Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People did
Speaker 1: Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that when bad things happen,
Speaker 1: people can do good things in response to it, and
Speaker 1: your weekly reminder that sometimes we all fall into the
Speaker 1: trap of seeing things as good and bad. But actually
Speaker 1: it's true. There are things that are good and there
Speaker 1: are things that are bad, And even though morality is subjective,
Speaker 1: there are some things that are just true. Like it's
Speaker 1: true that I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy and with me
Speaker 1: today as my guest on this part three out of
Speaker 1: four is James Hi.
Speaker 2: James Hi, Margaret, It's nice to be here.
Speaker 1: How are you? Usually I make the joke about this
Speaker 1: on this totally different day, but it is a different.
Speaker 2: Day, different day. Yeah, we've had a weekend. Yeah, someone
Speaker 2: has tried to shoot Donald Trump. Yep, that's the thing
Speaker 2: that happened this weekend. I went for a nice trail run.
Speaker 2: It's nice. I picked some fennel. I mentioned the fennel
Speaker 2: because I shoved it in my running pack and it's
Speaker 2: choosed now and I've just recovered it and unfortunately it's
Speaker 2: no longer an edible condition, which is which is sad.
Speaker 1: This is very relatable to me.
Speaker 2: I just just fucked like a magpie, just just taking
Speaker 2: things and then having no ability to use them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's how I got the name Magpie.
Speaker 2: Really, do you like shiny stuff?
Speaker 1: Yeah, rusty things. I would find little trash on the
Speaker 1: street and bring them back to where I was staying.
Speaker 1: So someone started calling me Magpie. And then later I
Speaker 1: met someone named Magpie whose full name was Margaret, and
Speaker 1: I was like, there's an idea.
Speaker 2: I love that. It's really sweet. Do you also collect
Speaker 2: cool stones? I do, not as much as I used to.
Speaker 2: When I like hitchiked and traveled full time. I just had,
Speaker 2: like we call it goblin treasure. Me and all my
Speaker 2: friends would collect like rusty objects and like little neat
Speaker 2: stones and things like that, and then make a kind
Speaker 2: of jewelry out of it all. Yeah. I love to
Speaker 2: do that. I'd love to have a jar of stones
Speaker 2: on my desk, just just neat stones from around the world.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, I was picking one up recently in Syria.
Speaker 2: My fixer was like, you cannot be picking up cool looking,
Speaker 2: shiny shit from the ground, so this is how we
Speaker 2: all die. Yeah, that makes sense, which is the thing
Speaker 2: I know intellectually. You know that you see a nice
Speaker 2: stony you just want to just want to own it.
Speaker 1: I think everyone has a little magpie, you know, sitting
Speaker 1: on their shoulder, chirping in.
Speaker 2: Their ear, yeah, telling them to pick up shiny things.
Speaker 1: One of our ear chirpers is today's producer, who's Ian Hi, Ian.
Speaker 2: Hey, magpie, Hey James, how are you guys doing good?
Speaker 2: Were great?
Speaker 1: And our audio engineer is Danel Hi Daniel. Everyone's say
Speaker 1: hy to Daniel.
Speaker 2: Sorry, Hi Daniel, Hi Daniel.
Speaker 1: Our theme music was written for us by unwoman. I
Speaker 1: it becomes this thing where like I sometimes forget to
Speaker 1: have everyone say hi to Daniel, but then like when
Speaker 1: I do, it like haunts me, and I'm convinced that
Speaker 1: the episode will be bad. I don't normally have these
Speaker 1: compulsive behaviors, but that has become one, and so we
Speaker 1: will just stick with it because what I'm beating around
Speaker 1: the bush around is that this is probably gonna be
Speaker 1: the darkest episode of cool People did Cool Stuff that
Speaker 1: I've ever recorded, because here we are in part three
Speaker 1: about Armenian resistance to genocide, and that means that today
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about the Armenian genocide.
Speaker 2: Oh dear, see, this is like Coming of Roberts Show.
Speaker 2: Now you're just gonna tell me.
Speaker 1: Know, it's always a little bit like that, right, because
Speaker 1: when I first started this, I was like, Oh, it's
Speaker 1: just gonna be all the fun people, and then you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: my definition of fun people is usually people who are
Speaker 1: like fighting against the most evil things that have ever
Speaker 1: happened in the history of the world.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, you have to go through to bad stuff.
Speaker 1: Like you could imagine a cut of Star Wars, Like,
Speaker 1: imagine Star Wars is cool, people did cool stuff. However,
Speaker 1: you could do a behind the Bastards and it would
Speaker 1: just be all of the details of blowing up alder On.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have the whole narrative hit, we have it.
Speaker 2: I like that. I like the analogy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm better, is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's kind of in the Ja ja binks area.
Speaker 2: Where's you a more.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly? This is totally a fight that I want
Speaker 1: to pick and care about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, please tweet your thoughts about which Star Wars character
Speaker 2: rober Evans would be to Margaret at I write, okay
Speaker 2: on Twitter.
Speaker 1: So, the Armenian genocide, like the Assyrian genocide in the
Speaker 1: Greek genocide that all happened at the same time was
Speaker 1: a systematic mass murder, exile, or forced conversion of nearly
Speaker 1: all the Christians in Anatolia like what's now Turkey. This
Speaker 1: is generally seen as the first modern genocide in terms
Speaker 1: of a systematic approach to the destruction of an entire
Speaker 1: ethnicity and all of its people. I didn't end up
Speaker 1: including it into the script, but I read a whole
Speaker 1: bunch about how the word genocide came to be because
Speaker 1: looking at this, and then in the immediate wake of
Speaker 1: the holocaust of the World War two, people were like,
Speaker 1: we don't have a word for kill all the people,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we had to come up with a
Speaker 2: whole new word for something that was so terrible that
Speaker 2: we hadn't invented a word for yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like crime beyond crime. And obviously people had done
Speaker 1: it before, right, right, we are both recording from places
Speaker 1: that that has happened, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like European folks did this to indigenous people
Speaker 2: sort over the world, right, Like I'm thinking of the
Speaker 2: Herero genocide for example, Like, yeah, we did it. It
Speaker 2: wasn't I guess so visible to people in the metropol, right,
Speaker 2: and that's what made this kind of stand out to
Speaker 2: them at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we'll get into it. Turkey tried real or
Speaker 1: the Ottoman Empire tried really hard to not have anyone
Speaker 1: know about it and to try and have it happen
Speaker 1: like all the previous ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're still trying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they still refuse to admit that this happened. Hooray.
Speaker 2: And they will cynically use the genocide of the indigenous
Speaker 2: peoples of North America as a way as like a
Speaker 2: hammer with which to bash the United States for when
Speaker 2: it acknowledges or threatens to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, right,
Speaker 2: Like I don't know if you've seen this, but they'll
Speaker 2: be like, well, you guys compoint fingers because of what
Speaker 2: you did to your indigenous peoples, which, yeah, that's bad too.
Speaker 2: Two things can be bad. Multiple genocides cannot have occurred.
Speaker 2: There's not a shield you can put up and to
Speaker 2: excuse your own shitty behavior.
Speaker 1: We should all acknowledge that stuff that seems like it's necessary,
Speaker 1: even just from a pure like understanding how the world works,
Speaker 1: Like even if you don't care about people, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean a horrible. Whatever these things happened, stop pretending
Speaker 1: like they didn't anyway, So let's talk about how it happened.
Speaker 1: It was centralized and systematic. It was enacted in the
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen fifteen during World War One. It started
Speaker 1: furthest East, and then it moved its way westward, all
Speaker 1: under the pretense of defeating this internal threat. Right, they
Speaker 1: were like, oh, the Armenians, they are all going to
Speaker 1: go join Russia, and a few thousand of them, did
Speaker 1: you know. I also can't blame anyone who did, they
Speaker 1: would still be whatever anyway. Yeah, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: linger super long on the like gory details, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to do it more than I usually do because
Speaker 1: usually I kind of am, like, and then some really
Speaker 1: bad stuff happened, because I'm usually talking about stuff that
Speaker 1: people kind of know about on some level. Right, But
Speaker 1: just saying a million people died doesn't give you a
Speaker 1: sense of what happened. And one of the main issues
Speaker 1: about how the Armenian genocide is discussed is that it's
Speaker 1: not People barely know shit about it. I only knew
Speaker 1: the tiniest bit. I kind of knew the like a
Speaker 1: bunch of people died level, right, yep. And of course
Speaker 1: it started with, as we talked about last time, those
Speaker 1: forced labor death camps for the conscriptable men. Right, everyone
Speaker 1: who is conscripted into the army in World War One,
Speaker 1: if you were Christian, they were like just kidding or
Speaker 1: taking your guns away, and now you're gonna die. It
Speaker 1: quickly expanded beyond that. That would be enough, right, that
Speaker 1: would be one of the worst things that's happened. But
Speaker 1: sometimes if a village was entirely Armenian soldiers and militias
Speaker 1: would just show up, round everyone up, and then kill them.
Speaker 1: In villages with mixed Christian and Muslim populations, they did
Speaker 1: more of this exodus style thing. They'd start by rounding
Speaker 1: up and arresting all of the men who hadn't been
Speaker 1: conscripted into these labor death camps, anyone who was suspected
Speaker 1: of being a leader or in any way might be
Speaker 1: perceived as a threat to their power, right, and deal
Speaker 1: with those people, And then they would announce to the
Speaker 1: remaining Christians in the town that they were being deported
Speaker 1: for their own good. And they did it all classic
Speaker 1: write down an inventory of everything you're leaving behind, which
Speaker 1: is everything by the way, you can't bring anything with you,
Speaker 1: We'll make sure it's returned to you later. You know,
Speaker 1: they wrote the receipts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right. The bureaucracy of these things is just fucking
Speaker 2: like a whole set of Kaman in Jerusalem thing. But yeah,
Speaker 2: the cold, bureaucratic nature of genocide is pretty horrific to comprehend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the comparisons to the Nazis is just
Speaker 1: direct they write themselves, but are worth pointing out still,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, And of course these receipts were alive.
Speaker 1: People were forced to sign over the deeds to their
Speaker 1: houses and lands, which is like such a like we're
Speaker 1: the good guys, right, it's all legal.
Speaker 2: Here's yeah, like what the fuck are you doing? You're
Speaker 2: going to kill these people? Like do you really need
Speaker 2: to do this too?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And I bet a lot of it is to
Speaker 1: like make people think that they're going to survive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just you know, to prevent like I guess, rebellion
Speaker 2: or like, yeah, I'm sure if you were going to
Speaker 2: be genocided, you would act in a way that was different,
Speaker 2: like right, for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: And so they sign away their houses in their land
Speaker 1: and then they're marched off into the desert, or they're
Speaker 1: boarded onto trains or boats, and the people marching through
Speaker 1: the desert. These are death marches. Anyone who acted up
Speaker 1: was killed. They were denied food, they were denied water.
Speaker 1: You weren't allowed to stop and drink from the springs
Speaker 1: along the side of the road. Kurdish groups were allowed
Speaker 1: to attack and rob the caravans. Young women were kidnapped
Speaker 1: and forced to convert Islam. Young boys were taken as slaves,
Speaker 1: often as shepherds, but the only men who survived were
Speaker 1: the ones who escaped. An incredible number of people they
Speaker 1: started coming out, and I think the seventies or eighties
Speaker 1: there was this whole book about it. An incredible number
Speaker 1: of people who were raised Turkish today have discovered recently
Speaker 1: that at least one of their grandmothers was of Armenian
Speaker 1: descent and forced to convert and lie about it her ethnicity.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Armenians were deported by train, forced to buy their
Speaker 1: own tickets onto cattle cars, which is probably just another
Speaker 1: way to be like, oh, yeah, no, you're you're going somewhere.
Speaker 1: The dead were removed at each train stop and thrown
Speaker 1: down in bankments, and they were taken to these outposts.
Speaker 1: Then they were left to die, and if they didn't
Speaker 1: die fast enough for the new arrivals, they were just killed.
Speaker 1: It's like they're figuring it out as they go along
Speaker 1: genocide right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they haven't quite like perfected it in the
Speaker 2: way that the Nazis had or industrial lives hit in
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah. Along the Black Sea, people were just
Speaker 1: taken out onto boats and drowned. Children were put into
Speaker 1: sacks and thrown overboard. Whole boats full full of people
Speaker 1: were like taken out and sunk. Muslim leaders who fought
Speaker 1: against this mass murder were replaced or executed. Muslims would
Speaker 1: hide their Christian neighbors and if they were caught, both
Speaker 1: the Muslims and the Christians would be executed. Victims were
Speaker 1: forced to strip before they were killed, often before they
Speaker 1: were deported at all, because it was against Sharia law
Speaker 1: to strip clothes off of a corpse to sell life
Speaker 1: insurance of the murder people was used to finance the
Speaker 1: murder of others. They were packed into houses and they
Speaker 1: were set alight. Others used as target practice for Turkish officers.
Speaker 1: I wasn't joking that this is just going to be
Speaker 1: dark for a moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a fucking litany of horrible shit.
Speaker 1: A lot of Christians were crucified, often to their own
Speaker 1: doors or barns. Often they were raped and impaled. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm like, not even telling me some of the worst shit.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I spent a long time thinking about
Speaker 1: how I was going to talk about this, And we're
Speaker 1: having this conversation a lot right now with what's going
Speaker 1: on in Palestine right where there's like these arguments where
Speaker 1: you don't need to see it or you do need
Speaker 1: to see it, you know, and people make really good
Speaker 1: cases on both sides. And I think where I'm at personally,
Speaker 1: and this is maybe a gut instinct, is that, like
Speaker 1: I think it is worth knowing and then not lingering on,
Speaker 1: but like knowing. And that's like why when I engage
Speaker 1: with like World War two stuff, I don't engage with
Speaker 1: the details of the Holocaust stuff as much, right because
Speaker 1: I faced it in whatever way, you know, I've read
Speaker 1: about it, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I've like, when I think about my personal engagement,
Speaker 2: I guess with genocidal violence. I've been part of I've
Speaker 2: been a historian of the Spanish Civil War, I've seen
Speaker 2: people uncover their grandparents and find their like shattered skulls
Speaker 2: in the village they still live in. Yeah. I also
Speaker 2: one of the things that impacted me most in recent
Speaker 2: years that really just made like I've been a conflict
Speaker 2: reporter for a while, I've seen really horrible shit. I've
Speaker 2: heard stories of terrible things. And in twenty twenty, I
Speaker 2: was in Rwanda and as COVID was all kicking off,
Speaker 2: and like one of the last things I did for
Speaker 2: everything shut down was go to the Genocide Museum in Kigali. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and for whatever reason, like that is the most moving
Speaker 2: museum exit that I've ever attended. And it wasn't like
Speaker 2: the numbers and like there were vast numbers of people
Speaker 2: killed in Rwanda. It was individual stories that really fucked
Speaker 2: me up for a while. And I think like for
Speaker 2: it and also just hearing from like they were wander
Speaker 2: genocide wasn't that long ago. It was in our lifetimes
Speaker 2: within probably lots of listeners life to known and ninety four,
Speaker 2: you know, hearing from people who had been present. It's
Speaker 2: sort of it's one thing as a historian, it's one
Speaker 2: thing to see people uncovering their grandpa grandma or whatever,
Speaker 2: non binary grandparent doesn't matter. But like it's different when
Speaker 2: it's someone like you know, you can walk around Rowanda
Speaker 2: and see where shit happened. I remember bike all around
Speaker 2: the country and then to see how like in that country,
Speaker 2: ethnicity in a meaningful sense does not exist today people
Speaker 2: my I have young Rwandan friends who are in their
Speaker 2: early twenties now who don't know which of those two
Speaker 2: ethnicities would pertain to them because it's just not it's
Speaker 2: not a relevant form of identity. This thing happened for
Speaker 2: something that I mean, all all identities bigger than you know,
Speaker 2: very small communities are made up. Doesn't mean they're not real.
Speaker 2: But it just disappeared afterwards, and it disappeared for reasons
Speaker 2: that aren't always great. Disappeared kind of due to the
Speaker 2: full set of state. But to just be like this
Speaker 2: thing fucking had people killing each other with knives and
Speaker 2: fucking shovels and now it's gone, like it was completely false.
Speaker 2: It profoundly moved me in a way I think about
Speaker 2: like identity and the world.
Speaker 1: No, it makes sense, and it makes sense about how
Speaker 1: like it is worth sometimes to go and read the
Speaker 1: specific stories of individuals you know, yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: what I decided on for this episode, right is that
Speaker 1: I'm not doing that. But I'm also not glossing over.
Speaker 1: I want to be like, this is what happened pretty roughly.
Speaker 1: I got a lot out of reading about it. I
Speaker 1: got a lot of upsetness, you know. But I also
Speaker 1: think it's like worth understanding what people are fighting against
Speaker 1: and also just like I don't want people to like
Speaker 1: panic or worry specifically, but it's like it's worth understanding
Speaker 1: how bad the world could be, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it is. I think we should face up
Speaker 2: to the realities of what it's I mean, I uh
Speaker 2: Sin Syria last year spoken to a ZD people who
Speaker 2: went through genocidal violence by the so God Islamic state, right, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: things can be really fucking terrible and we shouldn't. You know,
Speaker 2: it's very easy, especially now, right we have so much
Speaker 2: stuff and so many things and so many disurrections. It'll
Speaker 2: be okay, and like it probably will be right, I don't,
Speaker 2: I don't, Yeah, totally, it probably will be fine. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And that probably won't be you who faces genocidal violence.
Speaker 2: If you're a person with a smartphone downloading a podcast well, right,
Speaker 2: more people have smartphones electricity in their homes, Like smartphones
Speaker 2: are very broadly distributed around the world, but probably won't
Speaker 2: be you listener. It will probably be someone who you
Speaker 2: see on the news. But it's still something that we
Speaker 2: should face up to about the state, right, the state
Speaker 2: is the only tool that can do this. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: humanity more broadly.
Speaker 1: That is actually an important point that I didn't talk
Speaker 1: about too much, is that, like one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that words like genocide exists because it's a state level
Speaker 1: crime and the concept of the modern state is fairly new.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that kingdoms didn't pull off stuff like this,
Speaker 1: and that you know, diverse groups, decentralized groups. I've also
Speaker 1: done some bad stuff, right, Yeah, but yeah, there's a scale. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One account I read described the mass suicide where children
Speaker 1: and teenagers would join hands and jump off cliffs together
Speaker 1: to escape what was coming. And in order to do this,
Speaker 1: more than thirty thousand felons were released from Turkish prisons
Speaker 1: into the Special Organization, which was guerrilla fighters who were
Speaker 1: at war against the Armenian civil population of the country.
Speaker 2: It's not ready a war, it's just it's just murdering
Speaker 2: people is what that is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like, what have we let out all the
Speaker 1: murderers to do a bunch of murder?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's great. That's that's how the state can
Speaker 2: pretty fuck things up, I guess yep. Not dramatically different
Speaker 2: to what's happening now in part of Syria. Sadly. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like you relabeled Jahada's fighting, No, totally, I'm gonna throw
Speaker 2: to ads without a clever thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here they are, here's ads.
Speaker 2: And we're back.
Speaker 1: I guess there is a line about how serious I
Speaker 1: can feel where I can't do my cycle. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: it is, we found it. Yeah, so this was happening,
Speaker 1: and this happened during the summer of nineteen fifteen. As
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit last time, the Kurdish tribes
Speaker 1: are major participants in all of this, since for generations
Speaker 1: they've been told the Armenians were the reason for their
Speaker 1: own poverty. However, it is possible that the role of
Speaker 1: the Kurds has been overstated to shift blame away from Turkey.
Speaker 1: But that's people's speculation and there's no my guess is
Speaker 1: is not all one way or the other. The Kurds
Speaker 1: were absolutely involved in this Also, Turkey could absolutely be
Speaker 1: overstating their responsibility.
Speaker 2: I didn't think it hugely matters if you're responsible for
Speaker 2: like thirty or forty percent of a genocide, like you
Speaker 2: were still responsible. And the Kurdish groups that I'm familiar
Speaker 2: with acknowledge their complicity and apologize for it, which is
Speaker 2: again important.
Speaker 1: That is the next paragraph I have. Sorry, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's good. It is worth reiterating.
Speaker 2: Coming in here with my fucking nerd shit.
Speaker 1: To be clear, all modern Kurdish movements openly speak about
Speaker 1: the Armenian genocide and admit the Kurdish role in it,
Speaker 1: and speak about how Kurdish and Armenian liberation are inseparably linked. Well,
Speaker 1: an awful lot of the groups I said all, but
Speaker 1: I read a list and it was all of the
Speaker 1: groups that I know about were on that list of
Speaker 1: people who talk about it openly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd certainly like I have met seeing Armenian and
Speaker 2: Assyrian units within the SDF. Yeah, right, so that like
Speaker 2: autonomous can unities within the broader an s in North
Speaker 2: and Easyria.
Speaker 1: I feel like this makes me better understand to I
Speaker 1: don't want to like totally fall into this nerd stuff
Speaker 1: in case people don't know exactly what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: But you know, when people talk about the Kurdish movement
Speaker 1: of you know, when people talk about Roshabam right and
Speaker 1: the Northeast Syrian Autonomous movement that's going on. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons that I'm under the impression I think, I know,
Speaker 1: you know more about this that Kurdish folks talk about,
Speaker 1: being like, this is not a Kurdish movement. We are
Speaker 1: among these movements. This is a pluralistic movement. Even though
Speaker 1: they're the ones who kind of spearheaded it. I assume
Speaker 1: that this kind of stuff is part of the reason
Speaker 1: that they're like real aware of not wanting to fall
Speaker 1: into nationalism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, it's not an ethno nationalist movement. It's a
Speaker 2: movement which is liberatory and the people it's trying to liberate,
Speaker 2: if it has any one focus, are not the Kurds
Speaker 2: per se, but women if they have a focus. Right,
Speaker 2: But that's why they will use an e s in
Speaker 2: pref to Rosjava, which just means west in Kurdish, right,
Speaker 2: you have north, southeast and West Kurdistan. This is West Kurdistan. Yeah,
Speaker 2: got my compass in my head.
Speaker 1: You know, it's an easier thing to say Roosevelt right
Speaker 1: than oh, yay, the autonomous regions of Northeast Aria.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yes, totally, and people understand what you mean.
Speaker 2: But I think the problem that they have faced, and
Speaker 2: then we'll get back to tour genocide chat is that
Speaker 2: American media are incapable of understanding movements in the Middle
Speaker 2: East without reference to ethnicity or without primarily referencing ethno nationalism. Right,
Speaker 2: like the Uzidis a z d they are kind of
Speaker 2: Kurdish but also distinct right, they're like they have been.
Speaker 2: You have the Yebashi right, which is an a Zli
Speaker 2: group within the broader Kurdish liberation movement. It's confounding for
Speaker 2: people to write about. I have seen other journalists be like, well,
Speaker 2: are they Curds? Are they not Curds? Like? Are they
Speaker 2: you know? Like? And then well, you have two Kurdish groups,
Speaker 2: you know, right next to each other who are in
Speaker 2: conflict right now, Like the Frist is not the salient
Speaker 2: determining right, it's their outlook. But totally especially with Kurds right,
Speaker 2: who because they have been persecuted for who they are
Speaker 2: by various states for a very long time, it's hard
Speaker 2: for I think any frame of analysis it doesn't primarily
Speaker 2: reverenced ethnicity to especially in the Western media, to.
Speaker 1: Be used, no totally. And even when we're talking about
Speaker 1: like the Armenian genocide, right, it's like, you know, we
Speaker 1: talk about the Armenian genocide, and we talk about Asyrian genocide,
Speaker 1: and we talk about the Greek genocide. Well mostly we
Speaker 1: talk about their well mostly we don't talk about any
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah, but like it's the fact that they're
Speaker 1: Christian that is the in many ways, the relevant thing.
Speaker 1: But that also doesn't quite get across. It's not because
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, well, you go to church on Sunday,
Speaker 1: that's why we're mad, you know. Yeah, it's like much
Speaker 1: more important about like cultural stuff that's going on. So
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that we don't know as much, well,
Speaker 1: we know a fair amount about the Armenian genocide. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons it's not talked about as much, right
Speaker 1: is because the Burkish government with the Ottoman Empire was
Speaker 1: interested in covering it up. And the way they covered
Speaker 1: it up was to pretend it wasn't happening, especially while
Speaker 1: it was happening. The goal was to not have the
Speaker 1: West notice until it was done, no photos of it
Speaker 1: were allowed. Photo development places were told to report anyone
Speaker 1: who brought photos in of it. Wow. Passenger trains had
Speaker 1: their windows blacked out so no one could see the
Speaker 1: corpses lining the tracks. And the way they covered it
Speaker 1: up was very orchestrated. First they would be like, no,
Speaker 1: it's not happening. And then if it is happening, if
Speaker 1: someone notices it is happening, it's because of the Armenian insurgency.
Speaker 1: And they pretended that the deportation was humane and that
Speaker 1: all property was inventoried, and they cared about the deportees.
Speaker 1: Another thing they would do is they'd send two telegrams
Speaker 1: with the orders, and one was a like real order,
Speaker 1: like kill them all, and the other would be like
Speaker 1: a pleasant fiction. Right, Oh, how was the deportation going?
Speaker 1: Is everyone doing okay? After the order was followed, they
Speaker 1: would destroy the real telegram and keep the fake one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they destroyed all the files about it. There's
Speaker 1: this like rumor that there's a vault somewhere in a
Speaker 1: Swiss bank with records of this whole thing. Who knows.
Speaker 1: There is a lot of Like as the Ottoman Empire fell,
Speaker 1: they got a lot of the rulers of it moved
Speaker 1: a lot of like golden shit to Switzerland, right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: but why would you keep records of agendocide?
Speaker 2: I guess maybe you're really proud of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: States be weird. I've found some stuff in archives. You're like,
Speaker 2: why do you write this down? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Totally?
Speaker 2: What are you doing here? Bro?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Where's their security culture? I guess when you're like
Speaker 1: the state level actor, you don't have security culture because
Speaker 1: you think you were the top.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, and you don't realize it. Well, I mean,
Speaker 2: what do I do? I try a snoky history book
Speaker 2: about how they're all pieces of shit, like it didn't
Speaker 2: stop them, did it? Like doesn't effect then they're all dead?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I guess you can get Franco exhumed and
Speaker 2: fly his body across the country. That was kind of funny.
Speaker 1: One of the groups that worked hardest to bring attention
Speaker 1: to the Armenian genocide while it was happening was in
Speaker 1: this part's like funny, funny is the wrong word? The
Speaker 1: American Protestant missionaries. Can you guess who the American Christians
Speaker 1: were there to proselytize too?
Speaker 2: The Muslims. No, they try to convert the Armenians to
Speaker 2: like plus one Christians, like unorthodox Christians.
Speaker 1: I mean, they weren't trying to convert them to Christianity, period,
Speaker 1: because that's how American protestant Ism writ large. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously there's Protestant is a very diverse ideological and theological framework. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Protestant missionaries were over there to convert the world's
Speaker 1: oldest Christian nation to Christianity.
Speaker 2: Yes, we love to see it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the literally got our Christianity directly from one of Jesus' apostles.
Speaker 1: Armenians weren't Christian enough for them.
Speaker 2: Perfect.
Speaker 1: But while they were there, America hadn't entered the war yet,
Speaker 1: and the Ottoman Empire didn't like really want America to
Speaker 1: enter the war on the side of kill the Ottoman Empire.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 1: And actually later the US never declared war on the
Speaker 1: Ottoman Empire. So these are some of the only protected
Speaker 1: Christians in the country, and so they're working really really
Speaker 1: hard to try and bring attention to this and care
Speaker 1: for people.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 1: The other protected Christian group that was there were their
Speaker 1: German allies, oh dear, mostly the German allies did not
Speaker 1: work to save all of the Armenians. Some were basically
Speaker 1: taking notes like, oh, you can just kill them all.
Speaker 1: But many German soldiers wound up being some of the
Speaker 1: loudest advocates for recognition of the genocide and provided hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of pages of evidence.
Speaker 2: So yeah, okay, they say, came right in the end,
Speaker 2: this is post World War two, like they no, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: no post World War one, right, okay, So like, because
Speaker 2: that's the thing is like the German allies in the
Speaker 2: eye him An Empire weren't Nazis, you know, No, they
Speaker 2: were mony kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or fucking conscripts, you know, like yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: guessing they like I'm mentioning who Germany would have sent
Speaker 1: to the Ottoman Empire at that time, you know, like
Speaker 1: probably not.
Speaker 2: It's like fighting troops.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure there's some rank and file soldiers
Speaker 1: on the Southern Front of the war. I only know
Speaker 1: a little bit about the Southern Front of the First
Speaker 1: World War, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a an area I don't know a
Speaker 2: lot about either.
Speaker 1: So all of these folks collected evidence, evidence that was needed.
Speaker 1: Because Turkey still denies his mascot of this day. And
Speaker 1: now we've covered the Armenian genocide, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to be like and now it's done, but like, you
Speaker 1: know whatever, Now you know what happened. Now I get
Speaker 1: to talk about the cool people. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about the Armenian man who took out the guy most
Speaker 1: directly responsible for the genocide. He was a small, nervous,
Speaker 1: epileptic man who was driven by visions to do what
Speaker 1: needed to be done, a man named Soghom until her
Speaker 1: Sokomantelerian was born in Anatolia in eighteen ninety six in
Speaker 1: a small peaceful village. Although it's like, oh, peaceful village,
Speaker 1: but it gets compared a lot to the wild West.
Speaker 1: This like rural Ottoman area. Right, violence can pop off
Speaker 1: wherever bandits are everywhere. It is a rough time to
Speaker 1: be an Armenian peasant.
Speaker 2: But you know, just a place where the state doesn't
Speaker 2: ye have like the monopoly on violence, right, Like people
Speaker 2: are just violencing left, right, center, right.
Speaker 1: Instead they're wielding the nomadic war machine with which to
Speaker 1: enact their violence.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: His father emigrated to Serbia during the eighteen nineties because
Speaker 1: of extreme poverty and to hope to send money home
Speaker 1: to his family. Because of the war and the genocide,
Speaker 1: he never made it home again, which is the reason
Speaker 1: he's the family member who survives this story. Mom moved
Speaker 1: the family to a bigger town of like twenty six
Speaker 1: thousand people. You know, I would have been like, that's
Speaker 1: a tiny town, except now where I live, Like, that's
Speaker 1: like way bigger than the big town that's near my
Speaker 1: tiny town, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Metropolis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's probably like three Walmarts there, you know, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2: Back in the eighteen nineties, a Turkey did love a Walmart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. In nineteen thirteen, newly an adult
Speaker 1: Sokolman emigrated to Serbia to join his father. When he
Speaker 1: heard Russia might invade the Ottomans, he was like, oh
Speaker 1: fuck yeah, sign me up, nice, I want to invade
Speaker 1: the Ottomans yet them. He's ready to grow yeah, and
Speaker 1: his dad is like, no, you really shouldn't. He goes
Speaker 1: on a train for twenty four hours to Bulgaria and
Speaker 1: eventually he gets his dad's he's I think he might
Speaker 1: even be seventeen or maybe eighteen, is actually a minor.
Speaker 1: At this point, he needs his dad's permission to sign
Speaker 1: up for the Russian military, which is like surprising to me.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, that is given him the general state
Speaker 2: of the Russian military.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, he has to talk his dad
Speaker 1: into it. His dad's not excited about it. He goes
Speaker 1: to Bulgaria and then he goes to Georgia for training,
Speaker 1: and his commander was this Armenian who had probably been
Speaker 1: an assassin for the ARF back in the day, but
Speaker 1: then he had split with the ARF when they'd backed
Speaker 1: the young Turks. So basically their commander was cool and right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: He seems to have already made all the good choices. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There in Georgia, Tillerian met older ARF fighters and was
Speaker 1: part of this like youthful revolutionary scene, and he writes
Speaker 1: a lot in his journal about how he is like
Speaker 1: madly in love with this woman and but you know,
Speaker 1: they all have to be chased for the revolution and
Speaker 1: shit like that, right, and they get to feel like
Speaker 1: heroes when they're on the train off to the front
Speaker 1: as Armenian refugees wave handkerchiefs and cheers they go off
Speaker 1: to go fight. And I don't want to even be
Speaker 1: cynical about that, because, like I mean, that's true, Like
Speaker 1: they were heroes in this in this context, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I think about like I have friends in
Speaker 2: the PDF and me Emma who are fighting the Tamadola junta. Right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: When they go through villages where they come back, they're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: everyone look lines of roads and clap to them. Or
Speaker 2: when they like liberate villages, you know if one lines
Speaker 2: are road and claps to them, because yeah, they're the people.
Speaker 2: They're the only people doing something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're fighting and dying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they are definitely doing both those things.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He started off as an unarmed medical orderly. The
Speaker 1: Southern Front of World War One was decades behind the
Speaker 1: Western Front technologically because there wasn't the road infrastructure for vehicles.
Speaker 1: Artillery had to be drawn by horse cart. There's no planes,
Speaker 1: no tanks. The Ottomans had fled and so they're basically
Speaker 1: fighting against Kurdish tribes who are fighting the invading Russians.
Speaker 1: Because why support people if you're the Ottoman Empire when
Speaker 1: you can make them do all the dying for you.
Speaker 1: My cynicism is whatever, Speaking of cynicism, here's an ad
Speaker 1: break and we're back. And of course the Russian army
Speaker 1: was also fucked up in murdering people and being evil
Speaker 1: because it's an army.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But as they advance, Tellurian starts seeing the bodies of
Speaker 1: Armenian civilians everywhere. The genocide was decentralized and there's just
Speaker 1: corpses scattered around everywhere. And he's an odd fellow for
Speaker 1: a soldier, right. He's like prone to seizures and passing
Speaker 1: out during times of heightened stress, which includes like being
Speaker 1: in a war and also seeing your entire people murdered.
Speaker 1: At one point, he actually passes out in the middle
Speaker 1: of a firefight.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then there's this part of his life that I
Speaker 1: want to know more about. He starts running across orphans everywhere.
Speaker 1: Most of the survivors of the genocide were children, and
Speaker 1: so there are these gangs of orphans roaming around, begging
Speaker 1: and stealing and avoiding adults. And he makes it his
Speaker 1: purpose in life to rescue as many of them as possible.
Speaker 1: It's became his life mission. And I don't know as
Speaker 1: much about it because he's most famous for being an assassin,
Speaker 1: but he rescued every orphan he could constantly. When he
Speaker 1: wrote about it in his journal, he would talk about
Speaker 1: how he was like, Okay, when they're awake, they run
Speaker 1: away from all the adults, so you got to catch
Speaker 1: him at like dawn when they sleep in the following places.
Speaker 1: And it's like kind of written as if he's like hunting,
Speaker 1: but he's I mean, he's not right, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, he's trying to get these kids out of
Speaker 2: Where do they go? Where do they get rescued?
Speaker 1: That's what I don't know. Okay, that's what I'm frustrated
Speaker 1: by not knowing. Someone must know. But what I have
Speaker 1: read mostly didn't talk about this part of his life.
Speaker 1: But I'm very interested in it, and I don't know.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: Interesting, It like kind of implies that he just has
Speaker 1: this gaggle that's following him.
Speaker 2: Amazing. It's like a child army.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know he's like a medical orderly, right,
Speaker 1: so he's not like, hey, kids, run this grenade up
Speaker 1: to the front, you know, right.
Speaker 2: They can be putting on bandages or yeah, vibing back
Speaker 2: there at the field hospital. Yeah, and people do that
Speaker 2: with dogs. I seem some yeah, some units really just
Speaker 2: accruing dogs.
Speaker 1: That makes sense to me. That would absolutely be me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that would be me too. Yeah, There's one
Speaker 2: unit in Memma that I have this giant plush teddy
Speaker 2: bear like four to five feet off the ground. They
Speaker 2: dragged around with them for a while, like they would
Speaker 2: send me videos of their firefights. You know, they just
Speaker 2: put it in a chair. It would just be like
Speaker 2: like it was spectating at the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I suspect that adding some level of surrealism is a
Speaker 1: useful way to make your way through a war.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can see that, allowing yourself to like maybe
Speaker 2: dissociate or like yeah, just make yeah, like everything's strange
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It seemed to be very good at that in Burma,
Speaker 2: like what the fuck is happening? People do a lot.
Speaker 2: You see it a lot among the gis, whether it's
Speaker 2: people like listening to Katie Perry or something. Well, they're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know out there calling in air support whatever it is,
Speaker 2: Like I've I've noticed it. It's a yeah, it is
Speaker 2: a way to get through things for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so eventually he comes to his own former house.
Speaker 1: It's long since abandoned. It's now a barracks for Russian soldiers.
Speaker 1: He basically comes up and he's like, hey, can I
Speaker 1: like go in there? That's my house. And the guy's like,
Speaker 1: fuck really, and like gives him a cigarette, you know,
Speaker 1: oh great, and he goes and he passes out in
Speaker 1: his childhood garden. And this is what at least when
Speaker 1: he started having visions. It might be when he started
Speaker 1: being epileptic and fainting, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like if he was epileptic and they knew,
Speaker 2: there would be some kind of disqualifying factor for service,
Speaker 2: but maybe not, I don't know. Maybe that's why he
Speaker 2: was a medical ordlyan, not a you know, the machine gunner.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then by the time he's in and this is happening,
Speaker 1: they just need everyone and he's there, you know, totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's there, and he's doing his thing anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and he's clearly capable of continuing to do it, seems like.
Speaker 1: And so he lays down in his childhood garden and
Speaker 1: he has a vision about his brother being there, come
Speaker 1: from Serbia to try and find their family. And he
Speaker 1: wakes up and he's like staggering around his old neighborhood,
Speaker 1: going to his old neighbors' houses and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and it's this transformative experience in his life, and in
Speaker 1: one of these visions he sees Talat Pasha, the orchestrator
Speaker 1: of all of this. The minister raised his hand and
Speaker 1: Tillaryan cut it off, and this he believed was divine revelation,
Speaker 1: and I'm not in any position to tell him he's wrong.
Speaker 1: He also started having vivid dreams of his family giving
Speaker 1: him advice and lessons and also being like pretty constantly,
Speaker 1: his mom would be like, you kill that fucking guy.
Speaker 1: Yet you know it's up. You know you're alive to
Speaker 1: do this thing, right, It's maternal love for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, in nineteen sixteen, shit somehow got even worse for
Speaker 1: the survivors because the Brits abandoned their plan of conquering Constantinople,
Speaker 1: and so the Armenians knew that they would just keep
Speaker 1: being murder until the war was over. Bizarre, for his part,
Speaker 1: stopped promising an autonomous Armenia, and as Armenians started to
Speaker 1: try and resettle reclaim towns, they still faced hell. Then
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventeen, Veteran of the Pod I almost in
Speaker 1: front of the pod, but it's too complicated to say
Speaker 1: that Veteran of the Pod the Russian revolution hits the world.
Speaker 1: Russia signs a peace agreement with the Ottoman Empire, and
Speaker 1: the Armenians are now on their own. In February nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: the Armenians fought like fucking hell to defend their reclaimed
Speaker 1: territory against the Ottomans, which bought time for the exodus
Speaker 1: of the civilians. This moment alone, I would watch a
Speaker 1: ten part mini series about. Yeah, you know, the exodus
Speaker 1: did not go great for people. I mean it saved
Speaker 1: a lot of people's lives. A lot of people froze
Speaker 1: to death or were cut down by Kurdish forces. There's
Speaker 1: like they just like find officers like frozen in their boots,
Speaker 1: you know, in the mountains and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 1: When the Bolsheviks true and formally left the war, they
Speaker 1: agreed to quote utilize every available means to disperse and
Speaker 1: destroy the Armenian bands operating in Russia and the occupied
Speaker 1: provinces of Turkey.
Speaker 2: That was nice of them, Yeah, real, real solidarity kind
Speaker 2: of shit that you love to see.
Speaker 1: Never a good idea to side with the Bolsheviks, even
Speaker 1: as a Bolshevik.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, yeah, yeah, yeah, they will kill you two.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, once again, the Armenians had fought alongside to
Speaker 1: suppose an ally, only to have the ally turn on them.
Speaker 1: Don't worry, that's going to happen at least two more
Speaker 1: times in the very near future. Oh good, good, Tillerian
Speaker 1: and the other Armenian soldiers, they stayed to fight and
Speaker 1: defend this exodus. Right, twelve hundred Armenian soldiers held off
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand Turks.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Tillerian took a severe wound to his right arm in
Speaker 1: the fighting and was out of the fight and was
Speaker 1: like transported.
Speaker 2: To a hospital.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighteen, the Christian nations of Georgia and Armenia
Speaker 1: joined the Muslim nation of Azerbaijan to form a new country, Transcaucasia.
Speaker 1: This didn't last. If you're like al Comino, there's there's
Speaker 1: not a country called that on the map. Somewhere there's
Speaker 1: a white trans people joking here that you shouldn't make
Speaker 1: it be wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's not presenting itself. Really.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They all had their own interests and they were
Speaker 1: all scrambling. Turkey captured Armenia. Azerbai John helped them do it.
Speaker 1: Yet another former ally now attacking Armenia.
Speaker 2: Like right now, currently as you listen to this podcast. Yes,
Speaker 2: but also in the story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, yep, yep.
Speaker 2: Yeah. History is great, kids, because we learned from it
Speaker 2: and we change, we make things better.
Speaker 1: I'm like more and more. I know it's because it's
Speaker 1: like what I do for a living, but I am
Speaker 1: like more and more convinced that we genuinely actually need
Speaker 1: to better understand the history.
Speaker 2: No. Yeah, no, that is a thing that's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Tillurian, as fellow soldiers are trying to fight
Speaker 1: off two armies that are invading some Armenian vets, gather
Speaker 1: in London and they join the Allied forces still fighting
Speaker 1: in the sun in Front. But that didn't go well,
Speaker 1: and Tillarian was not among them. And then World War
Speaker 1: One ended Britain one Constantinople became a safe enough place
Speaker 1: for former enemy combatants like Tillurian, so he went there.
Speaker 1: The young Turks are out of power. Peacetime was hard
Speaker 1: on Tellurian. War had probably been harder, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: honest about that. Yeah, but he felt like he was
Speaker 1: crazy because everyone around him were trying to act like
Speaker 1: they hadn't survived a genocide. He was twenty two.
Speaker 2: At this point. Oh wow, houck, he's young.
Speaker 1: He had spent four years in Hell. Yeah, and he'd
Speaker 1: been taking his time during that time. He had rescued orphans,
Speaker 1: he had buried corpses, he had fought, he had nearly died.
Speaker 1: He had no idea if his family was alive or not.
Speaker 1: He left a notice with the Arf newspaper looking for
Speaker 1: his family. Meanwhile, the Cup the Young Turks, their whole
Speaker 1: leadership had resigned and they escaped done a German torpedo boat,
Speaker 1: like at the last minute. It's a lot Pasha, Jamal
Speaker 1: Pasha and Enver Pasha and a ton of other mass murderers.
Speaker 1: They'd split up, some to Berlin, some to Moscow, some
Speaker 1: to Rome, but no one was sure where they'd gone.
Speaker 1: A lot of the Young Turk leadership was tried in
Speaker 1: absentia and sentenced to death, but most of them weren't
Speaker 1: around to be killed. Some of them were executed, but
Speaker 1: the big leaders of the genocide got the fuck out
Speaker 1: of town. This is not a peaceful time to be
Speaker 1: in the city. It's clearly more peaceful than it just
Speaker 1: like had been during the war, right right, But things
Speaker 1: are spicy. No one knows who's in charge. Greece declared
Speaker 1: that all Greek Christians and Constantinople were independent of the
Speaker 1: Saltan's rule.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love that for them, it as your responsibilities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I kind of I kind of like it
Speaker 1: because like one of the whole things that people use,
Speaker 1: like like anti Catholic stuff in the United States from
Speaker 1: like two hundred years ago was always about our like
Speaker 1: divided loyalty and how you know, Rome was going to
Speaker 1: tell all the Catholics what to do or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like, okay, here's a time where that was sort
Speaker 1: of true.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't the pope, right because it's Greek Orthodox,
Speaker 1: but right, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2: There, whatever, it is a prelate.
Speaker 1: Just I'm slowly learning all this shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not goot out the ship to learn.
Speaker 1: The city was divided up and ruled by Britain, Italy, France,
Speaker 1: and Greece. Everyone sent troops to try and claim a
Speaker 1: piece of the Ottoman Empire. This is like the fucking
Speaker 1: prize of World War One, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the old Man of Europe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the sick Man of Europe.
Speaker 2: Sick Man of Europe. That's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my bad, No, No, it's like I mean it might
Speaker 1: have been the old Man too, but I remember reading
Speaker 1: specifically that I think it was the Czar who called
Speaker 1: him the sick man of Europe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the sick man of Europe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is cool and good that when you imagine
Speaker 1: that there's a sick man in your family, everyone is
Speaker 1: just plotting how to rob him.
Speaker 2: He's just gonna well, to be fair, if you're the
Speaker 2: czar and someone older than you and your family is dead,
Speaker 2: all you're thinking about is like the ship that you're
Speaker 2: going to get when he.
Speaker 1: Dies, Like, yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 2: This is how Aristos relate to each other and it
Speaker 2: it's why they're incapable of normal human empathy and interaction.
Speaker 2: Every success, they have hinges on people they love dying.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, that makes sense. And then the way that
Speaker 1: the sultans would end up, like once a sultan gets
Speaker 1: into power, they like kill most of their family that.
Speaker 2: Yeah they know they Yeah we really, we really set
Speaker 2: them up to do psycho shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. I almost got into like a lot of
Speaker 1: how that, like the power worked in the Ottoman Empire
Speaker 1: and stuff, and then I was like it's not central enough,
Speaker 1: and I I'm not trying to do orientalism about.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it's not like Britain does this stick too, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: all sausage pans are just coming into a power when
Speaker 2: he's like eighty something and half dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so everyone's trying to get a piece of the
Speaker 1: Ottoman empire. Tillian had contact with the larger Armenian revolutionary
Speaker 1: movement through a woman from that Marxist party that had
Speaker 1: used to be mad at the arf. After the genocide,
Speaker 1: no one had the stomach for in fighting one of
Speaker 1: the like rare moments of left or radical unity, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Through her and through the general Armenian community, he learned
Speaker 1: that the murderers had escaped and were hiding out. He
Speaker 1: also learned that in that very neighborhood there was a
Speaker 1: collaborator and Armenian who had compiled a list of names
Speaker 1: for the Turks and was like alive and living large
Speaker 1: a couple blocks away. So Tilarian was like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that guy will never do it again, and
Speaker 1: then lived a quiet and peaceful life as a coffee importer.
Speaker 2: I fancy that's maybe not true.
Speaker 1: No wait, no, the quiet, peaceful life is a coffee
Speaker 1: importer is going to come after a bunch of murder.
Speaker 1: Uh Tilarian did not waste time. Everyone was complaining about
Speaker 1: the collaborator, but no one would do anything about it.
Speaker 1: This is the thing that was making him feel fucking crazy,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, so we started hanging out near the
Speaker 1: guy's house. He waited for the collaborator to be hanging
Speaker 1: out near a window. One evening, he was giving a
Speaker 1: toast to his guests and then he had a big mental.
Speaker 1: We have his journ roles, is why we know a
Speaker 1: lot of what he was thinking of these various times
Speaker 1: he was like, should I shoot him in the head
Speaker 1: or the chest? I'm not talking about current events here.
Speaker 1: I'm not talk here about current events here.
Speaker 2: Just go right, bast it.
Speaker 1: This soldier with battle experience shot the man in the
Speaker 1: chest and aimed center mass and then fled the scene.
Speaker 2: How'd that go for him?
Speaker 1: It went great?
Speaker 2: Okay? Yeah.
Speaker 1: His Marxist friend found him at his apartment and shook
Speaker 1: his hand and said, I congratulate you, my brother, because
Speaker 1: he gets home and he's like, I didn't see him die.
Speaker 1: I fucked up. I should have gone for the head shot.
Speaker 1: The fuck am I doing? I'm a failure. My mother
Speaker 1: will never forgive me. I don't know if he went
Speaker 1: that far. She comes in and she's not the mother.
Speaker 1: The friend, the Marxist revolutionary comes and says, I congratulate you,
Speaker 1: my brother, and informed him that his target was dying
Speaker 1: in the hospital. And just like that, to Larian was
Speaker 1: a hero. He was not one whom people could really
Speaker 1: shout about from the rooftops, but everyone in the Armenian
Speaker 1: community was like, there's our guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is our dude now.
Speaker 1: And then he was like, well, that's not enough. I'm
Speaker 1: a pretty cool person. What if I do even more
Speaker 1: cool stuff? And the cool stuff he's gonna do spoiler
Speaker 1: alert become a coffee importer. That's not the that's not
Speaker 1: the party's famous for. We're gonna talk about it on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: It is a cool thing to do, though. I like coffee,
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, if you're financing justice for Joe us not justice,
Speaker 2: I suppose more like revenge.
Speaker 1: He has a pretty like happily ever after story.
Speaker 2: Okay, now I'm excited.
Speaker 1: This is like one of the most happily ever after
Speaker 1: hero people on this show I've ever talked about. And
Speaker 1: if you want to hear that, you have to wait
Speaker 1: till Wednesday. Well not you, James, you have to wait
Speaker 1: about fifteen minutes. Okay, sick. But first, if people want
Speaker 1: to hear more from you, where can they do it? Yeah?
Speaker 2: All over the internet at the moment. I'm talking about
Speaker 2: about the Olympics at the minute because they are happening.
Speaker 2: And I wrote a book about the anti fascist Popular
Speaker 2: Olympics which happened in nineteen thirty six. Anti fascist Populalympics. Good,
Speaker 2: regular iOS, Olympics Bad. That's the short version of my book.
Speaker 2: For the longer version, you can find it on the
Speaker 2: internet or i'd a libry. I'd love you to go
Speaker 2: to your library and ask them to get the book
Speaker 2: and then lots of people can read it and you
Speaker 2: don't have to part with your money. It's called the
Speaker 2: Popular Front and the nineteen thirty six barcel In Olympics.
Speaker 2: It's written by me, James Stout. They can listen to
Speaker 2: it could happen here. Another podcast on the Carl Zone
Speaker 2: Media network where we talk about all kinds of news
Speaker 2: and current affairs, where I am currently writing about Turkey
Speaker 2: and its actions in Kurdistan. So if you're down on
Speaker 2: Turkey and I'm sorry, but there's going to be more
Speaker 2: on the Turkey front that will be out in a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks, I hope, And yeah, I think that's
Speaker 2: where I have Twitter James Stout, and I have a
Speaker 2: website James Stout dot net, which has all kinds of
Speaker 2: things I've written in the past.
Speaker 1: Nice if you want to hear more from me, I
Speaker 1: write every Wednesday on Substack. Half of the posts are free.
Speaker 1: If it's like a more important thing I'm saying to
Speaker 1: the world or whatever, it'll be free. And then if
Speaker 1: it's slightly more personal, you can pay me if you
Speaker 1: want to read my memoir stuff. And I also do
Speaker 1: an individual and community preparedness podcast or Live Like the
Speaker 1: World Is Dying. You can hear James on some of
Speaker 1: the episodes. I have a book that is currently in
Speaker 1: pre order called The Sapling Cage, and you can get
Speaker 1: it wherever you get books, but instead you should get
Speaker 1: it from Firestorm Well, if you're in the US, you
Speaker 1: should get it from Firestorm Books. It's a cooperative run publisher.
Speaker 1: I swear I know how to use words based in Ashville,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, and if you order it from them for
Speaker 1: your pre order, it'll come signed.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: It comes out in September. I'm excited for people to
Speaker 1: read it. I think you'll enjoy it. If you don't,
Speaker 1: don't tell me. I don't care. Take care of yourselves
Speaker 1: and we'll see you on Wednesday. Cool People Who Did
Speaker 1: Cool Stuff is production of cool Zone Media. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website foolzonmedia dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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