Speaker 1: Ah, welcome to it could happen here the podcast where
Speaker 1: this Today I sit down with my buddy Jake Hanrahan
Speaker 1: and we talk about Corsica. Jake, how's the showy? How
Speaker 1: you how you feeling? Yeah, I'm all right, thank so.
Speaker 1: I've got a bit of a flu, but otherwise everything's
Speaker 1: really good. One. Yeah, um, we you just took a
Speaker 1: little reporting trip um down to the island of Corsica Um,
Speaker 1: which is not a place I know much about, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to guess not a place most of our
Speaker 1: listeners not much about. So why don't you Why don't
Speaker 1: you start with kind of like what what brought you
Speaker 1: down there? Yeah? No, it's a really good point. A
Speaker 1: lot of people don't even know it exists. I sent
Speaker 1: the documentary made Um with Popular Front to a friend
Speaker 1: of mine today and he said, brother, us the first
Speaker 1: time I've ever heard of Corsica Like a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't know. Boy. It's so it's a very old island, um.
Speaker 1: You know, more than two hundred years people have inhabited
Speaker 1: the plays, but generally for the last kind of two
Speaker 1: hundred years there's been an on again, off again independence movement.
Speaker 1: They're people that don't want to be under the control
Speaker 1: of France or whoever. They want control of their own island.
Speaker 1: Because Corsican is quite a specific culture. Um, it's very
Speaker 1: different to French culture, it's different to Italian culture. They
Speaker 1: even have their own language called Course. Unfortunately, it's kind
Speaker 1: of dying out, as you know, a lot of languages
Speaker 1: do in kind of contested areas if you like. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so so they've always kind of wanted to
Speaker 1: be independent in some way. Not everybody, not the whole place.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you'll find some course Becans that will say
Speaker 1: their course and Confrench, but generally the majority of people
Speaker 1: if you go there and say, well are you they'll
Speaker 1: tell you with Corsican, we're not French with Corsican. So
Speaker 1: in the nineties seventies, that kind of coalesced was rebirthed,
Speaker 1: if you like, with the backdrop of you know, guns,
Speaker 1: bombs and independence movements of course Europe and a group
Speaker 1: called the f l n C formed the Nationalist Liberation
Speaker 1: Front for Corsica and they arrived with twenty one bombs
Speaker 1: on the island in one night. I mean not arrived,
Speaker 1: you know, they were already there, of course, but they
Speaker 1: bombed twenty one times in one night, mostly French infrastructure,
Speaker 1: and they were all very very well armed. There was
Speaker 1: literally hundreds of members and at one point I have
Speaker 1: to I don't want to say this because it's been
Speaker 1: a while since I looked at the research, but if
Speaker 1: I'm right, at one point in the in the late
Speaker 1: seventies or early eighties, the Effllency was actually the most
Speaker 1: active militant or terrorist group in the whole of Europe,
Speaker 1: even even more active than the Provisional IRA. Now Provisional
Speaker 1: IRA called a lot more people the f l n C.
Speaker 1: Their targets weren't really to kill people. They were to
Speaker 1: blow up holiday homes and blow up French infrastructure. They
Speaker 1: didn't have open gun battles, and they did assassinate the
Speaker 1: the highest ranking French officer on Corsica on the island eventually.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so so there was this real backdrop of
Speaker 1: very militant um independence. When I say nationalists, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not what we might associate with like far right nationalists.
Speaker 1: You know, when an independent movement doesn't have its own country,
Speaker 1: you know, the ultra nationalism in their sense comes out
Speaker 1: in a very different way. It's not we want to
Speaker 1: ban everybody else from here. It's simply we want our country,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So when I say ultra nationalists,
Speaker 1: that's not to be confused with fascist ultra nationalist. It's
Speaker 1: very different. Not to say that couskins all believe in
Speaker 1: in leftist causes and that that wouldn't be true. A
Speaker 1: lot of them do. There's a big socialist element to
Speaker 1: to the cause, and there's also quite a right wing
Speaker 1: element to the cause, but ultimately they all kind of
Speaker 1: want the same thing, autonomy or independence of Corsica. So yeah,
Speaker 1: So that that's the kind of history very briefly of
Speaker 1: militant independence movements in Corsica. FLNC put down their guns
Speaker 1: and recently one of the fln C was suspected FLNC
Speaker 1: militants who shot this this high ranking French official that
Speaker 1: I told you about. Um this this guy is called
Speaker 1: Evan Colina. He was arrested after the shooting in the
Speaker 1: nineties and sent to a French prison for life. And
Speaker 1: on March the sixth, I believe it was, he was
Speaker 1: no very much. Second, he was attacked in a French
Speaker 1: prison by a Jahadics inmate and beaten into a coma.
Speaker 1: Yesterday or two days ago now he died of his injuries.
Speaker 1: Ever since he was beaten into this comma, the youth
Speaker 1: would just kind of lit the place on fight. You know,
Speaker 1: they were really clashing very violently. And for for the
Speaker 1: last kind of seven years since there was as a
Speaker 1: was a relative calm on the island in terms of
Speaker 1: political activism and militancy, the politicians, the more moderate parties
Speaker 1: have tried to do this politically and for the first
Speaker 1: time in a while, the youth have gone, not fuck it,
Speaker 1: We're not playing that anymore. We're we're going to knock
Speaker 1: the place about. We're going to smash the shop up.
Speaker 1: And basically it's kind of worked, which we can go into.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so sorry to go on a lot, but
Speaker 1: there's quite a lot to it because obviously, like you said,
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't know. But one thing I
Speaker 1: always say is Corsica is just one of the most
Speaker 1: beautiful places anybody will go to. Like objectively, it's idyllic.
Speaker 1: It's not really had this horrible holiday home vibe there
Speaker 1: because genuinely, when when some contractors tried to kind of
Speaker 1: gentrify a course to come and turn it into the
Speaker 1: next ib through I believe one of the quotes was
Speaker 1: from one of the people doing this. The f l
Speaker 1: n C kind of waited for them to build their
Speaker 1: homes and then blew them all up and blew up
Speaker 1: all their hotels. So it was like they're like, you're
Speaker 1: not going to do that here. A lot of these
Speaker 1: companies were infringing on the environment, which is beautiful there.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so there's a lot more to it, but generally,
Speaker 1: you know, this all kind of revolves around militant independence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. I mean, I think it's fascinating the idea
Speaker 1: of targeting, like the degree to which a lot of
Speaker 1: this seems to be focused on stopping this place from
Speaker 1: turning into another vacation destination, or like rich people's second
Speaker 1: homes push out the population that's born there. Um. I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of places that, like organizer complaining
Speaker 1: about that sort of thing. Um, But I'm not aware
Speaker 1: of anyone who's gone to these kind of lengths to
Speaker 1: stab themselves from turning into another a visa. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And honestly, if you go to Corsica and see how
Speaker 1: beautiful it is, not just I mean, it's one of
Speaker 1: the few places in Europe where you can see the
Speaker 1: mountains from the beach. You know, it's incredible island. I've
Speaker 1: been obsessed with this place since I was about twenty
Speaker 1: four years old. Firstly from the nature and the beauty there,
Speaker 1: but secondly I was very interested in the militant group there,
Speaker 1: um because the culture there is so different. But yeah,
Speaker 1: if you look at the place, you go there and
Speaker 1: you realize, like, right, this place is very much worth preserving.
Speaker 1: I don't want to act like there hasn't been businesses
Speaker 1: doing their thing there. There definitely is, but certainly it
Speaker 1: feels preserved. There's no high rises. All of the old
Speaker 1: buildings are still there and they're still intact. And you
Speaker 1: know when when these big businesses came in and a
Speaker 1: lot of these businessmen were almost showing off like yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna turn course occur into Waibetha, which as a
Speaker 1: brit Um I would apologize to anyone living inever, you know,
Speaker 1: like having sex in the street and throwing up at
Speaker 1: bars and everything here you go there, Um, it's kind
Speaker 1: of been turned into one big not the Great club,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, not the Great Club definitely. Yeah. So so
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's one of these ones where It's
Speaker 1: like I could kind of understand. I'm not saying anyone
Speaker 1: should bomb anywhere, certainly not, but I do understand the
Speaker 1: sentiment there. And one of the one of my course
Speaker 1: and friends said, um, some people were calling it like
Speaker 1: the cold bed policy. So you come to our island,
Speaker 1: you buy a holiday home, and if you leave that
Speaker 1: bed cold as in you're not even living here, it's
Speaker 1: gonna get blown up, you know if you like. So
Speaker 1: very militant, very violent, but if effective. I mean, it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that you have to agree with it, but
Speaker 1: no one can deny that it hasn't been effective. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, there's a very big mafia presence
Speaker 1: on the island as well, so that you know, it's
Speaker 1: not to say that everything is all for the people.
Speaker 1: I'm going to guess that the mafia is more or
Speaker 1: less on the side of, you know, turn this place
Speaker 1: into a vacation destination because that's where the money is.
Speaker 1: That that would be my essentially. Really that's interesting. No,
Speaker 1: So the unfortunately the independence movement, not all of them,
Speaker 1: but there is an element to it that is very
Speaker 1: hand in hand with the mafia. Most definitely, perhaps some
Speaker 1: people that were independent militants are now mafia if you like. Um,
Speaker 1: and people have been killed on the island quite a lot.
Speaker 1: There's quite a lot of you know, unsolved murders there.
Speaker 1: It's quite sad. Um. But no, they they were more
Speaker 1: for keeping their own interests. You know, Um, we have
Speaker 1: this island, we can run the docks, we can run this,
Speaker 1: we can run that. And whilst what you said like
Speaker 1: makes sense, right, you would think, oh, no, they'd be
Speaker 1: for this money. I think what they want. They're still nationalists.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day. They won't control, but
Speaker 1: they won't control in their own way. If the big
Speaker 1: business comes in and start saying, oh, yeah, we're doing
Speaker 1: this and that and the other, and we're bringing all
Speaker 1: these people in via the docks, I guess they lose
Speaker 1: control of that essentially. So they were very much on
Speaker 1: the side of yeah, do what you like sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and I think fascinating. Yeah, so very unique, very specific place.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that this action you shut up for people
Speaker 1: bombed twenty one targets in one night. In one night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you say bomb, are we talking like your standard
Speaker 1: molotabs or were they are? Were they kind of like
Speaker 1: more elaborate devices? Shall we say, how would you describe
Speaker 1: what they were using? Yeah, no, it's a good question.
Speaker 1: I mean when you think of twenty one in one night,
Speaker 1: you think, right, like molotovs night, something simple. Yeah, yeah, No, No,
Speaker 1: they weren't even pipe bombs. You're talking fertilizer bombs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like blowing whole buildings, you know, not all of them,
Speaker 1: you know, there were some smaller ones, but some very
Speaker 1: significant ones um and very very big. The way of
Speaker 1: Corsica is the way it's laid out. Like I said,
Speaker 1: it's a small place. I think currently like three people
Speaker 1: lived there roughly, and there were mountains, there were beaches,
Speaker 1: there were very rural communities. It's an islands. It's quite
Speaker 1: far away from France. Actually, it's very close to Italy
Speaker 1: um and Sardinia is just to its south. And it's
Speaker 1: just for them. If you were you couldn't ask for
Speaker 1: a better location, if you wanted to be a kind
Speaker 1: of guerrilla group, you know, you really couldn't. It's kind
Speaker 1: of built for them. So they just got away with it,
Speaker 1: you know, farmers whatever, they went into the mountains, build
Speaker 1: bombs dropped them off. And not to say that everybody
Speaker 1: was for them, but there is some It wasn't just
Speaker 1: we want independence, there was there was subjugation by the French.
Speaker 1: You know. Firstly, they're like, we don't want to be
Speaker 1: a French colony or whatever you would call it anymore,
Speaker 1: which I think anybody that wants their determination to not
Speaker 1: be held by a former colonial power it's fine, or
Speaker 1: current colonial power if you like, I think, yeah, fair
Speaker 1: play to them. But secondly, they're one of the most
Speaker 1: poorer regions, despite having all this holiday stuff, despite having
Speaker 1: a lot of produce, despite having a lot of reasons
Speaker 1: to be there. So there's definitely something. I won't claim
Speaker 1: to know too much about the law situation, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure a lot of French people get angry whatever, but
Speaker 1: it is genuinely doing very badly in many different aspects.
Speaker 1: Is that mismanagement by them? Is it because of the French?
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell you. I don't know enough about it,
Speaker 1: but I certainly find it very weird that all of
Speaker 1: these beautiful things that happened on the island and they're
Speaker 1: they're constantly in you know, the lower bracket of situations economically, culturally,
Speaker 1: they're getting kind of sidelined a bit. So I do
Speaker 1: I do understand, and certainly when the clashes or even
Speaker 1: protests happen in the seventies, the police, you know, French police.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but there's some of the worst fucking police ever,
Speaker 1: you know. And I've been in front of Turkish police,
Speaker 1: like French police are fucking up there. They're horrible, and
Speaker 1: they beat the ship out of a lot of people
Speaker 1: in Cortica just for peacefully protesting, you know. So it
Speaker 1: didn't come from nowhere, you know what I mean, there
Speaker 1: is there is more to it than just nationalism and independence.
Speaker 1: There's a lot more to it. They want to, they
Speaker 1: want to they want to deal with their own affairs,
Speaker 1: a lot of them, you know, most people probably now
Speaker 1: want to do it democratically. But like I said, the
Speaker 1: youth were said, no funk, that we're not getting anywhere,
Speaker 1: and they've Actually it's actually worked because the day after
Speaker 1: the Rights that we filmed on March thirteen, the Interior
Speaker 1: Minister of France basically said, right, we're willing to discuss
Speaker 1: this with you. We will go as far as autonomy.
Speaker 1: That's literally a quote he said, which is quite significant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: after seven years of basically stalemate through the politicians, so
Speaker 1: the youth in a way one of the very few
Speaker 1: examples of this, specifically in Europe. The youth, what they're
Speaker 1: doing kind of worked, you know what I mean, like
Speaker 1: direct action got got some goods, started the process of
Speaker 1: getting the goods hopefully. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, it has. And
Speaker 1: the thing about the course scan youth is they're very intelligent,
Speaker 1: very they're very authentic in their political activism in the
Speaker 1: sense of it's just they're born into it. It's in them,
Speaker 1: you know, from the age of like twelve thirteen, they're
Speaker 1: understanding it. They're getting told about the legends of blah blah.
Speaker 1: You know, um, there's there's militant group and whatever whatever.
Speaker 1: So there's very much in them in that sense, kind
Speaker 1: of in a you know, like the Kurds are kind
Speaker 1: of you know, not on the same level, but that
Speaker 1: kind of vibe. So when they go to students, when
Speaker 1: they go to UNI and they become students, they're not
Speaker 1: really forming their political opinions. They already have them, they
Speaker 1: already got them, and then they they sort of higher,
Speaker 1: they sort of germinate together. So that's from what I
Speaker 1: understood anyway, that's from what I gathered. And you know,
Speaker 1: your average trendy young man and woman on the street.
Speaker 1: There is very political. It's kind of like Greece in
Speaker 1: that sense, like it's cool to be political, but in
Speaker 1: the sense of not the kind not like um, you know,
Speaker 1: not not something you brought into as a teenagers, something
Speaker 1: that was already there and then which which there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with it. You know. Most people fall in their
Speaker 1: political opinions in unis or whatever. But for them, it's
Speaker 1: already in there, you see what I'm saying. So they
Speaker 1: already have They're already united in that sense, you know.
Speaker 1: So when they get to the UNI, they get there
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, well we all want independence or autonomy,
Speaker 1: but then the other things are lesser, so you know,
Speaker 1: for that in that really, in that sense, I think
Speaker 1: that was quite interesting. And we saw eight thousand, nine
Speaker 1: thousand people marching maybe and then when the clashes started,
Speaker 1: you know, it is well, but like normally it's like
Speaker 1: what a hundred three people stay talking, like two thousand
Speaker 1: people help clashing, and men and women like young girls,
Speaker 1: young men, like many many, you know, So it was
Speaker 1: really I was like, wow, okay, and one one thing
Speaker 1: that I've never I haven't seen for a very long time.
Speaker 1: I've very rarely seen it. Normally, when the clash happens,
Speaker 1: everybody you know, your grandma's, you're working man, you know,
Speaker 1: the people that support what's going on but are not
Speaker 1: able to clash or don't want to clash, they normally
Speaker 1: stay back. In the Corsican protests, everybody just stayed. Like
Speaker 1: we were getting tear gas next to like fifty lads
Speaker 1: with balaclabas on, next to like grandma or auntie, you know,
Speaker 1: and we're like helping people into the side street to
Speaker 1: get away from tear gas. It's very weird. They just
Speaker 1: didn't leave. They just were there the whole time. It's
Speaker 1: weird when you're talking about like tactically, what is this,
Speaker 1: How are these kind of bombings being pulled? Arthurs? So
Speaker 1: you've got like this huge crowd and they're just kind
Speaker 1: of like marching from target to target. Um. So the
Speaker 1: youth are not really I mean, they have some small
Speaker 1: kind of I D s you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: that youth student youth protesters, but generally it's Molotov's bricks,
Speaker 1: burning barricades. But they very clearly know the islands inside out.
Speaker 1: They know their streets, you know, obviously because they lived
Speaker 1: there and most of the police, from what I understand,
Speaker 1: are actually French called in from the island, from the mainland.
Speaker 1: Sorry to the ILA. A lot of the CRS riot police,
Speaker 1: thousands of them were brought in there was that they
Speaker 1: were actually completely outnumbered. They had to retreat at one
Speaker 1: point in in the evening to go back to the
Speaker 1: prefecture kind of cultural French administrative building where the main
Speaker 1: the main target of violence was. They had to retreat
Speaker 1: to get more ammunition because they just they just shot
Speaker 1: so much tea gas um. They just couldn't, you know,
Speaker 1: they couldn't do anything. There were some teams like the youth.
Speaker 1: Some of them had green arm bands or green leg bands,
Speaker 1: so they were very clearly like a different unit, and
Speaker 1: they were very well organized. They didn't have walkie talkies,
Speaker 1: mind you normally that that shows a closer sign of organization,
Speaker 1: but some of them were like that. Some of them
Speaker 1: were just turned up to fight, and some of them
Speaker 1: were splitting off into different groups. You would see one
Speaker 1: come in, they'd fight, fight, fight, and then they'd leave,
Speaker 1: and as they're leaving, another load would just come in
Speaker 1: in the line. It was was really quite interesting. You know,
Speaker 1: they'd really thought about it. Um, it wasn't just a
Speaker 1: free for all, which it might look like. But you know,
Speaker 1: after a while of covering riots, there's certain things you
Speaker 1: notice where you're like, Okay, they're planning this, they're planning that,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So it's quite interesting in
Speaker 1: that sense. Um, but yeah, man, it's yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a that was a youth fighting. Um, it did get messy.
Speaker 1: I think forty four police were injured, thirteen protesters and
Speaker 1: one pedestrian. That was the official figures. I saw at
Speaker 1: least three pedestrians injured, and I think probably more protesters
Speaker 1: and definitely more cops, I would say. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: obviously it also depends on like what you're raiding as
Speaker 1: an injury for that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: a lot of folks probably are avoiding the hospitals and
Speaker 1: being dealt with at homes and whatnot because they were
Speaker 1: committing some crimes. Yeah, just like you know at home
Speaker 1: with superglue and sort of stitches or whatever. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: do you have a sense of like how long? But
Speaker 1: the kind of the back end of this was the
Speaker 1: preparation and process was for this. Yeah, so the classes
Speaker 1: have been ongoing before we got there for about a week.
Speaker 1: So even Colinar was beaten into this coma. He was
Speaker 1: he was attacked in prison. There's some rumors that he
Speaker 1: said some kind of Islamophobic thing to the inmate, and
Speaker 1: don't know how true that is, but all we know
Speaker 1: is the guy was actually a you know, convicted jahadist.
Speaker 1: It's not kind of his say that the guy the
Speaker 1: inmate was a convicted jahadist. Because obviously even Colinar is
Speaker 1: in the type of prison where what the state says
Speaker 1: is terrorists are there, you know what I mean, anybody
Speaker 1: terrorists is there, So it makes sense he's amongst these people.
Speaker 1: And I think he was attacked in the gym when
Speaker 1: he was on his own and he was strangled, and
Speaker 1: this this is where yeah, yeah, this is where there's
Speaker 1: a weird point of contention. He because of the special
Speaker 1: status he had as such a violent militant or whatever,
Speaker 1: he shouldn't have really been on his own like that.
Speaker 1: And some people were speculating did something happen, But generally
Speaker 1: most people we spoke to were like it was probably
Speaker 1: just negligence, you know, they weren't very conspiratory. There was
Speaker 1: someone like, oh, the French. The French plan is I
Speaker 1: doubt it. It doesn't make much sense to do this
Speaker 1: right now, Like you know, they would knew what would
Speaker 1: happen to be on calling our to the people. Sorry
Speaker 1: if he's on Colling our wash because he's a big
Speaker 1: you know, a big name there. There's also some you know,
Speaker 1: maybe interesting arguments around the case, the way he was arrested.
Speaker 1: Apparently the gun doesn't match up. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: didn't really get into that. But either way, he's like
Speaker 1: a you know, people there love him, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. He's like a matter for them, even though
Speaker 1: you know he shot this guy in the back in
Speaker 1: in cold blood essentially, but for them that was a
Speaker 1: political assassination whatever. So so for about a week, the
Speaker 1: youth were fighting, and I saw a video and anything
Speaker 1: that happens in course, I'm right, I'm looking at it,
Speaker 1: and I was like, okay, this this is a little
Speaker 1: bit different. Okay, molotovs are out again. Hasn't haven't seen
Speaker 1: that for a while. And then the next day and
Speaker 1: then the next day, and then it's had one night
Speaker 1: to like five different cities or like sorry, three different cities,
Speaker 1: like big, big places and then they burned like a
Speaker 1: very specific monument, so that was like, oh, it's on.
Speaker 1: So for at least a week they were they were
Speaker 1: planning something, you know, and there was enough kind of
Speaker 1: um momentum there, I think for them to organize. Certainly,
Speaker 1: we know that there was people from a jat CEO
Speaker 1: of the capital city in Bastia where we filmed it,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of people drove in. They came, you know,
Speaker 1: specifically for this clash, so that was quite interesting. I
Speaker 1: think the youth movement have a very strong network there,
Speaker 1: and there's also quite a big football ultra scene there.
Speaker 1: So the day before the clashes, Bastia and the JATSO
Speaker 1: had a derby, So obviously I imagine a lot of
Speaker 1: the ultras, or at least I know a lot of
Speaker 1: the ultras were also part of the independence groupings and
Speaker 1: part of the clashes, so I imagine that a lot
Speaker 1: of the football ultras kind of organized you know, you know,
Speaker 1: the the match the day before or at least a
Speaker 1: week before. So I think there was quite a lot
Speaker 1: of organization there. You know, what, do you feel like
Speaker 1: it's next? Is this the case? Do you get the
Speaker 1: sense that because the government has announced their willingness to
Speaker 1: sit down and talk that maybe folks are gonna wait
Speaker 1: to follow up this or do you get the sense
Speaker 1: that they're going to kind of keep the pressure on. Well,
Speaker 1: the thing is, there was one option before Evan Colonard died,
Speaker 1: and now there's a new option that he's died. You
Speaker 1: see what I'm saying. Before, I think what you're saying
Speaker 1: would have would have happened. I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I think that youth would have They would have
Speaker 1: held off the fact that the Interior Minister of France,
Speaker 1: who answers directly to mcron within one day or less
Speaker 1: than one day, said we're willing to go as far
Speaker 1: out autonomy in these discussions. Stop being violent. I think
Speaker 1: the youth was smart enough to realize, all right, let's stop,
Speaker 1: let's see what he's got to say. I'm sure if
Speaker 1: things faltered, if things didn't move quick enough, they would
Speaker 1: have very quickly stepped up the stepped up the violence again. However,
Speaker 1: now that even Colin has died, I don't think that
Speaker 1: they're just gonna wait. Now. From what I understand from
Speaker 1: speaking to contacts and friends in Corsica, there's a period
Speaker 1: of mourning right now. You know his funeral. He died
Speaker 1: in a prison in Marseille. He wasn't even transferred to
Speaker 1: to Corsica to die, So for a lot of them,
Speaker 1: that's incredibly offensive. That's the kind of spark that started
Speaker 1: these clashes. It's all about independence and autonomy on one level,
Speaker 1: but the thing that drove this and sparked it was
Speaker 1: even Colonize attack, and and the fact that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of course com prison prisoners, which are political prisoners,
Speaker 1: are in prison in Frances at the Corsica anyway. So
Speaker 1: now that he has died, I really think that there
Speaker 1: will be a moment of calm due to the funeral
Speaker 1: and respect for Evan colin Arum whatever, and then I
Speaker 1: think maybe a week after this week, I think it's
Speaker 1: almost inevitable that we will see some form of violence again.
Speaker 1: I've spoken to some people that are maybe going a
Speaker 1: bit far, maybe being a bit dramatic, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but they speculate that there will be a little bit
Speaker 1: more than just clashes. One one person I know said,
Speaker 1: I think they're going to blow something up again. Do
Speaker 1: I think that, probably not, But certainly when we were
Speaker 1: in the streets, they were using. There's there's photos of
Speaker 1: it as well. They were using very crude but very small,
Speaker 1: improvised explosive devices. Now, when a group even starts to
Speaker 1: do that, you know, okay, it's a very small device.
Speaker 1: It was in a kind of like a basically a
Speaker 1: tennis ball type thing with it with whatever in it.
Speaker 1: But it was fucking loud. It wouldn't really do much
Speaker 1: unless it probably blow up right next to your foot.
Speaker 1: But when they're even considering that, in my experience, that
Speaker 1: tells you that people are there's an element that are
Speaker 1: ready to go further up the ladder to the next level.
Speaker 1: All does that mean they're gonna blow somewhere up? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't see it personally. You know, these
Speaker 1: these young people are very clever. I think that would
Speaker 1: be in an insane decision because it would France would
Speaker 1: have no option but to basically flood the island with
Speaker 1: a lot more police and maybe even military type police.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe not, but but yeah, anyway, we'll
Speaker 1: see what happens. But again, my point is not not
Speaker 1: that I think this is gonna happen, But there's that
Speaker 1: talk which we haven't seen that kind of talk in
Speaker 1: Corsica for quite a while, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: And there's actually people now genuinely worried like Okay, where's
Speaker 1: this going to go? Which can never be a good thing.
Speaker 1: I guess the French state really has to be careful here,
Speaker 1: and I think the fact they've now said we're gonna
Speaker 1: go as far as autonomy, maybe they at the very
Speaker 1: least have to be shown to be doing that very quickly,
Speaker 1: I think, you know. Otherwise, for a lot of people
Speaker 1: in Corsica, it's like even Colin Colinar died in Vain,
Speaker 1: I guess, and it's not just the youth, it's everybody,
Speaker 1: even people that perhaps I really don't like that the
Speaker 1: youth were fighting, really don't support that level of violence.
Speaker 1: They still support Evan Coliner and a very sad he's dead,
Speaker 1: you see what I'm saying, and the way he died,
Speaker 1: And even even past DNFC, the football team and one
Speaker 1: of the main football teams in Courtsco, they said, are
Speaker 1: you know, we're very sad that he's dead. You know,
Speaker 1: hero has died that kind of thing, so he's a
Speaker 1: very He's seen as a Martineau definitely, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's a predictable outcome from killing the guys in prison. Um, right, right, right, right,
Speaker 1: So we're kind of in this like waiting to see
Speaker 1: what the next step is. Then I guess, like the
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of this weird sort of like political
Speaker 1: liminal space. I guess where the next steps are. There's
Speaker 1: a number of things that could happen. Um, yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: it's this very everything's in transition. It's it's very it's
Speaker 1: it's either car before the storm or it's calm that
Speaker 1: turns into something positive. But I I just don't see,
Speaker 1: you know, after almost two weeks of extremely violent clashes,
Speaker 1: very well organized, after seeing them on the ground as well,
Speaker 1: these are brave lads, these and women as well. These
Speaker 1: are not your kind of average weekend warriors. They're very,
Speaker 1: very up for it. Um. You know how people clash
Speaker 1: in Paris, Like French people, they're very up as soon
Speaker 1: as find they'll fight, you know. Um, it's like that
Speaker 1: times ten for from what I experienced, because it's got
Speaker 1: the the kind of incubated nationalist identity separate from France,
Speaker 1: but whilst also having kind of fiery French culture and
Speaker 1: fiery Italian culture influences and fiery Corsican culture. Um, not
Speaker 1: to say that they're not very nice people. Everyone was
Speaker 1: absolutely lovely, very very friendly, but you can tell they're
Speaker 1: you know, there are fiery people. They're active, they're about it,
Speaker 1: they mean what they say. So I don't think that
Speaker 1: the youth will just go quietly from this essentially a
Speaker 1: political prisoner m A. Martin now, and then for them
Speaker 1: to just go, Okay, we'll just relax now. I don't
Speaker 1: see it. You go, you're talking from like you know,
Speaker 1: probably in the full week of clashes, maybe four or
Speaker 1: five thousand people together, throwing rocks, burning barricades, throwing small
Speaker 1: improvised devices at cops. So then just to go to
Speaker 1: nothing after even Colinard dies, I would be very very surprised.
Speaker 1: I think the only way that that would happen would
Speaker 1: be for France to go, okay, here's your autonomy, and
Speaker 1: then that energy could be turned into a celebration what
Speaker 1: I'm saying that should or shouldn't happen. I just think
Speaker 1: theoretically that's the only way that it could avoid violence,
Speaker 1: because the energy is there now, you see what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: not on like an essteric level, it's just the level
Speaker 1: of like they're revved up, they're ready, you know, in
Speaker 1: the attitude, the kind of it's in the air. It's
Speaker 1: in the air right now. So you published just a
Speaker 1: couple of days ago, your a little documentary like short
Speaker 1: documentary from Popular front which has footage a little dispatch
Speaker 1: which has footage from this um, which people should definitely
Speaker 1: check out, especially if they'd like to see some of
Speaker 1: the tactics that we've talked about UM on this this
Speaker 1: episode so far. Is there anywhere else you might recommend
Speaker 1: they go for further reading on this subject UM, not
Speaker 1: not to be UM, oh you're only popular Front UM,
Speaker 1: but we we have. It's just something that I've just
Speaker 1: been specifically fascinating and obsessed with for a long time.
Speaker 1: So when the time came, I was very well prepared.
Speaker 1: Everyone has said like, oh, you know, this is this
Speaker 1: is crazy, like you know, how did you understand all
Speaker 1: of this so quickly, because I've been reading about it
Speaker 1: and and the problem with a lot of the French
Speaker 1: reporting is, you know, it's it's naturally very fresh, skewed,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit sneary, like all the island people
Speaker 1: are kicking off again, Whereas it's like no come on
Speaker 1: like this. It's an incredible beautiful place. Of course they
Speaker 1: want to preserve it. Of course they want to control
Speaker 1: it in whatever way they want too. So again it's
Speaker 1: very difficult, but I will say that there are some
Speaker 1: really good reporters um there. There's a a friend of
Speaker 1: mine from Corsica, Lionel Doomus. He runs like a thing
Speaker 1: called um Corsican passport or were used to, which was
Speaker 1: kind of kind of humorous but at the same time
Speaker 1: in our news about kind of course and related um
Speaker 1: patriotic stuff. And then who we worked with, Jean Colinar.
Speaker 1: He's not related to m Yvonne, like it's it's quite
Speaker 1: a you know, common common last yeah exactly, yeah, so
Speaker 1: us it sounds quite you know, right, you must be related,
Speaker 1: but over there it's like not smith, but you know
Speaker 1: it's quite common yea, um, so yeah. Jean Colinary's great.
Speaker 1: And there's also the local papers in Corsica course, Mattin.
Speaker 1: They're really good. You might have to translate stuff, but
Speaker 1: they're very on the ball, you know what I mean
Speaker 1: that they're focused on everything. So if people are interested
Speaker 1: in it, honestly, I would say, like seek out local
Speaker 1: French reporters. From what I gather it as well, there's
Speaker 1: there's a quiet, but really thriving kind of youth media.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it's a it's a movement, but there's
Speaker 1: something growing there, you know. I spoke before I went out.
Speaker 1: I spoke to quite a few reporters, really nice people,
Speaker 1: really enthusiastic, really you know, love loving their island, but
Speaker 1: not full of hatred or anything like that. That that's
Speaker 1: something that I've seen a lot of French people say, oh,
Speaker 1: Corsicans are really full of hatred, their racist, They're blah blah.
Speaker 1: And it's like, I didn't experience that. And at the
Speaker 1: same time, it's like, have you been to Paris, Yeah
Speaker 1: it's yeah, you know, like it's like the end of
Speaker 1: the day. I think the whole region probably has a
Speaker 1: has an issue with that, but certainly the youth are
Speaker 1: very open minded, very nice um And like I said,
Speaker 1: this isn't just me basing it off of one trip.
Speaker 1: I've been fascinated with this place for about six to
Speaker 1: eight years and I I have not experienced anything like that.
Speaker 1: Sure you'll hear the old comment like you very yeah
Speaker 1: it's Europe, Yeah exactly, exactly Europe, not to minimize it,
Speaker 1: but like it just Corsica exactly whatever. Generally, you know,
Speaker 1: for a small island, it could be way worse. And
Speaker 1: and so I had a lot of French people, like
Speaker 1: they're really nasty, they're really violent, and it's like they're
Speaker 1: not actually like they're very angry, but they don't hate.
Speaker 1: They don't hate the French in that sense of like,
Speaker 1: oh you're a French person, kill you. It's the same
Speaker 1: thing as we hate the state, you know. Like and
Speaker 1: at the same time they have a very quite a
Speaker 1: few people brought up Ireland and the Basque situation and Sardinia,
Speaker 1: and so they have this they have an internationalist mentality
Speaker 1: as well. Actually, and in fact, years ago there used
Speaker 1: to be a youth conference in Corsica hosted there. I
Speaker 1: don't think it goes on anymore, but it was hosted
Speaker 1: in Corsica by what was a very well organized radical
Speaker 1: socialist youth movement in Corsica, where people from northern Ireland,
Speaker 1: people from the Basque country, people from um, uh, what's
Speaker 1: the one in Barcelona, Oh, um, Calonia, Catalonia. Yeah, people
Speaker 1: from there would come, you know, all people from different
Speaker 1: breakaway regions or whatever, and they would all come and
Speaker 1: they would all meet in Coursco and they would talk
Speaker 1: about tactics and politics and whatever. So it's a very
Speaker 1: very interesting culture place, amazing history. Fucking the Poland is
Speaker 1: from Napoleon is from there. You know that's what you want. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a really cool place. And you know,
Speaker 1: we only documented one side of it, a very radical
Speaker 1: side of it, because that's what was happening that weekend
Speaker 1: to dispatch. But there are a lot of moderates as well.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of like political, very smart political
Speaker 1: moderate moderates that are like, look, we don't want violence,
Speaker 1: but we do want autonomy, we want something. And they,
Speaker 1: you know, they said, oh, you only showed the militant
Speaker 1: side of It's like, well, you weren't on the street
Speaker 1: that day, you know, these kids were, so obviously that's
Speaker 1: how it works. But yeah, I would to actually a
Speaker 1: question again. Sorry, I would say just if you're interested
Speaker 1: in the region, UM, check it out. And there's there's
Speaker 1: a film if you can find it in English subtitles,
Speaker 1: send it to me. But there's a fictionalized film about
Speaker 1: the effllency. I think it's called a Life of Violence. Um,
Speaker 1: that's actually like quite good. It's a bit romantic size,
Speaker 1: but it's quite good in terms of explaining this situation
Speaker 1: there if you speak French. Checked that out and just
Speaker 1: check out like course Martin and all these these other
Speaker 1: kind of local reporters there. People are like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: too hard to find them. It does feel like that,
Speaker 1: but once you find them, you find them all. So yeah, awesome. Well,
Speaker 1: Jake Canrahan, thank you so much. Check out the new
Speaker 1: Popular Front dispatch on Corsica. Um by the way to Yeah,
Speaker 1: so check out all the Popular Front stuff on YouTube.
Speaker 1: You've got a great documentary out also about the territorial
Speaker 1: defense militias in Ukraine that you're filmed right before ship went.
Speaker 1: Yeah you know where it is. Yeah, yeah, we're standing
Speaker 1: it because we're a bit like how do we how
Speaker 1: do we make this most relevant? But it's it's coming,
Speaker 1: that's it will be quite excited. Yeah, the perspective beforehand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the ship you're posting on Twitter was really interesting. Um
Speaker 1: so yeah, check that out when it's out. Check out
Speaker 1: all the Popular fronts other stuff. Um and yeah, thank
Speaker 1: you Jake. Let's uh well we'll have you back on
Speaker 1: soon all right, man. Thank you very much. It Could
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