:31,120 --> 00:37:36,440
Speaker 1: victory UM. And yeah it all, it all works. Grassroots

676
00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:40,680
Speaker 1: movement led by a woman is a vibe led by

677
00:37:40,719 --> 00:37:45,560
Speaker 1: three women vibe. Yeah, it's it's definitely a vibe UM.

678
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:49,840
Speaker 1: And because protesters have this UM, they have this like

679
00:37:50,080 --> 00:37:53,480
Speaker 1: vote tracking system that they've all set up together independently,

680
00:37:54,040 --> 00:37:57,080
Speaker 1: they're able to like keep track of how the votes

681
00:37:57,120 --> 00:37:59,879
Speaker 1: are actually going when the government lies about it. Which

682
00:37:59,920 --> 00:38:02,719
Speaker 1: is what happens. You know, there's an election. Um the

683
00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:05,320
Speaker 1: early polls, which seemed to be pretty like the the

684
00:38:05,600 --> 00:38:08,800
Speaker 1: the credible polls UH suggests that about eighty percent of

685
00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:12,120
Speaker 1: people voted for set lana Um. The government claims that

686
00:38:12,200 --> 00:38:15,879
Speaker 1: eighty percent of people voted for Lukashenko, which again has

687
00:38:15,920 --> 00:38:19,200
Speaker 1: happened every election. But this time, when he claimed that

688
00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:22,160
Speaker 1: he'd won by an overwhelming margin, everyone knew it was

689
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:25,440
Speaker 1: a lie because they were all online talking to each other. So,

690
00:38:25,719 --> 00:38:27,640
Speaker 1: and you you'll hear this in interviews, people being like, well,

691
00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:30,360
Speaker 1: I just assumed he must have a bunch of supporters elsewhere,

692
00:38:30,640 --> 00:38:33,640
Speaker 1: and like so, I like, that's why he kept winning.

693
00:38:33,960 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 1: But now people were online with hundreds of thousands of

694
00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:38,120
Speaker 1: their citizens, and everyone was saying, like, no, none of

695
00:38:38,200 --> 00:38:41,080
Speaker 1: us voted for Now, we're all in communication. We know

696
00:38:41,200 --> 00:38:43,640
Speaker 1: who we voted for. This guy, wasn't it. Yeah, we're

697
00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:46,839
Speaker 1: all talking. And so so that's what takes all these

698
00:38:46,880 --> 00:38:48,759
Speaker 1: people out into the streets and we're gonna talk a

699
00:38:48,800 --> 00:38:52,520
Speaker 1: little more about what happened next. But first, you know

700
00:38:52,640 --> 00:38:56,080
Speaker 1: what's better than going to the streets but buying the

701
00:38:56,200 --> 00:39:01,439
Speaker 1: products and participating in the rat wheel of capitalism which

702
00:39:01,760 --> 00:39:06,880
Speaker 1: provides us with satisfactory answers to all of our needs

703
00:39:07,040 --> 00:39:09,279
Speaker 1: that are so much better than getting out in the

704
00:39:09,400 --> 00:39:13,560
Speaker 1: streets and bricking windows all of that bad stuff you

705
00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:26,640
Speaker 1: don't need with not we're back, okay. So yeah, it

706
00:39:26,920 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 1: was a really interesting situation. So basically spent Lana and

707
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:34,799
Speaker 1: these other women, like the wives of these candidates, run

708
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:39,239
Speaker 1: this incredible grassroots campaign that by all accounts, outside of

709
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:42,960
Speaker 1: the Belarusian regime fucking wins. And there's you'll hear so

710
00:39:43,160 --> 00:39:46,680
Speaker 1: like tank these people who listen a lot are a

711
00:39:46,760 --> 00:39:48,720
Speaker 1: group of people I don't like much. And they're basically

712
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:51,840
Speaker 1: this group of leftists who finds a reason to defend

713
00:39:51,920 --> 00:39:54,960
Speaker 1: every dictator and a reason to criticize every movement against

714
00:39:55,000 --> 00:39:57,960
Speaker 1: a dictator who isn't in line with the United States,

715
00:39:58,200 --> 00:40:01,120
Speaker 1: because if you're not a and of the US, then

716
00:40:01,160 --> 00:40:03,160
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how about a dictator you are. Anyway,

717
00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:05,560
Speaker 1: I don't like tankys um. One of the things that

718
00:40:05,680 --> 00:40:09,400
Speaker 1: they will attack, uh, One of the things that they

719
00:40:09,440 --> 00:40:13,640
Speaker 1: will attack um fet Lana's campaign from is that one

720
00:40:13,719 --> 00:40:16,200
Speaker 1: of the proxies that she picked for her campaign, like

721
00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:19,000
Speaker 1: a local activist who was sort of campaigning for her

722
00:40:19,640 --> 00:40:23,040
Speaker 1: praised Adolf Hitler in speeches, Um, which is a bad

723
00:40:23,200 --> 00:40:29,720
Speaker 1: thing to do. But also it's not like he didn't

724
00:40:30,120 --> 00:40:32,880
Speaker 1: praise Hitler. It's like, if you are going to say, like,

725
00:40:32,960 --> 00:40:35,920
Speaker 1: I agree with you, it's a problem that this person's

726
00:40:36,000 --> 00:40:38,680
Speaker 1: vetting was so bad that they picked like an election

727
00:40:38,800 --> 00:40:41,920
Speaker 1: proxy who had support, Like who says nice things about Hitler?

728
00:40:42,320 --> 00:40:45,200
Speaker 1: But the president repeatedly says nice things about Hitler, So

729
00:40:45,320 --> 00:40:47,480
Speaker 1: that may not make the point you wanted to make

730
00:40:47,520 --> 00:40:52,560
Speaker 1: in this case, um, which is like, yeah, it's it's

731
00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:57,560
Speaker 1: bad that that happened, but also come on, like the

732
00:40:57,719 --> 00:41:00,560
Speaker 1: the guy that they're running against his repeatedly talked about

733
00:41:00,600 --> 00:41:03,440
Speaker 1: how good many of the things Hitler did. Is maybe

734
00:41:03,840 --> 00:41:06,360
Speaker 1: this is a sign that nobody who runs for president

735
00:41:06,840 --> 00:41:09,520
Speaker 1: makes great choice. We're saying, it's like it's like it's

736
00:41:09,640 --> 00:41:12,120
Speaker 1: like telling people they should vote for Trump insta the

737
00:41:12,160 --> 00:41:15,680
Speaker 1: Biden because Biden's creepy around women. It's like, yes, but

738
00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:18,480
Speaker 1: also Trump, Yeah, Like that's not that's not a good

739
00:41:18,560 --> 00:41:22,560
Speaker 1: argument to vote for Trump. They're both creepy around women. Yeah.

740
00:41:22,600 --> 00:41:24,959
Speaker 1: And I don't want to like criticize fet Lonire because

741
00:41:24,960 --> 00:41:26,680
Speaker 1: I honestly you get the feeling that she just like

742
00:41:26,800 --> 00:41:30,000
Speaker 1: she never wanted to be in politics. She she probably

743
00:41:30,120 --> 00:41:34,000
Speaker 1: just didn't really think much about vetting people, and nobody

744
00:41:34,160 --> 00:41:36,600
Speaker 1: can be that good in Belarus at running a political

745
00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:41,520
Speaker 1: campaign experience. So I'm gonna give her a pass on

746
00:41:41,600 --> 00:41:44,240
Speaker 1: the fact that one of the people she hired wound

747
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:47,399
Speaker 1: up having said some dumb things in the past. Yeah,

748
00:41:47,480 --> 00:41:51,719
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem cancellable to me. Um. Yeah, and she

749
00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:53,600
Speaker 1: had it was one of those things. So she would

750
00:41:54,040 --> 00:41:56,239
Speaker 1: she would say things sometimes in speeches that were like

751
00:41:56,520 --> 00:42:01,120
Speaker 1: kind of broad like like like broadly let's say, gender traditional.

752
00:42:01,200 --> 00:42:03,439
Speaker 1: So she repeatedly make the claim that like, I would

753
00:42:03,520 --> 00:42:06,560
Speaker 1: rather be preparing cutlets for my children than running for president,

754
00:42:06,640 --> 00:42:09,239
Speaker 1: but like I just have to do it, which you

755
00:42:09,320 --> 00:42:11,799
Speaker 1: can feel about the way you want. Um. But it's

756
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:14,960
Speaker 1: also what's a politician. It's politician. It plays well like

757
00:42:15,120 --> 00:42:18,719
Speaker 1: it's a very pretty patriarchal society, and that'll get people

758
00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:20,759
Speaker 1: who might not otherwise vote for a woman on board

759
00:42:20,760 --> 00:42:24,800
Speaker 1: who's it's a protest vote like exact. Um. She also

760
00:42:24,880 --> 00:42:26,920
Speaker 1: said some stuff that I think is pretty cool. I

761
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:29,640
Speaker 1: don't need power, but my husband is behind bars. I'm

762
00:42:29,719 --> 00:42:31,960
Speaker 1: tired of putting up with it. I'm tired of being silent.

763
00:42:32,040 --> 00:42:35,400
Speaker 1: I'm tired of being afraid. Um. And obviously one of

764
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:37,760
Speaker 1: the things that's really tragic about this, in the immediate

765
00:42:37,800 --> 00:42:40,359
Speaker 1: wake of the election, you know, all these protests start up,

766
00:42:40,640 --> 00:42:44,200
Speaker 1: things become like very violent, very quickly, with state security

767
00:42:44,239 --> 00:42:47,279
Speaker 1: forces cracking down, and she has to go into hiding. Um.

768
00:42:47,440 --> 00:42:50,040
Speaker 1: She sends her children out of the country first, in

769
00:42:50,120 --> 00:42:52,600
Speaker 1: which she's actually in the same boat with Lukashenko because

770
00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:57,879
Speaker 1: there's it's heavily suspected although not proven, like the presidential

771
00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:01,040
Speaker 1: aircraft bellers Is air Force one flew to Turkey as

772
00:43:01,120 --> 00:43:03,680
Speaker 1: soon as things started getting bad, and it's believed that

773
00:43:03,800 --> 00:43:07,719
Speaker 1: Lukashenko's family was on board. Yeah, do do we know?

774
00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:09,839
Speaker 1: Do we know where he is right now? I think

775
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:12,440
Speaker 1: he's still in the country. Um, he's supposed to be

776
00:43:12,480 --> 00:43:15,759
Speaker 1: giving an address pretty soon, probably will have by the

777
00:43:15,840 --> 00:43:18,280
Speaker 1: time this episode drops. And there's a bunch of different anyway,

778
00:43:18,320 --> 00:43:24,200
Speaker 1: So fet Lana Um comes on like basically goes to

779
00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:27,839
Speaker 1: ground for a while and seems like she gets caught

780
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:30,640
Speaker 1: because the next time we see her protester going on

781
00:43:30,800 --> 00:43:33,840
Speaker 1: and she makes a video from the office of government

782
00:43:33,920 --> 00:43:37,600
Speaker 1: minister where she's like everyone should accept the election results

783
00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:39,920
Speaker 1: and go home and not fight the police. And she

784
00:43:40,080 --> 00:43:44,040
Speaker 1: looks like fucked up, and it's it's it's yeah, yeah,

785
00:43:44,120 --> 00:43:45,719
Speaker 1: we we we know what's going on. You know what's

786
00:43:45,760 --> 00:43:47,840
Speaker 1: going on. And she's fled the country since, so she

787
00:43:48,040 --> 00:43:50,360
Speaker 1: is out and safe and hiding for the sake of

788
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:54,239
Speaker 1: her family's safety. Um. And things in Belarus are very

789
00:43:54,320 --> 00:43:57,560
Speaker 1: bad right now. UM, seven thousand people have been arrested.

790
00:43:57,600 --> 00:43:59,480
Speaker 1: Now most of those people are a sizeable chunk of

791
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:02,160
Speaker 1: those people have and released. At this point, again, we

792
00:44:02,280 --> 00:44:04,520
Speaker 1: are not talking yet, at least about a regime that

793
00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:07,360
Speaker 1: is like the Syrian regime where they're going to the

794
00:44:07,560 --> 00:44:12,240
Speaker 1: immediately kill killed. Um, they have killed at least two people,

795
00:44:12,360 --> 00:44:16,000
Speaker 1: probably significantly more, and they're torturing people, lots of them.

796
00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:18,160
Speaker 1: There was the audio that came out a few days ago.

797
00:44:18,400 --> 00:44:20,120
Speaker 1: We're going to include a clip from that in a second,

798
00:44:20,200 --> 00:44:23,520
Speaker 1: but it's it's audio of protesters from outside of one

799
00:44:23,600 --> 00:44:27,440
Speaker 1: of Belarus is not so secret prisons, just like people.

800
00:44:28,160 --> 00:44:31,000
Speaker 1: You can hear people being tortured, and we'll we'll play

801
00:44:31,040 --> 00:44:38,160
Speaker 1: that now. So yeah, that's horrifying. UM, not not great,

802
00:44:38,280 --> 00:44:41,439
Speaker 1: not great, Uh, not great, But it hasn't stopped people

803
00:44:41,520 --> 00:44:44,640
Speaker 1: from coming out and in the last as I, as

804
00:44:44,680 --> 00:44:46,680
Speaker 1: I deliver this, things will be in a different state

805
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:48,960
Speaker 1: by the time you hear this. Most recent change has

806
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:52,000
Speaker 1: been that the government is allowing mass demonstrations again, and

807
00:44:52,160 --> 00:44:55,279
Speaker 1: like the soldiers are hugging protesters and like they're there.

808
00:44:55,960 --> 00:44:58,000
Speaker 1: It seems like things got bad enough that he decided,

809
00:44:58,040 --> 00:45:01,680
Speaker 1: oh god, if I keep pressing people shooting people in

810
00:45:01,760 --> 00:45:04,800
Speaker 1: the streets, that will inevitably lead to a revolution. And

811
00:45:04,880 --> 00:45:07,120
Speaker 1: I don't know that I'll win because this morning I

812
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:10,080
Speaker 1: saw footage of like police cars joining in on the

813
00:45:10,120 --> 00:45:13,160
Speaker 1: protest or whatever. Yeah, And it's it's hard to say

814
00:45:13,239 --> 00:45:14,719
Speaker 1: at this stage, because there have been One of the

815
00:45:14,800 --> 00:45:16,960
Speaker 1: things that was happening is there were viral videos of

816
00:45:17,080 --> 00:45:19,960
Speaker 1: members of like even Russia or even Belarution special forces

817
00:45:20,080 --> 00:45:22,879
Speaker 1: throwing away or burning their uniforms to be like, we're

818
00:45:22,920 --> 00:45:26,480
Speaker 1: not going to hurt our people. Um, And maybe that

819
00:45:26,640 --> 00:45:28,680
Speaker 1: was enough of a problem that he realized he had

820
00:45:28,719 --> 00:45:32,760
Speaker 1: to change his response. I can't tell if the because

821
00:45:32,960 --> 00:45:35,279
Speaker 1: there have been cases in history where like police and

822
00:45:35,400 --> 00:45:39,640
Speaker 1: military forces joined with protesters and then the government got overthrown, right,

823
00:45:40,040 --> 00:45:42,080
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's the case. We we don't

824
00:45:42,160 --> 00:45:44,440
Speaker 1: know if it's actually genuine or if it's kind of

825
00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:47,560
Speaker 1: been being controlled by him to make himself look good. Yeah,

826
00:45:47,719 --> 00:45:50,400
Speaker 1: and there's also rumors that basically what's going to happen

827
00:45:50,480 --> 00:45:54,360
Speaker 1: is Lukashenko is going to be backed by Russia and

828
00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:57,280
Speaker 1: allowed to stay in power for another year and then resign,

829
00:45:57,400 --> 00:45:59,239
Speaker 1: and that like that's what they're going to try to do,

830
00:45:59,440 --> 00:46:01,960
Speaker 1: so like he can save some space, but like they

831
00:46:02,000 --> 00:46:03,600
Speaker 1: want to put their man. But also it's like it's

832
00:46:03,640 --> 00:46:07,160
Speaker 1: not clear that that would work because basically a significant

833
00:46:07,239 --> 00:46:09,640
Speaker 1: number of the country at this point is actually more

834
00:46:09,800 --> 00:46:12,880
Speaker 1: pro Europe than pro Russia. It's it's some polls that

835
00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:14,920
Speaker 1: have happened have had it been close to fifty fifty,

836
00:46:15,080 --> 00:46:19,440
Speaker 1: it's usually about fifty pro Russia pro EU. Who knows

837
00:46:19,520 --> 00:46:22,640
Speaker 1: where things are at this moment um, but it is

838
00:46:22,680 --> 00:46:25,120
Speaker 1: a situation that's like kind of the thing that he's

839
00:46:25,160 --> 00:46:27,320
Speaker 1: been trying to avoid since two thousand fourteen, which is

840
00:46:27,360 --> 00:46:29,800
Speaker 1: Belarus winding up kind of like Ukraine, where you have

841
00:46:29,960 --> 00:46:33,120
Speaker 1: the country split along pro European or pro Russian lines,

842
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:35,200
Speaker 1: and then Russia comes in and takes the chunk of

843
00:46:35,239 --> 00:46:37,680
Speaker 1: the country and there's a big, ugly civil war like

844
00:46:37,880 --> 00:46:41,279
Speaker 1: a lot of really horrible things could happen here um

845
00:46:41,400 --> 00:46:43,480
Speaker 1: and some of them being that like Belarus could get

846
00:46:43,680 --> 00:46:46,160
Speaker 1: you know, sort of put absorbed more by kind of

847
00:46:46,600 --> 00:46:51,120
Speaker 1: the technocratic West and wind up being picked over by

848
00:46:51,239 --> 00:46:56,479
Speaker 1: capitalists like Albania did. It's no easy, great solution here. Yeah,

849
00:46:56,880 --> 00:46:59,560
Speaker 1: besides like just getting the elected leader actually elected like

850
00:46:59,640 --> 00:47:03,279
Speaker 1: the first and who we probably think won the election. Yeah, yeah,

851
00:47:03,360 --> 00:47:06,040
Speaker 1: which is which is a start um and it is

852
00:47:06,080 --> 00:47:08,120
Speaker 1: one of those things where you can kind of look

853
00:47:08,200 --> 00:47:10,680
Speaker 1: through what's likely to happen next and be like, oh, well,

854
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:13,080
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like there's a lot of potential for

855
00:47:13,160 --> 00:47:16,320
Speaker 1: things to end well for Belarus um. And I do

856
00:47:17,400 --> 00:47:19,839
Speaker 1: like you can make a strong logical arguments there right

857
00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:22,560
Speaker 1: that like you know, NATO is going to like uh

858
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:25,120
Speaker 1: like the I M F or whoever, like like what

859
00:47:25,360 --> 00:47:27,799
Speaker 1: all these different sort of Western powers that have been

860
00:47:27,880 --> 00:47:30,640
Speaker 1: kind of have been slavering at the chance to get there,

861
00:47:30,760 --> 00:47:33,719
Speaker 1: to get their teeth around Belarus will do that, and

862
00:47:33,800 --> 00:47:36,800
Speaker 1: it will make life worse for people. Not impossible, although

863
00:47:36,840 --> 00:47:39,000
Speaker 1: at this point, considering how bad things have gotten, hard

864
00:47:39,040 --> 00:47:41,080
Speaker 1: to see how that would be worse than where things are.

865
00:47:41,400 --> 00:47:43,600
Speaker 1: There's also the argument like Russia will take over and

866
00:47:43,719 --> 00:47:46,000
Speaker 1: like it will become more authoritarian and things will get

867
00:47:46,000 --> 00:47:48,640
Speaker 1: worse for people, um and like none of the options

868
00:47:48,960 --> 00:47:52,160
Speaker 1: before them are good. And I don't like getting trapped

869
00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:54,239
Speaker 1: into that kind of thinking because it leads you to like,

870
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:57,480
Speaker 1: it leads you to not be excited about what what

871
00:47:57,760 --> 00:48:00,279
Speaker 1: is a core good thing here, which is that a

872
00:48:00,320 --> 00:48:02,560
Speaker 1: shipload of people who never thought, who never who have

873
00:48:02,680 --> 00:48:05,759
Speaker 1: not had political agency in their lives are now like

874
00:48:06,800 --> 00:48:09,560
Speaker 1: drop kicking riot cops in the street and trying to

875
00:48:09,680 --> 00:48:13,160
Speaker 1: change their circumstances. And that's a good thing. Yeah, absolutely,

876
00:48:13,200 --> 00:48:15,640
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's these people how have for the

877
00:48:15,680 --> 00:48:17,200
Speaker 1: first time in a while or having a sense of

878
00:48:17,320 --> 00:48:21,040
Speaker 1: like agency in their life. Yeah, And I don't want to, like,

879
00:48:21,360 --> 00:48:23,880
Speaker 1: I don't think it should be a foregone conclusion that

880
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:26,200
Speaker 1: they will get fucked over like one way or the

881
00:48:26,239 --> 00:48:29,600
Speaker 1: other by you know, Russian imperialism or or sort of

882
00:48:29,719 --> 00:48:34,080
Speaker 1: like the kind of the same, like the fucking shock

883
00:48:34,200 --> 00:48:37,480
Speaker 1: doctrine capitalism. Like I don't think either of those has

884
00:48:37,560 --> 00:48:41,759
Speaker 1: to be inevitable. Like it's an unwritten year. Things could

885
00:48:41,960 --> 00:48:47,319
Speaker 1: be different, Like who knows. Anyway, there's a there's enough

886
00:48:47,400 --> 00:48:49,880
Speaker 1: things going on in the world that there's not a

887
00:48:50,160 --> 00:48:54,319
Speaker 1: foregone conclusion yet. Yeah. So that's what what I've got

888
00:48:54,440 --> 00:48:57,960
Speaker 1: for this episode so far. UM. And I hope that

889
00:48:59,320 --> 00:49:01,919
Speaker 1: if you're in Belarus and somehow listening to this. Because

890
00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:04,480
Speaker 1: they shut down the Internet to a pretty heavy extent,

891
00:49:04,680 --> 00:49:07,120
Speaker 1: people have found ways around it, thankfully. One of the

892
00:49:07,160 --> 00:49:09,320
Speaker 1: cool stories is that, like there's this app that was

893
00:49:09,400 --> 00:49:13,440
Speaker 1: developed to allow people in China to access the Internet

894
00:49:13,600 --> 00:49:16,759
Speaker 1: that people started downloading in Belarus before the Internet got

895
00:49:17,239 --> 00:49:19,799
Speaker 1: or before like all the app stores got blocked. Um,

896
00:49:19,920 --> 00:49:22,800
Speaker 1: so people have been passing it around and flash drives

897
00:49:24,320 --> 00:49:26,160
Speaker 1: thousands of people so that they could get it on

898
00:49:26,760 --> 00:49:31,239
Speaker 1: this This is cyberpunk. It's very cool. That's that's actually cyberpunk.

899
00:49:31,280 --> 00:49:33,279
Speaker 1: That is awesome and it's neat. There's been some really

900
00:49:33,320 --> 00:49:35,680
Speaker 1: cool stories coming out, like a bunch of British soccer

901
00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:38,520
Speaker 1: hooligans flew over to Belarus to like fight the cops

902
00:49:38,640 --> 00:49:43,640
Speaker 1: on the hat like yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fucking fucking rules. Yeah. Um,

903
00:49:43,800 --> 00:49:47,399
Speaker 1: like anti racist skinhead types in the UK, um, which

904
00:49:47,440 --> 00:49:50,200
Speaker 1: I think fucking rocks. Um. And I was reading a

905
00:49:50,239 --> 00:49:52,759
Speaker 1: really interesting crime thing published an article an interview with

906
00:49:52,800 --> 00:49:56,359
Speaker 1: a number of different Belarusian anarchists, um and yeah. People

907
00:49:56,400 --> 00:49:58,480
Speaker 1: were asked like what they're It was really interesting for

908
00:49:58,480 --> 00:50:00,279
Speaker 1: a number of reasons. One of them was that one

909
00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:02,360
Speaker 1: of the guys they interviewed estimated, like, there's maybe a

910
00:50:02,480 --> 00:50:05,000
Speaker 1: hundred of us in the country, like anarchists who were

911
00:50:05,000 --> 00:50:09,279
Speaker 1: actually organized in an um and but they're also like

912
00:50:09,360 --> 00:50:11,719
Speaker 1: the people who have the most time and experience thinking

913
00:50:11,800 --> 00:50:14,120
Speaker 1: about how to fight the state. Yeah, they've they've just

914
00:50:14,160 --> 00:50:16,680
Speaker 1: been there free time thinking about this, so they've been

915
00:50:16,719 --> 00:50:18,919
Speaker 1: the back bone and help. But trying to like train

916
00:50:19,040 --> 00:50:21,560
Speaker 1: up all of these other these Belarusians who kind of

917
00:50:21,680 --> 00:50:26,359
Speaker 1: like never would have considered themselves political activists before um,

918
00:50:26,719 --> 00:50:28,800
Speaker 1: which is an interesting a story I'd love to to

919
00:50:28,960 --> 00:50:31,879
Speaker 1: learn more about, to be honest, UM and yeah. Another

920
00:50:32,000 --> 00:50:34,120
Speaker 1: one of the people they interviewed, like was asked like,

921
00:50:34,160 --> 00:50:35,520
Speaker 1: what can we do to help, and he was like, well,

922
00:50:35,560 --> 00:50:37,799
Speaker 1: there's some donations that people can want, but like, really,

923
00:50:38,040 --> 00:50:39,840
Speaker 1: if you could, if it's at all possible for you

924
00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:42,440
Speaker 1: to travel to Belarus and help us fist fight the cops,

925
00:50:42,840 --> 00:50:45,640
Speaker 1: we could really use that help right now. Of course,

926
00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:48,640
Speaker 1: it's difficult with the play, very difficult. Not a great time.

927
00:50:48,800 --> 00:50:52,359
Speaker 1: I would love to be They're doing something, but um,

928
00:50:52,640 --> 00:50:55,719
Speaker 1: not easy to get to at the moment, especially for

929
00:50:56,280 --> 00:50:58,959
Speaker 1: Americans who are no longer welcome anywhere in the world.

930
00:50:59,040 --> 00:51:04,640
Speaker 1: But yeah, Belarus were We are paying attention and hope

931
00:51:04,680 --> 00:51:09,120
Speaker 1: that y'all uh figure out how to make things better

932
00:51:09,280 --> 00:51:12,160
Speaker 1: in your lives and that everyone who says that this

933
00:51:12,320 --> 00:51:16,120
Speaker 1: is inherently doomed winds up being wrong. Yep, very hopeful

934
00:51:16,120 --> 00:51:20,520
Speaker 1: and optimistic ending. I love optimism. You know what else?

935
00:51:20,560 --> 00:51:24,000
Speaker 1: I love Garrison? No, what else do you love? Plugging?

936
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:27,160
Speaker 1: You love? You love pluggables. The attempts we've tried to

937
00:51:27,200 --> 00:51:31,160
Speaker 1: plug in headphones all day well actually because they were

938
00:51:31,200 --> 00:51:34,160
Speaker 1: not plug in headphones. It was a nightmare that stole

939
00:51:34,239 --> 00:51:35,960
Speaker 1: like an hour from our We better if we had

940
00:51:35,960 --> 00:51:38,080
Speaker 1: a splitter, then we can plug into head exactly exactly,

941
00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:41,840
Speaker 1: if people had just Sometimes progress isn't necessary. What was

942
00:51:41,880 --> 00:51:44,359
Speaker 1: wrong with the audio jack? Why did people need something new?

943
00:51:44,480 --> 00:51:47,840
Speaker 1: It worked fine. My plug doubles are good. Speaking of

944
00:51:47,920 --> 00:51:53,560
Speaker 1: plug doubles, my plugables at Hungry Bowtown Twitter for protests,

945
00:51:53,600 --> 00:51:58,279
Speaker 1: reporting and other kind of political fun stuff. Um yeah,

946
00:51:58,800 --> 00:52:00,719
Speaker 1: that's that's what I'm doing right now, and that's the

947
00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:03,560
Speaker 1: main thing currently and mine is at I right okay,

948
00:52:03,680 --> 00:52:07,160
Speaker 1: where you can occasionally see me live streaming Garrison and

949
00:52:07,320 --> 00:52:11,120
Speaker 1: myself and a number of our other close friends getting

950
00:52:11,200 --> 00:52:14,600
Speaker 1: repeatedly hear gassed in the streets of Portland, Oregon, as

951
00:52:14,640 --> 00:52:17,000
Speaker 1: has become tradition in the streets of Portland, Oregon on

952
00:52:17,120 --> 00:52:20,280
Speaker 1: days that end. And why oh it's a good time, Sophie,

953
00:52:21,360 --> 00:52:24,680
Speaker 1: great reading. Our city is for a long time. Yeah.

954
00:52:24,760 --> 00:52:28,000
Speaker 1: On an unrelated note, my lungs hurt every day. I wonder,

955
00:52:28,040 --> 00:52:34,200
Speaker 1: I wonder, why oh okay, Well that's the episode Products

956
00:52:34,239 --> 00:52:37,799
Speaker 1: and Services. Everybody just remember, no matter how dark things get,

957
00:52:38,040 --> 00:52:40,200
Speaker 1: we always have products and services.