It Could Happen Here - The Black Cat Named Sabotage: Spooky Week #2

Episode Date: October 26, 2022

Spooky Week continues with the story of how the black cat became synonymous with syndicalism and sabotage.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German,

where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians,

actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search. Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Oh, no.

There's that monster coming to kill me with his fentanyl knife. Ah, it got me. Ah, what a bummer. Welcome to Spooky Week, where we talk about all of the scariest things. A podcast with foreshadowing. That is foreshadowing, that's right. Where Deputy Garrison Davis just overdosed on fentanyl by being near it, and will now consume 17 Narcans. Yep.

It was very scary. Thank you. Very spooky. Yeah. It's good to be back with Spooky Week. All right. So this episode, I believe Chris has something very special prepared for us. Yeah. So today we are talking about one of the most immediately recognizable and enduring symbols of Halloween.

And one of the things that I've had to spend the most time cropping out of party invitations when i was sending them to like kids girls and pumpkins oh what no we're talking god damn it we're talking about other other iconic halloween imagery no no yeah well this is the one like specifically i had to spend a lot of time cropping this out of i i fucking like party invitations people because if like you're you're in you're in your like fucking shitty christian suburb and if you send a kid home with an invitation that has a black cat on it, their parents will pull them out of public school because of the rising threat of Satanism.

Better to stick to the tried and true, you know, like put the Unabomber on it or something. Yeah, you gotta lots of nice stars, put some crosses on it instead. Put like a cornucopia, make it's like called like a harvest festival or some bullshit yeah oh yeah harvest festival yeah no come to my fucking

pentagram party or your party's sick so yeah we were talking about the black cat um and ironically the black cat's association with witchcraft is actually this is the catholic church's fault as are many things the only bad thing they've ever done they even created protestantism it's a real issue so true so okay so pope gregory the ninth the may cats eternally feast on his soul uh took took office of the pope in 1227 and six years later and in it's in in 1233 he issued his first papal bull this is this bull is called vox in rama and vox in rama is essentially like it's a giant anti-witchcraft bull that is designed to like okay what do you mean by bull like people people bulls are these like orders basically that are like declared by the pope and they turn into sort of like – they have this sort of legal status.

They determine what sort of church doctrine and church position is going to be. It's basically like – it's like an executive order for the pope. Okay. All right. And they can just do this. So they do this a lot. lot and yeah this is the sort of anti-richcraft one because he's trying to rally support for like stamping out a bunch of heretics in uh germany for the crime of like not believing in catholic doctrine and giving all their money to the pope so this bull like directly links cats to satanic rituals there's this whole thing about like half cat like half people oh i wish i was supposed to be there oh i wish we are this is what we are back to iconic trans girl halloween imagery we full circled there are no new

moral panics this is a fucking furry panic in like 1233 it's it's amazing it's great cat girls kill god yeah unfortunately the product of this is that you know like this this this this space from here it's off to the races right black cats have become associated with witchcraft and then sort of in general with bad luck and you get this whole sort of like you know crossing a black cat like bringing bad luck and this is really sort of devastating real world effect on cats like there are sort of they're like it is yeah like i mean like like throughout europe like from this point on like periodically there was mass killings of cats in europe because like these people are fucking barbarians and savages who like should never have been allowed to like

leave their stone huts um when i was getting a few a while ago when i was getting some childhood cats we were talking to the cat agency and we learned that they don't allow people to adopt black cats during October because people either buy them as props and then like get rid of them or just like abuse them. It sucks. It's like an actual problem. Yeah.

Are we going to get to the Great Cat Massacre? No. What is the great cat massacre? That sounds like a sequel to that, to that mouse Sherlock Holmes movie that Disney made. Yeah. It's the extremely dark version. Yeah.

No, the great cat mask is a book by Robert Johnson. It's like a, uh, it's a very very like if you're doing a history graduate degree and you're reading like these sort of histories of everyday life or like uh histories of popular laughter you will read the great cat massacre and uh he details how like basically in france i can't remember when but uh these printers apprentices were like the

apprentices lived with the printer, right? And the printer's wife also had a bunch of cats, which she cared for much better than the apprentices. So they got mad and started doing cat murders. Oh, no! They put the cats on trial and convicted them of witchcraft. Wait, wait! This was like judicial murder.

Yes. Yeah, they sentenced the cats to death by having them hung. Oh my god. Did the cats have a defense attorney? Like, what is... Well, you're supposed to have an advocate at a witchcraft trial, so one would

hope, but unfortunately... My guess, though, is you're probably going to get another cat, which is not a great defense attorney. No, they don't get a single fuck. I don't know. They could really fuck up your face or something if they just, you know, claws out. I don't know if the cats had a defense attorney. It's an excellent question.

If someone's read it more recently than me. This is reminding me of that great great poster someone took my vet's office that was like fighting cats it's like don't fight fair use drugs great one oh yeah yes but you know okay my piece of advice to you is don't fight fair yeah use drugs yeah it's great it's good it's good general advice and put them in your halloween uh sweets yeah yeah foreshadowing pm so according to a study from the journal animals uh black cats have the highest rate of euthanasia and shelters and have lower rates of adoption like have the lowest rate of adoption among all fur colors which is like extremely fucked up and it's also like the number of cats that we euthanize every year is just so bleak.

It's very sad. Yeah, so fuck the Catholic Church. This is their fault somehow. However, comma, for millions of people across space and time, the black cat has meant something else entirely. This black cat, with its fur raised and back arched, is the bringer of the class war, the herald of the new world, and its name is Sabotage. It's a Beastie Boys song about it. Yeah. And before we get into how the Sabotabby or the Sabot kitty became associated with Sabotage,

we have to talk about what Sabotage actually is. And the reason we have to do this is because Sabotage, like, does not mean the same thing now as it did when the term was coined so if you look at sort of the modern definition of sabotage it's it's almost entirely focused around sort of the physical destruction of property like here's merriam-webster's definition for example destruction of employers property such as tools or materials or the hindering of manufacturing by discontented workers to destruction or obstructive action carried on by a civilian or enemy agent to hinder a nation's war efforts and okay so part part of the reason why sabot why everyone thinks about sabotage is sort of like a physical act of destruction it has to do with the sort of folk etymology of you know where

the word sabotage came from which is supposedly dates back to these like early 1800s french workers throwing these wooden shoes called sabots into, like, machines to break them. And the problem is that this sort of just isn't true. Um, like, there's no direct evidence that anyone sabotaged machines by throwing your shoes into them,

which seems like a kind of inefficient way to just grab a stick, right? Like, you need your shoes to walk on. And the other thing is that sabotage only- These are the people who put cats on trial they weren't always thinking in straight lines that's true well at least this is the 1800s so hopefully we're slightly past the cat trials but what's interesting about this is the other thing about this okay like sabotage like it's a french word right the french shoot the word for the shoe is sabbat. Like, it doesn't start, up until, like, the late 1800s, it literally just means someone who, like, it means to make a wooden shoe. Okay.

The term sabotage as the sort of worker action was invented by the French anarchist Emile Pouget. Pouget? P-O-U-G-E-T. I don't know how to pronounce that. It does not matter. No one cares. Pouchet? Pouchet? I don't know. Sure. Okay, I feel slightly bad because he's one of the few good Frenchmen. Controversial statement.

Him and Foucault, the only flawless Frenchman. So Emile Pagot is like, he's a... Okay, I've just looked this guy's face up. This guy's extremely French. Yeah, but he's also... He is in the period of French cool, which is to say he is... He is an anarchist. He is a the period of French cool, which is to say he is an anarchist. He is a cynicalist.

He is doing all of the shit. And he invents the term sabotage as part of this report to the CGT's 1879 conference in some city's name. I can't remember. So the CGT is a really weird union it means cgt means like the general confederation of labor of workers basically um actually it's really funny because because because of how similar like french spanish and portuguese are there were like 16,000 unions across like 12 countries that are named the cgt it's it's it's they're all either the cgt or the ugc because they're all just like confederacion or something yeah so the french cgt is like a very very weird union they're they're like they're the

only union i've ever seen that has at various points been an anarchist union a communist union a liberal union and a social democratic union and it also like the the thing they're famous for sort of now is the fact that they sat out like like, every revolution that's ever happened in France. Like, they're probably most famous for, like, telling people to, like, basically signing a pact with the government and trying to get people, like, to go back to work when May 68 was happening. And, you know, the CGT is still around today. They have, like, 700,000 members or something. Like, they're the second largest union in France. And, I don't know, it's interesting. So, they'll go on strike for, like, pension stuff, but they won't go on strike to, like, abolish the class system, is sort of how I put it. syndicalist union and emile pigot who again like like anarchist par excellence is like their vice secretary so pigot like invents he invents the word sabotage as a way of translating

basically the scottish term that i okay i apologize for my scottish pronunciation i don't i genuinely don't really have any problems with scottish people uh i i think the term is go connie basically which means go slow um here's to go from his pamphlet sabotage that's um like his explanation of like what's going on here the first part of it's him quoting a british pamphlet that's about what uh goy is. If you want to buy a hat worth $2, you must pay $2. If you want to spend only $1.50, you must be satisfied with an inferior quality. A hat is a commodity. If you want to buy a dozen of... Why is it a dozen of shirts?

Okay, I don't know. People wrote weird in the early 1900s. If you want to buy half a dozen shirts at 50 cents each, you must pay $3. If you only spend $2 and 50 cents, you can only have five shirts. Now the boss declares that labor and skill are nothing but commodities like hats and shirts.

Very well. We answer. We'll take you at your word. If labor and skill are commodities, their owners have the right to sell them. Like the hat seller sells hats and the haberdasher sells shirts. These merchants must give a certain value in exchange for an equivalent value. For a lower price, you will have an article of either lower quality or smaller quantity. Give the worker a fair wage and he will furnish you with his best

labor at its highest skill. On the other hand, give the worker an insufficient wage and you forfeit the right to demand the best and most of his labor any more than you can demand a two dollar hat for one dollar the go connie consists then in systematically applying the formula bad wages bad labor so yeah basically what this is like it it's it's go connie is like it's it's it's a kind of strike where it's kind of like it's kind of like a slowdown or there's another kind of strike whose name I'm forgetting right now where it's like you like exactly follow the rules. Work to rule. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like a work to rule strike.

It's basically like, okay, so you're not being paid enough. So you just intentionally work really shittily and just keep working slowly and badly until bosses pay you more. And so this had been a big thing in in britain and pigot like sees this and he writes basically like a paper like recommending it the cgt starts using this as a tactic but he's trying to find a french word for it and he's like i don't know how to translate this and so what he thinks of is there's this sort of like well okay so here's where it gets messy because it's like there's like a couple versions of the story one version of it is like work as if you're being like hit with a wooden shoe so true i wake up every morning and turn on my podcasting mic

and a clog just flies in through my window and smacks me in the face. That's why Sophie had to move. Yeah. To get in with the shoes. There's these slingshots set up outside my windows that launch these clogs right at my face every morning. Hilariously, we are going to come back to slingshots in maybe 20 minutes. So there's this thing in France.

So people with wooden shoes basically generally are like peasants right they're people from rural areas there's this whole sort of stereotype in france that like in this period and like for the through the 1800s that's like there's like these people with their wooden shoes and they're like peasants and they're like ignorant and they're bad at working and like and so basically what pago is the other thing the other theory of what's happening here is he's doinging this thing, right? He's like, well, okay, here's this stereotype about workers working badly. And he's like, okay, what if we did this on purpose?

What if we were intentionally just lazy? And it's important to note that – and Pagot does this in his writing. So he invents the word sabotage. He sure as hell didn't invent the content of sabotage here's from the pamphlet sabotage again sabotage is a form of revolt is as old as human exploitation since the day

man had the criminal ability to profit by another man's labor since that very same day the exploited the exploited toiler has instinctively tried to give his master less than what was demanded from him in this way the worker was unconsciously doing sabotage demonstrating in an indirect way the Okay, I have to do a call-out post on Porget, Porgy, whatever. That was very sexist. He said every man. that's true that's not

women should also be forced to work um non-binary people should be forced to work um eight hours a day hopefully more so the fact that he's just making men work is a little sexist garrison doing a hillary clinton there doing a a Glenn Greenwald there. That's right. You'll have to see it. Weirdly, weirdly, in terms of canceling a Frenchman, a French dude for sexism,

like, pretty mild, not gonna lie. Least problematic Frenchman. He probably did do something horrible. I just didn't see it when I was reading about it but you know such as such as the the the guy who invented sabotage um so okay so we have sabotage as like you know and this is an interesting thing about this right when when pigot is first like defining the word right like he literally is just talking about, like, labor slowdowns. Right? And, you know, very quickly, sabotage comes to mean other things. Yeah, like throwing bombs. Yeah, so here's again from this same pamphlet.

He's quoting the secretary of a railway union who's, like, on strike for the right to unionize. And this is what the fucking railway union secretary, guys, says. this is what the fucking railway union secretary guys says with two cents worth of a certain ingredient union utilized in a peculiar way he declared it will be easy for the railway men to put the locomotive in such conditions as to make it impossible to run them which uh fucking absolute absolutely based 1870s french railroad union secretary ah it's great stuff it's actually funny because like so he's just like out there just like saying this and like every modern union has like a giant disclaimer in their thing saying like we do not endorse the destruction of machines like we do not do crimes we are not crying yeah the fucking base french guys like no no no no like we we are actively threatening you to

destroy like every locomotive in france if you do not let us form this union this is why this is why my organizing with the iheart union is solely based on us planning future terrorist attacks yeah if we don't get our way the hollywood sign will never never be the same again oh god i've already poured sugar into the gas tank of my podcast recorder great that's gonna work out perfect unfortunately the the the the the gas tank of the podcast is like my stomach so we're kind of it's it's it's just as effective as actually pouring sugar into things that's why I'm hiding under your bed with a funnel right now, some sugar

on the other hand Garrison, do you know what else will put locomotives in such a condition that will make it impossible for them to run is this an ad break? yes dynamite the products and services that support this podcast they are yeah the fucking the rail companies are making the trains not be able to work the trains are too long

they are too long okay dynamite the answer is dynamite Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your

podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Okay, so from here, the definition of sabotage starts to sort of expand very rapidly. Here's from the IWW in 1913 about what sabotage is. Oh, God. Let's go.

I'm so curious sabotage is is sabotage is a destruction of profits to gain a definite revolutionary economic end it has many forms it may mean damaging the raw materials is that uh destined for a scab factory or shop it may mean spoiling it may mean the spoiling of a finished product it may mean the displacement of parts of machinery or the disarrangement of a whole machine where that machine is the one upon which other machines are dependent for material it may mean working slow it may mean poor work it may mean missending packages giving overweight to consumers pointing out defects in goods using the best material where the employer uh desires of alteration and also the telling of trade secrets in fact it has as many variations

as there are lines of work this is this is so fascinating because sabotage definitely now is way more associated with like earth first like elf tactics and this is like very labor focused like sabotage is done yeah by the people who are working at the factory or place of production on the products that they're working on it's that that is extremely fascinating yeah and and i think there's another thing too right because like there is the sort of physical aspect of it but again like this was created as like like as a term of sort of like like anarchic like specifically like syndicalist political struggle right yeah and as that term like it's a lot of what they're talking about when people talk about sabotage is just like strikes and like labor

slowdowns and that that part of the connotation of sabotage has just like completely faded and we're gonna get into sort of like how that happens and it's so based on addressing actual material changes as opposed to like a lot of sabotage now is almost like performative like even like even like elf type stuff it does it it does get a thing done like yes this thing did burn down but they're gonna build another one it's it's all it's obviously it's it's for kind of like spectacles built into what the actual goal is and for this kind of stuff it's actually it's about like it's more like improving labor conditions it's based on and like there's a lot of this that is this that is specifically designed not to be like very noticeable like

i mean there's a very common thing you get strikes like in the u.s even like sort of like conservative trucker strikes will do this thing where like okay so the truckers will go on a strike and then they'll hang like they basically like hang like fragments of metal and shit from like the top of overpasses so that if you drive another truck under it it'll like fuck up the top of the truck and that's like that's kind of stuff isn't like it's not designed it's specifically not designed to be public right it's designed to be something that like okay like it's it's it's it's it's about like directly materially hurting the bosses yeah over like a long period of time, not just like one single action.

You do it and you run away and hope to never be caught. It's like, no, I'm just going to work slowly for two years and cost my boss like thousands of dollars in profit. I mean, there's something like... Okay, so I guess I'll talk about it here. So I've been i've been doing some episodes next week are going to be about lula who's like the sort of like great uh like originally labor leader and uh turned sort of like

why am i blanking on the name friend of the people of haiti yeah we're gonna get to that that's what he turned into there's nothing else yeah yeah no but yeah so he's a former president of brazil may be the next president of brazil also maybe you know he he has this interesting sort of like he has a bunch of labor organizing under the military dictatorship and he has this really interesting line because during the military dictatorship in brazil there's a bunch of these sort of like like underground leftist paramilitary groups and like like his brother gets like arrested by the military and tortured horribly and he has this really interesting line about that talking about these clandestine groups which is

like okay like if like if you guys had like talked to like the 2 000 people who work in this factory instead of doing this completely clandestinely and not even telling your own family that you're a communist like maybe if you talk to people like they couldn't have grabbed you off the street and just like arrest like it's like disappeared you overnight because there would have been people there yeah and and that and that's that's the thing like all of this stuff like this kind of sabotage relies on like you and like everyone else around you also doing the thing and that makes it like harder to crack down on because you just you know you sort you have critical mass and yeah and that's something i think is very different from sort of modern sabotage which is yeah based on these sort of

like either either like okay we're doing this and we're gonna get arrested or it's like here is like a secret cell in like the woods in oregon and and no none of the people none of the people in this group will ever see each other again after they like spike this tree i wonder if it has its roots in like um i don't know when these like sub-o people in france existed but like in britain we have the luddites at around a similar time who are sometimes seen as one of the original trade unions right who would um sure break break boilers in the industrial revolution yeah based yeah britain still incidentally uh makes it a capital crime to destroy a boiler or like to break a boy yeah holy shit well it's a way of break because what the like the ned ludd is just like fictional

leader of the luddites right like this giant general who's supposed to come and they were like oh it was ned ludd mate i don't think about it what you're talking about like they made it a capital triumph to try but to try and break up specifically that right to what like chris is talking about like like it's obviously like personifying the forces of labor as a a giant general is not something that continued throughout space and time but that solidarity where we're like someone in the factory fucked up the boiler everyone in the factory has something to gain from fucking up the boiler so as long as we don't tell anyone the boiler stays fucked up yeah and it's just like pigot actually like specifically writes about well he's writing about the stuff the stuff in the 1930s like the late uh 1830s but like he specifically writes about well he's writing about the stuff the the stuff in the 1930s like the late 1830s but like he specifically writes about like the little thing that that kind of labor struggle

in britain is like one of the things one of the sort of like forebearers yeah yeah yeah the chartists are great we should do a thing on them yeah but so this stuff is sort of like yeah a lot a lot of this stuff is people is people in the 18 like the 1890s and like early 1900s like looking back on those groups yeah and okay so i i want to sort of pivot a little bit which is okay so we've mentioned the iww um and the iww are the people who are basically like responsible for associating sabotage with the black cat and it's sort of unclear how this happens. Here's how the modern IWW talks about in 2011. It, which is had close association with hobo signs, described elsewhere in this gallery of IWW culture. Although today the cat has a

general association with the IWW, sometimes even as its mascot, its original purpose was as a code or symbol for direct action at the point of production, specifically sabotage. Indeed, the cat may even have been chosen due to the convenient wordplay sabotabi possibly even a direct inspiration for mel blanc's characterization of bugs bunny often uh bugs bunny is often mispronounced sabotage sabotage oh really should be as like an anarchist sabotage icon yeah though as described in the section on sabotage must be emphasized that the latter did not mean destruction of machinery or equipment although i i i really think that's partially like the modern iww being like hey don't sue us like all right this is the thing

with the old iww is like you'll you'llWW. You'll get statements from IWW leaders who are like, we're not the guy. Our strikers aren't the people who break machines. There's another group of people who are here also, but who are not us. Who are not us.

Who are destroying all these things. I never do crimes. It's great stuff. Only my identical twin harrison does crime yeah it's a bad twin it's amazing how many symbols of industrial labor come from the wobblies like the raised fist also comes from the iww right like it's incredible this global impact yeah well i mean like and i think there's a there's a reason for this which is that like okay if if you're if you are a capitalist in the early 1900s

like this cat is the spookiest shit you've ever seen like it is terrifying like they are like groups of wobblies will like try to step off a boat and people will and like this like sheriffs will just immediately start shooting them. Like it is to this day. I think, I think that WWE is the only leftist group in the history of the U S outside of Puerto Rico that has ever taken an American city, which they did in the, I,

it was, it was a very small town on the border, but they, they, they, they actually successfully took American cities like dream, dream, the Mexican revolution.

Um, and that mountain may be a United mind. Well, they didn't, they didn't actually like, that mountain maybe yeah united well they didn't actually like that's the thing though they didn't actually like fully like drive out like okay yeah true yeah like like they like the the ww like actually fully like took over these towns it was like who are the fucking running this down but you know but this thing that starts happening here is you get like like people are really desperate like there's still there's a bunch of houses like there's a bunch of like old mansions from this period like late 1800s early 1900s like in chicago that are are all

built and online in one street and the reason they were all built that way was because i they wanted to be on on the road to on the road to the fucking nearest military base so that when the revolution come they came they could run and hide like this is how scared peace people are and the like bosses start offering workers things as a compromise that like most people today like think are socialism like they have like you start getting companies that have like into that have their own workers councils in them like they're like here here is here is the workers council we'll give the workers council budget control over how the shop floor works like please don't overthrow us like rockefeller like develops the idea of putting workers on corporate boards like specifically as a way of

trying to buy off workers and stopping them from like sabotaging their way to a revolution and just like stealing all rockefeller's property for the working class and you know we've been talking a lot about this in sort of like the american context and like sort of the french and english context but you know partially because the etymology partially because of like who's involved with like the pacific black cat thing but like syndicalism which is the sort of like this ideology of using democratic unions doing a general strike to like seize control of the means of production and in the class system this is fucking everywhere this is these people spread like wildfire like i think i think probably the most famous syndicals other than the iww are the cnt in spain but like

you know the italian in in in 19 in 1917 1919 like syndicalists in italy like very nearly pull off a revolution during the period that becomes known as the benio rosso or like the two red years they they wind up being betrayed by the italian socialists and that's how we get mussolini but shocked yeah who who could have guessed but you know there there are enormous cynical unions like everywhere that there's there's these huge unions in both brazil and argentina and sort of bizarrely both brazil and argentina both have these sort of like general strike anarchist revolutions in both 1917 and 1919 yeah it's wild like the syndicalists are everywhere there's there's like there's syndicalists like uh tin workers in brazil they're in venezuela there's an iww section in south africa there's like syndicalists in egypt they're in japan like it

from this period from like the late 1800s through really even the early so the early 1920s like these people are a pretty significant section of like the entire international labor and socialist movement and everywhere in syndicalism goes this black cat goes with them now unfortunately as the 1900s wear on the the influence of syndicalism begins to wane as a combination of both intense post-World War I repression and as red scare reactions to the Russian Revolution. lie on sabotage in the sort of theoretical sense that cynicalism does. And this has a bunch of sort of maligned effects on what people think sabotage is, unfortunately.

But, do you know what else degraded the use of sabotage as a political and ideological weapon? It's ads. The advertising industrial complex. Not the Beastie Boys. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill.

Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. with supernatural creatures.

I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for

billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge

and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba.

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we are back.

But wait, there's still more sabotage. Because unfortunately, you know, as the sort of like the syndicalist movement is declining and like every single one of these people is getting shot uh there was waiting in the wings another type of sabotage that we've talked about a lot on this show and yeah this is ecological sabotage which i i'm okay i also see people calling it eco taj and like i'm sorry i love you i love you all forest defenders that is a dogshit word. Not a word. Ecotage. Like, hey, come on. This is not actually a good word.

We could do better. It's also called monkey wrenching after the work of ecological activist and inveterate racist Edward Abbey. That's right. And sexist. Don't let him off the hook for that. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Old white dude edward abby yeah he's a he's a very like he this is a very like pacific northwest kind of guy who's like a southwest kind of guy that's true yeah like yeah it's like a guy who's white really likes forest does not like brown people. He loves the fucking desert. Yeah. Desert boomers love some Edward Abbey. I was in Moab recently and the amount of people selling first editions of Edward Abbey books.

Oh my god. First editions of Earth First Gathering posters and stuff. For thousands of dollars to someone who's on an off-road safari oh nice i yeah that's copy of the monkey this may be a first edition actually damn do you do do you want to tell the crowd what this book is about the monkey wrench gang yeah yeah oh it's a group of people who have some fun times uh it's people who travel around. They play with some trains.

Some diggers. They play with diggers. Bulldozers. Yes, yes, yes, they were. They were diggers. Yeah, I don't know. He was just having fun times. Also, this is something that I did not know for a while,

but Edward Abbey also wrote one of the adaptions of Lolita to play on stage. Oh, shit, I forgot about that. Yeah. Just an unproblematic guy doing fascinating stuff he just loves trees yeah well okay so here's the the the one genuinely unproblematic thing he did is he wrote this another book called eco well he okay so he's involved in the writing of this there's a lot of there's a lot of people who contribute to this but he's involved in the writing of a book called eco defense a field guide to monkey wrenching which is this like

unbelievably intricate and detailed guide to doing everything from like tree spiking, to disrupting power lines, to breaking ranching equipment, to sabotaging vehicles and aircraft, to freeing animals from traps, to defeating surveillance,

to sinking ships, to a section that is called only, quote, fun with slingshots. Oh, great. In the book. It sure is fun. Even in Monkey Wrench Gang, like, he goes into

great detail about how to start a caterpillar, like, bulldozer. No, like, a lot of it was, like, how to do terrorism, but, like,

in a novel. Yeah, it's fantastic, yeah. Well, it's like, there's a whole genre of, like, of post-World War II French films that are this

with prison breaks, where it's, like, there's a bunch of people who have been in concentration camps and had broken out of them and are making these movies that are just really intricate. Okay, this is how you make a lockpick. This is how you figure out guards, shift changes. This is how you take out these boards. It's great stuff. It's one of the better kinds of things and eco defense like it's not the most banned book i've ever seen an award that goes to yeah it's it's not okay so on the one hand like the fbi is in a weird position because they can't like technically

ban it because the u.s has this thing called the First Amendment that you can sometimes win in court. Does it really though? Here's the thing. The Eco-Defense Handbook was not written by Edward Abbey. It was written by David Foreman. Yeah, but okay. There was a foreword in the book written by Edward Abbey. Okay, that's the part that's written by him.

I think he was involved with the publication with it somewhat. David Foreman and Edward Abbey were friends. They were buddies. They were doing something together. Abbey is less involved with this insofar as he – Foreman – the FBI tries to entrap him for writing this book. Most of the people who actually wrote sections to this – I wonder why.

I wonder why. All these people – the FBI tries to arrest him on other stuff because stuff because unfortunately this book doesn't violate traffic law so they can't arrest you for it and okay i i do buy it on amazon oh yeah it's on the anarchist library for free yeah yeah don't buy it don't give jeffrey bezos your money yeah so it turn on a vpn use tor and go to the anarcharchist Library. It's in this category of books that are like... When you have your normal banned books list, there's two kinds of books they don't include.

One is they don't include books where it's like, well, they didn't technically ban the book, but they tried to arrest everyone who wrote it. And then two, they don't include Alfredo Bonanno's Arm Joy, a book for which he was arrested, thrown in prison, and kept there while the Italian government, on orders from the Supreme Court, like, took every copy they could find, lit it on fire in giant bonfires. The other thing with the Eco Defense Handbook, even if they did not arrest the owners, I've

talked with a lot of green anarchists who were active during the Green the green scare and they definitely arrested people oh yeah just for having having yeah like if like if you had it that was evidence that you were a terrorist like yeah it was something that like you don't talk about you don't put your fingerprints on it um because having this book could get you in trouble like you don't like it's it's it's there's there's multiple ways to ban a book one of them being if you have it they're going to try to charge you with like terrorism enhancement stuff um yeah they might also try to carve on pretext so yeah fun book yeah and so and like i think yeah calling it like i think with the so i i think a lot of the stuff that people were doing that got called monkey wrenching or sort of like eco ecological

sabotage just is called eco-terrorism today because people have just well there's like a whole loop of this right because there's there's there's there's the fbi to the green scare going like all of this is terrorism we're going to use the fucking entire like giant like military apparatus we've built up to like go after a bunch of people setting free animals but then but then like like at some point and this is i think this thing is very interesting in the last sort of like five ten years like people who weren't really involved with the original stuff decided that eco-terrorism was cool and now everyone on twitter just talks about eco-terrorism all the time, which is like... They talk about it, yeah....an interesting term. Well, they don't...

And this is the thing. Those people don't do it. And it's like, come on. Like... But on the other hand, there are a lot of people like... We should maybe caveat for our British listeners that you absolutely can be prosecuted for having that book

and multiple people have been prosecuted in the last two years for having the anarchist cookbook. I mean, you could still be... Oh, yeah. It's like they can't ban you from selling it. Even if you're an American, you can still get... They've still gotten people for having the book. That's the interesting thing about how the censorship works, right?

Is it like you are allowed to be a capitalist and sell it, but you're not allowed to buy it because having it you're a terrorist yep wonderful stuff yeah in britain you can't even think about the anarchist cookbook like people have been prosecuted for oh yeah and anyone should be prosecuted for the anarchist cookbook because it's dog shit anyone who is yeah i've always wanted to do like a deep dive into like the history of all the shit that's been blamed on that book and yeah all the people who've and it's funny too because it's not like the army literally doesn't publish fucking field manuals but you could just buy in a store that like has all the same shit like yeah yeah you know terrorism is when we do it and not when they do it

yeah that's right so i i want to talk about so like this whole thing is a product of like this like you know this is what sabotage turns into right and there's you know and so some of the people stuff that like is being done here isn't really that destructive like a lot of people like you know like people people's like sitting in trees right there's a lot of stuff that's sort of like civil disobedience that is like you know included in this stuff but then there's also like but you know but the like stuff like spiking trees is where you i think you and it's basically like destroying construction equipment is where stuff you start to get the sort of like modern understanding of sabotage is like a thing that like an activist does to like a piece of machinery

but you know like there's a lot of things people do like people sabotage like whaling ships but then also i i want to sort of close the episode with this is that like there's a lot of things people do like people sabotage like whaling ships but then also i i want to sort of close the episode with this is that like there's a lot of people in a lot of other places in the world who do like who do a lot of stuff for ecological defense that doesn't get put under this framework where for example there are groups like the niger delta avengers who are like okay fuck it if the nigerian government is just going to execute ecological activists we're going to pick up guns we're going to blow up pipelines and we're going to start shooting and you know there's ground in between like the sort of like we're going to do sabotage and we're going to like do armed struggle like in ecuador for example one of the responses you see is sort

of like attacks on indigenous land by capitalist developers this indigenous groups being just like fuck it we're doing an uprising and then tens of thousands of people like spend three weeks fighting and fighting cops in the street until they stop and you also see stuff that's like it's kind of like okay so one of the other specifically in france they do this all the fucking time i like one of the older sort of like workers like sabotage tactics is just like you kidnap your manager and like people do this like now in france's just like, okay, you're the manager. You can't leave until you agree to our demands. Like, but, like, people will do this in ecological settings. Well, like, they'll send in a government minister to, like, negotiate something.

There'll be, like, a money manager around, and people will just be like, okay, like, we're kidnapping you. Like, we'll let you go when you stop doing this. I don't know. It's good stuff. Yeah, and I think, think like and these tactics also sort of spread like for example in Chile if you look at like if you look at their sort of like like militant ecological struggles especially like indigenous apuche resistance like that is a place that like more than anywhere else I've ever seen love setting construction equipment on fire like they they really they really like this lighting backhoes on fire. It's good stuff.

But having sort of said all of this, like the fact that sabotage is synonymous with sort of like property destruction is – like I genuinely think like a triumph of corporate propaganda because the original meaning of it uh which which is this like very explicit class politics of like fuck it like if we are not going to get the actual like products of our own labor we are either not going to work or we are going to take it from you or were you going to make sure that you also don't get the products of our labor like that stuff's all just could have gone and that's that's that's very sad to me because it's it's a good politics and we need more of it. And yeah, all of this sort of is to say that workers have no reason to fear the black cat, but bosses, owners, and capitalists live in fear your time will come. Happy Halloween. Happy Hallows' Eve.

Cut fences. Somehow I never mentioned bolt cutters in here, which is sort of wild. Oh yeah, buy a bolt cutter. Hopefully one of the ads will be for bolt cutters. So something I learned on a job once is that like, okay, so razor wire is really scary

stuff. Like, it has like anti-clotting agents in it that like, on the wire. I've gotten past a lot of razor wire. Yeah, well, but I mean, the thing about this, right, is that you could just cut... It's actually really easy

to just cut the chains on the chain link. So many people... It's like, I can do it. I'm not very strong. You could just sort of do this. And this is useful for a lot of things. For example, if you have to break down

sections of fences and fences in your lawn. Yeah could you could do lots of fun things with bolt cutters keep the kids or tin snips keep the kids off your lawn yeah it could happen here is a production of cool zone media for more podcasts from cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow.

Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers.

Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.