Speaker 1: I fucking hate headphones. Still behind the bastards, And we
Speaker 1: just spent another like forty five minutes having to figure
Speaker 1: out how to reconnect the earbuds were using for this.
Speaker 1: Very frustrating. But you know what also is frustrating, it's
Speaker 1: frustrating to live under a dictatorship also, And in a way,
Speaker 1: isn't bluetooth a kind of authoritarianism? I don't know. We're
Speaker 1: going to do part two of our episode, Kushenko, and
Speaker 1: who is your gus? You have to introduce Jesus. I'm
Speaker 1: just so frustrated by the headphone issues that I forgot
Speaker 1: to introduce the person who fixed the headphone issues, Local youth,
Speaker 1: Garrison Davis. Yeah, that's my that's my new Twitter handles,
Speaker 1: and locally, it's not at hungry about tie from Twitter.
Speaker 1: Tear gas proof Garrison, Hi, local youth headphones are terrible. Look, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be good until I'm no longer I know
Speaker 1: what he was around that. I don't know that your youth.
Speaker 1: That could be your TikTok handle for however many more
Speaker 1: days Trump allows TikTok contact me to be a yeah, right, yeah, okay, alright,
Speaker 1: we're moving on right now, right now, right now, God
Speaker 1: damn it. Okay, So we talked about in the last
Speaker 1: episode how Lukashenko is most well named. No nickname was Vodka,
Speaker 1: which kind of means daddy, which is a little weird.
Speaker 1: I just daddy, ladies. Uh yeah, no, not that kind
Speaker 1: of dad, Maybe that kind of daddy. His opponents, though,
Speaker 1: have another nickname for him that basically translates to farm
Speaker 1: Hitler that sounds more fun. Yeah, yeah, which is a
Speaker 1: fun nickname. And speaking of Hitler, like any self respecting autocrat,
Speaker 1: Lukashenko has a history of saying really weird things about Hitler.
Speaker 1: Um are yeah, kind of baffling. On one occasion, the
Speaker 1: Bell Larusian dictator told an interviewer quote, Hitler created a
Speaker 1: powerful Germany owing to the strong presidential power. After all,
Speaker 1: the German order has been developing for centuries. Under Hitler,
Speaker 1: this process reached its highest point. This is how we
Speaker 1: understand the presidential republic and the role of the president. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's that's not not problematic. Yeah when when
Speaker 1: I when I become president of every country, I will
Speaker 1: make sure to model my presidency after Hitler. I prefer
Speaker 1: to that. I prefer to be a strong president like Hitler,
Speaker 1: a guy with whom I have less disagreements than you
Speaker 1: might expect. Obviously, these remarks caused a bit of a
Speaker 1: stir um, as it ought to when your head of
Speaker 1: state compares himself favorably to Hitler. Lukashenko found it necessary
Speaker 1: to justify himself by semi backpedaling and telling people that
Speaker 1: he thought Hitler was quote a real fascist, a real
Speaker 1: idiot in power who destroyed a lot of people. But
Speaker 1: and this is where he goes wrong. Whatever that and
Speaker 1: then at a but yeah, you know you're doing with
Speaker 1: just write a lot of people ended there, don't add
Speaker 1: the butt. But he continues, but managed to unite the
Speaker 1: nation by means of tough policy. At that stage, the
Speaker 1: result was obvious. Therefore, there is no need to reproach
Speaker 1: me that we wished to have the serious tough power
Speaker 1: in Belarus. Um, the result was obvious. I don't know
Speaker 1: if we saw the same obvious thing and the results there, Alexander,
Speaker 1: But yes, Lukashenko has one other weird Hitler statement, uh
Speaker 1: that he's repeated a number of times, which is the
Speaker 1: line not everything Hitler did was bad, which again you
Speaker 1: shouldn't need to point out. You don't need to say that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's one of those things. Yes, we could split
Speaker 1: hairs and discuss the extent to which the Nazi Party
Speaker 1: deserves credit for the auto bon or whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: but it really isn't important. But here we go this. Honestly,
Speaker 1: Hitler did do one good thing. That's that's killing Hitler
Speaker 1: was the one. Yeah, that was the only thing he
Speaker 1: did that. Uh other governments had proved unable to do
Speaker 1: so far. Um, yeah, gotta give him credit, Gotta give
Speaker 1: him credit for that. Uh So yeah, anyway, Lukashenko weird,
Speaker 1: weird Hitler opinions. So yeah. Lukashenko repeatedly admits to having
Speaker 1: authoritarian tendencies, but he also again gets really pissed when
Speaker 1: people call him a dictator. In two thousand twelve, Germany's
Speaker 1: foreign minister Guido Westervel used the term dictator to describe
Speaker 1: Lukashenko's regime. Um, and I should note here that Guido
Speaker 1: is homosexual. And the fact that I'm noting that he's
Speaker 1: homosexual is not a good sign for what's about to
Speaker 1: come next, because as soon as Guido called Lukashenko a dictator,
Speaker 1: Lukeshenko responded, better to be a dictator than gay, which
Speaker 1: is like a ninth grade level. That is ninth grade
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four. It's a very four school grade. No,
Speaker 1: but at least I'm not gay. Yeah, you're yeah, it's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's literally the thing that like he moved on
Speaker 1: from at like age fourteen. Uh, when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: Your generation is much better about that sort of little Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in another interview, Lukashenko made it clear that he's
Speaker 1: capable of some nuance when it comes to LGBT issues. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote now from an interview he gave
Speaker 1: to the Independent lesbians are bad, but I do not. Again,
Speaker 1: that's a great clause to start us out with. He
Speaker 1: has a lot of good add the word, but it
Speaker 1: seems to be a recurring theme. Lesbians are bad, but
Speaker 1: I do not condemn them as with gays. This is
Speaker 1: not my understanding. I think it's absolutely unacceptable and negative. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's good. So at least he makes a distinction. He
Speaker 1: is fine with leslie, he's not fine. Lesbians. They're not great.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to condemn them. There used to take
Speaker 1: a strong anti lesbian state. I think they're hot. Those
Speaker 1: gays I look at I feel fine condemning those. Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: Lukashenko is like a lot of people. You grew up
Speaker 1: with your small southern community. Anyway, Lukashenko's cultural conservatives and
Speaker 1: manifest itself in his attitudes towards the Russian Orthodox Church,
Speaker 1: summed up by the statement he made to a church
Speaker 1: patriarch quote, thank god our church does not suffer from
Speaker 1: the infections that have crushed the Western church. He's referring
Speaker 1: to the Catholic Church. There. We have heard it all. Pedophilia, gainnus, environmentalism.
Speaker 1: What the hell is going on? The trifecta of pedophilia,
Speaker 1: gainness and environmentalists the three evils of society. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: getting sick here too. So I think that the Orthodox
Speaker 1: Church and state are not working well enough here. We
Speaker 1: cannot afford to lose a whole generation of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can't afford to lose that to environmentalism and environmentalism
Speaker 1: and its cousin gainness. You couldn't really just ruin the
Speaker 1: youth with those, yeah. Uh. In two thousand fourteen, after
Speaker 1: Russia's annexation of Crimea, Lukashenko offered to share control over
Speaker 1: a United Russia slash Belarus with Vladimir Putin telling an
Speaker 1: interviewer on Ukrainian TV, I told Putin that after the
Speaker 1: Crimea annexation, people might no longer call me Europe's less dictator. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't know. It's interesting because he also held
Speaker 1: like piece a piece SMA in Minsk that helped bring
Speaker 1: him closer to NATO over the whole issue. He kept
Speaker 1: doing that whole weird like jumping into both sides with
Speaker 1: both feet sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't
Speaker 1: pretend to have any particularly deep sight into Lukashenko's mind
Speaker 1: and like who he is as a person, because he
Speaker 1: kind of plays a lot of his ship pretty close
Speaker 1: to the vest. But studying him you do really get
Speaker 1: the opinion that he thinks it's important to be seen
Speaker 1: as legitimately popular. Um. After in two thousand six, after
Speaker 1: a blatantly false election gave him eighty six percent of
Speaker 1: the vote, in the international community, you know, decried the
Speaker 1: fact that he was falsifying the elections. He actually admitted
Speaker 1: to falsifying the results of the election, um, but kind
Speaker 1: of lied about the direction in which he faked things, saying, quote, yes,
Speaker 1: we falsified the results. I've already told this to Westerners
Speaker 1: In fact, ninety three and a half percent of ballots
Speaker 1: were for President Lukashenko. People say this is not a
Speaker 1: European results, so he changed it to this truly happened.
Speaker 1: So his argument is like, people are accusing me of
Speaker 1: lying and falsifying an election. The way to respond to
Speaker 1: this is to say, yes, I lied and falsified an election,
Speaker 1: but just to make myself seem less popular. Um, that's good.
Speaker 1: I don't think that has the impact that he thinks
Speaker 1: it has. No, it's not it's not a good way
Speaker 1: to build up trust. No. Um. Outside of the official propaganda,
Speaker 1: a series of local rumors have propped up around Lukashenko.
Speaker 1: The most common one is that he's mentally ill, suffering
Speaker 1: from a variant of anti social personality disorder called mosaic psychopathy.
Speaker 1: His opponents will generally declare that Stalin, Hitler, and mau
Speaker 1: were all diagnosed with the same disorder, and this is
Speaker 1: like it's a meme in Belarusian sort of opposition groups.
Speaker 1: But I don't think it's true at all. For one thing,
Speaker 1: I on think he's been diagnosed with anything. I know Hitler,
Speaker 1: Stalin and Mao weren't diagnosed with anything, and Hitler Stalin, Mao,
Speaker 1: and Lukashenko are all like broad the different kinds of shitty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they all they all definitely, they're not all the same
Speaker 1: type of dictator. No, No, they're not very different. And
Speaker 1: in fact, if you're picking Hitler, Stalin and now you're
Speaker 1: picking like three guys who are actually like the most
Speaker 1: different three dictators like Stalin and Saddam same kind of guy. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, but but Hitler, Stalin, maw all pretty different
Speaker 1: dudes in terms of the way they utilized power and
Speaker 1: the way that they came into power. Weird that he
Speaker 1: picks those. I guess they it's just like they're the
Speaker 1: they're the big dictators. You could add Musolini there, I guess,
Speaker 1: but I guess Musolini is a little bit similar to Hitler.
Speaker 1: Mussolini is the most similar. More is like pretty similar
Speaker 1: to Lukashenko comparatively, Like he's closer to Mussolini than he
Speaker 1: is to Hitler, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, um yeah, so
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever. Um. Alexander Lukashenko does have a wife,
Speaker 1: but she very conspicuously doesn't carry out the job of
Speaker 1: first Lady. Belarus has no equivalent to Asthma assad or
Speaker 1: Melani A. Trump Uh. This is also in line with
Speaker 1: traditions for Eastern European despots. Stalin was conspicuously single for
Speaker 1: most of his time in power. There are rumors that
Speaker 1: Lukashenko's wife lives in a monastery or a mental institution. Uh.
Speaker 1: And likewise, there are rumors about his children. Were not
Speaker 1: really sure how many he has. People are pretty confident
Speaker 1: that about three of his sons, Nikolai, Dmitri and Victor um.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of worth noting that while these guys
Speaker 1: are sometimes portrayed as particularly his youngest son Nikolai, Like
Speaker 1: we talked about this on the Children of Bastard's episode,
Speaker 1: he's the kid who got given a golden handgun. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his his Putin gave him a gigantic golden handgun that
Speaker 1: he carries everywhere. So there's all these very funny pictures
Speaker 1: of him, like meeting the President of Venezuela, which mess
Speaker 1: of Bulgian gun and his his little little kids suit
Speaker 1: for him. It's very funny him. It's exactly what you
Speaker 1: do if you were eleven years old, got to and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can carry everywhere you want, but it's a giant
Speaker 1: gold it's awesome. Yeah, but so there's this kind of
Speaker 1: idea that because of the ship that that Nikolai poll's
Speaker 1: um and and because of like the reputation he has,
Speaker 1: that he's being groomed as the the like following in
Speaker 1: his dad's footsteps. And this is actually pretty heavily debated
Speaker 1: by people who know anything about the country. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of argument as to whether or not Lukashenko's children
Speaker 1: are kind of expecting to follow in his footsteps. For
Speaker 1: his part, the president himself has repeatedly publicly stated that
Speaker 1: his children don't want to to go into politics and
Speaker 1: that he doesn't consider them airs um. And Yeah, nobody
Speaker 1: really knows how true this is, but a lot of
Speaker 1: reputable academics do think that he's kind of being broadly
Speaker 1: sincere there um and yeah, it's it's hard to say
Speaker 1: kind of what he wanted for the future. Prior to
Speaker 1: this last election, in the late oughts, that were persistent
Speaker 1: rumors that he felt trapped as dictator of Belarus and
Speaker 1: kind of was looking for a way out but couldn't
Speaker 1: find it. Uh. And I'm gonna quote now from an
Speaker 1: article in Deutsche Well uh to uh kind of elaborate
Speaker 1: on that Lukashenko's biggest challenge, meanwhile, still lies ahead his
Speaker 1: exit from the political stage. He recently announced that presidential
Speaker 1: elections will be held as planned, and he's expecting to
Speaker 1: run again. In his biography on Lukashenko, Valerie Karboalovitch described
Speaker 1: the leader as a hostage trapped in a political system
Speaker 1: of his own making. Lukashenko, he writes, has no choice
Speaker 1: but to try to remain in power indefinitely, with no
Speaker 1: viable successor in sight. Karbolovitch says Lukashenko's electoral defeat would
Speaker 1: lead to radical regime change. Um. So that's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder. I always wonder how much to believe it
Speaker 1: when people talk about like these guys wanting a way
Speaker 1: out or being trapped, because it does happen. Like Saddam
Speaker 1: before the invasion was like wind all the time about
Speaker 1: how he didn't want to be dictator anymore. Um, And
Speaker 1: you do have to think that, like for the guys
Speaker 1: who kind of are less ideological about it and just
Speaker 1: wanted power, there's a certain point at which you're old
Speaker 1: and you're rich, and maybe you just like to enjoy
Speaker 1: being old and rich and not have to constantly worry
Speaker 1: about being overthrown um by angry activists. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's also like he has a credible there's
Speaker 1: another person that can run the country, which is his
Speaker 1: opponent the election. So if he wants to step down,
Speaker 1: he can. He doesn't need to be dictator forever. But
Speaker 1: here's the problem. Once you've been the dictator and you've
Speaker 1: had a bunch of people disappeared and executed for exercising
Speaker 1: their political rights, um, and you've stolen huge amounts of
Speaker 1: money from the country, then if you leave power, you're
Speaker 1: in a little bit of a pickle. Yeah right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the cage of your own making. Yeah, that's the case.
Speaker 1: The cage of your own making is made with the
Speaker 1: bones of your enemies because at a certain point you've
Speaker 1: killed too many people to um, to retire peacefully. Um.
Speaker 1: Because we don't just have an island where dictators can go. Well,
Speaker 1: we do, and it's Jamaica. But um, I don't think
Speaker 1: he likes the heat. So yeah, it's he's he's in
Speaker 1: a complicated situation. UM. And as with any controversial political leader,
Speaker 1: there's numerous rumors about how Lukashenko fox both his detractors
Speaker 1: and supporters. Close your close your ears at this point, Garrett,
Speaker 1: I'm covering my ears. There we go, both his detract
Speaker 1: we know that the teens don't don't ever hear about
Speaker 1: dictators um doing. I don't know, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: lost track of the joke here. Um yeah. So both
Speaker 1: of his detracts, both his detractors and supporters feel it
Speaker 1: necessary to tell stories about Lukashenko's supernatural, uh sexual and
Speaker 1: erotic sexual prowess and his titanic erotic appetite. So like,
Speaker 1: both people who like him and hate him need you
Speaker 1: to know how fun hungry he is, which is kind
Speaker 1: of a weird. I don't know. I guess that's just Belarus.
Speaker 1: Um yeah. One tabloid newspaper clearly put like pushing a
Speaker 1: government line of propaganda described to the president's described an
Speaker 1: alleged adulterous relationship by the president, and wrote that Lukashenko
Speaker 1: is the only candidate who was potent like is basically like, look,
Speaker 1: he's he focks around on his wife because he's the
Speaker 1: only person in Belarusian politics, um who can get it,
Speaker 1: which is an interesting line to take. Um yeah. And thirteen,
Speaker 1: Lukashenko was asked by his Phobota journalist how long he
Speaker 1: felt his political career would last. This was a polite
Speaker 1: way of asking do you plan to be dictator for life?
Speaker 1: Lukashenko responded, if people will elect me, then you have
Speaker 1: will have Lukashenko for as many terms as you elect him, if,
Speaker 1: of course, health will allow him. He then added, if
Speaker 1: you have any doubts about my health, let's take skates
Speaker 1: and skis and tomorrow we will try. Let's run ten kilometers.
Speaker 1: If you come first, then tomorrow you will be president. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love the system, dictatorship of the marathon. It's my
Speaker 1: favorite political system. It would be cool if I could
Speaker 1: just challenge the president to fucking tin k um and
Speaker 1: then this is what I hope that I would. I
Speaker 1: would so beat the president at any k The thing
Speaker 1: is now is because the election here is such a
Speaker 1: big mass, we could just have Biden challenge Trump to
Speaker 1: push up contest and then the winner just be president.
Speaker 1: I mean, has he kind of always he already had
Speaker 1: he already talked about that, But now that could just
Speaker 1: be the way we win the presidency. I don't have
Speaker 1: up and see what happens. No, I don't think either
Speaker 1: of them could. I don't know if I think either
Speaker 1: of them could do one good push up. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be honest, I don't think so either. But if we want,
Speaker 1: they're so trash, they're so old in trash. But Kamala,
Speaker 1: Kamala could could do more push ups than Pence, I'm
Speaker 1: fairly sure. Yeah, probably, um but no, but they can't
Speaker 1: be on the stage together because it's against his religion
Speaker 1: to sweat near a woman he's not married to. Um So,
Speaker 1: I don't think he's going to agree to that in
Speaker 1: the first place. Uh So, Yeah, that that's a weird one.
Speaker 1: Um Now, I think the best Lukashenko propaganda I've come
Speaker 1: across is again from that Belarush Country study guide that
Speaker 1: was produced with help from the Belarusian government. Uh And
Speaker 1: I wanted to read a few fun, fun Lukashenko facts
Speaker 1: that they put out in their like broken Belarusian to
Speaker 1: English translated text, because it's it's fun. Lukashenko has always
Speaker 1: willingly indulged in sport. The head of the state is
Speaker 1: sure that enormous psychological strain he undergoes every day, a
Speaker 1: nervous stress, can only be removed by activity going in
Speaker 1: for sport. Yeah. Although every minute of President's time schedule
Speaker 1: is entered in the records, he tries to find time
Speaker 1: and meets the state affairs to come up to a bookshelf.
Speaker 1: To come up to a bookshelf, reading books for him
Speaker 1: is a most pleasant occupation. He obtained satisfaction whenever he
Speaker 1: gets acquainted with technological novelties, with latest achievements of the
Speaker 1: scientific mind. It seems like a real eccentric fell out.
Speaker 1: You obtain satisfaction from a technological novelty earlier today and
Speaker 1: then it broke Amedia never my headphone. Yeah. I love
Speaker 1: the way they describe coming. When he needs a relaxation,
Speaker 1: he comes up to a bookshelf. That's what I do
Speaker 1: when I do you feel relaxed? I go up to
Speaker 1: my bookshelf, and for him is the most pleasant occupation.
Speaker 1: So over the last twenty some years, Lukashenko's political agenda
Speaker 1: has evolved from a vague platform of anti corruption to
Speaker 1: more or less supporting return to the old Soviet economic
Speaker 1: system with minor market elements. The private sector has been
Speaker 1: kept pretty consistently at of the GDP, and Belarus's industry
Speaker 1: has kept chugging along, duing large part to Russian support. Uh.
Speaker 1: Not only did Russia cell cheap oil to Belarus, but
Speaker 1: they bought the Soviet style products still made in its factory.
Speaker 1: So like all of the like the like the Kirkland
Speaker 1: brand products in Russia are all from Belarus. So like
Speaker 1: you can get like a stove that's made somewhere else
Speaker 1: in the world, or if you want a cheap stove
Speaker 1: that just works, you get the BELARUSI get the Belarus brand.
Speaker 1: Yeah and yeah they were like and that that's part
Speaker 1: of what has kept their economy chugging along. UM. So Yeah,
Speaker 1: Lukashenko pretty much based his entire political capital on stability UM.
Speaker 1: But most of that stability has been an illusion. For example,
Speaker 1: for most of his time in power, Belarus shot to
Speaker 1: provide workers with an average monthly wage of around five
Speaker 1: dred u s dollars. Unfortunately, the state was rarely able
Speaker 1: to afford more than about half of this, so they
Speaker 1: came to rely on regular loans from Russia, particularly in
Speaker 1: years like two thousand eleven, when Belarusian inflation topped a
Speaker 1: hundred and nine percent. Oh good, Yeah, that's not good
Speaker 1: in amounts of inflation, UM. But Russia said no sometimes,
Speaker 1: which is again part of why, like Lukashenko started making
Speaker 1: more overtures for the EU UM and he's also gotten
Speaker 1: loans from the I m F and the European Union um,
Speaker 1: which means he's kind of in debt to everybody a
Speaker 1: little bit um, which is, I don't know, in an
Speaker 1: interesting situation to be in now. In general, Putin and
Speaker 1: Lukashenko have had kind of a more of a tumultuous
Speaker 1: relationship than most media tends to present. Belarus and Russia
Speaker 1: are on paper, part of that economic union that was
Speaker 1: always meant to progress, being a political one, and it
Speaker 1: first folks assumed that Lukashenko was a puppet of Putin's
Speaker 1: kind of inevitably bringing his country into this like union
Speaker 1: of Russia and Belarus. But over the years, Lukashenko's like
Speaker 1: repeatedly pulled back, like right at the moment where they
Speaker 1: might take a step forward towards that. And again it's
Speaker 1: kind of like he's been a little bit of a
Speaker 1: cock tease with Belarus, like, Oh yeah, we're totally gonna
Speaker 1: like we're gonna get hitched. Don't worry, don't worry. I
Speaker 1: just gotta go see I gotta go see my like
Speaker 1: Bay over the the I m F. We're just gonna
Speaker 1: like hang out for a night, like but it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean anything. Yeah. So last Christmas, Lukashenko presented Putin with
Speaker 1: a gift that some people see as a fuck you
Speaker 1: to Russia over the fact that they started like demanding
Speaker 1: repayment of things and kind of anyway, the gift was
Speaker 1: three sacks of potatoes and a bunch of like rendered
Speaker 1: fork pork fat um, which is a weird thing to
Speaker 1: like bring to your buddies house as a Christmas gift. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Putin seems to broadly be kind of have been relatively
Speaker 1: pissed in recent years, particularly in the last year. Um
Speaker 1: And has responded by jacking up oil prices against towards
Speaker 1: Belarus and fucking with the state of their exports to Russia,
Speaker 1: which has kind of helped to created the Belarusian economy. Now,
Speaker 1: all of this has meant that for the last few
Speaker 1: years Belarus has been anything but stable. Lukashenko has continued
Speaker 1: to talk a good game about socialism, but he's reverted
Speaker 1: to the same sort of austerity measures that we see
Speaker 1: in western countries. He's raised the age for drawing out
Speaker 1: your pension basically like raised the retirement age. Uh. He
Speaker 1: started permitting moderate unemployment. It used to be like impossible
Speaker 1: basically to be unemployed in Belarusia are belarus And Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's allowed unemployment as a result of the fact that
Speaker 1: there just was not enough money to force it. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's brought you know, political turmoil because people are
Speaker 1: seeing themselves losing access to some of these like state
Speaker 1: institutions that had at least been like kind of a
Speaker 1: sav on the fact that they didn't have much freedom. Um.
Speaker 1: Since two thousand eight, lukashenko solution to this has been
Speaker 1: to periodically loosen up the rules and allows political opponents
Speaker 1: to organize and advocate for whatever it is they happen
Speaker 1: to want. Is like a safety valve. You know, things
Speaker 1: are getting worse and worse, so I might as well
Speaker 1: give them an opportunity a little bit of esteem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you also get to figure out who's the best
Speaker 1: at organizing resistance and throw them in dark cells. Um.
Speaker 1: And he kind of developed he had a history of
Speaker 1: being relatively smart about approaching some of these protest movements. So,
Speaker 1: for example, when mine workers went on strike over delay
Speaker 1: in wage payments and demanded to be allowed to join
Speaker 1: a new non state owned union, Lukashenko made sure that
Speaker 1: they got their money and they got a fifty percent raise.
Speaker 1: But then as soon as that was done, he fired
Speaker 1: all of the leaders who had organized the strike, and
Speaker 1: he also fired all of the heads of the new union. Likewise, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know what is really healthy, Sophie, I do, Robert,
Speaker 1: I think I do. Yeah, the products and services that
Speaker 1: support this podcast extremely healthy, you know, yeah, very healthy.
Speaker 1: Never fired the head of a mining strike. Well maybe
Speaker 1: maybe probably no comment, We're back, so uh yeah. Lukashenko,
Speaker 1: so he was. He kind of developed over time a
Speaker 1: pretty canny way of responding to dissent um. Every now
Speaker 1: and then he would loosen the rules for political activism
Speaker 1: to sort of let people gather in the streets more.
Speaker 1: But he never actually changed the laws so that at
Speaker 1: any point in time he could just like have his
Speaker 1: police start enforcing the laws again. Um. And that gave
Speaker 1: him an opportunity to like, uh kind of trap people
Speaker 1: and funk with them, um, but also do the safety
Speaker 1: velops sort of thing when he needed to. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote now from a write up in the Carnegie Moscow
Speaker 1: Center about the way in which the regime dealt with dissent. Quote.
Speaker 1: The resume has several tools to minimize the likelihood of
Speaker 1: mass protests that might escalate to the point of threatening
Speaker 1: its survival. First, a significant proportion of Belarusians are excluded
Speaker 1: from politics, is a consequence of the state sectors economic dominance.
Speaker 1: The country has a widely used system whereby employers are
Speaker 1: not obliged to extend labor contracts when they run out,
Speaker 1: usually after one year, so the authorities have a powerful
Speaker 1: lever lever for influencing the majority of the working population. Similarly,
Speaker 1: students risk being expelled from institutions of higher education, the
Speaker 1: majority of which your state run, if they express political
Speaker 1: satisfact dissatisfaction. So yeah, it's a pretty pretty sweet situation
Speaker 1: when you own the state and the state is everything um,
Speaker 1: and you can just shut down people's lives. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: one body shouldn't control all those things. I don't know. Now.
Speaker 1: Protests are allowed in Belarus, but they have to receive
Speaker 1: state approval first. Yeah, my favorite type of protest is
Speaker 1: state approved approach. Yes, when they tell you where you
Speaker 1: can be um, which they always want to do, like
Speaker 1: the police and the authorities always want to be able
Speaker 1: to tell people where you can protest. Yeah, it's something
Speaker 1: we're seeing in Portland. A lot is still just close
Speaker 1: off areas of gentime, Like, Nope, you can't proticey anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a thing you have to be really unguardful or
Speaker 1: because you know, it's exactly the kind of thing you
Speaker 1: do if you want to be able to run an
Speaker 1: authoritarian state and stop people from resisting it. Uh. In
Speaker 1: two thousand from seventeen, Belarus's rules about when people could
Speaker 1: protest and where we're briefly loosened. Um. And basically people
Speaker 1: just got fined for partaking an unapproved protests rather than arrested. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this state of affairs lasted for a little less
Speaker 1: than two years until Lukashenko instituted a new law that
Speaker 1: taxed the unemployed. Um, just the unemployed, who he called
Speaker 1: social parasites. When protests against this got serious, he cracked
Speaker 1: down again and started stopped letting people go out of
Speaker 1: the streets without getting arrested. Um. Yeah, so that's interesting. UM.
Speaker 1: Lukashenko has shown sort of a a habit of giving
Speaker 1: in and giving concessions to protesters in certain situations in
Speaker 1: which he felt like it was kind of necessary. So
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven, drivers who got angry at a
Speaker 1: rise in gas prices blocked men central thoroughfare, claiming that
Speaker 1: their vehicles had broken down. A bunch of them were
Speaker 1: detained and fined. But on the same day the president
Speaker 1: lowered the fuel price. Now the fuel price crept up
Speaker 1: again very quickly thereafter, back to the levels that had
Speaker 1: been before the protests. Um. And he basically just used
Speaker 1: that as an opportunity to like stop the protest, temporarily,
Speaker 1: throw all of the people who organized them in prison,
Speaker 1: and then gradually raise the fuel tax back up to
Speaker 1: the level it had been before. Um. Yeah, very very sneaky,
Speaker 1: very sneaky. The kind of the smart dictator way to
Speaker 1: do is the smart wave if you want to be dictator,
Speaker 1: a smart way to handle the protests. Yeah, it's risky
Speaker 1: to confront protesters in the street and beat the ship
Speaker 1: out of them, because that can lead to huge mobs
Speaker 1: of protest. Yeah, and then more people will be on
Speaker 1: the street. Whereas you give them what they want, you
Speaker 1: throw their leaders in prison, and then you fuck them
Speaker 1: over again and see if they're going to be bold
Speaker 1: enough to come back out. Smart guy. Likewise, President Lukashenko
Speaker 1: is deeply cautious about promoting charismatic or ambitious men to
Speaker 1: positions in government. Um. The only thing more dangerous than
Speaker 1: being a protester in Belarus is being a politician who
Speaker 1: works with the president and stands out in some way.
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote again from that Carnegie Russia piece quote.
Speaker 1: Those who occupy senior posts know this and try not
Speaker 1: to stand out, give too many interviews, or develop public profiles.
Speaker 1: Lukashenko's aim is to ensure that neither elites nor ordinary
Speaker 1: citizens get the impression that someone has a stable hold
Speaker 1: on the number two position in the power vertical. There
Speaker 1: is no clear air or favorite in the eyes of
Speaker 1: the elite, and one should not be allowed to appear. Moreover,
Speaker 1: to prevent officials from thinking that they are becoming untouchable
Speaker 1: and to keep them in line, Lukashenko regularly initiates criminal cases,
Speaker 1: usually in charges of corruption against some of them. The
Speaker 1: rare cases tend to fifteen years ago in which high
Speaker 1: profile officials went over to the opposition, ended with various
Speaker 1: criminal charges being brought against them. To make sure others
Speaker 1: got the message. In this system, betraying the president's trust
Speaker 1: is the greatest sin. It seems this country stability has
Speaker 1: been sorely based off of this guy trying to keep
Speaker 1: the country as boring as possible. Yeah, yeah, you really
Speaker 1: get that like that impression from it. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of why Belarus had a hard time. Like Belarusians who
Speaker 1: were pro like trying to actually fight against state repression
Speaker 1: have consistently had a hard time getting any getting anyone
Speaker 1: to give a fuck, Like right now because of the
Speaker 1: violence in the streets has been the first time anyone's
Speaker 1: really cared about Belarus on an international level in quite
Speaker 1: a while. Because people are terrible, um, and Lukashenko was
Speaker 1: good at being like, he was smarter than like an
Speaker 1: assad where it's like, oh, you don't want torture tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of people to death, you just torture the
Speaker 1: right few dozen people and kill a handful of those people,
Speaker 1: and everybody else gets the message and you let them
Speaker 1: do their little marching and stuff unless they go too far,
Speaker 1: and then you just you know, there has to be
Speaker 1: enough allowed that people feel like they have a little
Speaker 1: bit of control so that they don't fully rise up exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he he kind of it's a balancing act, and
Speaker 1: he seemed to be pretty good at it for almost
Speaker 1: thirty years. Um. One of the things that kind of
Speaker 1: disrupted his ability to add a actively hide from that
Speaker 1: or two. It was one of the things that seems
Speaker 1: to have disrupted his ability to successfully balance is the
Speaker 1: coronavirus um. So Lukashenko made an interesting call when the
Speaker 1: virus hit, which is that he just refused to acknowledge
Speaker 1: that it was dangerous. We've never seen this before, we
Speaker 1: haven't like he makes the president look responsible, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not good. He told his people that
Speaker 1: the virus was a mass psychosis and that if they
Speaker 1: got sick, they should all go to the sauna and
Speaker 1: get drunk to poison the virus. Yeah. Yeah, let's all
Speaker 1: go to the sauna in a moist room where all
Speaker 1: the airs going around. Yeah yeah, that's a great plan.
Speaker 1: Let's drink lots of straight vodka to lower our immune systems.
Speaker 1: You get a poison of virus um. Yeah. In late May,
Speaker 1: he insisted he'd been right not to lock down, stating,
Speaker 1: you see that in the affluent West, unemployment is out
Speaker 1: of control. People are banging on pots, people want to eat.
Speaker 1: Thank god we avoided this. We didn't shut down. You
Speaker 1: wanna you wanna guess what happened next. I'm guessing thousands
Speaker 1: of thousands people have died. We don't know how many
Speaker 1: people have died because it's Belarus, but the president absolutely
Speaker 1: got coronavirus. You could see a pattern States, Russia, Brazil.
Speaker 1: All authoritarian kind of leadership styles are so incompetent at
Speaker 1: handling an actual crisis of this scale. And he he
Speaker 1: absolutely refused to make any changes to his life. They
Speaker 1: continued to hold all of his public appearances. Government meetings
Speaker 1: continued without masks. He continued to play hockey and go
Speaker 1: to hockey games. UM. In late March, he was interviewed
Speaker 1: in full hockey gear uh, saying it's better to die
Speaker 1: standing than live on your knees. Oh boy, and yeah,
Speaker 1: then he caught the coronavirus. UM. He says he was asymptomatic,
Speaker 1: but he does not describe being a symptomatic and he
Speaker 1: told an interviewer, I apologized for my voice. Lately, I
Speaker 1: have to talk a lot. But the most surprising thing
Speaker 1: is that today you're seeing a person who managed to
Speaker 1: power through the coronavirus standing on his feet. Doctors made
Speaker 1: this conclusion yesterday. It was asymptomatic, like I said, of
Speaker 1: our people go through this symptom illness without symptoms. And
Speaker 1: thank god I've managed to get into this group of
Speaker 1: asymptomatic people, which is not true. There's no he cited.
Speaker 1: He cited no actual statistics from his health ministry or
Speaker 1: whatever to make this claim. Um. But also he was
Speaker 1: clearly apologizing for the fact that his throat sounded shitty,
Speaker 1: gotten sick. Very funny. Um, not funny because an unknown
Speaker 1: number of Belarusians died from the virus. Again, we have
Speaker 1: no actual data on how many of them got sick,
Speaker 1: but we do know that Belarusians were so desperate at
Speaker 1: the complete lack of support provided by their government that
Speaker 1: they started taking to go fund me in massive numbers.
Speaker 1: One campaign purchased more than a hundred and thirty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars worth of respirators for doctors and nurses, which were
Speaker 1: like sixteen dollars a piece on the streets because like
Speaker 1: they're just weren't masks available. Um. So people, people have
Speaker 1: been crowdfunding basic medical supplies for their doctors in Belarus,
Speaker 1: a supposedly socialist state, because the government just refused to
Speaker 1: admit that the coronavirus was a thing. Um. And it
Speaker 1: is weird that, like, you've got Belarus the closest thing
Speaker 1: we have to the USSR left on the planet except
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe Cuba or something. Um. And you've
Speaker 1: got the United States, which is you know, this bastion
Speaker 1: of capitalism. Um. And they both kind of wound up
Speaker 1: in the same position where civilians were crowdfunding doctor. This
Speaker 1: is this. This is a sign of a perfect working
Speaker 1: system when you have people having to use a crowdfunding
Speaker 1: site for their medical care. This is this is a
Speaker 1: sign that everything is everything is fine, nothing is wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's great. Um. For his part, Lukashenko, yeah, refused
Speaker 1: to cancel and like he just yeah anyway. Over the years,
Speaker 1: Lukashenko clearly grew comfortable with the idea that his words
Speaker 1: could manipulate and dictate reality. You know, he could change
Speaker 1: his own birth date, like the nature of his dad
Speaker 1: or whatever, like at a whim for whatever was politically convenient.
Speaker 1: And again kind of like we saw with Trump, he
Speaker 1: ran into the coronavirus, which is this thing that like
Speaker 1: you can't manipulate, you can't lie to it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just a virus and it will get you sick if
Speaker 1: you don't take certain precautions. Um, but you know it,
Speaker 1: he let it spread like wildfire through Belarus and that sucked. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it happened to be also that this year was
Speaker 1: a presidential election UM, and so the kind of campaigning
Speaker 1: season started just as the coronavirus was really biting and
Speaker 1: the economy was hitting a nose dive, and there was
Speaker 1: no way for him to hide the rod. Right. You can't,
Speaker 1: as the president claim, I kept everything stable while people
Speaker 1: are sick and out of it. It's hard to just
Speaker 1: propaganda this one away exactly. There's a certain point at
Speaker 1: which the lying does not work. A government poll taken
Speaker 1: in April of found that only a third Belarus trusted
Speaker 1: the president UM Opposition Canada and this is again a
Speaker 1: pole his own government RELI. Yeah, not great results. Opposition
Speaker 1: candidates began to come out of the woodwork to oppose
Speaker 1: his rule. There were three of them initially. UM. One
Speaker 1: of them was a guy named Sergei Tekanowski who's a
Speaker 1: famous YouTuber who grew to local fame by putting out
Speaker 1: video's highlighting corruption and incompetence within the government. And then
Speaker 1: there were two other like opposition politicians who were kind
Speaker 1: of prominently running against the president and they all get
Speaker 1: arrested almost immediately. And then which is like normal, right,
Speaker 1: that's what happens. That's happening. Um. But then something weird happens.
Speaker 1: The wives of all three of these opposition politicians get
Speaker 1: together and decide to run one single campaign together. Um.
Speaker 1: So they merged their support in campaign, and they throw
Speaker 1: all of their support behind the wife of the YouTube
Speaker 1: star who got arrested, a woman named fet Lana, and
Speaker 1: they start running a really credible campaign. Well, in a
Speaker 1: matter of days, they collect a hundred thousand signatures necessary
Speaker 1: to register as a campaign with regime controlled election authorities,
Speaker 1: and the regime lets them. And you get the feeling
Speaker 1: it's because they thought that it's yeah, they thought it
Speaker 1: was just like there's no chance. Yeah, would kind of
Speaker 1: like uh crudely say something along the line like mockingly say, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't think we're ready for a female president in Belarus.
Speaker 1: But she kept getting more popular and more popular and
Speaker 1: more popular. Um, and something really neat happened. Where As
Speaker 1: this is all going on, starting with like you know,
Speaker 1: the coronavirus pandemic, people in Belarus started getting onto apps
Speaker 1: like Telegram in increasing numbers, hundreds of thousands of them
Speaker 1: who hadn't been before, to organize these like drives and
Speaker 1: donations and providing like to organize the providing basic medical
Speaker 1: supplies to um medical professionals. And they were on all
Speaker 1: these platforms when the campaignings started up. So they began
Speaker 1: like there was this one app created that allowed them
Speaker 1: to like track votes, um and like track what people
Speaker 1: were voting for us that they could have like an accurate,
Speaker 1: updated by the minute account of how people were really voting,
Speaker 1: to compare to the government talies on the election, UM
Speaker 1: and so. And also like you have all these people
Speaker 1: who were able to get like organized voter drives and
Speaker 1: stuff like that to actually like run a really competent
Speaker 1: campaign that very quickly overwhelmed the president's uh, like all
Speaker 1: of the state repressive measures he'd spent decades building up
Speaker 1: UM and it kind of works. I'm gonna quote next
Speaker 1: here from a rite up in vox quote. Experts told
Speaker 1: me Lukashenko usually allows some opposition candidates to run against him.
Speaker 1: Doing so let's the regime keep the appearance of a
Speaker 1: fair election, and also allows those with grievances to address
Speaker 1: them once in a while, hoping complaints died down soon
Speaker 1: after the vote. That seems to have happened in this case,
Speaker 1: but the president also didn't seem too threatened by takenof
Speaker 1: Skaya's candidacy. One reason was that Takenovskaya had no political
Speaker 1: experience at all. In fact, she'd never spoken at a
Speaker 1: political rally before. The other was that Lukashenko holds sexist,
Speaker 1: outdated views of women. Society is not mature enough to
Speaker 1: vote for a woman, he said in July, adding that
Speaker 1: the weight of the presidency would leader to collapse the
Speaker 1: poor thing. But taken off Skaya didn't collapse under pressure. Instead,
Speaker 1: she united the opposition and brought hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: people into the streets and support UM. So yeah, they
Speaker 1: put together this campaign like they have that. Like the
Speaker 1: sign for this campaign was like a heart and a
Speaker 1: fist in a fist pumping position and a V for
Speaker 1: victory UM. And yeah it all, it all works. Grassroots
Speaker 1: movement led by a woman is a vibe led by
Speaker 1: three women vibe. Yeah, it's it's definitely a vibe UM.
Speaker 1: And because protesters have this UM, they have this like
Speaker 1: vote tracking system that they've all set up together independently,
Speaker 1: they're able to like keep track of how the votes
Speaker 1: are actually going when the government lies about it. Which
Speaker 1: is what happens. You know, there's an election. Um the
Speaker 1: early polls, which seemed to be pretty like the the
Speaker 1: the credible polls UH suggests that about eighty percent of
Speaker 1: people voted for set lana Um. The government claims that
Speaker 1: eighty percent of people voted for Lukashenko, which again has
Speaker 1: happened every election. But this time, when he claimed that
Speaker 1: he'd won by an overwhelming margin, everyone knew it was
Speaker 1: a lie because they were all online talking to each other. So,
Speaker 1: and you you'll hear this in interviews, people being like, well,
Speaker 1: I just assumed he must have a bunch of supporters elsewhere,
Speaker 1: and like so, I like, that's why he kept winning.
Speaker 1: But now people were online with hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: their citizens, and everyone was saying, like, no, none of
Speaker 1: us voted for Now, we're all in communication. We know
Speaker 1: who we voted for. This guy, wasn't it. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: all talking. And so so that's what takes all these
Speaker 1: people out into the streets and we're gonna talk a
Speaker 1: little more about what happened next. But first, you know
Speaker 1: what's better than going to the streets but buying the
Speaker 1: products and participating in the rat wheel of capitalism which
Speaker 1: provides us with satisfactory answers to all of our needs
Speaker 1: that are so much better than getting out in the
Speaker 1: streets and bricking windows all of that bad stuff you
Speaker 1: don't need with not we're back, okay. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a really interesting situation. So basically spent Lana and
Speaker 1: these other women, like the wives of these candidates, run
Speaker 1: this incredible grassroots campaign that by all accounts, outside of
Speaker 1: the Belarusian regime fucking wins. And there's you'll hear so
Speaker 1: like tank these people who listen a lot are a
Speaker 1: group of people I don't like much. And they're basically
Speaker 1: this group of leftists who finds a reason to defend
Speaker 1: every dictator and a reason to criticize every movement against
Speaker 1: a dictator who isn't in line with the United States,
Speaker 1: because if you're not a and of the US, then
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how about a dictator you are. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't like tankys um. One of the things that
Speaker 1: they will attack, uh, One of the things that they
Speaker 1: will attack um fet Lana's campaign from is that one
Speaker 1: of the proxies that she picked for her campaign, like
Speaker 1: a local activist who was sort of campaigning for her
Speaker 1: praised Adolf Hitler in speeches, Um, which is a bad
Speaker 1: thing to do. But also it's not like he didn't
Speaker 1: praise Hitler. It's like, if you are going to say, like,
Speaker 1: I agree with you, it's a problem that this person's
Speaker 1: vetting was so bad that they picked like an election
Speaker 1: proxy who had support, Like who says nice things about Hitler?
Speaker 1: But the president repeatedly says nice things about Hitler, So
Speaker 1: that may not make the point you wanted to make
Speaker 1: in this case, um, which is like, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: bad that that happened, but also come on, like the
Speaker 1: the guy that they're running against his repeatedly talked about
Speaker 1: how good many of the things Hitler did. Is maybe
Speaker 1: this is a sign that nobody who runs for president
Speaker 1: makes great choice. We're saying, it's like it's like it's
Speaker 1: like telling people they should vote for Trump insta the
Speaker 1: Biden because Biden's creepy around women. It's like, yes, but
Speaker 1: also Trump, Yeah, Like that's not that's not a good
Speaker 1: argument to vote for Trump. They're both creepy around women. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to like criticize fet Lonire because
Speaker 1: I honestly you get the feeling that she just like
Speaker 1: she never wanted to be in politics. She she probably
Speaker 1: just didn't really think much about vetting people, and nobody
Speaker 1: can be that good in Belarus at running a political
Speaker 1: campaign experience. So I'm gonna give her a pass on
Speaker 1: the fact that one of the people she hired wound
Speaker 1: up having said some dumb things in the past. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem cancellable to me. Um. Yeah, and she
Speaker 1: had it was one of those things. So she would
Speaker 1: she would say things sometimes in speeches that were like
Speaker 1: kind of broad like like like broadly let's say, gender traditional.
Speaker 1: So she repeatedly make the claim that like, I would
Speaker 1: rather be preparing cutlets for my children than running for president,
Speaker 1: but like I just have to do it, which you
Speaker 1: can feel about the way you want. Um. But it's
Speaker 1: also what's a politician. It's politician. It plays well like
Speaker 1: it's a very pretty patriarchal society, and that'll get people
Speaker 1: who might not otherwise vote for a woman on board
Speaker 1: who's it's a protest vote like exact. Um. She also
Speaker 1: said some stuff that I think is pretty cool. I
Speaker 1: don't need power, but my husband is behind bars. I'm
Speaker 1: tired of putting up with it. I'm tired of being silent.
Speaker 1: I'm tired of being afraid. Um. And obviously one of
Speaker 1: the things that's really tragic about this, in the immediate
Speaker 1: wake of the election, you know, all these protests start up,
Speaker 1: things become like very violent, very quickly, with state security
Speaker 1: forces cracking down, and she has to go into hiding. Um.
Speaker 1: She sends her children out of the country first, in
Speaker 1: which she's actually in the same boat with Lukashenko because
Speaker 1: there's it's heavily suspected although not proven, like the presidential
Speaker 1: aircraft bellers Is air Force one flew to Turkey as
Speaker 1: soon as things started getting bad, and it's believed that
Speaker 1: Lukashenko's family was on board. Yeah, do do we know?
Speaker 1: Do we know where he is right now? I think
Speaker 1: he's still in the country. Um, he's supposed to be
Speaker 1: giving an address pretty soon, probably will have by the
Speaker 1: time this episode drops. And there's a bunch of different anyway,
Speaker 1: So fet Lana Um comes on like basically goes to
Speaker 1: ground for a while and seems like she gets caught
Speaker 1: because the next time we see her protester going on
Speaker 1: and she makes a video from the office of government
Speaker 1: minister where she's like everyone should accept the election results
Speaker 1: and go home and not fight the police. And she
Speaker 1: looks like fucked up, and it's it's it's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we we we know what's going on. You know what's
Speaker 1: going on. And she's fled the country since, so she
Speaker 1: is out and safe and hiding for the sake of
Speaker 1: her family's safety. Um. And things in Belarus are very
Speaker 1: bad right now. UM, seven thousand people have been arrested.
Speaker 1: Now most of those people are a sizeable chunk of
Speaker 1: those people have and released. At this point, again, we
Speaker 1: are not talking yet, at least about a regime that
Speaker 1: is like the Syrian regime where they're going to the
Speaker 1: immediately kill killed. Um, they have killed at least two people,
Speaker 1: probably significantly more, and they're torturing people, lots of them.
Speaker 1: There was the audio that came out a few days ago.
Speaker 1: We're going to include a clip from that in a second,
Speaker 1: but it's it's audio of protesters from outside of one
Speaker 1: of Belarus is not so secret prisons, just like people.
Speaker 1: You can hear people being tortured, and we'll we'll play
Speaker 1: that now. So yeah, that's horrifying. UM, not not great,
Speaker 1: not great, Uh, not great, But it hasn't stopped people
Speaker 1: from coming out and in the last as I, as
Speaker 1: I deliver this, things will be in a different state
Speaker 1: by the time you hear this. Most recent change has
Speaker 1: been that the government is allowing mass demonstrations again, and
Speaker 1: like the soldiers are hugging protesters and like they're there.
Speaker 1: It seems like things got bad enough that he decided,
Speaker 1: oh god, if I keep pressing people shooting people in
Speaker 1: the streets, that will inevitably lead to a revolution. And
Speaker 1: I don't know that I'll win because this morning I
Speaker 1: saw footage of like police cars joining in on the
Speaker 1: protest or whatever. Yeah, And it's it's hard to say
Speaker 1: at this stage, because there have been One of the
Speaker 1: things that was happening is there were viral videos of
Speaker 1: members of like even Russia or even Belarution special forces
Speaker 1: throwing away or burning their uniforms to be like, we're
Speaker 1: not going to hurt our people. Um, And maybe that
Speaker 1: was enough of a problem that he realized he had
Speaker 1: to change his response. I can't tell if the because
Speaker 1: there have been cases in history where like police and
Speaker 1: military forces joined with protesters and then the government got overthrown, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's the case. We we don't
Speaker 1: know if it's actually genuine or if it's kind of
Speaker 1: been being controlled by him to make himself look good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's also rumors that basically what's going to happen
Speaker 1: is Lukashenko is going to be backed by Russia and
Speaker 1: allowed to stay in power for another year and then resign,
Speaker 1: and that like that's what they're going to try to do,
Speaker 1: so like he can save some space, but like they
Speaker 1: want to put their man. But also it's like it's
Speaker 1: not clear that that would work because basically a significant
Speaker 1: number of the country at this point is actually more
Speaker 1: pro Europe than pro Russia. It's it's some polls that
Speaker 1: have happened have had it been close to fifty fifty,
Speaker 1: it's usually about fifty pro Russia pro EU. Who knows
Speaker 1: where things are at this moment um, but it is
Speaker 1: a situation that's like kind of the thing that he's
Speaker 1: been trying to avoid since two thousand fourteen, which is
Speaker 1: Belarus winding up kind of like Ukraine, where you have
Speaker 1: the country split along pro European or pro Russian lines,
Speaker 1: and then Russia comes in and takes the chunk of
Speaker 1: the country and there's a big, ugly civil war like
Speaker 1: a lot of really horrible things could happen here um
Speaker 1: and some of them being that like Belarus could get
Speaker 1: you know, sort of put absorbed more by kind of
Speaker 1: the technocratic West and wind up being picked over by
Speaker 1: capitalists like Albania did. It's no easy, great solution here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: besides like just getting the elected leader actually elected like
Speaker 1: the first and who we probably think won the election. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is which is a start um and it is
Speaker 1: one of those things where you can kind of look
Speaker 1: through what's likely to happen next and be like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like there's a lot of potential for
Speaker 1: things to end well for Belarus um. And I do
Speaker 1: like you can make a strong logical arguments there right
Speaker 1: that like you know, NATO is going to like uh
Speaker 1: like the I M F or whoever, like like what
Speaker 1: all these different sort of Western powers that have been
Speaker 1: kind of have been slavering at the chance to get there,
Speaker 1: to get their teeth around Belarus will do that, and
Speaker 1: it will make life worse for people. Not impossible, although
Speaker 1: at this point, considering how bad things have gotten, hard
Speaker 1: to see how that would be worse than where things are.
Speaker 1: There's also the argument like Russia will take over and
Speaker 1: like it will become more authoritarian and things will get
Speaker 1: worse for people, um and like none of the options
Speaker 1: before them are good. And I don't like getting trapped
Speaker 1: into that kind of thinking because it leads you to like,
Speaker 1: it leads you to not be excited about what what
Speaker 1: is a core good thing here, which is that a
Speaker 1: shipload of people who never thought, who never who have
Speaker 1: not had political agency in their lives are now like
Speaker 1: drop kicking riot cops in the street and trying to
Speaker 1: change their circumstances. And that's a good thing. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's these people how have for the
Speaker 1: first time in a while or having a sense of
Speaker 1: like agency in their life. Yeah, And I don't want to, like,
Speaker 1: I don't think it should be a foregone conclusion that
Speaker 1: they will get fucked over like one way or the
Speaker 1: other by you know, Russian imperialism or or sort of
Speaker 1: like the kind of the same, like the fucking shock
Speaker 1: doctrine capitalism. Like I don't think either of those has
Speaker 1: to be inevitable. Like it's an unwritten year. Things could
Speaker 1: be different, Like who knows. Anyway, there's a there's enough
Speaker 1: things going on in the world that there's not a
Speaker 1: foregone conclusion yet. Yeah. So that's what what I've got
Speaker 1: for this episode so far. UM. And I hope that
Speaker 1: if you're in Belarus and somehow listening to this. Because
Speaker 1: they shut down the Internet to a pretty heavy extent,
Speaker 1: people have found ways around it, thankfully. One of the
Speaker 1: cool stories is that, like there's this app that was
Speaker 1: developed to allow people in China to access the Internet
Speaker 1: that people started downloading in Belarus before the Internet got
Speaker 1: or before like all the app stores got blocked. Um,
Speaker 1: so people have been passing it around and flash drives
Speaker 1: thousands of people so that they could get it on
Speaker 1: this This is cyberpunk. It's very cool. That's that's actually cyberpunk.
Speaker 1: That is awesome and it's neat. There's been some really
Speaker 1: cool stories coming out, like a bunch of British soccer
Speaker 1: hooligans flew over to Belarus to like fight the cops
Speaker 1: on the hat like yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fucking fucking rules. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: like anti racist skinhead types in the UK, um, which
Speaker 1: I think fucking rocks. Um. And I was reading a
Speaker 1: really interesting crime thing published an article an interview with
Speaker 1: a number of different Belarusian anarchists, um and yeah. People
Speaker 1: were asked like what they're It was really interesting for
Speaker 1: a number of reasons. One of them was that one
Speaker 1: of the guys they interviewed estimated, like, there's maybe a
Speaker 1: hundred of us in the country, like anarchists who were
Speaker 1: actually organized in an um and but they're also like
Speaker 1: the people who have the most time and experience thinking
Speaker 1: about how to fight the state. Yeah, they've they've just
Speaker 1: been there free time thinking about this, so they've been
Speaker 1: the back bone and help. But trying to like train
Speaker 1: up all of these other these Belarusians who kind of
Speaker 1: like never would have considered themselves political activists before um,
Speaker 1: which is an interesting a story I'd love to to
Speaker 1: learn more about, to be honest, UM and yeah. Another
Speaker 1: one of the people they interviewed, like was asked like,
Speaker 1: what can we do to help, and he was like, well,
Speaker 1: there's some donations that people can want, but like, really,
Speaker 1: if you could, if it's at all possible for you
Speaker 1: to travel to Belarus and help us fist fight the cops,
Speaker 1: we could really use that help right now. Of course,
Speaker 1: it's difficult with the play, very difficult. Not a great time.
Speaker 1: I would love to be They're doing something, but um,
Speaker 1: not easy to get to at the moment, especially for
Speaker 1: Americans who are no longer welcome anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Belarus were We are paying attention and hope
Speaker 1: that y'all uh figure out how to make things better
Speaker 1: in your lives and that everyone who says that this
Speaker 1: is inherently doomed winds up being wrong. Yep, very hopeful
Speaker 1: and optimistic ending. I love optimism. You know what else?
Speaker 1: I love Garrison? No, what else do you love? Plugging?
Speaker 1: You love? You love pluggables. The attempts we've tried to
Speaker 1: plug in headphones all day well actually because they were
Speaker 1: not plug in headphones. It was a nightmare that stole
Speaker 1: like an hour from our We better if we had
Speaker 1: a splitter, then we can plug into head exactly exactly,
Speaker 1: if people had just Sometimes progress isn't necessary. What was
Speaker 1: wrong with the audio jack? Why did people need something new?
Speaker 1: It worked fine. My plug doubles are good. Speaking of
Speaker 1: plug doubles, my plugables at Hungry Bowtown Twitter for protests,
Speaker 1: reporting and other kind of political fun stuff. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's what I'm doing right now, and that's the
Speaker 1: main thing currently and mine is at I right okay,
Speaker 1: where you can occasionally see me live streaming Garrison and
Speaker 1: myself and a number of our other close friends getting
Speaker 1: repeatedly hear gassed in the streets of Portland, Oregon, as
Speaker 1: has become tradition in the streets of Portland, Oregon on
Speaker 1: days that end. And why oh it's a good time, Sophie,
Speaker 1: great reading. Our city is for a long time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: On an unrelated note, my lungs hurt every day. I wonder,
Speaker 1: I wonder, why oh okay, Well that's the episode Products
Speaker 1: and Services. Everybody just remember, no matter how dark things get,
Speaker 1: we always have products and services.