A Geek History of Time - Episode 381 - Louis Mercier Vega's Rejecting the Legend Part III

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

When I think nuclear annihilation, I think... La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la I'm gonna drink a metric fuck time of coffee and hope that I stop right before I start seeing sounds That's one of my one of my favorite I don't know if you know like yeah favorite awful thing I get it I get it Like bitch took the ice trees meanwhile this guy is going into a unicorn cave This is better than the what is the orientation of the chicken strapped to your head question the essential part of democracy to me is not that I should spend a lot of time in governing myself, for I have many more amusing things to do. But I want to be quite certain that I can change the

person who governs me without having to shoot him. That is the essence of democracy. You mean herge? Probably. Okay. Well, I mean, yeah. I don't know if that's just, you know, my inner drama queen. Okay, so this is really hard because you're talking about like serious important things to you. The amount of jokes that, like, I think they're funny as shit. History of time. Where we connect nerdery to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylock.

I'm a world history teacher here in Northern California. And my son's baseball season just ended. And we had the picnic for the end of baseball season because Leanne was my son's team mom. So we organized this. She organized this. And we held the picnic in the middle of a windstorm here in Sacramento, which was quite an adventure. And I was especially proud of my son because, you know, every kid got a trophy. But my son additionally got an extra award from the coaches for his,

they called it the all heart award because he was he always gave his best he was always up to try a new position always you know cheering his teammates on he was the kid in dugout starting the team off going hey let's go

you know when they were up to bat and I am more proud of him for that than I am for all of the growth he's made in terms of his actual baseball ability, which is also dramatic, and I'm proud of him for that too, but that he is that kid on the team. I got emotional a little bit when they gave him that award. And yeah, so that's what I have going on. I'm very, very proud of

my kid. How about you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I am a U.S. history, and actually, I didn't get a new schedule yet. So I'll just say US history and government teacher. I got a feeling it's just going to be U.S. history next year, per my warning. But at the high school level up here in Northern California.

I warned him. I told him. I did. And so, yeah. My daughter just finished a run on a play where she was a bard, and she's kind of like introducing various

fables. She shared barred duty with two others. But people went apeshit when she bowed on stage. She did a really good job with that. So she's very excited. That's wonderful. She immediately, two days after show closed, she went back for auditions for, God, what's it called? Showboat.

No, not showboat. Jesus Christ. No, it was for the Panther, the Warlock, and the Armour. Okay. It was a play that's based on a book written book. by a guy named C. Treebeard.

I don't... Nice. Now, I see what you did there. Yes. I see what you did there. Okay. Anyway, so she's awaiting

callbacks on that. All right. My son has found on his own because he has a phone now and he's doing more and more research. He's found on his own. There's a model trains club in Sacramento.

And so, So he hit me up. He's like, hey, they've got an expo this next Saturday. I was like, oh, okay, cool. And he says, you know, do you want to go? I said, I would love to. But also, is that something you want to take me to or something you want to share with your mom? And he's like, I said, either way is fine with me, but you and I get to share all kinds of cool things.

So if you want to share that with your mom, I'm not going to be feeling left out. It is perfectly fine. So he'll let me know tomorrow. Okay. Yeah. So anyway, that's all the news that fits to print for me. When last we talked, we were talking about Mr. Mercier. And if you remember, he's writing 20 years after the Civil War in Spain.

And his basic gist is, let's not make heroes out of the people that we loved and that we fought with because they were normal people. And the whole point of this is that normal people can do. do this shit. And so the successes and the failures that they had were because they are all of us. And the second, you lionize them, you start to make it harder for normal people to actually access and make this stuff happen. You wind up empowering the fascists because it creates the idea that you have to be some kind of romantic hero to stand up to them. Yes. The idea that only great men can stand against great dangers is anathema to what he believed. And honestly, that is one of the big reasons. why I think Wedge is my favorite character in Star Wars.

So. Yeah, fair. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. I left off with a paragraph, and I'm going to read it again, just to kind of reset us. He says, this is how in their heart of hearts, in the isolation, which is the answer to vomiting, and in the promiscuity of a banal existence, returning to July 1936 is cultivated, like the anticipation

of a great and barbaric religious festival. Let's steer clear of such a fate if we want to avoid a life of disappointment and bitterness. The cerebral dynamite of 1936 Spain withered and dies in the sun of misery and revolt. Courage was not to be found only sitting behind the tripod of a machine gun. Heroism was not spent only in the moments of attack. Both were etched into the bedrock of daily existence and gave a framework to the episodic passions of the masses. Yesterday as today,

they have to contend with the absurdity that emanates from economic formulas and the changing clamors of the crowd. So people were making decisions every day and therefore we can do that now too. I swear to God, I don't

know that he read, that Merci read anything by Jean-Paul's art. They certainly would have crossed paths since in France. Yeah. And, but like, he's saying essentially, you know, you, by your actions, are validating and legislating for humanity. Right.

So anyway, he mentioned sitting behind the tripod of a machine gun. And so broadly speaking, I mean, we can obviously, you know, what that is, but we can group those who oppose the phalanjist as Republicans. Okay. Okay. Broadly. Speaking broadly, yes. We both know through history and through my own annotations here that we've been listening

to, that it would be. is not a monolith in any way, though. Like a Republican is different from region to region, and they will have different support from different types of anarchists and from different types of communists. Yeah. What's interesting is we label them as Republicans because they were fighting on the side of the government of the Republic that had essentially been struck down. Yeah.

But they really weren't motivated by republicanism as an ideology, which makes it, which is one of those things that unfortunately makes it easy for, I don't know, historians who are who are not the ally of any of these movements to kind of obfuscate, you know. It's an easier narrative. there were two sides. Yeah. And if you zoom out, there were two sides. There was the people who struck down the government and wanted a dictatorship and the people who fought for the government. Now, the reason why people fought for the government will differ from group to group. Right.

Yeah. And that's the, the difficult, the difficult part about trying to teach this shit is that nuance. It's nuance is hard. It is because you can support the Republic. You can support the Republic because that was closer to the direct democracy of anarchism that you want. Right. And you can support the Republic because it's better than the total lack of anarchism that fascism brings. Right.

Yeah. So even the phalanjists themselves weren't a monolith, to be perfectly honest. and we could actually broaden that side of the war to include the ones who won, and we could call them nationalists or even Francoists. And those are going to be different groups as well. Yeah, well, because they were the royalists.

Yeah. Although, in all fairness, the Francoists were kind of what we called all of them ex post facto. Yeah. But either way, if we were to total the amount of machine guns used in the Spanish Civil War,

we'd see that the ones who opposed the fascists had between, a third to 40% of the total machine guns of the war. The rest belonged to the fascists who got them from other fascists. I had not realized the material balance was that stark. Yeah, because remember, the only foreign power that's really supplying the Republicans, again, painting very broadly here, would be the Soviet Union. And they only supplied certain of the Republicans.

Well, yeah. And now, and I know we touched on this in the prior episode, but just to kind of refresh my own recollection understanding and, you know, anybody in the audience who's with me in that, their support, essentially Stalin was being, was directing his people to be picky. Yes, quite so. Would be the way that I would phrase that. because of his and because of his intent to protect Soviet security interests by trying to support

the explicitly communist movement, the common intern. And the right kind of communist. He wanted the third international. Right. Yeah. You know. And he wanted it to be sublimated to the Soviet.

Union. He's also deathly afraid of Trotskyites. So he's trying to do all he can to stamp any embers of Trotskyism out. And Trotsky is, he's been exiled by 36. Remember, he's going to find an ice pick or an ice axe in his head in 40. So

this is, yeah. I mean, Stalin was paying. I love it. I love the way of phrase. He's going to find one. Yeah. Oh, hey. Where did that come from? Oh, that guy. How did that get there? Yeah. But he's, he's paying an American. congressman to report on the whereabouts of Trotsky if Trotsky shows up in New York.

Oh, wow. Yeah, Dickstein, actually. Wow. A congressman who won the congressional seat in New York, I forget what district, but he won it by beating a socialist in 1922. And Dickstein was one of the only government people in 1934 who was sounding the the alarm about the Nazis. And then by 37, we have receipts that he's getting money from the Soviet Union to continue passing along information about fascists in America, which there were plenty of.

And anything you could find on Trotsky would be great, too. Thanks, bye. And they were paying him $1,250 a month. Holy shit. Yeah, in 1937. Yeah. That's, wow. That's like three new.

cars practically. That's a lot of dough. It is. Holy moly. Dickstein was the, he started the informal congressional committee. He started at H-UAC committee, actually. But this was informal, unfunded, and it was specifically

to look after fascists or Nazi, I think it was Nazis or fascists. I can't remember which. And other subversive groups, which means that like he had cover, because there were also people spying for the fascists and doing propaganda work for the fascists, including a senator from

Minnesota, Mr. Lundeene, who was reading Nazi propaganda into the congressional record. Fuck. And was using our mail system because you know how a congressman get free franking, so they get free postage. Oh, no. He was using that to send Nazi propaganda to all kinds of Nazi people. So. Ch, me, Christmas. Yeah.

So, yeah, we basically. the American public were the battleground for the propaganda war between these two for yeah but uh Stalin was anti-Trottsky like super haughtsy

trotsky uh and so yes he's he's got a vested interest in making sure that Spain doesn't get trotskyed up um and so he's giving supplies but the fascists in in Spain are getting supplies from Italy

and Germany right um And I don't remember if they're getting help from the BUF in Britain. I can't remember Oswald Mosley's people. Seems like something Mosley would do, but I'm always hesitant to say when something fits my narrative that clearly. One and two, I mean, Oswald made an awful lot of noise and did have, I mean, I don't want to minimize the amount of public support he actually did have.

But I'm not sure how much like independent, you know, money he had to be providing that much support. Well, he was in the House of Lords. He was pretty wealthy. His wife, whom he married with Hitler as one of his groomsmen in Berlin. Yeah, she was, I believe, of money as well. Yeah. So there's that. But also, remember Churchill said prior to 1934, because once he saw Hitler talking in, in homicides,

He changed his tune. Right. So this would have been in the 1920s. Churchill said, you know, we have in Italy an example of how to defeat Bolshevism. No great country can say that they couldn't stand for stability and greatness without using this antidote. Right. Which is just, you know, again, because he's an imperialist. So he's going to hate Bolshevism until he saw Hitler talk in Hamburg.

And he's like, oh, never mind. fuck these guys. Fuck these guys. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, there is a huge imbalance, like a 20-point swing at least in terms of who's got what kind of machine guns. And one of the most iconic examples of, therefore it takes a lot of courage, you know, to go against these machine guns.

One of the most iconic examples of this courage that Mercier is referring to is the Battle of Ciudad Universitaria. or the Battle of the University City. Now, this is one of my favorite stories. So, of course, I'm slipping it in here. But this was the first time in the war that the Francoists were actually stopped for any significant period of time. And it was just outside of Madrid, which is a huge hot spot for the anarchists and the communists. Now, the Francoists had, and the phalanches had been advancing fairly trouble-free throughout Spain.

And then they came to the Ciudad. for a week the Francoist besieged the university town, but they were unable to take it. And the Republicans fought at very high costs to keep this area. And this set the front for the rest of the war. Like it stayed as a pocket of resistance forever until it didn't, right? Yeah. Now, my favorite part was that the Republicans, they hold up in,

the philosophy department, and they used philosophy textbooks to barricade the faculty offices and classrooms that they were firing from. Now, you know bullets and ballistics. Books are remarkably good at stopping bullets. Yeah. Philosophy books, doubly so because those guys are writing or getting paid for the word. And the fascist bullets, therefore, couldn't get past about page 300. Yeah, it sounds probably about right. And that's not a joke that actually happened. Like, they would regularly talk about which philosopher stopped fascist bullets the most.

Yeah. Well, because when you're when you're in that situation, you have to find, you have to find the gallows humor. And you find little gifts like that. You're like, oh my God. Like that's, you know, it's like when I found out that the guy who tried to start a Nazi boom here in America got deported. and went back to Germany and couldn't make a living as a propaganda minister there,

so he had to buy into a leather factory. Nice. A German leather factory, partly owned by a man named Spank Noble. That's a gift. Same thing. And I know I've talked about that before. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have.

But, yeah. No, I totally, I totally get what you're saying. I find the part about this anecdote from Madrid that I find funny in my own head is, you know, the consistent realization that like, you know, Plato, Aristotle, you know, the Greeks. Moron. Well, one, they're no good for stopping bullets. But, you know, Hegel, you know, Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein, like, you know, these guys, they had a lot. They had a lot to say, and they did not say it concisely. And, you know, yeah.

The fascists can't. No, nothing? No, I, the fascists can't. Yeah, no, the fascists can't. There you go. It didn't cut out. I'm just that. No.

Yeah, I'm behind. Okay, got it. Any of this place remains strong until it was finally surrendered at the end of the fucking war on March 28th, 1939. And now that brings me to another story that, that, again, machine gun based, Fannie, the queen of the machine gun. Okay, you have my interest. Yeah. Now, by no means is this story universal, but it is odd enough that I want to include it here.

There's a woman named Fanny Schunheit, Heet, H-E-Y-T, Shun-Hat, Scho-Hat. Shon-Hat. She's a Dutch woman. Shun-Hite. Shun-Hite. Yeah. So, Schoen-Hight. There's no U-L-Lout, so it's just un.

Okay, so Shun-Hight. Yeah, it's a verb, the E-Y, there in Dutch as a verb combination that's hard for us to totally duplicate in English. A vowel combo. Yeah. Okay. So Fannie Schoonheit. She was a Dutch woman who came with other Dutch women to aid the Republican

cause during the Spanish-American War. Holy fucking shit. Wait, you mean the Spanish Civil War? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Spanish Civil War. It corrected to that. Yeah, very different conflict. Yeah. Now, she was the only Dutch woman

to fight. The rest came as necessary nursing. Uh, Fannie was already in Barcelona as a foreign correspondent when the coup broke out and she started fighting against it. Now Fannie stood out wearing a yellow shirt that distinguished her in battle, but she still didn't get shot, which is something she wrote about in a letter to a friend in 1936. Okay. And then she joins the anti-fascist militias and she fought until she was wounded in Aragon in November of 36. Oh, wow. Now, the CNT's, Van Gardia, which is one of their newspapers or propagandies, interviewed her, and her expertise in all things technical,

and her bravery were highlighted at length in this article. And it's funny because they actually still blended with the sexist attitudes at the time along with their revolutionary anarchism in their reports. So, like, she was called La rena de la ametradora. Armitra. Armitradora? Ametraia d'a, the queen of the machine gun. Her commander still said in interviews that she was, quote, a very feminine woman.

And the reporters assured readers that she was a natural blonde, not a peroxide user, with eyes as blue as a Nordic lake. and then they're talking about how fucking technically adept she is and how badass she is with a machine gun. And it's like, growth happens unevenly, okay. Yeah, problematic, a series of problematic steps forward. Yeah, you know. And she was a regular at communist meetings.

And when the liberals began their purges of the anarchists and the POUMists, which is Partido Obrero de Unification, Marxista, the workers, the workers' party of Marxist unification. So the liberals start purging them and the anarchists in Catalonia. It's very likely that she was there for that purge. Now I bring up that purge because Orwell wrote homage to Catalonia. Right, right. And in that memoir, he recorded his getting shot in the throat.

And he detailed the struggle that the POUM had as an organization as well as they're being declared a fascist front by the United Socialist Party of Catalonia, which was under the control of the Soviet Union. Oh, right, okay, sorry. Yeah, you're like, why would they do that? It explains how anybody, like, wait, their name has Marxist in it. How can anybody label them right?

Right, okay, right, yeah. Okay, because what's fascinating, what occurs to me there is anybody who's not sufficiently Stalinist to Stalin becomes a fascist. Yes. Then later, I'm jumping ahead a couple of decades, Stalin dies. And anybody who's not sufficiently Maoist,

and anybody who is Stalinist becomes a socialist imperialist. Yes. And effectively a fascist to Mao. Mm-hmm. And like, there's no satisfying these people. Well, you remember in our discussions of Andor, Mao was about the perpetual revolution, where even his beliefs, it's kind of like the jek kundoondot of Marxism, right? Right.

Even his beliefs in a few years should be outdated. Yes. So at least there's consistency there. Yes. And there's, so there's that aspect of it. And there's also the aspect of with looking at at Mao with more cynical eye. There's also, you know, the idea. First he saw from a very Confucian point of view, he viewed Stalin during Stalin's lifetime as big brother and China as little brother.

Stalin died and he was like, okay, no, now I'm big brother. Oh, it was before that. I'm, yeah. Yeah. It really became a more pronounced thing. Yeah. You know, after Stalin's death. But anyway, so yeah.

So here's what Orwell said. He said, quote, no one who was in Barcelona then or for months later will forget the horrible atmosphere produced by fear, suspicion, hatred, censored newspapers, crammed jails, enormous food cues, and prowling gangs of armed men. so that's during the purges of Catalonia. After Mayday and the cancellations of demonstrations, which then became known as the Barcelona Maydays, Orwell also predicted that the fascists would win. Well, because he was witnessing the Republicans eating their own. Yeah.

And again, this is why you can't label them all as Republicans, ultimately, right? Because that would make no fucking sense. but when you plumb down a little bit, you see the pica next to each other, you start to see the black and white, not just the gray. Now, anyhow, at this battle, Orwell detailed that there was a hotel

that was an easy landmark in the Playa de Catalonia called the Hotel Colon. It was the headquarters of the PSUC, the group that stood against the POUM and other anarchists. So this is the Soviet Union-backed one. And he said, quote,

in a window near the last O, but one in the huge Hotel Cologne that sprawled across its face, they had a machine gun that could sweep square with deadly effect. And the thing is, Fanny was very likely there as one of the machine gunners for the PSUC, because in La Vanguardia, she was again featured in a picture in front of a machine gun nest at the edifice of the Hotel Cologne. And it said, La Gran Luchadora Antifascista concoeur,

for Fanny Garveminante Herida So basically the great anti-fascist fighter Fanny was wounded here yesterday. Okay. Manning one of the

potentially manning one of the machine guns from the Stalin-backed faction. Yes. Oh, so she was a Stalinist then? Eventually, yeah. Functionally. Yeah. Okay.

Now, she'd been injured. in a car accident near Tarragona the prior day, and there's no real record of her activities from June of 37 to 38, but we can find possible shadows. An unsourced account relayed to an author who was constructing a 1960 biography about Ramon Mercador, the Catalan murderer of Trotsky in 1940 in Mexico. The person constructing that had said that during a 1937 hospital stay in Catalan, Mercador had met someone fitting her prior descriptions. She wasn't a nurse. She was a fellow patient.

Quote, a tall blonde Dutch girl, Fannie Castello, FAA and I, prominent in the place for some of the notorious communists in Barcelona, as well as Soviet NKVD operatives, hospitalized in the establishment. Okay. Now, interestingly, the pseudonym matched a friend of Fannie. who was an artist who had fled to the Soviet Union after the fall of the Republic. In 1938, Fannie had resurfaced

and she was trying to get a pilot's license in Paris at the time and trying to get back to Holland, all while back and forthing to Toulouse. She also had fallen in love with a man named George Vue, V-I-E-U-X, who worked for Air France in Toulouse, and he was one of the many private pilots who did an aerial prequel to Dunkirk in 1939 getting out of Spain. Okay.

Now, there's a lot more about her biography that I found fascinating, but just to shorten it a little bit, she ends up in the Dominican Republic as a refugee, and she did all that she could to separate herself from her revolutionary past now that she was a mom. And some of this could possibly have been part of a larger effort to separate herself from what many communists consider treason by way of association with Mercador, the man who murdered Trump.

Trotsky. Her own daughter didn't know Fannie's history, and Fannie died in 1961 on Christmas Eve. She'd only just returned to Holland in 1957. Oh, wow. So that courage behind a machine gun, it's typically when someone is holding the space to allow others to retreat. So I think when he talks about courage behind a machine gun, I don't think he's talking about machine gun, Fannie, to be perfectly honest, because all accounts have her, holding down a killing zone

on behalf of the Soviet-sponsored liberals. Right. Now, he also talks about daily existence, and this goes back to the anarchist efforts at the local level. Remember, the anarchists were actually remarkably successful at the local levels, and different locals had different approaches,

and they all seemed to work and produce really good fighting. Barbershops, hotels, hallage, restaurants, factories, shops, arms, every occupation, and all of them collectivized. They put the workers in charge, and they structured society as flatly as they could, and with as much community-driven efforts as possible. And the thing was, like I said, it fucking worked. People always say that there's no way that communism or anarchism would really work,

but it did work in these areas. These were Republican-controlled areas during the Spanish Revolution and Spanish Civil War, and they worked until people. who thought that their idea was better and betrayed and were pushed out the anarchists from these places by force. And that's kind of vagus point here. When we look at the Spanish Revolution or at the Spanish Civil War, we don't need to lionize folks. We don't need to speak of it as some sort of unattainable once ever you caught a butterfly moment. It was day-to-day choices on how to behave and it worked rather successfully for all those involved.

The landlords were pissed, but let's be honest about their numbers. Yeah. You know, it's, it's, and their influence is because they have monies, not because they have numbers, right? Well, yeah. So, yeah, they're pissed. Fuck them. Put them to work as a concierge, which often happened. Now, according to Orwell, quote, in theory, it was perfectly, it was perfect equality, and even in practice, it was not far off, far from it.

There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life, snobbishness, money grubbing, fear of the boss, etc. had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England. There was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as no one owned anyone else as his master. Okay.

So it worked. That's that part just like it's worth repeating multiple times. It fucking worked. 70% of rural areas in Catalonia during the revolution were expropriated for the people. an area called Extra Medora saw the its rural areas as high as 91% expropriated for the people

all decisions were made by councils of workers and all the anarchists outproduced the landed aristocracy and bureaucracies every fucking where else yeah it's not surprising and yet people act like it's impossible right it's got to have somebody in charge It's like it turns out when they're all in charge of themselves, they get shit done.

These communes and collectives lasted all the way up until the end of the Civil War, by the way, in most places. And they were not the reason that the war got lost. Others were surrendered by the liberals who wanted to fight the war, not live the revolution. So let's cede this area because we have this. So again, the anarchism, the day-to-day decisions that people got to get to and collectively made was betrayed by liberal elites thinking that they knew better and wanted to go and fight the war a different way than what all the people were agreeing to do. Right. In addition to this, it was a moral revolution, not just an economic revolution.

And that means that rationalist schools opened up for kids. So while the war is going on, they're like, we're going to remake education too. And they did. They had public libraries that they opened, literacy classes. And there were massive increases in access for women to their own health and all sorts of tearing down of the old systems. Now, that doesn't mean that plenty of folks remain personally very conservative. So these inroads were sometimes shortened largely by a local desire and preference. But still, there's a man named Carlo Roselli, the anti-fascist Jewish-Italian Socialist who had escaped from an Italian fascist.

prison in Tunisia, which is interestingly where Franco got his start, by the way, and then Rosselli escaped on to France. He had this to say about the Catalonian anarchist summer. He says, in three months, Catalonia has been able to set up a new social order on the ruins of an ancient system. This is chiefly due to the anarchists who have revealed a quite remarkable sense of proportion, realistic understanding, and organizing ability. Anarchos, syndicalism hitherto despised has revealed itself as a great constructive force. I regarded as my duty to express here my opinion of the anarchists of Catalonia, who have all too often been represented in the world as a destructive, if not criminal, element. I was with them at the front in the trenches,

and I have learned to admire them. The Catalan anarchists belonged to the advance guard of the coming revolution. A new world was born with them, and it is a joy to to serve that world. Oh, wow. All right. Now, he was murdered in France in 1937 by fascists on Mussolini's order. Yeah, well. So anyway, yes.

Big shock. Yeah. But daily existence should be remembered for what it was, because heroism exists not only in fighting hard and in staying in the machine gun nest, but in living your ideals in such a way that they inspire actions in others. also the heroes were the ones that were just living their lives and not worrying about being heroes

there's hair to cut yeah and bricks to lay and and dung to carry away and trash to collect and did you ever read i talk pretty one day by david sadaris i have not okay there's a part in it where he ends up joining a moving crew and it's a communist moving crew and what he said is that The guy who owned the company, basically, was a communist. He was like a fat guy with missing teeth. And he said he's the only communist I ever met who knew that he would be a worker and not in charge. Like when the revolution came. He had no illusions about and then I will ascend.

It was like, no, I'll just keep doing this. Okay. But like that just always twigs to me like these day-to-day decisions that people made. Right. You know? And again, the whole idea that people have, the I'm going to say cheap and lazy idea that people have that like well there's no way anarchists can anarchy that can organize it's like no

they do you know anarchism like the thing is any any legitimately what's the word I'm going to say good faith yeah um libertarian anarchist like movement that is that is genuinely genuinely about no, no, man, we're, we're, we're going to eliminate hierarchy. We're going to, we're going to, you know, give, you know, individuals, you know, the maximum level of freedom while still operating in a society. Any, any intellectually legitimate movement like that requires a lot of organization. Yep. Like, like, there's a lot of work. And the thing is, you know, anybody who, who doesn't, believe it can work is number one,

they're intellectually being lazy and they are assuming that everybody else is going to be lazy in the same way. And, you know, it is certainly really easy to have a view of people as

being, like, as as apes go, we're pretty fucking lazy. Right. Like, but you know, when you, when you, when you consider the idea that. And let me just add a corollary to that right quick. And then you'll go back to considering the idea. Yeah.

The only way to make people not lazy is the specter of starvation and hierarchy that forces labor. Right. Because we've made amazing shit. But that's because people would rather work than starve. Like that's the logic. That's the corollary to that. Now, you were saying when you consider the idea that. Well, you know, when you consider the idea,

that when we are when we are idle we make shit like we we do things like we have been blessed and cursed with with brains that we

if we are not dulled by external uh entertainments or treats or what have you. When we are left to our own devices, like we get bored and we get bored and we have to do shit. And like we need a purpose and we need something,

we need something to do. And the thing is, if you can inculcate in people a value of being a part of a community, then they will be able to be trusted to have them maximum amount of freedom and still operate within a society. Yep. You know, if you, if you can inspire people to be the one to, you know, take steps to, to do, you know, help me to work with the community to do what needs to get done.

Like, oh, hey, you know, somebody needs to go out and, you know, fix the sidewalk out here. Okay, well, let's get together and if somebody's got to do it, then let's do it. Like, you know, so-and-so is being a prick. Well, we need to get together and have a talk with him. So-and-so need the barn raised. Yeah, so-and-so. Yeah, there's a classic example, like, from the most anti. Yeah, well, yeah.

And from, you know, the country that has the most, you know, profoundly anti-socialist, anti-anarchist, you know, track record in the modern world. Like, yeah, yeah. We've done it for her. hundreds of years. It's just that you choose to ignore those things when you say, well, there's no way to rely on a community to do this. Yeah, there is.

Like, models exist. Yeah. You know, and the same thing comes up anytime you talk about you know, defunding the police or abolition of the police. It's like, well, you know, what are you going to do? What are you going to

do without that? It's like, well, we did for a couple hundred years there. Yeah. There's like... When there weren't slaves to be hunted down, there weren't that many police. Yeah. And, and, you know, stuff still got handled. Mm-hmm.

Like... Now, he also speaks of the absurdity that emanates from economic formulas. And this is Vega doing a dig on theorists who never actually live the ideals that they argued about. Okay. It's not economics. It's daily decisions that drive the ideology. So it's not, I'm an anarchist, therefore, I must do these things. It's, I do these things.

I guess that... makes me an anarchist. Anyway, I've got hair to cut. It's not theory. It's attending boring-ass meetings and making sure that you listen to people. It's not high-minded ideals that these folks were fighting for. It was the janitor and the cafeteria worker and the librarian and the kids playing in the street that they were fighting for. And it was about making a better life for all of them and for yourself at the same time in the same way. You get into theory and suddenly really dumb fucking decisions start to make sense and impractical things become the goal to fit life into and hurting people becomes acceptable.

Theory at least, I think having read a bunch of Vega now, according to Vega, was descriptive, not proscriptive. Yeah, well, I think that's a pretty, that makes sense to me. Yeah, and it makes absolutely all the sense, given that he's a step back from anarchism. Yeah. You know. And, and, you know, if you are. there's there's a balance that I think is important to maintain like you need to be informed about what it is that you say you believe right but if you are letting your book learning about what you say you believe get in the way of actually like walking the walk or just define what you believe even yeah it's okay that your belief is more grounded and practical like it's it's it's it's

It's like letterkenny is a really good example of anarchism. I love that. When someone needs your help, you help them. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, when that help involves, you know, kicking the shit out of a bunch of fascists, you do it. Right. Yeah, that too. You know. And then all these groups band together and then they have a party afterward.

And then they go back and do whatever floats their boats. And then they go back to, you know, flipping each other to the bird and swearing at one another. Yeah I'm sorry you throw in Letterkenny out there Yeah I just it just occurred to me like oh my God Yeah Kenny is utopian anarchism It really

Hasn't utopian anarchism In this essay I will Oh my God I might I might have finally found my magnum opus on Letterkenny I love it okay Oh Um, but practical anarchism. Give your balls a tug.

Give your balls a tug. Fuck you, Shorzie. Um. Did fucker. Alleged. Alleged. Allegedly. Anarchist, allegedly.

It's allegedly. How even the skids can contribute. Fuck you, Shorzy. A thesis on. Yeah. Checking in on anarchism in Lederkutty. How are you now? How are you?

know. So the, you know, talking about the balance between, you know, theory and practice. Yeah. What, what, you know, of course, immediately comes to me as the, you know, one believer, you know, on the mic right now. Right. Is, you know, you can quote chapter and verse out of scripture. You can talk about Paul until you're blue in the face. But if you're not behaving like a Christian, then your faith is dead.

You're, you know, what you're doing is empty. Makes sense. And I think it is important as a Christian to have read the book, right? Sure. You know. They all are based on it. Yeah. You know, but and part of this is, you know, Catholicism as an adult convert.

But like, you need to go out and do shit too. Right. You need to be, you need to be giving money to the poor. You need to be, you know, helping other people out. You need to be, you know, mowing your neighbor's lawn. Like, you know, if you're, you know, faith without works is dead. Right. is a lesson in Christianity.

And I know it's in Catholicism, but I don't want to claim it just for Catholicism because there's other traditions that would say the same thing. But faith without works is dead. And that doesn't just apply to Christianity. I think ideology without action is puffery. Yeah.

And if you allow yourself to be defined strictly by ideology, like you say, well, you know, I'm a Maoist, so, dot, dot, dot. Right. Then like our author here, Sir Mercier says, that that allows for moral,

moral decay. Degradation. Yeah. You know, well, you know, if the ideology here says that, you know, these people are doing the wrong things so we're not going to help them out well okay no they're they're still on your side they're still you know there's still people in your community sorry there's yeah there there are people in

your community and you know and you know and hearing the tone you use when you say there's still people in your community you know sorry is is the same tone of voice as it's the contract yep sorry like you know union thug for life it's it's you know it's the same fucking thing yeah you know there there has to be an ethical core to whatever you're doing because if you lose if you put ideology above humanity if you put um on theory or the written word above empathy and connection then there is no moral difference. I'm going to go on a limb here. I'm going to make kind of an extreme statement.

If you are entirely driven by words on a written page, at some point, you are going to be capable of doing awful shit. And there will be no moral difference between the philosophy that you are tied to and the one that is your diametric opposite that you hate intensely. See, I would disagree with that because I think that there are some philosophies that are worse than others.

Okay. I mean, that's fair. Your adherence to legalism could lead you to committing similar sins against humanity, to borrow your terms, as a philosophy that depends on hurting others. Okay. And at that point, oh, your bullet was so much more. moral than that guy's bullet ceases to matter. So for the people who are harmed, it

certainly doesn't matter as much. There was a wonderful note that I read recently because I finished reading all of the the clone commando books again. And one of the characters said, because somebody's like, well, the Sith are way worse. He's like,

oh yeah, yeah, no, because the ideology behind this decapitation is so much better than the ideology behind that decapitation. And I'm like, okay, that's, that's, lazy libertarian thinking, but I get how you got there considering, you know, the history. But he talks about the changing clamors. Go on.

I was going to say, for the individual who's now, you know, seven inches shorter, it really doesn't matter. Right. You know, yeah. So he talks about the changing clamors of the crowd. And he said, and what this is, he's basically pointing out that as the Spanish Revolution bore on, the friction that barely existed between different anarchist groups and different socialist groups in the beginning was now growing. And some of this can be laid at the feet of the Communist Party of Spain and their connections to Soviet Union. And I'm inclined to think that it's mostly their fault since my biases and sympathies lie with the anarchists who are making shit work.

But I digress. Many of the people who were on the left capitulated or shifted their thinking with a heavy dose of from the top theorist propaganda. them and making illegal the very anarchy that had pointed to such authorities as illegitimate. The public, after all, is fickle and prone to strong leaders taking over. And he wants us to remember that. Now, he goes on. Back to quoting him. The high cost of this painful apprenticeship in the awareness of social situations is one that we cannot squander, whether in Spain or anywhere else.

libertarian passion only takes on value in response to the problems at hand. It cannot be squandered on apocalypses of circumstance or more so exaltations. It draws strength from the experience of the militant clutching their rifle as a guarantee of his independence, but also in the effort of the anonymous worker who carries lucid dreams with them and lays the foundation for a future less wrought with despair. Now, when he talks about libertarians, this is me again, he's not talking about libertarians as we know them. This is libertarian socialism and civil libertarianism that Vega champion, that Mercia champion so well. It's anti-centralized authority beyond the local level, and anti-capitalists, the point where in some places the anarchists did away with money entirely.

And it favors self-management by the workers and self-governance by the same. In other words, no state ownership, no local and just local control and no private property either. Workers and peasants who are all just workers in fields basically all live freely and equally in their everyday life as flat as possible. So that's the libertarians, he means. Now, he also talks about the efforts of the anonymous worker who carries lucid dreams with them. And there's a wonderful quote that I read recently that said that the, the worker carries the hope of the future and the artist can imagine the future.

And any worker working for the fascist is slitting his own throat and any artist working for the fascist is not engaging in art because art is, by its nature, anti-fascist. I'm Damien's phrasing, but there you go. Yeah. And he's basically saying, like,

you're creating technical things that will cover as art, but you're working for fascists so it doesn't count as art. Okay. Yeah. Like on the one hand, I get the ideological point. Yeah.

Of the part about artists. The part about workers 100% agree. Anybody choosing to work for a fascist system is imagining that they are somehow going to wind up being the one stepping on everybody else. And like... And that's not hope. Ultimately, that's not hope. That isn't hope.

That's grim expectation of the work. possible scenario. Right. Yeah. But I would personally disagree that artists working, that artists who espouse fascism or who work for fascists are not creating art. They are creating art. Lenny Riefenstahl created art.

It was terrifying, morally bankrupt. art, but it was still art. I would say that the owner of that quote, whose name I've forgotten right now, but the owner of that quote would tell you, no, that's not art, that's propaganda. Okay. And now we're essentially getting into a very postmodern debate about the definitions of terminology. Yeah.

And that person maintains that like, because fascism does not. not allow expression, it only can allow propaganda. Okay. Yeah. And service to the state is not expression. Okay. Since the highest good of fascism, like I get how he gets there. I don't necessarily know enough to be able to agree or disagree, but I get his logic.

Yeah. Well, and I mean, I can follow the terrain of logic. Yep. And I can see the argument that is being made there. And it's compelling. And it's one of those like, well, I might need to rethink my thoughts on art, which is fine. I've rethink my thoughts on art before. So he talks about the effort of the anonymous worker who carries lucid dreams with them.

Right, right, right. Independence for the anarchists, revolution for the anarchist, was living their lives absent any overarching authority, be it by the rifle or be it by the book. And that's book with a capital or a non-capital B. Either way, they don't want it. So the most revolutionary thing to do would be to live according to that philosophy, showing practically what theorists can only dream abstractly about. So it's a lucid dream because they do it on purpose and they do it daily and are in full control of their lives.

Okay. That's why he's calling it, carrying on lucid dreams. Yeah. Okay. And I like that particular choice of phrase. Yeah. I do. I like the way he puts that.

Hmm. Yeah, I, yeah, I had a thought, and it got lonely and left. Yeah, so, yeah. He says, he goes on to say, in the curious universe in which we live, false hopes can let us forget the hundred methods that conspired together to form totalitarianisms that are neither courageous nor heroic. Individual courage and individual audacity can intervene against schemes, statistics, and facts. as much as the action of voluntary communities can weigh in or can weigh on the destiny of the world as long as there is planning and measurement. So what he's talking about here, the hundred methods that conspired together to form totalitarianisms that are neither courageous nor heroic, this pairs really well with economic formulas and statements from before, right? Essentially, totalitarianism didn't spring up spontaneously in a vacuum.

neither did people decide on an economic theory and then start moving toward it. People make daily decisions, based on daily decisions of others, based on the hundreds of methods of living that came before them. There is nothing that is on a tabula rasa. Nothing is pure. And as such, it's okay to completely eliminate something that's not working. Tradition is not a reason for us to stick to something, since we have to make hundreds of decisions tomorrow dealing with that same tradition.

We can make it different. We can make different decisions. And the hundred methods that conspired together to form totalitarianisms are as unheroic as living the revolution daily is heroic. Both of them are mundane and both of them are grinding daily activities. But there's nothing heroic about falling into totalitarianism because it's not revolutionary to be a reactionary. It's an attempt to make noble what is based on the same amount of decisions as it took to make the revolution today. and it's ultimately not courageous either because you're giving over to the giving over the hard work of living a revolution to someone who will tell you what to do. Okay, that last part, that last part cemented everything for me.

Okay. That's why I like annotating his stuff. Yeah. Because otherwise I, there are things that I missed on the first four read-throughs. He then, he then goes on to say, in the foxholes dug into the hillsides of Aragon. Men lived fraternally and dangerously and without the need for hope because they were living fully conscious of being, they were living fully conscious of being what they had to always wanted to be. Just, I mean, you know that this is catnip for me.

He says, we have tried to enter into a dialogue with them, with the dead, to preserve whatever, I'm sorry, no, to persevere, whatever of their truth can be useful for the survivors and the living. Bianchi, the thief who offered up the proceeds of his burglaries to buy weapons, star adults, the Bulgarian vagabond who died like a lord. Bolshekhov, the magnivist, who, although finding himself without horses, continued the spirit of revolution in Ukraine. Snatin from Bordeaux, or I guess it would be Snotin, from Bordeaux, whose tattoos showed the haunting fears of a pure life. G-I-U-A, Gia? Gia, Gia? Yeah, I don't know. Jua, I don't know.

Jua, yeah. The young thinker from Milan, who came to burn himself out in the open air. Jimenez of many names, who showed us the strength of a weak body. Manolo, whose fearlessness gave us a yardstick with which to measure our own daring. Oh, Christ. Okay, so there's a lot of references here. yeah i was going to say what what i find what i find remarkable about that is

this is almost a a catalog of saints like if you if you listen to there are certain there's certain there's certain times yeah during the liturgical year yeah there's there's a there's a there's a there times during the liturgical year where in mass there are there we we catalog saints we list the names of, you know, the father, the church fathers and, you know, other, other figures who are, who are important. And this, if you're anywhere in the Western tradition, you can't get away from the, from, from the influence of Catholic culture, because that's, that's what this is.

This is, this is a cataloging of saints. And, you know, what I, what I find remarkable about it is, He's writing this. What years he was writing this in? 56. 56. He's clearly writing for an audience who he's not going to have to explain like last names for any of these people or who any of these folks are. There's an audience here who understands this catechism. Yeah.

And he's speaking directly to them saying, do not make heroes of these men. Yeah. Do not make heroes of the efforts of the did. Because that takes it away from all of us. He's using the cadence and the style of a cataloging of saints, specifically in order to say, let's not write hagiographies for these men. Let's not treat these men as more than we are, which is also interesting to me because one of the things that we, one of the things that we try to do in Catholicism, is we try to remember that we are living our lives,

we are working to live our lives so that we can become saints. And sainthood, like we admire people who we know who we know have achieved it. But it isn't something that we can't do if the way I'm saying that makes sense.

Yeah, I think so. It is, you know, it's a high standard, but it's not something that is, that is impossible. for us. It's not out of reach. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I just, I, that, that comparison immediately struck me.

So, but I guess from the way you started speaking a moment ago that you're going to tell us who some of these folks are. Oh, yeah, yeah. So we're going to start with the foxholes that were dug into the hillsides of Aragon. He's talking about the Aragon offensive here. It went from March through mid-April of 1938, and it was. the defeat of the Republican Army. Now, by this point, the anarchists had largely been pushed out and delegitimized by the communists and the socialists.

And this was the bargain that they had to strike to continue getting weapons from the Soviet Union, which was one of the only groups willing to sell weapons to the anti-fascists in Spain. The United States passed several laws that were lumped together to be called the Neutrality Acts, which paging Elie Wiesel, when you are neutral, you saw, side with the oppressor. Now, the neutrality acts were passed from 35 to 37, and they weren't specifically aimed at stopping Americans from helping fight the fascists in Spain, but they were absolutely specifically aimed at stopping Americans from helping to fight the fascist in Spain.

Tell me, tell me you don't want to support socialists without telling me you don't want to support socialists. Right. Now, the 1935 Act was extended and expanded. and in addition to barring the export of, quote, arms ammunition and implements of war, end quote, by the United States to belligerent nations, requiring a specific export license of arms manufacturers,

Congress now added to that the loaning of money to belligerents and including civil wars under its umbrella of what it banned. This was also what this also would allow cash and carry for Roosevelt later on. Right. Now, back to the Argonne offensive, the Soviet Union, one of the only sources for arms, ammunition, and the implements of war for the anti-fascist side, slowed down their production and delivery of both things. If only there was a more localized way to get the weapons. Oh, right. Also, Catalonia's arms industry was similarly slowed down at this time.

Now, Franco grouped all his forces east of Aragon and was prepared for a final storm into Aragon. And even though Franco had fewer men, he had Italy and Germany supplying them and their march with arms, ammunition, and the implements of war. Nearly a thousand airplanes, thousands of trucks, more than 200 tanks, and the Condor Legion. The Nazi-Varmoct Army Air Force that used strategic bombing, which is, made famous, which was made famous by Guernica the prior year. Mm-hmm. So by this point, okay, by March to April of 38, it was led, the Condor Legion was led by the Germanly named Wilhelm Yosef Ritter von Thomas.

Now, the Republicans had more troops, but they had far fewer rifles. They had no tanks, and they had no trucks. They had no airplanes that I could find. And additionally, Franco's nationalists attacked when the Republicans were refitting their best troops, which meant that their numbers at the front were severely inexperienced. The battle started with an artillery bombardment, followed by an aerial bombardment, and then the trucks and the tanks. And the Republicans, many of whom were sick of the communists and thus even more demoralized, didn't stand with the communists. They ran, and it was a route. The thing was, this whole battle was a surprise to those on the Republican side because they think,

thought that the main battle would be at Guadalajara. Many of those who survived hid in the hills of Aragon and they dug in. Here's your foxholes. The communists and the remaining anarchists and socialists and other leftists fell on each other, blaming each other for their destruction. Leading to the very lazy narrative of, see, that's what happens. And it's like, wait a minute. That's like saying alpha wolves exist.

It's like in one condition that will happen. Here's the condition that happened, right? Yeah. The merit of these accusations definitely wasn't on the communist side, as they were the ones that were rerouting all sorts of munitions from the anarchists to themselves as they were retreating. And leaders began hunting out traitors to the cause rather than addressing the fascist in the room, including arbitrary executions of officers in front of their men. And still, despite all of this, they hung in there for about a month, largely due to the foxhole.

that they dug into the mountains of Aragon. But as often happens, air power decides the fight at the end. The Republicans were pushed to the sea, giving way from the Aragon offensive to the Levant Offensive, which was where the Republicans were grouped a little bit. Now, he also talked about living fully conscious of being what they had always wanted to be. This is where Mercier is referring specifically to the very few anarchists who were left

and who fought hard in their foxholes despite the communist efforts to destroy them in the face of literal advancing fascism. Aragon's eastern villages had been anarchist infused in the prior year, but with the efforts of the communists working for the third international, combined with the fascists being so well-funded and well-armed, they had been driven out of Catalonia and eastern Aragon by this time. So the social revolution that had been the backbone of the civil libertarian and the anarchist successes, militarily had been made into a diaspora with the anarchists in the area largely being made refugees. So they had no hope whatsoever of success, but God damn if they weren't going to go down swinging

and fighting for that same revolution when they were trapped in the hills of Aragon. Their social revolution had been ended by force and by betrayal, not because it wasn't what they wanted. Okay. now, then he mentions Bianchi. I can't find Bianchi at all. The only person I can think of who fits the bill is a guy named Duruti. Remember I mentioned him before? Derrude's column, right?

Right, right, yeah. But he's mentioned above, and there's no reason not to use his real name here. Derruti was an anarchist who fought on the Aragon Front and who did bank robberies to fund the revolution, calling it expropriations. But he was long dead by the Aragon Front, by the Aragon Offensive. so I can't find Bianchi anywhere. And since he had mentioned Duruti, there's no reason to use a pseudonym.

Now, I get to Star Adults, and I had better luck. This is a guy named Alexander Star Adults. He was ascribed as being a Bulgarian here, but he also seemed to be ascribed as Ukrainian as well. And he was one of the many Ukrainians who joined Derutti's column from the, quote, four corners of Europe. And later, according to Mercier Vega,

Star Adults was a standout in how he approached most things. He seemed to have enjoyed fist fighting. Here's a quote about him. Yeah, I know. I'm just like, again, it's that same guy that like David Siddharis talked about. Like when communism comes, I'm still going to be hauling things for people.

Right. And being cool with it. So here's a guy who's like, I like fist fighting and I hate fascists. Can we put me to work? And they're like, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm not fighting any fascists, but I still want to fistfight.

you come here you know like i don't like your face today yeah it needs rearranging um so here's uh here's what he says uh did to do uh yeah powder terrain to explore the raid executed in silence the machine gun made to speak at the right moment a new life had started for him in the spanish revolution he had friends a free and strong life uh air to breathe in deeply a weapon to care for, and the feeling that he was fighting for all, for the whole world, for something which went beyond him and made him greater all the same time. So, Merci A seems to really have admired star adults attributing to him in optimism in the face of struggle and a somewhat older brother vibe to younger revolutionaries in Spain at the time.

Italian anarchist Bruno Salvadori, writing under the pseudonym of, Antoine Jimenez wrote two memoirs on the Spanish Civil War and also fought in the Derutie column alongside Star Adults. And he mentioned Star Adults in his memoirs, calling him Star Doff. And in this account, Star Adults had also been sent to work in the salt mines of Siberia, which gave him white scars around his ankles and wrists because of the chafing of the salt with the metal on his flesh. Star Adults was killed in Saragosa in 1936.

So he's name-dropping heroes, but also he's like, these are just the decisions that they made. They're not heroes. Or they're heroes because of these decisions, which everybody else was making, too. Yeah. Now, he also talks about a guy named Bolshekov, the Mancovist, a Magnivist. I couldn't find this direct guy, but the Magnivist movement was what followed the February Revolution of 1917 in Russia. Okay. The bourgeois democratic revolution happened, and then the Magnivists got moving.

And it was during the Ukrainian War of Independence, and it was named after a popular Ukrainian leader, Nestor McNo. He'd been in specific contact with Derruti in the 20s and early 30s, and he'd done all he could to establish an anarchist-communist revolution in Ukraine during the War of Independence for Ukraine. And it was part of an attempted transition to a stateless and classless country, or society, rather, can't be a country if you're stateless. a collective of Soviets, because the Soviet just means counsel, right? So think like school districts, but for agriculture and labor. And it was working pretty well in the South and the East parts of Ukraine until the Red Army invaded in January of 1920 and the Magnivists were fully defeated by 21. McNo, a member of the group called the Union of Poor Peasants,

which carried out a number of robberies to fund their efforts and were considered to be one of the least anti-Semitic groups in the area, largely because poverty knows diversity. Okay. Yeah. So that's who he's talking about there. Now, he talked about the revolution in Ukraine. So while there's a Ukrainian War for Independence happening from 17 to 21, the revolution that Mercia Vega is talking about here is the one that McNo was catalyzing.

MacKno had been returned from prison in Moscow in 1917, and he immediately said about establishing the Peasants Union. They, the Peasants Union, established a true Soviet in place of the local government at Huliaople, Huliapoli, Huliaipo. Huliaiipoli. And they, the Soviet that they established, engaged in land redistribution, creating a land trust to keep the former landlords from selling off their livestock, as well as a number of strike actions across the region that year.

workers were running things during this time. Peasants were running things. Everyone was self-managing in these areas of the Ukraine. And then the Bolsheviks came in to seize all that power for the people in an effort to control what was happening vis-a-vis the true revolution and to make sure that the white Russians didn't get it all back somehow. And by January of 1918, so just a year after a Machno had come back, the Red Russians had re-seased control from the Magnivists.

and after this the Ukrainian War for Independence really kicked off since the Soviet Union had seized to Kiev or Kiev. Eventually the Soviet Union had bigger fish to fry and the Ukrainian state collapsed. The regional Congress of the peasants, workers, and insurgents in McNusina, McNovshina declared that it would create a, quote, society without ruling landowners, without subordinate slaves, without rich or poor, without tyrannical decrees and order, and in defiance of tyrant, and oppressors throughout the world. It did not last.

The Bolsheviks, after multiple backs and forth fighting, they ended up taking over after both Typhus and the White Army came in and took over. And by the end of August of 1921, and after the Red Terror, after Typhus, after the reconquering, the reclamation,

and the eventual diaspora of McNo's forces to Romania, the Ukrainians lost their revolution and came under the Soviet sway. But during the time before that, There was a period of time. What they were fighting for in McNov-Shina was a people's commune, a network of trade unions, peasant collectivists, committees, popular assemblies, and factory committees.

And this anarchist republic ran on referendum, direct democracy, and self-governance for the Soviet level. Everything that Mercier had seen and Spanish civil libertarians had seen, they were working toward that. Okay. Now, he also mentions a guy named Snontine. I could not find fuck about shit with him. Okay. I failed. Guilla.

I'm going to say, Gia. I'm pretty sure this is Renzo Gia. Okay. He was a Sardinian anti-fascist who came to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Who didn't? He was the son of a socialist minor, it seems. And he ended up getting arrested for eight. 18 or at the age of 18 for his connections to a group called Voki Dio Fisina, which was an anti-fascist

newspaper. This was in 1931. He served 100 days and then he was released, Gia was, with the warning that he'd better steer clear of anti-fascist activities because it's 1931 in Italy. Yeah. So he continued set activities. Because hell yeah. Yeah.

So in March of 1934, he left Sardinia and he got captured and brought back as a man, quote, capable of terrorist acts, end quote. And then he went from Switzerland to France, just as the Italian police had let the Swiss government know about his history. Gia or Gia did all he could to help exiles from Italy to arm them and then to support them. And when the Spanish coup led to the Spanish Civil War in August of 36, Gia, enlisted in the first Derutie column and then in the Garibaldi Brigade. Giuwa was wounded multiple times and ended up a company and then battalion commander. He died of his wounds about a month after receiving them in March of 38. Oh, wow.

Okay. Now, he also mentions a guy named Jimenez of many names, and predictably, there's too many guys that this could be. And none of them are distinguished by having lots of names or by having a frail, frame of any kind. And I don't think this is Carlos Romero Jimenez, which a lot of people attributed it to, because even though he was a hero of the siege of Madrid, that Jimenez specifically targeted anarchists and anarcho syndicists and tried to get Duruti now called Miaha column to disband. Oh, really? Yeah. So I don't think it was that guy. I also doubt that it was a guy named Juan Ramon Jimenez because he won the Nobel Prize for literature the same

year that this essay had come out, and there's no mention of his being any kind of poet or writer, and because he fled for France at the outset of the war, he wouldn't have been a hero in Spain. Right. Okay. Manolo is another name I had the hardest goddamn time finding. The one that keeps coming up is a pseudonym of someone too young to have been much influence during the Spanish Civil War. A guy named Manolo Gonzalez. He was too young.

He was also standing for the experience of those who were persecuted by Francoist-Span. after the Francoist said one. Okay. He was in preschool in Spain when he and his anarchist family fled Spain in 1939. Yeah, so unlikely. So he winds down his essay with the last two paragraphs. So the first one I've got to annotate again. He says, of all these and thousands of others, all that remains are trace chemicals.

The residues of bodies burned with petrol and the memory of brotherhood. We were shown proof that a collective life with neither good nor master was possible, but alongside people, as they actually are in the context of a world, such as people have made it, is possible. Now, actually, yeah, I'll pull that apart and then I'll finish with his last sentence. He talks about trace chemicals. Surely you've heard that like the total value of a human being is a $1.85 or something like that. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Okay. This comes from an article in Time Magazine and then rerun in the New York Times from 1926. This is the first time that they discussed the chemical value, monetary value of human beings. Okay. Now, since Time Magazine is free and the New York Times isn't, I'm going to go with what Time Magazine said. Right. Here's the quote. Dr. Allen Craig of Chicago addressing the American College of Surgeons last week in Monty,

Montreal said, quote, it is the spirit within him that makes the man supreme in the world and allows him to control materialistic things. Consider the average 150 pound body of a man from its chemical aspect. I'm just going to break in here real quick. Remember, this is a time where like 70% of men were not fit for the army. Right. So it contains lime enough to whitewash a fair size chicken coop. We've never used the metric and I guess we're never going to use the metric. Um, just, right. Yeah. But, okay, a full-sized chicken coop.

Sugar enough to fill a small shaker. Iron to make a 10-penny nail plus water. The total value of these ingredients is 98 cents. Nor was well-read Dr. Craig unique and having furbished up his speech with these neat statistics. Perhaps the first oral repetition was by the Reverend Dr. Henry Sloan Coffin from the pulpit of his Manhattan Church in March of 1924. since when they have often, or since when, they have often been heard from other pulpits, platforms, and publicist desks. So that's the time article on it.

The idea of us being chemicals had seeped into our groundwater, and so referencing the dead in this way, even though it's somewhat macabre, is a pretty common thing across the world by 56. Okay. Now, he also talked about the collective life with neither good nor master was possible. And I mean, at this point, you see what he's talking about, right? Yeah. Yeah.

The civil libertarian approach, the local self-government model of anarchism, right? The thing that led to really solid fighting morale and spirit, you're doing this for your fellows who were at the last meeting and you need to all protect each other because that's what you do in a community, as well as the revolution that they were making happen at the very local level. Our revolution is just as important in the haircuts that we give as it is. in the rifles that we fire. I love that haircuts is the thing you keep going back to. It's so unnecessary as a job. And they unionized. And they like took the barbershops from the owners.

And now the owner was one of the workers. Like it's, I don't know. It's such a luxury job. But like it matters so much to communities because it's where people come to gather. Yeah. You know, it's, again, I say it's unnecessary because you know how I shave my head every six weeks. Right. But like, it is a community thing.

Yeah. And it matters to communities. And yeah, I've just, my imagination is absolutely captured by it. So, yeah. Further, like, the revolutions they're living through owning all of their own means of production and collect. and then making all these decisions, right, that also gave them the strength to protect themselves and drive off the fascists in Spain. So it was clearly and manifestly possible until the liberals and the communists got involved,

the international communist, which, you know, there's a lesson there. Further, it was happening successfully and to the benefit of the people there, and in multiple places, regardless of the resistance by out. outside forces. They were carving out realities and ways that worked for each local, and they would be different from local to local. Spain and the Ukraine both faced tremendous violence and troubles at that time, at that time, as they were attempting to shift to anarchism and anarchy syndicalism with no need for a state and lots of self-governance. And it wasn't the right wing that stopped either of those places. It's the right wing that was the benefactor of it. Or is that the word?

Like when Michael Jordan... The beneficiary. Thank you. I was like, when Michael Jordan left, the Houston Roberts were the beneficiary of his pseudo-retirement. Departure. Yeah. So the right wing didn't stop these people. They were weakened enough that the right wing...

You know, it's that if it doesn't kill us, it makes it stronger? No. Yeah. It allows a opportunistic infection in to fucking kill you. There's a lovely way of looking at the world. But, you know, historically speaking, you're entirely not wrong. Yeah. You're entirely correct there.

I mean, the anarchists were making shit work and they were winning their fights and then and then. Well, and then so, you know, in Ukraine, it's it's the Bolsheviks. And what I find interesting there is there's a, if I'm understanding the course of the history correctly, there's a very significant urban versus rural component involved in that. There is. The anarchists in Ukraine are very rural. And the Bolsheviks are very much industrial. You know, the whole thing with Lenin was we're going to, you know, peasants, we can't rely on the peasants to do the revolution.

we've got to get industrial workers. So we've got industrialized the fuck out of everybody. Right. And so it winds up being a conflict between industrial workers and the group that is using. And that maybe not. I may be revealing my own biases by saying the group that is using industrial workers. But the faction that has industrial workers as their base, you know, then subjugating, you know, rural communities in that way, which then also ties back to the French Revolution where you have the, I mean, in that case, it was essentially bourgeois factions in the urban areas who wound up, what's the front.

I'm trying to remember the name of the campaign or the Venday. Essentially, they wound up turning on the peasantry in the countryside. And they wound up, you know, doing a bunch of awful shit. Well, and you see Stalin do this with the Kulax once he takes over as well. You know. And there is a peasants tend to be more conservative kind of viewpoint, which is true. But in Spain, they were like, yeah, but women still need health care. And they still want to fuck.

And they still. And now they were somewhat in different locals. There was some pushback on women's reproductive health rights. Right. But most women in the anarchist held areas had access to abortions, contraceptives, cortofascents, gynaecological care. It didn't matter. like, you know, if you want that, go to the city.

Okay, I want that. I'm going to the city. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And, you know, to kind of continue the thread with the comparison of the French Revolution, the peasants in the French Revolution in the countryside were, became and enraged, became upset with what the convention was doing in terms of disenfranchising. the church.

Yeah. And that became a flashpoint there. Yep. You know, they all agreed, you know, fuck the royal family. But, you know. But don't fuck with our ticket to heaven. Don't, don't fuck with us having a better life in the afterlife. Because like, come on.

Yeah. Because this. Have you done farm labor fucker? Right. No, you haven't. Well, and also, like, again, like that there's a reason that Mark said, you know, religion is the opiate of the masses. Yes.

Indeed. Now, he goes on, remember, he talked about alongside people as they actually are in the context of a world such as people have made it, right? Right. This is his final admonition in his essay not to lionize and martyr the people who live their own lives and worked hard at making a stateless society. His whole point here was that they made daily and hourly decisions to live in such a way that was valid, viable, and sustainable. and were it not for the betrayals of those who were also on the left, also making decisions, but not quite as far to the left, just average normal people would have made a better life for everyone if they were allowed to. No heroes, just fucking people. And that's his point. And so he ends it with this set of questions. Why would that example be pertinent only in times when tensions

were high, why could we not forge our destiny day by day? And that is Mr. Merci A Vega, the man with a, what did I call it, a federation of names. Louis-Mercier Vega is the way that he's known. And that is rejecting the legend. And the translation that I used was James Stout's translation. Okay. I think the very last question there. strikes me particularly because the idea of, you know, daily choices and, you know, restate how he, how he phrases it. Oh, yeah. He said, uh, why would that example be pertinent only in times when tensions were high?

Why could we not forge our destiny day by day? that question, that's an armor piercing question. It is. That gets right to the heart of why, of one of the factors of why our politics in this country is so fucked up. Yeah. Because nobody, it, because we are bombarded with, with shit all the time. And we have been for years. I'm not just talking about,

I'm not talking about just right now under the current administration, although, you know, it's reached a fever pitch. But we're bombarded with shit all the time. Yeah. We're, you know, just trying to get through daily life, you know, involves a lot of, keeping a lot of plate spinning, right?

And so nobody pays attention or not enough people. Pay attention to school board elections. And county board of schools. supervisors elections and elections for judges. And so every four years, when it's time to pick the one person that's going to sit in the big seat in the Oval Office, all of a sudden everybody pays attention. All of a sudden, it's sexy and it's vital and it's important. And it's like, okay, well, at the very least, every two years, there's another set of federal elections for like, all of the other fuckers who were supposed to be holding that person accountable.

Right. You know, and why can't we get people to pay attention then? Right. You know. I'll go you one better. I was having a discussion with somebody about loan forgiveness, educational loan forgiveness. And of course, you know, oh, it flies in the face of, you know, those of us who paid it and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, yeah, but just from an economic perspective alone.

it would be better for all of us. And well, you know, I didn't, you know, I would never take it and blah, blah, blah, I have pride. And I said, okay, do you know that us paying for college here in California is only about 60 years old? What? I was like, yeah. We can thank Ronald Reagan for that. And I explained.

I'm like, da, da, da, da. I said, so I don't, I'm not asking you to imagine an impossible thing. thing. I'm asking you to imagine a thing that already existed. That we lost. Yeah. And if we can imagine it, why can't we make it happen? Especially if it already happened. And they decided to use verbal gymnastics to get out of like the responsibility of recognizing that I don't know all my history kind of thing. Like being like, oh, I hadn't thought of that. Instead of that, they were, you know, too busy on their moral high horse of jubilee is is unethical um even though of the friend as well uh so two things number one

and the one i have to touch on um because of because of the topic of my master's thesis i have had uh marching through georgia stuck in my head for like the last three days and i'm not angry about it. Everybody, everybody listening, I understand. No, no, this is, this, I, I built this. I'm fine with it. But the chorus of that song, if you don't remember, is hurrah, hurrah, we bring the jubilee. Hurrah, hurrah, the flag that makes you free. So we sang a chorus from Atlanta to the sea while we're marching through Georgia. And from Atlanta to the sea, Georgia will be free. Yeah And it may have been you I sent the text to the other day

But I just remember hearing that and saying You know I've never heard the phrase We bring the Jubilee sounds so much like a threat Well it certainly was to an apartheid system And the white supremacy system Yeah So when capitalism exists it's a threat It is a threat

and my grandfather is spitting in his grave as I say this as Republican as he was, but man, I am here for it. But again, I come back to, we don't have to imagine because we have history of it happening. So like he says, why could we not forge our destiny day by day?

Why couldn't we just decide to do it? Yeah, I'm sorry, all of you people who own our debt, you have enough money yeah no debt you wait you have it's all imaginary anyway

it's not actually in speciate currency it's all it's all numbers on a spreadsheet somewhere yeah yeah which which then brings me

neatly around to the other thing that occurred to me as you're talking about having this conversation with with you know a colleague about you know loan forgiveness

back I don't know when I was working at another job. So at least six or seven years ago, pre-COVID, I somebody that I am

kind of semi-friends with on Facebook was going really hard in the paint talking about we really need to go to a single-payer healthcare system and just eliminate, you know, having employers provide health insurance

and it just needs to be. That would make it so strong. Oh, my God. And so I, in a spirit of legitimate, like, I don't get this, I'm, you know, explain to me how this would make it so that I'm as a, that me as a laborer is that I am not having to pay more money out of my pocket. Explain to me how, how this shift. and and you know having it explained to me I was legitimately able to say okay I had not understood that

and okay I get it and now I'm 100% on team you know fuck health insurance right which again my grandfather spinning I'm sorry granddad but the conversation that you, I mean, it parallels the conversation you had with your colleague and what gets me and what, what I find so frustrating about the challenge of why can't we make this something we choose to do in our daily, you know, the choices we make daily is the intellectual dishonesty.

Mm-hmm. that that whether it's motivated by fear, whether it's motivated like there is, there is somewhere there is a level of some kind of, I don't want to say subconscious, but there is, it is sub rosa set of assumptions. And set of like value determinations that's involved in, as you said, the mental gymnastics that are involved in like, well, you know, I just don't want to do that.

And it's like there are so many levels on which this would just make everything fucking easier. Yeah, but my dad didn't hug me enough, so. I mean, I don't want to be reductive. I don't mind being reductive. I know you don't. I'd like to reduce people's debt.

And if this gets me there, fine. I like that. And by the way, I hate off all my loans. And if they had gotten rid of loans the next day, I would have been one of the first ones out there celebrating. Yeah. You know, and again, there's two schools of thought, right? I went through it so everybody else should because it made me the man I am as though

that's a fucking goal. Or I went through it. God damn, if anybody else has to, that's a tragedy. Yeah, I'm going to make sure nobody else has to. You know. Yeah. And again, there's plenty of things that I think toughened me up, but like there's also plenty of things that didn't.

And let's all recognize that as a society, we have developed any number of really shitty coping mechanisms? Well, also as a society, we have enough, we throw out enough food to feed everybody. Yeah. And I don't know a single friend who thinks that starvation is good. I don't. Yeah.

That being said, there are plenty of people who don't think starvation is good, but also who think you shouldn't get food for free. And I'm like, how do you square that? Yeah. So, and they're not all Protestants, just so you know. Anyway, that's it. That's that. I think we just talked about what we gleaned.

Is there anything else you want to talk about with Mr. Louis, Merci Vega, any overall? notes on him or anything else? It's okay if not. We can go right to the book. Well, no, I do kind of want to say that I appreciate the viewpoint of being, I don't want to say, but very staunchly anti-romantic. Yeah.

Because I think, like still being in face. of the cause, right? And still being like, no, no, we, we, we fought for something that was important. We fought for something that was, uh, you know, right. Yeah. Worth fighting for. Worth fighting for. We lost.

And not turning it into a romantic, you know, kind of self-aggrandizing, yeah, lost cause. kind of kind of narrative. I mean, number one, because obviously here in the United States, the Lost Cause School of historiography is just absolute bullshit and it's based in white supremacy. But like there are plenty

of other you know, uh, conflicts where you get this, you know, kind of, kind of, uh, sepia tone, romanticized kind of, kind of view of things. Like if you look at the Peloponnesian War, the way that Western historians have,

you know, glazed the Athenians for forever when they lost. Which, like, let's look at some of the things about Athenian civilization and, like,

let's, if we're clear-eyed about, you know, how the Athenians did things, maybe we shouldn't romanticize them quite so much. You know, in recent years,

the glazing of the Spartans is by, by, you know, right-wingers and conservatives. This is the same thing. It's like this is not a civilization that deserves this level of idealization. Like if you scratch the surface, there are serious flaws here. There are moral quandaries plenty.

And I think having a clear-eyed, unromantic, but still positive? Yeah. I think that unromantic, you know, it makes the positive. It is necessary to keep it positive because he's saying 20 years after the loss that we could do this again tomorrow. Yeah.

And there's the optimism. And you can't say that if you're romanticizing it. because you're romanticizing it it was a time when heroes were made and blah blah no yeah yeah no I think

I think you're right I think it's it's when when you and we kind of already touched on this but when you make giants of the people who did these things

you diminish you kind of diminish the pain and the blood and the and the hardship just the general grinding suck of what they went through you know and and you also diminish the ability of anybody else to go through the suck and the bloodshed and the pain and push it further out of reach so Yeah. You're, you're aiding and abetting the oppressor class. Yeah. And so doing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, what do you want people to read or watch or take in? I am very strongly going to recommend that everybody find a way to watch the Mandalorian and Grogu. Okay. Um, I, I, my, my son and I, uh, went and saw it. And it is, it, it is so much fun. Uh, I am not going to say it is an amazing movie. Um, you know, it isn't, it isn't, you know, uh, high, high cinematic art. But it is, it is a film that for the majority of its two, just over two hour of running time, um, uh, uh, high, high cinematic art. But it is, it is a film that, it is a film that for the majority of its two, just over two hour of running time.

I got to be my son's age again. Cool. It was way too much fun. My son had a great time. It's rated PG-13. He's only eight. But, you know, it was it. We had a whole lot of fun.

It's an amazing film. And I highly, highly recommend it to go see, specifically to see it in a movie theater. Because it's, it's got some cinematics in it that are. that deserve the big screen. Cool. So that's my recommendation. How about you? I'm going to recommend a book by James Stout,

the same guy that translated this, called Against the State, anarchists and comrades at war in Spain, Myanmar, and Rojava. Rojava. I recommended this, I think, at the end of the last episode, so this is just a repeat of

Go out and get it. Yeah. But, I mean, I mean, we're talking about Spain. So it seemed... The other one would be, I think the guy named...

It's either Beavar or Overe. I think it's Richard Overey. But it's how... Overey wrote a book on the Spanish Civil War as well. And I think I recommended that in the first episode. So... Anyway, yeah, against the state by James Stout. So...

Cool. Very cool. Where can they find us? We can be found. First of all, I'm going to say our website at wwobabwabawebwoba.gikhistorytime.com. Also on, let's see, the Amazon podcast app, the Apple Podcast app, on Spotify, and on YouTube, where our archive consistently continues to grow. Anywhere that you have found us, wherever you go to find more of us, please take the time to subscribe and give us. the five-star review that you know we deserve.

And I, of course, remain as ever a shadow in the warp. But you, sir, where can you be found? You can find me on the first Friday of every month. I'm going to assume that you missed the August 7th show. But if you haven't, then go see that. August 7th at 9 p.m. at Sacramento Comedy Spot in Sacramento. But August 7th, September 4th, October 2nd, and November 6th. You should go see Capital Punishment.

It's in our 11th year. You got to come out. Check it out. See if we lose the belt. Myself, Justine, we're going to have a slew of rotating guests for a little bit because our host is going to have a child ex-utero. And so I will be hosting for a few months, and then we'll have guests come in to take over my spot as co-star.

So come see me host. I'll be wearing the zebra outfit and everything. Nice. Yeah. But yeah, I guess that's about it. Yeah, $15 tickets, come and check it out. Well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock.

And until next time, keep rolling 20s.