Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, your
Speaker 2: weekly reminder that when there's bad stuff, there's good people
Speaker 2: trying to not do the bad with the good and
Speaker 2: the all the words that work together. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Margaret Giljoy, and my guest is James Hi.
Speaker 3: James, Hello. I'm excited to be here for the final
Speaker 3: and in a series of episodes, I know this is
Speaker 3: gonna be the one with I mean, actually there's been
Speaker 3: fun stuff in all of it. I tried to pace
Speaker 3: it that way, you know, yeah. But here to help
Speaker 3: produce it is Ian Hi Ian, Hey, Magbine, Hey, James, Hi.
Speaker 1: Ian.
Speaker 2: Our audio engineer is Daniel.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 3: Daniel, Hi, Daniel. Ian's just trying to make us wait,
Speaker 3: Hi Daniel, thank you. Sorry. Just cut Margaret speaking, Just
Speaker 3: be like a ten second silence.
Speaker 2: Our theme music was written for us by Unwoman and
Speaker 2: this is part four of our four part are about
Speaker 2: resistance by Armenian folks to the genocide of the aforementioned
Speaker 2: Armenian folks and where we last left our heroes, they
Speaker 2: had just been through one and a half to two
Speaker 2: genocides depending on how you count it, and a world war,
Speaker 2: and things were rough. But at least a guy got shot.
Speaker 2: I had a dream last night where I was like,
Speaker 2: after the apocalypse, hanging out with a bunch of like
Speaker 2: anarcho pacifists who were all like early Aughts style like
Speaker 2: food and out bombs, kind.
Speaker 3: Of hippie punks. M h, I'm familiar.
Speaker 2: And I was like trying to talk to them about
Speaker 2: how pacifism was working for them in the apocalypse, and
Speaker 2: at one point one of them got caught, like stealing
Speaker 2: a bunch of diesel fuel from like a bunch of
Speaker 2: like let's say, chuds, and so he was like, well,
Speaker 2: I guess I'm just gonna lay down and let them
Speaker 2: kick me for a while until they get over it,
Speaker 2: and then I'll try to be their friend. And in
Speaker 2: the dream I was like, this is so stressful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is a stressful scenario.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Anyway that it was some kind of subconscious being like, hey,
Speaker 2: you're reading about a lot of heavy shit right now,
Speaker 2: so let's see. Most cliff notes versions of this history
Speaker 2: sort of treat the young Turks like they were done
Speaker 2: after World War One, that their leaders had scattered to
Speaker 2: the wind, and now they're leading quiet lives, no longer
Speaker 2: able to hurt anyone, This is not true. The exiled
Speaker 2: leaders were still coordinating Turkish nationalism in Turkey. There was
Speaker 2: some conflict between them and like a general who was
Speaker 2: still in Turkey, but like, we're not gonna get into that.
Speaker 2: An armed rebellion started, a counter government was taking territory everywhere.
Speaker 2: The exiled leaders were also into creating a pan Islamic
Speaker 2: alliance to fight Russia and the West. Either of you
Speaker 2: ever heard of pan Turanism?
Speaker 3: No, I didn't think, like Persian.
Speaker 2: So it's some wacky race science thing called pan Turanism,
Speaker 2: which it is basically like, hey, there's this cool secret
Speaker 2: master race that includes Turks and Arabs and Mongols and
Speaker 2: also Finns and Hungarians.
Speaker 3: Of course a natural combination of peoples.
Speaker 2: There is some like language uralic stuff, but it's clearly
Speaker 2: culturally distinct areas and like trying to harken back to
Speaker 2: some like it's like the equivalent of being like the
Speaker 2: Nazis and caring about arianism, but like meaning it in
Speaker 2: a completely different way and meaning like literally from whatever.
Speaker 3: I don't know about this shit. Yeah, anyway, the Nazis
Speaker 3: did like to join themselves to ancient Greeks a lot.
Speaker 3: I think that's more of a cultural thing than a yeah.
Speaker 2: And so they're basically trying to come up with this
Speaker 2: like pan, whoever we can get well. Different of the
Speaker 2: leaders they actually kind of all hated each other at
Speaker 2: this point, but they all had different ways that they
Speaker 2: wanted to do it. The Exile leaders are still doing
Speaker 2: their thing, and the ARF leadership was like, well, no
Speaker 2: one got punished by the state. Besides, like a couple
Speaker 2: of people like, how are we going to do this?
Speaker 2: And someone at the ARF's ninth General Congress in nineteen
Speaker 2: nineteen was like, or do we just kill them all?
Speaker 2: Or we just find out where they live and then
Speaker 2: shoot them intreasable? And this wasn't actually super popular when
Speaker 2: it was first recommended. Overall, folks were more on the like,
Speaker 2: I think our goal is to collectively not die. It's
Speaker 2: the old is living well the best revenge? Or is
Speaker 2: shooting a man in the street the best revenge conundrum?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Tailor's oldest time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so they did it the way that I think
Speaker 2: you should deal with this kind of impasse, and.
Speaker 3: They went for both. Yeah.
Speaker 2: A small group with Garo, our bank occupier guy who
Speaker 2: showed up a bunch of times as a politician. Later,
Speaker 2: Garo ends up in charge of this quote special mission,
Speaker 2: the Bullets into Brains mission. They wrote up lists of targets.
Speaker 2: Some of the lists.
Speaker 3: We have a bunch of the different lists or history does.
Speaker 3: I don't have them.
Speaker 2: That would be cool because on media should give us
Speaker 2: budget to buy weird history artifacts and we can have
Speaker 2: a museum of cool people.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I've been buying them with a budget that
Speaker 3: they pay me. But that's just me being the way
Speaker 3: to and died with money. I bought a Spanish Civil
Speaker 3: War Republic stamp. Oh nice, that's pretty cool. Which one? Oh,
Speaker 3: I don't remember. It's in my basement. I got to
Speaker 3: go look at it. I have a bad memory, sick. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they used them to raise funds a lot. They would
Speaker 3: sell them in other countries too, like oh cool, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I bought a Spanish Civil War Republic rifle. That's cool.
Speaker 3: That would be more what I would want, But you know,
Speaker 3: it's pretty cool. I'll send you my little There are
Speaker 3: some things you can look for, Margaret, and then you
Speaker 3: can go in Gumbroker for hours, and then you can
Speaker 3: get one over from the chid. He doesn't know what
Speaker 3: he's selling.
Speaker 2: My budget currently is at the Stamp Variety. There was
Speaker 2: like recently a friend of mine was working for a
Speaker 2: bookseller who had like a first edition I think it
Speaker 2: was a Living My Life by Emma Goldman with like
Speaker 2: a long inscription from Emma Goldman in the front. Oh wow,
Speaker 2: and like I wanted it really badly, but it was
Speaker 2: in the many thousands dollars category. And I'm into history,
Speaker 2: but I feel like that level of history. I'm like,
Speaker 2: I actually think what Emma Goldman would want me to
Speaker 2: do is give that money to food, not bombs, you know, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you'll be directly.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Like if I was a museum, I would
Speaker 2: talk about this differently, right, My personal collection doesn't need.
Speaker 3: That, no, yeah, yeah. These things should come to you
Speaker 3: as gifts from the friends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, much like the gifts of bullets that they wanted
Speaker 2: to insert directly into the brains at very high speed
Speaker 2: of the people who had That's my transition back into
Speaker 2: where I was at. So they put up gotually these
Speaker 2: lists of names, and this included, of course the three Pashas,
Speaker 2: plus a bunch of commanders, administrators, and the leaders of
Speaker 2: that special organization that had done so much of the
Speaker 2: killing number one target though, that's Talat Pasha, the Grand Vizier.
Speaker 2: In nineteen twenty in Boston, the Arf Regional Conference christened
Speaker 2: the whole thing Operation Nemesis because they're not a fucking
Speaker 2: name in operation.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Kind of straight out of Massachusetts as well. I'd
Speaker 3: love to see it, yeah, yeah, real Megachusetts moment. It's
Speaker 3: fun because, like there's so many different.
Speaker 2: Ways that people tell this story, and one of them
Speaker 2: is like, wow, Armenian exiles who weren't even there got
Speaker 2: together and it was just some middle class Americans, and
Speaker 2: it like divorces them from the political lineage that they
Speaker 2: were part of. But there's still like a little bit
Speaker 2: of truth to it, right, you know, You've got these
Speaker 2: like immigrants and children of immigrants getting together in New
Speaker 2: England to be like, all right, let's pull our money
Speaker 2: together with our middle class jobs and do this.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, I think it may well have still
Speaker 3: been on the receiving end of bigotry for who they were, right, Like,
Speaker 3: that's definitely not inconceivable in early twentieth century America.
Speaker 2: It's true, although the stuff that I've read about presents
Speaker 2: them as like being fairly attempted to integrate but I
Speaker 2: do not know. I've also read more from like the
Speaker 2: perspective of like their children, you know.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, yeah, who is more Americanized in that second generation? Yeah.
Speaker 2: The organizers of Operation Nemesis included a former editor of
Speaker 2: a newspaper, an accountant in Syracuse, New York, and Garro
Speaker 2: himself plus another general with twenty years of experience.
Speaker 3: Is that the first accountant you've ever had on the podcast, Margaret?
Speaker 3: It might be.
Speaker 2: And it's cool because there's actually you can listen to
Speaker 2: some of the other podcasts that are worth listening to.
Speaker 2: There's an NPR did one where it's like the accountant's
Speaker 2: like grandkid was going through his like stuff after he
Speaker 2: died and found all of the documents of Operation Nemesis
Speaker 2: and had never heard of it. Oh, he didn't tell anyone,
Speaker 2: His wife didn't know.
Speaker 3: He kept it.
Speaker 2: The secret of running this thing to his grave incredible.
Speaker 3: You'd think there'd be some temptation, like on the on
Speaker 3: your deathbed if that person died in that way, to
Speaker 3: be like, oh, by the way, yeah, we got him back.
Speaker 3: Yeah that was me.
Speaker 2: I'm a secret spy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the top up sec from that guy.
Speaker 2: I know, I wouldn't last more than I'd be like
Speaker 2: calling my lawyer every week, be like, what do you
Speaker 2: think that the Statute of Limitations is on international conspiracies
Speaker 2: digital heads of state?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to tweet it. Let me tweet it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, what if I go to Cuba, first.
Speaker 3: City in Venezuela loggi on posting something and then wondering
Speaker 3: what to do with the rest of your life? Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: And that's how you know I haven't gotten up too much.
Speaker 2: All my petty crime is like in the stuff I
Speaker 2: write about, you know, like and then I was out
Speaker 2: of protest wearing all black. Anyway, So the Operation Nemesis
Speaker 2: was financed by middle class Armenian Americans who may or
Speaker 2: may not have known.
Speaker 3: Where their money is going.
Speaker 2: So the light way that people tell this story is
Speaker 2: they talk about it as a story of revenge, and like,
Speaker 2: that's true. It was vengeance, right, it's called Operation Nemesis. Well,
Speaker 2: Nemesis doesn't actually mean revenge, right, Nemesis is actually a
Speaker 2: more accurate word. It was a specific and important political
Speaker 2: action that needed to take place. The people that they
Speaker 2: were going to kill were actively working to further the
Speaker 2: destruction of the Armenian people still, and maybe most importantly
Speaker 2: in terms of its impact, was the attempt to restore
Speaker 2: pride to the Armenian people. You will not survive ordering
Speaker 2: our genocide. The thing that's so inspiring to me about
Speaker 2: the story is how it's like, yeah, it's your wild
Speaker 2: eyed revolutionaries that are part of a grew out of
Speaker 2: libertarian socialist democratic socialist movement. And it's your middle class
Speaker 2: Armenian American accountants, and it's your kind of disabled soldiers
Speaker 2: who have visions, all working together, all deeply focused on
Speaker 2: one mission that they pulled off against all odds. But
Speaker 2: there's also another take if you zoom out even further,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to get into it a little bit
Speaker 2: more about like geopolitics and all of it. The Western
Speaker 2: powers in Russia let it happen and nudged it along.
Speaker 2: They were happy to let Armenians do their dirty work.
Speaker 2: But first they've got this whole plan. Now they've got
Speaker 2: Operation Nemesis. They have a list. Now they need volunteers,
Speaker 2: shortage of volunteers. The ads they put out in the
Speaker 2: newspapers were like bachelor's only, because they're like, this is
Speaker 2: a one way trip. We're asking you to go on,
Speaker 2: you might die.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but what did the ad say though, and they
Speaker 3: just wanted hitman bachelor's only need apply. I think they
Speaker 3: were not like hit Man needed.
Speaker 2: I think it was a little bit like, hey, Armenian exiles,
Speaker 2: like come apply for some important stuff. But like if
Speaker 2: it says bachelor's only, it is like a wink, wing, nudge, nudge,
Speaker 2: we're giving you a gun and pointing you you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's not like you're going to be an accountant. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I actually think a lot of their op sec relied
Speaker 2: on the fact that no one spoke Armenian.
Speaker 3: They have built in encryption.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean later we'll talk about the encryption
Speaker 2: they actually used. But the fact that Armenian was like
Speaker 2: it allowed them to get away with even more I think, right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Tillarian did not know about Operation Nemesis at first. He's
Speaker 2: a there in Constantinople and so he's like, all right,
Speaker 2: I figured it out. We should kill all of them,
Speaker 2: and I should find rich Armenians to fund it. He
Speaker 2: has basically tried a one man Operation Nemesis. He is
Speaker 2: trying to build a parallel organization right because his mother
Speaker 2: keeps coming to him in his dreams and is like, hey,
Speaker 2: what's up, what are you doing? Yeah, you really got
Speaker 2: time to play video games.
Speaker 3: Very early, other video games. Yeah. Did he know at
Speaker 3: this point did his family where they murdered in the genocide? Like,
Speaker 3: so his father survived.
Speaker 2: I'm a little bit confused because some of the way
Speaker 2: that people write about it, they write about his visions
Speaker 2: as if they're true, or like as if they're like literal,
Speaker 2: Like I'm not quite sure whether his brother survived. I'm
Speaker 2: under the impression that his family died, Okay, Yeah, And
Speaker 2: like I I don't know, and I'm a little bit
Speaker 2: annoyed that I don't know is the answer to that? Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like at what point he was like sure they were
Speaker 2: gone or what?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well that's part of the thing, isn't it. Like
Speaker 3: I'm sure it takes away that closure in certainty totally.
Speaker 3: But he might have had it, and I just might
Speaker 3: not have read about it, even though I like kind
Speaker 3: of tried to look a bit, you know. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: So he's going around and he's like trying to find
Speaker 2: people to finance him in Constantinople, and then eventually he
Speaker 2: moves to Paris, which is a classic place to go
Speaker 2: bum around. He worked as a cobbler. He spent all
Speaker 2: of his time fantasizing about how to kill Talat Pasha.
Speaker 2: He didn't hang out with folks, He barely ate. All
Speaker 2: he thought about was this and then basically Nemesis, without
Speaker 2: telling him why, they sent him a telegram and a
Speaker 2: ticket to Boston, plus a visa and passport in his name.
Speaker 3: It just rolls up in the post one day, like
Speaker 3: I think someone comes and gives it to him, okay,
Speaker 3: because they have like a bunch of diplomats and shit
Speaker 3: like that are part of Operation Nemesis, right, and so
Speaker 3: they like have gotten him all the paperwork. It's not
Speaker 3: even like I mean it's forged and that he didn't
Speaker 3: apply for it, right, but it's like real paperwork. And
Speaker 3: they've picked him to kill their number one enemy because
Speaker 3: he's shown such initiative already and he seems to be
Speaker 3: very focused and committed. All the other assassinations Nemesis wanted quiet.
Speaker 3: This one they wanted done in public, and they wanted
Speaker 3: the assassin to turn himself in so that he could
Speaker 3: stand trial. This is how the Armenians would make their
Speaker 3: case to the world.
Speaker 2: And so folks met him in New York as soon
Speaker 2: as he gets off the boat and they help him
Speaker 2: get on a train to Boston. He doesn't like any
Speaker 2: of these people. They're all like having fun, right, you know.
Speaker 3: And he's just like eyes on the prize.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like, what the fuck is wrong with everyone?
Speaker 2: They pick him up in Boston, they drive him to
Speaker 2: the newspaper. Tullarian's grouchy. Everyone's talking casually about the whole thing.
Speaker 2: He's just grim and driven. And eventually he meets people
Speaker 2: where he's he meets Garro right, and he's like, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: they have real revolutionaries here, right, They're serious. He wasn't
Speaker 2: much of a spy. He was a soldier. He wrote
Speaker 2: in his journal about how he wanted to grab people
Speaker 2: and say to them, tell me where he is. I
Speaker 2: am a weapon. Aimy, which is a direct quote, and
Speaker 2: it goes hard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the just go hard. So they aimed him.
Speaker 2: They put him on a steamship back to Paris, then
Speaker 2: to Geneva, where arf got in paper saying he was Persian,
Speaker 2: and sent him to Berlin with a student visa, which
Speaker 2: is where they were pretty sure Talt was living. His
Speaker 2: name was now Simon Tavicien a bunch of the genocidal
Speaker 2: fuckers were in Berlin. Actually, and when I say it's
Speaker 2: like this big organization we're actually gonna talk about at
Speaker 2: the end, it's about ten assassins and twelve spies and
Speaker 2: a few other people, and they work in seven countries.
Speaker 2: It's like, really impressive, honestly what they did with so
Speaker 2: few people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that's genuinely impressive. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Nemesis, including Tellurian, found a reasonably high up guy
Speaker 2: pretty soon, and Tilarian was like, I should just kill
Speaker 2: that guy. But then he's like, no, I need to
Speaker 2: catch the bigger fish, right, you know, I need to
Speaker 2: hold on to this thing. And the young Turks had
Speaker 2: gone to Berlin because they had stashed a bunch of
Speaker 2: gold and Swiss and German banks and they wanted access
Speaker 2: to it. Yeah, and plus they couldn't go to France
Speaker 2: because there's a ton of Armenians there and they're like, well,
Speaker 2: definitely recognized and killed in France, and the UK won't
Speaker 2: have them. And the Balkans were a bad place to
Speaker 2: be Muslim, so a lot of them went to Berlin.
Speaker 2: Someone went to Russia. We'll talk about that. The young
Speaker 2: Turks were arguing about how to move forward. Enver Pasha,
Speaker 2: for example, he was in with the Soviets and wanted
Speaker 2: to work with them in return for power, waiting to
Speaker 2: bring the Islamic countries into the Soviet sphere. The Soviets
Speaker 2: were arming the Turkish nationalists who were fighting against the
Speaker 2: British occupation. It's a lot wanted to ally with the British,
Speaker 2: who were a capitalist nation who probably sold advertisements in
Speaker 2: the middle of history lessons you'd probably go to you
Speaker 2: went to university. I have no idea if you went
Speaker 2: to university in Britain, but I'm sure they interrupted their
Speaker 2: lectures to sell you bis skits.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very very common. Yeah, tea, thank you, bask ma, mite, crumpets.
Speaker 3: Those the four cardinal directions of British nests. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: that's what we're advertised by is big crumpet. I don't
Speaker 3: know what a crumpet is. You don't know what a
Speaker 3: crump it is? Oh great? Is it what I would
Speaker 3: call a biscuit?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: No, no, okay, so no biscuits, cookie, Yes, that's correct,
Speaker 3: it's crump at a scone. No, No, crumpet is like
Speaker 3: a bread product, but the top is all bubbly. The
Speaker 3: closest analogy is like a half English muffin, I think.
Speaker 3: But it's good because the top is all bubbly, so
Speaker 3: it doesn't have like a crust on the top. So
Speaker 3: when you butter it, or you use your vegan substitute
Speaker 3: butter in our case, it sinks into the little bubbles,
Speaker 3: so it gets really buttery. That actually sounds really good.
Speaker 3: They're really good. Yeah, I think trade Joe sometimes has
Speaker 3: him in America.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I'll give a crump at a chance and
Speaker 2: I'll toast you as I sorry, I know that it's
Speaker 2: really annoying. I was only easy ins because the UK
Speaker 2: came up and the thing and anyway, here's ads and
Speaker 2: we're back, and you missed a long conversation where James
Speaker 2: was defending the fact that the first floor is the
Speaker 2: second one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is correct. I am actually a person who
Speaker 3: very often gets lost on lifts still after fifteen years
Speaker 3: and is God's saken country. It is one of the
Speaker 3: one of the ways in which I have failed to
Speaker 3: integrate as a migrant.
Speaker 2: It's like the one thing that I'll like try and
Speaker 2: claim American supremacy on is the counting of floors. And
Speaker 2: I actually I wonder if people only care about it
Speaker 2: so deeply because we get lost.
Speaker 3: You know, it impacts my quality of life. So yeah,
Speaker 3: it's something that I've become like a I refuse to
Speaker 3: compromise on it. But where do you go to Spain, Margaret,
Speaker 3: and you have half floors? Oh my god, I've been
Speaker 3: to Spain, but I like, I didn't run across have floors.
Speaker 3: If you ever lived in a really shitty apartment building
Speaker 3: in Spain, they have floors. Yeah, Like when you go
Speaker 3: in the lift, instead of having a door, it's just
Speaker 3: like a mesh screen that you pull across. So like
Speaker 3: if you wanted to lose a limb at any point,
Speaker 3: you could just stick it out there and it would
Speaker 3: be gone. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been in the industrial elevators in the US
Speaker 2: or sometimes like that, like old warehouses and stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, that's exactly what it's like, except these
Speaker 3: ones are like the size of a coffin. Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's how I feel about all elevators to me, is
Speaker 2: that they are all coffins. Oh, which is part of
Speaker 2: why everything's Oh I'm so American. I'm like everything's so
Speaker 2: small in Europe. I feel so constrained at all times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is funny to watch American people that direct
Speaker 3: with European things, whereas I am like, everything is so
Speaker 3: massive in America. Why is it this big? Yeah, what's
Speaker 3: going on? It's still funny to my family will come
Speaker 3: here like fifteen years later and just be like, why
Speaker 3: are there so many milks? That's fair, that's the thing. Actually,
Speaker 3: the left and right can come together on this issue, right,
Speaker 3: there are too many milks. Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 2: And it's because all the alternative milks. We're still trying
Speaker 2: to find the right and pure one that doesn't destroy
Speaker 2: the environment, and it such a thing doesn't exist because
Speaker 2: of consumption and capital anyway, This is a milk cast, yeah, James.
Speaker 2: So I don't even want to say my favorite milk
Speaker 2: alternative because it's like wrong somehow. All of them are
Speaker 2: one by one proven to be bad. Yeah, much like
Speaker 2: countries where people fled to so Talat wanted to ally
Speaker 2: with the British. Both Talat and Enver were waiting for
Speaker 2: the dust to settle before they could go home to Turkey,
Speaker 2: and they'd be fighting for a pan Islamic alliance of
Speaker 2: Turks and Arabs. Enver actually doesn't get got by Operation Nemesis.
Speaker 2: He dies in the classic way to die when you
Speaker 2: ally with the Red Army.
Speaker 3: Does he get.
Speaker 2: Purged, which is that he was machine gunned by the
Speaker 2: Red Army?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Classic? Was it like a conscious machine gunning of
Speaker 3: him or just a general bumblefuck?
Speaker 2: It was in a battle, this one. I actually can't like.
Speaker 2: He did the betrayal.
Speaker 3: First.
Speaker 2: He tried to do some independence from Moscow and they
Speaker 2: were like, all right, we're going to machine gun everyone,
Speaker 2: you know, Oh, okay, in a good fight whatever. I
Speaker 2: didn't read enough about Edvers passing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well he's dead. I just wanted to take potshots
Speaker 3: at Bolshevism. Yeah, no, anytime you want, please. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Nemesis is after Talat Pasha and they had to
Speaker 2: find one guy in a city of four million people,
Speaker 2: and they had almost no money with which to do it.
Speaker 2: They found him. They bribed border guards to tell them
Speaker 2: anytime Turkish nationals came and went. A diplomat, the Vice
Speaker 2: consul of the Republic of Armenia was passing information using
Speaker 2: diplomatic privilege across the world and they would write in
Speaker 2: code and plus no one spoke Armenian anyway. So that
Speaker 2: helped some Armenians, fluent in Turkish without an accent, pretended
Speaker 2: to be Muslim Turks and joined Turkish cliques at school
Speaker 2: to learning what they could be Like, hey, yeah, like
Speaker 2: any important guys come over recently for no reason, just curious.
Speaker 2: They're probably better at it than I would have been. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Tillarian was not a fucking spy. He could barely speak German.
Speaker 2: He had no natural affinity for languages, and so as
Speaker 2: Armenian friends, who had no idea he was an assassin,
Speaker 2: made him take German lessons. They're like, oh, come on,
Speaker 2: you're a student. He's like, not really a student, but
Speaker 2: he's enrolled in order to have cover, right, Yeah, they're.
Speaker 3: Like, you got to learn German.
Speaker 2: And he's like, he wants to scream, like no, I'm
Speaker 2: here to do a murder, you know, but he can't.
Speaker 3: That's not a good idea. Kids don't do that, listeners.
Speaker 2: He struggled with friends. Friends tried to be friends with him.
Speaker 3: It's actually kind.
Speaker 2: Of sweet how hard people worked to include him. I
Speaker 2: actually I find it really charming. Yeah, he didn't understand
Speaker 2: anyone who wasn't buried in deep mourning. His friends once
Speaker 2: dragged him out to dance. This is the most humanizing
Speaker 2: thing ever. They dragged him out to dance lessons against
Speaker 2: his protestations, and then he was so overcome by stress
Speaker 2: that he fainted, and so then he didn't have to
Speaker 2: go to dance lessons anymore. Yeah, we get on the
Speaker 2: friends for trying their best there.
Speaker 3: I know, I know.
Speaker 2: Slowly Nemesis made progress. One day, while watching a Turkish
Speaker 2: tobacco shop, he found the leaders of the special organization
Speaker 2: that had done so much of the killing. He followed
Speaker 2: them for miles. They went into the British embassy, and
Speaker 2: then he fainted and he lost them. He felt like
Speaker 2: he was losing his strength. He's getting sicker and sicker,
Speaker 2: and he's trying to convince Nemesis to just let him
Speaker 2: kill those two leaders. He's already found, right, He's like, ah,
Speaker 2: my day's are numbered as a successful assassin guy, you know.
Speaker 2: But to Nemesis, the whole point is the killing in
Speaker 2: a public trial, and they needed to lot. Finally they
Speaker 2: got their Break's a lot in disguise without his mustache.
Speaker 2: It's like classic disguise, I know, but it like worked.
Speaker 2: They're like still not sure. For a really long time,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Like, why would this do do this for himself? I
Speaker 3: have to find a picture of him with his mustache
Speaker 3: now and just check out like the yeah, yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: that is a prominent tash. Yeah wow, yeah he already
Speaker 3: went Fred points Yeah. Yeah. It's clearly in an integral
Speaker 3: part of his whole vibe, so I can see why
Speaker 3: he would look different without it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He has a very thick handlebar mustache that has curled
Speaker 2: up at the ends that looks like he's spending some
Speaker 2: time in Yeah, and it is like thicker than my
Speaker 2: head hair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's impressive. It looks like a slug, yeah,
Speaker 3: banana slug living on his lip there.
Speaker 2: And he's like very it's like kind of like how
Speaker 2: he's known, you know.
Speaker 3: Sure. Yeah. And so they see him at this train
Speaker 3: station because some young Turks are off on their way
Speaker 3: back to Turkey, right, and so they follow them there
Speaker 3: and then there's this huge Turkish man who's off to
Speaker 3: see them off, and so an Armenian who looks western
Speaker 3: eavesdropped and they didn't suspect him of understanding them, right,
Speaker 3: because they're like, oh, we're speaking Turkish, No one can
Speaker 3: understand what we're saying, you know, right, yeah, and folks
Speaker 3: called him Pasha and this wasn't proof. A lot of
Speaker 3: people are getting called Pasha, right, Okay, you're going to
Speaker 3: say this seems like a fucking stupid thing to stick
Speaker 3: with that, like the honorifically you gave yourself.
Speaker 2: I can't remember if in parts wad or too whether
Speaker 2: I talked about Pasha being an honorific Yeah you did,
Speaker 2: you mentioned it in me in one okay, cool, but yeah, no,
Speaker 2: totally it is. It was absolutely stupid of them, but
Speaker 2: it was like had started to become more of the
Speaker 2: style just kind of call it everyone that apparently, or okay,
Speaker 2: I don't know. That's at least what they argued when
Speaker 2: they were like I had to have been him, they
Speaker 2: said Pasha, and then people are like, no, just anyone
Speaker 2: will say that these days.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't proof, but it was likely. They followed
Speaker 2: him home to his apartment building, and so now they
Speaker 2: know where he lives. They just don't know it's him.
Speaker 2: They sent someone around to pretend to want to rent
Speaker 2: a room in the same building, and they chatted up
Speaker 2: the landlady. You know, at the time, it's like a
Speaker 2: lady owns a house and has three rooms in it
Speaker 2: and rents them out right. Yeah, and this tenant was
Speaker 2: a businessman whose room had been rented for him by
Speaker 2: the embassy, which is not how businessmen normally have their
Speaker 2: rooms rented.
Speaker 3: No, that's an unusual one.
Speaker 2: So Tillarian starts stalking this man, basically following him everywhere,
Speaker 2: learning his schedule. He's like every day at ten am
Speaker 2: he comes out and goes on a walk, and he's
Speaker 2: ready to kill the guy. He's like, all right, we
Speaker 2: got him, Like probably him, let's just kill him again.
Speaker 3: Very poor persek that like having a daily routine where
Speaker 3: you do exactly same thing at the same time. Not
Speaker 3: a good way to avoid assassination. No, well, and actually
Speaker 3: one of his whole things. I don't think I put
Speaker 3: this in the script.
Speaker 2: He kind of like a day or two before he died,
Speaker 2: the Brits who were setting him up to kill him, Yeah,
Speaker 2: were like, aren't you worried about assassination? And he's like, no,
Speaker 2: you can't go through your life living that way.
Speaker 3: You're king.
Speaker 2: I'm both it, yeah, like fucking yolo and that shit
Speaker 2: right is great?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it just in the moment, Yeah, self, fund know
Speaker 3: where to be seen, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and his friends are like, look, you can't kill
Speaker 2: that man because we don't know it's him, and you
Speaker 2: cannot kill an innocent man by accident, And like, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm like telling this whole long story about like a
Speaker 2: bunch of killing, right, And I keep using the word
Speaker 2: murder just because it's a fun word. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not murder, right. And more than that,
Speaker 2: it's like there is a difference.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: People are like, all violence is violence. It's just not true.
Speaker 2: And everyone knows that on some level, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it would be wrong to kill an innocent man that
Speaker 2: you think is your target. Whereas if all you care
Speaker 2: about is geopolitics, I'll kill a bunch of them. And
Speaker 2: as long as you got the right guy too, who cares.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah. So I I really respect Operation Nemesis
Speaker 3: for this, And I don't know how it would have gone.
Speaker 3: It's quite possible that the Armenians would have eventually confirmed
Speaker 3: his ID or just gone for it anyway, that's possible. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But what almost certainly happened is that Western powers who
Speaker 3: knew where he was were like, yeah, let's just tell
Speaker 3: the Armenians where he is, they'll take care of him.
Speaker 3: Because Talat Pasha had been meeting with the Brits to
Speaker 3: try and like play forty chess or whatever. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he told them, look, we're ready to get the
Speaker 2: Islamic Soviets to revolt against the USSR if you support us.
Speaker 2: If you don't support us, we'll fucking kill you all
Speaker 2: in Turkey and drive you out, British bastards. The Brits
Speaker 2: were like.
Speaker 3: We literally just beat you in a war. I'm not
Speaker 3: afraid of you.
Speaker 2: I mean, there is an ongoing war happening in Turkey,
Speaker 2: and like the Brits are like not totally winning it, right,
Speaker 2: but like the random British spies are not fucking scared
Speaker 2: of this dude, And so what the Brits do? This
Speaker 2: is like one of those moments where you realize that
Speaker 2: like the Western world hates the non Western world far
Speaker 2: more than they hate each other. They go to the
Speaker 2: Soviets and they're like, hey, the Pasha's you know, the
Speaker 2: young Turks are planning to fucking do an uprising. How
Speaker 2: should we play this?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And the Soviets are like, yeah, all right, let's fucking.
Speaker 3: Kill the guy.
Speaker 2: I just tell the Armenians where he is and take
Speaker 2: care of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, the loyalty of states is always going to
Speaker 3: be to states, not people, right, Like totally see this,
Speaker 3: Like when you look at the war in BM. I'm
Speaker 3: writing a book about anarchists at war right now, and
Speaker 3: you look at the an s well, right when the
Speaker 3: conflict goes from being between states to about the state, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: when what is at stake it's not who will be
Speaker 3: in charge, but that someone will be in charge. You
Speaker 3: see the world pivot really fucking quickly away from all
Speaker 3: these so called systems of alliances and blocks and organizations
Speaker 3: and treaties and such. Should everyone's just like no, we can't.
Speaker 3: Like every state starts to to want things right not
Speaker 3: to happen, And yeah, that's what they're doing here. I
Speaker 3: guess they always look out for each other first. No, totally.
Speaker 2: And in this case, it's like we're more afraid of
Speaker 2: the scary pan Islamic you know, scary other than we
Speaker 2: are of this thing that we claim with all of
Speaker 2: our hearts. Is like all that matters is communism versus
Speaker 2: I mean, you can see it, and I.
Speaker 3: Know we're mostly trying to avoid talking about coron events.
Speaker 2: You can see it in current events where buying and
Speaker 2: is trying to be like, hey, Trump is basically Hitler
Speaker 2: Project twenty twenty five is real bad and then immediately
Speaker 2: is like, well soon we'll stop all campaigning, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's uh yeah, I guess it's.
Speaker 2: Similar because when they say like, we cannot have political
Speaker 2: violence in this country while in the middle of enacting
Speaker 2: the genocide against Palestine, what they mean is you can't
Speaker 2: kill politicians because I'm a politician. Yeah, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's bad for all politicians, and so their loyalties are
Speaker 2: class loyalties essentially. Yeah, we would not be the first
Speaker 2: to note the disparity between political violence is terrible. What
Speaker 2: we send five hundred pound bombs to it throughout every
Speaker 2: fucking week. Yeah. So the Brits are more afraid of
Speaker 2: Islam than they are of the USSR. They don't want
Speaker 2: Islamic revolt in their territories like India, and they also
Speaker 2: don't want Islamic to revolt in their territories that lead
Speaker 2: to India. The King of England has more Muslim subjects
Speaker 2: at this point than any monarch in the world. I
Speaker 2: think now that the Ottoman empire has gone, and so
Speaker 2: like Ariel don't want them revolting. This feels similarly they
Speaker 2: have a ton of Islamic Soviets and they don't want
Speaker 2: to lose them. We are not one hundred percent sure
Speaker 2: that this is how Nemesis got confirmation. We know the
Speaker 2: Brits and the Soviets were like, let's let the Armenians
Speaker 2: kill him. And we also know that a few days
Speaker 2: later Tilerian got a ciphered telegram from Nemesis like headquarters
Speaker 2: in Geneva, saying like, yup, he's our guy, Go get
Speaker 2: him Champ, you know. And then my favorite way that
Speaker 2: we know, the British spy, the one who was going
Speaker 2: to meeting with Talat, he kept a detailed daily journal
Speaker 2: every day except the assassination. I just took a day off,
Speaker 2: and then the next day he's like, huh the newspapers
Speaker 2: told me Talats dead.
Speaker 3: Wow. Yeah, oh, just got back from my holiday and
Speaker 3: found this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is still better that opsect than what we've
Speaker 2: been talking about earlier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, yeah, yes, yeah, it's true. Still the unspectacular.
Speaker 2: It is very frustrating living a life where you're like
Speaker 2: I can't keep a proper journal, because you know, like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, occasionally I'm complicit and murder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I feel reasonably confident that this is
Speaker 2: what happened, is that they were like, yeah, he's your guy.
Speaker 2: As soon as they had this confirmation, Telearian is like, man,
Speaker 2: you know what I need. I need to buy stuff,
Speaker 2: just sweet products and services, like a new apartment or
Speaker 2: whatever's advertised next, like these ads.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he just begins to be a happy consumer. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and we're back. He got at least one of those things.
Speaker 3: You got a new apartment. Sweet.
Speaker 2: Telearrian moved apartments to be across the street from his quarry.
Speaker 2: He told his landlord that the reason he was moving
Speaker 2: on short notice is that the gas light in his
Speaker 2: old apartment was affecting his conditions like epilepsy, and so
Speaker 2: he needed to be somewhere with electric light. There is
Speaker 2: a gas lighting, n hear, and I don't know where
Speaker 2: it is noted in his new spot. Tileririan just stayed
Speaker 2: vigil at the window, watching all hours of day and night,
Speaker 2: scarcely sleeping. He'd leave his food on, he'd like fall
Speaker 2: asleep at his post.
Speaker 3: Like oh yeah, this dude does have a tremendous amount
Speaker 3: of focus and drive. So it's genuinely quite quite impressive
Speaker 3: and concerning.
Speaker 2: I have never read about anyone quite this single minded, you.
Speaker 3: Know, Right, the whole years of his life, he's literally
Speaker 3: cared for nothing else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he has gone to four countries at least
Speaker 2: in the process already, right, you know. And so the
Speaker 2: plan is simple. He's going to kill him and then
Speaker 2: he's going to stay by the body so that he
Speaker 2: can be arrested and go on trial. He's going to
Speaker 2: deny the conspiracy. He's not going to bring up the conspiracy,
Speaker 2: but he's going to say he's an angry Armenian who
Speaker 2: saw him and was overcome with anger. The next morning,
Speaker 2: a lot came out. Tilarian headed down to go to
Speaker 2: a shooting. The lock on the front door of his
Speaker 2: place is broken, and he's like, oh no, and he's
Speaker 2: like trying to break it open, and he finally has
Speaker 2: to go wake someone up to help him open it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then it's too late, and so he's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll wait for this guy to come back. He comes
Speaker 2: back at the same time, right, right, He doesn't come
Speaker 2: back that day. Tilarian loses his fucking mind. Right, He's like,
Speaker 2: it's blown. He saw me in the window. I fucking
Speaker 2: ruined it. I am the disgrace to everything, you know.
Speaker 2: In the end, it was probably for the best that
Speaker 2: this happened because he hadn't cleaned up his place of
Speaker 2: all the notes and evidence yet. Oh yeah, you want
Speaker 2: to do that, so yeah, I know he should have
Speaker 2: done it sooner, but he did it in time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he was busy with his window stuff. Yeah, exactly. He
Speaker 2: sent a friend away with all the evidence and then
Speaker 2: resumed his perch and then Tlot didn't.
Speaker 3: Show up for days.
Speaker 2: Ooh, and Tilearian is like losing his mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: What actually happened is that it's a lot left town
Speaker 2: to go meet with the Brits. And this is when
Speaker 2: the Brits were like, aren't you afraid someone's gonna kill you?
Speaker 3: And he's like, nah, not me. Yeah, I tell that
Speaker 3: passa no, sir.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: A man who's not afraid to shave off a mustache,
Speaker 2: ain't afraid of death.
Speaker 3: Ego suicide was when you take mustache.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's right.
Speaker 3: I'm not the left to lose. Yeah yeah, yeah, just
Speaker 3: living free.
Speaker 2: And then finally one day he's back home and he's
Speaker 2: back on his schedule with a ten am walk, and
Speaker 2: I think it's like he goes out to buy like cigarettes.
Speaker 3: In the newspaper or something. Okay, yeah, classic nineteen twenties
Speaker 3: European guy vibe. Yeah no, absolutely, yeah, small coffee. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean it's like, look before you know that cigarettes
Speaker 2: are bad for you. It's the good life. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: leave every day at ten in the morning and go
Speaker 2: read what's happening, walk around a nice city like, oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great till someone shoots you in the face.
Speaker 3: He still smiles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he didn't have too long to think about what
Speaker 2: was happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Drew. He was happy he was doing what
Speaker 3: he loved. Yeah, exactly, smoking or reading in his paper. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Tilarian slips out when he sees him. He walks parallel
Speaker 2: to the murderer, like across the street for several blocks
Speaker 2: because he's like, okay, I need to get ahead of him,
Speaker 2: I need to come around, I need to confirm for
Speaker 2: certain I need to look him in the face. I
Speaker 2: think a little selfishly, he's like, I want to look
Speaker 2: this man in the face. But most importantly he's like,
Speaker 2: I am killing the right man. I need to have
Speaker 2: visual confirmation that this is my target, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So he walks a little bit faster for several blocks,
Speaker 2: crosses the street, turns around, walks towards him, so a
Speaker 2: lot Pasha never saw it coming. Tilarium saw him face
Speaker 2: to face for positive id held a luger to his
Speaker 2: head just under the ear. One shot blew his brains out.
Speaker 2: There's a ton of witnesses. Pretty immediately he flees because
Speaker 2: the crowd's mad. And then he like gets like a
Speaker 2: block or two and he's like, shit, I'm not supposed
Speaker 2: to run. That's like the whole fucking thing, you know.
Speaker 2: So he like stops and he's caught up. The angry
Speaker 2: mob catches up with him and like kicks him and
Speaker 2: you know, starts beating him up pretty bad. He winds
Speaker 2: up in custody, like some cops break it up, and
Speaker 2: then they like bring him back to the body and
Speaker 2: he's like, yeah, I did it, like take me at
Speaker 2: jail whatever, you know. Yeah, and then he's on trial
Speaker 2: really quickly. And this is a huge, huge deal of
Speaker 2: a trial for obvious reasons. Yeah, it only lasts three days.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: His defense was the old fuck that guy argument.
Speaker 3: Classic.
Speaker 2: So at this point he makes up a story. He
Speaker 2: describes in detail all the horrors of witnessing his own
Speaker 2: family be massacred and how he barely escaped through the
Speaker 2: mountains and you know, like I was on the death march,
Speaker 2: and a lot of details about all these horrible things
Speaker 2: that happened, you know, and it was all a lie.
Speaker 2: But he was telling the truth about what had happened
Speaker 2: in Meia, right, or to Armenians.
Speaker 3: Right, He's just like making a composite character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he had seen brutality, but his cover story was
Speaker 2: a lie. The goal was to bring the eyes of
Speaker 2: the world onto the atrocities of the genocide. But if
Speaker 2: they found out he was just an assassin working for
Speaker 2: a conspiracy, he will surely hang and it'll kind of
Speaker 2: undermine some of the sort of moral high ground that
Speaker 2: the Armenians are presenting themselves to have. Yeah, one of
Speaker 2: the reasons the trial went so well for him is
Speaker 2: that Germany wanted him to get off.
Speaker 3: That will help.
Speaker 2: The geopolitics angle is like, it's like the less fun angle,
Speaker 2: but it helps. It's important to understand. Yeah, Germany is
Speaker 2: newly a republic and they're like, oh my god, I
Speaker 2: swear to god, we had nothing to do with the genocide.
Speaker 2: I was all the Ottomans, they're bad. I mean, look
Speaker 2: at them. There can we use orientalism here? Is that allowed?
Speaker 3: I think so? And they're bad, We're good. We're good.
Speaker 2: Germans would never hurt anyone, We'd never do a massmer
Speaker 2: We're Germany. Funny in retrospect.
Speaker 3: To be fair, they were the wim Germans, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe different Germans, that's true. They were quite nice in
Speaker 3: many ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, one of the more interesting republics in history.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true. Not the longest lasting.
Speaker 2: No, the Germans couldn't afford to let the trial delve
Speaker 2: into their complicity, so they were like, we're not going
Speaker 2: to get super deep into all the details, you know,
Speaker 2: and we're gonna do this quickly. And so the prosecution
Speaker 2: was like, well, the Turks are really bad, so of
Speaker 2: course this guy had to kill him.
Speaker 3: Amazing. Yeah read dub for like a district attorney. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I get it, dude, Like what we don't do the
Speaker 3: same totally.
Speaker 2: Like I think they were like a little bit like
Speaker 2: and he probably shouldn't, you know, but I mean they
Speaker 2: they were like, yeah, absolutely, it's fine. The defense and
Speaker 2: the prosecution were on the same side of this because
Speaker 2: the defense's argument was yes, he did it and he
Speaker 2: should have, and the defense was incredibly well funded. This
Speaker 2: is like Operation Nemesis was a little bit shoe string
Speaker 2: and like had some money. Armenian expats just drop like
Speaker 2: all their money on this case. Like I fucking would, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, one hund Like I'd mortgage my house to
Speaker 2: get this man off if I'm an Armenian expat at
Speaker 2: this point.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, he's the one guy who has get
Speaker 3: like you said before, not only got revenge, that's one thing,
Speaker 3: but like stop this shit happening again or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 3: toxic shit they were on next, you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: he struck a blow for the for your side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like you just kind of can't do this.
Speaker 2: You can't kill all of us without dying, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He made it so that if you kill Armenian people,
Speaker 3: that's consequences, like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: His defense described how he was sickly, how he'd started
Speaker 2: fainting after the massacres he'd seen, and this is true.
Speaker 2: Witnesses would talk about seeing him faint in public at
Speaker 2: no point where they like, hey, uh, how come you're
Speaker 2: not actually in class, or hey, uh, why do.
Speaker 3: You have a gun? Yeah?
Speaker 2: You know, like they just like don't ask these questions. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're the like subtext here is that I think Germany
Speaker 2: also knew about Operation Nemesis, right, and uh, witnesses came
Speaker 2: to testify about the genocide and this is their chance
Speaker 2: for media. And there are some details that were said
Speaker 2: during this that I'm not going to share that are
Speaker 2: even worse than the stuff I read last episode horror
Speaker 2: movie bad instead of war movie bad. Is what some
Speaker 2: of the stuff that happened was. There were a bunch
Speaker 2: of star witnesses who came who had known to Lot personally,
Speaker 2: who were all on the like fuck that guy level, right,
Speaker 2: Like three people who knew him came to be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but fuck that guy. There was this Westerner who had
Speaker 2: written a bunch of books about the previous massacres, the
Speaker 2: eighteen nineties massacres that you know, led to the attempted
Speaker 2: assassination of the Sultan. Yeah, and then the highest ranking
Speaker 2: German military officer in Turkey during the war came and
Speaker 2: testified about Like, yeah, but fucked a lot, right.
Speaker 3: It's a real like avengeous moment.
Speaker 2: And it was a very like because we were good
Speaker 2: and us we had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we couldn't stop. There's nothing we could do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I swear I will throw him under the bus
Speaker 2: at the first available. Oh look, he's already under the bus.
Speaker 3: I did that. Let's stump on him now, yeah, I mean, like,
Speaker 3: good on him whatever, you know, I mean he should
Speaker 3: have stopped the China, say what was happening? Fuck him?
Speaker 2: But like you know, and then there was this Armenian
Speaker 2: bishop who came from England to testify. You know, it's
Speaker 2: like this three day trial that happened right away. Like
Speaker 2: obviously this bishop was immediately like I am on the
Speaker 2: next fucking boat.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah he was. He had a suitcase backed yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: because you couldn't. He doesn't even have a plane back
Speaker 3: then He's get on a boat yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: a man was rowing. He was ready to go. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Immediately starts skiffing it across the channel, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's just waiting at the belt of the Dutch border.
Speaker 2: You know, the entire time the whistle blows.
Speaker 3: He starts running. He starts running. He's like a like
Speaker 3: a trathlete or something comes out of the water immediately runs.
Speaker 2: Later, I think, I think I didn't put this part
Speaker 2: in the script. Later, this Armenian bishop helps smuggle to
Speaker 2: Leri into England.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah.
Speaker 2: And so after three days of testimony, the jury goes.
Speaker 2: It takes them less than three hours to agree, Fuck
Speaker 2: that guy is a legitimate excuse for killing this man.
Speaker 2: He was not a criminal. He was a hero, which
Speaker 2: I mean is true. And the courtroom exploded into applause
Speaker 2: and like women ran forward with flowers. The New York
Speaker 2: Times headline was they simply had to let him go
Speaker 2: with an exclamation mark. But that one's like messy, it's
Speaker 2: a little bit like it's actually trying to grapple with
Speaker 2: some interesting stuff where they're like, how do we cope
Speaker 2: with the fact that you're never supposed to assassinate people?
Speaker 2: And that's wrong, but not killing this man would have
Speaker 2: been wrong too. We don't understand, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess there's a difference between like we shouldn't
Speaker 3: lock this man up or hang him and hell yeah, assassination.
Speaker 2: Right, totally and clearly a lot of people are like,
Speaker 2: hell yeah, assassination.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is understandable. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then after the trial, Delarium was deported to Turkey.
Speaker 2: They were like, yeah, he got got out of here
Speaker 2: by way of Serbia. He didn't go to Turkey. As
Speaker 2: soon as agains a Serbia focks off with that bishop
Speaker 2: and gets to England nice. And then he gets to
Speaker 2: the US and he basically goes on this like whirlwind.
Speaker 2: Yeah fuck yeah, I killed that fucking guy. He took
Speaker 2: a victory lap. Yeah, he takes a victory lap around
Speaker 2: the US, around the Armenian diaspora, and then his mental
Speaker 2: health is better.
Speaker 3: I was wondering that, like he had this mission, Like
Speaker 3: what's he going to do after his mission to done?
Speaker 2: There's like photos of him smiling. I don't know whether
Speaker 2: epilepsy and stuff stopped. He dies of a seizure eventually,
Speaker 2: so I like, obviously actually don't know enough about medicine.
Speaker 2: Does seem like they'd be related to me because they're
Speaker 2: brain stuff, but I don't actually know. But yeah, his
Speaker 2: mental health improves, he retires from the Assassin game because look,
Speaker 2: if he is ever caught killing anyone ever again, this
Speaker 2: blows the entire conspiracy, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, he's.
Speaker 2: Done his work, you know, Yeah, he's hit the target
Speaker 2: if he wants to hit Yeah, He also never wants
Speaker 2: to kill anything again. Oh wow, including animals. He later,
Speaker 2: at some point he joins a gun club and he
Speaker 2: refuses to go hunting because he says, I'm never going
Speaker 2: to kill anything over again. I genuinely really like this man.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, these guys seem to be pretty right on.
Speaker 2: He goes back to Serbia, he reconnects with his father.
Speaker 2: He reconnects to that woman at the very beginning where
Speaker 2: I was like, and then he kind of had this
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Oh, then they had to be chased for the revolution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which I'm actually secretly glad for because she was
Speaker 2: like fifteen, but like, yeah he was eighteen, Like I'm
Speaker 2: not mad, yeah yeah, yeah, like byoth children. Okay, yeah
Speaker 2: he was not a creep. Yeah no, yeah, he was
Speaker 2: chased for the revolution. He comes back and like he
Speaker 2: writes a lot in his journals about how he's like
Speaker 2: he needs to like prove that he's like worthy, you know, for.
Speaker 3: Her and stuff, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he marries her, ah, and they have two kids,
Speaker 2: and he starts working in his family's coffee wholesale trade
Speaker 2: with his father. And like, I think his either uncles
Speaker 2: or maybe like uncles in law or something. I didn't
Speaker 2: write that down, and then they end up moving in
Speaker 2: a couple different places. In nineteen fifty seven, they moved
Speaker 2: to San Francisco, and he worked for an Armenian like
Speaker 2: a famous Armenian restaurant tour whose name I didn't write
Speaker 2: down because I didn't recognize it. And I do this
Speaker 2: thing where like when I write fiction, I try not
Speaker 2: to include names if they're not going to come up
Speaker 2: a couple of times, because otherwise I get overwhelmed as
Speaker 2: a reader and I don't remember anyone's names.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he becomes like a Russian novel where you have
Speaker 3: to have a note pad with everyone's nameationship to each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I try not to do that. And so
Speaker 2: that's why, like, since I'm not writing history, I'm telling
Speaker 2: history as a story, you know, like history books should
Speaker 2: have everyone's fucking names and the dates so that you
Speaker 2: can cross reference everything. I'm fully on board with that,
Speaker 2: but you know, it's like, I don't know I'm defending that.
Speaker 2: I'm not even like I'm explaining why I don't include
Speaker 2: the name of the restaurant.
Speaker 3: Here that he worked for. Yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 2: And then he died of a stroke in nineteen sixty,
Speaker 2: not super old, not super young. I think that puts
Speaker 2: him in his sixties or seventies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, most of his life happens after this, so right,
Speaker 3: like he's in his work, like his twenties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's like twenty four to twenty five when
Speaker 2: he kills the guy.
Speaker 3: Perfect. Yeah, he did it. You know, it's like a
Speaker 3: rare I don't know. Obviously, he's still probably carried unbelievable
Speaker 3: trauma for the rest of his life totally, but like, yeah,
Speaker 3: to see someone feel like they've kind of completed their circle. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I know a lot of people who survived these things
Speaker 3: lived for the rest of their life with survivor's skill
Speaker 3: or whatever else. Yeah, so he gets to do both.
Speaker 3: He gets to live well and like also murder the
Speaker 3: dude who was responsible for murdering members of his family
Speaker 3: and community. No, you're right.
Speaker 2: It's what we were talking about earlier, where they were like,
Speaker 2: is living well the best revenge? Or is killing the
Speaker 2: guy the best revenge? And the answer is why not both?
Speaker 2: Dot give Yeah you know, yeah, that's right. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: can have two. After Tillerian retired, Nemesis wasn't done. They
Speaker 2: killed at least six more high ranking young Turks who
Speaker 2: were behind the genocide. And they did all this with
Speaker 2: ten assassins, twelve additional spies, and a handful of other
Speaker 2: diplomats and folks doing behind the scenes work. And there's
Speaker 2: like also really amazing stories and all of that I
Speaker 2: really recommend. I usually read one to two books and
Speaker 2: then read a lot of like academic articles and shit
Speaker 2: like that to provide context and fill in gaps and stuff.
Speaker 2: There's one book on this by Eric Bogosian, who also
Speaker 2: wrote that place Suburbia that I really liked as a kid,
Speaker 2: called Operation Nemesis, and it gets into more of the
Speaker 2: details after this, and it is absolutely worth reading, and
Speaker 2: so I recommend it to any listeners. There's like a
Speaker 2: prison break. Believe me, there was a strong temptation to
Speaker 2: six part this, but instead I'm four parting it.
Speaker 3: We can save them for it'll treat down the line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And so they did all this work twelve
Speaker 2: ish people, seven countries, three continents, with the support of
Speaker 2: everyone from conservative Armenians who hated the Tashnags to the
Speaker 2: Toashnags themselves. And it's not bad for twenty fourish people
Speaker 2: because as Margaret Mead once put it, never doubt that
Speaker 2: a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed,
Speaker 2: it's the only thing that ever has. She It's just
Speaker 2: what she was going full Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I
Speaker 2: haven't bothered to look up more about who Margaret Meade was,
Speaker 2: but you know, I'm sure, I'm sure she would have
Speaker 2: been done with it. And that's where we're going to
Speaker 2: leave it for this week. The Armenian struggle continues, the
Speaker 2: attempt to destroy them continue. That falls more under current
Speaker 2: events than history, but it's absolutely, unfortunately worth looking into,
Speaker 2: both their recent attempts to destroy them as a people
Speaker 2: by Azerbaijohn and also the potentially upcoming more of it.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of talk that's happening right now about
Speaker 2: how after this like climate conference in Azerbaijohn is over,
Speaker 2: they might do real bad stuff to Armenians again, and
Speaker 2: that's worth looking into, unfortunately. Yeah, but what's also worth
Speaker 2: looking into is James's stuff.
Speaker 3: Hi, what do you go? Yeah? I hope it won't
Speaker 3: be as as depressing as that thing, which is sad.
Speaker 3: What if I go? I have a Patreon. You could
Speaker 3: just search my name on Patreon and you can find
Speaker 3: it where I write about stuff. I write about things
Speaker 3: I am reading. I write stuff that I can't sell
Speaker 3: because freelance journalism is as dead as Talat Pasha at
Speaker 3: the moment someone has shut it in the face. It's
Speaker 3: a very very sad time for journalism. And yeah, you
Speaker 3: can go that. I try and make stuff free after
Speaker 3: a while, some of the stuff you will have to
Speaker 3: pay me a little bit, just like a dollar is fine.
Speaker 3: That that's enough money. And sometimes I write about going
Speaker 3: outside there as well, and I do that for free
Speaker 3: because I want people to go outside. I believe it
Speaker 3: is good for you and it is how we all
Speaker 3: get through all of this shit. Aside from that, I
Speaker 3: would love to plug organize it with your friends. You
Speaker 3: don't have to organize across three continents to kill the
Speaker 3: perpetrators of genocide. Instead, you can feed hungry people in
Speaker 3: your community. So do mutual aid. You don't need to
Speaker 3: read a bunch of books by like old white dudes
Speaker 3: with bids to understand mutual aid. Just get together with
Speaker 3: your friends and help people, and you will feel better
Speaker 3: and the people you're helping will feel better as well.
Speaker 2: I remember, once I read this book, God, I think
Speaker 2: I even brought it up on a podcast recently, but
Speaker 2: I'm much for as one of these. I read this
Speaker 2: book called Russia through a shot Glass, which is like
Speaker 2: a hobo traveling around in the USSR and he's like,
Speaker 2: you know, down and out or whatever, and it had
Speaker 2: this moment that explained something that I had never really
Speaker 2: truly internalized, where he's talking to this you know, this
Speaker 2: beggar and they're drinking under a bridge or something after
Speaker 2: day's work, and the beggar's like, yeah, no it I'm
Speaker 2: helping people and they help me, people give me money
Speaker 2: and they feel better. And it's just like said on cynically.
Speaker 2: It's not like hey, I'm getting one on them or
Speaker 2: yeah whatever, like you know, it's like it's a man
Speaker 2: who's fallen through the cracks of the society that's supposedly
Speaker 2: perfect and you know whatever. But state capitalism is roughly
Speaker 2: as bad as regular capitalism. So yeah, feeding people, helping
Speaker 2: people is good for both of you. It's instead of
Speaker 2: we have this idea of like exchange where like we
Speaker 2: have to each get something from the other, you know,
Speaker 2: whereas there's actually things that we can do that just
Speaker 2: make both people wealthier and feeding people is one of
Speaker 2: those things, so that's also my plug. Also also the
Speaker 2: go outside. I know it's kind of hot out the summer,
Speaker 2: but it's the coolest summer for the rest of your life,
Speaker 2: so go make the most of it.
Speaker 1: It's God.
Speaker 3: Yeah, get up early, go outside, which out for snakes
Speaker 3: if that's a thing where you live.
Speaker 2: That is actually one of my biggest problems with the
Speaker 2: fact that I, like, I've been mostly trying to only
Speaker 2: go out once the peak of the sun is gone,
Speaker 2: but then it's like snake time and snakes central. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've yet to see ral snakes in my property, and
Speaker 2: I'm very happy about that because I'm usually out with
Speaker 2: my dog and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's scary. Way. Yeah, I got pursued by dad.
Speaker 3: I've never seen a rat snake like. I asked a
Speaker 3: snake expert about this. The informed conclusion seems to be that,
Speaker 3: just like people, some snakes are just assholes. Because this
Speaker 3: guy was, like, he wasn't just standing his ground right,
Speaker 3: who was coming at me? I thought it was going
Speaker 3: to come to come to blows. Didn't. Yeah, but I
Speaker 3: don't want to hurt snakes. Don't hurt snakes. They just
Speaker 3: snaking around. I mean like, I heard a snake before
Speaker 3: you let it bite you. Yeah, if it's venomous, yes,
Speaker 3: don't go gently onto that good night of rattlesnake death.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't be like the post apocalyptic pacifist.
Speaker 3: You lie down. Yeah, I mean, like whatever.
Speaker 2: At the end of the day they fed in that dream,
Speaker 2: they were like running a like you know, a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of food, mutual aid stuff. And it's fine, you know,
Speaker 2: but yeah, whatever you can also, yeah, get ready for
Speaker 2: what's coming, and we'll all take care of each other
Speaker 2: through it and it'll be as well as we can
Speaker 2: make it. And yeah, yeah, I'll see you all next
Speaker 2: week when I talk about something really light and next
Speaker 2: week's topics.
Speaker 3: It's light and fun, but it'll be interesting. Oh no,
Speaker 3: I'll talk to you then.
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