A Geek History of Time - Episode 143 - V for Vendetta Redux Part I

Episode Date: January 29, 2022

You know, Stalin and the Nazis were these welfare state types. One of us is a stand-up comic. Can you tell what it is? Ladies and gentlemen, everyone, brick. Um. But the problem. Oh my god. That's like, I could use that to teach the whole world. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha 1.5-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1- This is a geek history of time. Where we connect to a real world.

But it is at Le Mans. I mean, world history and English teacher here in Northern California. And I really don't have any say no worthy to share right now. What do you got to go on? Well, I'm a Latin teacher and a drama teacher up here in Northern California. My name's Damian Harmony. And I have a deep and abiding love for graphic novels as well as for the history of... Well, a lot of things that are really, really unpleasant, which is why I really enjoyed the last few episodes of the Sherlock Holmes stuff because we were talking about British Empire.

So other than that, I can tell you not too terribly much to be perfectly honest. It's winter time, so essentially is my time to shine because it gets dark early and I can go outside and not get a sunburn. and I can go outside and not get a sunburn. So. Well, you know, isn't the summertime literally your time to shine because, you know, the sun shines off of you rather like the moon? It's more that that's the time for appeals. Because my skin, it appeals.

It appeals. Really, I go from salmon to scarlet back to salmon. Like it's not... Yeah, no I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure you've heard this story from me, but have I shared on the podcast about the worst summer I've ever witnessed? Uh, no. But you mentioned graphic novels. I did! And so, I'm curious, because I have a sneaking suspicion. That's going to be related to what we're going to be talking about this evening. Yeah.

It occurred to me that in all of our talks lately of, let's see, what are we talking about? We talked about zombies. We got in England because we had Sean of the dead. And we had a few, the 28 days later. And then you've been talking about Sherlock. And it occurred to me that, you know, I did a very British based podcast,

but when we had a guest, I believe. I missed out on this. Yeah, I missed out on this. This is for Vendetta, isn't it? It is for Vendetta, yeah. So previously, we had a friend of the show, Tim Watts, a comic book artist. It was a very good get for us to discuss this specific thing. And it occurred to me that we should maybe bring it back. So perhaps you would get your reactions in there

as well. And so settle in because this is the V for Vendetta episode, which I've titled. V for Vendetta was overblown for its time, which makes it perfect for our time. Also, the movie too, but in a totally different time. And yeah, I can't argue with any of that. Like, I'm interested in getting into the details, but like you make that statement, and there's no part of me that wants to go, well, okay, but.

Yeah, the titles in the thesis. I can't, yeah. Frederick Douglass, like. So. All right. So yeah, V for Vendetta was a graphic novel, written almost right in line with the victory of Thaturism It debuted in 1983 and it was wildly unpopular in the anthology in which it was printed

Really? Yeah, no one fucking liked it However later it was bought by DC and it they published it in a color in a 10 series or a 10 issue series And finished its arc. So it was written by Alan Moore. You would know him from. Famous for Watchman. Famous also for the League of Extraternity Gentlemen. All of which interestingly have statements to make about empire and about colonialism.

And cult of personality surrounding it's huge. Yeah, yeah, I like that. Cult of personality. And to one extent or another, they are deconstructions, reconstructions. Yeah, that's kind of his thing. And in fact, that brings us to two of the other things he wrote, swamp thing. Yes.

And Batman the Killing joke. Yes. Yeah. Both of which managed to be repotent stories in their own right and also intensely meta. Yes. Yes. Now he did V for V and he wrote V for V and David Lloyd was the man who illustrated it. In a reprint of all of it, David Lloyd said this about V for V and

data. Quote, there aren't many cheeky, cheery characters in view for Vendetta. It's for people who don't switch off the news. Boy, the understatement in the first part of that quote. Yeah. Yeah. But that kind of goes away to explain why it was not very popular in his anthology that it was printed in either. What was the anthology? Oh, I don't recall them because it wasn't 80 2000, wasn't it? No, I don't believe so.

I would have remembered that name. I don't recall the name, but yeah, it wasn't like something that housed Archie and Veronica at the same time, but at the same time, it like... It wasn't heavy metal. Right. Let's get pretty. Right. Totally up and to the establishment.

Now, in the original DC Comics run for VFN, DETA, Alan Moore said the following. He said said quote, ''Now you've taken also be detected in my supposition that it would take something as a mel- I'm sorry, that it would take something as melodramatic as a near-miss nuclear conflict to nudge England toward fascism. It's 1988 now. Margaret Thatcher is entering her third term of office and talking confidently of an unbrokenbroken conservative leadership well into the next century. I'm going to break there for a second.

He was right. They just changed brands. Coming back to the table. The tabloid press are circulating the idea of concentration camps for persons with AIDS. Again, I'll break out. This was 1988. Yes. Breaking back in. By the way, before I break

back in, Reagan had only just acknowledged AIDS as a thing. I believe in 86 or 87. Yeah. And even after acknowledging that it was a thing, they were dragging their feet. And there was a lot of like like you've talked about past episodes about well why are you so concerned about it Bob right making fun of the reporter who's like dude the fuck's going on here yeah people are dying assholes and I just I just bring that up because we're heading into I'm going to date this this episode um aicron has just been found or reported upon in the last day or so. Yet another variant of... You started Jesus Christ actually.

A virus that we could have beaten a year and a half ago if we'd actually paid attention to it and put money toward it. You know, a friend of mine, stated a year and a half ago, that somebody asked him as a mathematics guy. You know, you don't know about the math that I think, you know, you can have an opinion on this. How long do you think it's gonna take for us to beat this thing? Right. And he said well

I'd say it'll take a month From the time we start taking it seriously. Yeah And he revisited that quote eight months after he said it and said I was right We just haven't ever taken it sufficiently seriously. Yeah. So, yeah. It's kind of like when they talk about grief, they say that you, like, let's say you suffer

a massive breakup or a massive, you know, a person very dear to you who dies, they say you actually only cry for 24 hours. It's just that nobody can cry for 24 hours straight So it's gonna take you years to get that 24 hours of crying over that event out Now I recognize that that is What's the word not apocryphal but like it's it's folk folk talish it's old wives talish But there's an intuitive sense to that and it seems like yeah, it'll take us a month

Just we're stretching that month out and restarting it over and over and over and over and over and over again It's kind of yeah gone and and there's a certain segment of our population It just refuses to take it seriously like at all ever mm-hmm. Yeah, it's kind of like how you're actually technically starving to death It's just every time you eat something, you restart the clock. There you go. Wow. That's gonna keep me awake at night. So, okay. So back to his quote, the tabloid press are circulating the idea of concentration camps for persons with AIDS. The new riot police wear black visors as do their horses and their vans have rotating video cameras mounted on top. Now, breaking out, this was 1988. Breaking back in, the government has expressed a desire to

eradicate homosexuality, even as an abstract concept, and one can only speculate as to which minority will be the next legislated against. I'm thinking of taking my family and getting out of this country soon. It's cold and it's mean-spirited and I don't like it here anymore." End quote. Now the thing is, with that quote, that sounds so much like me in the last year. So yeah. Right, yeah. Now, both men meant for their graphic novel to mean something.

They both did mean for Veefrundetta to mean something. And at the time, they were reacting to Thatcher and what she meant for the direction of their country. But now it's taken on a whole new meaning, which some purists will say is impossible, but I'm not one of them. Yeah, well, and I want to touch back on, on, that's your, oh good, because I'm going to real fast hard on her.

Okay, because, because remember that one of, one of the first few episodes we did was about that's your, and, and so I think it's worth touching again on what a remarkable reversal. Yes. Thatcher's whole fucking platform was from everything that had been part of the kind of, you know, behind the scenes agreement,

the un-stated political social contract between labor and the conservative parties since World War II. They called it the post-war consensus for Fox sake because it was, well, after the war and going on into infinity, what's the assumption? This is just how it's going to be. Like, we're going to argue over the edges of privatization. We're going to argue over this that and the other thing, the level of taxation, this that and the other. But nobody's going to fuck with the NHS. Right.

You know, nobody's, nobody's, like labor unions, nobody's going to fuck with the institution of labor unions. Right. It was like roads, like we all agree that roads are a thing that we publicly maintain. This is how it works. Yeah. This is yeah, this is just the system. You know, and we're not, you know, public housing, like all of the all of the welfare state programs that have been put in place after World War II, largely is a way to prevent communists from getting a foothold. Yeah, it's like, well, if we don't want people to just go,

you know, fall on fucking Marxist, we'd better, you know, give some room and go somewhere toward socialist. Right. Like, you know, the very idea of the socialist welfare state was just, okay, this is how we're gonna do things. Mm-hmm. And then all of a sudden that shows up with you know a Molotov cocktail in her hand which is ironic you know in that way

but like is like no I'm gonna set fire to this bitch. Well I wouldn't say all of a sudden though I would say as as you had pointed out in in I, episode three of our podcast, there was a long growing shift that was happening. And yeah, in 1979, she does take power. The conservative party and Margaret Thatcher take power as part of a larger and decided shift to the right from the welfare state that had been in place since the end of World War II, like you said. And they got elected to power in England.

And it's largely characterized by a populist conservatism, economic and moral. And this is part of a larger worldwide movement to the right in that same vein. The technocracies had failed to put a halt to the economic downturns of the early 1970s. They had failed to properly address the failures of 1968. Not just the United States with the Ted Offensive, but also the tanks coming into Czechoslovakia from the USSR, the election of Charles DeGal, the election

of Richard Nixon, all of these were huge failures of the populist left to actually get shit working. Well, 68, the riots in Paris. Yeah. The students picking up cobblestones. Yeah. And the answers to those students, this is your vote. Yes. and picking up, picking up cobblestone. Yeah, and the answer to those students, this is your vote. Yes, and the answer to those riots was,

DeGol is now in power. Like, they failed. And because the populace left failed in 68, that led, and because the populace left, and frankly, the technocratic left, failed in the 1970s to answer the economic downturn. Populist writers came into power in 1979 through 1981 all over the globe. Most obviously, Fatcher and Reagan.

Okay. And it was a model born of libertarianism. And it was. Yeah. Go on. Well, no, I'm just just agreeing with your assertion about model born libertarianism. Yeah. I think their rhetoric was built around libertarianism. I don't know if the ideology was. Well, I think that libertarianism tends toward individualism and it tends toward ultimately authoritarianism. I really do think libertarians, they want, and I'm painting with a very broad brush here,

but historically, I think this bears out. Libertarians tend to want to be the dictator of their own realm. You don't get to tell me what to do in my sovereignty. Okay, that's fair. Yeah. I did. Yeah. So, that boot stamping on a human face forever could be mine someday.

So I'd better lick shine it. And it was born of a strong authoritarian government that would stay out of business, allow for privatization, weaken the unions, and make it so that homosexuality, even though in England it had literally been legal since 1966, was also legislatively discouraged in terms of quote intentional promotion and quote of homosexuality Right, so you know, I mean nowadays it's critical race theory Now it's you know Satanism because of a mask, you know tell you what tell me tell me what that phrase means and I'll tell you whether or not I fucking teach it You tell you tell me yeah, yeah, you using the buzzword,

tell me what the fuck that is, then I can tell you whether or not I teach it. Oh, you don't know, then fuck off. It also recaps. Sorry, that's you, sure. Sorry. That's okay. So the same wave also recasts Christianity

into an imminently personal salvation based religion instead of a force for social change. It de-secularized Christianity so that God coming back, the rapture was not eminent, it was imminent. And he would pluck you out of this shit hole and save you, not that he was waiting for you all to get it right. Which has led to this weird metastasization now of, okay, well, if I can be really, really, really shitty, I can make the end times come around sooner and then he'll pluck me out.

It's like, bro, he's only pluckin' the good ones. Like, what are you doin'? Yeah, well, like, you're okay. So the funny thing about this is, we're an atheist and a Catholic, sitting across on opposite sides of a virtual table from each other, talking about modern Protestant theology, which like, ha ha ha, silly pratties, like, you know, we can

both point and laugh from completely different directions. Well, it's like when my communist friends says fucking liberals and all the conservatives in the room are like hell Yeah fucking liberals and he's like oh We're not the same. We agree here. No, we're not the same I mean an entirely different set of things. Yeah, yeah, like don, don't be an angry to fuck it up. This is the overlap, but this is it. Like, it's not even really an overlap. No, like, it's an accidental overlap.

It's an accidental, yeah, it's a moment of moment of moment where the sign waves line up for that second, but for the frequencies wildly diverge. Have you ever seen those species correlations? I love looking up species correlations. So like the amount of what was it? People who strangled themselves accidentally in bed with their own bed sheets, lines up perfectly with the amount of Nicholas Cage movies made in a year or something like that.

That's funny. Yeah. So it's one of those overlaps. There's one where we're somebody linked the global temperature to level of piracy. Oh nice. See that? It's partly as piracy has dropped off.

Uh-huh. Global temperatures have gone up. So clearly we need more pirates. Oh, I like. I like. Yeah. I thought it was going to go the other way. Another one was like the amount of people

getting sociology degrees in Maine and the amount of death by steam Okay Yeah, yeah, it's it's that divorce rates in Delaware and like the price of Marjorin in Wisconsin or some shit like It's just wild wild. Yeah, you know correlation. So it's it's that so yeah, but but I want to I want to I want to pick on on the Protestants theology for a second here a little bit in that The the particular what would I find interesting about it? About this all of a sudden, you know British conservatives now want to trylaw homosexuality. The thing is the brand of Protestant outlook, the particular brand of judgey bullshit

that became a central part of that brand of political Christianity was an import to Britain from us. Yes. It is, it is like you can, you can draw a line. Yeah. Oh yeah. So easily from, oh, they want to integrate the schools. Mm-hmm. Well, okay, white evangelicals in the South don't want to let that happen.

So we're going to, we're going to have our religious schools. Okay, well, if we're going to do that, then we need political leverage. We want public funding for this. So what other issues can we find that we can get sympathy on? Right. Oh, hey, abortion. Oh, hey, people are creeped out by homosexuals. Oh, hey, abortion. Oh, hey, you know, people are creeped out by homosexuals. Oh, hey, here we go.

Mm-hmm. And then that getting exported back to Britain, like the brand of... We sent our Puritans back. Yeah, essentially. Like, didn't y'all initially create circumstances that forced them out because y'all didn't want to be that judgy? Like, you weren't willing to turn things into a religious state, so they left and I

don't know. Right. And now you're like, oh yeah, come on in. Yeah, yeah, let's do it. So it also helped that in the 1970s, this idea of looking strong, especially as a former empire, meant military might, right? It also would mean reestablishing England as a major military player in a world

that had not seen superpowers do very well in the prior decade. For instance, the United States just finished losing in Vietnam and the USSR was on its way to a loss in Afghanistan Which is really the perfect time to puff ones chest out and lead an eventual war against penguins in the South Atlantic You know, okay, here's the deal. I got to admit. I mean, Biblin about the fault on this crisis It's a brave stance to take because because because because on the one hand,

yeah, it's it's the last gasp of a of an irrelevant empire. So like, what the fuck? On the other hand, it was against the Argentinians who were fucking Nazis. Yeah, Like, yeah? So... Not wrong. Like, you know... I don't... Like, it's not like I'm gonna root for the Argentinians because they're fucking Nazis.

But on the other hand, it's like I don't really know if I want to root for you either. Yeah, there is a layer. Yeah, no, I get you. There's a layer of of I'm rooting for injuries during this game. That, you know, I actually actually said that the other day because I'm going to date this sort of because we're recording this just a few days after Thanksgiving. I actually said that in front of my in-laws when the Detroit versus, and not Detroit, sorry,

the Raiders versus Dallas game was playing. No, I thought it was the Lions versus Dallas. Cause the Lions versus Chicago. Oh, you're right. Detroit, Detroit. Detroit, Chicago. And I got reminded that in my extended family, we always root against Chicago

because everybody's from St. Louis. Oh, okay. So so my in-laws that that was easy for them, but I was like, well, okay, so it's the Raiders versus Dallas. I don't know who like I can't root for anybody and I kind of can't figure out who to root against. Right. So I rooted for injuries. So it's I guess it's the same kind of thing. Like, okay, fine.

Yeah. Absolutely. So that's the setting. As a military history buff though, I just do need to interject. I'm sorry. Goose Green was the last time anybody performed a bayonet charge.

Okay. Historically speaking. Okay. So a group of British, I want to say it was Royal Marines actually performed a bayonet charge against a group of Argentine troopers largely because they were running low on ammunition and the funny thing about it is, of course, this is in a circumstance where everybody on the battlefield was literally carrying an automatic weapon. And the fact that the Brits were charging with bayonets caused the Argentinians to break and run.

It, yeah, just psychological. Just like, okay, they're that fucking crazy. Yeah. So anyway, sorry anyway sorry no it's fine so this is the setting in which Alan Moore wrote V for vendetta now as a quick aside I'm going to quote from V for vendetta let me see if I can find the page number I cannot find the page number but it's early on and and V is putting on the mask or he's he's ready. And it says, quote, this is him listening to the radio

or the television. Mr. Carell went on to say that it is the duty of every man in this country to seize the initiative and make Britain great again. Okay. That was 1983. Okay, well, make America great again had been a Reaganite slogan. Yes.

When he's running primary against Ford, if I recall. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. So, fun fact, in 1983, Fature's government failed to properly fund the NHS so that it could get its own supply of blood, and thousands of hemophiliax got inflicted blood that had HIV and or hep C because they had to go on the open market, get the lowest bidder and ended up with a supply of clotting factor 7, no 8, that wasn't nearly regulated enough. Because capitalism is always better.

Ball, shit, dead. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, okay, wait. Yeah, sure. Okay. All right, so now in the course of your research, we're able to figure out whether this was

malicious unfunding or just ideologically, we don't care that much about the NHS. So like, we bungled this because we weren't paying attention, which really is the line. Because, and I ask you this honestly, because we've seen for years, cruelty is the point. Well, that's that's kind of that's kind of what I'm wondering have had we gotten to that point to cruelty is the point. I don't know. Nixon was doing like that with the war on drugs.

So I mean, you'd seen working models like that. Again, you'd seen, you know, the privatization in the ABC countries down in the South America, you'd seen working models like that. Again, you'd seen, you know, the privatization and the ABC countries down in the South America, you'd seen, it's not like the British we're doing something original here. It's just that they're. It's true. I don't know.

I genuinely. As a first world country, they weren't supposed to be the ones banking this kind of mistake. Yeah, you know, mistake kind of an airquot. Exactly. Sort of an airquot. And so the planet which the cruelty and the stupidity are overlapping and interchangeable,

I think we're seeing it right there. I don't think they were like deliberately trying to kill people, but I also don't think ideologically they could have pulled back on, oh fuck, we really do need regulation. They couldn't do that. So we're not quite at a circle yet, but the Venn diagram is approaching that. Yes, yes. Okay.

Now again, in 1983, Fuck. Yeah, this comic was initially very unpopular, but when it was published about five years later by DC, so in 80s, 88, it picked up some steam. The basic plot is essentially that a fascist government called Norse fire has taken over England in the shadow of a nuclear holocaust that missed England. In the 1980s and 1970s, that was actually a very real threat that people had lived through.

V himself is an anarchist, which sets the tale to be between the two extreme political philosophies, which is what Moore was trying to do. The story is that he essentially is an avatar for anarchism, a movement unto himself, who seeks to push back against the fascism that has taken root in England in the late 1990s. He does it through terrorism and murder,

he also tortures an underage sex worker into an existential crisis, which she comes out of stronger for having been tortured. Eventually, the story ends in the chaos that Visteraism has caused with the government devouring itself to close the book. Okay, go. This may be a segue, but it strikes me in the way you summarize that. That's the T-N-Sex worker, and I feel terrible that I don't remember the character's name. Evie. Evie, thank you. It strikes me that the story regarding Evie. Thank you. It strikes me that the story regarding Evie falls uncomfortably close to what happened to Barbara Gordon and the killing joke. It's like he was trying it out. It's like, you know, like, you know, like any time you watch an Aaron Sorkin show, you're like, oh, I heard that on the West Wing already.

Yeah, good point. You know, Oh, hey, an argument for drug legalization. This must be Sorkin. Look, a liberal take on something that leftist did. Sorkin. Yeah, Sorkin. So, yeah, I'm just like it, it, it just like it it I'm a huge fan of V for vent out of the comic Let less so the movie but we can get into that conversation later. Mm-hmm and and I am also Simultaneously deeply uncomfortable with the things that Alan Moore has done to women in his fiction.

If that makes sense. Oh, yeah. It's kind of like, as we've talked about my relationship to Tolkien and his subconscious racism. Yes. Okay. It's well done. Yeah. Yeah. While I'm sure it's well prepared, it doesn't taste good. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, anyway, I just had to have that aside. Just that that jumped out at me all of a sudden like, oh, hey, another circumstance of a female character being tormented. Yes. Yeah, he does.

He does. I don't know if there's a, well, okay, I, I, I'm not going to say that there's not a misogyny there, there is. I think though that it could also be metaphoric to him, wherein, what's the way to show? Do you remember watching Conair? Yes. Okay, do you remember Cole Meney's character?

Vaguely. Okay, they did in one scene that was literally a two second cut showed us everything we need to know about this character. Vagely. Okay, they did in one scene that was literally a two-second cut showed us everything we needed to know about this character. He parked in a handicap spot in a sports car. Okay, there you go. It's that. So I wonder if some of this is Alan Moore going, what's the quickest shorthand I can use to show his person is depraved beyond belief. He'll attack a woman. You know, it's in John Wick, they killed the dog. You know, it's that kind of shit. So, okay, let me show you.

And at the same time, though, he does keep putting women in torturous positions. So what you say there is definitely meat on that bone. Okay. Yeah. But it's clear that the comic meant something to Alan Moore. He wrote it and he struck at the power structure that was in place in Britain and has been virantly against, he has been virantly against their overreach since writing his comics. Now at the time he wrote it from the perspective of anarchist v. fascist and what that presented. At the time he was writing V for Vendetta, Fatcher was facing her first crisis, really. Her wave of popularity was waning

and she'd been in power a couple years and there were riots in the places where they hadn't been in years. Now, and there's some interesting parallels here with her and Reagan, so hang with me on this. Now, according to Moore, quote, there were fascist groups, the national front, the British national party, who were flexing their muscles and sort of trying to make political capital out of what were fairly depressed and jobless times. It seemed to me that with this kind of Reagan

Thatcher axis that existed across the Atlantic, it looked like Western society was taking somewhat a turn for the worst, breaking out for just a second, the most British way to put it. Very. Yes. Breaking out some more, you remember my Ace of Base episode. You start to see national fronts and ethno-statists coming out in the 80s. All right, back to this. Continue the quote. There were ugly fascist stains starting

to reassert themselves that we might have thought had been eradicated back in the 30s. But they were reasserting themselves with a different spin. They were talking less about annihilating, whichever minority they happened to find disfavor with, and talking more about free market forces and market choice and all these other kinds of glib terms, which tended to have the same results as an awful lot

of the kind of fascist causes back in the 1930s, but with a bit more spin put upon the friendly face of fascism." So that's what Moore is saying about when that you got elected. Yeah. Now this, yeah. Well, the one thing that occurs to me is again, it comes back to part of my thesis in the Warhammer 40K episode, is that for somebody who grew up under the post-work consensus, the level of whiplash toward free market unregulated, everything privatizing stuff would look overtly far more fascist

like overtly far more fascist, then it would necessarily look to the individuals espousing the privatization, if that makes sense. And to somebody in a less socialized economy, like, say say the United States, it would look less like a, you know, oh my god, we're shifting the fascism because, you know, the Overton window was in a completely different position to start with. And so the rapidity of the, not rapidity, the extremity the the the rapidity of the or the not rapidity the extremity of the shift. I think is part of the reason that this is the point where you see people in Britain starting to make comparisons to fascism with thatcher and Reagan. Whereas in the United States, we don't really start seeing people saying, you know, hey, this is like fascist light until, you know, 98, 2000, you know, with, with, you know, W. Yeah.

It took a couple of administrations before people in the already further right leaning politics of the United States started making that comparison. Well, I think because in the United States, fascism didn't really look bad to most of the Americans until they started invading places, actually invading them. Whereas in Europe, fascism started looking bad a lot earlier than that. So it wasn't until we invaded a sovereign country with very little pretense that people started going, hey, it's kind of flashy versus,

our threshold for fascism is much higher because we've got two oceans. Yeah. So now, and this was in 1981, and the fascination that the Britons had with bandits, with outlaws, dashing villains, it was much higher than across the pond over here. This combined with Moore's desire to fast forward about a generation, which is, frankly, a standard writer's tool, and to see what would and could happen if that tourism was allowed to continue its logical march forward. We've already seen similar sci-fi in the same era in England, like you said, the Warhammer 40k stuff. England seems to like its dashing villains much more than Americans do too.

V for Vendetta was still very much a British phenomenon. Oh, very much. What's it you talk about the dashing bandit? That goes back to the Regency period when there was a rash of highway robbery, like as an actual thing. And the popular media at the time was filled with stories of dashing highwaymen who were in a couple of notable cases, they think were former footmen to country gentlemen

who had the heirs and the characteristics of a noble right, while they were engaging in violent criminal activity and the legitimacy of the government behind them. Yeah, well, yeah, the nobleman had that and therefore by extension their agents did too So long as they were agents of the nobles well Part of part of the appeal the stories to the to the To the groundlings was that they were robbing the nobles. Yes, the people with the money that they were targeting and so so that made them the heroes of the people

Yes, which which like, which at the time authority was outraged by the fact that these figures were being turned into popular heroes. And the British seemed to like that quite a bit. Here's a quote from more. He said, quote, so it all evolved from different sources, from several different sources. But it was playing into the fact that over here in England, we've got quite a good tradition of villains and sociopaths as heroes. Like Robinhood, Guy Fox, and all the rest of them.

And in our fiction, in British children's comics, there were probably as many sociopathic villains who'd got their own comic strips as there were heroes. Possibly more. The British have always had sympathy with the dashing villain. And Moore's political thinking led to his art being the way it was. Quote, as far as I'm concerned, the two poles of politics were not left wing or right wing. In fact, there are just two ways of ordering an industrial society and we're moving, we're fast moving beyond the industrial societies of the 19th and 20th centuries. It seemed to me the more absolute extremes were anarchy and fascism." And quote, and so doing more kind of both sides did there. Well, he did. Yeah. I mean, he solidly did because the thing is,

Eevee and V are both unreliable narrators. Yes. And to the extent that the story of V for a Vendetta is viewed through Eevee's eyes, that makes it suspect. Yeah, at least the first half of it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so he was, he was trying about sides it.

I think the thing is, if you don't read it with enough detail, the both sides and gets lost. Yeah. Well, and he even said as much. He said, quote, what I was said as much. He said quote, What I was trying to do was to take these two extremes of the human political spectrum and set them against each other in a kind of little moral drama Just to see what works and what happened. I tried to be as fair about it as possible. I mean, yes Politically, I'm an anarchist at the same time. I didn't want to stick out, or I didn't want to stick to just moral blacks and whites. I wanted a number of the fascists I portrayed

to be real rounded characters. They've got reasons for doing what they do. They're not necessarily cartoon Nazis. And so that's him trying to have integrity as an artist, but also admitting his left leanings. And bias. Yeah, and frankly, here's where he and I disagree. He saw fascism creeping in and thought,

yeah, but what about if we make people afraid of anarchists instead of just talking bad about fascists? I see it as creeping in and I think, hey, let's worry about everything else later. The bacteria count for fascism is way too high to ignore time for antibiotics. Or better yet, the virus has taken a hold. Let's worry about some other things later. Let's just get everybody vaccinated. Yeah. Yeah. Not to, you know, drop an anvil on anything there. Right. Or anything. You know, I think

there's a very comfortable middle class anarchist vibe involved in him wanting to do that thought experiment thing he's talking about. Yes. And I,. Yes. And the thing is, as much as he says that, I think he admits to I tried to be as fair as I could, which number one, like I'm with you, fascists don't deserve being fair right right off the bat But but even even at the level at which he approached that I think He can be criticized

Because the thing is even in the comics and we can talk about the film later in the film fucked everything up in my opinion But but even in the comics, V is way cooler than any of the fascists, like by leaps and bounds. He is, but he doesn't get nearly as much panel time. He is clearly a force for chaos. All right. Where, you know, say what you will about Norse fire in the fascists,

at least they were orderly. Yes. Yeah. And, and the, I'm trying to remember the detective's name. Pro, who's, who's, who's, Prothrow, Prothrow is a wonderful study of a work-a-day cog in a fascist machine. And like he's not, he's not even ideologically. Right. A fascist. Like he looks at, he looks at the hardcore members of the party and you can tell he's kind of like whatever you're crazy.

Yep. You know, he, he has a job to do. He's a police detective. He wants to get to the bottom of things. That's like his, he doesn't have time for your politics. He's a police detective. He wants to get to the bottom of things. That's like his Yeah, he doesn't have time for your politics. He's busy solving murders. Yeah, yeah, and you know, yeah, and so he's been co-opted by the party By that and the thing is

It's a brilliant. It's it's a absolutely I wish It's a brilliant. It's it's a absolutely I wish I absolutely wish the one flaw like major flaw that I have with the way Or that I find in the way that more wrote things was I really wish there had been More of a moment for Prathra to look at Who he was working for. Yeah, but he's not interested. And have a, well, he's not that's not his character. I understand, but I wish there, I wish he had been forced to. You want an A-H-A moment for a quick way. Yeah, I want, I want that and I because like you I don't think it's a good idea to be fair to fucking fascists Right, you know what I mean and and so like on an artistic integrity level, I totally get

Why Prathro was the character he was and and like it's amazingly well done? But you know Like the analogy we were talking about, this meal is really well cooked, but it doesn't taste good. Right. You know. Yeah, so.

Now, interestingly, now I'm gonna spend the first half of this on the comic and then I'll switch over to the movie because they're different things. Now, interestingly though, he did object strongly to the defanging of fascists in the movie version because the movie version of Norse fire went in hard against the queer community in a couple of montages, but it was hardly at all about race. And there is a nod toward Islam too, but it's nothing about race.

Now you could point out, well, what was that beep? That was cool. I don't know what that was, but I don't know. So you listeners, if you know what that was, that was really neat. It was uniform and sound. it was cool. Anyway, so in the movie, like during the the montage scene, yes, half the people or more that are gathered up by Kredi's black baggers are people of color, but it's because they're queer, not because they're brown, specifically, like it keeps getting pointed because it's same-sex partners. Right, right. Yeah, now he didn't like them doing that in the movie because they were ignoring the racial stuff and he said, look, the racial purity

is the tent pole of fascism. And I'm gonna come back to that later. So while he's very willing to both sides at the extremes, he never actually horseshoes his logic, which I appreciate, And he also still sees fascism as a very viable threat. And he mentions it by name in his comic, for instance, Adam Susan, which the name was Adam Susan in the comics. It's Adam Sutler later on and we'll get it in stunt casting that that is. He says, and I'm just going to read these quotes from the panels for you.

I am Adam Susan, the leader, I am the leader, leader of the lost ruler of the ruins. I am a man like any other man. I lead the country that I love out of the wilderness of the 20th century. I believe in survival. I believe in the destiny of the Nordic race. I believe in fascism. Oh yes, I am the Nordic race. I believe in fascism. Oh, yes, I am a fascist. What of it? Fascism. A word. A word whose meaning has been lost in the in the bleatings of the week and the treacherous. The Romans invented fascism. A bundle of bound

twigs was a symbol. One twig could be broken. A bundle would prevail. Fascism, strength in unity. I believe in strength, I believe in unity. And if that strength, that unity of purpose, demands a uniformity of thought, word, and deed, then so be it. I will not hear talk of freedom. I will not hear the talk of individual liberty. They are luxuries.

I do not believe in luxuries. The war put paid to luxury. The war put paid to freedom. So that's him just walking in like he's walking into the Bailey building through a series of Nazi salutes, by the way. That's Susan walking to work. Yes. Now, I wanna point out. Sure. And I think I genuinely think more knowingly did this.

What he's talking about about the bundle of sticks is utterly a historical because that wasn't the point of bundling the sticks together. When the Romans bundled the canes together, it was to make them easier to carry. There's so they could be distributed. I don't recall, and of course you're the, you know, I'm instructor, so you'd be able to, you know, answer this better for me.

Sure. I don't, I don't remember anywhere where within Roman, political symbolism, the idea of the bundle of sticks, big anything other than, no, we're going to hand these sticks out to you all to go beat people because you're the just this years. So there's some stuff going on there actually that that least puts the bundle of sticks, Mithos, in a more favorable light as far as veracity goes. One, Romulus borrowed the Atraskin tradition of having twelve lictors. Yes.

Each lictor was represented by a stick. Each brother's stick gave it to him. Boom. Two, Romulus and Remus, when they killed their great uncle, Numator. No, Amulius, to reinstate their grandfather, Numator, to power. They walked amongst the people, hidden in their intention, and concealed within them them a hatchet. And then they got near them and they hatcheted his ass to death. And so there were about a dozen of them, because Romulus had a group. There were a dozen of them or so, and they had the hatchet.

So that's where that little axe comes in and the center of the bundle. So there are a couple of aspects that go there. Now would there also be a practical aspect of like, yeah, hand out these canes? Yes. But the Roman pomp and circumstance was such a practical and realistic thing that I could see that being so, but also would have been a feedback loop to what I was going on. Okay.

Fair enough. Now, I, again, you know, more he talks about fascism there. I honestly, I think I might prefer my anti-fascist plymix to be more plymix. I was, I was frankly disappointed by his efforts and they missed me completely to be honest. I saw fascism as the big bad evil guy. Um, and therefore anybody seeking to disrupt that was automatically an ally, uh, regardless of the methods they use, we can deal with this shit later, right?

Because in terrorizing a population, he's terrorizing a population that has become complicit in the disappearance and the violence toward large swaths of that population. So I don't think more did enough, honestly, in his graphic novel. So yeah, okay. We have also had the conversation that the first country the Nazis invaded was Germany. Yes. And the first city they invaded was Berlin. Yes. Yeah. So how do you what you just said with that sentiment. What did the... The first country the Nazis invaded was Germany. Right.

How does that jive with the idea that he didn't, you know, the people he's terrorizing are complicit. Like where is the... I think I mean. Yeah, I think I come back to what that book by Meyer, they thought they were free. So there's a quote from Meyer's book. He interviewed, basically I think it does in or ten people who lived through Nazi Germany at the time, of the war, and he asked them a number of questions,

one of which was basically, so what was the point in our return? When did, when did, when was the country lost essentially to the Nazis? And here's one person whose answer was, says, I was employed in a defense plant, a war plant, of course, but they were always called defense plants. That was the, of course, but they were always called defense plants.

That was the year of the National Defense Law, the law of, quote, total conscription. Under the law, I was required to take an oath of fidelity. I said I would not. I opposed it in conscience. I was given 24 hours to think it over. In those 24 hours, I lost the world. And just point out, like, so here's, here's an answer to your question, what I've said to the normal people, I think that people like this existed at that time, and they still went along for a number of reasons. He says,

you see, refusal would have meant the loss of my job, of course, not prison or anything like that. Later on, the penalty was course, not prison or anything like that. Later on, the penalty was worse, but this was only 1935. But losing my job would have meant that I could not get another. Wherever I went, I should be asked why I left the job I had, and when I say why, I should certainly have been refused employment. No one would hire a Bolshevik. Of course, I was not a Bolshevik, but you understand what I mean.

I tried not to think of myself or my family. We might have got out of the country in any case, and I could see and I could have got a job in industry or education somewhere else. What I tried to think of was the people to whom I might be of some help later on, or if things got worse as I believe they would. I had a wide friendship in a scientific and academic circles, including many Jews, and quote Aryans too, who might be in trouble. If I took the oath and held my job, I might be of help somehow, as these things went on. If I refused to take the oath, I would certainly be useless to my friends even if I remained

in the country. I myself certainly be useless to my friends even if I remained in the country. I myself would be in their situation. The next day after thinking it over, I said I would take the oath with the mental reservation that by the words with which the oath began, Ikshwore begot, I swear by God, I understood that no human being in no government had the right to override my conscience. My mental reservations did not interest the official who administered the where by God, I understood that no human being and no government had the right to override my conscience. My mental reservations did not interest the official who administered the oath. He said, Do you take the oath and I took it.

That day the world was lost and it was I who lost it. First of all, there is the problem of the lesser evil. Taking the oath was not so evil as being unable to help my friends later on, would have been. Or it was not so evil as being unable to help my friends later on, would have been. But the evil of the oath was certain and immediate, and the helping of my friends was in the future and therefore uncertain. I had to commit a positive evil there and then in the hope of a possible good later on. The good outweighed the evil, but the good was only a hope and the evil a fact. The hope might not have been realized either for reasons beyond my control or because I

became afraid later on, or even because I was afraid all the time and was simply fooling myself when I took the oath in the first in the first place. There I was 1935, a perfect example of the kind of person who with all his advantages in birth and education and in position rules or might easily rule. In any country, my education did not help me, and I had a broader view, or had a broader and better education than most have had, or will have ever had. All that did in the end was to enable me to rationalize my failure of faith more easily than I might have done if I had been ignorant. And so it was, I think, among educated men, generally, in that time in Germany.

Their resistance was no greater than other men's. So I think you come back to the question of, you know, where do I fall on your prothros, your people who are just part of a system. And they certainly, you know, they didn't bring the system about this man is taking responsibility for that. And he realizes what a cog he is and what his complicity is. And I think in terms of art, in terms of a, what do you call that thing, a graphic novel? In terms of that, I do think that, you can say, you know what, these people are complicit in a system

that absolutely has done that. Okay. John Brown attacking Harper's Ferry would be a good example. And we can always come up with really cool, black and white examples of bad asses who did this, but we both also know how complex the system is. We both got mortgages to pay, you know, and I understand that too. But at the same time,

within art, there's a freedom to be more partisan? Yes, but I would also say that, this is gonna maybe sound weird. When I and 11 happened, I certainly wasn't happy that it happened, but I understood. And when I read about Dresden, that's fucking awful.

But clearly they're not gonna give up. So try that too. And it's why I still come to loggerheads with myself about Hiroshima, less so Nagasaki, but about Hiroshima, because, you know, there was, yeah, there were plenty of indications looking back, but I gotta to look at who knew what when they knew it, not just their motivations for how they could get around it. Yeah, did Truman

cook the books for himself? Yeah, I think he absolutely did. But a whole bunch of people under him who were giving him advice and giving it, you know, and so on and so forth, they were looking at a problem from a very specific point of view, and gave the advice that they could and I do think that you know I come down to just because it's justified doesn't make it right. Yeah. And just because it's right doesn't mean you can justify it. Yeah. And so I come back to that like I think civilians are a legitimate target when those civilians are working in the war industries and you're trying to stop a total war population. I think that is a valid target.

I think it fucking sucks and it's evil. And you know, at the same time, if they're complicit in a system that's getting marginalized peoples destroyed, I'm, I'm, I don't know, I'm not gonna bite my nails too hard about like, well, now what's happened to you guys, you know? So again, I don't, I certainly didn't cheer the buildings falling or anything like that. And at the same time, I think that I can understand the grievance that brought that about.

So yeah, I think reading a comic book where there's an anarchist who's bringing all the chaos in the world and terrorizing an entire civilization or an entire population. That population, which is complicit in the disappearance of ethnic minorities and marginalized peoples and thereby violence toward those peoples, organized violence. I'm okay with little chaotic violence against those people. Systematic. Yeah, it's violence. Yeah.

So, here's another quote by Mr. Moore. He says, and the central question is, is this guy right? Or is he mad? What do you, the reader, think about this? Which struck me as a properly anarchist solution. I didn't want to tell the people what to think, I just wanted to tell the people to think, and consider some of these admittedly extreme little elements, which nevertheless do recur fairly regularly throughout human history. I was very pleased with how it came together, and it was a book that was very, very close to my heart.

and it was a book that was very, very close to my heart. There's a certain level of armchair anarchist. I think so. I believe her. He has the ability to leave. Yeah, he can walk away. Yeah. Which frankly, you and I can too. Yeah, well, yeah.

Yeah, no, I mean, which frankly, and I can too. I mean, yeah, well, yeah, yeah, no, I mean, that's, I don't know how conscious of his ability to walk away more is. Yeah, like I'm not sure what level of self reflection he has there. Like if you were, I were saying this, there would be a caveat attached to it of like, and I totally recognize my privilege in approaching this this way. And that's not there with more.

Right. And he is of a certain generation from a certain demographic. And part of me kind of wants to interrogate him a harder about that. I do too, yeah. You know what I mean? And again, I say this is somebody who absolutely

like loves the graphic novel as a work of art, but yeah. So here I'm going to give a little bit more background of what's going on at the time of the writing and then I'll stop shortly thereafter. So all of this terror that V is committing, all from blowing up buildings to assassinating key party members is in the backdrop of the troubles. Oh shit. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's the fight in Ireland to get the British out of Northern Ireland. Yeah, that's all there.

The problem was not everyone wanted them out either. And it was an ethno religious struggle, which had a lot to do with identity in Ireland, and the long time oppression by the British on Ireland. Now I'm painting with a really broad brush to save a lot of time here, but essentially that's what's going on. And here's some examples. The IRA set off a bomb that killed a famous admiral and a relative of the royal family, Lord Mount Baton in 1979. And 18 British paratroopers were killed by remote detonated bombs on that same day. Yep. In 1981 you get the Irish hunger strikes, which took 10 Irish prisoners. Bobby Sands was the first to die. They received aid afterwards from Libya, who

frankly was pissed that thatcher helped Reagan bomb his country. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he'd gotten shot by John Hinckley in 81 in an attempt to impress Jody Foster because he'd Hinckley had seen Foster perform in taxi driver Fures prior and was obsessed with her as a 13-year-old turn 17-year-old college student. There's, yeah, so much. Well, here's a quote from him. Over the past seven months, I've left you dozens of poems, letters and love messages, and the faint hope that you could develop an interest in me. Although we talked on the phone a couple of times, I never had the nerve to simply approach you and introduce myself. The reason I'm going ahead with this attempt now is because I cannot wait any longer to impress you. Now, when R would be assassins, try to kill someone, they're creepy as fuck about it.

When the Irish do it, there's a political reason. So soon after his trial, Hinckley wrote that the shooting was quote, the greatest love offering in the history of the world, and he was disappointed that Foster didn't reciprocate his love. Jesus. That's very American. Where's the Irish? I'm mensley. Get the very American. Where's the Irish?

I'm mensley. Get the fuck out. Get the fuck out of our country. Yeah. There's one of my friend of mine who is Irish American has one of his favorite stories about the IRA from roughly this period is one of the things they did. They wound up driving a panel truck as the right word, but they

had a delivery truck essentially with a tarp over the top of it that they drove to whatever distance away from Parliament, whipped the tarp off the top of the truck and fired a series of mortars from the truck onto the roof of Parliament. Wow. And every single one of the mortars had been intentionally disarmed. Just showing we can do it. And they did the same thing at Heathrow. Wow. And the message was, we could have done this.

Yeah. We chose not to. Yeah. Get the fuck out of Ireland. And like, yeah. Yeah. You know, like, but, you know, we got John Hinckley trying to impress

Jodie Foster because he saw her which was 13. Well, you know, yeah, yeah, America. Yeah. Now, it's Denley Reagan got hit by Sheer Dum luck because Hinckley would have missed entirely, but for a secret service agent's perfect timing and rushing Reagan into the limo. Because of his tremendous speed and a seriousness, the only bullet that had a chance of hitting Reagan actually hit

Reagan because it bounced off the limo door and tore into the president's chest. Which is forgotten he was hit by a ricochet. Yeah, which means that Reagan would have been fine if the secret service had not done their job.

Davis had not done their job. Park me for a moment. That baked my noodle. I completely forgot about that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like everybody did their job perfectly. And that's why the president was wounded. Yeah.

And here's where it gets worse. That's why the president got a second term, I think, because Reagan got a lot of sympathy, turned around people's dislike of him, charmed the shit out of everyone in the hospital, and basically locked in his second term alongside his tougher new image. Look, I'm the one that withstood the bullet. So in August, when he enforced a law that nobody thought he would against the air traffic controlling controllers in their strike, everyone was on board or willing to look the other way because he'd survived being shot and was charming.

I can't totally discount what you're saying. Because his popularity was dropping discount what you're saying. Mm-hmm. Because his popularity was dropping hard at that point because he wasn't able to deliver. Oh yeah, by the time he was, yeah, no, by the time he was shot. Yeah, no, that's in touch. So if he didn't get shot, if the Secret Service hadn't done his job

and then he tried to break the strike, what political capital could he have have spent to hold off people's disdain? Here's the deal. I'm going to push back on that. I think that part of what got him elected in the first place was an attitude at the time that being against organized labor and turning against, especially government employees because of the seven days. I think that there was obviously support for there was a groundswell of that, but for him to be able to be so brazen about it, I don't think you've got that with him not being, I hope one of you is, I hope

you're all Republicans and honey, I forgot to duck. I think that folksy charm really help take the piss. It's kind of like when the students were silently protesting him and he was, I believe, on the campus of UC, wasn't Berkeley, it was UCLA, is walking down the... Is this as governor? Yeah, he's walking down the walkways as governor, and all the students are there with their hands over their mouths, you know, because he's trying to silence them, and he's walking in,

it's total silence, it's very awkward, and then he turns around right before he closes the door, he turns back to them and goes, shh. And I mean it just took the piss out of everything they were doing and he was really good at that. He was, again, that great communicator kind of shit. He was really good at charming people and taking just enough of the piss out that he could

get away with his other fuckery. Okay. Yeah. All right. That's whatery. Okay. Yeah. All right. I'm not sure. I know. I think he possibly, because the groundswell of the right leaning stuff and everybody being

frustrated with government and everything because of the 70s, I think he still could have gotten away with what he did. I don't know that I don't know. I don't know if he would have been able to carry over into a second term. But I think he still could have broken the controller strike. It is, we'll never know kind of thing. Yeah, sadly. Yeah. In 1982, the Disco Tech bombing at the drop in well killed 11 British soldiers and six civilians.

And in 1984, Margaret Thatcher herself escaped an assassination attempt by sheer dumb luck. The next day she was a goddamn badass and spoke as scheduled to find the IRA to try her again. This made her wildly popular after facing a lot of trouble. and halfway through a coal miner's strike, she got a lot of support due to her response. And she wound up breaking that coal miner's structure. So this is the barrel. Yeah, parallels are eerie. Yeah. And this is the backdrop of the

scary fucking violence that these right wing libertarian branded populist crypto fascists end up gaining popular support with and therefore more power. Can't be a little bit more specific about your characterization of their leanings. So also in V for libertarian populist crypto fascists. Yeah. Libertarian branded for liberty. Right. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. In V for vendetta, they're already in charge and their popularity isn't any longer a question

as they've got all the authority. And this is what Moore's kind of pointing out. The comic book has an excellent answer to this really. V has a fireside chat of sorts on the National News Channel, which cannot get shut off because fascism and in it he says the following things. Okay, if I can't shut it off, I'll just hijack it. Right. And so here's what he says, he says quote, and it's no good blaming the drop in work standard upon bad management, either, though to be sure the management is very bad.

In fact, let us not mince words. The management is terrible. We've had a string of embezzlers, frauds, liars, and lunatics making a string of catastrophic decisions. This is plain fact, but who elected them? It was you. You who appointed these people. You who gave them the power to make your decisions for you.

While I'll admit that anyone can make a mistake once to go on making the same lethal errors century after century seems to mean nothing short of deliberate. You have encouraged these malicious incompetence who have made your working life a shambles. You have accepted without question their senseless orders, you have allowed them to fill your workspace with dangerous and unproven machines. You could have stopped them. All you had to do was say no. You have no spine, you have no pride,

you are no longer an asset to the company. So it goes back to that Meyer quote too, right? Yeah. Yeah. Alan Moore is pissed at England for electing Margaret Thatcher. You think? And he's pissed at them for usher Margaret Thatcher. You think? And he's pissed at them for ushering in the first steps toward totalitarianism, and here is his strongest case against them.

He does not both sides it here. He calls it out. If you remember from the beginning, quote, Nye of Take can also be detected in my supposition that it would take something as melodramatic as a near-missed nuclear conflict to nudge England toward fascism. It's 1988 now, Margaret Thatcher is entering her third term of office and talking confidently of an unbroken conservative leadership well into the next century. The tabloid press are circulating the idea of concentration camps for persons with AIDS, the new riot police were black visors as do their horses, and their vans have rotating video cameras mounted on top.

The government has expressed a desire to eradicate homosexuality, even as an abstract concept, and one can only speculate as to which minority will be the next legislated against. I'm thinking of taking my family and getting out of this country soon. It's cold and it's mean spirited and I don't like it here anymore. That's the same quote as from before, by the thing, it's worthy of repeating because he said as much half a decade earlier in his book. Yeah.

So, the sex worker, by the way, got to come back to her that V tortures into an existential crisis, one which ultimately frees her to choose freedom. That's all the metaphor for what anarchism has to do to England to thoroughly purge itself of fascism. Anything else would be inauthentic and allow it to creep back in and yet again in a more polite smartly dressed tone like Margaret Thatcher or someone else with a nice suit and tie and an easy smile who lets you think that others are the problem.

Now the only solution is anguishing and abandonment and despairing and authentic choice. The British electorate must suffer and must make the choice for themselves and must realize that both things come with pain. And only then can they truly choose what's best for them. And with that opportunity comes a huge risk, but at least it won't be a momentum of inertia or a momentum or inertia.

Now having said that, he obviously also likes to torture young women in his books. So yeah, that's essentially the plot of the comic book. There's a certain level of revenge fantasy there. Mm-hmm. There is, and it comes back to the quotes that V had said, it's on you. You done fucked up, son. Yeah.

And you're gonna have to pay for this. Yeah. So that's the plot of the comic book. In the 80s, it was clearly overblown, except that looking back, it wasn't. There were some painful choices that England didn't make, and as such, a lot of people died, a lot of people lost their rights. And when the labor party took back over in 1997, which is nearly a generation of conservatism, it was led by Tony Blair, the British version of Bill Clinton.

And again, the parallels across the Pond are stunning. It's as though it's more than just a localized phenomenon. Regardless both the Democrats in the US and the Labour Party in the UK were a far more conservative version of themselves than they'd been prior to Reagan and Thatcher eras. Well, because in order to maintain political viability, they had to try to take the middle out from under the right, which, which number one compromised their position in the first place. And second of all, in order to then have a platform to differentiate themselves, the conservatives and the Republican

party in the United States shifted farther to the right. Yes. You know, it would be, it would be really interesting. I'm trying to think of a better word than that, but that's when it comes to mind right now To be able to go back in time right now to Bill Clinton's first term in office and Show him video Show him and all of his conceded liaries and everybody around him. Show them video of the last 18 months in our country.

And say, okay, so here's the deal. You got two choices. You can do everything I know you are planning on doing, because I'm a historian from the future. And you can do everything you're going to do. And this is the future you're going to create. Or, and I don't know what's going to happen here if you do this. Or, you can instead of trying to go to the center and pull the center out from under the Republican Party and, you know, go with all your super predator language and welfare reform and everything. Instead of doing that, you can double down on what got you elected in the first place

and you can send a message to the American people that no, no, no, I meant what I fucking said. And you can actually try to sell that instead of giving up. Like, and this is me talking as no shit, a moderate, like as somebody who lives militantly in the middle, like I am a I am a third way, I'm a social Democrat. Yeah, like, okay, look, you can you can you can try to steal the middle out from other publicans and I can guarantee you'll win, or you can actually stick to a fucking principle for wads.

Mm-hmm. And actually like sell that to people. Oh, I don't think they would have gone for option B. I really don't. Yeah. So you're probably right. See if this sounds like anyone we grew up under. Quote, critics and admirers tend to agree

that Blair's electoral success was based on his ability to occupy the center ground and appeal to voters across the political spectrum to the extent that he has been fundamentally at odds with traditional labor party values. Some left-wing critics argued that Blair oversaw the final stage of a long-term shift of the labor party to the right. Oh, you know, yes, that's Billy boy. Yeah. Now, I would point out though that both Blair and Clinton were very young in the 70s,

compared to, you know, 20 years later. And their formative years, they saw a ton of meeting in the middle from the left and the right. They saw a lot of people on the right voting for left policies because it helped their constituents and people from the left voting on right policies because it helped their constituents. They saw that. They saw people agreeing that, well, yeah, of course, unions are the thing. Yeah, of course we're all freedmen people. Of course, we're all kinsians.

I mean, Nixon said that, shit. They saw that happen. So it's not unrealistic to think we could just get back to that. The problem is they saw that practice and not the reality necessarily, but again, how do you check for the weather report when you're in the middle of a goddamn storm? I agree with... I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying.

I think the contract with America should have been a gigantic fucking red flag. Yeah, it should have. Should have been like the moment, Newt fucking Gingrich, like just look at who Newt Gingrich fucking was. Like just analyze the character of that man. And legitimately look at that.

And then think, is this motherfucker actually interested in any kind of compromise, fucking at all? Is anybody on the right? I think that they thought that you could beat that with meeting people in the middle and showing that they're still a reasonable way to go. Because we've seen that in just about every election with the exception of Obama's first.

So now England did not despair. England did not anguish. And England did not truly suffer any sense of abandonment through the election of Tony Blair. They shifted to the left and I'm sorry to the right. And the center had shifted and a new paradigm, one that takes those marginalized for granted and ignores their needs arose, because who else he to vote for? Moore's writings seemed overblown because society ignored the temperature in the room that it was rising until it adapted to a new

heat. But more really wished that they did suffer, that they did despair, that they did anguish, and that they did feel abandonment. And there's this wonderful part in the comic where Protharo takes acid and goes to the camps. And every person in that camp is a brown person because to more, this is ethno state shit. And he very much is apologetic to them and very, very sorry.

He leaps. Yes. That is... He has a breakdown. That is more... It's an amazing moment. That is more wishing that England did that. And then after V dies, there's an awful lot of energy that happens.

And that's more wishing that they suffered that as well. So England prevails. So that's where I'm gonna leave it because next time I'm gonna talk about the movie. Yeah, um, so Besides reading V for vendetta is there anything you want people to go give a look at? I'm actually going to recommend, well, number one, read for eventata. Number two, in thinking about empire, and in thinking about the, the mentality of Britain and the historical context that led to all of this, I'm actually going to recommend everybody read Kipling. Because everything in the British uvra, everything in the British subconscious since World War

2 is responding to, we used to be an empire now or not. And I think reading Kipling, any of his stories about India is a really great window into what their mentality was before then. I like it. And I think that's an important context for anybody, for anybody to really comprehend the British take on anything in the modern era. You need to understand what the mentality of the British Empire was. Okay. I like it. So that would be my recommendation.

All right. I'm going to recommend that people find an essay called The Long Revolution by Raymond Williams. It's been a while since I've read it, so I'm going to dust it off again. But I think in light of what we've talked about these last three or four weeks, it would be who you to read The Long Revolution by Raymond Williams. I think it's a bit out of date considering what we've just been through collectively, but I still think that it's worthy of a look, just as a response to failing empire and a

response to shifting to the right of things. Where can people find you on the socials? I can be found on Instagram and on Twitter as eHBlake. And I can be found on TikTok as MrBlake. Where can you be found, sir? You can find me on twitch.tv-cap slash capital puns the first Tuesday of every month. You can find me doing live comedy, but you can also find me on duh harmony, on Twitter and Instagram and you will find advertisements there for those things. But if you're in the Sacramento

area, we will be doing shows on January 14th, February 4th, March 4th, and April. I want to say seventh. It's the first Friday of each month after January 14th. So that's where you can find me. So collectively, if they want to find us, where shall they look? They can find us at geekhistoryoftime.com and at Geek History Time on Twitter. Great. Well, also, I'm sorry, I forgot about this one. You can find us on Spotify and the Apple

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