WEBVTT - Part Three: Operation Nemesis and Armenian Resistance to Genocide 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:06.360 Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People did 0:00:06.360 --> 0:00:09.559 Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that when bad things happen, 0:00:09.880 --> 0:00:13.080 people can do good things in response to it, and 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:15.480 your weekly reminder that sometimes we all fall into the 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:18.240 trap of seeing things as good and bad. But actually 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:20.320 it's true. There are things that are good and there 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:23.640 are things that are bad, And even though morality is subjective, 0:00:23.960 --> 0:00:26.680 there are some things that are just true. Like it's 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:30.520 true that I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy and with me 0:00:30.640 --> 0:00:33.120 today as my guest on this part three out of 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:34.879 four is James Hi. 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:37.200 James Hi, Margaret, It's nice to be here. 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:39.600 How are you? Usually I make the joke about this 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:42.160 on this totally different day, but it is a different. 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:44.960 Day, different day. Yeah, we've had a weekend. Yeah, someone 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:49.560 has tried to shoot Donald Trump. Yep, that's the thing 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:52.840 that happened this weekend. I went for a nice trail run. 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:56.880 It's nice. I picked some fennel. I mentioned the fennel 0:00:56.880 --> 0:00:59.560 because I shoved it in my running pack and it's 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:02.040 choosed now and I've just recovered it and unfortunately it's 0:01:02.080 --> 0:01:05.759 no longer an edible condition, which is which is sad. 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:09.440 This is very relatable to me. 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:12.840 I just just fucked like a magpie, just just taking 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:15.119 things and then having no ability to use them. 0:01:15.200 --> 0:01:17.520 Yeah, and that's how I got the name Magpie. 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:19.759 Really, do you like shiny stuff? 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:23.520 Yeah, rusty things. I would find little trash on the 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:25.360 street and bring them back to where I was staying. 0:01:25.800 --> 0:01:29.040 So someone started calling me Magpie. And then later I 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:32.039 met someone named Magpie whose full name was Margaret, and 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:33.640 I was like, there's an idea. 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:36.600 I love that. It's really sweet. Do you also collect 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:40.200 cool stones? I do, not as much as I used to. 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:42.920 When I like hitchiked and traveled full time. I just had, 0:01:42.959 --> 0:01:45.520 like we call it goblin treasure. Me and all my 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:48.440 friends would collect like rusty objects and like little neat 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:51.360 stones and things like that, and then make a kind 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:54.240 of jewelry out of it all. Yeah. I love to 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:55.800 do that. I'd love to have a jar of stones 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:58.320 on my desk, just just neat stones from around the world. 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:01.480 Hell yeah, I was picking one up recently in Syria. 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:05.160 My fixer was like, you cannot be picking up cool looking, 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:09.560 shiny shit from the ground, so this is how we 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:13.880 all die. Yeah, that makes sense, which is the thing 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:15.919 I know intellectually. You know that you see a nice 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:18.520 stony you just want to just want to own it. 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:22.040 I think everyone has a little magpie, you know, sitting 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:23.600 on their shoulder, chirping in. 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:26.520 Their ear, yeah, telling them to pick up shiny things. 0:02:26.680 --> 0:02:33.000 One of our ear chirpers is today's producer, who's Ian Hi, Ian. 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:36.840 Hey, magpie, Hey James, how are you guys doing good? 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:38.799 Were great? 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:43.799 And our audio engineer is Danel Hi Daniel. Everyone's say 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:44.320 hy to Daniel. 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:46.600 Sorry, Hi Daniel, Hi Daniel. 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:49.320 Our theme music was written for us by unwoman. I 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:52.680 it becomes this thing where like I sometimes forget to 0:02:52.680 --> 0:02:55.480 have everyone say hi to Daniel, but then like when 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:58.000 I do, it like haunts me, and I'm convinced that 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:00.320 the episode will be bad. I don't normally have these 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:04.760 compulsive behaviors, but that has become one, and so we 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:08.399 will just stick with it because what I'm beating around 0:03:08.440 --> 0:03:11.440 the bush around is that this is probably gonna be 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:13.200 the darkest episode of cool People did Cool Stuff that 0:03:13.240 --> 0:03:16.840 I've ever recorded, because here we are in part three 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:21.400 about Armenian resistance to genocide, and that means that today 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:24.000 we're gonna talk about the Armenian genocide. 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:27.480 Oh dear, see, this is like Coming of Roberts Show. 0:03:27.520 --> 0:03:29.040 Now you're just gonna tell me. 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:32.120 Know, it's always a little bit like that, right, because 0:03:32.120 --> 0:03:33.639 when I first started this, I was like, Oh, it's 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:35.880 just gonna be all the fun people, and then you're like, oh, 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:37.920 my definition of fun people is usually people who are 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:39.960 like fighting against the most evil things that have ever 0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:41.240 happened in the history of the world. 0:03:41.720 --> 0:03:44.160 Right, Yeah, you have to go through to bad stuff. 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:47.080 Like you could imagine a cut of Star Wars, Like, 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:50.520 imagine Star Wars is cool, people did cool stuff. However, 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:52.960 you could do a behind the Bastards and it would 0:03:53.000 --> 0:03:56.000 just be all of the details of blowing up alder On. 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:59.280 Yeah, we have the whole narrative hit, we have it. 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:00.920 I like that. I like the analogy. 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:03.640 Yeah, I'm better, is what I'm trying to say. 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:06.600 Yeah, he's kind of in the Ja ja binks area. 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:07.760 Where's you a more. 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:13.120 Exactly exactly? This is totally a fight that I want 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:14.400 to pick and care about. 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:17.760 Yeah, please tweet your thoughts about which Star Wars character 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:20.360 rober Evans would be to Margaret at I write, okay 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:20.920 on Twitter. 0:04:24.080 --> 0:04:28.160 So, the Armenian genocide, like the Assyrian genocide in the 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:31.080 Greek genocide that all happened at the same time was 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:34.960 a systematic mass murder, exile, or forced conversion of nearly 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:38.680 all the Christians in Anatolia like what's now Turkey. This 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:42.000 is generally seen as the first modern genocide in terms 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:44.760 of a systematic approach to the destruction of an entire 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:48.600 ethnicity and all of its people. I didn't end up 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:50.240 including it into the script, but I read a whole 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:54.080 bunch about how the word genocide came to be because 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:56.800 looking at this, and then in the immediate wake of 0:04:56.839 --> 0:04:59.800 the holocaust of the World War two, people were like, 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:03.640 we don't have a word for kill all the people, 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:04.599 you know. 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:07.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, we had to come up with a 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:09.000 whole new word for something that was so terrible that 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:10.760 we hadn't invented a word for yet. 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:16.520 Yeah, like crime beyond crime. And obviously people had done 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:21.080 it before, right, right, we are both recording from places 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:23.400 that that has happened, you know. 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:26.880 Yeah, And like European folks did this to indigenous people 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:28.760 sort over the world, right, Like I'm thinking of the 0:05:28.839 --> 0:05:33.280 Herero genocide for example, Like, yeah, we did it. It 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:36.800 wasn't I guess so visible to people in the metropol, right, 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:40.159 and that's what made this kind of stand out to 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:40.920 them at the time. 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:44.880 Yeah, and we'll get into it. Turkey tried real or 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:48.080 the Ottoman Empire tried really hard to not have anyone 0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:50.119 know about it and to try and have it happen 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:51.520 like all the previous ones. 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:52.919 Yeah, they're still trying. 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:56.640 Yeah, they still refuse to admit that this happened. Hooray. 0:05:56.839 --> 0:06:01.479 And they will cynically use the genocide of the indigenous 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:05.360 peoples of North America as a way as like a 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:08.240 hammer with which to bash the United States for when 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:11.880 it acknowledges or threatens to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, right, 0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:14.000 Like I don't know if you've seen this, but they'll 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:16.479 be like, well, you guys compoint fingers because of what 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:18.920 you did to your indigenous peoples, which, yeah, that's bad too. 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:22.159 Two things can be bad. Multiple genocides cannot have occurred. 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:25.400 There's not a shield you can put up and to 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:26.880 excuse your own shitty behavior. 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:31.960 We should all acknowledge that stuff that seems like it's necessary, 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:35.840 even just from a pure like understanding how the world works, 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:39.359 Like even if you don't care about people, you know, 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:45.000 I mean a horrible. Whatever these things happened, stop pretending 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:48.719 like they didn't anyway, So let's talk about how it happened. 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:52.760 It was centralized and systematic. It was enacted in the 0:06:52.760 --> 0:06:56.440 summer of nineteen fifteen during World War One. It started 0:06:56.600 --> 0:06:59.800 furthest East, and then it moved its way westward, all 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.040 under the pretense of defeating this internal threat. Right, they 0:07:03.040 --> 0:07:05.160 were like, oh, the Armenians, they are all going to 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:08.040 go join Russia, and a few thousand of them, did 0:07:08.839 --> 0:07:11.720 you know. I also can't blame anyone who did, they 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:15.680 would still be whatever anyway. Yeah, I'm not going to 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:19.120 linger super long on the like gory details, but I'm 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:22.239 going to do it more than I usually do because 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:24.120 usually I kind of am, like, and then some really 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:27.640 bad stuff happened, because I'm usually talking about stuff that 0:07:27.680 --> 0:07:32.040 people kind of know about on some level. Right, But 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:35.560 just saying a million people died doesn't give you a 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:38.760 sense of what happened. And one of the main issues 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:41.320 about how the Armenian genocide is discussed is that it's 0:07:41.880 --> 0:07:45.080 not People barely know shit about it. I only knew 0:07:45.080 --> 0:07:48.520 the tiniest bit. I kind of knew the like a 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:53.000 bunch of people died level, right, yep. And of course 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:55.200 it started with, as we talked about last time, those 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:58.560 forced labor death camps for the conscriptable men. Right, everyone 0:07:58.640 --> 0:08:02.080 who is conscripted into the army in World War One, 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:04.760 if you were Christian, they were like just kidding or 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:07.880 taking your guns away, and now you're gonna die. It 0:08:07.960 --> 0:08:12.160 quickly expanded beyond that. That would be enough, right, that 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:15.640 would be one of the worst things that's happened. But 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:20.760 sometimes if a village was entirely Armenian soldiers and militias 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:24.040 would just show up, round everyone up, and then kill them. 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:27.960 In villages with mixed Christian and Muslim populations, they did 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:31.760 more of this exodus style thing. They'd start by rounding 0:08:31.840 --> 0:08:33.760 up and arresting all of the men who hadn't been 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:36.720 conscripted into these labor death camps, anyone who was suspected 0:08:36.720 --> 0:08:39.760 of being a leader or in any way might be 0:08:39.800 --> 0:08:43.640 perceived as a threat to their power, right, and deal 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:46.560 with those people, And then they would announce to the 0:08:46.600 --> 0:08:49.079 remaining Christians in the town that they were being deported 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.920 for their own good. And they did it all classic 0:08:53.559 --> 0:08:56.800 write down an inventory of everything you're leaving behind, which 0:08:56.840 --> 0:08:59.440 is everything by the way, you can't bring anything with you, 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:02.280 We'll make sure it's returned to you later. You know, 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:04.240 they wrote the receipts. 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:07.560 Yeah, right. The bureaucracy of these things is just fucking 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:11.320 like a whole set of Kaman in Jerusalem thing. But yeah, 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:16.319 the cold, bureaucratic nature of genocide is pretty horrific to comprehend. 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:19.440 Yeah, I mean, the comparisons to the Nazis is just 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:22.199 direct they write themselves, but are worth pointing out still, 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.319 you know. Yeah, And of course these receipts were alive. 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:28.480 People were forced to sign over the deeds to their 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:32.000 houses and lands, which is like such a like we're 0:09:32.040 --> 0:09:34.040 the good guys, right, it's all legal. 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:36.720 Here's yeah, like what the fuck are you doing? You're 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:38.600 going to kill these people? Like do you really need 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:39.280 to do this too? 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:42.000 Yeah? And I bet a lot of it is to 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:44.840 like make people think that they're going to survive. 0:09:45.320 --> 0:09:48.600 Yeah, just you know, to prevent like I guess, rebellion 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:51.200 or like, yeah, I'm sure if you were going to 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:54.920 be genocided, you would act in a way that was different, 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:57.280 like right, for whatever reason. 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:00.680 And so they sign away their houses in their land 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:02.679 and then they're marched off into the desert, or they're 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:06.000 boarded onto trains or boats, and the people marching through 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:08.280 the desert. These are death marches. Anyone who acted up 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:11.200 was killed. They were denied food, they were denied water. 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:13.760 You weren't allowed to stop and drink from the springs 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:16.720 along the side of the road. Kurdish groups were allowed 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:20.079 to attack and rob the caravans. Young women were kidnapped 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:22.880 and forced to convert Islam. Young boys were taken as slaves, 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:26.600 often as shepherds, but the only men who survived were 0:10:26.600 --> 0:10:30.320 the ones who escaped. An incredible number of people they 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:32.120 started coming out, and I think the seventies or eighties 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:34.480 there was this whole book about it. An incredible number 0:10:34.520 --> 0:10:37.679 of people who were raised Turkish today have discovered recently 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:40.560 that at least one of their grandmothers was of Armenian 0:10:40.600 --> 0:10:44.440 descent and forced to convert and lie about it her ethnicity. 0:10:45.040 --> 0:10:45.439 Wow. 0:10:46.280 --> 0:10:49.360 Sometimes Armenians were deported by train, forced to buy their 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:53.440 own tickets onto cattle cars, which is probably just another 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:56.440 way to be like, oh, yeah, no, you're you're going somewhere. 0:10:57.320 --> 0:10:59.680 The dead were removed at each train stop and thrown 0:10:59.679 --> 0:11:03.160 down in bankments, and they were taken to these outposts. 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:05.680 Then they were left to die, and if they didn't 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:08.679 die fast enough for the new arrivals, they were just killed. 0:11:10.160 --> 0:11:12.280 It's like they're figuring it out as they go along 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:13.760 genocide right now. 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:16.520 Yeah, yeah, they haven't quite like perfected it in the 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:18.560 way that the Nazis had or industrial lives hit in 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:19.040 that way. 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:23.679 But yeah, yeah. Along the Black Sea, people were just 0:11:23.760 --> 0:11:27.880 taken out onto boats and drowned. Children were put into 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:30.760 sacks and thrown overboard. Whole boats full full of people 0:11:30.880 --> 0:11:34.640 were like taken out and sunk. Muslim leaders who fought 0:11:34.679 --> 0:11:39.160 against this mass murder were replaced or executed. Muslims would 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:41.480 hide their Christian neighbors and if they were caught, both 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:45.040 the Muslims and the Christians would be executed. Victims were 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:47.760 forced to strip before they were killed, often before they 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:50.360 were deported at all, because it was against Sharia law 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:53.720 to strip clothes off of a corpse to sell life 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:56.199 insurance of the murder people was used to finance the 0:11:56.280 --> 0:11:58.960 murder of others. They were packed into houses and they 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:02.200 were set alight. Others used as target practice for Turkish officers. 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:04.000 I wasn't joking that this is just going to be 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:05.400 dark for a moment. 0:12:05.640 --> 0:12:08.240 Yeah, it's a fucking litany of horrible shit. 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:11.640 A lot of Christians were crucified, often to their own 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:16.720 doors or barns. Often they were raped and impaled. I'm like, 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:19.360 I'm like, not even telling me some of the worst shit. 0:12:20.480 --> 0:12:22.880 I don't know. I spent a long time thinking about 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:24.960 how I was going to talk about this, And we're 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:26.920 having this conversation a lot right now with what's going 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:29.880 on in Palestine right where there's like these arguments where 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:33.160 you don't need to see it or you do need 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:36.080 to see it, you know, and people make really good 0:12:36.080 --> 0:12:40.319 cases on both sides. And I think where I'm at personally, 0:12:40.800 --> 0:12:43.240 and this is maybe a gut instinct, is that, like 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:47.360 I think it is worth knowing and then not lingering on, 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:51.240 but like knowing. And that's like why when I engage 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:53.760 with like World War two stuff, I don't engage with 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:56.000 the details of the Holocaust stuff as much, right because 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:58.880 I faced it in whatever way, you know, I've read 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:00.520 about it, you know. 0:13:00.840 --> 0:13:04.560 Yeah, And I've like, when I think about my personal engagement, 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:09.240 I guess with genocidal violence. I've been part of I've 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:11.760 been a historian of the Spanish Civil War, I've seen 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:15.800 people uncover their grandparents and find their like shattered skulls 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:18.280 in the village they still live in. Yeah. I also 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:21.280 one of the things that impacted me most in recent 0:13:21.400 --> 0:13:24.800 years that really just made like I've been a conflict 0:13:24.840 --> 0:13:26.880 reporter for a while, I've seen really horrible shit. I've 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:30.880 heard stories of terrible things. And in twenty twenty, I 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:34.520 was in Rwanda and as COVID was all kicking off, 0:13:34.559 --> 0:13:36.840 and like one of the last things I did for 0:13:36.920 --> 0:13:41.600 everything shut down was go to the Genocide Museum in Kigali. Yeah, 0:13:41.640 --> 0:13:46.880 and for whatever reason, like that is the most moving 0:13:47.240 --> 0:13:49.680 museum exit that I've ever attended. And it wasn't like 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:53.360 the numbers and like there were vast numbers of people 0:13:53.440 --> 0:13:59.559 killed in Rwanda. It was individual stories that really fucked 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:04.080 me up for a while. And I think like for 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:06.640 it and also just hearing from like they were wander 0:14:06.720 --> 0:14:08.960 genocide wasn't that long ago. It was in our lifetimes 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:11.160 within probably lots of listeners life to known and ninety four, 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:14.080 you know, hearing from people who had been present. It's 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:16.400 sort of it's one thing as a historian, it's one 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:20.320 thing to see people uncovering their grandpa grandma or whatever, 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:25.160 non binary grandparent doesn't matter. But like it's different when 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:28.040 it's someone like you know, you can walk around Rowanda 0:14:28.040 --> 0:14:29.960 and see where shit happened. I remember bike all around 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:34.040 the country and then to see how like in that country, 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:37.640 ethnicity in a meaningful sense does not exist today people 0:14:37.920 --> 0:14:40.480 my I have young Rwandan friends who are in their 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:44.160 early twenties now who don't know which of those two 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:47.920 ethnicities would pertain to them because it's just not it's 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:51.840 not a relevant form of identity. This thing happened for 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:54.880 something that I mean, all all identities bigger than you know, 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:57.160 very small communities are made up. Doesn't mean they're not real. 0:14:57.240 --> 0:15:00.560 But it just disappeared afterwards, and it disappeared for reasons 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:03.800 that aren't always great. Disappeared kind of due to the 0:15:03.840 --> 0:15:06.280 full set of state. But to just be like this 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:10.320 thing fucking had people killing each other with knives and 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:13.760 fucking shovels and now it's gone, like it was completely false. 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:17.160 It profoundly moved me in a way I think about 0:15:17.320 --> 0:15:19.560 like identity and the world. 0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:22.880 No, it makes sense, and it makes sense about how 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:25.880 like it is worth sometimes to go and read the 0:15:25.920 --> 0:15:30.080 specific stories of individuals you know, yeah, And I think 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:33.160 what I decided on for this episode, right is that 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:37.520 I'm not doing that. But I'm also not glossing over. 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:41.920 I want to be like, this is what happened pretty roughly. 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:45.240 I got a lot out of reading about it. I 0:15:45.280 --> 0:15:49.200 got a lot of upsetness, you know. But I also 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:54.040 think it's like worth understanding what people are fighting against 0:15:54.240 --> 0:15:57.600 and also just like I don't want people to like 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:00.920 panic or worry specifically, but it's like it's worth understanding 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:02.920 how bad the world could be, you know. 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:05.040 Yeah, no, it is. I think we should face up 0:16:05.080 --> 0:16:08.720 to the realities of what it's I mean, I uh 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:11.960 Sin Syria last year spoken to a ZD people who 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:16.560 went through genocidal violence by the so God Islamic state, right, like, yeah, 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:20.480 things can be really fucking terrible and we shouldn't. You know, 0:16:20.920 --> 0:16:24.080 it's very easy, especially now, right we have so much 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:26.840 stuff and so many things and so many disurrections. It'll 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:29.200 be okay, and like it probably will be right, I don't, 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:31.960 I don't, Yeah, totally, it probably will be fine. Yeah, 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:34.760 And that probably won't be you who faces genocidal violence. 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:37.720 If you're a person with a smartphone downloading a podcast well, right, 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:40.480 more people have smartphones electricity in their homes, Like smartphones 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:43.720 are very broadly distributed around the world, but probably won't 0:16:43.760 --> 0:16:45.480 be you listener. It will probably be someone who you 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:48.720 see on the news. But it's still something that we 0:16:48.720 --> 0:16:51.280 should face up to about the state, right, the state 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:53.840 is the only tool that can do this. Yeah, and 0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:55.520 humanity more broadly. 0:16:56.080 --> 0:16:58.440 That is actually an important point that I didn't talk 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:00.560 about too much, is that, like one of the reasons 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:03.400 that words like genocide exists because it's a state level 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:07.200 crime and the concept of the modern state is fairly new. 0:17:07.400 --> 0:17:10.320 That doesn't mean that kingdoms didn't pull off stuff like this, 0:17:10.440 --> 0:17:14.320 and that you know, diverse groups, decentralized groups. I've also 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:19.119 done some bad stuff, right, Yeah, but yeah, there's a scale. Yeah. 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:22.359 One account I read described the mass suicide where children 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:24.960 and teenagers would join hands and jump off cliffs together 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:29.920 to escape what was coming. And in order to do this, 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:34.120 more than thirty thousand felons were released from Turkish prisons 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:38.359 into the Special Organization, which was guerrilla fighters who were 0:17:38.359 --> 0:17:41.640 at war against the Armenian civil population of the country. 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:45.720 It's not ready a war, it's just it's just murdering 0:17:45.760 --> 0:17:46.800 people is what that is. 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:49.240 Yeah, they're like, what have we let out all the 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:50.800 murderers to do a bunch of murder? 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:54.880 Yeah, yeah, that's great. That's that's how the state can 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:58.840 pretty fuck things up, I guess yep. Not dramatically different 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:03.760 to what's happening now in part of Syria. Sadly. Yeah, 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:09.320 like you relabeled Jahada's fighting, No, totally, I'm gonna throw 0:18:09.359 --> 0:18:10.760 to ads without a clever thing. 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:17.800 Yeah, here they are, here's ads. 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:22.760 And we're back. 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:25.439 I guess there is a line about how serious I 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:28.000 can feel where I can't do my cycle. Yeah, there 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:34.080 it is, we found it. Yeah, so this was happening, 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:37.200 and this happened during the summer of nineteen fifteen. As 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:39.560 we talked a little bit last time, the Kurdish tribes 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:42.119 are major participants in all of this, since for generations 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:44.159 they've been told the Armenians were the reason for their 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:48.359 own poverty. However, it is possible that the role of 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:52.800 the Kurds has been overstated to shift blame away from Turkey. 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:58.240 But that's people's speculation and there's no my guess is 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:00.560 is not all one way or the other. The Kurds 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:05.560 were absolutely involved in this Also, Turkey could absolutely be 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:09.040 overstating their responsibility. 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:12.159 I didn't think it hugely matters if you're responsible for 0:19:12.240 --> 0:19:15.399 like thirty or forty percent of a genocide, like you 0:19:15.440 --> 0:19:18.320 were still responsible. And the Kurdish groups that I'm familiar 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:21.919 with acknowledge their complicity and apologize for it, which is 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:22.800 again important. 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:27.040 That is the next paragraph I have. Sorry, no, no, 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:29.679 it's good. It is worth reiterating. 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:30.920 Coming in here with my fucking nerd shit. 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:34.120 To be clear, all modern Kurdish movements openly speak about 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:36.399 the Armenian genocide and admit the Kurdish role in it, 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:40.960 and speak about how Kurdish and Armenian liberation are inseparably linked. Well, 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:43.480 an awful lot of the groups I said all, but 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:45.920 I read a list and it was all of the 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:48.639 groups that I know about were on that list of 0:19:48.720 --> 0:19:50.320 people who talk about it openly. 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:55.119 Yeah, I'd certainly like I have met seeing Armenian and 0:19:55.119 --> 0:19:58.520 Assyrian units within the SDF. Yeah, right, so that like 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:04.280 autonomous can unities within the broader an s in North 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:04.800 and Easyria. 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:07.680 I feel like this makes me better understand to I 0:20:07.680 --> 0:20:09.880 don't want to like totally fall into this nerd stuff 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:11.720 in case people don't know exactly what we're talking about. 0:20:11.720 --> 0:20:14.840 But you know, when people talk about the Kurdish movement 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:16.959 of you know, when people talk about Roshabam right and 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:21.320 the Northeast Syrian Autonomous movement that's going on. One of 0:20:21.359 --> 0:20:23.399 the reasons that I'm under the impression I think, I know, 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:25.720 you know more about this that Kurdish folks talk about, 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:28.640 being like, this is not a Kurdish movement. We are 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:32.120 among these movements. This is a pluralistic movement. Even though 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:35.560 they're the ones who kind of spearheaded it. I assume 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:38.280 that this kind of stuff is part of the reason 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:40.920 that they're like real aware of not wanting to fall 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:41.880 into nationalism. 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:45.720 Yeah, Like, it's not an ethno nationalist movement. It's a 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:49.640 movement which is liberatory and the people it's trying to liberate, 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:52.880