Guerrilla History - Sudan's History Through Independence & the Destruction of the Sudanese Left w/ Mohamed Khougali & Ruehl Muller [Pt.1] (AR&D Ep. 15)

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

In this continuation of our African Revolutions and Decolonization series, we we have an lengthy conversation that just starts to scratch the surface of Sudan, with a terrific guest and guest host.  Here, we are joined by Mohamed Khougali, author of Politically Unconscious: The Psychic Aftermath of the Sudanese Revolution, and returning guest host Ruehl Muller, whom you will remember from our episodes with the Communist Party of Swaziland's Bafanabakhe Sacolo.  Stay tuned, part 2 of this conversation will be coming very soon! Mohamed Khougali is a Sudanese socialist who was part of the Sudanese revolution of 2018-19. He is currently residing in Germany where he and his wife founded the Black Radicals, an anti-racist group informed by the Black Radical Tradition. He also continues his radical psychological practice, where you can reach him (notatherapist.de).  Also be sure to follow his instagram, Black Radicals!  Ruehl Muller is senior lecturer/associate professor at the Institute of Creativity and Innovation at Xiamen University in China, and the editor of the fantastic Building a People's Art: Selected Works of Trường Chinh and Tố Hữu (buy a physical copy or download the free PDF from Iskra Books). Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You remember Den Ben-Brew 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, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki.

Unfortunately not joined by my usual co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, who of course is historian director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada, as he's on the road today. Now, listeners, you may have noticed that we've had a slightly unplanned hiatus recently. And so we're going to be coming back. This is the first episode back from this unplanned hiatus. We have a lot more coming up in the very near future. And in fact, today's episode is the first part of a two-part conversation,

which Adnan will hopefully be at the second part of, before I introduce what this two-part conversation is on and who our guest and guest host are for today, I'd like to remind you listeners that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And with the show is on social media, but, you know, sanctions I haven't been able to log online in over a year and change. So, you know, you can follow guerrilla history on different social media. who knows if things are being posted or not. All right, with that being said, we are back with another installment of our African

Revolutions and Decolonization series. Today, as I mentioned, is the first of a two-part conversation that we're going to be having on Sudan. Today's episode is going to be kind of a grounding conversation that's focused very heavily on the history. And the next time we are going to be talking a bit more on some conceptual issues, psychotherapy within the context of Sudan and more broad. And the editorial work on a brilliant new book, which is going to be the focus of these two conversations in part of each of the conversations and who the author of is our guest today.

We're joined by Mohamed Hu Jolie, who is the author of Politically Unconscious, the psychic aftermath of the Sudanese Revolution. Muhammad, it's nice to have you on the show. How are you doing? I'll do it very good. Thank you for having me all. It's really a pleasure being here and I can't wait to get into this. Absolutely. I know I first made a contact with you a few months ago and had a very nice conversation with you then

and have really been looking forward to this conversation that we're having today since that time. And I'm happy that we're finally able to get back together and start getting these new recordings done again. Again, just letting the listeners know there's going to be a lot of content coming your way in the near future. But yeah, Muhammad, it's great to have you. And I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So, Muhammad, as I said, it's a pleasure having you on the show. Can you introduce yourself to the listeners who, this is your first time on the show. So they may not be familiar with you at this point.

Yeah, for sure. And you're right. Like we had a conversation a couple of months ago, and it's lovely to, I hope you don't mind me saying this like consummate the romance. It was a lovely. It's going to be that kind of podcast, is it? Glad I should be here for that. Go ahead, go ahead. I love that.

It's lovely being here. And yeah, my name is Mohamed Kugali. I am, I was part of the Sudanese revolution. I'm a Sudanese socialist. I've written the book that we're talking about today called The Politically Unconscious, The Psychic Aftermath of the Sudanese Revolution. Currently, I'm residing in Germany and trying to do some anti-racist work, especially in regards to bringing in the black radical tradition,

which has informed a lot of my thinking of late. And I will make, it's great to see you. And I will just point out that I noticed that you gave the English version of your surname for the listeners, whereas I tried to give the Arabic version. So maybe I did that bad of a job that you had to let the listeners know how to find you. But I tried. It was all good. It was all good.

It was just, it's like, I think maybe the ha in Arabic is a little bit like heavy in weight. I don't know. I think my parents are like, how? I don't know. I don't know. Well, like I said, in Russian, I said this off the record, listeners, but it's pretty similar to how it would sound if he wrote his name in Russian. So, you know, Muhammad, come on over any time.

Everybody will have no problem saying your name. Now I'm going to turn to, as the listeners will have noticed earlier in the introduction to episode I mentioned that we have a guest host today. It's a returning guest host and one whom the listeners will hopefully be familiar with from his previous appearances on the show. We have Ruhl Muler, who is a senior lecturer, an associate professor at the Institute of Creativity and Innovation at Shaman University in China, and the editor of a book that I really think that more listeners should pick up because it's an absolutely beautiful book, Building of People's Art, Selected Works of Tron Chin and Tu Hu. Ruhul, my friend, it's nice to have you back on the show

again, how are you doing today? I'm good, I'm good, always good to be here, and I'm extra good today since I get to be here for this marriage consummation. This is exciting. Well, you're involved with this as well. I mean, you're also involved with the book that we'll be talking about today, but you're involved in the consummation as well. I think there's going to be like a running joke throughout the podcast episode.

I just like to say, I am happily married, so we're about to begin. The listeners are still going to be very upset because famously I have no sense of humor. So if we have running jokes going on in this show, it's going to be very, very bad from my part. But in any case, we'll see what happens. So as I mentioned in the introduction, today's episode is really going to be kind of a grounding of Sudanese history to really lay the foundations for the listeners who may not be familiar with the history of Sudan. and also the current events in Sudan. Because even though Sudan is getting in the news occasionally today, it's not nearly as covered as one would expect given what is happening in Sudan

and as one would hope given what is happening in Sudan. So given that I'm quite sure that many of the listeners will feel that they would like to know more but aren't in the position to really get into those conceptual weeds at this point immediately. That's what today's conversation is really geared towards, is laying that groundwork so that as we get deeper and deeper into this conversation, people will really be able to, you know, understand what's happening today and all of the implications as well. But, Ruel, I'm going to turn it over to you now. You were involved, as I mentioned with the making of this book. And there's an editor's note that I know that you want to kind of launch off of into how you want to introduce this conversation for the listeners. as well. And I think it's a really important intervention. So please go ahead.

Yeah. Just the first thing I want to say is that obviously it really was a privilege getting to work on this book. And as I joked about before we started, that I'm really just here for comedic effect. I honestly don't know why I'm here. Muhammad is really going to carry the weight with this. So maybe I'm just here for the aesthetics. but I mean, there's no video. We're not doing video. We're just doing audio. So I can't even be here for the aesthetics.

So let's hope I have a purpose. So it really was a privilege working on it. And the editors note, as you would have noticed, in a book about Sudan, has very little about Sudan in it. And there is a reason for that. Well, a few reasons. The first point that I wanted to try and achieve with this,

and I mean, obviously, just to put out, the editor's note is really absolutely nothing compared to the book itself. The book is incredible. The editor's note is, it's just there to fill up some space before you get into the real good stuff. but what I wanted to try and achieve with it was to reiterate this collective idea that we're starting to see that Sudan is Palestine and Palestine is Congo and Congo is Cuba and Cuba is Iran and that all these events that they don't exist in isolation. they're all manifestations of the same symptom. They pop up in different locations, different geographies, different forms, different cultures, different languages, religions, but they're all manifestations of the same systemic problem.

I don't want to go in too much on that because I think that that will come up late in the conversation and a lot better and more nuanced than I could ever hope to do. but what I essentially wanted to do with this strange editors note in a book about Sudan that doesn't really mention Sudan that focuses more on Iran and Palestine was that essentially piggyback of Palestine's recent escape from retrospectivity. I don't even know if that's a word. I'm going to make up a word now if that's not a word. But what I mean by retrospectivity is that we often see that when an event happens in particularly in Africa, almost exclusively in Africa, its eventness almost has to be justified through its relevance to non-African events, if that makes sense. where it's almost like conflicts and events and civil wars and revolutions and genocides in Africa,

they seem to exist in isolation from the contemporary. Even when they're happening today, it's almost as if they've treated retrospectively. It's a strange phenomenon that I myself don't really fully know how to explain or even why it occurs. I assume it's got to do with the West's view of Africa, with the Western lens of Africa, is generally comes through media.

And that media is essentially NGO groups, which are like the modern-day missionaries, how in the past the West's communication with Africa was via the missionary. Today, the West's communication with Africa is via the NGO media, where the stance is essentially one of, you know, protecting survivors. So whenever there's an intervention in Africa, it's about what can we do to make life good for the survivor? How do we, what can we do for the survivor? But it never, it never tackles the event that's happening. It's always treated as a retrospective thing. To be a survivor means the event has to have ended. You know, if you're in a

car accident, you survive, you get out the car. The car accident has finished. But we all, but we almost treat these events as if they, even while they're happening now, as if we're looking back at them as historical events that have passed. And when we do that, we ask, you know, okay, how does this apply to our contemporary situation? How does this apply to us today? When I mean, the truth is that it's happening today. It's happening now. I think Sudan is probably eight hours away from most places.

You can get on a plate. You can drop the kid off at school, fuck off to Sudan, and you'll be there before the kid finishes school. It's not like this is happening in another timeline. But for some reason, it's treated like that. And so what I essentially wanted to do was reiterate this, this emerging realization that Sudan is Palestine, it is Iran, that all these struggles, all these events are connected. They're all manifestations of the same thing. But what we've seen with Palestine now is that Palestine has started to escape.

It was also trapped in this retrospectivity, but it's starting to escape. I mean, it's not there yet for I think the vast majority of people still conceptualized the genocide as starting on October the 8th. In most minds, that is the start of the genocide when I assume this is your listeners are quite caught up with history, you know, being guerrilla history, most of your lessons will know that, no, when did the genocide start? 1948, I would guess. But for most of the world, it started the 8th of October, 7th of October. And this is Palestine's escape from this retrospectivity. And I think what I tried to do with that, that brief editors note, was place Sudan in this context.

of utilizing Palestine's escape from this retrospectability and show that these places are all connected. And they're not retrospective. They're ongoing. They can't be looked at in past tense. You can't justify their eventness, you know, in relevance to the ongoing. So that was my aim with that. And that's a point that I'm really glad that you raise because it's a point that specifically on the case of Palestine and, you know, this idea that the genocide started on October 7th or October 8th, it's a point that I've made ad nauseum on the show that no, the genocide is a decades long, if not a century long genocide that has been taking place and is taking place.

It has ebbed and flowed over time in the ways in which it's carried out, but that is a historical process, which. which has always been ongoing for the duration of that time. And what you raise rule, I think, is an interesting philosophical point for people on the left that would claim to be historical materialists, but yet somehow failed to utilize historical materialism when it comes to struggles that are taking place in Africa or genocides that are taking place in Africa or Palestine or Iran. and the way that these events are either treated, as you mentioned, retrospectively, or divorced from the history. There's this strange inability to utilize historical materialism when the locus of the analysis is not somewhere that's immediately next door to the observer.

And so that's something that I hope that in these episodes of guerrilla history, particularly in our African revolutions and decolonization series, that we try to utilize the science of historical materialism to, its fullest extent and to demonstrate that, one, these processes do have precedence and events that have placed in the past have antecedents. We have connections that run through history. We also have connections that take place between geographic locations. And so I'm really happy that you brought that up, real, because it's a point, like I said, that I've raised ad nauseum on the show. And I'm just happy that we have another voice for the listeners to listen to as we make the same point again on the show, but much more eloquently than I typically do, I think. But Muhammad,

I'm going to turn it over to you now. First of all, if you have anything that you want to raise on the points that Rule and I made, feel free. But then I'm also going to throw out what might seem at face value an extremely simplistic question. But I also think it's a question that is extremely important for the listeners who are not as deeply engaged with the history and geographic analysis of Sudan as they would want to be. Many of our listeners are not academics. They're activists who have limited amounts of time to research different parts of the world, and we hope that we can use the show to help educate in that front where

people don't have time otherwise. So starting on this basic front, where is Sudan? what is its geography like and how does the geography and how has the geography historically shaped its politics? You know, you've got the Nile running through the country, the Red Sea coast, the Sahara, swamps in the south. It's a really huge country, which if listeners are looking at a map, they will probably appreciate that it's a really huge country, but they may not appreciate just how huge the country is. So why does the place in the geography matter? And also, in addition to it being huge geographically, it's also huge in terms of demographic diversity.

When you hear the word Sudan come up in the media, it's often mentioned as being an Arab country or an Islamic country. But that is such an oversimplification that it's remarkable. Sudan, as you're probably going to inform me much more. But Sudan has over 500 ethnic groups in them. You have Arabic speakers, non-Arabic speakers, Muslims, Christians, traditional religions are still practiced fairly widely in some parts of the country. So in addition to the geographic grounding, can you also walk us through the basic demographic and cultural landscape of Sudan and how listeners can understand the place not as a monolith, but as a complex and diverse society? I know, a simple question, but a huge one at the same time. Yeah, for sure.

And an important question as well. Before going to, I would like to respond to Rawls' intervention, which I think is really the impetus of this book, you know, at maybe at like a very foundational level. Because I think you all right when you say, for example, that at least how I interpret your words, when we look at like the conflict or what's going on in Svada, let's say the happenings, you know, it's somewhat, it's exclusively seen from like very limited lenses.

You know what I mean? As if, how I see it at least is like, seen as like, you know, people have intervened in this land where before this intervention, you know, there was like calmness and noble savagery or like, you know, like these kinds of images. You know, and like I, like, it's not, it's not, it's not one particular person's fault and it's not a discursive issue. It's more like a structural thing and all that kind of stuff. But I think this is the impetus of the book, maybe to give like some more, like,

texture to history and inform what's going on today. And, you know, you know, to talk about this richness and try not to be retrospective about it, like you mentioned. So that was a very important intervention. And I also like the things I just said about Iran as well. So that's added bonus. About Sudan, just like very briefly and basic facts. So Sudan, I think most people, the most popular.

country next to Sudan or bordering Sudan is Egypt. So Sudan is right underneath Egypt. Before the split between the south and north Sudan, it used to be the biggest country in Africa to put that in perspective. Just a place that everyone hears about called Darfur, that's bigger than Germany. And that's just one place in west of Sudan. It's a huge country. It used to be before or the split the 10th biggest country in the world. Like I was saying, you know, the Nile River runs from, like, there's two now, like, it meets in Sudan. There's one that starts from Ethiopia, but it starts from the east, and it comes all the way through Sudan. And then it meets the other part of the now, which starts from the south.

And it meets all the way. and the meeting point is exactly where the capital is, which is Khartoum. And so this is, you know, I think is that the world's longest river. I'm not sure, maybe the Amazon is longer, but it's like more curvier or something like this. You know, my, I don't know, 11th grade geography teacher might be disappointed about the thing. But it's either the longest, the biggest, the second longest river in the world. Also, like, and you were saying, like, you have like a Sahara on top, and then you have like, Like parts of Sudan is in the equator, for example.

So you have like really hot places and terrains. And places like bordering or even South Sudan, for example, because we're talking about colonial history or like post-colonial history, that place has like a lot of like jungles. And like you can get like, I don't know, things like the fruits just in Sudan. You can get anything from, I don't know, Bawab, plants or trees and like fruits and guava and avocado till like I don't know lemons and oranges and citrus fruits and you get like cactus cacti I think it's the plural I don't know but uh Arabic gum

for example what requires like somewhat hot temperatures and stuff like this so you have like a diverse, a bio-diverse country and landscape and basically a lot of things grow there and like, you know, this is important too for later history. And as for the ethno-diversity, you're all right, like, you know, we encapsulate Sudan within the borders that are known to us through colonialism and stuff like this. But, you know, some, like before certain events that happen in history, for example, some of the biggest Messiah, which is now known to be like, you know, groups of people who are, you know, in Tanzania and Kenya, but they used to be in Saas Sudan, for example. There's like a lot of pastoralist groups, agrarian groups. And there's just so

much biodiversity. Like you said, there's like not just different sort of rituals and religious practices and stuff like this, but they're infused and intermarry one another. And so you might have like a form of Sufism that's available in Sudan that you might not find available elsewhere. You might have a recitation of how we, how, you know, the Quran is recited, for example, in Sudan that's fused with like, you know, something else that you might not find elsewhere, for example. And it's not just like that, like I said, it's not just like the diversity of like cultures and different backgrounds and different religious practices and rituals, but also the marriage and the coming together, for example, in Sudan ritualistically, when you get married, there's this thing where,

you know, the groom and the bride sort of like drink from one cup of milk and then they spit away each other, which is like clearly somewhat like a traditional sort of religious practice. Or like comes from there at least, but like it's incorporated with like another sort of ceremony that's exclusive to the mosque and so on and so forth. So you have a lot, a lot going on in Sudan. Yeah, I think this is like this sort of might help us like just for context, finally. Bordering Sudan, you have, like you said, the Red Sea and across it, you have Saudi Arabia. So you have immediate access to like the Gulf countries.

On top of Sudan, you have like Egypt, the side you have on the top left or the top west, northwest, like Libya, you have Chad, you have obviously South Sudan, you have Ethiopia and and so on and so forth. So like it is a big significant, you know, geographically relevant country for better or worse, this sort of informs the history a little bit more. So I hope that this was helpful. Yeah, and just as a follow-up, it's on the specific point that you just made at the very end, how that geography and also the cultural diversity, and forms the history. I'm wondering if you can elaborate a little bit more on that for the listeners,

because you just went through how many places Sudan touches, all of the places that they have direct access to, whether that's a land border or a small water crossing that they would have to make. You talk about all of the geographic diversity within the country and the cultural diversity, and again, this will come up as we talk more about the history, but these ethnic groups were thrust together into this modern conception of a Sudan that historically didn't exist. There were empires that existed in the location, but there was no Sudan the way that we see it on a map today. So how does this geography and all of these places that Sudan has either direct access to or geographic diversity within the country,

as well as these different ethnic groups that over the course of centuries were in contact with one another as neighboring groups to all of a sudden being co-constititive of a same nation. How did their relations also inform the history of the country? And of course, we'll talk about specific events as we go through the conversation, but just generally, how does this diversity geographically and culturally kind of lay the roots for how history works in Sudan? Yeah, I mean, I think, I think maybe I'll ask this a little bit bizarrely, but I think in our contemporary moment, especially under neoliberalism, we are, we are, you know, encouraged to imagine that simply because there's diversity and ethnicity, that there's necessarily going to be conflict. And there's, of course, you see, like, you see the reason why it's done so in, like, places like here, for example, like, oh, you know, we have too many migrants coming into,

like, I don't know, Turkey, Germany or, you know, Syrians to Turkey or whatever it is. And like, you know, because they're different, they can't be assimilated. So you see where the rhetoric comes in, but we're encouraged to imagine this, like in our current moment, right? Like, you know, just because it's like diversity of backgrounds, then it's going to cause, you know, lack of assimilation, some like social ruptures and so on and so forth. And I think even, unfortunately, for us on the left, there are, you know, a few of us who believed in this as well, which, which, you know, historically there's no case for. And there's been a study, it doesn't really matter. But basically, this is never, people never just fight based on their differences.

This is a political question, you know, the fighting world like that, or these kinds of things, it's always a political question. It's never just by its diversity. And I say this because, like, you know, thinking outside of, you know, the current moment, people have lived and existed together in harmony with you know communication with the land and so on and so forth for you know hundreds thousands of years I think you know one of the things that we talked about before going live is like we talked about a certain place where there was like an Orthodox Christian population and a Muslim population who have existed literally like half the population was

Christian have a population with Muslim have existed for a thousand of years not like there was no conflict. The conflict only arrived when a particular monarch came in. Maybe we can talk about this. Oh, yeah. I've mentioned on the show before. It's Taduristan, where I live. So, yeah, right. That's, but any, sorry for the interjection, Mahab. No, no, no, but that's exactly what I mean, which is like, you know, just by the diversity. And so how is, how does the, how does the differences start to create conflict, is political? And how does this relate to canonical? I mean, there's a lot of, theories that, you know, talk about race and colonialism and this kinds of like, let's say,

racial or ethnic conflict. But one thing that maybe I would say right now, just in the spur of the moment, is I like, you know, David Graber when he talks, just uses one sentence to describe race, which is like, you know, how you relate to authority. Your identity becomes more cemented, you know? So, for example, if you have a colonial administration coming in, it obviously they imposes so much authoritative on you, right? It tells you that, you know, you need to be organized in this way. It sort of extracts your wealth. It, like, destroys your, you know, whatever, like, destroys your life,

your means of subsistence, it sort of divides people. And so when an authority presents itself onto you, you in yourself, or like the people in themselves, for example, their identity starts to gain, you know, somewhat political gravity and through it, you know, a lot of, you know, other political things happen, including in conflict and so on and so forth. And so, you know, when we talk about ethnicity, it can be, or the ethnic diversity of Suban, it can be too far away from like, you know, the political context. And especially in the current period, for example, when we're going to get into this later

on, when we talk about, for example, the conflict, maybe, or something that you mentioned, which is, let's say, you know, Arabs and Africans or like these sorts of groups of people and they come to, in conflict with one another, the identity in conflict with one another have only becoming conflict with one another once it became like a political, when there's like a political context behind it, whether that's like, I don't know, colonial era politics and, you know, domination, or whether that was in the, for example, in the northern Sudan, trying to oppressed South Sudan and then South Sudan obviously rebelling against this authority and like identity becomes like a crucial element in like this fight between them too rhetorically

and otherwise or ideologically and otherwise. And so yeah, we can't separate the two, but we also have to remember that this is not the cause. You know what I mean? It's not simply because people are different, you know, they, they sort of engage in warfare. Yeah, like I'm sure I didn't answer the question completely like completely but but please pick up and you know what you think what you think is relevant and well I mean it's impossible to answer these questions in their entirety within a relatively short you know we're going to be going for probably an hour and a half or two hours of course when I say that the episode ends up being like three hours but it's knowing that this is a two-part conversation we'll we'll try to save some for later but it's impossible to answer these these sorts of questions comprehensively within the short conversation So, you know, don't worry about trying to hit everything. But I think you did a pretty good job of summarizing the main point. But there is one other point that I want to pick up on here, which is you were mentioning the influence of colonial politics.

Before we get to colonial politics, though, I think that it will be also relevant for the listeners to know what was present prior to colonization. And when I say colonization, I'm talking first colonization, because as we'll get to in this episode, the way that colonization took place in Sudan is extremely interesting. And what I mean by that is that it took place in a way that's very different than most of Africa in terms of the phases of it. So that's something that we'll get into probably in, you know, the next question unless we have another follow-up. But I think it'll be relevant for the listeners to understand what was present prior to that initial period of colonization. And then, of course, we'll get into the period of colonization after that. Yeah, for sure. And I think what I start or what I stretch back in history in the book, not too far back, but to the 1820s, basically.

And here, you know, I speak about the sort of the creation of Khartoum. Khartoum is the capital of Sudan. It's the place that I set sort of the two nileau's meat. And the reason why I started there is because basically Kharton plays a central role in the history of Sudan more specifically. But for that period, it was, you know, you know, to talk about the history, in the 1820s, the Ottoman, what's it called, the Turco Egyptian Empire, the official name for it, sort of came and, you know, tried to take Sudan,

or tried to force farmers and agrarian workers who are, you know, living of the Nile and, you know, had their place there, basically kicking them out. And using not just, you know, the colonial, force of, you know, the Turco-Egyptian empire, or the Turco-Egyptian administration more accurately, but also they used, you know, internal soldiers, people from a certain group of people, to expel these agrarian workers. And on top of their expulsion, their land theft and land grab or dispossession, they sort of created the administrative state or, you know, the hub or the capital of Sudan, which is Khartoum. Now, at that time, for example, you know,

maybe like all the historians might be like, other books might talk about this a little bit more, but for example, the way it was administrated under, you know, the Turk or Egyptian sort of rule was different than the Anglo-Egyptian rule. And, you know, the reason being it could be seen more as like a tribune or something like somewhat pre-capist in a certain sense. But during that time, it was also, they also managed to, so this is the time from 18, 20, 18, 18, 21, all the way to the late 18, 18, 18, 1880s,

1890s, basically the Turkish Egyptian rule was informed or like it was supported by local figures and local sort of, let's say, the gentry class or whatever you want to call it, like the elites of the country at the time. This is important to understand because like this, even this politics influenced British colonialism and post-colonialism as well. So that's where I start the, that's where I start sort of this brief historical look. But the more interesting aspect of it, I think, with something that you hinted at is the rebellion towards this. And so, you know, you can get into the deep politics about it.

There's a really good book on a read, a book that talks about this called The Armies of Thought. But what you get into is towards the end of the 19th century, there is a person by the name of Mahmahad Ahmed Abdullahi. or Muhammad Ahmad Ahmad al-Mahadi. And Mohamed Ahmed Ahmed al-Mahadi basically is a person who comes and challenges this sort of, let's say, oppressive force, this colonial force, by uniting a lot of groups in Sudan and basically overthrowing this Turk, this Turk or Egyptian sort of administration,

which was also at that time, because of various political events that were happening in Egypt and in England was also sort of in relationship to the colonial British administration as well, the British colonialism. Mohamed Ahmed Abdullah managed, like I said, to gather a lot of people and fight against, you know, colonialism. His fight against colonialism, he saw it as in different terms. So he saw it as like a colonialist sort of crusading force. that came to basically take Sudan and, like, destroy it and, like, you know, dominate it and so on and so forth. And his idea, basically, of justice, let's say, or his idea of anti-colonialism or however you want to understand it,

was more wider than Sudan itself. Now, at that time, the reason why that was, because at that time, the question of Sudanese nationalism itself, wasn't discussed. I don't we're jumping, maybe I don't want to jump too far ahead. But basically he saw that basically, you know, British colonialism or what he saw as British colonial,

the British crusading colonialism, basically it was a problem for all these regions and like in order for us to like fight it. We don't just fight it here in Sudan, but we fight it here in Sudan in our various neighbors. And also like there was ambitious, of course, little bit, like a, you know, a little bit, maybe too ambitious for their means, but also, like,

seen it like as a worldwide sort of revolt against, against this cruciating force. But yeah, maybe we can, maybe, maybe I'll leave it there. We can get into like more questions in a bit. Yeah, I want to take, take a step back, actually, a little bit. And you alluded to, and you, you already mentioned that there was. two distinct periods of colonization, which is what I was mentioning in passing earlier. And I think that we should spend a little bit more time talking about the differences in those periods of colonization. And when I say differences, I mean both in terms of the way that colonization, I shouldn't

say both. There's a few different ways that I'd like to look at it. First, the way that colonization was initiated in each of these two distinct phases, the way that the colonial apparatus operated within the society, as well as the way that the colonial apparatus maintained the system, or attempted to maintain the system, because as you mentioned, and your last answer, there were waves of rebellion and eventually nationalism that came up during these phases of colonization, but nevertheless, as with any colonial system, there are concerted efforts to try to think how to maintain an unjust system with the,

without the people immediately trying to overthrow that unjust system. So what were the differences between the ways in which these colonial systems operated with regard to maintenance of the system? And then at the end of that, so I know I'm laying a lot of different tracks here, kind of a very dense comparative analysis of these of these two phases of colonization. But the last point after we compare, you know, the economic models and the systemic structures that were taking place. And the last thing would be how the popular consciousness was able to then mobilize itself

and overturn the colonial systems in each of these cases, because there are differences in that as well. inherently. I mean, the way that the systems were structured and the way that they operated were different. So, of course, the ways in which resistant manifests itself would also be different. So I'm wondering if you can take us through that, Muhammad. And again, apologies that my questions are all really dense today. I just, there's so much that I want to talk about. I just keep layering things. I understandably, like, after the hiatus, I think you have a curious mind.

Listeners would contend that I always just like putting way too much on the guests. I don't think it has anything to do with the hiatus. Yeah. I mean, like, I think to answer this question, I think, you know, we need to understand it a little bit more sort of structurally in the sense that the difference between capitalist sort of colonialism and let's say the colonialism of the Turk or Egyptian. Because Turkish, for example, you know, the politics, like the colonialism that was happening was so much influenced by what's going on. in, you know, Ottoman administered Egypt at the time. And it wasn't, it was somewhat, it wasn't similar to the British one, because the British one is the one that came later.

Because the British one, it sort of, it wanted to colonize, and with, you know, capitalist colonization came a certain logic of property. whereas for example during the autumn during the autumn period for example you know the things that were available

already in Sudan they just wanted to take over it so for example let's say slavery let's say certain agrarian productions and so on and so forth but which is

which is you know take over it and like you know have like tax it and you know send this tax to the administrative Khartoum which is the capital of Sudan again and this will be sent back. This would like help build like, you know, sort of a distribut, tribunary system and then send some of it back to, you know, the administration of Egypt. And so, these were the aspirations. But for the capitalist colonialism, what happens is it's not just enough to colonize

a place and let its sort of modes of production like persistent, so on and so forth. For colonialism, it came and it subverted completely the means of subsistence through subverting completely the property relations. And so what I mean by this is, you know, when during the during and we're going to talk about like how it so in a bit. But for example, like I mentioned just a second ago with the Turk with the Turk or Egyptian, it was just like taken over like certain practices that are already available and taken like taxes from them and so on and so forth. For the British, what they did was basically come and categorize people completely differently. Try to create like a sort of transportation system that flows from very rough areas in Sudan

where there's production and so that they can extract this production or the produce or whatever. But also more importantly, the land that the people lived in was no longer their land. this land was basically contested to whoever can produce it or whoever can cultivate it better and of course cultivating it better is just a euphemism for like destroying stealing and enslaving those people or like putting these people in a certain form of labor so that they can produce much more and you know they dependent now more so on like you know the new system that they brought up then they did, for example, then for example, the Turco-Egyptian

which just didn't just extracted the taxes, so to speak, or the tribunes or whatever. One of the ways in which, you know, you see a significant difference between those two is, for example, for the, you know, the Turco-Egyptian, while they did have like internal, let's say, informants or like internal sort of people, Sudanese people who, you know,

they would engage with or like different groups that they would help administer, you know, administer the state. Under British colonialism, they made this, like, officialized this. They systematized this. So, for example, they had something called the indirect rule. An indirect rule was made up of basically people who were mitigated between the colonial administration and the general population.

These people were, they were called Umda and Sheikh and Nazer. Or these are the three ranks, basically, the Sheikh, Nazer and Unda. And basically these three people would, you know, be bestowed on like large, you know, land. And this land would become basically entirely theirs and they would be like, they would get the blessings of like the British administration or the British colonial administration. of Sudan. A good example of this, for example, would be like in West Sudan, which I talk about a bit in the book, where when the British came, there was like, I don't know, monarch or whatever who lay claim to a certain area of Sudan. And, you know, like he didn't, like, he was only

after the British helped him, which was Ali Dianar in the early 20th century. It was only when the British sort of backed him and helped him and allowed him to take the land in parts of West Sudan, that he was able to actually hold control of this part. And this is how it happened, basically, through, facilitated through British colonialism, you had a certain administration or a certain government structure. And then beyond this, like I said earlier, it's how we relate to land. And I was talking, when we were talking briefly about the bio and the ethno-diversity, of Sudan, right? Like you had a lot of interchange, you had a lot of people mixing, you had

a lot of people sort of pasturilist moving around from like, you know, agrarian workers. The land was not stuck in the sense that this land belonged to one person, that the usage of this land was not like typical of like one particular thing or like, you know, dedicated to one particular thing, but like, you know, a lot of people used the same land for different purposes and like negotiating the boundaries of these land was like, you know, a little bit not just contested, but completely arbitrary. And, you know, the matrix is used to measure these land was not like, as we know them today, for example, like, I don't know, kilometers, meters, meters, yards, or whatever it is. And so the relationship with land was a little bit more dynamic. There was obviously ownership

of land, but it was more dynamic and had like a much more sort of social element to it. this was all basically completely, no, not all of it, but the process of like subverting this came with British colonialism or intensified more so with British colonialism. And so the British introduced two things that we will get into why they were,

they influenced the politics of post-colonial Sudan. The first thing is, systematize basically the governing structures of, you know, letting basically Sudanese elites run over the Sudanese population. And second of all, subvert land ownership relations to capitalist property relations. One of the things that you said that is really interesting on this point, and it's a point that we've talked about in various episodes of guerrilla history in the past over the last, you know, five years or whatever, we've been six years, I guess, that we've been doing

the podcast and something that also, I think, rule, as of somebody from South Africa, this might sound familiar to you as well. Muhammad, you were talking about how there was this idea that whoever could produce more or make the land more productive was basically entitled to the land, but how productivity of the land, as you said, was a euphemism for destruction. And that can be destruction of the land. It can be destruction of the people. It could be destruction of the entire form of society that was taking place there.

It sounds similar to doesn't it rule? Doesn't that sound like South African history as well in a lot of ways? But I think that that's something that we've talked about on the show many times is that there is this conception of what is productivity. And as time went on in the case of Sudan, as well as in these other cases of colonialism that we've explored in the show's history. And again, particularly in our African revolutions and decolonization series, there's this idea that the land wasn't being used to the fullest, but within a productivist, capitalist way of thinking about it, rather than thinking about the land as being co-constitutive of the people and the people being co-constititive of the land, not property relations and productivity, but rather the people were of the land and the land was of the people. and that sort of justification that, well, these people, you know, they could just produce more of X crop or Y crop or have more economic output from X amount of land is, you know, a pernicious way of thinking, but that was used very frequently as a justification for these colonial land grabs. And at the, you know, it sounds crazy today when you would say, well, yeah, we could grow more on that land. therefore the land should be ours. That sounds like an absurd notion. But that sort of logic was

unquestioned at the time internationally. It wasn't just that it was the ruling classes of England, for example, that were having these debates about it. It was the international media, what went along with that same notion entirely. So yeah, Ruel, I saw that you were laughing about that when I brought up South Africa as well. That does sounds, it sounds familiar, doesn't it? Unfortunately. The other thing that I wanted to, I don't know, I'm somewhere between adding it to the conversation and asking it.

But also, again, speaking from the South African context, is how land and, I suppose, to the great extent, capitalism and colonialism created what we now refer to as tribalism, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, this notion of tribalism. And I think there, it's a problematic term.

It's a problematic conception of this issue. I don't know, I'm throwing this on you quite suddenly, but I hope you, I apologize. I hope you're comfortable with that, but you have anything to say on on that, there's this concept of tribalism. I think you understand what I mean by it. It's a very African thing, this idea.

Yeah, I mean, look, I think this, the concept of capitalist property relations cannot be divorced from race or racism. So, for example, we know that, for example, the experimentation of these property relations first started with Ireland, actually. You know what I mean? And then Ireland, basically, you know,

and later on, it went to the Americas and so on and so forth. But in these places, you know, they have people who direct, like, I don't know, John Locke or whatever, but who's a famous person who, you know, gets quoted about this. But a lot of people who basically, it was common, it was somewhat, it became a common notion that to say that, you know, well, these people, they don't, they just waste the land.

they don't, they don't, you know, produce it as well as they should. And we have to understand here the complicity, not just of like, you know, the direct colonial violence and, you know, the racial violence and the, you know, you know, what later on the term, you know, when you get to like the questions of like tribalism, which like you said, it's a problematic term and it says it's almost one iteration of it or one understanding of it is just seeing that this is a form of waste. as in like, you know, people are fighting over these things. They're always constantly fighting.

Even their tribalism gets in a way of like this, you know, wasting, you know, the resources of Africa and stuff because they're always embroiled in like these, this quote-unquote tribal warfare and, you know, this tribal competition and stuff like this. There's one manifestation of it that's racial and, you know, it needs to be acknowledged. But also we need to acknowledge at a deeper level,

maybe even a philosophical level, the complicity of even the sort of scientific and moral system that sort of is founded on capitalism or capitalist property relations. Because like I said, for example, you come in and you say, I can improve this land. And the first thing that you do is survey and map the land. We think about like Google Maps, we can't, we can't, no one, I think like in the 21st century, everyone requires that Google Maps to get anywhere. but maps actually should be seen as a tool of colonial violence because it came about by basically enclosing being like okay scientifically this kilometer this kilometer square or whatever it is like however

you measure it this belongs to whom and this sort of you need to have a deed for this land now when you start talking about this sort of moral the reason why I call it moral as well is because it's a political system as well, not just the system of science, because it says that who does this, let's say, kilometers square of land, who does it belong to, who's the moral air and whatever and so on and so forth? Now, of course, before capitalism or, you know, before, let's say, a bureaucratic revolution of certain states, you didn't have sort of, except for, like, certain people who are, like, you know, elites and, like, you know, gentry or, like, you know, landowners or whatever you're going to call them, or however they come, who have, like, maybe some arbitrary form of, like, bureaucratic

deeds and stuff like this. But you don't have, for the vast majority of people, you don't have these deeds set. And so it comes like, it's not just that you say that they're, you know, I don't know, divide them racially and say that they don't produce it. And in fact, they fight in tribalistic ways and so on and so forth. But even morally and scientifically, you have to, by virtue of dividing the land. I mean, like, if you go to Google and stuff like this, like, I know, Just to bring it to the moment, every square inch of Earth, you can know, I mean, maybe this is an exaggeration, maybe there's some things that we don't know, but like the vast majority of Earth knows exactly what it is, how to define it. And if we don't know what it is and who it belongs to the design, we at least know how to measure it, how many, you know, meters squared and stuff like this. and, you know, which used to be like an art form.

It used to be like something like highly technical during like feudalism. And like it wasn't something that just everyone had access to. Now, by doing this, obviously, you know, you can use it in many ways. But one of the ways that is majorly used is basically so that you can determine, you know, or reinforce the scientific, moral sort of logic of like property relations. It cannot be divorced, I think, from race. It cannot be divorced from class. but where is especially since you brought up the topic of tribalism.

And I think for me personally, in that sense, whenever you hear tribalism and stuff like that, if you listen intently about, like, I don't know, people talk about in recent years about Haiti, for example, and like the destruction that's going on there, in the subtext you see as if they're like, oh man, what a waste or like Sudan or like countries in Africa or whatever. It's like, you know, there's so rich kind.

and like they have so many minerals like for us to fucking get our hands over and stuff like this. What are ways that there's like a civil war there? Like if you look at the subtext, it's quite, you know, like a, you know, you know, the logic of like savages and civilization is sort of embedded in there. But yeah, yeah, I think I understand what you're in time coming from. It's a really interesting question that you ask their rule and very, very, interesting intervention, Muhammad. And you know, you mentioned that there's this justification then for, again, these colonial land grabs and exploitation of the land in the most extreme of

ways by saying that the people there are wasting the resources or wasting the possibility of having capital, you know, come into the society by utilizing these resources and how that waste is oftentimes because of tribal warfare. Or another pernicious one is this corruption that takes place in these third world places. Or even when they have the resources and they are able to find it and decide that they're going to export it. Well, it's, you know, a couple people at the top of their society that are getting it all. As if that doesn't happen in the other parts of the world. You know, let's look at the United States, for example.

Actually, my mom just made a graphic. In fact, I'll pull it up. My mom sends me, you know, stuff that she's looking at. And I sent her, of course, guerrilla history-related stuff. And she made this graphic, which is, it's a pretty nice one, actually. The distribution of wealth in the United States in three different time periods, not that far like back, 50 years back, 53 years. So in 1973, the distribution of wealth was the top 1% had roughly 25%

of the wealth in the United States. The next 4% of the United States had also about 25% of the wealth, and then the bottom 95% of the United States had about 50% of the wealth, which is grotesque also in itself. But, you know, we move through time. 2007 comes around. The top 1% has expanded their wealth to 40% of the wealth in the United States. The next 4% had 29% of the wealth,

and the bottom 95% had decreased in their share of the wealth from 50% to 31%. Sounds pretty bad, right? But let's look at today. And this is the funniest one. I mean, funny in a perverse sort of way. Elon Musk versus the bottom 52% of the United States. Elon Musk, 51% of the wealth in the United States, the bottom 52% of the United States, 49% of the wealth.

Now, if you had a situation like that in, let's say, pre-colonial what now is Sudan, again, you know, Sudan didn't exist at the time, but let's say that the area that Sudan is today, if they had a social situation that was as divided as that, where one person had more wealth than over half of the population of that area, and it's not even the king of the area, it's just one individual that happens to have. have a huge amount of resources at their disposal. You would have these colonial entities saying, well, look, the corruption is rampant. The people in the country are suffering, and we can make that land much more productive, and the people in that land can then share in the riches that are coming out of the land in a much more equitable way than they are now. We'll both produce more, and it'll be more fair for the people in the country. It's a win-win. That's exactly the sort of justification that would be given. And it often is raised that in these, again, quote unquote, since it's the terminology that comes up very frequently, these savage parts of the world,

when you're looking in this colonial era rhetoric, you see that they talk about waste of resources, waste of the riches of the land, about the waste that's a result of tribal warfare, which are the two points that you brought up, Muhammad, and then also just this point of, you know, corruption and mass exploitation by a small group of people in the society as if that's something that only can happen in these backwards savage parts of the world. It's really interesting. But when those justifications are given and, you know, the colonial apparatus takes place and it's carried out, you know, there is resistance that then pops up. And I'd like to talk a little bit more about the ways in which the revolutions took place against the colonial

apparatacies and again the plural form because these are two distinct you know two distinct ways in which the colonial apparatus were overthrown so if you can Muhammad tell us a bit about the way that resistance was organized I know you alluded to this a few questions ago in the case of the British Egyptian consortium, condominium rather. But can you talk a little bit about how resistance was organized in these two

and the differences between the ways that resistance manifested itself in these two colonial periods? For sure, for sure. I mean, firstly, like what you said exactly nail on the head, right? I mean, like, for example, when we talk about corruption in like the global minority, for example,

or we talk about like the wealth extraction or wealth concentration or the elites in the global minority, for example, it's not seen as corruption, but the reason why it's not seen as corruption is because apparently they were just very successful at improving the land. They were just very successful business people. That's all it is, like, look, you know. And, you know, obviously the degradation and the destruction of like the, I mean, the homeless people, the homeless, the unhoused people in America or, you know, people are suffering that are crazy-ass countries.

I mean, just the slave population of the prisons is something, it's really, I don't know, if it's, if it's unprecedented or whatever. So, yeah, there's, but when it comes to, like, other places, since it's not this, since it's seen as like not as developed, and so on and so forth, there's like these colonial racialized categories, like corruption and stuff like this. But to answer you a question about, you know, resistance. Of course, when it comes to colonialism, there's always been resistance in minor and major forms.

One of the ones that I've concentrated on, like you were saying towards the end of the 19th century, so from 1891 to 1890, I believe, there was this, it wasn't a constant state of war, but you know at the beginning of it there was a the Mahadist revolt the Mahadist revolt was led by some agaqa called Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi or Muhammad Ahmad Abulahe the Mahdi a mahdi means a chosen one now the problem with this particular figure or this particular history is that to understand that Muhammad Ahmad is basically the

equivalent of modern day Osama bin Laden so all sort of you know, narrations about him whether it's in the popular press, whether it's in the books in contemporary during that time were very, very biased. And so you see them, you see whenever, when you read about the person

or you read about this event, it's just the level of shit that you have to see through to understand what actually was going on. It's quite incredible. You know, the stories of him, for example, when he was walking, he stepped on a thorn, and then he wanted to take it out.

And then, you know, a bird came by and sort of plucked the thorn out of his foot. And this was like a meant to be like, you know, a show of like his divine providence or whatever it is. And like, like, it's just like, you know, it would be very, like today everyone knows the Psalm of Lutin, but I don't know if they would know like the letters that he wrote to America, for example. You know what I mean? So it's difficult to understand this because he was seen as rich. Yeah, just to interject. Sorry, you mentioned the letters to America.

That was published. I want to say that I probably shouldn't say the name of the publisher in case they weren't the one who published it. But I'll say it. I'm pretty sure that it was Verso Books published Osama bin Laden's message to America. And there was a huge, huge outcry about the fact that they were publishing this book for people to read. You know, so you mentioned that most people wouldn't even know about it. That's true. Most people wouldn't know about it.

And even when a publisher decides that they are going to publish it for mass consumption, the governing structure basically tries to ensure that it's, it's, quashed, the publishing of it is prevented. So I just wanted to interject that. And while you're speaking, I'm going to look up just to make sure that I have the right publisher. Okay. But so, so, Muhammad, Muhammad was the OG, Osama bin Laden, so to speak. But basically, he was, he was, he was someone who managed to unite. I mean, all jokes aside, like, you know, like, obviously these categories are different and these people are different. But, but for example, he managed to unite a group of people in the late 19th century, a group of Sudanese who

up until then weren't unified as an art, like, and created this army against, you know, or guerrilla group or whatever, but against this, the colonial administration of Saddam at the time, which was Turkish in name, but also, you know, it had like a relationship to the British colonialism and so on and so forth. And so they managed to actually very smartly and strategically sort of encircle sort of of Kharton, the capital, the administration, starve it of any like resources and essentially go in and destroy the colonial officer whose name was Gordon at the time. You know, the stories that say, you know, there was a spike that went to, they cut his head

or whatever. Like, it's just way too grew more romantic like to because this history is really super like biased. But basically they destroyed the or you know they decapitated the head of the British administration,

the Turco, the Turco Egyptian but also like a British administration at the time. And for just for a little bit of context, it became increased the unpopular back home in England for, you know, expanding towards Sudan.

And so, you know, after that, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, they were, they were called, what the Mahadist revolt. They sort of consolidated power and, you know, sort of went around and, like, made sure, like, you know, they, they unified systematically, and so on and so forth. not in any major way, not like a colonizing country would with the resources of a colonizing country, but what, you know, through the resources that they had. Now, because this didn't happen after the question of nationalism that was to come later on in the early 20th century, they didn't see it a liberatory national liberation sort of movement in the sense that we understand,

or like so many of us understand or read about in various contexts, including Sudan. But more so their idea of justice against imperialism came through like a religious understanding of the world. And so they saw like, you know, the British Empire and this, you know, this consortium of like British Turkish and Egyptian Southern administration. They saw it as like a colonizing crusading force and they wanted to fight against it not just in Sudan because nationalism, you know, remember like it was, the national question wasn't like, wasn't developed. yet until later. And they wanted to even expand it. One of the romantic, one of the romantic sort of tales about Muhammad Ahmed, or was it his, the person that succeeded him at Daishi, was that they wrote a letter to a monarch in England basically saying that, you know, marry me and convert to Islam. So like, you know, you will be spared. Now this, but this is also

like, you can never know how true these things are, because it's, It's so romanticized. It's so, so, so, even in like academic books. But what we do know is that they were, you know, Muhammad Ahmed Ahmed, Mohammed was a very good military commander, and, you know, he defeated the consortium of colonialists. Later on, when the British came back to Sudan

for various political reasons, that's outside of Sudan, which is like to do with, like, Egypt and Turkey, or Ottoman Empire and England, when they did come back to Sudan, they defeated them, but not because, not for like reasons that, for reasons that I think are a little bit underappreciated. And the reason why specifically is because at the time they managed to utilize technology of steamboats, who, you know, I think someone like Andreas Mann, for example, talks about this,

about how the steamboat was a very useful tool for, you know, British colonialists to expand, the, you know, to expand the cause, because, like, it was a new form of, like, before that, you would have to wait for a ship and the winds would, like, move you across. But with the steamboat, you can actually, you know, traverse the waters and, you know,

this was like a great advantage. What they did with the steamboat, they went up the Nilean, basically with, like, guns and stuff like that. They murdered and slaughtered the Mahadist revolution. And, you know, at the end of the 19th century, British colonialism commenced.

Now I think here is, this is where it's a little bit underappreciated. A lot more research needs to go into this topic specifically, about specifically what Andrew Asmore talks about, like how British colonialism sort of came with its newly developed weapons of like the steamboat and stuff, like all the steam boats and steam engine and how like this was useful in colonialism. And how this ended the sort of the revolt against not just colonialism, but what they considered as crusade their colonialism.

The destruction of the Mahdiqqqaeda empire brought about officially the British administration, colonial administration of Sudan. During the British colonial administration of Sudan, which lasted from the late 19th century till 1956, exactly. There was a lot of revolts.

not as big as the Mahathist one and not as successful but like asking about revolts there were a lot of revolts at the beginning before the national question took root so in the early 2010-1920s

there were revolts that were inspired by the the Mahadist revolt so it didn't yet take on the national question as its core the national question came about to the 1920s in 1930s.

Later on it developed 40s and 50s, of course, but this is when it's sort of, Sudanese nationalism sort of was starting to be discussed and started to take form and like, you know, the politics and the anti-imperialist resistance was explicitly from like a national independence

aspiration. The significant protest or revolt during that time was in 1924. This was one of the most significant sort of revolts that took explicitly, seriously the question of national liberation. In the year before 1924, there was a piece written by a member of what was called the White

Flag Organization, which is somewhat like a civil society, somewhat like elite intelligentsia, you know, a consultant with people who basically did like, you know, had like a had like a lot of political sort of weight and you know produced a lot of political discourse. One of the members wrote a piece basically asking for, you know, national liberation that we need to have administration of Sudan by Sudanese people. We need to ensure employment and high offices such as education for Sudanese people. Sudan needs to have like a pathway towards independence. like making these explicitly national independent demands.

The British colonial administration of Sudan at the time saw this and they were like absolutely categorically not. How even dare you to like even, you know, question the magnanimity of us allowing you to even have like the sort of like groups like the white flag. And in fact, because of this letter, we're going to penalize you. basically a huge uproar and protest and, you know, revolt sort of unsuccessfully. It sort of, you know, took root, especially in Kharton. But unfortunately, it was unsuccessful. But immediately after the revolt, the British saw that the problem was these educated intelligentsia members who, you know, gave sort of these,

an intellectual aspiration towards national liberation and stuff like this. So they did stuff like sort of cancel or completely do away with like exchange, excuse me, exchange programs, sort of cancel like educational programs, making sure like, you know, education was not prioritized, in fact, defunded and so on and so forth. And then it was later on after, during World War II, actually, when the British forces or British colonialism was sort of wearing thin and it couldn't perform

the same oppression on the colonies as it did because it had to concentrate its efforts elsewhere. In Sudan, this meant that easing up of the same tensions that were put in place or the same oppressions that were put in place after 1924.

Once this happened, you know, and at the time there was like somewhat a treaty or like a, you know, time of peace between the USSR and, you know, Britain and stuff like this. It wasn't necessarily, it was just not hostile. At the time, sort of, you know, there was Marxist literature or like, you know, libertory literature being distributed. People were able to, you know, express and people were able to, like,

engage sort of discursively, intellectually, or like the national question problem. And it was in this period, for example, where some Sudanese people took inspiration from the National Independence movements of Egypt, for example. And they created their own sort of national independence movement in the Sunnis National Independence Movement. This movement came up and alongside with another movement

which was a British soldier that was stationed in Sudan but was also part of the Communist Party in England. and he used to hold like reading circles, Marxist reading circles and so on and so forth. And these two groups basically came together to, oh, these two groups came together to officially sort of announced the Sudanese National Liberation Movement that post-independence or a little bit before independence became the Communist Party of Sudan. So it's just like a brief history of like the various sort of kinds of revolts and like, you know, the ones that happened after the national question became prominent and the ones before

the national question. Yeah, and we'll definitely talk more about the left in Sudan. I mean, after all, it is a very critical point of your book, you know, the way that the left developed. But before I ask the next question, I just wanted to mention that, one, I was mostly right that it was Verso books. And 2005, Verso books put out messages to the world, the statements of Osama bin Laden. that book, at least where I'm looking at it,

it looks like it's been out of stock for a while. I don't know if they've had any subsequent printings of it any time after 2005. Well, it's either that popular or what's even funnier is that while I was just double checking that it was indeed Verso books that published that, which I will reach back into my memory for that one. I also saw that the original translation of it was done for the observer, which was affiliated with the Guardian. But this is the funny thing. When you Google it and you go to the Guardian's website where they had the letter to America,

letter to the American people, it now is that the page on the Guardian's website is now no longer titled Osama Bin Laden's letter to the American people. It is now titled, document and it reads, this page previously displayed a document containing in translation the full text of Osama bin Laden's letter to the American people, which was reported on the observer on Sunday 24th, November 2002. The document which was published here on the same day was removed on 15th of November, 2023. The transcript published on our website had been widely shared on social media without the full context. Therefore, we decided to take it down and direct readers instead to the news article that originally contextualized that. And you can also see that at the

same time, if you are looking on the internet for that, I saw an NBC News article that says TikTok bans content promoting Bin Laden's letter to America. So I am not on TikTok. I was unaware of this. But I guess it says that the videos that were featuring the letter to America started to go viral on TikTok. And TikTok had to crack down by banning all of the content that featured that at the same time that the Guardian slash the Observer also removed the document from their website. So yeah, I mean, I'm getting us pretty far afield from our conversation about Sudan, but it's just something that was interesting while I was, you know, all I wanted to do is see,

was it Verso books or not. It was, but, you know, I found a lot of other interesting things. But I mean, you're not too far off because Osama bin Laden actually used to be in Sudan, actually. This is where before he went to Afghanistan, he was... That's right. ...in the 90s. Well, and not only was he there before, but one of the big things that happened after 2001 is that there was a reexamination of Sudan by the United States government as to whether, one, Osama bin Laden had gone back to Sudan. And two, whether or not Sudan should be viewed more harshly,

as a harbor for international terrorism. Additionally, of course, there is the whole, again, we're probably going to talk about this later because it is also Sudanese history in some ways, the whole uranium in Sudan. I want to say conspiracy. I mean, of course, there is uranium in Sudan, but the way that the United States government utilized that,

the fact that there may be some uranium in Sudan, and that means that international terrorists are going to be creating dirty bombs and trying to pursue nuclear weapons. Again, we'll probably talk about that later. It'll probably be in the next conversation that we have because that's much more contemporary. And, you know, this is, now I'm going backwards

and I'm going to get so tangential. I'm sorry, guys. But, you know, the whole, the way that Sudan is often used as a punching bag by the United States to deflect attention because of some linkages at certain points in history to individuals that the United States government doesn't like whenever the United States government wants to lash out and say there might be terrorism in a place. Sudan often comes up. So Muhammad, you probably know that I'm going to be referencing the al-Shafaa pharmaceutical company at some point.

I know that that was, it'll be a conversation for later, but you know, this whole thing about deflecting attention and Sudanese history, a grotesque example of the United States and specifically the Bill Clinton administration, just looking for any possible way

to deflect attention from, let's say domestic affair, and I mean that with the double entendre is intended okay sorry I'm laughing at my own joke here so

he really consummated that relationship yeah so to distract I wasn't there for that consternation well I won't get it

I don't take your word for it yeah yeah so to distract from domestic affairs, Bill Clinton, you know, utilized the pharmaceutical company in Sudan, but we'll get more into that event later, I'm sure. What I did want to ask about, now that I can try to get us back to where we were before I needlessly distracted us, you were talking about the British administration

of the colonial apparatus. And there is a specific point here that I think will be really important that we mention at this stage, which is going to resonate through the duration of the rest of our discussion on Sudanese history, not just this kind of colonial and just after colonial period, but right up to basically today. One of the things that makes the period of colonization under the British administration pretty, in some ways unique, but in some ways is an echo of the British colonial playbook is that they administered parts of the country absolutely distinctly from one another. And what I mean by that is that the British were administering the South as if it was part of East Africa and not part of Sudan whatsoever, which laid the roots

for many of the really deep North-South divides that eventually exploded into decades of Civil War culminated in the independence movement in South Sudan that reached fruition in in some ways in 2011, but still has left this deep rift within Sudan itself as well as echoes that are continuing in South Sudan today. So I'm wondering if we can talk a bit about how this British colonial divide-in-rule strategy left its roots in the popular society of Sudan and how that resonated through history from then on. And it might also be interesting from a more conceptual perspective to think about how this

divide and rule strategy, it is distinct in the case of Sudan in some ways and that, you know, there is this really sharp divide between two distinct regions. they're administered absolutely completely differently. But in other ways, it is just an extreme form of the old colonial playbook of divide and rule. Yeah, no, no. I mean, you're absolutely right. Like, there are completely distinct ways of running South Sudan and North Sudan, respectively.

One example, I think one very prominent example is, for example, South Sudan's education system was mostly missionary. You know, it was mostly like in this paternalistic sort of, you know, teaching as if like you're sort of civilizing people into Christianity and so on and so forth. This was basically that one of the main sort of ways in which you, basically how the education system was under colonialism for South Sudanese. For North Sudanese, for example, you know, it wasn't a lot, but there was like a robust education system which, you know, some people in the colonial era after like graduating from high school would go into like elite universities or elite education institutions, such

as like, you know, places in France and places in England, such as like Harvard and the Sorbonne and places in America and so on and so forth. So you see, and of course, this was privy only to the very few and the very elites. And in Sudan, there was something, there was the Gordon College, named after the guy Gordon that I mentioned earlier who got, apparently his head chopped off. And so, like, these institutions sort of, you know, gave rise or, like, you know, sort of birth, the elite classes or, like, the administrative elite classes of Sudan during the colonial period. Whereas, like, you are right, there was a complete disparity when it comes to South Sudan. For, you know,

This was also made explicit. There's a letter or there's a document, there's documents, but there's all document that I looked at in the early 20th century, where they made this very, very explicit that, you know, we need to make sure that this education system or this education system cannot be similar.

It needs to be like dispersed. There needs to be a disparity between them. There needs to be less educated and so on and so forth. And of course, to create like this, divide in the rule and so on and so forth. But we also have to understand and contextualize it, that it wasn't as if, you know, things were completely, you know, perfect and amazing

before this period. I mean, you know, Sudan itself, there was like, you know, histories of slavery and so on and so forth. There was histories of, you know, northern slavers who would go down south and, you know, destroy places and take southerners and other people as like slaves and sell them to like, you know, the hijazz, which is like modern day Saudi Arabia and so on and so forth.

You know, so we shouldn't romanticize this as if like it was something that, you know, the British, of course, British colonialism completely sort of systematized and sort of, you know, intensified this division and also sort of cemented it, in fact. You know, there were conflict between, you know, a different. times more intense, at different times, at different times, this extent, intense between different people and different geographies. This precipitated, like you said, after independence,

what every single Sudanese government or administration or dictatorship has called the Southern question. Every single administration is Sudan after independence, independence had to wrestle with what is called quote-unquote the the southern question. Now, you know, like, you know, immediately after independence, one of the ways in which sort of this conflict cemented itself is by the North continuing colonial era practices of dominating the South or seeing themselves as like superior by trying to enforce their educational educational systems enforced like their certain practices onto the south without having

a repri without having major representation of southerners to to the administrative practices of Khartoum for example or the administrative practice of the entirety of Sudan you know and in so doing basically they continued same practice maybe in different severities or different extremities or whatever to this disparity now you know different administrations try to resolve this question, the Southern question, by either having some sort of, I don't know, mutual agreement, by giving sort of ministerial portfolios to elite South Sudanese people as like a form of representation in the administration of Sudan. And some people just went all out war, I guess, the South Sudanese,

people. And basically you see this sort of develop resistance from South Sudan specifically against, you know, North Sudan in more, you know, more recent times until leading up to, to South Sudan's independence. One key figure here, I think, to look out for is someone by the name of John Garan, who was a very, very successful, maybe we'll get to this history a little bit later. later on because it goes a little bit forward but it was a very very successful sort of main figure of independence for the sastodinese people yeah I don't want to go too

far ahead but basically that that's the that's the case of sultan if the southern question is a very integral and important one but something that was cemented by british colonialism like in their in their oppression yeah yeah the the divide and conquer strategy is pretty prominent in, you know, my neck of the woods. I mean, just, just some examples of that. I think we spoke about it last time, but how in Swaziland, the monarchy has entered like a one and a half billion-round security agreement, you know, between, I think it's the Israeli aerospace industry and they're their local government. But the interference is, it's so bizarre sometimes.

Like another example, just thinking about it, is I'm trying to remember his name. I'm Minister of Parliament from Lesotho. I think, I think his name is Lepo. I can't remember his first name. But he was supposedly. funded by Israel to go to the UN with a case claiming

that huge chunks of South African territory belong to Lesotho. And I mean even just this small act was such a I don't know why

what you would call it an instigator if that's the right word in English where I think he was even arrested in LaSouca. to for saying this. But this need to cause these little tensions and divide

are becoming more and more not only more and more common, but more and more blatant. I think South Africa would be a good example at the moment. The whole American-backed nonsense of the white genocide

that fell apart pretty quickly because you know, if you want to lie about a genocide, you probably shouldn't do it when there's an actual genocide being live streamed on TV that people can compare it to. And I mean,

the idea that white people in South Africa are getting murdered and ethnicically. By the way, for listeners who haven't seen me, you can obviously tell I'm white and I am South African and I'm still very much alive and my family is still very much alive. but this

idea that white people were being ethnically cleansed it obviously failed and backfired quite spectacularly I mean like there were instances I think where where Trump sent planes to fetch the refugees and like only a handful of people

arrived and signed up and now there's stories about how so many or the few that left are actually now trying to come back because life in America is significantly worse than what it was like under genocidal South Africa. So that, and I think even in that, there was this expectation that it was going to cause tension between the black population and the white population. And I don't really know how, but somehow getting the black population to turn on the white population or vice versa.

But all that actually really materialized was it seemed very much just the white South Africans turning on white South Africans and, you know, labeling them traitors essentially and laughing at the ridiculousness of this accusation. So that interference, which obviously completely American back, fizzled out, but Coincidentally, I don't know if your listeners have seen the news, but coincidentally, we now have a problem with xenophobia. So xenophobia is probably the wrong word, because it's not all foreigners that are targeted. It's particularly African, black African migrants. So it's more Afrophobia.

but there's always been small undercurrents of this throughout South Africa's history, you know, that's owed to aparthe, to poverty, to all sorts of things. But lately with these more organized movement, so there's a movement called March and March, and what we are seeing, one of our justice ministers, Kubai, I think, so forgive me if I'm wrong, I think it's Kubai, has said that, you know, we have evidence that it's Israel that has been stoking this movement and basically building it out. And it's quite interesting to see one thing that I was just speaking about the other day is so in South Africa we have a lot of

ethnic issues, obviously, with our history of apartheid, but it's racial, it's race-based, obviously. We've never really had a major problem with religions. So yes, there's been, you know, the idea of Christian supremacy, but it's never really been as strong as of the racial aspect. And especially with the Muslim community, they've never really been a target or something, you know, that that's othered or for lack of a better word, like you see in the rest of the world. I mean, in fact, the Muslim community, if you go back to apartheid, the Muslim community and the Africana community generally didn't get on too badly because they both, for the most part, they both spoke the same language.

a large chunk of the Muslim community if I'm not mistaken I heard that the first book that was ever translated into Afrikaans was the Quran used by our Muslim community so it was never really an issue

but anyway what I'm trying to get out is that recently a Muslim guy actually went to a university with him. Yusuf Kasim, I think, has been promoted to our deputy minister of education. And there's been so much online rhetoric around this.

And particularly coming from those associated with this March and March organization. But the online rhetoric is like the wording that's used, that you, that you, you see. First of it's very Islamophobic, which is not something we've ever been. And the wording that's used is not words from, you know, the South African lexicon. Like what I saw the other day is this online posts calling him a towelhead. And I mean, coming from South Africa, people may not know this, but that is absolutely ridiculous. Because first of that, that's not a word we've ever used or really know. But also we have

like a thing called a duke, which is essentially the same thing that that's really common. You know, half the country is wearing it at any given time. And then like, then another thing, like calling him, I think it was Paki or something like that.

Which again is definitely not a South African Mexican Mexican. We would never use that. Most South Africans, if I'm perfectly honest, could not tell you where Pakistan is on a map. It could not tell the difference. And I mean, the other thing is if there was this deliberate attempt at disgracing him or using a slur or something like this,

it's South Africa. You know, we invented apartheid. We have the slur. We have our homegrown slurs. We've got slurs for everyone. we don't need to borrow these strange foreign words. So there's so much evidence

of just foreign interference. And I think Africa has forever, almost forever, been a victim of this divide and conquer, perhaps, because it's so easy. You know, like listening to all the points, Marmad May. Because it's so easy that this strategy is just so effective here.

Yeah. probably the most dangerous example of it at the moment would be what we're seeing in Somalia with the creation or attempt to establish this Somali land, you know. But again, it's just almost entirely, you know, who's behind it. You know, Rule, I'm just going to add in something quick here. It's interesting how you answered this question because when I was, discussing that, you know, divide and rule would be a very familiar strategy, you know, that you'd be familiar with, not only because, you know, divide and rule, but the history of South

Africa in the colonial period was very much a history of divide and rule by the colonists. But your answer was mostly focused on the post-colonial era, and particularly today where we still see these same efforts at dividing the people in the country for political purposes by the neo-colonialists that are operating outside of the country and their representatives inside of the country, as well as, you know, the United States, to just put it bluntly, which is, you know, imperialism to the max. But this terminology that you mentioned that is seeping into South Africa is not a South African term. Those are, those are terms that come, you know, the two that you use,

uh, were brought in from the United States and from England respectively, very clearly. Those are terms that are almost exclusively associated with those two countries. And you see them coming up within a South African discourse today. So it's, it's really interesting that you bring up, uh, all contemporary examples of divide and rule. When I was thinking that, you know, you were going to be talking about like the long history of divide and rule within. South Africa, which could be, you know, an entire episode just unto itself on that one specific point. We, of course, listeners have episodes on apartheid as a system and the history of South

Africa with a focus on apartheid. But, you know, just the question of how divide and rule worked in that period would be another episode unto itself because there was so many ways in which it was affected. So yeah, I just wanted to point that out. That was really interesting that you talked about post-colonial events with with regard to that. Well, yeah, if we had to speak of our pre-colonial as well, we'd be sitting here for another God two weeks. Yeah, Ruel, that's a really terrific intervention. I know that, you know, it has echoes with what we've previously talked about,

as you mentioned at the beginning there when we had that previous conversation. And also the discussion there at the end of, of Somaliland, I think, is also a very key intervention at this time in particular. So thank you for that. I do want to turn us back towards the historical point at which we left off, which is the end of the colonial system, Muhammad. And you had mentioned at the very end of your previous answer when we were talking about the history, about the Communist Party and about the coalescent.

of the left during that end phase of the colonial system. I'm wondering if you can give us a little bit more of a broad view of what the state of the left in Sudan was like in that end phase of the colonial system, the British colonial system. And then what happened? What were the moves that were made? What were the analyses that were being made? what were the alliances that were being fostered, et cetera, et cetera, by these formations on the Sudanese left

in the immediate post-colonial space. Yeah, I mean, to contextualize this question a little bit so that it's easier to understand where I'm coming from, after the revolution of Sudan, the reason went 2019, 2018, 2019, one thing that was immediately obvious was that there was not a significant, left movement that was ready to drive this revolution and basically to its next step.

What I was trying to do with this history that I'm going to talk about now, prompted by your question, Henry, is I'm trying to understand basically why the decision, because it's not just enough to be like, oh, there was no left, you know, we're going to build a left and, you know, for next revolution. Sure, yeah, of course, that's a good point. but also like there are historical reasons why the left is not as strong as it used to be or why the left is not, wasn't there to sort of deliver this, or why we weren't organized enough to deliver from this revolution.

A big point of this is what we're going to get into right now, which is, you know, a little bit before colonialism with the establishment of the Sudanese National Liberation Movement, which later turned to be the Communist Party of Sudan. During this period, we have to understand, you know, there was one of the major questions, the major issue at the time was, as you might, I guess, was independence, right? Like, this was the time where people, the central question of the time was, you know, we need to get rid of, you know, the British colonial administration of Sudan. You know, we need to be more independent than it's independence. we need to, you know, organize ourselves, organize our, you know, new state or new, you know,

like these sort of independent aspirations. During that time, there was a significant, the second head of the Communist Party of Sudan, what became known as the Communist Party of Sudan, was a gag called Abdul al-Qalek-Mahjub. Abdul-Khaliq Mahjub basically questioned basically, okay, yes, we understand that there is a sense, question of like independence, but if we ally ourselves with the same people who are

calling for independence, the same elites, we will be adiluting our politics because they don't share our same politics. They're basically sharing somewhat anti-communist politics. They're politics of the elites. And, you know, we will be dependent on this coalition for even our survival and instead we need to be looking at like working class, peasantry, you know, student movements, women liberation movements, instead, which is not necessarily the top priority of like these elite interests. And so during, it was a rough, it was a tough call, right? I mean, I mean, think about it. The example that I love to give is like today, for example. If listeners are in Germany, you have the rise of the AFD, in the UK, you have the rise of reform,

in America, you have like, you know, the mega party and the mega movement and so on and so forth. And, you know, there's an impetus for everyone to join hands to stop this greater evil, right? And this was the same case during the colonial period, which is like everyone should come together to oppose and finally push through independence. But the harder position to take is actually to say, well, okay, I'm not going to, I don't want to be, I don't want to be tied to the hip with, you know, these sort of people who I don't share their politics, these elite interest and so on and so forth. I'm going to do my own politics or engage with the working class and the peasantry and like be part of these communities and so on and so forth. it's more difficult, you know, because you're somewhat going against the stream or like, you know, you're breaking off from mainstream sort of political discourse or mainstream political actions. It's like, for example, in a lot of places, for example, you have in Germany, you have the anti-AFT protest.

In, you know, America, you have the no-kings protest. It's like, actually, yeah, okay, you have these movements or whatever, but we're going to actually go into the way. working classes and create like, you know, and peasantry movements and so on and create like a force there and identify ourselves with these movements. And this is our politics. We're going to not prioritize us heavily the question of independence. And that's exactly what the Khalil Mahjub did,

which I think, like I keep on saying this, if you could have heard in other podcasts, but which was a question that actually is someone like France Falun, someone like France Fanon, for example, was grappling with, you know, years after Abduchalhaq Mahjub sort of decided to take the step, which is, you know, famously, France Fanon said, you know, beware of these post-colonial elites. You know, you know, they might be, you know, they might have different motivations and different aspirations, you know, you just need to beware of them. Abd al-Qa-Khalv Mahjub already put that into practice. and this was an ex-this was a left tradition that one is, you know, is part of and it was an excellent

decision to make at the time, especially, and it released to the question that you asked previously, Henry, which is, you know, the South Sudanese question. After independence, you know, it wasn't like, you know, independence opened the door of, like, prosperity and justice to the people of South Sudan. No, in fact, you know, the same colonial dynamics continued and, you know, intensified at certain points. The North waged all-out war against the South Sudanese, like later on in history in the 90s or whatever. So, you know, when, and, you know, if you consider the current moment and just are, I don't want to say distracted, but like you take, you sacrifice, you know, the liberation of people and the hard work and, you know, the working classes for just,

the moment's convenience, and I think this is what Abdul Khaled Hamajib, you know, demonstrates, then you're not really tackling, you know, important, structural, deeply rooted issues. Now, you know, the history goes, Abdul Qalalek-Mahjub, through doing that, and he even went further, you know, he didn't just, you know, it's not just a change of strategy, but he was even, you know, annoyed or, like, challenged that, the, the, the, the, the, the, the situation in the Communist Party of Sudan, which, you know, he saw like some of his comrades were these elite, educated sort of fancy men who, you know, red dust capital or whatever, and, you know, saw themselves in a certain light and saw the religious poor in a different light.

And, you know, you know, this sort of, this era of somewhat, you know, I'm sure listeners on know a couple of one or two Marxists who might share the same sort of pretension. But, you know, like, you know, it was very frustrated about them. Like, you know, like, this is not the people who I imagine the Communist Party to be of, you know, the Communist Party needs to be like with, you know,

the peasantry and the working classes and so on and so forth. And it's not our number one enemy. It's not the, quote, unquote, the religious poor because they haven't gotten a certain form of consciousness to overthrow capital. But whether you're Christian, whether you're atheist, whether you're Muslim or whatever, our number one enemy, and he says this directly, is imperialism. It's none of these things.

And so he wanted not only to put in practice, but even change the character of the Communist Party of Sudan. Now, this was somewhat, you know, within sort of these intelligentsia spaces. it is quite radical because you have to imagine at the time, even a little bit later on, you had a lot of left-wing movements were influenced by like state atheism or state secularism or whatever or like the USSR. And, you know, they followed a certain atheistic worldview and all these kinds of things.

And so this was bizarre. I mean, even in left circles today, this is a little bit, this might seem a little bit bizarre. But he went against the grain and, you know, he fought for these. And the results were very successful. What happened was immediately after independence, though, you know, the three major, those three major parties, one of them liberal,

the other two were, you know, conservative, they were sort of grappling for power. and, you know, one of the conservative parties called the Ulmer Party sort of, you know, got sort of major votes and so on and so forth. But later on, you know, in the next sort of elections or the next round, you know, it was the liberals who got more votes because the other conservative party, a party sort of had a coalition with the liberal party. The OMA party didn't like this and basically handed power to then Sudan's first dictatorship, Aboud, Ibrahim Abud, and basically Sudanese independence started over a small period of like electoral, parliamentary democracy, and then just this period was literally handed, like the dictator, you know, it was given to a dictatorship or a dictator of Abud because they didn't want to,

the Omu party didn't want to accept its defeat. Now, I bring this up is because after, during the dictatorship, Abud washed the Communist Party. But the Communist Party continued to engage in its practice of being like a working class spaces and liberal liberation movements and peasantry, peasant movement. and so on and so forth. And, you know, when finally Abud was overthrown in the 60s, it was actually the communists, the Communist Party that played a,

it was a communist revolution, or, you know, inspired by the Communist Party, played a significant role. Historians talk about, you know, this was the moment of like the luminaries of the Communist Party, you know, quote-unquote, the luminaries of the Communist Party, who basically, you know, were the bright lights of that revolution. Not only that, but even, you know, this revolutionary period, the transition period was not, didn't go by so smoothly. The conservative movement sort of went with militias in the street to make sure, like,

no communist was in the transitional government and so on and so forth. But even after that, when there was, you know, democracy, when there was like elections, the Communist Party of Sudan managed to get something like 20% in the seas that they did run in. 20% for a party that had been basically banned for years, had to go on the ground, is a significant feat,

considering even that party was the one that was sort of, you know, had like major influences in the October Revolution of the 1960s. Now, this particular point here is, important for us, like we have to understand, like I said at the beginning of my answer is, you know, this history is not just dead history, it's a live history so that I and us and, you know, either in Sudanese or the general left could understand, which is what Abdulahalim had used teaches us, maybe indirectly, is that perhaps elections are the most undemocratic part of democracy.

In fact, it should be, in a sense, working and being part of the, you know, the laboring classes and, you know, various sort of productive forces and various sort of, you know, groups, working classes. This sort of forced a reality, whether it was, you know, elections or not, for them to have a major stake in what,

what goes on in the state or what goes on the state of Suban. And I think, you know, this is this is a significant history, for example, for the left and a very successful history of the left of Sudan, a tradition. I'm personally proud to be a part of. Sudan during, just before independence

and after independence till the 1990s, the revolution. Yeah, really, really terrific, Muhammad. there's really there's a lot more on my list. I know that I put together a rough outline of what I was hoping that we would talk about in this conversation. We've covered like maybe half of that. But as I mentioned at the top of this episode, this is going to be a two-part episode. So we do have another episode, which again, hopefully Adnan will also be at. Rule and Muhammad you both will be there as well, where we can finish talking about the history and particularly focusing on. on what's happening in Sudan today, the precedence for what's happening today and how that's connected with what is happening today, as well as some of these more conceptual questions. We'll talk about psychotherapy. There's a lot of things that we're going to be talking about in that next episode.

But I do have one final question to close us on today. We were just talking about the state of the left in the late colonial stage and the immediate post-colonial stage. And there's a lot of really interesting things happening in the Sudanese left at that point. However, that does not continue on forever, Muhammad. And so in closing this question, I'm wondering if we can stick with an examination of the Sudanese left and the way that the Sudanese left developed or, you know, de-developed or I don't know how we want to. to formulate this in terms of what happened to the Sudanese left, but something happened to the Sudanese left, and the Sudanese left basically disappeared, at least in terms of being

a significant force within the country. And the way in which that happened is a really interesting one. And in so doing, we'll also kind of sketch out a rough outline of what the contour of Sudanese history was from that immediate post-colonial era up to the present, but without getting into too many of those weeds, which we'll talk about the history, that more modern history in that next conversation, but at least we'll have a little bit of a teaser for the next conversation, I guess. So take us through what happened to the Sudanese left Muhammad. It really is a fascinating and depressing case in terms of, you know, the, the trajectory and the decision making from that immediate post-colonial phase up through the next

couple of decades, really. But, you know, we can look at that early phase there particularly. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I know I said this before, but just to emphasize this, like, you know, it's we often look at the Seneid revolution and various other revolutions when we wonder where was the left, you know, why wasn't to not carried on to, you know, beyond its embryonic stages, like to develop it further the revolutions, especially in Sudan, but generally during the Arab Spring. So to follow off from what I was saying, just to understand why the left was, for Sudan, at the 60s when there was the revolution, you know,

there was the luminaries of the Communist Party who were like, you know, existed in, you know, this clandestine state organized. with workers and you know even after even during the the transitional period you know the conservatives sort of mobilized their militias to basically cut the transitional period and like kick out all the communists who were part of the transitional government even afterwards when there were elections like I said in the places in which they ran you know which they they sort of ran for elections they got 20% in the votes it wasn't enough to win the majority it wasn't enough to like hold office and

you know, in major ways. But it was a very successful, like coming from, you know, existing in the shadows to this was very successful. Now, the late 60s after this revolution, you know, brought about a very sort of tumultuous period for Sudan. It's because these conservative parties, well, you know, they didn't really run Sudan in any, you know,

decent way or a popular way or, you know, a way that the people sort of saw as appropriate. You know, inflation was going up, you know, and, you know, various sort of economic woes were, you know, tied to that. And people saw them basically as almost like a clown car of like administration where you had just like the switching from like one minister, one prime minister to another, not too similar to like the UK today. But basically like, you know, a shit show basically. And that is until 1969. So the last year of the 60s, there was a successful coup that was headed by a guy called Numeri, Jaffer Numeri.

He's a significant figure that hopefully we can get to in the next conversation. But for our purposes today when talking about the left, Numeri, you know, he styled himself as a socialist of the Nazarite type, Jamah Abdul Nasr, pan-Arabist, socialist. And without going into the background of ideologies, the Communist Party immediately had sort of a problem with him, but a working relationship. So they saw that this Nazarist sort of pan-Arab socialism or whatever,

it was a little bit antithetical to their project because they saw it as more of a top-down than a bottom-up. up from the Communist Party's perspective. So they had, you know, somewhat a working relationship. At the time, Jaffer Numeri, the dictator that came in 19609, dissolved all the parties, including the Communist Party, but the Communist Party was able to practice politically under different kind of, under like different sort of pretenses

and stuff like this, but it wasn't too hostile towards the Communist Party. Now, within the Communist Party itself, Abdul Khaliq Mahjub, his steadfastness, even as he was growing older, his steadfastness never gave way. For him, he was like, yeah, we cannot be part of this Numerary project, this denier dictatorship,

because A, it's a dictatorship, B, it's like a top-down process. For us, this is not something that we should be supporting, yeah, it can be a socialist or a socialist in name, but it's not socialist in practice. We need to think about the people and so on and so forth. There was another part of the party, right, of the Communist Party that were like,

no, actually, since he's a socialist, you know, we need to be part and he had ties with like, you know, or, you know, there was like, later on he would be, you know, friendlier and stuff like this with Timala al-Nasar. And so, you know, there was another faction within like the Communist Party

who said, like, actually, no, we should be supporting this and we should have like a relationship with Endomeri and to understand it you need to understand that the Communist Party was living

in the shadows for so long so for them they saw that this democracy that you're talking about it's one cannot fold them for seeing it as like a sham right you're like okay you want to engage in this democratic process but democratic process has

been quite disfavorable or unfavorable towards us right so you understand this perspective. But like I said, Abda Khaled Mahjub, he was still the Secretary General, stood firmly on his

perspective. He said, you know, no, we don't want to be part of this. Still, Numeri did employ in position certain people from the Communist Party into like government positions against, obviously, the consultation of the Khalelk Mahjoub.

And then later on there was another faction within the Communist Party or a coalition that was building within the Communist Party that sought to even overthrow to solve this because what they saw this faction this third faction or coalition that was building it was seen in like in Abdul Khalik Mahjub in one side and the other communist forces on the other side

they were bickering amongst each other. They're like okay yeah we're not doing any. thing, you know, like we need to do something a little bit more radical, you know, that this, it's not working what's, what's going on. It seems to be, like, stuck. And so they were aiming to overthrow a numery, because it was stuck, right? Once, Abdu Khalid Mahjee's faction was like, you know, no, we need to stick to the proper way.

We can't, you know, we don't want to engage with the Numeri. Then there was another faction that we ought to engage with Numeri. And it's the third faction was like, okay, since the Numeri is like, you know, like, this party is not satisfied with him and it was like, you know, somewhat a challenging relationship or like, you know, an uncomfortable relationship. Let's overthrow him. Now, they had a general assembly meeting or, you know, a general meeting with, you know, the major cadres of the party and members of the party to talk about this very issue

or one of the conversations or topics about this very issue about, you know, what should we do about the Nibati? the topic of you know overthrowing or a crew was brought up but it was on in in you know it was you know not it didn't you know carry water they didn't carry free they were like a lot of people were against that the chalphamahjou sort of when there was a vote at the end and he basically his vote won by saying that we shouldn't have we shouldn't overthrow according to some because we shouldn't overthrow the numeric dictatorship basically the people in the third faction without the consent of the Communist Party in 1971 so two years after dictatorship

decided anyways to overthrow an Numeri now they overthrew an Numeri and things were looking quite rosy and you know they got you know hold of like certain parts of the radio station and you know, it was looking like it's going to be a successful sort of counter-revolved, counter-cruor or whatever. Unfortunately for them or whatever, in Libya, the Libyans allowed, no, sorry, it wasn't Libyans, it was the Egyptians allowed for their airwaves to be used by the Numeri people the NEMER administration, so that they can broadcast the message of like, okay, soldiers need to go out in the street, and, you know, this is an illegitimate coup and all that kind of stuff,

basically. And the co-conspirators of the communist coup, the third wave of the third coalition of the communist, the third faction of the communist, they were coming from England to Sudan, and their flight was intercepted or stopped in. Egypt. It was put down in Egypt and the caucus writers basically were stopped there

basically. And so this particular sort of period in Sudanese, Georgia or Sudanese left history was the moment where, you know, the fractions within the Communist Party sort of split and acted upon their splits

and this final, the third sort of the third people, the third split, is like the people who wanted to overthrow Annameri, they tried to carry it out and it was successful for a day or like a very, very short-lived. And then And Mn Mered came back into office with the help of Libya and Egypt.

When he came back into office in the same year, he basically ordered the execution of major political figures in the Communist Party and communist across Sudan, numbers are maybe a little bit foggy, but something like 3,000 leftist or communist were prosecuted. And Abdul Qadhajid, including he was executed,

and that moment in history, the split in history and the outcomes of it and this execution specifically of like the major heads of the Communist Party is the moment where I see, and a lot of people I think on the left to the southern, the 70s left, see that this is where left-fing politics in Sudan was completely devastated. This was the last sort of moment in which we had the radicalism of the

Abdul Khalil Mahjub and the radicalism of the Communist Party of Sudan. And, you know, it ended with a bang with, you know, the execution of all these people. And yeah, we live in the aftermath of this even until today. So on that depressing note, I think that it's, you know, time to wrap up the conversation for today. Again, there is much more that I want to talk about. But I think that this idea that the destruction of the left in Sudan was in part by their own making and in part also as a result of brutal. suppression of of them. And these two things worked alongside one another.

You know, you have to make yourself a target in order to be a target. And you also have to make yourself susceptible to being a target in order for that crackdown to be successful against you. Historically, basically every far left wing movement that is not, you know, in charge, any oppositional left wing movement is going to. to face attempts at suppression and crackdown on them. And that requires these left wing movements to operate in such a way that they're not able to be destroyed should the governing powers that be at that moment decide that now

is the time that we're going to crack down on the left. You have to have structures. You have to have structures in place that allow you to circumvent the most severe of the crackdown. You have to have structures in place that allow you to continue to organize safely during periods of crackdown and to continue to agitate and to continue to get your literature out there, to the masses, to continue to integrate yourselves into the community, but in the face of crackdown. And in many ways, and I know that it's always difficult to try to draw lessons from one specific context and try to make them. maybe not universal, but more applicable to other situations as well. But if there is one that can be drawn from this, I think it is that, that if you are in a left-wing

movement that is agitating, that is organizing, and you're not currently in power, and let's face it, most left-wing organizations globally are not in power, you know that the more successful that you are and the longer that you persist in your struggle, the more likely you are that you are going to face a crackdown at some point. And it is because of the likelihood that you are going to face that, that you also have to be planning for contingencies. And in each context, how those contingencies look are going to be absolutely different. So there's nothing that we can really draw in terms of concrete lessons in terms of what your contingencies would look like. But what we do know is that you are going to need contingencies in place because inevitably,

there is going to be a crackdown. And if you're not prepared for that crackdown, it is the end of the left wing movement in your locality, in your country. And as you mentioned, Muhammad, that resonance of the lack of the left continues through to today. This is decades on. We're talking about a systematic destruction of not only an individual organization, but of an entire ideological tendency with, a society. And so it's a depressing situation, but on the other hand, you know, we do have to take something from that as, uh, as we are in these, these organizations that inevitably are going to face crackdown. And the last thing, I know that you want to say something on this, Muhammad, the last thing. I just saw a few days ago, the United States, for example, Marco Rubio, secretary of state. And I, I pulled up this quote while you were speaking because I think that this also speaks towards this phenomenon that I was just speaking to in which the resonance came from the example of Sudan. Marco Rubio said, quote, Marxism is not dead.

If we don't confront this now and defeat it, it will destroy this country and everything that has made it special. The United States is gearing up to confront, quote, Marxism. And of course, the target for Marco Rubio for for Deccas. has been Cuba, no surprise, but they are increasingly discussing ways in which they can combat the left, the far left, Marxists, whatever. They use different terminology all the time, but to crack down and confront this tendency within American society itself against American citizens, this is one, not a surprise. It is what we've seen historically. is that whenever the left seems to have some sort of momentum, there's a crackdown on them.

But we should also take it as, and again, I don't live in the United States. So this is intended for listeners in the United States, but also this is just, frankly, the situation in most places globally. As your movement begins to gain popularity, begins to have, you know, representatives that are, that are not adversarial to you. the governing structures are going to then be looking at how they can be too down. And there are different ways that they can do that. There's administrative ways.

There's legal ways. And there's physical slash violent ways that they can do that. It's important that we all think about where we are and how those contingencies can look. I know that I just went off on a really long kind of preachy sermon on what organizations should be doing. But it wasn't meant in that. it was just a notice for everybody that, you know, this example of Sudan does demonstrate a tendency that we see globally, historically, as well as in the contemporary world. Sorry for the long exposition on that, Muhammad.

I know you wanted to hop in. No, no, I was equally going to sort of talk about that or like, you know, produce a sermon or like to do a sermon about, you know, the concept of freedom and the Marxism. Like, I mean, the reason why the crackdown happens, I think, it's not just because there's ideological difference. And, of course, there is, you know, and, you know, different interests or different class interests and stuff like this. But also there's a romantic element, or rather I see,

there's a romantic element within Marxism, which is the element of freedom. You know, I mean, these people, they're not fighting, you know, Abdul Khalif Mahjoub and, you know, his comrades and many comrades to have, you know, perished on the scythe of capitalist counter-revolution. When they were alive, what their, what intuitively their vision of freedom is to be separate from the structures that determine how they reproduce themselves, the structures in which they exist and they can't sort of actualize any sort of agency. And they wanted to be a post sort of post-class, post-whatever you all

call it, subject in which they have access to autonomy beyond structures where they determine what's going to come and, you know, what they can do, how they should shape their reality, how they should shape their, you know, social relations, how they should shape their production and their, you know, and, you know, their, their communities and, you know, things of that nature. And I think while, yes, they perished, they perished, you know, more alive and more determined and, you know, for an aspiration of freedom, you know, that is really, really at the core of liberatory politics, which is a freedom that, to be beyond the structures that oppress us.

And this is why I think the crackdowns are so severe, even if we're not in any position of strength. But what we represent is something that they know it's very radical. To be your own subject, to determine your own history, you know, together with your comrades, beyond like, you know, the authorities and beyond these structures and things, this is quite a radical way to exist and quite a radical way to, you know, aspiration. You know, you need to kill that whatever, you know, however, however is possible. So, yeah, yeah, just that to that notes. Yeah.

And it's not only in the case of Sudan. I know that rule, I'm going to bring you in now as we're getting here to the conclusion. One of our more recent, it might be the most recent time that you were on guerrilla history as a guest host. We had Comrade Sokolobok Baccahna Bufé of the Communist Party. of Swaziland on the show. And we discussed at length the crackdown that has taken place and is taking place in Swaziland against the Communist Party and left-wing individuals more generally. So it's, again, it's something that we see historically. It's something that we see now. Anytime that there is a left-wing movement that has any sort of threat to the governing structure,

there is going to be a dramatic crackdown and rule. I know that you're much more an expert on the situation at Swaziland than I am, although I feel like I'm fairly up on the situation. But, you know, I don't know if you want to just remind the listeners about how dire the situation is for the Communist Party and the brutal repression of those in Swaziland. And then, of course, we'll reference the, I'll, if I remember, I'll put a link to the conversations that we had with Comrade Sikolo Bacana Bafé in the show notes for listeners to click on and listen to. But I think that, you know, a brief mention here also might inform.

So we'll take it away. Yeah, I mean, the repression that the not just even the Communist Party of Switzerland, that, but almost any movement that that tries to even just go slightly against the monarchy. What they face is inside. And it's quite bizarre, you know, how South Africa is held up as this beacon of democracy, you know, of getting things right. And then basically, almost entirely within our border sits this little bastion of absolute to oppression.

And then I think the other thing I would add as well is that it's almost like a vicious aesthetic cycle where the, because like you say, you know, any organization, any movement, any, any, any successful form of, of socialism, of communism, would he never to be faced crackdown? one of the first things that you see, at least in the African context, but you can talk anywhere, China, DPRK, is the need for these movements, these organizations, to essentially fortify themselves.

And when that happens, you then get this aesthetic of authoritarianism or militarization or dictatorship, whatever you want to call it. But essentially, it's just a way of fortified. the movement against these outside influences. And then this is then bastardized. You know, look at this place. They're building walls.

They're building fences. But it's to keep the repression out. That's the irony. But it's completely framed the opposite way, as if they are then these repressive states, these militarized authoritarian states. And I think you see that quite a lot, particularly. I mean, DPRK is a good example, but you also see it quite a lot in African socialist projects

where there's a big movement towards a militarized socialist project that you don't really see elsewhere. Maybe South America, but I don't know if it's fully to the same extent. And it also, I don't know, maybe it's not fair to say corrupt, but it also, perhaps hinders these projects where the focus becomes so devoted to stopping this inevitable external crackdown from happening that certain socialist's expectations are sacrificed. I mean, there's lots of examples in southern Africa, you know, where like, Land redistribution, for example. It didn't go to

peasantry or workers. It went to soldiers, went to military, especially military elites. And you know, it's easy to look at that and say, ah, you know, typical corruption, kleptomania, what, whatever you want to call it. But there is

a deeper logic behind it, you know, you need to give something up to your generals because if you don't, they will have a Who? France has more money than you. America is more money than you. Israel is more money than you. If you don't give up, they will shoot you in your back tomorrow. So how do you fortify yourself against this without not only losing the socialist project in the process,

but also with maintaining a positive aesthetic that doesn't become this cartoonish caricature that they inevitably will portray you as, you know, if any of that makes sense. It makes total sense, and I really appreciate you bringing that to the table rule. I'm going to stick with your rule. Now we're into the readout for you to let the listeners know what you're working on. I don't think you're on social media rules, so you have nothing really to direct them, too. But you can, I know that you have some very exciting projects in the works. I don't think that there's anything that you can, like,

state exactly what it is, but you might be able to tease some of the projects that you're working on. And then Muhammad will turn to you afterwards as well. Let the listeners know how they can, you know, keep up to date with what you're working on, what you are working on, if there's anything that you can share. And of course, we've been talking about your book and some of the contents of your book in this conversation. And again, listeners, the book is politically unconscious, the psychic aftermath of the Sudanese revolution, Muhammad, and when you are closing and letting the listeners know where they can keep up with you, perhaps you can also pitch the book as well. And we'll just mention, you can get the book listeners, iscrabbooks.org. And with Iskra

books, as always, the PDF is available for free, but you can help support the publisher and the author by purchasing a copy. But Ruel, we'll start with you. What are you working on? Well, the main thing I'm working on at the moment is taking a holiday. So I will be heading back, back home to South Africa next month. But what I will say is that in the process of heading back to South Africa, I will be heading somewhere, somewhere in the neighborhood. It's not Swazirang, but somewhere in the neighborhood. I can't really say, well, I can't at all say where, of NDAs and a whole bunch. But what I can say is that we are in the process of publishing the first extensive collected works.

And I mean, at the moment, we have about 300, 400 documents. we're busy transcribing but the first ever hopefully full almost complete works of a African Revolutionary and African leader

I don't know how vague I can make this without giving it away and getting in trouble but let's leave it at there a very little known individual but in terms for Africa and you know anti-imperialism

and socialist experimentation, I think a very important individual. I'm going to argue with you, Ruel. I'm going to argue with you. You say little known. I'm also not going to give anything away because I do know what the project is and I don't want to violate any of your NDAs.

Rule says a little known individual. It is true that this individual will be very little known in the West, but in terms of political, significance, politically extremely significant in this place, extremely. Yes, yes. In this place, extremely. I don't think you get more well known, but outside of this country, very little known.

Well, not really in Africa. That's what I say in the West. In the West, he's fairly unknown. in Africa he's fairly known and you literally cannot be more well known than him in this place but but to be fair i mean most americans couldn't pick this place on a map this is true but they'll see they'll see soon enough i don't want to i don't want to get us too close to to violating any documents but get it get excited listeners it's a it's an extremely interesting project about an extremely, again, just not sharing anything new that we didn't already just say, an extremely

consequential person, an extremely consequential revolutionary person in this particular place. And you will not have seen anything like this on this individual anywhere else ever. So be excited and stay tuned. There's probably nothing that we can direct them to so that they can keep up to date with that. to subscribe to guerrilla history because we'll bring yeah well subscribe to guerrilla history i know you're three hours into this conversation listeners if you're not subscribed by now what are you still doing here but uh if you're subscribed to guerrilla history when there is an announcement available

we'll probably announce it at some point on the show and uh of course when the work is actually ready it will be featured in an episode on the show i'm i'm already booking you in rule for that Sorry, I'm not giving you a choice. Muhammad, I'm turning to you now. Let the listeners know where they can keep up to date with your work and pitch your book, please, in less vague terms than rule did. Yeah, I mean, what am I working on at the moment? I'm in Germany at the moment, and like I said at the beginning of the pot,

I'm, we're doing some biofinery, doing some, trying to introduce the black radical tradition to German left. for some radical anti-racism and stuff like this. If you're interested in that kind of work in your Germany and you would like to, or anywhere, you can follow us on. Our Instagram handle is Black underscore Radicals. Which is crazy. I don't know how no one has taken that particular handle.

But yeah. For the book, I mean, I think a lot of people are, like, you know, one of the reasons why the book sort of was received quite well, I think it's because there is a lot of, there's an appetite for what's going on in Sudan. And I think generally everyone on the left today, especially today, right? We are a left that has been re-in,

has its radicalism been reinvigorated, not figuratively, but literally at top of the skulls of Palestinians. You know, we are a left who are witnessing. the accelerated genocide of Palestinians, destruction of Sudan and Congo and elsewhere. This thing, you know, when we see it in our screens and stuff like this, we cannot, we have to give it the justice that it deserves.

We have to give it the gravity that it deserves. And I think one way in which we could do this, and I think, you know, we need to start getting educated about what's going on around us. And it can no longer be, this radicalism has to be followed up with, commitments because it can no longer be like viewing these countries like Rowe said in the beginning of their pod in the sort of abstract way of like you know a retrospective a retrospective perspective or in this way as if like you know Sudanese people or Palestinian people or whatever they're just figments in

the liberal imaginary to which we can donate and blah blah blah like they exist for us to soothe our sort of conscience. I think in order for us to do this, we need to understand what's going on and the histories of these places and how we can contribute. And I think, you know, one of the ways I would suggest immediately is to pick up a book and like Henry said, there's not even a pitch to buy the book. You can get the book for free. And the book might not be perfect. You might disagree with it. And I'm sure even maybe some of the editors of the book might even disagree with some of the things. But it's a start and it's a start to understanding these countries and you can get it for free and you would do it.

And a message for, I mean, I don't know, like a message for people interested in what, I get this question, a lot of what we can do about Sudan. Specifically for academics and people who are academically minded, one of the things that we were looking for during the Sinai's revolution was people such as myself, you know, people in their 20s and younger and stuff like this, who wanted to know what was going on during that time. But, unfortunately, for a lot of Marxists were sort of enclosed within these elite universities

or like universities in general in the West. I think wherever there's a revolution, it is incumbent upon us, you know, the generations of intellectuals to go to these places and engage with these young comrades. And, you know, I wish when I was younger, you know, there were people, you know, people in academics or intellectuals were with us.

on the ground, helping us analyze, directing our intellectual curiosity. And in that regard, I think no better comrades. I couldn't ask for better comrades than Raul and the people at Eskra for picking up this book and giving voices to one person of tens of millions of people during the Arab Spring was experimenting with, I don't know how to understand history, psychoanalysis or psychotherapy and some experimental philosophy of science

you know and so I have to give mad props to my boy Raoul and the people at Eskra and yeah I think I'll just leave it there yeah wonderful I know that I'm really looking forward to the next conversation that we have it'll be great to see both of you again in the very near future we'll schedule it for

as soon as we can get everybody together again, basically, because I'm champing at the bit to get to the next one. But as for me, listeners, you know, I, as I mentioned at the top, sanctions make it pretty much impossible for me to get on social media. But if you want to follow me, you can at Huck, 1995. Eventually, I might be back online. That's at Twitter at Huck, 1995. Eventually, I might be back on there and at least updating of what's coming

out. Guerrilla history is on the very social media platforms under, you know, similar handles, Gorilla underscore history, Gorilla underscore pod, depending on what platform it is. And hopefully that channel will also be up and running again as sanctions decrease. But the main thing that you can do, listeners, there's two things that you can do as we're coming out of this, again, unplanned hiatus to help support the show. The main one that you can do is take episodes like this one and share them with people. So always the most helpful thing that you can do, not only for the sake of educating others and movements that are around us, but also for the sake of helping get the show out in front of more people, is to just take the episode and share it.

It doesn't cost you anything, but find somebody who's in an organization that you're in or in activist circles that you're in, or maybe somebody who's just curious about these events that you know of and just send them the link to the episode. It's literally the most. It's literally the most of, most helpful thing that you can do and it's absolutely free. And, you know, we don't have any advertising or anything on the show. So it's literally free for everyone. The other thing that you can do, if you do want to help support the show financially and help us pay for platform fees and things like that is go to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. But again, the most useful thing that you can do, the most helpful thing is to share the episodes

when you find something that you think is useful. So I hope that I'll hear some people saying that they sent this link to their friends, because I know I have a lot of people's phone numbers that listen to the show. I'm looking forward to you texting me and saying, hi, I sent it to four people. That's the nicest thing that I can hear. So on that note, then, listeners, and until next time, solidarity.