Guerrilla History - Dispatch: January 6 Anniversary

Episode Date: January 6, 2022

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we talk about the anniversary of the Capital Riot on January 6, 2021.  This episode is a Dispatch, which is part of our series of shorter, more informal episodes that are rooted in more current events, but which aim to use lessons of history to analyze.  Here we talk about the fetishization of the event by liberals and the media, the significance of the underlying tensions that led to the event, as well as other odds and ends.  Hope you enjoy! Guerrilla History is the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history, and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.  If you have any questions or guest/topic suggestions, email them to us at [e-mail]. Your hosts are immunobiologist Henry Hakamaki, Professor Adnan Husain, historian and Director of the School of Religion at Queens University, and Revolutionary Left Radio's Breht O'Shea.   Follow us on social media!  Our podcast can be found on twitter @guerrilla_pod, and can be supported on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory.  Your contributions will make the show possible to continue and succeed! To follow the hosts, Henry can be found on twitter @huck1995, and also has a patreon to help support himself through the pandemic where he breaks down science and public health research and news at https://www.patreon.com/huck1995.  Adnan can be followed on twitter @adnanahusain, and also runs The Majlis Podcast, which can be found at https://anchor.fm/the-majlis, and the Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives group at Queens University, https://www.facebook.com/MSGPQU/.   Breht is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio, which can be followed on twitter @RevLeftRadio and cohost of The Red Menace Podcast, which can be followed on twitter @Red_Menace_Pod.  Follow and support these shows on patreon, and find them at https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/.     Thanks to Ryan Hakamaki, who designed and created the podcast's artwork, and Kevin MacLeod, who creates royalty-free music.

You don't remember Den Ben-Brew? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history. to guerrilla history, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history

and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. This is going to be a little bit of a mini dispatch of sorts. It's going to be a very short episode, but it's something that we wanted to talk about in our previous episode, but didn't quite have time for. So we're going to talk about it today for pretty obvious reasons once we get into it. So I'm your host, Henry Hukamaki, joined as always by my co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan, and happy birthday. I'll embarrass you a little bit by letting the listeners know that today is your birthday. Hope that you're having a good day. How are you? I'm well. Thanks so much, Henry. Yeah, it's my birthday.

I'm sharing it, you know, with some interesting folks today. So we'll get into that. Yeah, absolutely. And that, you know, maybe it's teasing what we're going to be. talking about. But I'm also joined, as always, by Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. Excited to be here. And happy birthday. Adnan, the big, the big three zero out of your 20s now, huh? Yeah. Luckily, I'm wiser than my apparent years. I feel like you came out of the womb like that. So that's not that surprising, Innan. But today, as we alluded to Adnan is sharing a birthday with some rather interesting events

or interesting, you know, people of sorts. Today, as we record, is January 6th, 2022. It's the one-year anniversary of the events at the Capitol in January 6th, 2021. I'm not going to say much more here in terms of the introduction. I'll just turn it over to you, Brett. Maybe you want to remind the listeners, do a quick review of what happened on January 6th, 2021. Sure. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm sure most people know the basic outlines. But after the election where Biden, you know, clearly won the election. Trump's ego basically could not accept a loss. And so there has to be something asserted that, you know, saves Trump's face and his ego.

and that was the big lie that, you know, this election was stolen, you know, widespread corruption and ballot stuffing. And, you know, then you just spiral into la-la land with the fucking pillow guy and whatnot, right? So after the election, those months after it was clear that Biden won, there was a concerned effort by Trump and his proxies to put out this idea that actually it was stolen because there's no way Trump can actually lose. You know, I mean, a president that never got over 50% approval during a once a century COVID pandemic, you know, that can't possibly get him out of office. It has to be liberal meddling or whatever. And, you know, a huge chunk of this rather dying corpse of a society believed it and took it on board. And they were protesting in the area. Trump was giving a big speech, telling them you can't be weak. You got to go take your country back. You got to show strength. And they did that. They went to the Capitol. What started off is just a thousand or maybe a couple thousand on even know the exact number. Trump supporters from all over the country were rallying. It got wild. Police lines were broke. And eventually they broke into the Capitol, broke some glass, smeared their shit on the walls and roamed around for a little bit before leaving. And we've been living in the fallout of that event ever since. But I have to say, as an opening Salvo, luckily today on the one year anniversary, Commander Ghazi is down there in Atlanta on the front lines of CNN, showing solidarity with the January 6th freedom fighters and trying to form coalitions with them.

So all hope is not dead. But yeah, I mean, we all know the basics of the silly story and the sort of liberal insanity that ensued. And I think there's a line to walk here, right? there's a line to walk between like a principled criticism of what this was, which in my opinion wasn't an insurrection or a coup, but was a fascist riot. That's pretty much what it was. And then there's like the liberal fetishizing of it and the obsessing over it and the way that they can weaponize it for their own means, which we can maybe get into a little bit here. But I think that's what the point of this episode is, is to try to find what the actual principled analysis is without falling into the liberal hysteria and fetish.

reticizing, reifying, or over-hyping what this event actually was. Yeah, before I turn it over to Adnan for his opening thoughts, and before I pick up the threat of fetishization, which is exactly the term that I was going to use when talking about this event, I'm going to kick it back to you, Brett, to talk about one other thing that you talked about in Rev. Left episodes and perhaps also a Red Menace episode. I don't remember for sure.

It was a year ago, after all, in the aftermath of this event, which was the class character of the protesters at this, as you said, fascist riot, something that was not talked about very heavily in the media, but something that you covered in at least two episodes, if I remember correctly, of Rev Left. So if you can just at least raise that, perhaps we'll pick up that threat a little bit going forward. But yeah, go ahead.

Sure, yeah. I mean, there's obviously a sort of liberal elite compulsion to not only label the January 6 people, but Trump supporters broadly as the white working class. And while it's certainly true that members of the working class who are white are in the Trump base and participated in the January 6th riot, the class base of that event and of fascism more broadly, which the people in the January 6 event are a sort of core of true believers

that would form the basis of fascism, were it to fully burst into the open and become acute. The fact is that the class base was largely petty bourgeois, upper middle class, maybe some labor aristocracy, with some elements of the big bourgeoisie, you know, the most reactionary elements of the big bourgeoisie, which again is the class composition of fascism broadly, a relative minority of ruling class elites that are far on the right, they are have disproportionate wealth and power but they're sort of a minority even within the ruling class right and so they have to reach out and form a sort of class coalition and the

people most readily taking up with that are going to be the petty bourgeois this middle to upper middle strata of of people in this society obviously white men overrepresented as the as the majority gender racial ethnic religious you know formation if it were. So yeah, I really think it's important just to say that that solid, you're talking about like retired admirals and like real estate agents that flew down on private planes and small business owners, you know, maybe kids that inherited a bunch of money from their daddy and mommy, stuff like that. That's the, that's the core of this movement. It is not people working, scraping by that can't afford a flight to D.C. to ransack the capital, right? So I just think it's important to keep that

in mind. Absolutely. I think that that's important, too, to keep in mind as we continue in this conversation. Adnan, I'm going to pass it over to you now for your opening thoughts on this conversation. If there's anything that you want to recall about the event itself from a year ago, feel free to open with that. And then if you have any analysis that you want to share to kind of start the conversation as a retrospective, go ahead. Well, sure. I think what came into my mind initially when I was thinking about and discussing the events of January 6th a year ago in its immediate aftermath was to think about other historical analogs and you know the sorts of precipitating events for fascist politics and what immediately came into my mind was the beer hall pooch in munich 1923 and so

um the reason why that struck me is because it was such an obviously bungled and failed attempt um but it's not clear uh it wasn't clear quite at the time what the attempt to achieve was whereas you know the beer hall pooch was an effort an organized conspiracy to try and um you know have a coup d'tan seize seize power at least you know um you know during the vimar republic uh at least in the state of bavaria um and you know i think subsequently it's become clear that there are a variety of possible different motivations or different levels of actual organization in certain circles and in others so i don't know how well um the analogy holds anymore it'd be worth thinking about but what i do think was important or significant is that while this was an almost comic uh flop that has

turned into something that has panicked, you know, the liberal intelligentsia as an elites, it nonetheless points to such a very serious divide getting at, I think, the class analysis that, and the way that this divide is being exploited, you know, the class analysis that Brett just offered suggests that it can be a kind of precipitating moment for almost like a rehearsal, but that perhaps, you know, these sorts of forces that are growing, I think, in organization and power will, you know, try and suppress future voting. We'll try and use the electoral system or abuse it to achieve far-right and right-wing ends that they won't and I think this is something that Brett mentioned actually in our year review

roundup that they may never accept another democratic election in this country and I do recall hearing a lot of rhetoric on the far right in Republican circles that the Trump election in 2016 was the last election you know that was possible like democratically like if they were to maintain the system and you know have some sort of say over the future of a browning America they were going to have to take a stand at that decisive moment and then institute the mechanisms to disenfranchise others because demographically speaking their hold on power you know wasn't going to continue so I think there is some significance to this I don't think it's the

significance that a lot of the liberal elite you know that's hyperventilating about this as an organized insurrection that was trying to derail democracy I think the deeper analysis is that class analysis and the way in which a kind of cultural polarization is being used in order to submerge the actual class analysis here. And I guess my second major sort of point is at the time, I also felt that if this had been a people's occupation of Congress to demand its elected leaders provide universal health care and take action on the climate

emergency, I would not have been so, you know, very outraged by, you know, an occupation of Congress by people, much like we had the occupation in Wall Street, but with coherent demands and an organized, you know, popular movement. And what I feel is sort of tragic is that there was quite a lot of mobilization available ready you know there were attempts on the left to try and force this narrowly held balance of power in a more positive and progressive direction and I think a lot of it got displaced by the events of January 6th and the reaction to it and so I think opportunities were lost you know in that in that moment and it had some destructive effects for left organizing and gave a something of a pass to

Democratic Party leadership that could point to and focus entirely on this you know bizarre carnivalesque and really kind of idiotic fascist riot instead of actually upholding their responsibilities and be held and being held accountable by popular left organizing. Yeah, I agree with all of that. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to give my kind of retrospective thoughts on this event. I'll let you guys go around the horn one more time and then we'll wrap up. I know the listeners are just shocked at this point.

They're used to our two plus hour episodes and they're hearing that we're going to wrap up after just a few minutes. Like I said, it's a mini episode. But, okay, here's what I want to talk about. First off, the fetishization. by the liberal media, the liberal intelligentsia, liberal congressional leaders. Just today, within the last few hours before recording this, we had two just absolutely insane bits of fetishization of this event from major, major Democratic leaders. So first, Kamala Harris, while giving a speech to commemorate the January 6th riot from last year,

said that there was really three dates in American history that really, you know, should stay ingrained in our minds forever and ever. And that would be December 7th, 1941, 9-11, 2001, and January 6th, 2021. Putting this disorganized kind of clownish riot at the capital on the same pedestal as Pearl Harbor and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center is on 9-11, which is just goofy. I mean, it's just straight up goofy. There's no other way to put it. Whether you think that this was a significant event in itself,

or if I think that we kind of all agree on this, that the event itself perhaps wasn't the important part, but it was important as an indicator of underlying tensions within the society, regardless of where you fall on that debate, to compare this event as a singular event to Pearl Harbor or 9-11, it's a bit strange. It's a bit clownish. And then just after that, Nancy Pelosi at another commemoration had a surprise guest, Lynn Manuel Miranda and the cast of Hamilton. And they performed one of the songs from Hamilton the musical. So yeah, we have this commemoration that's

supposed to be for this, you know, huge, major, tragic event. And what do they do? They bring out Lynn Manuel Miranda and co to perform a song from a musical which you know we all have thoughts on but that's a different conversation for a different day but yeah it really was a pretty clownish thing to have happened so if I have time while editing this I'm going to chuck a little section of the audio in right here I'm dedicating every day to you domestic life was never quite my style when you smile You knocked me out I fall apart

And I thought I was so smart You will come of age With our young nation We'll bleed and fight for you We'll make it right for you If we lay a strong enough foundation We'll pass it on to you We'll give the world to you

When you'll blow us all away Someday, Someday. Yeah, you blow us all the way, Someday, Someday. But yeah, at this event that was hosted by Nancy Pelosi over Zoom or some similar video technology, all of the members of Hamilton were having this, you know, singing of this new song

And yeah, I mean, this is what they've been talking about in the lead up to today all day today is the fetishization of this individual act, but without actually digging into what was behind it. And that is the main point that we need to consider when looking at this. This event really wasn't all that significant in reality. This was not a genuine attempt to subvert democracy, regardless of what these elected officials say. And yes, that's the exact terminology. that you hear. This was an attempt to subvert our democracy. No, the people that broke into the capital were not trying to instill a different regime in charge and run by decree the country. It was not what was happening. These people went into offices. They put their feet on desks and then

walked out because they didn't know what to do next. There was no organization here. But the fact that we have these thousands of people who are protesting for, you know, a pretty explicitly fascist reason, is a concern and we have to think amongst ourselves on the on the genuine left what the antagonisms present within society that are causing this to bubble up at a time like you know last year what those antagonisms are what the contradictions within society are they're not that hard to figure out you know at end stage of capitalism we often see fascist uprisings We have to analyze exactly what is enabling them. We have to analyze the threat that is coming from them, but that is much more significant than the event itself.

And then the last thing that I want to mention before I turn it back over to you guys for your last thoughts as we wrap up. Adnan, you mentioned that we wouldn't be that upset if there was people breaking into the capital demanding actual change, progressive change to aid the American people. of course, I agree with that sentiment. The thing is, is that a lot of people, and I've seen a lot of people nominatively on the left, some pretty big name people who I'm not going to name, basically advocating for red-brown alliances. And I know that I've been harping on this in the past few episodes, but really I think red-brown alliances are a major, major red flag, you know, using that terminology. But we really need to make sure that we are not trying to pursue.

do some sort of red-brown alliance. We shouldn't say, you know, these people that are present within this fascist mobilization, they are mobilized, they're willing to do this sort of action that we think we need to do. And we can find some common ground with these people, and we should band together with them around these common issues and then storm the capital with them, demanding the change on these common issues. That is not a good tactic. I mean, perhaps they agree with you on that issue, but allying yourself with fascists really not smart. History has shown us that and any sort of brain function would tell you that as well. So we need to be very cognizant that when we're trying to think about things that we can do on the left to affect change,

that we don't try to just take the easy route of capturing dissatisfaction and already happening mobilization from different political tendencies and trying to capture that in subvert that into our movement along with those people and those different political tendencies. We need to go about finding an ideological line, explicitly stating that ideological line and explicit political demands that fit within that ideological line and then mobilizing with people that believe in that ideological line and those political demands. We don't go out and just say, hey, fascist, you want universal health care too, for whatever reason that might be. Let's go and ride at the Capitol

together. In the long run, really not a good idea. Okay, Brett, why don't I turn it over to you now for your final thoughts as we turn to wrap up now? Sure. I have lots of points. I'll go through really quickly. Just to your point right there about a red-brown alliance and the silliness and just the lack of historical knowledge from anybody that would say that, this is what they did when Biden was elected. Imagine what they would do if a socialist or a communist got anywhere near power. It's insane that there's anything at all that we could form a coalition around. Why did they do this? Because they wanted their preferred billionaire con man sociopath. Not because they had any highfalutin values. I mean, they dress it up in liberty and freedom, but they don't give a shit

about that. They wanted their guy in because he makes him feel feelings. And there's nothing there of any substance to to form a coalition around. It's a fascist personality cult. So I think that's worth pointing out. The other thing is, as Adnan said earlier, you know, I'm not against the act in and of itself. It wasn't organized. It wasn't planned. It was sort of spur of the moment. Trump had riled them up and they did something. There's a complete lack of organization showing how, you know, we can talk shit about the left being unorganized. The right is just as much, if not worse. and their far-right organizations are honeypots full of feds and nobody trusts anybody and they get together in real life and they start battling each other and jostling.

So, I mean, that's worth pointing out. But the GOP hypocrisy is also worth pointing out. We can make fun of the liberals and the liberal media and it's worth saying that CNN had their biggest ratings ever on January 6th. Of course, they're going to milk the fuck out of this. But the GOP hypocrisy is also worth pointing out because imagine if, as Adnan sort of alluded to, this was multiracial leftists, you know, coming in to advocate for universal health care action on climate change or even just like in the midst of the BLM Antifa riots that White House fence falls down and they rush the gates. They're getting fucking shot.

They're going to their house. People are disappearing. Organizers are disappearing. We know how it would be handled. It was handled with kid gloves throughout because they were right wingers. And even now, and this is also worth saying that the people that they're prosecuting, are just like the random dumb-dums who were in there, right? And okay, whatever, they committed a crime and they were stupid enough to carry their phones and show their face and brag about it afterwards. You get what you give a sort of thing. But the elites who lied to these people who helped, you know, there's good evidence that congressmen actually helped plan this event. Trump and other elites clearly incited them and cheered them on afterwards. Fox News pundits, conservative talk radio hosts, all these rich people with some with some elements of power.

they don't get touched. There's no threat of any legal repercussion whatsoever. It's the easy bottom of the barrel guys. They can pick off, throw in jail for a few months and make an example out of. And so, you know, it's just worth noticing that. I think we've already mentioned that the GOP base will never accept another national loss as legitimate. Still to this day, 75% of Republicans believe that the election was stolen. This is a symptom of an underlying disease, not the disease itself. The liberals will tell you the disease is Trump, right? but we know the disease is much deeper, and Trump himself is merely a symptom of an empire and decay of American history catching up to itself of the internal contradictions of this breaking down society. But we should, we should care about this insofar as what you both have said in your own way, not that the event itself was so horrific that we're traumatized from it, but that it is just another symptom of a decaying society, a balkanizing epistemology and just basic conceptions of what is true and what is not, and a sign of a resurgent fascism. This problem isn't going away.

Fascism is only going to become more explicit, is going to become more of a problem. And if the liberal media hysteria was actually looking at the core causes of fascist insurgency, looking at the economic devastation of this society and why it's tearing apart at the seams, the crises and what happens to capitalism in crises, and the fact that there is a demographic, change that the that the GOP and the right wing are reacting to it's a browning of america it is a more progressive young america and instead of of accepting you know neglection loss uh they see what's coming and they're going to everything they can to maintain an iron grip on the the political channels using anti-democratic mechanisms like the senate the supreme court and

others to to instantiate and perpetuate their minoritarian rule and to no longer be subject to the democratic whims of a larger demographically shifting society. So if you had more organization on the right, you had a more competent leader, you had more focus and more coordination, something more

serious could have happened. But as it did, it was as Adon said, a carnivalesque sort of silly riot. And then the last thing I'll say is Biden getting up and liberals love doing this.

after January 6th, the sacred halls of the Capitol. Oh, they were brought low by these barbarians at the gates. Sacred halls of the Capitol, these are buildings where war crimes are planned, where huge transfers of wealth are shifted from the bottom and middle to the very top, where the most corrupt, most vile, sociopathic individuals in the world routinely go to sit at their office desks and whatnot. This is not sacred halls. and we don't even have a democracy, which is a huge thing with these liberals, you know,

they're trying to overthrow our democracy. We don't have one. It would be nice to have one. It would be really nice if we had even a semblance of actual democracy. But in reality, all we have is a corporate plutocratic oligarchy who makes the rules with a thin patina, a facade of democracy. And so if they can row you up into claiming that America has a democracy and wanting to protect it against these people, they can sort of pull the wool over your eye to make you believe that this is a responsive democratic system in the first place. It's absolutely, absolutely not. And so, I don't know, I could go on forever on this front, but I think we should avoid liberal hysteria. We should seek the root causes of such a thing and seek to understand where this

trajectory is going to go in the future and how we can best respond to it. We shouldn't partake in this idealizing of our institutions, which are decaying or the reifying of the idea that we actually are a democratic society where people have a say in their daily life, all that is nonsense. So push back on the right and the liberal center at the same time. And I think that's the only proper approach. Yeah, I love everything that you said. I really appreciated to mention that America is not a democracy, something that I bring up all the time. And there's almost nothing that I say that gets more hatred from liberals than that statement alone. And I say a lot of things that liberals really hate. But the fact that America is not a democracy is just about

at the top of that list. So I'm glad that you were the one who brought it up this time and not me. Now, final words go to the birthday boy, Adnan. What do you want to say to wrap up here? There's not much to say on top of the great points that Brett made and also the points you made that cast of the musical Hamilton. That's just fantastic. I didn't notice that. It just shows how symbolically useful this event and its memorialization and commemoration has been for establishment forces that want to displace any. genuine anti-status quo left organizing, you know, by promoting this idea that, you know,

we are trying to save our democracy. I think that was the key point here, is that these buffoons may have been wrong about the election and its results, but on some level, they're responding to and reacting in this terrible and regressive sort of way, but they're responding to the fact that we have had a corporate duopoly you know i think ralph nader once called uh washington corporate occupied zone you know and and you know it's been a generation or more and depending on who you are as an american you've never had a democracy you know if you're a black person um you know uh suffering slavery Jim Crow, you know, the idea that this is some, you know, that there's some need to preserve and protect our democracy is, of course, already making the argument that is mask, you know,

masking the true reality of the situation. These are not democratically responsive institutions. I guess I just look at it as too often on the left, even though so many people were mobile, You know, maybe by the Bernie campaign or by other forms of left organizing, there was a feeling, even amongst so-called socialist leaders, elected leaders, that, oh, you have to give the Biden administration a chance. So instead of, you know, the left being in a position to make its concrete popular demands through direct action, through protest, and so on, instead it was the right wing that, you know, took the initiative. And, you know, we've seen after a year of the Biden administration that, of course, none of the, you know, even very sort of modest promises, very few promises were made. But even the modest promises that were made about the $15 minimum wage or other sorts of things have been completely derailed. So what are we left with? I mean, I think, you know, enhanced security at the capital.

you want to have a popular demonstration that's going to be much harder because they've enhanced security there at the Capitol they've put more money into the Capitol Police that was complicit you know in letting you know some of these rioters into the so-called hallowed halls of Congress and so instead they've enabled more of the clamping down on dissent and the you know isolating and marginalizing of legitimate political protest this was illegitimate bunk but what it's done is it's created the conditions to monitor surveil and isolate Congress from you know the people's will and popular political pressure as if it wasn't already so

walled off you know so many programs are popular but it's clear that only the 10% you know you know only 10% percent of society's goals, objectives, and will gets passed through Congress. So what has happened is that even more hurdles and barriers between these elected people and the public interest and the popular will have been erected. And I guess the last thing I would just say is the one lesson that I would take from it is also about who's been prosecuted. it's not been as Brett said the hypocrites who may have helped organize it or certainly have

provided political cover for the events it's the buffoon with the horned helmet you know who has been you know the law has come down heavy so i guess you know one lesson that i'm sure the right wing may learn is that if you want to go and and do silly things like this next time don't wear a costume I think that's the only lesson they will learn. But I fear that they will be organizing increasingly to derail into the people's will. And the one thing we should keep in mind is we have a lot of organizing and work to do on our side because we're not in a position to actually put pressure on our political leadership here to meet the needs of the people.

that has to be our goal. And at least we can say after a year of the Biden administration, if anybody had illusions about the possibilities for progressive change through these electoral representatives, you know, that should be gone by now. And we're going to have to turn towards more substantive organizing the kinds of things that we talked about in the year in review. workers, you know, organizing in their workplaces and local struggles, you know, on behalf of our communities. So that's the task ahead, I think. Great. And I know that I promised you the last word at none, but you just, you mentioned something that I would be really, really remiss to not mention, just as an aside, it's completely unrelated

to January 6th. You mentioned people's will and you mentioned clampdowns as a result of the protests on January 6th, just a slight reminiscent of the Russian experience. So there was a group called People's Will, Narragnaia Volia, which was a socialist clandestine group in the 1880s, that their main tactics were terror, and particularly and especially trying to assassinate public officials. They were successful in assassinating Tsar Alexander II in 1880. which they hoped would foment like basically a proletarian revolt or at least a peasant's revolt to topple the regime.

But in reality, what happened in the short term was mass repression by the regime. So just interesting that you mentioned people's will and repression by the state. And that was exactly what happened in 1881. And just as one other aside on that note for listeners who may be interested, Lenin's older brother, Alexander. Ulyanov was a member of people's will, and he was involved in the planning for a attempted assassination of Tsar Alexander III a few years later and was executed for his planning of that attempted assassination. That was in 1887. So just as an aside, because we're a history podcast

and you mentioned it, so I couldn't help myself. All right, Brett, how can the listeners find you and the excellent work that you're doing. Yeah, really quick. I bet Zaris Russia really regrets killing Lenin's brother. They set a whole domino stack in motion. But that's exactly what Lenin talked about, about the limitations of terrorism as a political tool. It just invites repression.

You don't have a mass base of support. It's a failing strategy every time. Last thing, I just wanted to mention off Adon's things. I'm sorry, I'll be quick. When the liberals try to freak out about January 6th and their broader freakouts about Trump in general, what they're trying to do is co-op the left who is sick of this system and say, hey, I understand you have problems with us, but we ought to unite to stop the fascists, right?

As if they're not the very cause of the conditions that lead to fascism. You know, the road that Biden leads to is right back to Trump because Biden's entire neoliberal political ideology is the reason this society is collapsing in the first place. He cannot think outside that box. We're going to get Trump again in 2024. And I mean, how many cycles do we have to live through before something breaks, something new changes? Liberals finally see the error of their ways, which I'm not holding out hope for, et cetera. So just last thoughts.

But you can find me at Revolutionary LeftRadio.com. And I highly recommend that people do check out Revolutionary LeftRadio.com and listen to all the podcasts that Brett is involved with because they're all amazing. And I don't just say that because I'm involved with one of them. Adnan, how can the listeners find you and your other podcast? that you run. Well, find me on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussein, H-U-S-A-I-N, and check out my other podcast, The M-A-L-I-S, about the Middle East, Islamic World,

Muslim diaspras we have coming up, an episode talking about the global war on terrorism and Islamophobia, looking back a retrospective of 20 years, with a really great writer Arun Kudnani, who wrote a wonderful book called The Muslim, are coming. People should check that out and look for that episode. So look out for the M-A-J-L-I-S. And of course, I also recommend the listeners to do that, and I'm looking forward to that episode as well. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-E-N-N-N-E-R-R-R-I-L-A-U-N-S-C-P, and you can follow

the show on Twitter at Guerrilla-U-L-L-A-U-S-C-P, and you can support the show by joining us on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history, and your support really means a lot to us. You get some bonus content by joining on there. So until next time, listeners, and we'll have a really great episode coming out for you next week about socialist states and the environment. So stay tuned for that. Until next time, Solidarity. You know what I'm going to be. Thank you.