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Speaker 1: Hello, Welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, the

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Speaker 1: podcast with the self explanatory title. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy,

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Speaker 1: and today we're finishing up our two part series on

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Speaker 1: the Paris Commune, which means you might I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I want to listen to the first episode first, if

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Speaker 1: you're beholden to linear time, and with me today is

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Speaker 1: Miriam Rocheck who likes to steal boats. Miriam, how are

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Speaker 1: you doing today? One? It was one time m hm

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Speaker 1: old boats stealing Miriam, you're known as forever allegedly allegedly Miriam,

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Speaker 1: definitely boat stealer. Allegedly. No, wait the way around. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So where we last left our heroes. They had conquered

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Speaker 1: the city of Paris, called for elections, told bakers they

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Speaker 1: didn't need to work overnight. They also forgot that robbing

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Speaker 1: banks is always morally good. Yeah, especially insured banks, I know,

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Speaker 1: and like when you control the government, it just seems

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Speaker 1: like a no brainer. I'm I did they have a

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Speaker 1: logic for not robbing the banks, like a reason? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: I mean okay, some of it was like, well, that's

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Speaker 1: not our money, and then some of it was there

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Speaker 1: was there was worry, which might have been legitimate that

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Speaker 1: if they robbed all the money, that money would essentially

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Speaker 1: become worthless on a like France level. Um, but I

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Speaker 1: don't know. It seems like everyone who looks at it

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Speaker 1: later was like, not, they should sure have robbed the banks.

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Speaker 1: But I mean, hindsight is yeah, those it's easy to

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Speaker 1: look back and say, should have robbed more banks. I know, Miriam, Okay,

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Speaker 1: what do you think that the government and verside? Do

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Speaker 1: you think that they were like, well, they didn't rob

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Speaker 1: the bank, and they're kind of moderate as far as

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Speaker 1: revolutionaries go, so we should probably just like let them

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Speaker 1: have the city. Yeah. In my experience, UM, as long

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Speaker 1: as you don't do a certain specific crime, governments are

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Speaker 1: usually okay with people seizing power and and uh self

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Speaker 1: determining in the absence of government. Yeah. I think that

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Speaker 1: they basically yelled in minecraft from the barricades and everyone

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Speaker 1: was like, oh, we're good, this didn't actually happen. Um okay,

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Speaker 1: but that actually that's not what happened. It was just shocking.

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Speaker 1: But instead they mobilized an army against the commune and

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Speaker 1: and in all honesty, even with the like attack first

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Speaker 1: and robbed the bank and like everything that people might

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Speaker 1: have wanted to do. In retrospect, the Paris Commune was

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Speaker 1: like probably always doomed because they had a they had

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Speaker 1: a funk off big city, and they had a bunch

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Speaker 1: of sort of trained troops. But not only did Versailles

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Speaker 1: have like a trained army, and they had the rest

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Speaker 1: of France. But Bismarck is still like kind of lurking

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Speaker 1: around around here, and apparently it seems kind of clear

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Speaker 1: to people that if if Versailles didn't retake Paris, Bismarck

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Speaker 1: was going to do it for them. So a lot

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Speaker 1: of the like it would have worked if we'd done

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Speaker 1: this differently. Conjecture is kind of both in fighting and fun,

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Speaker 1: so I don't have a moral stance about whether or

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Speaker 1: not it's good. But anyway, the Paris Commune did realize

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Speaker 1: that did realize that whether they wanted a war or not,

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Speaker 1: one was coming. They just didn't really know how to

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Speaker 1: organize for this coming war. But Louise Michelle, she had

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Speaker 1: an idea. She pretty much never lacked for radical ideas.

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Speaker 1: One time apparently she said, you know, I really like

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Speaker 1: these agent provocateurs who show up at demonstrations because they're

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Speaker 1: the ones who always have the best ideas. And I

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Speaker 1: think that is the one quote from hers that I

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Speaker 1: had heard, and I truly love it. That is the

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Speaker 1: kind of energy that that you really love to see. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I don't always love to see it when I'm at

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Speaker 1: a demonstration. No, I don't love to see it like

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Speaker 1: next to me. I loved to see it a hundred

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Speaker 1: years ago, in hundred fifty years ago in France. But

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's a rat it's a rat line. It's

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Speaker 1: a very good line. Yeah. So her plan was I'll

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Speaker 1: go to Versailles and I'll fucking kill Adolf tare the

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Speaker 1: okay friends um And apparently she even like slipped out

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Speaker 1: through the siege lines of Paris and took a jaunt

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Speaker 1: over to Versailles and back just to prove that it

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Speaker 1: could be done, which when I first read about it

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Speaker 1: made me look up Versailles about ten miles from Paris,

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Speaker 1: which when you say to prove it could be done,

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Speaker 1: I would argue that going to Versailles and back is

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Speaker 1: the easy part of the going to Versailles and assassinating

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Speaker 1: the head of the government. But that's true, that's true.

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Speaker 1: But either way, it was like it was a ten

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Speaker 1: mile Jaunton, not a It's not like from like DC

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Speaker 1: to New York or something. But uh, I would argue

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Speaker 1: that calmer and less intelligent people talked her out of

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Speaker 1: her plan, and instead they planned a military excursion to

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Speaker 1: march on Versailles. Rather than send one lady with a

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Speaker 1: gun or a knife for poison or whatever. You know,

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Speaker 1: she had in mind a hot air balloon. Maybe it

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Speaker 1: would be on theme work, but you know, I believe

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Speaker 1: in them, and so they march umber sign. This does

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Speaker 1: not get far. That guy Reclue. I keep bringing up

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Speaker 1: the one I like the vegetarian. Oh I didn't point

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Speaker 1: out these vegetarian maybe I did. Okay, he goes with it.

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Speaker 1: He's part of the march, and I swear it's related.

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Speaker 1: It was not really. I just want to talk about

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Speaker 1: cool he was. But just remind me who who Reclu

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Speaker 1: was in case I don't remember from from the previous episode. Well,

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Speaker 1: he's the one who volunteered for the hot air balloon

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Speaker 1: service even though he was already forty. And he's also

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Speaker 1: the one who I laid out his conception of how

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Speaker 1: the Paris Commune might relate to the rest of the

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Speaker 1: country and world. And he winds up. Later he writes

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Speaker 1: some of the first scientific books that like Western scientific

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Speaker 1: books that actually treat indigenous people like their people. As

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Speaker 1: kind of one of his whole things that he contributes

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Speaker 1: to the world. He really hates national borders. He works

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Speaker 1: as a geographer's whole life, and he was really weird.

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Speaker 1: He was pretty much much vegan as far as I

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Speaker 1: could tell. Like later people say that all he ate

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Speaker 1: was like bread and fruit. He was a nudist. After

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Speaker 1: the ship with the Commune, he goes on to fight

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Speaker 1: against state sanctioned marriage and because because it makes women

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Speaker 1: the property of men. And I don't think this is

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Speaker 1: weird at all. I think it's a very reasonable position.

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Speaker 1: He helps his daughter sort of illegally fake Mary, their husbands,

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Speaker 1: their their partners um and so it's just this cool, old,

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Speaker 1: weird hippie anarchist from the nineteenth century who's bravest ship

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Speaker 1: and goes out onto this fucking march. So he and

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Speaker 1: his buds National Guard, they probably go out and march

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Speaker 1: and off to meet the enemy, and they're convinced that

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Speaker 1: the army isn't really going to fire on them, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's all the whole commune started, the army

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Speaker 1: realized that they shouldn't shoot, you know, they're fellows. So

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Speaker 1: they run up on some army guys and they're like, hey,

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Speaker 1: we're all brothers. Put down your guns. Oh why do

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Speaker 1: I feel like that was a one time deal that

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Speaker 1: outcome from before. Well, it's a shame that you weren't

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Speaker 1: part of this, because the army guys are like, oh, yeah, totally,

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Speaker 1: we're totally not going to shoot you. Definitely put your

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Speaker 1: guns down and come over here because we're all brothers.

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Speaker 1: So the Communards march over there like they're all friends

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Speaker 1: and immediately get arrested and the army guys, um a

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Speaker 1: big chunk of the National Guard at this point is

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Speaker 1: actually army because the army had been stuck in after

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Speaker 1: they killed the general and some of the Army had defected.

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Speaker 1: They actually the the Armies like stuck there and they're

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Speaker 1: like not allowed to leave by Versailles. So they a

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Speaker 1: lot of them become National guardsmen and join the commune.

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Speaker 1: And so the Army, who has now captured the National guardsman,

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Speaker 1: goes through and tries to figure out who used to

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Speaker 1: be army and then just fucking executes them, just on

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Speaker 1: the spot. And they look to see whether their uniforms

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Speaker 1: look army ish or whether they like march in us,

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Speaker 1: like they carry themselves like soldiers. And then they at

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Speaker 1: murdered and yeah, so Reclue goes to Is and he's

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Speaker 1: out of the fight. He doesn't show up again in

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Speaker 1: this this little chunk. He spends a year in prison

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Speaker 1: and eventually they're going to deport him to a prison colony.

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Speaker 1: But he's this important scientist. And so all of these scientists,

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Speaker 1: including fucking Darwin right France, and are like, don't fucking

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Speaker 1: do this too, to our Guyraclue. Human rights violations are

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Speaker 1: bad when they happen to people who do science, I know,

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Speaker 1: But there's still part of it. It's like it's cool

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Speaker 1: that Darwin had his back, I don't know, but but

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Speaker 1: but also have everyone's back well. And actually there's this

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Speaker 1: whole thing that happens during the Paris Commune where like

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Speaker 1: it splits a lot of the general community of the

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Speaker 1: types of people who write letters to governments, scientists and

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Speaker 1: artists and so on about whether or not they support

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Speaker 1: like the commune arts who are arrested, and a good

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Speaker 1: chunk of them do say, hey, like go easy on

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Speaker 1: the commun arts or let them go, and a huge

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Speaker 1: chunk also don't Are are the governments of the world

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Speaker 1: freaked out by this? By the way, I'm not totally sure.

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Speaker 1: I think that probably because this whole thing only lasts

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Speaker 1: a couple of months. I feel like I'm conjecturing, but

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Speaker 1: I feel like it's like kind of swept up in

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Speaker 1: the grand scheme of like, I don't know, Prussia's kicking

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Speaker 1: Frances ass and some weird ships going on. Okay, some

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Speaker 1: some weirdos are doing something in Paris, but there's wars

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Speaker 1: we gotta be worried about. Yeah, but I'm not I'm

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Speaker 1: not entirely certain. So the whole jaunt out to Versailles

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Speaker 1: gets captured. And what I'm saying here is that the

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Speaker 1: Paris Commune wasn't particularly good militarily. They were a little

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Speaker 1: bit naive. Are you saying you don't support as a

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Speaker 1: military strategy throwing down your weapons and walking towards the

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Speaker 1: enemy and embracing them as brothers. I mean, like it'd

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Speaker 1: be cool when it works, but it might be a

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Speaker 1: little bit like now you come here first, Yeah, maybe

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Speaker 1: you put down your guns. So, yeah, I've seen these movies.

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Speaker 1: Everyone slowly puts down the guns works better than when

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Speaker 1: you who actually doesn't work very well in the movies either.

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Speaker 1: And okay, but to be fair, they don't have a

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Speaker 1: lot of officers, Like there's not a lot of people

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Speaker 1: here in Paris who know how to run a war.

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Speaker 1: There's one guy who's in charge for a while, Gustav

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Speaker 1: Paul Klaussay, who knows what he's doing. But also I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna pin his ascension as the beginning of the end.

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Speaker 1: When he kind of comes to power, it's kind of

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Speaker 1: when things start going apart because okay, he's a socialist,

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Speaker 1: but he's like an army guy through and through. He's

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Speaker 1: he's kind of an interesting one. He volunteers a general

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Speaker 1: in the US aren't Civil War, and he's he's a

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Speaker 1: French guy, but he's like, you know what, fox slavery

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Speaker 1: And he goes over and he like volunteers, why actually

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Speaker 1: volunteers is less than a general. And he ends up

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Speaker 1: in general and the the U S Army and because

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Speaker 1: he fucking hates slavery and long live the Republic and

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Speaker 1: all that ship and so then he's like ordered by

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Speaker 1: the Governor of New York to go to Ireland and

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Speaker 1: stir up anti colonial and anti British sentiment, mostly because

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Speaker 1: the governor of New wants to funk with Britain. I

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Speaker 1: love that, I know. And it's also like geopolitics about

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Speaker 1: like taking more control in the Mediterranean or whatever away

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Speaker 1: from the British. But like, I'm still alright with this guy,

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Speaker 1: you know. And and he goes and he joins a

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Speaker 1: Fenian uprising and uprising against the British, and then he

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Speaker 1: has to get the funk out of Ireland because they

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Speaker 1: sent him to death in his absence, so he he

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Speaker 1: does all this cool shit, um, and then he but

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Speaker 1: he also served as a fucking French officer in Algeria,

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Speaker 1: and I don't know whether he did that before afterwards.

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Speaker 1: I have like no idea whether he had a change

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Speaker 1: of heart about colonization or if he was just a

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Speaker 1: fucking racist. People are goddamn complicated. Um. But anyway, as

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Speaker 1: soon as the commune starts, he's like, oh, this is

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Speaker 1: my song, and he runs off to Paris because he's like,

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Speaker 1: I gotta go join this, and his ascension marks the

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Speaker 1: beginning at the end. From my point of view, I

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Speaker 1: would call this section revolutionary terror is back. Baby, but

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Speaker 1: it might be a bit of an exaggeration, is what

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Speaker 1: you called it. I know, but I needed a way

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Speaker 1: to like read my subtype my for anyone who's following

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Speaker 1: at home. I divide it all up with clever titles

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Speaker 1: of the different sections that are just for me are beautiful.

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Speaker 1: So okay. So there's the National Guard, right, and it's

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Speaker 1: huge and it's chaotic, and the officers were elected by

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Speaker 1: their own men, which goes back decades and under the commune,

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Speaker 1: like women are suddenly joining the ranks, including obviously Louise Michelle,

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Speaker 1: but also a lot of other women, many of whom

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Speaker 1: are just like Louise Michelle's friends, at least the ones

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Speaker 1: that I have found record of. But I have no

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Speaker 1: reason to believe that this was not happening in mass.

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Speaker 1: And when when women are joining it, they like fellow

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Speaker 1: soldiers are like, yeah, this fucking rules, and then the

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Speaker 1: like hip officers are like, this is bad. This is

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Speaker 1: I don't know, bad for morale or whatever. The hell

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Speaker 1: um monocles popping out of eyes all over the yeah

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Speaker 1: what yeah, totally this is Like I don't know why

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Speaker 1: I put on a British accent the same but I

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Speaker 1: liked it. So Class is like, this isn't this, This

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Speaker 1: won't do. I don't like this chaotic mess. You all

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Speaker 1: are not a proper army. So he gets rid of

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Speaker 1: the officer elections, so goodbye anything resembling workplace democracy for soldiers.

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Speaker 1: And then also the the guardsmen now have to sleep

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Speaker 1: at the barracks instead of just sleeping at home, which

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Speaker 1: is what they've been doing. And then they toss out

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Speaker 1: everyone over the age of forty, which includes like most

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Speaker 1: of our characters so far right, and it just like

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Speaker 1: goes on and on. He basically is just like, I'm

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Speaker 1: going to turn this into whip this group into shape,

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Speaker 1: and everyone just deserts because they're like, right, this isn't

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Speaker 1: fun anymore. You fucking as I recall you abolished conscription. Yeah, yeah, exactly,

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Speaker 1: so we can leave. Um, So like, if you make

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Speaker 1: this suck, we're not gonna stay here. Yeah, So everyone leaves.

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Speaker 1: So he actually just completely fox up the military as

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Speaker 1: far as I'm I'm concerned with my my bias. And

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Speaker 1: in the end when they fight, they fight with a

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Speaker 1: fraction of the original strength, and I blame Class ray uh,

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Speaker 1: but so did the Central Committee. Eventually they arrest him

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Speaker 1: on May one. Later they try him and find him innocent,

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Speaker 1: which is also legit. He was innocent. He wasn't like

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Speaker 1: trying to charged with fucking discounterable we're neo Bolsheviks. I

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Speaker 1: don't know they actually that's not true. They charge him

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Speaker 1: with really specific stuff. There's a lot of like tactical

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Speaker 1: ins and outs that I don't remember all the details

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Speaker 1: of where they go off and they like try to

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Speaker 1: take this or that fort and they get then they

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Speaker 1: like abandon it and then you know, so he's arrested

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Speaker 1: also for his like not succeeding, I believe, but I

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Speaker 1: decided not to do the most of the history stuff

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Speaker 1: I find is very like end then this army moved

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Speaker 1: forward ten paces here and now that that stuff, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that kind of information like passes directly through my head,

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Speaker 1: like I take it in through my eyes or ears

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Speaker 1: and it just leaves out through the back of my

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Speaker 1: skull immediately. Have not retained a single fact about like

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Speaker 1: battlefield maneuvers every unless like can map into how like

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Speaker 1: protest tactics work, you know, Um, then I kind of

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Speaker 1: like it, but well, no, it's it's good though. This

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Speaker 1: is why you're you're the opposite of like the worst

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Speaker 1: kind of person who's into history, who is like those

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Speaker 1: guys who are really into the Civil War and they

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Speaker 1: always have those maps with like the arrows on it

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Speaker 1: on them, and they always have the worst politics, and

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Speaker 1: they always have something to say about states rights or

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Speaker 1: something like just the the absolute worst, and they are

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Speaker 1: the ones who want to talk battlefield tactics. So stay

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Speaker 1: away from that brand of history. That is my plan

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Speaker 1: here at cool people who did cool stuff. Okay, so

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Speaker 1: things are looking more and more dire militarily, the National

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Speaker 1: Guards leaving, and then from my point of view, at

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Speaker 1: this point, the Council betrays the revolution. And since I'm

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Speaker 1: the one who's telling the story, there you go. The

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Speaker 1: Council betrays the revolution. The same people who started off

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Speaker 1: by burning the guillotine are like, you know what, let's uh,

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Speaker 1: let's bring back the quote Department of Public Safety a

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Speaker 1: k a. The revolutionary cops. Oh that went really well

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Speaker 1: last time, right, I think. So that's why they have

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Speaker 1: to do it eighty years later because it worked so well.

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Speaker 1: Department of Public Safety, like famously the least ironically named

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Speaker 1: group out there, definitely didn't get anyone killed. Yeah, So

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Speaker 1: in the council. The anarchists are like fuck no, the

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Speaker 1: blanchists are like fuck yes. And the Jacobins kind of

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Speaker 1: went along because they were like French revolution LARPers, like yeah, totally,

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Speaker 1: what are they gonna know? What else they gonna do?

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Speaker 1: And so okay, So now you've got your revolutionary police

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Speaker 1: and they run around and they round up dissidents, and

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Speaker 1: they shut down newspapers and they raid people's houses. They

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Speaker 1: like end free speech. They don't really murder people, with

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Speaker 1: a few exceptions that I'll get to. But this just

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Speaker 1: divides everyone further, right, because they don't actually murder people

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Speaker 1: with a few exceptions, We're gonna glizz right over that.

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Speaker 1: It's a sprinkle of murder, tiny murder. I enjoyed that.

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Speaker 1: You know. If I've ever murdered, I just hope I

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Speaker 1: just hope it's an exception. Yeah, yeah, totally. Like it's

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Speaker 1: like it's because I hate you, not because this is

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Speaker 1: a pattern or anything, right, right, totally. Oh, there's revolutionary

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Speaker 1: cops and and half of the stuff, like the radical

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Speaker 1: history is all about all the different revolutionary cops and

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Speaker 1: what they did, and um, because those are some of them.

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Speaker 1: Us like die hard revolutionists and I I don't like

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Speaker 1: them very much. Um. And but we also we don't

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Speaker 1: know how any of this would happened long term, right,

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Speaker 1: like we don't know whether it was because the whole

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Speaker 1: thing lasts like seven weeks or something, and and then

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Speaker 1: it all ends and what gets called, fittingly enough, the

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Speaker 1: Bloody Week. Margaret, last time you told me that there

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Speaker 1: wasn't going to be a section of this called the

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Speaker 1: Bloody Week, I lied. And you know who else lies?

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Speaker 1: Not the people who sponsored this show, but people who

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Speaker 1: might sponsor things in general. All of our sponsors on

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Speaker 1: this show are telling the truth as long as they're

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Speaker 1: selling potatoes exactly, the only ad that you will listen to.

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Speaker 1: If if you hear any other ad, please let me know,

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Speaker 1: because the only ad that I green lit was potatoes,

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Speaker 1: not any specific brand, but potatoes either the concept of potato.

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Speaker 1: And here are some ats and we're back. So speaking

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Speaker 1: of potatoes, mhm, everyone has heard a lot about potatoes. Yeah, Um,

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Speaker 1: the I don't know that. I don't know what the

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Speaker 1: lead into this is, Margaret, you told me to tell

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Speaker 1: this story. Um. The story is just that in England

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Speaker 1: in the nine thirties, when the fascist Black Shirt movement

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Speaker 1: under Oswald Moseley was really strong. Uh. There was an

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Speaker 1: anti fascist counter demonstration when the black Shirts were trying

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Speaker 1: to rally um and the weapon of choice for the

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Speaker 1: anti fascists were potatoes with fraser blades stuck in them.

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Speaker 1: And I'd like to tell this story because it allows

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Speaker 1: me to use the phrase one fascist lost an eye

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Speaker 1: to such a potato. That's it. That's the whole story,

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Speaker 1: that that Nazi rally did not take place because a

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Speaker 1: fascist lost an eye to a potato with a razor

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Speaker 1: blade in it? Can we can? So we can we

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Speaker 1: get the sponsor of specifically razor blade potatoes. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean if we're going to pick a type of

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Speaker 1: potato with the hast to be razor blade potatoes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: thrown at fascists in particular, right, I mean what else? Like,

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Speaker 1: I can't cook a razor blade potato. That would be

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Speaker 1: foolish and dangerous. Yeah, no, it would be no good,

359
00:20:32,000 --> 00:20:36,920
Speaker 1: but unfortunately could throwing objects anyway. The Bloody Week, more

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Speaker 1: the alleged bloody Week. Actually no one was hurt. This

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Speaker 1: is all a conspiracy, Okay. So on Sunday the story

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Speaker 1: goes about this, and again there's a million stories about everything.

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Speaker 1: There's this guy who doesn't like the commune very much

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Speaker 1: and he's in stuck in Paris and he's going on

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Speaker 1: a Sunday walk and he's like, oh, ship, that gate

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Speaker 1: is undefended because I guess the National car didn't show

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Speaker 1: up to work that day. And so he gets up

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Speaker 1: on top of the wall and he's like, hey, buds,

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Speaker 1: the this this door is open. You all want to

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Speaker 1: come in. And the people on the other side of

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Speaker 1: like this is probably a trap, much like we trapped

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Speaker 1: those other people, but they decided to check it out.

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Speaker 1: And indeed the door is open and the army pours

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Speaker 1: into Paris and all fucking hell breaks loose. Someone just

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Speaker 1: forgot to close the gate and and show up to

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Speaker 1: work to guard the gate. Well, that guy did make

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Speaker 1: working conditions terrible, so we can him exactly. And although

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Speaker 1: at that point he was out and a couple other

379
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Speaker 1: people had already cycled through, they went through their very

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Speaker 1: few generals were going to blame him. I can't I

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Speaker 1: can't keep up with all this. Let's just put it

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Speaker 1: on him and Okay, so actually while this is happening,

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Speaker 1: he's on trial. The day that they storm in is

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Speaker 1: the day of his trial class array, and and this

385
00:22:02,440 --> 00:22:04,679
Speaker 1: gets the example of like why the council actually kind

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Speaker 1: of sucked the entire time. They're just like lost in

387
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Speaker 1: their heads about like, oh, we're having a government, Like

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Speaker 1: they're like the model you N right, Like everyone else

389
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Speaker 1: is actually busy like making the city work through mutual

390
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Speaker 1: aid as far as I can tell, and the model

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Speaker 1: u N is like having their like we're a government meeting.

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Speaker 1: And so they have this guy on trial and someone

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Speaker 1: shows up and it's like, oh, ship the Versailles is

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Speaker 1: here there in the streets, like the fighting is started,

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Speaker 1: and and how do you think that the council handles that?

396
00:22:35,760 --> 00:22:39,440
Speaker 1: Were They like, excuse me, you didn't follow Robert's rules

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Speaker 1: of order, so that what it's called thing you're supposed

398
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Speaker 1: to follow, that is the thing that many people are

399
00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:50,119
Speaker 1: supposed to follow. I I don't. Yeah. Basically they're like, okay,

400
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Speaker 1: that's cool, and then they go back to having the trial.

401
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Speaker 1: Oh my god, seriously, they're like, that wasn't on the

402
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Speaker 1: agenda for today. I know, if they wanted on the agenda,

403
00:22:58,359 --> 00:23:00,359
Speaker 1: they should have come in and put it on agenda.

404
00:23:00,359 --> 00:23:02,879
Speaker 1: Went around last night. You must not have checked your email.

405
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Speaker 1: This is why I never That is why I hate

406
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Speaker 1: going to meetings. Just fhy I. Yeah. So they have

407
00:23:09,280 --> 00:23:13,239
Speaker 1: the trial until eight pm. He's found innocent, but and

408
00:23:13,280 --> 00:23:16,280
Speaker 1: the new general at this point is this Polish revolutionary

409
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Speaker 1: named Dobrowski, who just to tie in a bunch of

410
00:23:19,760 --> 00:23:22,639
Speaker 1: historical events altogether really neatly, which is like my favorite

411
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Speaker 1: thing about reading history, is that he'd been freed by

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Speaker 1: the Russian nihilist I love I love your red red

413
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Speaker 1: strings on a bulletin board approach to history. Yeah, exactly, Um,

414
00:23:34,240 --> 00:23:40,480
Speaker 1: all the cool people in a mysterious cabal. Okay, So Dobrowski, uh,

415
00:23:40,560 --> 00:23:42,560
Speaker 1: he had been freed by the Russian nihilists after he

416
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Speaker 1: joined a failed uprising in Poland a few years back,

417
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Speaker 1: and then years later he doesn't survive this. But years later,

418
00:23:50,760 --> 00:23:52,800
Speaker 1: during the Spanish Civil War, one of the first groups

419
00:23:52,800 --> 00:23:54,960
Speaker 1: of international fighters to show up and try and stop

420
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Speaker 1: fascism in France is the Dobrowski Battalion, which is made

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Speaker 1: up of Polish Communist miners who are being in France

422
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Speaker 1: who named themselves after this guy. Another story that definitely

423
00:24:07,160 --> 00:24:10,600
Speaker 1: doesn't take a dark turn in the second episode, right,

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00:24:10,880 --> 00:24:14,160
Speaker 1: that's definitely the oh, that's gonna be the whole thing

425
00:24:14,240 --> 00:24:20,159
Speaker 1: for the whole trap in everyone. Okay, So, and actually,

426
00:24:20,320 --> 00:24:22,919
Speaker 1: apparently armies everywhere in the nineteenth century, if you like

427
00:24:23,040 --> 00:24:27,640
Speaker 1: needed a pitch hitter, pinch hitter, I don't know, baseball. Um,

428
00:24:27,680 --> 00:24:31,000
Speaker 1: if you needed a an officer and you didn't have one,

429
00:24:31,280 --> 00:24:34,200
Speaker 1: you get you get a Polish officer because basically, since

430
00:24:34,240 --> 00:24:38,040
Speaker 1: Poland was divided up into three parts, all of their

431
00:24:38,040 --> 00:24:41,159
Speaker 1: military kept have to flee and run away and like like,

432
00:24:41,280 --> 00:24:44,000
Speaker 1: people were always in exile, and so you could always

433
00:24:44,040 --> 00:24:47,120
Speaker 1: get a Polish officer in exile if you needed an officer.

434
00:24:47,680 --> 00:24:51,840
Speaker 1: And so Dobrowski helps organize the Paris Commune at the

435
00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:56,159
Speaker 1: last minute, and the army pours in and what do

436
00:24:56,200 --> 00:24:59,680
Speaker 1: you know, there are these huge open avenues and they're

437
00:24:59,720 --> 00:25:06,120
Speaker 1: per picked for circumventing barricades and murdering Parisians and murder

438
00:25:06,119 --> 00:25:13,080
Speaker 1: they did. The estimates range wildly, but most at the

439
00:25:13,160 --> 00:25:17,119
Speaker 1: time people said twenty to thirty thousand people were murdered. Jesus.

440
00:25:17,440 --> 00:25:19,800
Speaker 1: More modern estimates say that it was only ten to

441
00:25:19,840 --> 00:25:21,800
Speaker 1: twenty thousand. So I'm just gonna go ahead and pick

442
00:25:21,840 --> 00:25:25,040
Speaker 1: twenty thousand as my number that I hold by, So

443
00:25:25,080 --> 00:25:29,480
Speaker 1: they murdered twenty people. And so as mad as I

444
00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:32,240
Speaker 1: am about the revolutionary cops, the reason, I'm like, it's

445
00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:35,400
Speaker 1: just a sprinkleing of murder what they did. The murder

446
00:25:35,400 --> 00:25:37,840
Speaker 1: they did. They had about sixty who actually had a

447
00:25:37,840 --> 00:25:40,760
Speaker 1: couple of hundred hostages, but they had they killed sixty

448
00:25:40,800 --> 00:25:42,760
Speaker 1: of them because the whole point of the hostages was like,

449
00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:46,919
Speaker 1: don't invade, or will kill the archbishop. And then they're like,

450
00:25:47,320 --> 00:25:51,640
Speaker 1: we're gonna invade, so they killed the archbishop. I mean

451
00:25:51,800 --> 00:25:54,600
Speaker 1: they did say. Yeah, I mean, it's like the point

452
00:25:54,600 --> 00:25:58,720
Speaker 1: of hostages. I don't I don't actually feel adept to

453
00:25:58,800 --> 00:26:02,040
Speaker 1: determine the morality here, but yeah, I'm not like pro

454
00:26:02,440 --> 00:26:05,119
Speaker 1: murderer as a as a general rule, but like, also

455
00:26:05,320 --> 00:26:07,120
Speaker 1: it does seem like one side did a lot more

456
00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:10,160
Speaker 1: murder than the other. So well, Louise Michelle would agree

457
00:26:10,240 --> 00:26:14,920
Speaker 1: with you, and she describes the bloody weak like this quote.

458
00:26:15,920 --> 00:26:18,359
Speaker 1: For years they've spoken of the victims of the commune,

459
00:26:18,359 --> 00:26:21,760
Speaker 1: about sixty whose names are known. The Commune's dead can't

460
00:26:21,800 --> 00:26:25,679
Speaker 1: be counted. Paris was an immense abattoir where, after eight

461
00:26:25,800 --> 00:26:28,480
Speaker 1: days of slaughter, the hordes of flies over the mass

462
00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:30,959
Speaker 1: graves put an end to the killings, for they feared

463
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:34,080
Speaker 1: the plague. The number of dead of the commune during

464
00:26:34,080 --> 00:26:37,359
Speaker 1: the Bloody Weak can't be calculated. They were buried everywhere

465
00:26:37,440 --> 00:26:40,440
Speaker 1: in the public squares, under the paving stones, in wells

466
00:26:40,720 --> 00:26:43,359
Speaker 1: and trenches dug at the times of the Prussians, in

467
00:26:43,480 --> 00:26:47,320
Speaker 1: cemeteries and casements where they were burned. They were brought

468
00:26:47,359 --> 00:26:49,920
Speaker 1: in wagons to the chomped them are where they were

469
00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:53,359
Speaker 1: also burned. The ashes weren't gathered and placed, and earns

470
00:26:53,480 --> 00:26:56,160
Speaker 1: the winds that carried them away will tell neither their

471
00:26:56,240 --> 00:27:00,119
Speaker 1: name nor their number. Jesus. Yeah, So this idea that

472
00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:02,560
Speaker 1: they only stopped murdering people when they were like, oh,

473
00:27:02,600 --> 00:27:05,720
Speaker 1: we ran out of places to put the bodies. All

474
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:10,240
Speaker 1: the death was becoming a public health hazard. Oh God,

475
00:27:11,119 --> 00:27:15,480
Speaker 1: that doesn't relate to the current We're I'm so glad,

476
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 1: we're so far away from this in time. Uh. And

477
00:27:20,080 --> 00:27:22,840
Speaker 1: the photographer Nadair who has taught who have talked about

478
00:27:23,040 --> 00:27:26,119
Speaker 1: when it organized the hot air balloons. He talks about

479
00:27:26,119 --> 00:27:29,159
Speaker 1: how crowds of community prisoners were marched through the streets

480
00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:31,000
Speaker 1: and then they were like laughed at and beaten by

481
00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:34,200
Speaker 1: the rich and they would they would round up everyone,

482
00:27:34,280 --> 00:27:35,560
Speaker 1: and then they would look to see if you have

483
00:27:35,600 --> 00:27:38,320
Speaker 1: like a bruise on your shoulder, gunpowder on your fingers.

484
00:27:38,600 --> 00:27:40,680
Speaker 1: The bruising your shoulder be from firing a rifle, and

485
00:27:40,680 --> 00:27:43,560
Speaker 1: then they would just execute you on the spot. Rich

486
00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:46,280
Speaker 1: women would come out into the streets with their parasols

487
00:27:46,359 --> 00:27:50,760
Speaker 1: and jab out the eyes of the prisoners, and one

488
00:27:50,800 --> 00:27:55,439
Speaker 1: by one all the neighborhoods fell the the revolutionary police.

489
00:27:55,760 --> 00:27:58,360
Speaker 1: They did go down with the ship. They left their

490
00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:00,920
Speaker 1: officers to fight at the arricades. There's kind of a

491
00:28:00,920 --> 00:28:03,919
Speaker 1: sweet story about one of the council members de la Cluz,

492
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:06,400
Speaker 1: and he was He wasn't one of the revolutionary cops.

493
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 1: He was just a council member. He was sixty one.

494
00:28:08,560 --> 00:28:11,879
Speaker 1: He's on death store anyway from I think tuberculosis, but

495
00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:14,679
Speaker 1: I couldn't be certain. Someone is certain, and I'm just

496
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:17,199
Speaker 1: not the one who is certain. But he's sure. The

497
00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:20,480
Speaker 1: person who's certain will tweet at you, I know. Yeah.

498
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:24,720
Speaker 1: And so he's on death's door anyway, because he spent

499
00:28:24,800 --> 00:28:27,199
Speaker 1: so long in prison that he got really sick, and

500
00:28:27,280 --> 00:28:29,639
Speaker 1: so he's like, I'm dying, Paris is falling, and he

501
00:28:29,680 --> 00:28:31,320
Speaker 1: puts on his like, this is the this is the

502
00:28:31,359 --> 00:28:35,560
Speaker 1: Hollywood moment. He puts on his red sash. Before the

503
00:28:35,600 --> 00:28:37,720
Speaker 1: Paris Commune people had like red, white and blue sashes,

504
00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:39,880
Speaker 1: and then the Paris Commune they had red sashes. And

505
00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:41,720
Speaker 1: he goes off and he finds the nearest barricade and

506
00:28:41,760 --> 00:28:43,520
Speaker 1: he climbs up to the top of his red sash

507
00:28:43,520 --> 00:28:50,000
Speaker 1: and gets shot dead. And at the same time, now

508
00:28:50,040 --> 00:28:54,600
Speaker 1: Paris is on fire. The actual scale of the burning

509
00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:56,920
Speaker 1: wasn't so great as people claimed in the media at

510
00:28:56,920 --> 00:29:00,160
Speaker 1: the time and later, but it sure wasn't nothing. And

511
00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:02,280
Speaker 1: most of it was done by one military force or

512
00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:04,800
Speaker 1: the other. A lot of it was done by the Communards,

513
00:29:04,800 --> 00:29:06,760
Speaker 1: who are basically like, if we're going down, we're gonna

514
00:29:06,800 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 1: fucking sas. Some shot on fire fun this place, and

515
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:13,640
Speaker 1: but most of it was military purposes here and there.

516
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:17,560
Speaker 1: And the media came up with this myth at the time,

517
00:29:18,200 --> 00:29:22,400
Speaker 1: which was there's a very convenient scapegoat can be blamed

518
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:28,480
Speaker 1: for most problems women, when in doubt, I know there's

519
00:29:28,480 --> 00:29:30,720
Speaker 1: a lot of other good, convenient, historical scapegoats. They could

520
00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:33,080
Speaker 1: have gone with a lot of them, um, but at

521
00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:36,360
Speaker 1: this time they picked women and went in doubt everywhere.

522
00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:43,320
Speaker 1: I know we're outnumbered ship We're aware of them too.

523
00:29:48,440 --> 00:29:51,840
Speaker 1: Uh So, these these these mythical women were called the

524
00:29:51,880 --> 00:29:55,600
Speaker 1: petrol Lose, which was an army of disgruntled poor women

525
00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:58,239
Speaker 1: who stuck around town with petrol setting fire because they

526
00:29:58,280 --> 00:30:03,720
Speaker 1: loved destruction. And the the folklorist Rent Awry put the

527
00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:06,800
Speaker 1: put it this way, talked about this in their essay

528
00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:11,280
Speaker 1: Babba Yaga burns Paris to the ground. Rent says, the

529
00:30:11,320 --> 00:30:13,720
Speaker 1: myth of the petro Lose was certainly invented to bank

530
00:30:13,800 --> 00:30:16,720
Speaker 1: people unfree. But I like the petrol loses because their

531
00:30:16,760 --> 00:30:20,640
Speaker 1: fire and ferocity hint at interesting predecessors. And then Ren

532
00:30:20,960 --> 00:30:24,360
Speaker 1: ties it into the long history of the a myth

533
00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 1: of fire wielding women in myth from from Baba Yaga

534
00:30:28,320 --> 00:30:30,840
Speaker 1: to characters and grim fairy tales to the witches that

535
00:30:30,880 --> 00:30:35,000
Speaker 1: were burned in the witch hunts. So then Ren connects

536
00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:38,840
Speaker 1: this with with fairy tales and offers their own. This

537
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:42,720
Speaker 1: is Ren's fairy tale. There once was a city of Stone,

538
00:30:42,760 --> 00:30:45,120
Speaker 1: where some people ate their soup with silver spoons, and

539
00:30:45,160 --> 00:30:48,000
Speaker 1: others stopped it up with crusts of bread. Though the

540
00:30:48,040 --> 00:30:51,080
Speaker 1: people of the silver spoons ruled the city for many years.

541
00:30:51,160 --> 00:30:53,360
Speaker 1: For a spell, the people with the crusts of bread

542
00:30:53,400 --> 00:30:56,520
Speaker 1: possessed it. They set to work remaking the city like

543
00:30:56,560 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 1: they might remake a chair or shoe, reassembling the parts

544
00:31:00,040 --> 00:31:02,480
Speaker 1: with hard work so that all had enough instead of

545
00:31:02,480 --> 00:31:04,800
Speaker 1: a few having it. But the people of the silver

546
00:31:04,880 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 1: spoons snuck back into the city with guns and bayonets.

547
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:11,960
Speaker 1: The streets became the color of roses. Among the bread

548
00:31:11,960 --> 00:31:15,400
Speaker 1: crust people, there were certain women, fierce and wise. They

549
00:31:15,440 --> 00:31:19,160
Speaker 1: carried matches and kerosene, and little children ran at their skirts.

550
00:31:19,640 --> 00:31:22,800
Speaker 1: They snuck through the night time city, leaving flames and

551
00:31:22,840 --> 00:31:25,920
Speaker 1: smoke behind them wherever they went. Many of these women

552
00:31:26,080 --> 00:31:31,120
Speaker 1: did not wake up, And that's the folklore I like. Um,

553
00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:36,959
Speaker 1: but the fear of these petrol loses, which again I'm

554
00:31:37,040 --> 00:31:39,200
Speaker 1: kind of into reclaiming as being like, all right, maybe

555
00:31:39,200 --> 00:31:41,360
Speaker 1: they weren't real, but it's still fucking cool, Like fuck you.

556
00:31:42,160 --> 00:31:44,720
Speaker 1: It was enough that the army just started shooting random

557
00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:50,120
Speaker 1: women and kids that they suspected of arson. Fifty years earlier,

558
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:54,160
Speaker 1: a German revolutionary named George Buckner has a quote, those

559
00:31:54,200 --> 00:31:56,520
Speaker 1: who make half a revolution only dig their own graves,

560
00:31:56,600 --> 00:31:59,080
Speaker 1: And I feel like that kind of ties into all

561
00:31:59,120 --> 00:32:03,440
Speaker 1: this stuff. Didn't rob the bank. I'm just thinking about

562
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:07,400
Speaker 1: the the reclaiming of the of the myths that people

563
00:32:07,520 --> 00:32:13,320
Speaker 1: tell about you, um, and how powerful that can be. Um.

564
00:32:13,360 --> 00:32:17,440
Speaker 1: But also, yeah, as you said, I mean, I wonder

565
00:32:18,680 --> 00:32:20,320
Speaker 1: if they you know, let's say they had robbed the

566
00:32:20,320 --> 00:32:23,760
Speaker 1: bank or or you know, not appointed that guy who

567
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:28,600
Speaker 1: ruined the national Guard or whatever else. I do still wonder, like, well,

568
00:32:28,640 --> 00:32:33,479
Speaker 1: what would have happened then? You know, I think just

569
00:32:33,560 --> 00:32:37,600
Speaker 1: because every other nation in Europe I think would have

570
00:32:37,640 --> 00:32:42,240
Speaker 1: been really uh really panicked at the idea of an

571
00:32:42,240 --> 00:32:48,760
Speaker 1: anti authoritarian you know, commune existing anywhere near them. I

572
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:50,920
Speaker 1: wonder how that would have gone down. But maybe by

573
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:53,640
Speaker 1: then they would have been able to defend themselves. Yeah,

574
00:32:53,680 --> 00:32:55,880
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean it could have been. I know,

575
00:32:56,200 --> 00:32:59,120
Speaker 1: like the nineteen seventeen revolution, a lot of different cities

576
00:32:59,680 --> 00:33:03,800
Speaker 1: across across Europe, in different places had their own uprisings,

577
00:33:03,800 --> 00:33:05,320
Speaker 1: and all of those, you know, like a lot of

578
00:33:05,320 --> 00:33:08,120
Speaker 1: the uprisings in in Europe at the time, we're all

579
00:33:08,160 --> 00:33:14,880
Speaker 1: kind of interlinked. So I don't know, UM, beautiful dream.

580
00:33:14,920 --> 00:33:18,760
Speaker 1: That probably would have ended badly no matter what. But

581
00:33:18,800 --> 00:33:23,440
Speaker 1: the the highest ranking French officer who defected the start

582
00:33:23,440 --> 00:33:25,680
Speaker 1: of it all. He ended up in charge, kind of

583
00:33:25,720 --> 00:33:29,440
Speaker 1: in the middle between the other two. And this guy's

584
00:33:29,520 --> 00:33:34,720
Speaker 1: name is Louis Rossel, and he he kind of desperately

585
00:33:34,760 --> 00:33:36,880
Speaker 1: tried to shore up the defenses. Basically, he was like, oh,

586
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:39,920
Speaker 1: we need actual you know, we need the walls won't last.

587
00:33:39,960 --> 00:33:43,680
Speaker 1: We need to build in these other things. And after

588
00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:46,240
Speaker 1: the bloody week he hid and he lived under an

589
00:33:46,240 --> 00:33:48,880
Speaker 1: assumed name for a few months before he was caught, tried,

590
00:33:48,920 --> 00:33:52,040
Speaker 1: and executed. Shortly before his death, he wrote the following

591
00:33:52,080 --> 00:33:55,480
Speaker 1: in a letter, I shall never regret having tried to

592
00:33:55,520 --> 00:33:59,480
Speaker 1: demolish that bastard oligarchy, the French bourgeoisie. We may have

593
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:02,760
Speaker 1: been beaten, but nevertheless our cannon shots have told and

594
00:34:02,800 --> 00:34:05,160
Speaker 1: I hope that the cause of democracy may find at

595
00:34:05,160 --> 00:34:08,160
Speaker 1: some future period less unworthy and less and capable servants

596
00:34:08,200 --> 00:34:15,719
Speaker 1: than ourselves. Wow. Yeah, Louise Michelle went underground also, and

597
00:34:15,760 --> 00:34:19,239
Speaker 1: she she kept up the fight for I think about

598
00:34:19,239 --> 00:34:22,839
Speaker 1: a month or so, but then eventually in a bunch

599
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:25,279
Speaker 1: of other women, I believe, one underground with her. But

600
00:34:25,320 --> 00:34:28,000
Speaker 1: then they came and they arrested her mother and to

601
00:34:28,160 --> 00:34:31,000
Speaker 1: draw her out, and it worked. She turned herself in

602
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:35,040
Speaker 1: in June, and thousands and thousands were arrested and tried.

603
00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:38,800
Speaker 1: As many as fifteen thousand people were executed, including basically

604
00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:41,239
Speaker 1: everyone that Louise Michelle was friends with, especially the men,

605
00:34:42,120 --> 00:34:45,080
Speaker 1: and so Louise Michelle tried to take credit for everything.

606
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:47,520
Speaker 1: Basically was like, no, I did that, now, that was me.

607
00:34:47,880 --> 00:34:51,640
Speaker 1: I did that to try and get other people off

608
00:34:51,680 --> 00:34:55,920
Speaker 1: the hook um. And then they didn't kill her, pretty

609
00:34:55,960 --> 00:35:00,080
Speaker 1: much exclusively because she was a woman, and she she

610
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:03,880
Speaker 1: didn't like that. She told the court quote, since it

611
00:35:03,920 --> 00:35:06,680
Speaker 1: seems that any heart which beats for freedom has the

612
00:35:06,840 --> 00:35:09,680
Speaker 1: right only to a lump of lead, I too claim

613
00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:12,399
Speaker 1: my share. If you let me live, I shall never

614
00:35:12,440 --> 00:35:15,280
Speaker 1: stop crying for revenge, and I shall avenge my brothers.

615
00:35:15,600 --> 00:35:19,440
Speaker 1: If you are not cowards kill me. But they were.

616
00:35:19,480 --> 00:35:22,480
Speaker 1: They were cowards, so they did not kill her, and

617
00:35:22,520 --> 00:35:26,479
Speaker 1: they sent her off to a prison colony where you'll

618
00:35:26,480 --> 00:35:29,160
Speaker 1: be shocked to know she continued to be really fucking cool.

619
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:33,440
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, and we get to talk about the continued

620
00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:36,880
Speaker 1: adventures of Louise Michelle. We'll get back to the Paris

621
00:35:36,880 --> 00:35:39,839
Speaker 1: Commune again. But I just I like my asides about Louis,

622
00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:44,279
Speaker 1: I want to know everything about that. Yeah, okay, So

623
00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:47,080
Speaker 1: France has this little has a has a series of

624
00:35:47,120 --> 00:35:49,000
Speaker 1: islands in the southwest Pacific that they stole in the

625
00:35:49,080 --> 00:35:52,320
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, and it's called New Caledonia. They still fucking

626
00:35:52,320 --> 00:35:54,120
Speaker 1: have it, as a matter of fact, and it's where

627
00:35:54,160 --> 00:35:57,839
Speaker 1: they ship off all the deported commune arts and on

628
00:35:57,880 --> 00:36:00,480
Speaker 1: the boat. Louise Michelle spends five months and king about

629
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:03,040
Speaker 1: the commune and everything that happened and everything that went wrong,

630
00:36:03,520 --> 00:36:06,960
Speaker 1: and she becomes an anarchist. As she put it, I

631
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:10,319
Speaker 1: came rapidly to the conclusion that honest men in power incapable,

632
00:36:10,360 --> 00:36:13,520
Speaker 1: and that dishonest ones or monsters, that it is impossible

633
00:36:13,560 --> 00:36:16,520
Speaker 1: to ally liberty with power. That a revolution whose aim

634
00:36:16,600 --> 00:36:19,040
Speaker 1: is any form of government would be but a delusion

635
00:36:19,080 --> 00:36:22,440
Speaker 1: if only a few institutions fell, because everything is bound

636
00:36:22,440 --> 00:36:25,839
Speaker 1: by indestructible chains in the old world, and everything must

637
00:36:25,840 --> 00:36:28,480
Speaker 1: be uprooted by the foundations for the new world to

638
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:31,120
Speaker 1: grow happy and be at liberty under a free sky.

639
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:37,719
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I mean, so she's when she's living

640
00:36:37,719 --> 00:36:40,280
Speaker 1: on the island, she starts sharing quarters with another anarchist

641
00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:44,279
Speaker 1: woman named Natalie Lamel and people start to gossip about that.

642
00:36:46,280 --> 00:36:49,200
Speaker 1: She also started working with the indigenous Knock people of

643
00:36:49,280 --> 00:36:53,040
Speaker 1: the island, and with with their permission, she wrote down

644
00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:56,240
Speaker 1: a lot of their folklore traditions, and she like basically

645
00:36:56,239 --> 00:36:58,200
Speaker 1: can't help but set up schools everywhere she goes. So

646
00:36:58,239 --> 00:37:00,239
Speaker 1: she sets up the school and she's working as a teach. Sure,

647
00:37:00,719 --> 00:37:03,480
Speaker 1: I honestly can't tell you how colon rizy she was

648
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:07,960
Speaker 1: or wasn't about it. Um, she obviously, like had I

649
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:09,799
Speaker 1: believe she had their permission and was friends with them

650
00:37:09,840 --> 00:37:12,320
Speaker 1: in order to relate the folk tales. But you know,

651
00:37:12,360 --> 00:37:17,480
Speaker 1: obviously people sitting up schools is very complicated history. Um.

652
00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:19,920
Speaker 1: But I will say that on like almost all the

653
00:37:19,960 --> 00:37:23,480
Speaker 1: rest of the Communards, when the Canic have an uprising

654
00:37:23,640 --> 00:37:28,520
Speaker 1: in in she she sides with them. All the rest

655
00:37:28,520 --> 00:37:31,960
Speaker 1: of the Communards are like, yeah, no, she's because she's

656
00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:33,920
Speaker 1: fucking cool, right, And she like realized that all the

657
00:37:33,960 --> 00:37:37,440
Speaker 1: ship's interconnected, unlike a lot of these Communards who are like, oh, well,

658
00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:39,560
Speaker 1: I don't know, we want like democracy in France, but

659
00:37:39,680 --> 00:37:42,640
Speaker 1: like these people aren't white, what do you want? You know? Um,

660
00:37:43,040 --> 00:37:46,160
Speaker 1: I can't imagine like it it should be so easy

661
00:37:46,239 --> 00:37:49,719
Speaker 1: for them to take an anti colonialist position when they

662
00:37:49,719 --> 00:37:52,959
Speaker 1: are in a colony by force, right, Like they didn't

663
00:37:53,040 --> 00:37:55,520
Speaker 1: choose to come there. It should be so easy for

664
00:37:55,560 --> 00:37:58,000
Speaker 1: them to be like, yeah, this whole situation fucking sucks.

665
00:37:58,040 --> 00:37:59,520
Speaker 1: Of course we're on the side of the people who

666
00:37:59,560 --> 00:38:03,520
Speaker 1: don't want is to be happening. But yeah, whiteness is

667
00:38:03,520 --> 00:38:09,720
Speaker 1: a hell of a drug. Yeah, yeah, fucking is. And again,

668
00:38:09,760 --> 00:38:12,759
Speaker 1: the other thing that she she studied and talked a

669
00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:15,239
Speaker 1: lot about the connect folks, is that they had They

670
00:38:15,239 --> 00:38:17,319
Speaker 1: had dozens of different languages that were spoken by the

671
00:38:17,360 --> 00:38:20,640
Speaker 1: different groups, but they maintained a single language for communication

672
00:38:20,680 --> 00:38:24,880
Speaker 1: between each other. And this this influences her politics greatly,

673
00:38:25,360 --> 00:38:29,000
Speaker 1: and she actually ends up making fun of the the

674
00:38:29,120 --> 00:38:32,719
Speaker 1: artificially constructed leftist languages like Esperanto because she's like, none

675
00:38:32,719 --> 00:38:35,359
Speaker 1: of those are going to ask if if this took

676
00:38:35,360 --> 00:38:39,160
Speaker 1: an Esperanto direction. Well, but she makes fun of Esperanto

677
00:38:39,200 --> 00:38:40,960
Speaker 1: because she's like, you can't make one. They have to

678
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:43,520
Speaker 1: be organically grown from people in order to have a

679
00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:46,799
Speaker 1: language that everyone can communicate with. Because she's freaking cool,

680
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:49,719
Speaker 1: I don't know, um, it's like she just had a

681
00:38:49,840 --> 00:38:54,080
Speaker 1: very good bullshit detector, Like she just anything that that

682
00:38:55,120 --> 00:38:57,759
Speaker 1: it sounded good maybe for a second, but then turned

683
00:38:57,760 --> 00:38:59,520
Speaker 1: out to be bullshit, Like she was not going to

684
00:38:59,640 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 1: get sucked into that sounding good maybe for a second

685
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:06,920
Speaker 1: part of totally totally yea, because she was a blanchist

686
00:39:06,960 --> 00:39:08,160
Speaker 1: the whole time. And then she was like, oh, that

687
00:39:08,200 --> 00:39:09,680
Speaker 1: didn't work, and then she was like, all right, let's

688
00:39:09,680 --> 00:39:14,400
Speaker 1: try something different, you know. And yeah, um in eighteen

689
00:39:14,480 --> 00:39:17,759
Speaker 1: eighty France pardons all the Communards and everyone's allowed back home,

690
00:39:18,080 --> 00:39:21,399
Speaker 1: the people who are still alive. And for the rest

691
00:39:21,440 --> 00:39:25,160
Speaker 1: of her life, Louise Michelle wears all black. So there

692
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:28,960
Speaker 1: is that, and so that is where we got it,

693
00:39:30,160 --> 00:39:32,440
Speaker 1: I believe. So I don't know whether all the other

694
00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:36,120
Speaker 1: anarchists like started copying that. But she's also the one

695
00:39:36,160 --> 00:39:38,960
Speaker 1: who popularizes the black flag as a symbol of anarchism.

696
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:41,720
Speaker 1: She's not the one who invented it. I believe striking

697
00:39:41,719 --> 00:39:45,520
Speaker 1: workers in Leon in the thirties fluid as the flag

698
00:39:45,520 --> 00:39:49,160
Speaker 1: of hunger. But I don't know. She wears all black.

699
00:39:49,239 --> 00:39:51,120
Speaker 1: She flies a black flag at one point at a strike.

700
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:53,480
Speaker 1: She just flies black petticoats because is what she has

701
00:39:54,400 --> 00:40:00,840
Speaker 1: and that rules. Yeah, she spends the rest of her life, Uh,

702
00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:04,799
Speaker 1: traveling around, joining strikes, giving speeches, and writing. She actually

703
00:40:04,840 --> 00:40:08,360
Speaker 1: doesn't write much like political text. She mostly writes poetry,

704
00:40:08,440 --> 00:40:10,200
Speaker 1: and then later she writes some novels that are apparently

705
00:40:10,280 --> 00:40:12,919
Speaker 1: kind of incomprehensible. I haven't I haven't taken a shot

706
00:40:12,960 --> 00:40:17,320
Speaker 1: at them. And the press likes calling her a lesbian.

707
00:40:19,520 --> 00:40:21,200
Speaker 1: As far as I can tell, she kind of like

708
00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:23,799
Speaker 1: neither confirmed nor denied, although she did say at one

709
00:40:23,840 --> 00:40:25,600
Speaker 1: point her only love was for the revolution. But I

710
00:40:25,600 --> 00:40:27,600
Speaker 1: believe she said that when they were specifically accusing her

711
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:32,640
Speaker 1: of like sucking this one dude. Um, and okay, so

712
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:34,320
Speaker 1: there's an irony, and that they were calling her a

713
00:40:34,360 --> 00:40:36,800
Speaker 1: lesbian because of the same press that had, like during

714
00:40:36,840 --> 00:40:39,480
Speaker 1: her trial and ship had basically been like, oh, she's

715
00:40:39,480 --> 00:40:41,800
Speaker 1: only a revolution because she's obsessed with this one dude.

716
00:40:42,160 --> 00:40:44,120
Speaker 1: And you know, she's just in love with this guy

717
00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:47,040
Speaker 1: who's fifteen years younger. He's one of the revolutionary cops.

718
00:40:47,640 --> 00:40:49,680
Speaker 1: It's completely possible she was in love with him, but

719
00:40:49,719 --> 00:40:53,360
Speaker 1: I I don't know. However, she did live with his

720
00:40:53,440 --> 00:40:58,319
Speaker 1: sister for a very long time, but that's just that's

721
00:40:58,360 --> 00:41:02,759
Speaker 1: just gal. Yeah, so instead of theophile for air, she

722
00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:08,400
Speaker 1: she's hanging out with Marie for air and being gal pals.

723
00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:14,800
Speaker 1: So they basically her entire life. She lives for chunks

724
00:41:14,800 --> 00:41:17,840
Speaker 1: at like, decades at a time with different women, and

725
00:41:17,920 --> 00:41:22,840
Speaker 1: that's the way she chooses to live. And so the

726
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:28,960
Speaker 1: press is like, she's gay, and she's like, and then

727
00:41:28,960 --> 00:41:33,040
Speaker 1: her friends are like, she's not gay. She's basically the

728
00:41:33,080 --> 00:41:36,960
Speaker 1: reincarnation of Joan of Arc. She's a sexual. She is

729
00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:41,439
Speaker 1: the red Virgin. She is an anarchist nun. Uh, which

730
00:41:41,480 --> 00:41:43,360
Speaker 1: is particularly funny that they call her this because she

731
00:41:43,520 --> 00:41:48,520
Speaker 1: like scorned Marxism as creating a new religion. God forbid.

732
00:41:48,560 --> 00:41:52,399
Speaker 1: She'd just be a cool revolutionary lesbian. Yeah, it's it's

733
00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:54,040
Speaker 1: hard to know and okay, to be fair, Like, I

734
00:41:54,080 --> 00:41:57,080
Speaker 1: don't think being a nun in a lesbian are particularly contradictory,

735
00:41:57,120 --> 00:41:59,640
Speaker 1: absolutely not. Like sounds like those guys did not know

736
00:41:59,760 --> 00:42:03,319
Speaker 1: any thing about nuts. Yeah, and a lot of ink

737
00:42:03,440 --> 00:42:06,160
Speaker 1: is spilled about her sexuality. We do know that she

738
00:42:06,160 --> 00:42:08,520
Speaker 1: she dressed like a man whenever it suited her. When

739
00:42:08,520 --> 00:42:11,200
Speaker 1: she was younger, she wrote under the name Louis Louis

740
00:42:11,239 --> 00:42:13,840
Speaker 1: instead of Louise, and she lived with a string of

741
00:42:13,840 --> 00:42:17,400
Speaker 1: different women her entire life. One of her later companions

742
00:42:17,480 --> 00:42:20,040
Speaker 1: was this woman named Paul Mink, and I just I'm

743
00:42:20,080 --> 00:42:22,439
Speaker 1: gonna tell you about Paul Mink for like one second,

744
00:42:22,480 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 1: because she's fucking interesting. She's this Blanchist and she foled

745
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:28,799
Speaker 1: on fought on the commune, and she was like, I'm

746
00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:30,600
Speaker 1: really only telling you about this so I can tell

747
00:42:30,640 --> 00:42:33,839
Speaker 1: you that she named one of her kids Lucifer Blanchy

748
00:42:34,200 --> 00:42:37,120
Speaker 1: the serin Tics, which is the name of the Gaulish

749
00:42:37,200 --> 00:42:41,319
Speaker 1: leader who led a rebellion against Rome Revolution. That was

750
00:42:41,320 --> 00:42:46,080
Speaker 1: what she named her first son. Is awesome. Uh, the

751
00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:49,040
Speaker 1: sun dies in infamy. It not infamy, that would have

752
00:42:49,040 --> 00:42:55,080
Speaker 1: been cooler infancy. She names her next son Spartacus Blanchi Revolution.

753
00:42:57,719 --> 00:43:00,440
Speaker 1: You will be amazing, He'll be shocked, and that young

754
00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:07,799
Speaker 1: Spartacus eventually changes his name to Max. I affirm the

755
00:43:07,880 --> 00:43:10,600
Speaker 1: right of anybody to to discard the name that their

756
00:43:10,640 --> 00:43:15,320
Speaker 1: parents gave them. But come ontring to not call yourself Spartacus.

757
00:43:15,640 --> 00:43:20,560
Speaker 1: Everyone should be doing that. That's the whole point. Is

758
00:43:20,600 --> 00:43:23,120
Speaker 1: the whole point. He's the only guy out there saying

759
00:43:23,160 --> 00:43:26,799
Speaker 1: I'm not Spartacus. That sucks. He's the only one who

760
00:43:26,880 --> 00:43:32,279
Speaker 1: is Spartacus. So okay. So Victor Hugo writes a poem

761
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:36,680
Speaker 1: bout Louise Michelle. Jules Verne probably wrote a whole book

762
00:43:36,719 --> 00:43:39,600
Speaker 1: about her. The Survivors of the Jonathan is about a

763
00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:42,319
Speaker 1: mysterious anarchist who lives among the indigenous people and then

764
00:43:42,360 --> 00:43:46,440
Speaker 1: helps shift rex Survivors create a socialist like anarchisty society

765
00:43:46,640 --> 00:43:50,000
Speaker 1: and sounds like something she would do. Yeah, And then

766
00:43:50,040 --> 00:43:52,759
Speaker 1: other people have claimed that he was inspired heavily by

767
00:43:52,800 --> 00:43:56,520
Speaker 1: her form for Nemo and Weeks into the Sea, but

768
00:43:56,600 --> 00:44:02,359
Speaker 1: I don't know. At one point in this drunk guy

769
00:44:02,400 --> 00:44:06,520
Speaker 1: takes offense to her speech and shoots her, and she survives,

770
00:44:07,160 --> 00:44:09,920
Speaker 1: and she doesn't involve the police because she's like, this

771
00:44:09,960 --> 00:44:11,920
Speaker 1: guy is a poor worker and his family is unheard

772
00:44:11,960 --> 00:44:18,600
Speaker 1: enough times as it is incredible principle. I know. During

773
00:44:18,640 --> 00:44:22,719
Speaker 1: the Dreyfus affair, she condemns anti Semitism, um, just you

774
00:44:22,760 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 1: know this big hole. Should we be anti Semites uproar

775
00:44:25,760 --> 00:44:29,440
Speaker 1: that happens in France. A little bit later, she's arrested

776
00:44:29,480 --> 00:44:31,560
Speaker 1: like four more times. They even deport her a second

777
00:44:31,560 --> 00:44:34,000
Speaker 1: time to Belgium. She tries to visit both Russia and

778
00:44:34,000 --> 00:44:37,520
Speaker 1: the US, and both countries like now we're good absolutely.

779
00:44:39,560 --> 00:44:43,320
Speaker 1: When when she dies in five, either fifty thousand or

780
00:44:43,360 --> 00:44:45,160
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty thou people come to a funeral

781
00:44:45,239 --> 00:44:48,919
Speaker 1: depending on who you read, and the very next day

782
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:51,760
Speaker 1: after her funeral, the nineteen o five Revolution in Russia

783
00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:57,160
Speaker 1: kicks off, and then shortly after she dies, she becomes

784
00:44:57,200 --> 00:44:59,719
Speaker 1: one of the first gay icons. Whether or not she

785
00:44:59,840 --> 00:45:03,240
Speaker 1: was gay. The early sexologist at the time really wanted

786
00:45:03,520 --> 00:45:07,560
Speaker 1: a more gay icons, and so they picked her, and

787
00:45:07,640 --> 00:45:10,840
Speaker 1: someone like I think In writes this biography about her

788
00:45:10,880 --> 00:45:13,560
Speaker 1: about this like as she's a great lesbian, and this

789
00:45:13,640 --> 00:45:19,160
Speaker 1: causes all kinds of scene drama. Uh. The anarchist Emma Goldman,

790
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:24,760
Speaker 1: who everyone loves. She Uh, she wrote a passionate defense

791
00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:28,960
Speaker 1: about how Louise Michelle was definitely not gay. No, but

792
00:45:29,040 --> 00:45:31,959
Speaker 1: I've read I have read that defense, and she does

793
00:45:32,040 --> 00:45:33,560
Speaker 1: go out of her way to say it would be

794
00:45:33,600 --> 00:45:37,160
Speaker 1: fine if she were gay, But she she goes out

795
00:45:37,200 --> 00:45:38,400
Speaker 1: of way to say it would be fine if she

796
00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:40,920
Speaker 1: had been gay, but she wasn't gay. And you're all

797
00:45:40,960 --> 00:45:44,560
Speaker 1: just saying she was gay because you can't imagine a

798
00:45:44,640 --> 00:45:49,120
Speaker 1: quote unquote normal woman, Um, you know, doing the things

799
00:45:49,160 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 1: that she did. You know, I always have to stick

800
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:57,960
Speaker 1: up for Emma Goldman. Yeah, yeah, no, no. When I

801
00:45:58,080 --> 00:46:02,160
Speaker 1: the first time I met Mary Miriam was dressed up

802
00:46:02,160 --> 00:46:04,520
Speaker 1: as as Emma Goldman and giving a speech about labor

803
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:09,920
Speaker 1: and it was fucking cool. Um cool, I mean for

804
00:46:09,960 --> 00:46:13,720
Speaker 1: a given value of cool, I think it's cool, Okay,

805
00:46:13,880 --> 00:46:19,640
Speaker 1: fucking cool. So whether or not she's ace lesbian or

806
00:46:19,680 --> 00:46:22,279
Speaker 1: I don't know, love that one guy, it doesn't matter

807
00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:25,360
Speaker 1: to me because she ruled and today there's a Paris

808
00:46:25,400 --> 00:46:28,200
Speaker 1: metro station, a park, and countless schools named after her

809
00:46:28,239 --> 00:46:32,920
Speaker 1: in France. You know what else lives on is the

810
00:46:32,960 --> 00:46:36,920
Speaker 1: concept that you should buy things in order to support

811
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:43,440
Speaker 1: other things, like me and Sophie and Sophie's dog Anderson

812
00:46:44,080 --> 00:46:47,839
Speaker 1: and my dog Rentraw, all of whom are supported by

813
00:46:47,880 --> 00:46:55,640
Speaker 1: the advertisers who advertise on this show. And we're back,

814
00:46:56,880 --> 00:47:00,279
Speaker 1: and it's it's hard to overstate how influence of the

815
00:47:00,320 --> 00:47:03,080
Speaker 1: community was on radical politics, at least in the Western world.

816
00:47:03,480 --> 00:47:06,200
Speaker 1: Socialism in France kind of died for a decade or so,

817
00:47:06,280 --> 00:47:08,719
Speaker 1: since you know, all of its practitioners have just been

818
00:47:08,840 --> 00:47:12,920
Speaker 1: murdered or exiled. But all over the place people started

819
00:47:12,960 --> 00:47:16,319
Speaker 1: mythologizing the Paris Commune, and the funniest part is that

820
00:47:16,360 --> 00:47:18,080
Speaker 1: basically all the leftists tried to come up and be like,

821
00:47:18,160 --> 00:47:20,080
Speaker 1: oh no, that was us, that was totally our thing.

822
00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:22,840
Speaker 1: Like well, if it was your thing, why are you

823
00:47:22,880 --> 00:47:26,880
Speaker 1: still alive? Yeah? Fair enough. Marx and Angles were like,

824
00:47:26,880 --> 00:47:29,440
Speaker 1: what a brilliant example of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

825
00:47:30,160 --> 00:47:33,279
Speaker 1: Kropotkin the anarchist was excited about as an example of

826
00:47:33,280 --> 00:47:36,360
Speaker 1: anarchist communism. I think the Social Democrats actually have the

827
00:47:36,360 --> 00:47:40,520
Speaker 1: strongest claim, But all in all, the Paris Commune is

828
00:47:40,560 --> 00:47:43,880
Speaker 1: kind of a miserable, beautiful failure, and it was like

829
00:47:43,920 --> 00:47:45,719
Speaker 1: the clearest example of what to do and what not

830
00:47:45,840 --> 00:47:50,200
Speaker 1: to do, all wrapped into one. To me, it seems

831
00:47:50,239 --> 00:47:52,480
Speaker 1: like they kind of picked like the worst parts of centralization,

832
00:47:52,560 --> 00:47:54,400
Speaker 1: like a council that's lost up its own asshole, and

833
00:47:54,440 --> 00:47:56,640
Speaker 1: a general drives out all the volunteers and secret police

834
00:47:56,640 --> 00:47:58,680
Speaker 1: who defeat the whole purpose with like kind of the

835
00:47:58,719 --> 00:48:01,680
Speaker 1: worst parts of decentral is and all the diverse neighborhood groups.

836
00:48:01,960 --> 00:48:04,399
Speaker 1: They wound up unable to coordinate with each other during

837
00:48:04,440 --> 00:48:07,480
Speaker 1: the final you know, during the when when all hell

838
00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:10,799
Speaker 1: breaks loose and it it also seems to me that

839
00:48:11,040 --> 00:48:15,160
Speaker 1: half measures got them nowhere. If you're in, you're in.

840
00:48:15,320 --> 00:48:18,200
Speaker 1: And with just rob the fucking bank. I don't know,

841
00:48:19,520 --> 00:48:22,480
Speaker 1: it does feel like a turning point in terms of

842
00:48:23,680 --> 00:48:28,080
Speaker 1: how committed they were to reshaping this society. Yeah, and

843
00:48:28,080 --> 00:48:30,560
Speaker 1: I mean, and to be fair, they didn't want a

844
00:48:30,640 --> 00:48:34,480
Speaker 1: society where you know, they weren't communists. You know, they

845
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:40,160
Speaker 1: weren't trying to immediately collectivize everything they buy and large

846
00:48:40,160 --> 00:48:42,919
Speaker 1: wanted something between a republic and like a kind of

847
00:48:43,600 --> 00:48:48,160
Speaker 1: anarchistic social democracy. And yeah, I guess that's that's something

848
00:48:48,200 --> 00:48:50,640
Speaker 1: that I don't have a clear sense of, Like what

849
00:48:50,680 --> 00:48:55,919
Speaker 1: did they if they had like what was their plan?

850
00:48:56,040 --> 00:48:58,239
Speaker 1: Do you think, like what what if if nothing had

851
00:48:58,239 --> 00:49:00,440
Speaker 1: happened and they had been able to just build a

852
00:49:00,480 --> 00:49:03,080
Speaker 1: society that was what they wanted to build, Like what

853
00:49:03,160 --> 00:49:06,719
Speaker 1: would that have actually been? Probably the answer would have

854
00:49:06,719 --> 00:49:12,000
Speaker 1: been different between the three different factions, right, um, but overall,

855
00:49:12,160 --> 00:49:13,680
Speaker 1: the one I would know the most about would be

856
00:49:13,760 --> 00:49:16,520
Speaker 1: like the mutualists. I think they wanted a cooperative society

857
00:49:16,560 --> 00:49:21,120
Speaker 1: that was decentralized. Obviously, some of them wanted a government,

858
00:49:21,239 --> 00:49:23,160
Speaker 1: sort of a government without the state. They wanted at

859
00:49:23,160 --> 00:49:27,040
Speaker 1: a city level, and I think they wanted like these

860
00:49:27,040 --> 00:49:30,160
Speaker 1: sort of communes to spring up everywhere. And actually we're

861
00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:31,640
Speaker 1: going to talk in a moment about some of the

862
00:49:31,680 --> 00:49:35,720
Speaker 1: other communes that's sprung up. Okay, So the most ironic

863
00:49:35,800 --> 00:49:38,400
Speaker 1: proof that everyone thinks the Paris Commune is there's happened

864
00:49:38,440 --> 00:49:43,560
Speaker 1: in the USSR because on on March sevente the Bolsheviks

865
00:49:43,560 --> 00:49:45,719
Speaker 1: and the uss are they put down a rebellion by

866
00:49:45,800 --> 00:49:48,920
Speaker 1: leftist sailors in a place called Kranstat who had been

867
00:49:49,120 --> 00:49:51,640
Speaker 1: heard of it. Yeah, they've basically been fighting for what

868
00:49:51,680 --> 00:49:54,160
Speaker 1: the Pairs Commune believed. They wanted a leftist revolution that

869
00:49:54,200 --> 00:49:57,279
Speaker 1: maintains the rights of free association, impress, that doesn't pay

870
00:49:57,320 --> 00:50:00,200
Speaker 1: one political party more than the others, that doesn't force

871
00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:04,080
Speaker 1: collectivization but just ends wage labor. Right, that's a huge

872
00:50:04,120 --> 00:50:06,840
Speaker 1: chunk of what the sailors who are rebellion against the

873
00:50:06,840 --> 00:50:10,919
Speaker 1: Bolsheviks wanted. The USSR crushes them, and the very next

874
00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:13,760
Speaker 1: day they celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Paris Commune.

875
00:50:14,760 --> 00:50:23,040
Speaker 1: Fuck you, I hate that so much. Yeah, And but

876
00:50:23,320 --> 00:50:24,520
Speaker 1: one of the things that I think a lot of

877
00:50:24,520 --> 00:50:26,719
Speaker 1: the communards took away was, oh, you can't have a

878
00:50:26,719 --> 00:50:29,600
Speaker 1: political revolution without having a social revolution as well, And

879
00:50:29,640 --> 00:50:31,400
Speaker 1: I think that's one thing that everyone also kind of

880
00:50:31,400 --> 00:50:36,480
Speaker 1: agrees on, is that they're like, you got to do both,

881
00:50:36,560 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 1: You've got to have them both at the same time.

882
00:50:38,719 --> 00:50:41,800
Speaker 1: Louise Michelle puts it, every revolution will now be social

883
00:50:41,840 --> 00:50:44,760
Speaker 1: and not political. This was the final breath, the supreme

884
00:50:44,800 --> 00:50:47,560
Speaker 1: aspiration of the Commune, and the ferocious grandeur of its

885
00:50:47,600 --> 00:50:52,640
Speaker 1: marriage with death. She you can tell she was a poet. Yeah, so, okay.

886
00:50:52,680 --> 00:50:54,560
Speaker 1: One of the strangest legacies of the whole thing is

887
00:50:54,560 --> 00:50:58,600
Speaker 1: that the Commune probably saved the Third Republic, like they

888
00:50:58,640 --> 00:51:03,520
Speaker 1: probably would have gone. Anarchist Raclu says, we know from

889
00:51:03,520 --> 00:51:05,440
Speaker 1: the first days of the Assembly in Versailles that this

890
00:51:05,480 --> 00:51:08,600
Speaker 1: slaughtered people, by its attitude, saved the republican form of

891
00:51:08,600 --> 00:51:11,520
Speaker 1: French government, and then he goes on to say what

892
00:51:11,560 --> 00:51:15,120
Speaker 1: he thinks was beautiful about the whole thing. Nevertheless, the

893
00:51:15,160 --> 00:51:17,680
Speaker 1: present Republic, a servant in the service of the Czar

894
00:51:17,760 --> 00:51:20,760
Speaker 1: and Kaiser, is so far from any practice of liberty

895
00:51:20,920 --> 00:51:22,799
Speaker 1: that it would be childish to be grateful to the

896
00:51:22,840 --> 00:51:25,440
Speaker 1: Commune for having saved it this vain word for us.

897
00:51:26,000 --> 00:51:28,880
Speaker 1: But it did something else. It held before us the future,

898
00:51:29,280 --> 00:51:32,240
Speaker 1: not through its rulers, but through its defenders, an idea

899
00:51:32,320 --> 00:51:35,719
Speaker 1: far superior than that of all revolutions that had preceded it.

900
00:51:35,719 --> 00:51:38,440
Speaker 1: It commits in advance those who want to continue it

901
00:51:38,560 --> 00:51:40,920
Speaker 1: in France and throughout the world, to fight for a

902
00:51:40,920 --> 00:51:44,239
Speaker 1: new society in which there will be neither masters by birth, titles,

903
00:51:44,360 --> 00:51:48,799
Speaker 1: or money, nor servants by origin, caste, or salary. Everywhere,

904
00:51:48,840 --> 00:51:51,759
Speaker 1: the word commune was understood in the widest sense as

905
00:51:51,800 --> 00:51:54,319
Speaker 1: having to do with a new humanity formed of free

906
00:51:54,320 --> 00:51:57,840
Speaker 1: and equal companions, ignorant of the existence of ancient borders,

907
00:51:58,080 --> 00:52:00,600
Speaker 1: and assisting each other in peace one end of the

908
00:52:00,600 --> 00:52:03,160
Speaker 1: world to the other. He also goes on to say

909
00:52:03,200 --> 00:52:04,920
Speaker 1: basically like, we shouldn't have relied on the council. That

910
00:52:05,000 --> 00:52:06,560
Speaker 1: was a bad idea. We really should have focused on

911
00:52:06,560 --> 00:52:11,440
Speaker 1: the neighborhood mutual defense societies. Huck. The council being the

912
00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:15,200
Speaker 1: people who got interrupted by somebody saying, hey, the army

913
00:52:15,320 --> 00:52:18,080
Speaker 1: is here, and they went back to what they were doing. Yes, yeah,

914
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:19,839
Speaker 1: it was far more important that they put this man

915
00:52:19,880 --> 00:52:22,239
Speaker 1: on trial for having not succeeded at defending them than

916
00:52:22,320 --> 00:52:28,960
Speaker 1: to go out and defend themselves. Um. And then okay, finally,

917
00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:32,319
Speaker 1: I want to end with a quote from someone whose

918
00:52:32,320 --> 00:52:35,560
Speaker 1: story I didn't really get to tell you. Paris was

919
00:52:35,560 --> 00:52:38,480
Speaker 1: Actually they weren't the only city that decided wanted to commune.

920
00:52:38,480 --> 00:52:40,640
Speaker 1: A bunch of different cities tried around the same time.

921
00:52:40,680 --> 00:52:42,840
Speaker 1: The city of Leon and especially one of its suburbs,

922
00:52:43,000 --> 00:52:45,680
Speaker 1: did it twice and held out the longest a couple

923
00:52:45,680 --> 00:52:48,200
Speaker 1: of weeks in eighteen seventies. So actually, before the Paris commune,

924
00:52:48,239 --> 00:52:50,960
Speaker 1: I mean, they weren't under siege, and then a few

925
00:52:51,000 --> 00:52:53,640
Speaker 1: days in eighteen seventy one the death toll there we

926
00:52:53,680 --> 00:52:55,440
Speaker 1: don't talk about as much, the death pill. They're numbered

927
00:52:55,440 --> 00:52:58,800
Speaker 1: in the dozens, not the tens of thousands. An anonymous

928
00:52:58,800 --> 00:53:01,480
Speaker 1: council member from that revel Lucian, said this in reflection

929
00:53:01,560 --> 00:53:04,000
Speaker 1: years later about being asked to serve on the council

930
00:53:05,320 --> 00:53:08,920
Speaker 1: instinctively through intuition rather than through reasoning. I felt that

931
00:53:08,960 --> 00:53:11,960
Speaker 1: I was guilty of illogic by preaching freedom and accepting

932
00:53:11,960 --> 00:53:14,160
Speaker 1: to be a new master. But how could I refuse

933
00:53:14,200 --> 00:53:17,120
Speaker 1: without being taken for a coward? There was danger, and

934
00:53:17,160 --> 00:53:20,320
Speaker 1: I accepted it. I have been angry at myself ever since,

935
00:53:20,600 --> 00:53:22,239
Speaker 1: though at the time I was one of those who

936
00:53:22,320 --> 00:53:25,000
Speaker 1: believed that something could be done by a revolutionary government.

937
00:53:25,640 --> 00:53:28,160
Speaker 1: My role in the commune was the same as any rulers.

938
00:53:28,280 --> 00:53:32,719
Speaker 1: It was absolutely useless when it wasn't harmless. And then

939
00:53:32,719 --> 00:53:35,719
Speaker 1: he he goes on. He goes on to say that

940
00:53:36,120 --> 00:53:40,440
Speaker 1: he thinks that when when threatened the people who elected him,

941
00:53:40,480 --> 00:53:42,040
Speaker 1: he thought the whole time he was like, Okay, the

942
00:53:42,040 --> 00:53:43,840
Speaker 1: people who elected me, they're going to come and defend me,

943
00:53:43,960 --> 00:53:46,680
Speaker 1: right after all, that's that's what they elected me for.

944
00:53:46,800 --> 00:53:49,040
Speaker 1: And then they think, oh no, no, we elected you.

945
00:53:49,040 --> 00:53:52,800
Speaker 1: You defend us, and you can step back. We were

946
00:53:53,360 --> 00:53:58,400
Speaker 1: putting responsibility on you too to do that for us. Yeah, exactly.

947
00:53:58,440 --> 00:54:00,200
Speaker 1: And so because they both were counting on the other,

948
00:54:00,640 --> 00:54:04,360
Speaker 1: it didn't work. And he says, my opinion is that

949
00:54:04,440 --> 00:54:07,719
Speaker 1: the insurrection of one could not succeed precisely because it

950
00:54:07,800 --> 00:54:11,040
Speaker 1: left the insurrectionary state and behind in order to enter

951
00:54:11,080 --> 00:54:14,000
Speaker 1: the governmental state. I believe that any insurrection that marches

952
00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:16,520
Speaker 1: to the conquest of a new government is sterile, that

953
00:54:16,640 --> 00:54:20,279
Speaker 1: any insurrection that names chiefs is still still born. The

954
00:54:20,320 --> 00:54:23,160
Speaker 1: insurrectionary state is one in which the people alone, without

955
00:54:23,239 --> 00:54:27,040
Speaker 1: leaders or chiefs, can specify its desires, its wishes, its aspirations,

956
00:54:27,040 --> 00:54:31,440
Speaker 1: and its needs. And obviously I'm coming at this with

957
00:54:31,520 --> 00:54:35,080
Speaker 1: a huge bias towards the anti state approach. Uh. You know,

958
00:54:35,120 --> 00:54:38,920
Speaker 1: everyone who left after the commune, you know, had had

959
00:54:38,960 --> 00:54:42,239
Speaker 1: their different ideas, and it's also probable that they would

960
00:54:42,239 --> 00:54:45,319
Speaker 1: have lost no matter what. But it feels to me

961
00:54:45,360 --> 00:54:50,880
Speaker 1: that they could have held onto their soul before they died. Yeah,

962
00:54:51,040 --> 00:54:53,480
Speaker 1: and then, um, remember what I was saying way back

963
00:54:53,760 --> 00:54:57,680
Speaker 1: Monday about how the Second Empire, you know, as an

964
00:54:57,680 --> 00:55:00,520
Speaker 1: empire that went around gobbling up countries. Well, the Third

965
00:55:00,560 --> 00:55:06,800
Speaker 1: Republic and they grabbed even more. Oh man, they expanded

966
00:55:06,800 --> 00:55:09,839
Speaker 1: all They're stolen ship in Asia, the South Pacific and

967
00:55:09,920 --> 00:55:19,680
Speaker 1: West Africa substantially. Right, this is still France we're talking about. Yeah, So, Miriam,

968
00:55:19,719 --> 00:55:24,719
Speaker 1: how are you feeling about Paris Commune? Gotta I Gotta go?

969
00:55:24,800 --> 00:55:30,799
Speaker 1: Were all black? I guess I knew that wasn't going

970
00:55:30,840 --> 00:55:35,480
Speaker 1: to go well, and I'm sad that it didn't go well. Yeah,

971
00:55:35,640 --> 00:55:38,600
Speaker 1: it didn't go all, But some people who did cool stuff.

972
00:55:38,640 --> 00:55:41,439
Speaker 1: I must say. It's true. There were definitely some cool

973
00:55:41,480 --> 00:55:43,319
Speaker 1: people in this story. And I think they did some

974
00:55:43,360 --> 00:55:49,520
Speaker 1: cool stuff for sure, and they really got Rob Banks though. Yeah,

975
00:55:49,560 --> 00:55:52,200
Speaker 1: I mean that's I just maybe I'm just maybe this

976
00:55:52,280 --> 00:55:54,319
Speaker 1: is not this less a political bias than like an

977
00:55:54,320 --> 00:56:00,239
Speaker 1: aesthetic bias. I love a heist, Like when thank is

978
00:56:00,280 --> 00:56:03,799
Speaker 1: just there and you're basically just allowed to rob it.

979
00:56:03,960 --> 00:56:09,359
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you decide, like, no, we're going

980
00:56:09,400 --> 00:56:12,800
Speaker 1: to actively prevent that, Like no, you start assembling a team,

981
00:56:12,880 --> 00:56:16,120
Speaker 1: dig a tunnel, whatever, like you can do it risk

982
00:56:16,200 --> 00:56:21,080
Speaker 1: free bank I know, it's the easiest time repellent from

983
00:56:21,120 --> 00:56:24,520
Speaker 1: the ceiling. It's always fun. Everyone else walks in the

984
00:56:24,520 --> 00:56:27,279
Speaker 1: door and they're like, hey, Frank, Hey, I just wanted

985
00:56:27,320 --> 00:56:28,920
Speaker 1: to come in this. He's just like I've always wanted

986
00:56:28,960 --> 00:56:37,600
Speaker 1: to do this. Frank is me, I'm Frank, and then

987
00:56:37,719 --> 00:56:42,960
Speaker 1: throw the all the other Frank's into a bag. I

988
00:56:43,000 --> 00:56:49,319
Speaker 1: didn't do that currency jokes. Yeah, well that that's going

989
00:56:49,360 --> 00:56:54,239
Speaker 1: to do it for the Paris Commune. Yeah really, you

990
00:56:54,280 --> 00:56:57,680
Speaker 1: really did it for the Paris Commune. Any any plugs

991
00:56:57,719 --> 00:57:02,920
Speaker 1: for us, Miriam? Um not for me personally, because um,

992
00:57:02,960 --> 00:57:07,360
Speaker 1: I don't exist and UH would prefer that nobody contact me.

993
00:57:07,440 --> 00:57:13,600
Speaker 1: But um. There's a bail fund called COVID bail out Um,

994
00:57:13,640 --> 00:57:17,360
Speaker 1: which can be found at COVID bailout dot org um

995
00:57:17,400 --> 00:57:19,840
Speaker 1: that raises money to get people out of New York

996
00:57:19,840 --> 00:57:23,960
Speaker 1: City jails so they don't get COVID. Um you can

997
00:57:24,000 --> 00:57:26,520
Speaker 1: give them money if you have any of that COVID

998
00:57:26,560 --> 00:57:31,120
Speaker 1: bailout dot org. Thank you, and Margaret. Do you know

999
00:57:31,160 --> 00:57:34,560
Speaker 1: the name of your book this time? Uh? Not? When

1000
00:57:34,560 --> 00:57:37,840
Speaker 1: I'm put on the spot likeness, remember the name of

1001
00:57:37,880 --> 00:57:41,600
Speaker 1: my own book? Which book? Oh? God? That is asking

1002
00:57:41,640 --> 00:57:45,360
Speaker 1: a lot? Come on, well, it's not even available for

1003
00:57:45,400 --> 00:57:47,480
Speaker 1: pre order yet. I'm stalling so that I can remember

1004
00:57:47,480 --> 00:57:51,200
Speaker 1: the name of my own book. But I think it's

1005
00:57:51,200 --> 00:57:53,320
Speaker 1: called we Won't Be Here Tomorrow in other stories. I'm

1006
00:57:53,320 --> 00:57:54,920
Speaker 1: not even sure if that's what name I claimed it

1007
00:57:54,960 --> 00:58:00,480
Speaker 1: was last time. It's yeah. So I have a coming

1008
00:58:00,520 --> 00:58:02,840
Speaker 1: out this fall from a K Press. It's a collection

1009
00:58:02,840 --> 00:58:05,040
Speaker 1: of my short fiction, some of which you might have

1010
00:58:05,080 --> 00:58:08,520
Speaker 1: heard on cool Zone Media podcasts in the past. I

1011
00:58:08,560 --> 00:58:11,280
Speaker 1: also want to plug that. I um have a Twitter

1012
00:58:12,000 --> 00:58:15,040
Speaker 1: and you can follow me on Twitter and my Twitter

1013
00:58:15,080 --> 00:58:18,200
Speaker 1: handle is Magpie kill Joy Sophie. Do you have anything

1014
00:58:18,240 --> 00:58:24,760
Speaker 1: to plug at Cool Zone Media Instagram on Twitter? Cool? Yeah,

1015
00:58:24,920 --> 00:58:28,080
Speaker 1: I give all all the things there and then we'll

1016
00:58:28,120 --> 00:58:35,600
Speaker 1: be for going back Monday. All right, ye? Cool Cool

1017
00:58:35,640 --> 00:58:38,120
Speaker 1: People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of Cool

1018
00:58:38,200 --> 00:58:41,400
Speaker 1: Zone Media or more podcasts on cool zone Media, Visit

1019
00:58:41,400 --> 00:58:44,200
Speaker 1: our website cool zone media dot com, or check us

1020
00:58:44,200 --> 00:58:46,960
Speaker 1: out on the I Heard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

1021
00:58:47,000 --> 00:58:48,760
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.