It Could Happen Here - The Henry Kissinger is Dead Episode

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

Mia, Garrison, and James celebrate the death of noted mass murderer Henry Kissinger and discuss the surprising country that isn't celebrating.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should probably keep your lights on for

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Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast with the it is Henry Kissinger. And the happening here is that he's dead as a doornail. I'm your host, Mia Wong. With me on this joyous day after Kissinger's dead is Garrison Davis and James Stout. Welcome to the show. Woo! Hello. Very excited.

Had a fun night in the group chat last night. Hello. Very excited. Had a fun night in the group chat last night. I did send over the horny Henry Kissinger coffee pasta without reading it to the group chat. And I feel like that was a good call. Fully. Within 30 seconds of you sending that, I got the same message in another group chat. And I was like, oh, boy.

It was spreading around pretty quick I wanted to jump on it soon before other people were going to share it so so yeah that is my duty I mean it's certainly upsetting he lives to 100 but we will celebrate his death nevertheless yes

it would have been nice if he died sooner yeah we don't know how he died. He could have died horribly. We actually don't know. Oh, really? Yeah. I don't see anything about how he died. In his home in Connecticut, surrounded by his family.

Yeah, hopefully he died shitting himself to death. According to the official statement. Yeah, well, look, he lived a lot longer and died a lot more pleasantly than a lot of the people in his life he ended, which is sad. It is sad, but it's also funny. He died knowing he's probably one of the people his life he ended which is sad it is it is sad but it's also funny he he died knowing he's probably one of the most hated men in the world which is also pretty funny parties in the fucking street like there was so there was there was a giant uh pro-palestine protest in chicago last night and there's videos of them finding out live while they're in the streets that Kissinger's dying

and this giant cheer goes up. People are having a great time. Yeah, I was texting my friends who were down at the border. I was like, Henry Kissinger is dead. Spread the word. Among the people of the nations that he destroyed. Pretty good. Pretty good stuff.

I mean, we all had a fun time last night as i'm sure many of uh you you listeners did but uh slowly some organizations started to trickle out very embarrassing statements uh the the first one i saw was from the adl who had a quite quite the quite quite the statement i'm gonna i want to find the i want to find it actually on X, the new hot social media app, because the community note on it is just magnificent. Oh, yeah, that was great. Really, really gives you a good look at the mind of Kissinger,

and it's fun to laugh at the people who are propping him up as some like great Jewish statesman. So yeah, Henry Kissinger was a towering intellect, diplomat, and practitioner who, not without controversy, helped shape American foreign policy with a lasting impact worldwide. A refugee from Nazi Germany and the first Jewish secretary of state, he was unapologetic about his heritage and his embrace of the importance of American global power and democratic values. Which I like that they call him a practitioner, which is a funny thing to say. There are a number of funny things in that post Oh absolutely Probably the funniest is that

During a meeting of the Washington Special Actions Group Kissinger said If it were not for the accident of my birth I would be anti-semitic Any people who have been persecuted For 2000 years must be doing Something wrong

Yeah Here's another one that that one's fun there's another one the emigration of jews from the soviet union is not an objective of american foreign policy and if they put jews in gas chambers in the soviet union it is not an american concern maybe a humanitarian concern yeah that was a real kissinger moment amazing stuff like it's it's it has it has certainly been wild to watch any any shred of credibility that the adl has had just absolutely go down the drain the past two months by their own volition just ruining decades of like of of research into anti-semitic extremism um by just tarnishing every single piece of research they've

done by how they've uh how they've been behaving the past two months. Yeah. I mean, the past three or four years, they've really been on one. Pitcavage has been leading the charge to the bottom there. They're like fully going back to their selling information to apartheid South Africa days. Praising Henry Kissinger, formation to apartheid south africa days so praising framing praising notary henry kissinger someone who admitted that he would be anti-semitic if he wasn't born jewish it's just like yeah what

the fuck are you doing anyway that was that was one of the first one of the first organizations to come out in in memoriam of mr kissinger um after after his his uh devastating passing last night sorry i've i made a post about this adl post and uh i'm just scoping the replies because there are a lot of normal people on uh on x.com these days and someone that there's a group which appears to exist to lobby for the adl to lose its non- status. And I'm just going to say that these are the people that ADL should be focusing their attention on. Because this is the old school anti-Semitism that is a giant fucking problem. And we all need to reject. Like there is some hateful shit on X.com.

And sadly, it's in my replies. Yeah, there is plenty to go around. And the fact that they feel the need to defend mr henry kissinger this guy's running for governor of missouri uh so yeah just as a podcast i think we can safely say don't vote for daryl mcclanahan clan is in his name uh this is our this is this is this is the captain here's first anti-endorsement for the 2024 election season. Yeah, yeah. I'm just going to say it.

Don't vote for this guy. So true. Well, I'm glad we could all bond over that, as I bonded over the many, many funny memes in the meme chats that I'm in. It was a good time. Rocketing on all cylinders. Twitter has been preparing for this night for years. We've been training for so long.

People have stayed on throughout Elon's catastrophe just for this night. And now are finally free. They can finally be released into the pasture. Go live on a farm I'm surprised we didn't crash Twitter with our posting Hopefully his last words were I wonder what they'll post about me Yeah, I'm sure he was thinking about posting when he was going out

That makes sense He would have been a poster I'm hoping it was like, oh no, it burns, oh god Yes, that's true He's coming for me Anthonyony bourdain with brass knuckles at the gates of hell yeah yeah so okay all right so what are what are we doing for the rest of this episode so okay if you want to do an episode that is the entire history of the stuff kissinger did uh ro Robert did a six part

behind the bastards episode on it. You can spend like 12 hours of your life doing that. Learning about having the worst time. Yeah. Yeah. It's the opposite of a self-help book.

It's a self-harm book, audio book that Robert has made for you. Yes, but with three funny people giving commentary. Yes, it's very funny. You should listen to it. Yeah.

However, comma. So we have been talking about how, I mean, people are like people are partying in the streets in Cambodia. Like Kissinger's death has been a source of celebration for almost everyone on Earth. But that is not what this episode is about. This episode is about the one country on Earth that isn't celebrating. That country is China. And on the contrary, not only is

China not celebrating the death of Henry Kissinger, China is quite possibly the most popular American in the history of China. To this day, like right now, if you went and polled the favorability rating of of like every famous american you can think of the person with the highest rating is almost certainly going to

be henry kissinger and you know i mean and this is this is and this is not just a sort of like a popular thing although again he is enormously popular among ordinary chinese people this is a thing that goes from the state down um xi Xi Jinping, he's actually weirdly one of the last world leaders to talk to Kissinger. So Kissinger went to visit China in July and him and Xi Jinping have this like great heartfelt reunion. They have a great time. people never forget their old friends, and Sino-US relations will always be linked with the name of Henry Kissinger. In the wake of Kissinger's death, the Chinese government said from Reuters, Kissinger made historic contributions to the normalization of China-US relations, and Chinese people will forever remember him for his, quote, sincere devotion and important contributions, Wang added. The Chinese premier and the foreign minister also sent messages of condolences to Kissinger's family and to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. So he is getting like he is getting as good a reception in China as any American has ever gotten.

reception in China as any American has ever gotten. And if you can understand how this came to be, how every other country in the region fucking hates Kissinger. Everyone else despises him. And if you can understand why China, why he is the most popular

American in Chinese history, you can understand the entire arc of the 20th century and how we ended up with the horror that we all live in today. But first, speaking of the horrors that we all live in today. Is this an ad break? Are you saying ads? Yes.

Hopefully one of our first. You're saying ads. Yeah, hopefully the Henry Kissinger collectible coins that they minted 10 years ago have now been released to the market and this will be the first of many adverts for them. They're only going to grow in value. Insulate yourself against inflation with these Henry Kissinger coins. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max.

You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories,

their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows,

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And we are back. So this story, the story of how Kissinger became the most popular man in China, or the most popular American in China, begins in Shanghai, 1927. Oh, it is the year 1927. For over a decade, China has been locked in a brutal series of civil wars. Kissinger is four years old. Yeah, four years old. Child Kissinger.

Child Kissinger is presumably unaware of the developments in China. Oh, I don't think you can say that with certainty. He was keeping tabs absolutely at four years old. Even back then, he was a was a quote foreign policy realist A towering intellect Of this stature Doesn't start in his twenties He starts like in his toddler years

Absolutely Amazing choice of words by the way Towering intellect Just looking at the pictures of him in China Where he's dwarfed. And it's just very funny to look at this guy just gradually towering.

He's got to be like five foot nothing. His intellect is towering. Not his actual stature. Not his person. Short king. Short king. Short king.

Short king would have been a great tweet. If the ADL had called him a short king, I'm ironically I would have stand that. Mia, as you were saying so as little tiny baby ass

Kissinger is looking on China's communist party is locked in a tenuous alliance with the Chinese nationalist party which is the Kuomintang yeah they suck with the aid of the Soviets and when I say the aid of the Sovietsviets and when i say the aid of the soviets i mean the soviets basically rebuilt the nationalist party from the ground up yeah the nationalists

have turned into a juggernaut they have they are they have swept aside like every warlord army they face they are marching triumphant across the country and ahead of their advance a massive uprising led by the communists finally drives the warlords out of shanghai the chinese working class stands victorious they and they alone stand triumphant over the greatest city in china it is the last time they will control this city for 40 years the the new leader of the nationalist party is chen kai shak a proto-fascist drug lord who the soviets for some inexplicable reason thought was going to work for them and was going to build a socialist state in China

deeply unclear why they thought this I don't know, don't have Stalin running your foreign policy don't have Stalin running shit as a rule not a great guy yeah, so he's he's no kiss and jerk

what can we say? Yeah, also dead though, thankfully. Killed similar numbers of communists. True, true. We are one sentence away from that. So, under the direction of Moscow, the communists in China convinced the Chinese working class to open the gates

of the city to allow the nationalist army inside. The nationalist army immediately begins slaughtering the Chinese working class. By the end of the white terror that this is going to unleash the nationalist will have killed 1 million people most of them chinese workers and peasants basically like the entire you know like like basically the entire urban chinese left dies in this like like in the in this slaughter and with them dies basically the entire internationalist wing of the Chinese Communist Party, because the internationalist wing, the wing that had, you know, very close connections to Moscow were all like in Shanghai. And they were all but they were most importantly, they were all literally in Shanghai, but they were all part of the urban communist party. And they get just completely wiped out. And this is the part of the Shanghai uprising that for our purposes is important because

it's the first moment where the rift between the Soviets and the Chinese communist party begins to form. Now, in the wake of the Shanghai massacre, Stalin sends the CCP instructions that are just nonsense. Like he's telling them to stay aligned with the nationalist party but to oppose chen kai shek and like and literally there's descriptions of the meeting when like this this telegram comes in the ccp leaders are like sitting around this i don't think it's a radio they're sitting around this radio they get the they like they get the instructions and they're just like these people are just burying their hands in their face because

like this is nothing it is nonsense and you know and this is sort of this is the last that's like these people are just burying their hands in their face because like this is nothing. It is nonsense. And, you know, and this is sort of this is the last that's like the last gasp of the old Communist Party leadership. Those people are just gone. And in their place rises Mao. Now, Mao is not from the urban wing of the party. He is from like he's he's Mao is a peasant organizer, right? He's from the rural wing and his wing of the party tends to be more nationalist and less sort of like subservient to Moscow than the urban wing of the party. And with Stalin basically getting the entire urban communist party and like every other urban leftist in the country killed, the people that are left are Mao and the sort of peasant organizations who have a distrust of the Soviets that they're going to maintain for basically their entire lives.

who have a distrust of the soviets that they're going to maintain for basically their entire lives now obviously relations between the ccp and stalin improve as like world war ii happens but there's a basically the moment the war ends there's a series of incidents that sort of strain relations one is that and this is less an incident but stalin seems to not have thought that the CCP was going to win the war. He seems to have thought that the nationalists are going to beat them. And one of the things that he does is basically de-industrializes Japan's giant industrial belt in occupied Manchuria. This is a completely intact industrial belt. It is one of the largest intact industrial belts in the world and stalin like in in classic soviet fashion takes the factories takes them apart puts them on trains and ships them across across the ussr to rebuild the soviet economy yep one of the first

of many such incidents yeah and this is a catastrophe for the CCP because even after the CCP wins the war, because they've now – so it's like Shanghai is in ruins. Beijing, like most of China is just in ruins because of – I mean like what year are they on if effectively continuous fighting? And after the war, China's industrial base – and this is 1949, right? Their industrial base is smaller than Russia's in 1917, which is just nuts. It is – and this is – That's very small. Yeah, and this is the conditions that the – everything, the entire course of 20th century Chinese history are defined by these conditions, right? chinese history are defined by these conditions right and these specific conditions are this you know is is basically a production bottleneck right and i've talked about this on the show before this is one of the one of the sort of most important things the 20th century

chinese like political economy is that you know the ccp is trying to simultaneously expand its agricultural production to feed people and also expand its industrial capacity it's mostly trying to expand its industrial capacity the problem is they can't expand their industrial capacity without uh expanding their agricultural capacity and they can't expand their agricultural capacity without uh expanding their industrial capacity and their attempt to just blow through this by like mass use of human labor is the great leap forward it's a complete catastrophe right this is just gonna fuck like whatever like intentions complete catastrophe, right? This is just going to fuck, like, whatever intentions the Chinese Revolution had,

this is just going to fuck them. Because the combination of this and their ideology is just going to doom the entire project. And, you know, this, and the other thing about this period, the Soviets are really, really patronizing. Like, they talk

about, like, constantly, and, like, diplomatic things, and,izing like they talk about like constantly and like diplomatic things like they talk about the soviet like the chinese is like their younger brothers there's like this weird like thing going on this isn't enough to substantively threaten their alliance but the relationship between the ussr and china is never as it's never quite as firm as people think it is. Now, the thing that really kickstarts the break between the USSR and China is Khrushchev's secret speech denouncing Stalin.

So this gets leaked. Khrushchev makes a speech where he was like, wow, Stalin did some fucked up stuff. The cult of personality was bad, actually. And this pisses off an enormous number of people's mal forever like problems mal has with stalin he takes a very hard line on this where he's like no i'm like like the soviets are

now revisionist they have abandoned the path of marxist leninism i am now the only anti-revisionist in the world and you know and this whole thing like results in these worsening relations between china and the soviet union with the ccp basically with the CCP basically calling the Soviets like weak neck bureaucratic social imperialists and the Soviets looking at like the Great Leap Forward and being like, what are these maniacs doing? And this tension escalates to the 60s as both sides start massing troops on the Chinese Soviet border. Now, meanwhile, so so OK, the 60s goes on, and control of the Soviet Union has fallen to Leonid Brezhnev, who is an absolute maniac, deeply weird, deeply not very good guy. And he, in response to the Council of Communists uprising in Prague in 1968, Brezhnev rolls tanks in, kills everyone, and then declares the Brezhnev Doctrine in which Brezhnev claims the right to overthrow any socialist government who the Soviets decided were trying to become capitalist, which – I mean this is the Soviets, right? What that actually means is that they don't align with the USSR.

So Brezhnev means this to be about eastern europe right mal looks at this and goes oh shit brezhnev is going to try to overthrow me and this this does not go well so and you know i know he's looking at he's looking at like the soviet troops massing on the border and he's like oh shit um and this is where things get absolutely wild. In 1969, there are a giant series of border skirmishes between Soviet and Chinese troops. People are killing each other across this enormous, this continent-sized border. People are like – companies of Chinese and Soviet troops are firing artillery at each other. Everyone is completely losing their minds and this is actually like one of the reasons why like every once in a while you get these these things from the the the himalayas and china's

border with india where everyone's like hitting each other with sticks and the reason you're hitting each other with sticks is that like the chinese were like, wait, hold on. It's actually a bad idea to have guys with guns on the border of a nuclear power. Yeah, yeah. They have some amazing, amazing brawls. Yeah. And but, you know,

but like and the funny thing, like that's the reasonable version of this in in in 69. They're having the unreasonable version of this where the Soviets are looking at the situation and they're going, oh shit,

we can't win a war with China. Because their calculation is that they will eventually be overwhelmed by a combination of human wave attacks and the fact that like an enormous portion of the Chinese population has been trained in guerrilla warfare. And their second problem is that the Chinese population is too dispersed for them to all be killed by Soviet nuclear weapons. And the CCP makes the same assessment and is like, okay, if we fight this war, like the human wave attacks are just going to, eventually are going to crush them.

We're going to use the force of numbers. They can't kill us all with nukes. So the Soviets plan for this is they are like drawing up plans to line the border with China with nuclear landmines to stop the Chinese army from marching through.

It's nuts. Everyone is losing their minds. Normal times. Yeah. Like I've seen rumors. Everyone is losing their minds. Normal times. Yeah. Like I've seen rumors. This is the thing I don't have actually good sources on. I've seen a lot of rumors that both the Soviets and China like reached out to the U.S. Try to get them to nuke the other side.

It's everyone is everyone is completely losing their minds um and you know so at this point like both sides kind of back down because both of them realize that like fighting this war is the stupidest thing that anything could possibly do because there's there's like there is there was a little tiny shred of sanity left in both sides that's like do we like actually want to have a nuclear war and they're like no okay but this marks the permanent solidification of what's called the sino-soviet split um and do you know what else is it is it is a sino-soviet split it's the split between the part of the episode that's ads and the part of the episode that's episode. That is a very important split that does relate to the worker councils of the Soviet state.

Because if the Soviets got their wish for world domination, we wouldn't be pivoting to an ad break. Instead, this would be purely worker-sponsored. I don't know. Here's the ad. Hey, guys. I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show,

where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast post run high is all about it's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories their journeys and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together you know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout well that's when the real magic happens so if you love hearing real inspiring stories from the people you know follow and admire join me every week for post run high it's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all it's light-hearted pretty crazy and very. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. killing 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 podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me

in a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics

and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. I, for one, am very excited to get those Coininger limited edition NFT collectibles. I think it's a real solid investment. So I know it sounds a little far-fetched, but hey, in 10 years,

you can sell it to some guy from the CCP and you might make a lot of money. So yeah, yeah. Or the ADL. Food for thought. Or the ADL. That's right. That's right.

You can sell it to Pitcavage. He could buy that for like 10 grand. All you have to do now is spend $1,000 and in 10 years, you could be getting 10 grand all you have to do now all you have to do now is spend one thousand dollars and in 10 years you could be getting 10 grand from pit cabbage and that sounds like that sounds like a great deal that's it that's a 10 discount as well with the uh discount code garrison davis sorry so back in the scripted podcast so the back in 1969 now basically from from from yeah yeah so for basically from this point on the USSR and people's

Republic of China are enemies this is what's called the Sino-Soviet split and Mao begins casting around for allies and into this breach steps a man accursed through history whose towering footfalls echo through the halls of power. I am talking, of course, about

Charles de Gaulle, the once important ruler of France. Yeah, most French man ever to exist. Yeah, so de Gaulle has been devising a strategy to pull China away from the ussr and towards the west and this is the origin of what's called triangle diplomacy now kissinger steals this idea and goes and does it but this was not kissinger's idea this was this was a plan that was already kind

of in motion that he stole from de gaulle hey good artists hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Good artists copy, great artists steal. If Kissinger was anything, it was an artist. Great artist. That is literally what the Tony Blair Foundation said. It's not a joke. We can't fucking make jokes

because everything's too fucked. I'm quoting the Tony Blair Foundation. That wasn't... There was some... Oh, God. I can't remember his name. Someone in the 70s declared that satire... The day that Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize is the day satire

died and he was right. And this is why satire doesn't work anymore. Yeah, Tony Blair is now pissing on its grave. Yeah, so, alright, but the, you know, okay, so this triangle diplomacy thing kissinger basically takes it over and the key element of this plan is to is to use china as a bulwark against the soviets both in east and southeast asia and in places like central africa um but in order to do this they have to actually like establish contact with, a thing they haven't had in like 30 years.

Well, I guess 20. Ah, whatever. Hey, complicated. I'm not going to go through the entire diplomatic history of China. But this is the origin of one of Kissinger's most famous crimes, which is Operation Searchlight, which is Pakistan's genocide in Bangladesh. They kill about three million people um if you want a really detailed account of this go listen to the behind the bastards episodes the the short version of this is that pakistan has been a chinese ally

for a while for a lot of reasons one of which is china's antagonism with india which peaked in 1962 when china just straight up invaded, at least beaded border region, conquered it, and then like handed Nehru his ass in the process of what became known as the Sino-Indian War. And this is an incredible betrayal, by the way. Like Nehru, who was the prime minister of India, Nehru had turned down a permanent seat on the UN Security Council

because he was being given the seat as a way to make sure china didn't get it and he turned it he turned down that seat to get china onto the security council like out of out of like not not out of geopolitical like this was basically a pure like ideological i'm doing this because it's the right thing to do thing and mao returns him by fucking invading India. So because of this and because of, you know, India, Pakistan don't like each other. This is this is known. The Pakistani government is very close with China.

Pakistani troops are trained by the Chinese army. They are armed with Chinese weapons. And with Kissinger's blessings, he could use the Pakistani government as an intermediary to negotiate with china the pakistani government proceeds to kill three million bangladeshis it is yeah this is it is among the worst crimes of the 20th century it's a crime that it is broadly forgotten china's complicity in it is forgotten the american's complicity in it is barely remembered basically only when people talk about kissinger but this was this was one of the worst things that happened in like one of the worst centuries in human history but you know for kissinger this is an enormous success right he gets everything that he fucking wants out of he doesn't give a shit about bangladeshis um then you know

this is a tradition that is like echoed through the like the eons of neoliberalism ever since the u.s successfully opens diplomatic channels with China and soon Kissinger and Nixon are going to meet Mao in China. And I'm going to read from Mao talking to Kissinger so you can understand who these people are. The trade between

our two countries at present is very pitiful. It is gradually increasing. You know China is a poor country. We don't have very much. What we have in excess is women. Kissinger, there are no quotas or tariffs for those. Chairman Mao, so if you want them, we can give you a few of those, some tens of thousands. Prime Minister Cho, of course, on a voluntary basis. Chairman Mao, let them go to your place. They will create disasters that way you can lessen our burdens laughter sometime later mao do you want our chinese women we can give you

10 million laughter jesus the chairman is improving his offer um bow by doing this we can let them flood your country with disaster and therefore impair your interest in our country we have too many women and they have a way of doing things. They give birth to children and our children are too many. I mean, this is like a deeply CCP moment. Like, yeah, it's like, like, this is one of these things was like, there are people in the united states to this day who call themselves maoists and like and think that this guy was like on the fucking left and it's like like how do you fucking read this like him just him just doing this fucking banter with the butcher of bangladesh and be like no no no this is the guy who figured out to keep the the the key to achieving like

socialism right is the guy who figured out how to end the class system and end imperialism. Is this fucking guy palling it up with fucking Henry fucking Kissinger? Like, it's terrible. Like, I just... Yeah, it's not great. The key to being

a Maoist is not reading this stuff. So true. I've seen Maoists on Twitter trying to defend this. They're like, well, it was only like a temporary thing because the Soviets were threatening the new China. One of the real problems they

have is that in Angola, there's a civil war in Angola. There is a faction that are the good guys, and then there's a faction that's being backed by apartheid South Africa. And China is backing the apartheid south africa fashion yeah and so you know and this is the thing they have to justify and they can't and this actually and you know one of this actually has impacts in the u.s because like american maoists are confronted with this and are like what the fuck like what is this shit and there are some of them and are like what the fuck? Like what is this shit? And there are some of them who just like ignore it

and quadruple down. There are some of it who become disillusioned. You can even pick a different tanky like Cuba heavily supported the MPLA in Angola for instance. Yeah. At least they were bad. Yeah. Move to like Castro or something. I don't know. Trotsky's right there.

He's right there he's right there with an ice pick in his head so true should have happened to Kissinger we gotta say what a fucking incredible alternate history Trotsky lives and Kissinger dies Trotsky lives to 100

the world is so much The world's not like a great place But it is a much better place In that alternate history Can you imagine if Trotsky Had held on long enough for social media To exist Oh my god

Trotsky poster It's him and The person I'm the most sad right now that never got on there was Gore Vidal. He would have fucking killed it. He would have posted. Yeah, yeah. There's a few people who you just think would have been magnificent posters. Vidal has

a famous Kissinger moment where he's watching, he runs into Kissinger in the Sistine Chapel looking at the part that's looking at the hell part of it. Vidal goes, Kissinger is in the Sistine Chapel like looking at the part that's like looking at the hell part of it Vidal goes Kissinger is apartment hunting very funny

yeah yeah yeah that is just poster brain incredible there's another famous one where the proto poster the absolutely dog shit American author Norman Mailer punches him and he's like falls over because he's got punched while poster the the absolutely dog shit i know american author norman maylor punches him and he's like falls over

because he's got punched while he's on the ground i vidal goes words fail norman maylor again yeah absolutely incredible guy real-time posting we love to see it yeah yeah tragic tragic you never made it lots of tragedies unfolding one of them is that you know this whole thing of like like kissinger bantering with mao like this it it works like the u.s and china establish diplomatic relations and this is a

this is a seismic shift in sort of Chinese popular culture and media and consciousness because from the Korean War until like the 70s, right? The way people think about America and the way they're portrayed in Chinese media is like as the great imperialist enemy, right? Right. Like the last time there was contact between the U.S. and China, it is a bunch of Chinese troops doing bayonet charges, like wearing sandals in the fucking snow, doing bayonet charges through their own artillery barrages to kill American troops. Like that, that is like the amount of hatred like there is is unbelievable. And, you know, it's funny because like the U.S. like really forgot that war, but China did not, right? And suddenly, America is China's friend. And the human face of this absolutely apocryphal shift in basically the entire ideological system of chinese communism the the face of this shift in in in the just the image of what america is which is like it doesn't it's not quite mapping on but it's like like america like it's kind of like how baptists think about the devil

right like that that that is the role that america has in chinese like popular sort of culture like up until this point and then suddenly it's completely pivoted on its head and the face of this shift is Kissinger. This is ping pong erasure is what you're doing right now. Actually, this all happened due to table tennis and I won't hear it any other way.

God. I specifically didn't include the table tennis diplomacy in this because I was like like I hate this shit when neoliberals really get on their shit they talk about ping pong diplomacy I think Joseph Nye was a big ping pong diplomacy guy

yeah but it's like you know I think like ping pong diplomacy is an example of like how circumscribed the contact between the US and China is right like again like we're talking about like ping pong teams playing each other of like how circumscribed the contact between the u.s between the u.s and china is right like again like we're talking about like like ping pong teams playing each other this is like the big diplomatic and cultural exchange that's going on between china and the u.s there's nothing

and this is something that you have to sort of understand if you want to understand this pivot is how isolated china was right like the u.s through this entire period is pretending that the nationalists in taiwan are the legitimate government of all of china they have blocked off effectively all trade with china they've blocked off basically all trade from the u.s they've blocked off a huge amount of international trade and and you know and this this this is something that really really cripples the chinese economy like you know you can't quite blame it for, like, the famines because, like, I mean, for example, like, the CCP was exporting grain to the USSR while the Great Leap Forward was happening, right? Like, but, I mean, it didn't fucking help that. And one of the other big consequences of this is that it is almost impossible for Chinese people to go to China.

Like, you basically can't do it and this is an enormous deal because there are tens of millions of chinese people across the world who can't go back to china these people can't see their families they can't see their friends they can't go to the graves of their ancestors they can't they can't go home and this happened with my family like my grandpa didn't see his brothers and sisters for 40 years after the war 40 years just did not see his family and you know and it's only when kissinger and this is the way that it's seen in china it's only when kissinger re-establishes relations which kissinger goes out there and advocates and the way they see it is he's advocating for china in the u.s which is kind of true but the way they see this is only when kissinger re-establishes diplomatic relations

that's when it becomes possible for you to see your family again and you know i like i cannot emphasize enough how big of a deal this is in china in the diaspora like if you are in the diaspora you can't get fucking messages in you in. A lot of people don't know whether their family is still alive because the last time they saw them was the war. And when I say the war, that could be World War II. That could be the revolution. That could be people living before that. And this is a huge deal in the diaspora, too, to the point where a lot of the people who had been in the Asian-American movements in 68, people who had been yellow peril, yellow power, Asian American movements in 68, like people who had been like yellow peril,

yellow power, people who are like ally with the black Panthers. Like these people are trying to get jobs in the Nixon state department because they want to be there to like help reopen diplomatic relations with China. It is, it is like, this is like,

it is one of the sort of apocryphal moments of, of the second half of the, of the 20th century is this, this, these diplomatic relations opening up again. And in the Chinese media, they don't really want Nixon to be the face of it because they're, they're smart enough to be like,

no one does. This is not great. Yeah. But so they, they, they put, they put Kissinger as like the human face of all of this. And, you know, and there's a lot of benefits to China from this.

They're getting these massive technological transfers from the US. And this is one of the things that it's in. I think it's a very underrated factor, but this is one of the factors that makes their technology like, sorry, let me say that again. This is one of the factors that makes, it's one of the incredibly underrated factors that makes their industrialization program work. And there's a lot of places where people try similar industrialization programs to what China is going to pull off.

Like Venezuela, for example, tries this. And Venezuela's program completely fails because they don't have access to the technology that the US got from basically sucking up – or that china got from sucking up to the u.s and and kissinger is directly responsible for a lot of like a lot of these technology transfers and for this kissinger is labeled as as like as a friend of the chinese people like this this is literally the way that it's talked about in in the chinese media and even sort of beyond just him being labeled like a friend of the chinese people like he is like okay so there's like one or two other americans who you can sort of like publicly express

admiration for who are people who like effectively defected to china or just moved to china and like were there for the revolution but those aren't like major figures right like they're like communist journalists or stuff like that or like anthropologists like they're not this is the first like actual public american figure that you were allowed and you are encouraged to be like yay this guy fucking rules and in a very short amount of time kissinger becomes enormously popular as the man who you know he's the guy who restored uh chinese american relations he's the guy who allowed all these people to see their to see their families and ended the sanctioned terror regime i mean he doesn't actually end them but he's helping people work around them and the sanctions eventually sort of come down but you know all of this comes with a price and this brings us to another kissinger crime which

is uh kissinger in the coup against ch's democratically elected President Salvador Allende. So this coup is fully greenlit by the U.S. Like Kissinger is involved with it. Pinochet is going to murder 40,000 Chileans. We talked about this

on the show a few times before. But what we haven't really talked about much is that after this, after the coup, Chile is like completely diplomatically isolated. No one wants anything

to do with them because this just like absolute maniac mass murderer has just deposed like a sovereign government like even like even the uk like won't like refuses to like talk to them right like like and when like the brits won't talk to you because you've done too many crimes yeah yeah you've really fucked it there. Like, the guys whose prime minister's son made a living doing coups. Yeah.

But there is one country, other than the US, that will make deals with Pinochet. And that country is China. And China funnels millions of dollars. Like, literally to Pinochet directly into the chilean government and this is a time where china is not rich but this is millions of dollars like in in like 1970s money it's a lot of money and this and china is absolutely broke and they're

fucking sending it to and they're sending it to fucking uh pinochet and like and and like to get a sense of how weird this stuff is in china right like a lot of people in china think that pinochet is a socialist because he's being portrayed positively in the chinese media so they assume that he's a socialist like this is the kind of shit that's like just the absolute brain worms that are happening in china at this point because their their connection to the outside world is really really tenuous and the chinese media is suddenly gassing up all of these just like horrific right wing dictators now as as kissinger star ascends in china the ccp begins pulling its own kissingers i so this is this is So this is a story

we only learned about pretty recently. I think in the last two years, Beijing was the first Chinese communist leader to visit the US. And so he's in Washington, D.C., and he takes time out of his schedule to have a secret meeting with the CIA, where he goes

to the CIA office to set up CIA listening posts in China to spy on the USSR. And one of the products of this, so that's the sort of low-level stuff that China's getting involved with. The high-level stuff is in 1979, China invades Vietnam. They kill tens of thousands of people. They devastate both the Chinese and Vietnamese economy. And this is one of the things that, you know, this is a decisive thing in the Cold War, right? China has like Donna Kissinger. They've invaded fucking, they've invaded Vietnam. One of the modern iterations of this has been – there's a long period of China's alignment with the US. One of the other things that happens is that China becomes increasingly tied to Israel. This is one of the things that's true of China to this day. There are a bunch of surveillance cameras in the West Bank that the Israelis use to surveil Palestinians that are that are that the israelis use to surveil palestinians that are built in china

right the same they're the same cameras that are being used in xinjiang um a lot of like chinese uh what's it called it's like chinese police sometimes special forces units like train with israeli like trainers uh there's a lot of like they do like count like quote-unquote counter-terrorism exchanges and the other big aspect of this is that a huge part of the Israeli tech industry and a huge part of their sort of defense complex is fueled directly by both Chinese resources and by Chinese raw materials and also by things like transistors that they're importing from China. things like transistors that they're importing from China. And this is the product of the sort of long arc of Kissinger's work in China and Kissinger's work sort of peeling off Egypt from the Palestinian Soviet camp. And this ultimately is the price of opening relations with the US. It's not a price that's paid by the Chinese ruling class.

Instead, what happens is that every dissident in China, every fucking child in Cambodia, every teenager in East Timor, and every veteran in Vietnam, Mao sells them the fuck out. Deng Xiaoping sells them out. Hu Jintao sells them out. Xi Jinping sells them out. They take American money. They take American technology. They shake hands with Kissinger, and they let Bangladesh burn. And for this, Kissinger would remain a steadfast ally of the chinese capitalist class his entire life when the ccp butchered the last gas of the chinese working class at tiananmen i kissinger stood by the ccp and basically is one of the few americans straight up doing pr for them he does it again when china

tried to enter the world trade organization he like this is the last thing he was doing before he fucking died, was going to China and allying himself with the Chinese ruling class. And, you know, he meets Xi Jinping and is greeted as an old friend. And this is how you get to the thing that's been happening today,

which is, like, all of these Chinese, like, the Chinese foreign ministry and a bunch of high-ranking Chinese government officials, like, releasing these statements about how Dr. Kissinger is a good friend of the Chinese people. And this ultimately is what Kissinger represents, the prospect of the alliance between the American and Chinese capitalist class built on the blood of the working class of five continents. It is a world in which there is peace and prosperity for the bourgeoisie, where there was starvation and death for everyone else. This still to this day is the regime that rules the U S it is a regime that

rules China and they are being united for one final time in their love of one Henry Kissinger. And yeah, that's basically all I've got. I guess the last thing I can say is, is one of the things that I think I hope people will understand about this is that the way that the American left thinks about China, the way that its politics function are completely – like in the US, it is very common to have someone who is like pro-Palestine, who is like socialist, who is like pro-LGBTQ rights, who considers themselves an anti-imperialist, who is also pro-CCP and also fucking hates Kissinger. And this is not a position that exists in China. There is nobody like this. Nobody fucking – like no one at all believes this because it's just it's not a coherent political position it is it is an american projection of politics on the china

because again meanwhile like the actual thing that's happened in china is because of the way the media has covered kissinger the thing they covered is is the normalization of u.s china relations and not all of the fucking genocides that he did and so they have the same fucking whitewashed view of Kissinger that like right wing Americans do and that the American ruling class does and yeah truly has been the century of Kissinger from 23 to 23

but but fuck that the century of Kissinger is over now is the century of the social revolution we're fucking coming for his ass. We're going to tear apart everything he ever built. That motherfucker is going to watch from hell as we destroy everything he ever created in his entire life. It's fucking time.

Let's go. That's why we're taking a week off to go to Chile and begin the social revolution that Kissinger destroyed again as a podcast. social revolution that Kissinger destroyed again as a podcast we do now have to choose the

new most evil person alive there's been quite a few in the running we have Cheney's up there obviously we have W. Bush we have Xi Jinping we have Netanyahu

we have Bibi's making a strong case right now maybe BB did him off maybe he wanted to take the seat take the throne Putin's made a decently strong case yeah, sure there is a decent

list running, I think only time will tell for who will truly have a a lasting impact of similar evil um but yes that there is now a new new open position for most evil person alive so many people are throwing their hat into the ring we will see how this contest plays out yeah and uh you will you will hear it on when when that fucking person dies you will hear it on this show too and we will enjoy it enjoy it yeah let's be naked happen here uh go have a good time enjoy enjoy for this enjoy by

the time you're hearing this the second ever sunrise in a hundred years that does not have Henry Kissinger under it. Yeah, somewhere today, somewhere in the world, a baby has been born in a post-Kissinger world. And we can all... The most evil baby has been born and we have to kill it. Yeah, somewhere, thanks to the cycle of Samsara, Henry Kissinger is back. That's right.

If you're squeezing out a baby this month, just be careful, is all I'm saying. you It could happen here as 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. Hey, guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes,

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