It Could Happen Here - The First Days of the Spanish Civil War, Part 2

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

James, Margaret, Robert and Garrison continue their discussion of the coup and the Catalan revolution, and learn about the first art therapy program for children traumatized by conflict.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. trajente can sprinkle listen to gracias come again on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast ah welcome back to it could happen here this is part two of it could happen here the podcast that fucks all right that's my job done today. Okay, part two of James' episode. Congratulations, Robert. The Spanish Civil War and the Antifa Olympics. That's right, yep.

Civil War week, closing out with this one. Why did the Antifa Olympics hate freedom, though, is my question. The Antifa Olympics are going around and destroying all of the balls. Yeah, they're taking your children. is my question. The Antifa Olympics are going around and destroying all of the malls. Yeah, they're taking your children. Bus loads of black-clad athletes are showing up in your cities to play sports. This does make me think back briefly to when a couple of different anti-fascist groups

in Seattle and Portland played soccer, and it became a whole thing because yeah, there was like, Oh, I used to play anarchist soccer in New York city. Yeah. Oh, that got,

that got canceled hard. Well, it's important that it got canceled hard. It also, um, because it was in New York city, there was a bunch of like semi-famous actors who would come and play anarchist soccer,

but then couldn't be like visually associated so like people would all mask up in solidarity whenever camera people would come by because like some famous actor was playing anarchist soccer in the park that's very funny yeah that's outstanding more of that needed um yeah these anarchists of course were just busy doing the traditional anti-fascist thing of starting forest fires in Oregon before the Civil War. So, anyway, picking up from the last episode. Where we left our heroes. Yeah, we're talking about the heroes, right?

So, with the military marching towards the city and every balcony in the working-class revolve quickly becoming a sniper's nest, every rifle was needed at the barricades. The Spanish and Catalan tops took an unprecedented break from being bastards and instead significant elements of the muscles de squadra guardia civil and the elite paramilitary assault guards grabbed their handy carbines rifles with names like tiger and

destroyer and took yeah none of them are called robert sadly um and took to the barricades in defense what a missed opportunity. Right, yeah. See, this is why the Spanish lost. Get me my Robert. I can see it now. I'm prepared to help you with the advertising at no cost. Just going to bob them right up. That's why they called them bobbies.

Yeah, famously. I think we need to make, I think it needs to be some sort of like nine-barreled electronic volley gun. I want to... Yeah. Something that could take out at least two Japanese prime ministers at once. You only need two barrels for one prime minister,

so you could get up to four. Yeah. Yeah. Shoot through space and time. Yeah. All right, so they... Go back and get Janchiro Koizumi. Finally. Bring him to justice

with a nine barrel pipe gun okay so these people so the cops and the anarchists are fighting alongside each other is that what you're that's correct yep the anarchists are pulling up paving stones building barricades which they had learned in previous conflict with the state could stop light artillery and they are welcoming the cops it's worth pointing out that the heroes of day are not cops and the heroes of day are very rarely cops instead it's the ordinary people of catalonia right everyone from liberals to left libertarians runs to the barricades but the anarchist affinity groups the anarchist uh defense committees are the mortar that holds together the resistance right they are experienced they have plans they provide impetus and inspiration to the working class they are ready when their liberal government is not um they had a pretty

good handle on fighting in the streets of barcelona too this is their home turf right and incidentally we see this shit a lot like people who are good at fighting the cops become integral in fighting the state it happened in the maidan happened in terria square both with like ultras right like uh football fans or people who go to football games that also like fighting cops um so like it's not unprecedented that the folks who are good at fighting the cops become integral at fighting the state when the state turns bad. Turns bad. In many cases, they also have more experience manipulating their weapons

than the poorly trained conscripts because it would be pretty hard to have less. There's a little bit of a debate, a discussion about causality here. Does the coup fail where it does because the cops remain loyal? Or does the beachhead established by the working class allow the cops who were sympathetic but not convinced to safely remain loyal right so across spain it's

like it's not quite the same as the u.s the cops are better trained and better armed than the military but they often hung back until the working class had taken decisive action, right? See which way the wind's blowing. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes, occasionally, they will do some sort of king shit. Like in one city, the couple of the assault guards, their officers, side with a coup, so they get shot by their own men. Which is just... You love to see.

In other places, they sound to do nothing in some places the soldiers come for them where they're like fuck it it's on now but in other places they join with the working class as they do in barcelona the civil guard is older um civil guard tends to be in more rural places where the coup tends to be more successful and civil guard tends to be less loyal to the republic. The civil guard in Barcelona waits until noon. The coup is really defeated by noon. By noon, the soldiers are holed up in the food buildings and it's very clear that they haven't won.

And then they come in on a horseback, clip-clopping down the street, doing the raised fist salute, like just milking it to announce their sort of loyalty to Republic. They did have better guns and better marksmen, so they were helpful in assaulting the buildings that came next all right all right everyone we're here we saved the day yeah here we come thin blue line so what happens all across barcelona is that the tremendously poorly organized army meet well-organized well-entrenched

resistance and they're killed a turn back um so I want to give uh one example of this from Avenida Icaria it's related by Bevor in his book now what they'd done in Icaria was taken out huge rolls of newsprint like the stuff that you put newspaper on and rolled them into the streets to make a barricade, right? So, yeah. The degree to which people were ready in amusing ways is a great part of this. That was what they had available to them. Seemed to be stopping bullets. Lots of layers is the way to stop bullets.

It is, yeah. Lots of layers of newsprint. Paper armor is a thing in different places so yes it was yeah yeah uh and certainly seemed to work here and they had uh big old guns like uh spanish mouses so the fighting stops for a second and a small group of workers and an assault guard close the distance between themselves and two 75 millimeter field guns but they're holding their rifles above their heads. They signalled they wanted to talk and not to fight.

And so for a few minutes they give a passionate speech, informing the soldiers they'd been lied to, that the anarchists were not in revolt, that they were in fact part of a coup, and that they should not fire on their proletarian brothers. It's not exactly clear what they said, but whatever they said it worked, and very slowly a seed of class consciousness was planted, and it bloomed in about the time it takes to turn a 75 millimeter gun 180 degrees

load it and fire it at your officers which again it's just so good like that these powerful anecdotes of like someone just being like huh yeah now that you phrase it like that we're on the same team let me turn this artillery gun around yeah i also just love to think of the guy who's just been like uh previously like forgotten country yeah gets vaporized by a 75 millimeter gun yeah it's a truly magnificent stuff so the popular olympians are still in town right uh that they turned up to show off as anti-fascist but uh they didn't really expect to be showing off their anti-fascist bona fides quite like this but lots of them were winning

participants the americans were down by the Boqueria Market. You've probably been there. You've been to Barcelona. You've probably bought an edible arrangement. That's what tourists like to do. And they watched the streets around them turn into battlegrounds. You can see the bullet holes in the hotel where they stayed and some of the cafes around there. But some of these bullet holes, it should be mentioned,

are from a sadder and altogether different battle a year later. But this day, they popped out of their hotel rooms to take a look at what was going on, got shot at, and then went back inside and then popped out of different balconies.

Well, they had this thing of popping out of different balconies. Like, I don't understand what the fuck is going on in their heads where they're like, people keep shooting at us. Let's continue to try different balconies i could see doing that just being so curious right like yeah yeah yeah and they'd all made friends with spanish people right they were

just they were not the athletes of today like they were out late drinking every night and they were really bummed very quickly very upset they don't we need to get stuck in like you know we're young healthy people um and their diaries they also write about seeing the spanish women at the barricades and just being like oh fuck yes like this is outstanding yeah um yeah they're just like uh because they're very committed right like these these anti-fascists are very committed to uh to gender equality like They really are. And it's demonstrable in all the communications about the Popular Olympics.

When they send stuff to unions and unions, like, here's a team, it's 10 dudes. They're like, well, that's fucking disappointing. Like, where are the women? What are we doing here? How are we making the world better with just a bunch of dudes exercising together? So it really is, I think, a very genuine commitment for them.

And yeah, they're so pumped. so when the fighting lulls uh these guys come running out uh and they saw those cavalry horses right the cavalry horses that they'd expected to parade down the rambler in the victorious coup had now been stacked on top of each other as barricades sorry the horses yes uh they used the horses as cover you can find pictures of this i mean yeah okay yeah it kind of sucks because the horses didn't want to be fascist yeah but i think you can take some solace in knowing that the people who are riding them also got killed yeah well you say the horses didn't want to be fascist this is in the intersection of shit you enjoy robert actually yeah yeah shitting on horses and hating fascists yeah which are the same

no but see horses would be very good at shitting on fascists from a great well yeah yeah i know rip horses did nothing wrong uh paul went out for the horses uh so charlie burley runs down into street right he's pretty accustomed to fighting he's a boxer he is a mixed race kid who grew up in pittsburgh uh he's refused to go to the 1936 olympics because he doesn't want any of hitler's bullshit and he doesn't speak spanish so all he needs all he knows how to do is pick up a crowbar start levering up paving stones and helping to build a barricade yeah so that's what he does universal language yeah breaking shit um and so uh he just gets stuck in and now in rhythm do right uh these barricades he built like i said they were so strong

that they would stop light artillery. Across the city, whipped and snaps of bullets cracked across the wide boulevards that cut through the regimented grid of the exemplar. Snipers were stationed in the bell towers of churches. They picked off the newly formed people's militias. They dashed between the barricades carrying ammunition and food. A French athlete was shot in the crossbow.

Right-wing snipers. That's correct. Yeah, yeah. So you will definitely read that they were priests, but they're not, I don't think, just a, you know, if you're going to put a sniper up there, you want to put someone up there

who knows how to use a rifle. Yeah, that makes sense. Yes. Yeah, so they probably weren't priests. That doesn't mean the priests were not abetting them. I'm sure they were at some points. But yeah, this is why the churches get burned yeah it's one of the reasons uh a group of german exiles suspected their company's diplomats might be involved uh so they raided their homes and found massive stashes of weapons

which is great uh the republic had very liberal asylum policies so you have a ton of german italian anti-fascists already in town and elsewhere people found each other in the streets were joined up with pre-existing affinity groups to form centuria uh centuria is a latin word for units of 100 soldiers they're broadly based on language and they're named after some famous leftists like uh tom mann uh karl marx or um ernst salomon right their founder of uh antifa with a capital a uh later these uh would become the nucleus of the international brigades but the international brigades were the army of the common turn and the centuria weren't They didn't have offices. Comintern means basically like under Soviet control? Yes, that's right.

They're Soviet controlled communist international. So they were doctrinally Stalinist more or less, right? And certainly like you can read a shit ton about the international brigades going from a broad popular front leftist alliance to straight up Stalinist and what that does to their desire to fight and their ability to fight and I would suggest that it's not great. It's a story as old as time. Yes it is

yeah yeah. Draw your own conclusion. Cecil Albee is very good on that if you want to read his book. So these Centuria don't have officers and they certainly don't have commissars right and off they roll to fight the nazis by 11 a.m general goddard has landed from mallorca he was hoping to command the city which he the nationalists

thought the barcelona would be the easiest city for them right they thought it was a soft target um they were wrong i don't know what again uh yeah not smart uh it was only through the intervention of her son incidentally killed trotsky uh that his life was spared he holed up in the headquarters the headquarters was overrun they wanted to execute him immediately she intervened she says no you know we gotta we gotta do this pretender justice so we put him on the prison ship uruguay and then he's killed a little later after a court martial he's executed a few weeks later in the monchouique castle that day in the monchouique castle the troops had shot their officers the ends and the ncos had leaded a raid on the armory where they

began distributing guns to anarchists again yeah very cool oh yeah yeah love to see it the catalan left and the catholic church uh had some historical disagreements right uh the church had a long history of violence towards the left and the left had an equally long history of violence towards the church the church had been part of brutal oppression of the working class right victimization of people, especially of working class women. And as troops withdrew from the city in July 1936, anarchists began to take revenge against the churches. Nuns' corpses were disinterred. Priests accused of collaboration were executed.

By the afternoon, the sky began to fill with smoke. Churches burned all over the city. Sometimes they had these things called checkers, which were like revenuciary tribunals, where they put the priests or the churches themselves. Later outside Madrid, there's a famous photo of them executing a giant statue of Jesus Christ after putting it on trial. That's what's in the future for Robert Evans, his executions.

That is a pretty funny bit. It's good. There's a pretty funny bit oh it's good there's a firing squad and everything uh that is like a pretty good dedication to the bit you got whether or not you agree with it you have to respect it yeah the uh yeah i uh it's a good t-shirt maybe we could you know return to merch uh and have that that image but yeah some catholics rebuilt it sadly it's uh it's no longer riddled with bullet holes in its face. Well, it's time to... Well...

You know what that means. Yes, it's time to kill God. Storm heaven. Yep. And redistribute all the stuff. Harps for everyone. Yeah oh people wore robes actually uh this became a bit of an issue because people will be like lol look at me i'm wearing a robe i pretend to be a priest and then other people will be like fuck you priest and shoot them

yeah don't do that actually robes for everyone bad idea you know at a time of anti-clerical violence uh what you can do is drink all the communion wine which is what they did uh i'm sorry all the blood of christ is what they drink yes yes i'm sorry actually i guess it only becomes that in the stomach yeah no i'm a bad catholic i don't remember any of this or it's just wine until uh they until they do the thing yeah okay and say the words and then something special happens that's that's that's the uh the eucharist so it's the pre-blood yeah it's pre-blood it's just sweet wine welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

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The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Bye. By the 20th of July, the military was all but done for inner city, right? But some of them had retreated back to their barracks immediately. They came out, promptly got shot at by a shit ton of people and went, nope. And pulled a 180, returned to the barracks. So smarter than the tourists at the hotel yes although uh i don't know about that because these guys end up dying there and the tourists do not well that's because they're side one but yes yeah yeah true

well i i would be lying if i said the tourists do not, because one of those tourists does. A guy called Albert Alchekin. They called him Chick. He was a coach of the team, community college professor, actually. And he leaves, goes back to America and just can't deal with like missing. It's not so much at the guilt of not being there.

It's, and I think some of us maybe can relate to this in a way right like the missing of being there too yeah the phone like that yeah and how special it feels yeah robert's off uh robert can can relate to this right like sometimes it's the time you feel the most alive is when you're trying not to be dead but also like this was a fucking awesome time right like the cops have joined the working class. The churches are on fire. The bosses are running for the hills. And the army has just had its ass handed to it by like a bunch of men and women in blue

overalls. Like I can imagine it felt pretty cool. And so he goes home and then he decides to come back. He comes back with his wife. His wife runs the first art therapy program for children traumatized by conflict. Yeah, the pictures are at UCSD. I used to go sit with them all the time.

It just kind of, I don't know, it feels like a special place, like a nice connection. Yeah, that's the kind of stuff that gets like left out of history too much too, right? Is these contributions like, and these like developments that come from political radicals that are like not just the the the gun the robert you know or the uh you know seizing of workplaces but the developing of art therapy for people dealing with traumatic event

that rules yeah absolutely right like these people made home weight bombs but they also like made it easier for kids to process their trauma yeah and like that's what anarchism is folks um but yeah uh jenny berman uh they hyphenated their last names uh berman chaykin uh yeah advanced yeah highly progressive 1930s yeah his wife uh jenny was definitely the radical and she she sort of brought him on and then he was like yeah fucking you got it um so yeah he goes back uh you can see the pictures uh at ucsd they're online too but al dies in in the sort of chaotic retreat to the international brigades uh no one knows where right uh i'm trying to write a book about him i have some of his diaries just an inspirational guy in a lot of ways very nice guy uh he's also like he sort of draws a lot of uh disdain from

the other passengers on the boat when they're crossing the first time uh because the passengers keep getting mad that the black folks and the white folks are eating at the same table at dinner from the popular olympics team uh and he's just like super mad at this and like why would you be that way so just keeps like getting and he is a wrestler right like he's a collegiate wrestler he went to olympic trials just keeps getting in people's faces about it i guess um which like yeah is i guess being an ally or something but um does white survive the war yes jenny berman is in uh there's a film called the good fight okay uh which is about the american volunteers and you can see her talking about him cool and yeah i think it's it's obviously a pretty difficult experience for her talking about him but

uh uh and i'm sure the whole thing it's pretty rough given you know the uh things that happen afterwards but yeah uh again a wonderful person she's passed away now but yeah actually it's it's pretty rough given you know the uh things that happen afterwards but yeah uh again a wonderful person she's passed away now but yeah actually it's it's the interview it's the full interview with her that i'm waiting for so i can write about him and but yes she does uh look up the good fight it's a good film so on the 20th of july the anarchists are assembling outside these barracks right uh they had the support of the police but they didn't want it anymore and so they assembled their own troops instead right garcia oliver abad de santillan and doruti are on some chad shit and uh they do what the anarchists did at this time which is uh they lead a frontal charge on the barracks where there are still machine guns.

So they are brave, but perhaps not tactically astute. I've read about this where basically one of the problems that people had strategically about the anarchists is that the anarchists in Spain were so fervent in their beliefs that they basically were like,ay soon i will be a murder and like all charged at machine guns and like weren't always the most strategic does that map to your understanding or yeah in the early days of the civil war they're like because they have been raised for decades of propaganda of the deed yeah right uh and like propaganda of the deed is saying like you know like you can die

as a hero and become an example to the working class and you will elevate the cause it's as close to martyrdom as you can get in an atheist political belief i think and yeah so they would just ah i don't like like ascaso ascaso is a famous anarchist leader uh ascaso is a guy who dies uh like literally leading the charge frontally on a machine gun at this time at this barracks, right? He dies in less than 24 hours after the war has started. And he's a member of this Nosotros group with Durruti and others, and Garcioliver. And he's the one who gives his name to the pistol, right? So in Tarasa, the cmt the um the anarchists anarcho-syndicalists take over an arms factory uh take it over the workers run the factory and they start making these pistols with his name

so it's like the only gun that is not in some way morally compromised so i guess in that sense he goes on to kill a lot of fascists um yeah but yeah they they don't want the help of the police they don't want the tactical advice daruti actually later is very good at this he has regular army officers embedded with his column and he listens to them and that allows him to be more successful than the other anarchists okay um but yeah he uh their battle cries adelante hombres del cnt cnt which is like know, forward men of the CNT. They had women too, but I guess that's not what they were going for.

And they took the barracks along with 30,000 rifles. Wow. Pretty much all of those would be in the hands of working people within a couple of days. Wow. Yeah, that's a vast, like this is a decent slice of the Republic's weapons, right? Yeah. Until they get resupplied later and interestingly the soviet

union and mexico supply them but they the republican government in madrid doesn't want people supplying the anarchists so only um cz or vizor the czech uh gun company are willing to illicitly violate two different arms embargoes to supply the anarchists later in the war. Yes. Based CZ. Maybe we can have them be the advert for this episode. Finally, a solid case for the hammer-fired arm in modern days. We have to honor

the legacy of CZ. Again, the only morally correct firearm to buy the glock wouldn't have done that motherfuckers nope no yeah don't see any glocks in an anarchist hands uh yeah buy a 32 acp because it also killed hitler it's the most anti-fascist gun that you can do you could own hitler killed hitler but you. We don't have to go there. The real anti-fascist. Critical support to Adolf Hitler. Or you could say, yeah, well, you know who else tried to kill Hitler?

Hitler. He did once before in 1923 after the failed Munich putsch. But his friend, Puzzi Honfstengel's wife, who he had a crush on, stopped him from killing himself, which was a mistake. Yeah. Yeah, she let the team down.

So, see, that's where CZ came in, giving him an efficient way to kill himself with no wives around. He did have a wife around, didn't he? See? Oh, well. Thank you, CZ. Hitler's dead.

And with that, let's go back to spain uh catalonia i guess um so the french popular olympics team left that day uh they sang the international isle uh from the deck of their boat as they pulled out the port a few days later on the rambler parade was organized the various nations of the popular olympics marched down the street led inexplicably uh by some bagpipers who had arrived with the british team hell yeah that's like another international bagpipes yeah yeah uh yeah why why not i love that like yeah some anti-fascist bagpipers had been recruited yeah by this point and they all sang the international on their own languages uh did the uh the raised fist salute that would become the popular front salute and they heard a speech and in the speech

they were told you've come for the games but you've remained for the greater front in battle and in triumph now your task is clear you'll go back to your countries and spread the word the news of what you've seen in Spain. So some of them went back and some of them stayed. All in all, about 200 of them actually stayed to fight or came back to fight. Some of the names are Bill Scott. He was an Irishman who came for the games. He went back and forth between Spain and Ireland a bunch, wrote some letters to newspapers to encourage other people to join uh his big slogan was a victory for fascism in spain is a victory for

fascism in ireland um the that's the same slogan that the other side used too right yes but the uh the irish volunteers who fought for the fascists were fucking exceptionally useless yeah yeah may have excelled more than irish volunteers who fought for the anti-fascists are killing fascists um which i guess critical support to them um he fights in the battle of madrid bill scott where he gets shot in the neck uh orwell style so there you go robert maybe they really were sticking their necks out um you got otto bosch uh otto bosch was a lover of novelist and poet muriel ruckaiser uh he was a cabinet maker a sprinter uh and literally an actual card-carrying antifa member uh and now he was a soldier um he also died uh the sad part about

this part of the war is everyone dies pretty quickly afterwards. Yeah. And yeah, it's really sad. These people are, you know, as good as people come and they all end up dead. But let's not talk about that. I want to focus on the victorious part. Okay. So that evening, right? Durucci, Garcioliver, and Abad de Santillón go and meet with companions.

Ascaso is dead uh right because he was on his heroics um they're still in their monos they're still covered in blood and they're still carrying their weapons uh which is the way one should meet with a a politician um so he gives him this little speech and i like some people say it's apocryphal i don't really give a fuck i think it's nice i'm gonna read it it's not very long um firstly i must say that the cnt and the phi have never been treated as their true importance merited you have always been harshly persecuted and i with much regret was forced by political necessity to oppose you even though i was once with you today you are the masters of the city and of

Catalonia because you alone have conquered the fascist military, and I hope that you will not forget that you did not lack the help of the loyal members of my party. But you have won, and all is in your power. If you do not need me as president of Catalonia, tell me now and I will become just another soldier in the fight against fascism. If, on the other hand, you believe that I, my party, my name, my prestige could be of use, then you could depend on me and my loyalty as a man who is convinced that a whole past of shame is dead. So that's nice.

That's intense. That's cool. I mean, it's interesting, you know? Right, it's fascinating. I think it's the clearest we get to a person at a time being like, in the last 24 hours i have gone from president to a guy who has to ask the anarchist for a rifle so i can fight yeah and and like it's uh you know people get on that zelensky stuff but uh this is kind of different i guess you know like it's good to find someone who cares about a cause more than power yeah as a rule if it's your job to be in charge of people, I'm probably not a fan of that job existing.

But if when it comes down to it, you throw down rather than hide in a bunker or flee the country to live in exile in, I don't know, whatever friendly country, then that's better than the alternative. Yeah. Yeah, I'd agree. And I think, yeah, being more attached to this and to your self-preservation or your power I think is admirable. For example, if Joe Biden had burned down the third precinct himself, I think

a lot of people would feel more positively towards him. He did, though. Robert, we're not supposed to talk about this on the podcast, guys. You're right guys you're right this is keeping that one under wraps until the midterms really start to heat up yeah that's an October surprise

and we released a video of Joe Biden with a firebomb I was told that he had a can of Axe body spray and a lighter that's how he normally rolls when he's in block. Alright. That image is like so cursed that I'm like

Joe Biden in block. Doing the smile like he's in the Camaro but just holding the Axe Body Spray and a cigarette lighter. But everyone can figure out it's him because he keeps touching people and everyone is keeping... He's sniffing everybody's hair.

Asking if he can smell the inside of their balaclavas. Uncle Joe. A hero. A true anti-fascist. Are you going dark Brandon on us? Oh god. Are we gonna have to explain what dark brandon is on the pot no i don't think we need to i don't think that's ever going to be

relevant no i think we'll just say let's go look it up kids just type dark brandon into your twitter search bar and see what happens and educate yourselves i'm gonna do this right now but please continue yeah please do because i don't have a fucking clue no i have no idea what they're talking about yeah i'm not on the internet enough uh uh and i don't think i'll ever want to be um so things go differently on across the country right um the navy i'm waiting to hear margaret squeal or scream or cry. I just don't understand. Okay. I think it's that he's a vampire?

Yes. Go ahead. Tell us about Dark Brandon. No, I don't know. It's just weird memes. It's scary. I think Robert knows. I don't want to know. Yeah, you don't need to know. It's fine. It's a good time. It's a good time on the internet. That's all the dark Brandon is.

Alright. 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. Chilling brushes with supernatural creatures Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time Listen to no Tales from the shadows as part of my cultura podcast network as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it.

Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, Podcast Awards. real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything, from music and pop culture,

to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again 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. 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, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. The Navy doesn't fall for the coup, right? And this leads to this spectacular exchange between the crew of Jaime I, James I's battleship, right? And the Ministry of Marine. Crew to Ministry of Marine.

We have encountered serious resistance from the commanders and officers on board. Crew to Ministry of Marine. We have subdued them by force. Urgently request instructions as to bodies ministry to marine to crew lower the bodies overboard with respectful solemnity what is your present position so what they've done there is the officers have declared for the crew for the coup and the minute these sailors on board the ship have killed them and thrown them

over the edge right subdued by force what do we do with the bodies the people we have subdued just the most amazing radio message like the officers turn out to be chuds and then like brief pause what do you want us to do with their bodies it's uh again king shit so it's a few days before the battle lines really get drawn as to who is where, who is on what side of the Spanish Civil War. It's a few days before it becomes clear that this is a civil war. Because without boats,

the rebels seem to be in trouble. But the fascists came to their aid with planes to airlift the troops from Africa. The Republic had more troops and more access to supplies and it looked like they were going to win a war of attrition. That doesn't work out

because France, the UK, and the United States abandon Spain. And the fascists do not abandon Franco. But I don't really want to finish there. I want to backtrack and think about how many times in the past or the present

the working class of a city is spontaneously organized to prevent an army from entering that city. Especially in the age of the tank and the bomber, I can't really think of any. I don't know if you guys can but i couldn't come up with one i got nothing yeah anyone i mean other than kiev kind of yeah yeah some of it was at least spontaneous but yeah

yeah it wasn't against their own army like they had an army uh no that is yeah i mean you could there are pieces of that and it was it was not as organized uh or clearly as successful in you know the holy week uprisings and uh the watts riots and stuff yeah yeah true um yeah pieces of it yeah i mean even like uh in minneapolis right like uh yeah pieces of it in minneapolis where the state didn't exist for a Yeah, I mean, even like in Minneapolis, right? Like there were moments of autonomy where the state didn't exist for a while. Yeah. But this revolution is somewhat unique, at least in that, right?

And what happens afterwards and what happened in the Civil War isn't what I want to end on. You can see this kind of idea in ken loach's film land and freedom uh that that this was a romantic failure and i don't think that's true i think that they the only way for the civil war to succeed was doing what it did for the republic to succeed was doing what it did well and what it did well with harnessing the enthusiasm and passion of the working class people to build a better world for themselves.

When it became not worth fighting and dying for something, then the war was already lost for a lot of people. Trying to mass behind a conventional war effort doesn't make sense when your enemy has every advantage in a conventional war effort. But I don't want to focus on that. I want to focus on the last week of July 1936, when the city's in the hands of the people, when there are no cops and no bosses,

people go back to work as collectives, when there's no money, but people distribute food to people who need it. All across Spain, and not just at the Barrio de la Gun, people collectivized. They collectivized in Castile, and they socialized industry in Valencia. And it's a remarkable moment in human history

it doesn't last more than a year but I think it shows us that this other future was possible the path we took from 1936 to the present day was not the best one but I like to think that just for a little while

we could have done better and I think that's where I want to end, really, is thinking about how we could do better. If people want to read books, this has already been a long episode, I will say Helen Graham's Very Short Introduction is very good. Anthony Bevor's newer book is good,

and you can get an audio book. Julian Casanova is one of my favorite writers in Spanish, and some of his stuff is translated into English. Augustin Guillemot's book, Ready for the Revolution, on the affinity groups of the CNT, and Chris Elam's stuff on Barcelona is excellent. If you're in Barcelona, Nick Lloyd's walking tours are excellent.

But yeah, I hope that's enough there. You can watch Ken Loach's film. You can watch, I think it's called Parallel Mothers. That's on Netflix. A couple of good films. Yeah. Thank you so much, Margaret, again for joining me to hear me drone on about the Spanish Civil War for an hour.

Oh, I'm into it. I didn't know. I've only been learning the the details more recently you know i've always just heard about it in in broad strokes and the like you know a lot of people like talking about what it means right but talking about what it means is cool but the stuff that's like really interesting to me is the stuff that actually like makes it matter is the the person who shows up and you know develops ways to deal with trauma by art therapy and the people who bravely steal dynamite and become named named rosa the dynamiter what was what was her name yeah rosa la dinamitera yeah yeah she loses. Yeah, it's better than Rosa the Riveter.

I mean, no offense to Rosa the Riveter, but Rosa the Dynamiter is doing well. Rosie the Dynamiter, go after all of the libraries keeping the books imprisoned. Free knowledge. Erode the gatekeepers of thought I really like librarians I didn't want to get cancelled but

I like libraries and librarians you all aren't ready for this discourse Margaret live Margaret Killjoy take librarians are problematic that's how we know you're a CIA asset because of your pro-library stance yeah exactly Librarians are problematic. That's how we know you're a CIA asset because of your pro-library stance.

Yeah, exactly. Classic capitalist infrastructure. Where did the CIA train all those people to overthrow governments? The School of the Americas. What does every school have? Books. Libraries.

See, I think school is the problem because that's the School of Americas. There's two things wrong with School of America. It's school and America. Most of the problem is the school part. I think the real problem with School of the Americas is it had school in the name, and we can't have that. That's an oppressive hierarchical system of learning.

Unbelievable. If Amerigo Vespucci never came here, maybe things would be different. Maybe even better wow anti-italian slander i'm here for it well let's all end on that note fuck italy yep and fuck traffic lights margot do you have anything to plug uh i do uh people can get my they can pre-order my book that is all about why traffic lights are bad. Um, it's called we won't be here tomorrow. And it's written from the point of view of a traffic light that knows it's about to be abolished. It's out from AK press, um, who uses the red and black flag as the logo and much like the anarchists in the Spanish civil war who developed the red and black flag,

which is to reference the, of course, the negation of the red, because the red in the traffic light is what stops you. And so the black is the negation of the red in this case. Yeah. That's what happens when you disconnect a traffic light from power, it goes black. Yeah, exactly. No one's disconnecting shit, Robert. People are shooting the traffic lights.

And you know what? Just to be clear. Do you know what AK Press sells? Books. AKs. Oh. Well, books. And books, where do books get kept? Do you know what AK Press sells? Books. Oh. Well, books.

And books, where do books get kept? Libraries. That's right. That's right. Guantanamo. It's all, everyone is in on it. Okay, well, if you don't want to be part of the evil world, you can do what is clearly good,

which is listen to podcasts and create parasocial relationships. Yes, the unpubletic medium of podcasting. and if you want to create a parasocial relationship with me you can listen to my podcasts one of which is called live like the world is dying it's an individual and community preparedness podcast and the other one is called cool people who did cool stuff which is all about people who defend libraries from people like you. Anti-learning nihilist radicals. Yeah, anti-library action. That's right.

That's right, Chase. That's what the ALA is, isn't it? That is why I fly the black and gray. I'm just making fun of people now. Never mind. All right. Thank you, thank you for joining my friends did once make me an anarcho goth flag that was black and then black lace that's great so uh thanks for having me i would i would fly that yeah all right well thank you for listening uh james where can people find you online? I'm all over the internet. You can just put in my name at James Stout on Twitter.

Sometimes I write things. I will talk about them there. Great. Well, you can find me at I Write OK. You can follow the show on... That's right. ...by Cool Zone Media and Happen Here Pod and send any complaints to...

Sorry. No, send... At Hungry Bowtie? No, send any complaints to at I bow tie. No, send any complaints to at I write okay. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's okay. I don't read responses. Bye-bye.

Bye. Bye-bye. 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. on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. 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.

The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.

Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. 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.