The Blindboy Podcast - Fluff Trumpet

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

How Superheroes in Irish folklore helped to create workers rights in America Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, boula bus, you cunts. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. I've got a little hot take this week. A historical journey hot take that I want to try and get into as soon as I can. Rather than dilly-dallying at the start. start if you hear any excessive noise on this podcast like a whirring sound or a breathing sound that's uh that's the sound of my my computer on its last legs the computer that i use to record this podcast is full to the brim and is wh wheezing because I ordered a new I ordered a new computer lads in fucking December it's middle of February now

and I ordered it from Germany custom made audio computer and it's been hell getting it here because of Brexit so the computer parts of it arrived here but then english customs lost um an essential part of the computer because it was in several packages they lost an essential part about two weeks ago

so that's gone and then the company had to resend it so today i thought i'm gonna have my fucking new computer today because the last piece was supposed to arrive today and then i get a text this morning from the courier saying the package has been seized by uk customs and they won't release it unless i pay a customs fee which should not happen because i'm ordering the computer from germany which is an eu country and i'm having it sent to ireland which is an eu country but in the process of that it must move through england as a land bridge and england isn't in the eu because of brexit so they have no right to seize my computer and try and charge me a customs tax. So that's why if you hear excessive wheezing in the background of my computer, it's the Brits.

I can blame the Brits for this one, lads. Brexit means that there's a wheezing noise in the back of this week's fucking podcast. So up the rah, I guess. This is the second podcast. I've released this week. You spoiled boys and girls. I released a bonus podcast. Yesterday. Because it was a sponsored episode.

So I released a bonus podcast. About. The 70's Japanese electronic group. Yellow Magic Orchestra. So if you like my music podcasts go and listen to that podcast that I released yesterday called Yellow Magic Orchestra if you're a brand new listener

go back to the start listen to some earlier episodes this episode that I have here mightn't be a bad start so yeah also last week's podcast lads

where I did a big long ramble about we'll say online media versus television and radio one thing I want to clear up right because I kind of so here's the crack I referred to

Irish TV, Irish radio and newspapers as mainstream media and I used this phrase quite a bit and on listening back I shouldn't have used the term mainstream media I should have instead referred to it as traditional media

and I'll tell you why the phrase mainstream media has a toxic undertones in particular in america and a little bit here but mainly in america people who are conspiracy theorists are people who are like avid trump supporters they'll use the phrase mainstream media and when mainstream media is used like that it's used quite disingenuously to discredit facts and truth to tell it to be honest so when i was using the phrase mainstream media last week that's obviously not the context i was using it in what i should have called it was traditional media and that's what i meant that was the context and intent that I was using it in I wasn't like trying to discredit the integrity of the news as such or discredit the integrity

of professional journalists no what I'm saying is that traditional old school media newspaper tv radio these powerhouses that have money behind them that are traditional they're quite different to online media so i sort of should have said traditional media but i listened back and i said mainstream media so many times like 70 times i couldn't go back and edit it so i'm just clearing that one up. When you see someone saying the phrase mainstream media, often that person's a prick and is espousing the views and opinions of a prick. So into the topic of this week's podcast,

it's definitely a hot take and it's definitely historical. How I write this podcast each week, sometimes, right, and it's becoming rarer and rarer especially with the pandemic because of the because of this pandemic and quarantine and not receiving much external stimulation into my brain and having the same four walls around me all the time my creativity creativity is down. My. My. No. My creativity isn't necessarily down.

Because I work on it. My moments of inspiration are down. When you're. A professional artist. Moments of inspiration. May happen. Throughout the day. At any point.

I could just be washing the dishes. Or. Looking out the window. And then a fully formed idea idea will just arrive in my head like it was sent from the fucking heavens and when that happens fucking fantastic and the skill you have to develop is write down the idea and that used to happen quite a bit before the pandemic because I'm engaged in a lot of activities that feed my unconscious mind, such as speaking with human beings, going to the gym, experiencing the spontaneity and chaos of life. And then ideas come. I'm not getting a lot of inspiration in the pandemic. So for my ideas, I got to work hard on them.

I got to work and I got to research for the ideas to come. They do come, it's just harder work. So how I kind of write this podcast is, I take note during the week of high arousal moments, we'll say. If I read an article, or if i see something on youtube or whatever or if i'm listening to a podcast if i receive a piece of information and this piece of information causes me to pause or to contemplate or to have a strong emotion then i immediately take note of that thing I save the article I put

it into a little into a little folder or whatever and if an idea comes alongside it or a little thread of thought I write that down as well because I know if I receive what I'd call a high arousal moment about a piece of information, that's my unconscious mind telling me there's a hot take here somewhere. Something about this thing you just heard is the idea is already in your unconscious mind. It's already there and you formed it in that moment but the language of your brain will not allow you access to the idea yet so what you have to do is pick this thing you found then spend several days researching around it and the idea the hot take will reveal itself to you so last So, last Friday, I just saw on the news, there was a ruling in the UK about the company Uber. And Uber are, they're like that taxi company.

You can't get Ubers in Ireland, but the corporate headquarters of Uber is based in Limerick, where I live. That's the European headquarters. You know what fucking Uber is? It's the taxian headquarters uber's you know what fucking uber is it's the taxi app but anyone can be an uber driver you don't have to be a taxi driver and they have uber eats as well which is like deliveroo but the problem with companies like uber is they're uber drivers anyone if you want to be an uber driver all you need is a car and the fucking app and then you become an uber driver and you get to earn money being an uber driver being a taxi person essentially but the problem is uber doesn't recognize their drivers as employees

instead i think an u Uber driver is technically like. A self-employed contractor. And. Some Uber drivers are like. Yeah that works for me that's fine. But it's. The thing is that it's in a grey area. With labour laws.

Labour laws. Laws that were fought hard for. So Uber drivers don't have a guaranteed minimum wage. They don't have protection around their working time. They don't have holiday pay. All this shit, right? They're not called workers. And if Uber don't call their worker workers,

then those workers are not entitled to workers' rights. then those workers are not entitled to workers rights and workers rights that was a hard battle to get what we refer to as workers rights so anyway court in London ruled Uber must recognise their drivers as workers

and the workers now must fall in line with the rights that they are entitled to as workers. And this is the ruling. And it's a victory. It's a victory for workers' rights and it's a good thing. But the high arousal emotion I had around that piece of information is I was pissed off at myself for being happy about it.

And I was pissed off that it was in the news as a victory that we had to be happy about because it's like I said basic workers rights are things that were hard fought for people died for these things these things came about because of extreme exploitation of humans during the industrial revolution and basic workers rights such as minimum wage protection around how many hours you can work holiday pay health insurance all this shit had to be fought for so i was really angered by it's like why the fuck in 2021 are we celebrating something that

we shouldn't have to celebrate in the first place because I thought this shit had been won already 150 years ago but I guess not not with these big tech companies so I was annoyed by that

and if you've seen my BBC series Blind by Undestroyed I did a full episode on work and the gig economy, as it's called, and how new app-based companies basically subvert and get around workers' rights by redefining the language and why that's a big problem in the 21st century. finding the language and why that's a big problem in the 21st century and it's a tough one too because you know we're all stuck into the system of it so we all use these apps we use these apps we use these we avail of the services of these companies that are subverting the rights of workers by their very their model their model subverts these rights and it's tough as well as a Limerick person because Limerick is a very poor city our city centre

isn't particularly active we'll say and Uber having the European headquarters in Limerick city centre improves the quality of the city centre there's small restaurants and coffee shops and a bunch of shit that's open

because Uber's headquarters are in Limerick. So it's a toughie. But it got me thinking about labour rights and unions and the history of these things. And it got me thinking of, we'll say, the big companies and corporations 200 years ago who used to exploit workers and the ways that they used to do it and another thing the uber shit reminded me of is a lot of companies 200 years ago used to do this this model called the company town like coal companies used to do this in america they would have the company town and what they would do is they'd build a mine for coal or silver or whatever then they would build an entire town

around the mine and they would directly provide for the workers so if you were a miner and you worked for a mining company in Pennsylvania we'll say mining coal you lived in a house that was provided by the company the company owned your house you lived in a house that was given to you by them you ate a lot of your food at work which was provided for you and the company provided for the needs the basic needs of the workers but it removed a lot of autonomy and freedom that the workers had but it also massively exploited the workers because that now a toxic relationship develops there if you're a coal miner and the company you work for owns your fucking house

feeds you all your food if you don't have that you not only don't have a job your family are completely homeless then that relationship is uh that's coercive and it's exploitative but thankfully you know america had a thing called the Coal Wars, like, and shit like this used to happen in England too. People rebelled, people died, people were shot to achieve the basic rights so that things like that couldn't happen anymore. So that workers had healthcare, the right to unionise, the right to not work fucking 18 hour days the right to sick pay or holiday time and all these things that we take for granted this was hard fought for but a lot of these big tech corporations in particular they figured out a way to kind of return to an extent to some of these exploitative models by changing the language and stuff.

And it doesn't look that way. And I was thinking to myself, this company town shit doesn't exist anymore. And then I went, hold on a minute. Like up in Dublin, like there's a massive housing crisis at the moment in Ireland, a huge, huge housing crisis. at the moment in Ireland a huge huge housing crisis or in Dublin in particular rent is it is some of the highest in the world and people can't afford property and it's destroying an entire generation of people to be honest especially if you live in Dublin any any Irish city but Dublin in particular and one solution that the Irish government... So here's the thing with Dublin, if you're not from Ireland.

Dublin's a little bit like San Francisco. All the headquarters of these tech corporations base themselves in Dublin because they can effectively launder money in Dublin. They can get away with paying less than one percent tax in Dublin Facebook Google you name it they're all here not paying tax and the Irish government this is a beneficial relationship for the Irish government because it ups our GDP it provides employment so the Irish government allow this to happen. But effectively, Dublin's a little bit like a company town. What I mentioned there about, we'll say, in America in the 1800s,

where you had these coal towns, where the mine, the company mine, owns all the property and provides directly for the people. But as a result, you end up with an exploitative relationship where the quality of life is reduced for the workers. Dublin's a bit like that, but they've changed the language, they've changed the parameters so it's hard to see. So like yes, all the huge corporate headquarters in Dublin do provide employment but those same corporate headquarters are a massive reason that rent is so high because they buy up all the they buy up all the property for their workers this then contributes

to a massive shortage in the in the rental market you've got airbnb now i know that's after chilling out now because of the pandemic, Airbnb headquarters is in Dublin, Airbnb's after making shit of Dublin, and then the government respond by announcing this plan known as co-living, co-living spaces, so the Irish government's response to, and when I say young people,

I'm talking fucking people up to the age of 40 lads so it's you know call that young if you want people from the ages of 20 to 40 have great difficulty living comfortably in dublin finding property uh being able to afford rent so the irish government's response to this was we're going to introduce this thing called co-living spaces and what co-living spaces are is it's like if if you're a young professional in dublin and you work in a tech company then you don't need an apartment what we'll do is you get to have a bedroom with a toilet. And then you and 30 other apartments will all share the same kitchen and the same living room.

It'll be just like an episode of Friends. But really it's not. What that is is a tenement. And tenements are a Victorian way of living that was considered unsanitary and unsafe. And now in the COVID environment, like these fucking co-living things, they were suggested two years ago.

In the COVID environment now, like you can't have safety within something like co-living. People shouldn't be forced to share a kitchen with 30 people. People shouldn't be forced for that is their only option all right and also to still be paying ridiculous rent in order to get that and the irish independent then posted an article last year where one of the developers of these co-living spaces they were challenged and someone asked them look do you do you think it's okay that fucking 20 adults are paying huge rent just to have a bed and a toilet

or just to have a bed in some situations and then that these 20 people should share the same kitchen or share the same bathroom or whatever and the developer turned around without a hint of irony and said well a lot of these young professionals that are going to be living in co-living spaces they already work in google and facebook and their meals are provided for them their meals are provided for them so they won't really need the kitchen it won't matter to be honest they're just going to spend most of their time in the fucking office and just coming home to sleep a little bit and the thing is they're probably right now i explored this in a previous podcast what's the fucking name of it i think it's called wreck them pen pals but i i basically compared the modern tech office environment to the tom hanks film big i have an i have a hypothesis

that the modern tech office environment which contains like facebook facebook and google these places up in dublin the modern office environment which has pool tables ping pong tables a fridge full of beer pizzas every friday all this stuff that tech companies do for their employees which make the workplace really fun these things aren't the company doing a nice thing for the employees what they're actually doing is they're fostering a relationship based on a parent-child dynamics and this also ties in with the millennial condition whereby millennials had 10 years taken off him because of the last recession some millennials are and millennial is anyone from fucking 25 to 40

millennials are we're in a stage of delayed adulthood right I'm a fucking millennial I've got a plastic bag on my head lads we're in a state of delayed adulthood alright and that's what our generation is

we like comic book films and we fetishise toys and objects and things like that and it's grand it's fun it's grand but we are in the delayed adulthood isn't the problem i love playing video games in my 30s and that being okay i love that i think that's healthy and good the delayed adulthood isn't the problem it's the economic conditions that created the delayed adulthood it's you're not having any children until you're into your 30s you're not owning a house if you're lucky until you're into your 30s these things that's the bad part which has pushed our adulthood off by about 10 years because of the great recession of the 2010s and then with gen z i mean i'm not

fully sure of the crack with with gen z yet but it's like oh you're 12 yeah you're 12 here's a hd video of someone in isis decapitating someone how are you getting on now that you're 20 how's that going for you that's the shit that gen z kind of had to have to put up with i mean at least when i was fucking 12 the worst i'd ever see is a is a an 18s video from extra vision but tech offices exploit this by fostering a parent-child relationship with their employees and basically going it's friday it's pizza fr Friday you don't have to wear a suit it's cool, oh we've got a bouncy castle jump up and down on the bouncy castle like a good boy

daddy Facebook's going to give you some porridge for breakfast yum yum, do you want your dinner daddy and mammy Facebook is going to make you dinner, so when you work in a tech company everything's provided for you, everything's really fun and cool and colourful.

But there's no unions or anything. It's at the expense of autonomy and rights. Do you get what I'm saying? And it's a really, really friendly Joe Biden version of the fucking coal mining town, the company town. It's the same shit. It's the same fucking shit. So Dublin is effectively a company town for big techs, big, big tech that's laundering its money here. by the developer of a co-living space having the audacity to say the grown adults spending 800 euros a month to live in this co-living space i know 20 of them are sharing a kitchen but they won't use it

because mammy and daddy facebook gives them breakfast lunch and dinner for free Facebook gives them breakfast lunch and dinner for free and the office in Facebook is so nice it's so relaxing that you're just gonna stay and work till 10 o'clock at night and they won't leave until they fucking get to go home I've been in San Francisco it's worse than San Francisco if you're in fucking San Francisco you don't even have to you don't even have to get a taxi to work there's an entire fleet of private buses that take the workers

directly to and from work like little kids and then the workers are dressed like children from 1992 with their game boys and again I'm not shitting on millennials fetishizing toys or games i do it

i love it i think that's healthy i'm not disparaging it and i think it's a lot healthier than the performed solemn adulthood of the 1980s yuppie we'll say for instance it's part of a system it is part of a system that's exploitative it's infantilizing it's an infantilizing relationship with the structures of power with the people that are paying wages so is this week's podcast about that yes kind of and this is going to be a bit of a stretch but it's it's a train of thought and i'm going to be a bit of a stretch, but it's a train of thought and I'm going to lead you through it. I am interested in the fact that superheroes and comic books and superhero films and comic book films, they're the current zeitgeist, alright, and they have been for about 15 years. We live in a society where one the largest largest cultural outputs in cinema is the creation of superhero films made for and directed at grown adults that's a fact that's an observation about

culture and also the same adults who are being distracted by superheroes we say and the artifacts of childhood the same adults are also seeing workers rights being peeled back workers rights being degraded rights which once existed being taken away on the sly through a covert exploitation of our delayed adulthood as i explained there earlier with the workplace shit so I have a hot take. Like a weird little full circle. In history. I think I can demonstrate. Okay.

How. 16th century Irish folklore. Created. The modern superhero. And not only created the modern superhero. But directly led. To the collapse. Of company towns.

In the coal mines of 19th century Pennsylvania. And the creation. Of the modern workers rights. That are now being sneakily peeled back. By tech corporations. Because we're distracted by superheroes now it's it's it's an incredibly hot take it's fucking forrest gump bothering a stranger at a bus stop level of hot take but that's why you're here that's why you're here listening to this

podcast let's not fool ourselves so a common theme in this podcast all the time and something I'm fascinated with is the Irish footprint all right the cultural footprint of the Irish people we are a small country that have had to emigrate all around the world for many many years because of the oppression we faced so the cultural footprint and the influence of the irish all around the world is massive absolutely massive and i love to trace these i love to trace this cultural footprint for good and bad and and i do think it's a lot larger than we actually give it credit to credit for it is a lot larger so let's take it to the 1700s in ireland and the penal laws have been passed okay the penal laws they were an incredibly oppressive set of laws that lasted more than a century okay

ireland had been colonized by britain been colonised since the 1100s but really properly colonised from 1600 aggressively colonised from 1600 onwards there was a minority of what was called the Protestant descendancy these were rich English people trying to take over Ireland and then you had a majority

of Irish Catholics the penal laws were brought in to persecute Irish Catholics and then like some Presbyterians I think as well but mostly Irish Catholics and it wasn't really a religious a religious thing it's it's much more of an ethnic thing. The laws were brought in to eradicate, kill and subjugate the native population. That's what it was, alright? The Brits wanted us dead. Simple as that. They wanted us dead and gone.

What were the penal laws? They were a set of very aggressive laws that meant if you were part of the Irish Catholic majority, you couldn't really own land, you couldn't have access to education, you weren't allowed to practice your religion, you couldn't really own land you couldn't have access to education you weren't allowed practice your religion you couldn't hold public office you couldn't have a weapon a set of institutional racism with the intention of disenfranchising disempowering and eventually eradicating an entire population culminating 150 years later in the Irish famine which killed two million people and another two million left if an Irish Catholic was

to violate one of the penal laws then they were shipped away they were shipped to Australia they were shipped to the Caribbean they were shipped to America okay so what the scene I'm setting basically is Ireland in the 1700s is a country of explicit and blatant systematic oppression and an insanely downtrodden people but interestingly what one of the cultural artifacts that emerged from this period in the culture of the Irish Catholic majority was a love of folklore characters that were called like outlaws, like outlaw characters. But the interesting thing with these Irish folklore outlaw characters that people came to love during the penal laws was they share a huge amount of similarities with what we would call modern superheroes so if you were part of the Irish Catholic majority in the 1700s you could

not go to school you had no access to education. So what would happen is the Irish Catholics used to have to attend what was known as a hedge school. A school that, they were called hedge schools because they said like it was a school in a hedge hidden away in a bush. It was usually like farmhouses and shit, but we called them hedge schools. And it was where you went to get an illegal education. call them hedge schools and it was where you went to get an illegal education and often the teachers were priests but it's where Irish people went to learn how to read to learn how to write to learn their native tongue of Irish which was outlawed to fight the attempt to colonize our mind you're not allowed to read you're not allowed to write you're not allowed to speak your own language you're being colonized you're being eradicated but people said no i'm a human being and i want to learn and i

want to learn my own language and i want to learn my history and i want to fucking have a bit of meaning in my life so kids went to hedge schools secretly covertly now a lot of these kids learned how to read on a type of book which was known as a chap book. And a chap book was a really really inexpensive pulp, like pulp fiction, like pulp literature. It was a really really cheap paper book that you could purchase at fairs for fuck all money and they were often counterfeit books as well and some of them would be in the Irish tongue and some of them were in English but if you went to a hedge school chances are the books that you were reading and learning to read were these chap books which were like pirate books like pir pirated books. But the thing with these chapbooks, because they were a form of pulp literature,

the stories in them were the stories of these Irish outlaws, these Irish folklore heroes, right? So all these kids were learning the stories of these outlaw heroes while they were in hedge school. Now the thing with these Irish outlaw heroes that were in these stories they would have been similar enough to we'd say Robin Hood like these characters stole from the rich and they gave to the poor and there was biblical themes as well a lot of stuff from the bible would have found its way into the narrative of these heroes but what made them unique too is they were specifically they were fighting the fucking english you're in a hedge school

right in extreme poverty in the penal laws and the country's being run by this minority amount of english english cunts who are killing your fucking neighbors bloodshed and murder your life means nothing so you're in your secret school in a hedge and if anyone catches you you're dead you're sent off to Barbados or off to Australia or to Virginia so you better believe your heroes are fighting the fucking English they're outlaws who are fighting the English landlords every single day and taking their money and giving it to the poor people of Ireland. And also what these outlaws did is they instilled a sense of kind of justice and morality. If you're living during the penal laws,'s no justice there there's no justice there but these are

deliberately constructed laws that exist to eradicate and disenfranchise so there's no justice there what if you live the life of the penal laws being the only law that you know then there's no hope because you're born an Irish Catholic you're never going to own land you're never going to own a horse you're never going to have a weapon you can never become anything other than dirt on the ground to die so the outlaw hero instilled an alternative balance an alternative law a new type of justice and a new type of morality so that you could live life with a sense of meaning or pride or dignity because if you live life by just going the penal laws have me fucked then you can't have any meaning dahi o hógan who he's an academic who

writes about the the irish outlaws of the 1700s. He said that English administration was of basically alien nature to the bulk of the people and the inbuilt injustice of such an authoritative system accounts for the wide variety of social types who functioned as outlaws. It also accounts for the great quantity of Irish folklore which heroized those acting in contravention of legal ordinances. So from the penal laws, this new type of superhero emerges in the fucking hedge schools on these shitty little chapbooks, these shitty little paper books that cost nothing. So let's look at some of the commonalities that all of these outlaw heroes had in this fiction.

Right? In this folklore. The first thing is the outlaw. The outlaw is, they're never an outlaw because they're bad. Something really horrible has happened to them in their life. Something was taken away from them they were downtrodden and they're fighting back so even though they're an outlaw they're outside a law that isn't moral they have a new code all right so some great pain has fallen upon them

at a young age and something was taken away from him by a big dark ruling power and they're now outside the they're fighting back against that power the other thing that the Irish outlaw character had was they were supernatural but supernatural in a way that they it's like nature worked with them the animals and the rivers and the horses worked with this outlaw character. The Irish outlaw character had a communication and understanding and relationship with the land and the environment. That the evil English landlord didn't. And this gave them supernatural powers. Which can be viewed as well as...

That can be viewed as... You have to remember at that time with the English too the English in the 1700s were you have to remember Ireland was a temperate rainforest Ireland was covered mostly in trees and this business you see today of nothing but grasslands that's not natural the English did that and during the colonial period of the 1700s, they were clearing forests. The English were clearing forests, putting up pasture land, filling it full of cattle that they owned, and then exporting all that. And this is what was contributing to the famine in Ireland too. There wasn't just a famine of the 1840s, there was a famine at the end of the 1700s too. So the English were contravening natural law in Ireland

by destroying or changing our landscape. Oliver Cromwell personally was responsible for the extinction of our wolves. When there was any resistance against English troops, Irish kind of fighters used to use the woods the woodlands and the thick brush for guerrilla warfare so the English would just clear that land so what you have there too is why wouldn't the Irish outlaw hero have this magical power that they can connect to the land of Ireland when you have an oppressive power putting the penal laws in

clearing all the land filling it full of pasture land and exporting all the animals the other thing that was common with all of the Irish outlaw heroes is they were chivalrous they had respect they were respectful to women they were respectful to old people they had a sense of morality they had a sense of politeness and there was a manners to them they weren't rude they were never violent for the sake of it they also were very well dressed they were well dressed they looked nice they looked after themselves they had a sense of dignity and what you see there is it's like no matter what shit was thrown on the outlaw they could still find happiness and meaning and they could still have the dignity to care about something as basic as

their appearance and to have self-esteem because again you've got a system of laws that are trying to take these things from you what you also had with the outlaws is they would whenever they stole money from the english in what in their stories and in their tales they always gave money back to the poor and also they never took more money than they needed so if an outlaw robbed some English soldiers they would only take the king's money but they wouldn't take anything belonging to the soldier they would have the respect to let the soldier go and say I'm just taking the king's money here and then they'd distribute that to the population and the saddest thing with these outlaws that they have in common, they never won. They were always betrayed and they were always sacrificed. They never won.

And for me, that's probably the Catholicism. That's where it borrows from Christ. Do you know what I mean? Betrayal is a very biblical thing. Adam was betrayed by eve in the garden christ was betrayed by judas and then sacrificed betrayal is a theme with all of these somebody that they trust the outlaw trusts a person and then that person betrays them usually for money and then the english kill them and this always happens with the outlaws and

dahil hagan says the heroes are victorious in individual episodes and thus help to preserve the morale and self-respect of the downtrodden folk but they are in the last analysis the heroes of a conquered people of a culture that's been pressed to the last lines of its defenses and it's no coincidence that their ethnographic present is the Ireland of the penal laws so the sad thing about it is that even though the Irish had these outlaw heroes the penal laws were so fucked up and so oppressive that you still had that sacrifice they still lost at the end the hope was still gone so I'll give you an example of one of these outlaw heroes

that would have been being read about in these chapbooks and would have been a hero to the Irish people in the 1700s a fatter called Red O'Hanlon now Red O'Hanlon like he was a real person so there was Red O'Hanlon the real actual person and then there was Red O'Hanlon his legend and myth the real Red O'Hanlon was a highwayman he was a robber

he was a Tory and this is this is the mad thing in the 1700s the word Tory meant outlaw or robber it came from the Irish word Tóraitha it meant outlaw or robber and when you hear in English politics today the Conservative Party the Tories that comes from that sometime around the 1600s I think outlaws and robbers in Ireland were so demonized by the English because if you're an English person with a bit of money and you're trying to go along the road some Irish cunt jumps up from behind the bush and says give me all your money or I'll kill you and these were the Tories the Torah has so the word Tory was a huge insult and the Conservative Party in England today I don't know how they ended up reclaiming it but they're called Tories because 400 years ago

somebody called them Tories as an insult by basically saying you're the same as those scumbags in Ireland who fucking rob us and that's why Tories are called Tories today but Red O'Hanlon the real Red O'Hanlon

was a Tory he was a highwayman he was a robber but a fictionalized version of him got written about in these chapbooks that were being read in hedge schools and to the kids he was a fucking hero the fictionalized Red O'Hanlon right so he starts off his life Red O'Hanlon was born to a wealthy like gaelic chieftain family so the gaelic aristocracy before the brits came he was born to one of these families but then the brits like burned down all his family lands and took everything away and red o'hanlon had nothing because the brits took it all as all away and killed his whole family so then red o'hanlon became this fucking amazing

robber who'd do nothing but rob the english soldiers and take all the money from the king and take it all and give it back to the poor people of ireland and he would dress immaculately and he was sound to your granny and women loved him and he was funny and charming and he could talk to crows and he could get up on the back of any horse. And he used to hunt down priest hunters. And priest hunters were a real thing during the penal laws. They were agents of the crown, mercenaries who were given money to track down Catholic priests and kill them. And if you're in a hedge school and you're a kid, the priest is person giving you education giving you food the priest is the one teaching you your native language

and this priest who's teaching you is in danger of being hunted down by men who are being paid to kill him in real life this was happening so the fictionalized version of red o'hanlon used to hunt the priest hunters he would find them and get vengeance and kill them and then as well with Red O'Hanlon he was born with a cross in his on his chest and he had a magical shirt and his magical shirt that he wore was impenetrable by bullets so the English would fire bullets at Red O'Hanlon they'd just bounce off his chest and then Ren O'Hanlon would take out his own gun and shoot all the English but the thing is the only bullet that could penetrate Red O'Hanlon's magic shart was the bullet from his own gun and

then finally Red O'Hanlon died by gunshot wound and no one knows who did it but you know that it was done with his own gun which meant it was someone close to him a friend that he trusted a woman that he was riding whatever he died by his own gun which means someone close got to do it and penetrate his magic shirt

and that was the story of Red O'Hanlon and what I find fucking interesting there that's just Superman Superman was a rich kid on a planet Red O'Hanlon. And what I find fucking interesting there, that's just Superman. Superman was a rich kid on a planet, Krypton, and his fucking parents said, fuck this, Krypton is exploding, sent him off down to Earth.

He's, you know, what he wanted, the wonderful life he had is gone, now he's a nobody on Earth. And he fights justice with his magical shirt the bullets bullets bounce off and he's chivalrous and he fights the right baddies and he gives back to the poor and helps people it's superman so these stories are the template for what becomes the Marvel superhero in 1700s Ireland. Then you had another outlaw hero by the name of Brennan.

And Brennan's shtick is Brennan used to steal from landlords, steal the rent from landlords and give it back to the tenants. And some of these stories, man, they really stand up today as being really good stories. Like, there's a story about Brennan. So Brennan, again, who's a robber, an outlaw highwayman. Brennan is going along the road down in Cork, right? And he meets a peddler who's selling goods. So the peddler is a merchant.

And the thing is with this peddler, he's not like a rich, wealthy merchant. He's just a regular Irish Catholic worker. And the shit that he's selling doesn't belong to him. He's selling like his wealthy English landlord's goods. And then having to go back to him with the profits he makes from selling the landlord's goods. So Brennan anyway stops him. And takes out his gun and says, give me all your fucking money. Give me your watch.

Give me everything and then the peddler who's called the peddler Bon peddler Bon says to him, look Brennan alright, I'm gonna give you I'll give you everything, but here's the crack Brennan if I go back to my fucking

landlord and you take everything the landlord's gonna think that I just fucking sold it, he's gonna think that i just fucking sold it he's gonna think that he's not gonna believe me basically and then brennan goes yeah fuck it man you're an irish catholic you're the same as me of course your landlord's not gonna think that you actually stole this yourself and that you weren't robbed so the peddler bond says to him will you do something so that when i go back to the landlord i can prove that i was robbed so brennan says yeah fuck it Grant

throw your jacket onto the ground there and I'll fire a load of bullets at it so the peddler Bon takes his jacket off, puts it on the ground and then Brennan fires six shots into it, but then all Brennan's bullets are gone and the peddler Bon takes out his own gun

and says now give me back everything Brennan and then Brennan is so impressed with how fucking clever the peddler Bon is he says to him fuck it man I don't want to take anything you become my partner

you need to become my partner in crime because that's the cleverest shit I've ever seen and they do and then the peddler Bon and Brennan become two highwaymen outlaw superheroes who rob the English on the streets. Fucking Batman and Robin fighting crime. So I told you how these outlaws,

how this ties in with workers' rights and things like that. Well, I'm going to get to that in a minute, but first we'll have a little Ocarina pause. rights and things like that. Well I'm going to get to that in a minute but first we'll have a little Ocarina Paws. On April 5th, you must be very careful Margaret. It's the girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen.

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the people who have done that so back to the outlaws. In the 1700s, at the height of the penal laws, you're in hedge school and you're learning about these heroes, Red O'Hanlon, William Brennan, all these lads. And they're fucking rock stars.

They're rock stars. What else are you going to do? It's 1700s in Ireland. These are fucking legends. They're the only thing that give you a sense it's 1700s in Ireland these are fucking legends they're the only thing that give you a sense of hope to give you a sense of pride these half real half imaginary characters that give you a sense of meaning and joy and purpose against the backdrop of a system that wants to eradicate you. So what starts to happen is. The kids who are learning about. The outlaw heroes.

In school. As they become adults. They start to kind of try and replicate them. And it leads to the formation of an organization called the white boys the buccal bonnet and the thing they're they're a secret society and secret societies are a frequent element of the irish story and in particular irish uh rebellion like you've the white boys the Fenians the Irish Republican Brotherhood the IRA all secret societies

and like why wouldn't you? If you think back there with those penal laws those the white boys secret society the simple act of going to school meant that you were in a secret society if you went to a fucking hedge school to simply receive your education to learn to read it was a secret society the the simple

the simple dignity of conducting your own education had to be done in secret as a secret society so what was happening in Ireland by the mid 1700s. Was. The conditions that would. Create the famine. The conditions that would create the famine. Because you kind of go. How the fuck do you have a famine. In a country like Ireland. Where you can grow things really easily. How the fuck does that happen.

Well. What started to happen is. England essentially was using Ireland. As. It just wanted to extract our resources forests were being cut down and what Ireland was being used for was industrial grazing for cattle as such so what happened is the only people that owned land were the Protestant descendancy or English people, absentee landlords, English people living in England

with huge, huge amounts of land in Ireland, but them not living on it. They're over in England and they just have like a... some cunt fucking looking after the land in Ireland. But Ireland was used as a resource to exploit by a very small amount of incredibly wealthy people. So if you were a landlord and you had a huge amount of land, the tax system at the time incentivized it for you to use that land for cattle only.

So what happened is landlords were just like, okay, then I'll turn all my land into grazing for cattle and if i have anyone living on that land who might have a little house a catholic with a little house and a little bit of land where they're growing their own food get evict them kick them the fuck out of their house burn their house down and make them homeless because i want to put some cows there like take from them the tiny patch of dirt where they can grow their spuds and just have it cows cows cows as far as the eye can see and if a catholic steps onto that landing and be shot so in step the white boys who were a secret society of Irish Catholic peasants.

Who got together. And they would go on raids at night time. They'd dress in white. And they'd steal horses. And what they would do is fight what they saw as injustices. And they deliberately modelled themselves on. The outlaw heroes. That they worshipped as kids. They fought against the landlords.

If someone was being evicted. The white boys would terrorise the landlord. The white boys would. If the Brits fucking put a lot of land out for pasture. The white boys would knock over all the fences and let the cattle run loose. They'd steal cattle. If there was debt collectors coming collecting debt from people who couldn't pay their debts, the white boys would send threatening letters.

They became the justice in an unjust system. They became the outlaw heroes as a collective secret society and frightened the living fuck out of the beneficiaries of the penal laws the protestant descendancy the small minority who were very powerful now had to be afraid in their beds because at any moment the white boys could come over the fucking mountain on stolen horses and burn down their house now if you're thinking why would they call the white boys is that a racist thing no this is the 1700s in fucking ireland this the the the social construct of race did not exist in ireland in the 1700s they were the buickle bonner because they wore

white smocks which was like uh farmer's clothing white and they wore it white and they used they used violence to fight for the peasants of Ireland against the injustice of the penal laws and it scared the living fuck out of the Brits, and then the Brits had to send over soldiers to become hunters of the white boys, but you couldn't hunt them because they were a secret society. You didn't know who was or who wasn't a white boy. So fast forward to the 1800s. The famine wasn't very kind to the white boys.

You don't have time for secret societies and burning down the houses of landlords when there's literally no food in the country and two million people are dying so people who were lucky enough to emigrate to the united states and to get away from the terror of ireland a lot of them found themselves in mining communities in america in particular in places like Pennsylvania in the mid 1800s. And you had this huge swathe of Irish people now living in Pennsylvania. Mining in coal mines.

And the coal mining companies in America in the 1800s would set up these company towns and the Irish lads there are mining and after a while they start to realize fucking hell I thought things were going to be better here in America but this doesn't seem very nice at all. We're here in this company town. And. People are dying down the mine. And they're making our children go down these mines as well. And.

This is a living fucking hell. And then they start to go. Maybe we should all kind of. Get together. And bring it up with the boss. Maybe we should say. To the coal company that has a mine in here, that owns this company town, that we don't like the conditions,

and maybe we won't work. But then when they do that, the company town and the mine that run everything, have got private police, called the Coal iron police and the coal and iron police have got private detectives that watch the miners all the time called Pinkertons from the Pinkerton agency and if they try and speak up or organize no one listens to them they're some of them are beaten to death by the coal and iron police

and they're watched at all times by detectives and then they start to go fuck me man a lot of these Pinkertons and these coal and iron police fuck load of them are from the north of Ireland and they're Protestants and Orangemen shit man

I thought we were actually after escaping this bullshit in Ireland but now we're here in Pennsylvania living on what is effectively a coal plantation and the police and the private detectives are

the Protestant descendancy who enforced the penal laws back home, who fucking hate us because we're Irish Catholics. This is the exact same shit as it is back home. We've got nothing. And if we complain, they'll either kill us or they'll evict us. This is like the penal laws, except it's in Pennsylvania. So the Irish workers in the coal fields of Pennsylvania

are now in the position where they have to do that fucking Irish thing again, where they form a secret society, because they're being watched by Pinkerton detectives and the Coal and Iron Police, who are overrepresented with very anti-Irish, orange men, Protestant descendancy, people from back home who really, really don't like Catholics and enjoy oppressing them. So directly inspired by the white boys from back home in Ireland,

the Irish miners in Pennsylvania form a secret society called the Molly Maguires, who are basically the exact same thing as the white boys who followed the exact same code and ethics and ideals and virtues as the Irish outlaw superhero folklore character and the Molly Maguires begin to adopt the exact same tactics the tactics that the white boys used back in Ireland against landlords now they're using them against the owners of the company town that they work for so they have this secret organization and they're sending really threatening letters to foremen or they're burning down houses in the night and they're organizing

and they're letting the owners of the company town know this oppressive these penal laws that you have on us that make you think you can shove our children down mines or that we can work all day long and if we complain you'll kill us if you do this to us we're gonna fight back and you won't know which one of it which one of us it was because we're the molly mcguires and you don't know who we are and we're a secret society and your law is unjust but we have a higher law and you now have to live in fear and but then what started happening in the pennsylvania mines is when the civil war in America broke out some of the supervisors in the fucking mines they used to like sell Irish miners to the union army for money so they would

force Irish miners to go off and fight in the civil war and sell them for money and this led to supervisors and bosses of the mines getting murdered and killed and people not knowing who did it and that's when the fucking the corporations that owned the mining towns and the company towns really went against the molly mcguires by aggressively hiring the pinkerton private detective agency so this is the fucked up thing the coal and iron police who are the police of the mining town because this is a town that's owned by a mining company so it's like the penal laws the laws exist to benefit the town and the the people who have the money but not not the people living there so the coal and iron police are just oppressive as fuck consisting overwhelming

amount of orange men from back in ireland and then you've got the pinkerton detective agency who was founded by a scottish fella by the name of alan pinkerton and the pinkerton detective agency were a private detective agency that operated all around America and specialized in infiltrating and busting unions for large companies that's what the Pinkertons did and they would break up strikes they would intimidate workers all this really bad shit the Pinkertons hired a fella called James McPartland who was he would have been a Protestant from Northern Ireland to infiltrate and take apart the Molly Maguires and basically accused them of crimes whether they did it or not and identified about 20 men as being members of the Molly Maguires but the thing is too with the Molly Maguires it wasn't

like a hundred years ago with the white boys, where there's this peasant agrarian association dressing up in white, completely being inspired by these outlaw heroes. The Molly Maguires by the 1870s in the mines of Pennsylvania started to become legitimate and they were supporting and helping organisations like the Workingmen's Benevolent Association, which were a labour union, an early labour union in the United States. And the Pinkertons were trying to take it apart. The whole thing ended with the Pinkerton Agency and this James McPartland fella identifying 20 men very little proof and they were all executed in the largest federal execution in u.s history happened in 1877 in pennsylvania prison where they executed 20 irishmen who were members of this secret society, the Molly Maguires. But from that, from that bloodshed,

from the Molly Maguires standing up to the mining towns and saying, this isn't good enough. You have to realise there was disasters in these mines where you'd have maybe 500 people dying. Men, women and children because the mine didn't put in proper ventilation it was real carnage horrible horrible working conditions with no rights the molly mcguires are one of the cornerstones of modern workers rights in america and unions. Now these things unfortunately now are disappearing. So at the start of the podcast I said what inspired this and the little hot take I have

and the thing I find interesting is you know I've shown a credible lineage there going from 1700s outlaw folk heroes who were effectively superheroes who inspired the white boys who then inspired the Molly Maguires who then led to modern unions from Irish superhero tales and then I said now we have the disappearance of unions workers rights

these things are being taken away amongst the backdrop of people in their late 20s and 30s in an economic delayed childhood being distracted by superhero movies. The office environment of pool tables and free pizzas on Fridays, this only works on a generation who have had their adulthood delayed and who fetishize things from childhood and if you think it's too hot a take last year lads 2019 and this is a fact you can look it up

delta airlines right ran an advert for their own employees and the advert has a big xbox controller on it and delta airlines put this advert to their employees union dues cost around 700 a year but a brand new gaming system with the latest hits sounds like fun put your money towards that instead of paying dues to the union that is an official Delta Airlines advert to their own employees. 700 quid a year lads. To be in a union? Fuck that. Get yourself an Xbox.

You fucking idiot. You dumb child. Get yourself an Xbox you 35 year old child. That's what that is. It's systematic and it's present and Delta Airlines dropped the ball by being explicit there they straight up said you stupid fucking 35 year old pricks

with your toys fuck unions and get an Xbox but that's what the tech companies are doing in a much much nicer way with their bouncy castles and beanbag chairs it's the same shit what do you mean you want a union we've got free pizza on fridays what do you what do you want a union for i thought i was your friend why are you hurting your da i'm your da i'm your ma

it's the same shit and dublin is the company town if the developer of a co-living space is able to say with confidence it's okay for 20 adults to share a kitchen because they get fed in Facebook and then the same corporate headquarters are creating the conditions where the government need to present co-living apartments as a solution that's a feedback loop that's systematic toxicity Dublin is a company town that is the infantilisation the corporate infantilisation of an entire generation to strip back

rights that were hard worked for and fought for and bloodshed given from it's stripping back those rights by dangling, fucking childish carrots, in front of who they perceive to be children, so there's my boiling hot take,

that's a roaster, that's a roaster, that's like I said, that's your Forrest Gump, and all it is, is a, it's a little theory, it's a theory,

it's something I've been thinking about, and you know, what am I going to do now, am I going to fucking,? Am I going to fucking. Boycott Facebook. Boycott Google. Don't use Google anymore. Don't use Twitter.

No. You know. Because. I need these things for my fucking life. We're in a system here. The problem is with the fucking system. You know. It'd be nice to.

Have the perfect morality to for literally nothing i consume to have any impact whatsoever on human life and to be completely ethical that's not happening lads not happening in this in this fucking society everything is dripping in blood but that uber ruling that ruling that u Uber workers are now actual workers, I think that's fucking good. That's a good thing. I'm very happy to see that. Makes me feel a little bit better with the corporate headquarters of Uber in Limerick that at least now I go,

that corporate headquarters that is providing so much employment for people in Limerick and that corporate headquarters that. Is keeping that restaurant open. And that pub open. At least now. Their drivers are considered workers you know. It's complex. It's a complex situation.

With many layers and nuance inside it. And it's not black and white. Like on the internet. And. As it's a hot take as well it's it's me trying to fucking entertain you for an hour and a bit to find the most interesting story i can give you yart i'll chat to you next week god bless rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the tor the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre

in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.