Cool Zone Media.
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that when there's bad stuff, there's good people trying to not do the bad with the good and the all the words that work together. I'm your host, Margaret Giljoy, and my guest is James Hi.
James, Hello. I'm excited to be here for the final and in a series of episodes, I know this is gonna be the one with I mean, actually there's been fun stuff in all of it. I tried to pace it that way, you know, yeah. But here to help produce it is Ian Hi Ian, Hey, Magbine, Hey, James, Hi.
Ian.
Our audio engineer is Daniel.
Hi.
Daniel, Hi, Daniel. Ian's just trying to make us wait, Hi Daniel, thank you. Sorry. Just cut Margaret speaking, Just be like a ten second silence.
Our theme music was written for us by Unwoman and this is part four of our four part are about resistance by Armenian folks to the genocide of the aforementioned Armenian folks and where we last left our heroes, they had just been through one and a half to two genocides depending on how you count it, and a world war, and things were rough. But at least a guy got shot.
I had a dream last night where I was like, after the apocalypse, hanging out with a bunch of like anarcho pacifists who were all like early Aughts style like food and out bombs, kind.
Of hippie punks. M h, I'm familiar.
And I was like trying to talk to them about how pacifism was working for them in the apocalypse, and at one point one of them got caught, like stealing a bunch of diesel fuel from like a bunch of like let's say, chuds, and so he was like, well, I guess I'm just gonna lay down and let them kick me for a while until they get over it, and then I'll try to be their friend. And in the dream I was like, this is so stressful.
Yeah, that is a stressful scenario.
Yeah. Anyway that it was some kind of subconscious being like, hey, you're reading about a lot of heavy shit right now, so let's see. Most cliff notes versions of this history sort of treat the young Turks like they were done after World War One, that their leaders had scattered to the wind, and now they're leading quiet lives, no longer able to hurt anyone, This is not true. The exiled
leaders were still coordinating Turkish nationalism in Turkey. There was some conflict between them and like a general who was still in Turkey, but like, we're not gonna get into that. An armed rebellion started, a counter government was taking territory everywhere. The exiled leaders were also into creating a pan Islamic alliance to fight Russia and the West. Either of you ever heard of pan Turanism?
No, I didn't think, like Persian.
So it's some wacky race science thing called pan Turanism, which it is basically like, hey, there's this cool secret master race that includes Turks and Arabs and Mongols and also Finns and Hungarians.
Of course a natural combination of peoples.
There is some like language uralic stuff, but it's clearly culturally distinct areas and like trying to harken back to some like it's like the equivalent of being like the Nazis and caring about arianism, but like meaning it in a completely different way and meaning like literally from whatever.
I don't know about this shit. Yeah, anyway, the Nazis did like to join themselves to ancient Greeks a lot. I think that's more of a cultural thing than a yeah.
And so they're basically trying to come up with this like pan, whoever we can get well. Different of the leaders they actually kind of all hated each other at this point, but they all had different ways that they wanted to do it. The Exile leaders are still doing their thing, and the ARF leadership was like, well, no one got punished by the state. Besides, like a couple of people like, how are we going to do this?
And someone at the ARF's ninth General Congress in nineteen nineteen was like, or do we just kill them all? Or we just find out where they live and then shoot them intreasable? And this wasn't actually super popular when it was first recommended. Overall, folks were more on the like, I think our goal is to collectively not die. It's the old is living well the best revenge? Or is shooting a man in the street the best revenge conundrum?
Yeah? Tailor's oldest time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so they did it the way that I think you should deal with this kind of impasse, and.
They went for both. Yeah.
A small group with Garo, our bank occupier guy who showed up a bunch of times as a politician. Later, Garo ends up in charge of this quote special mission, the Bullets into Brains mission. They wrote up lists of targets. Some of the lists.
We have a bunch of the different lists or history does. I don't have them.
That would be cool because on media should give us budget to buy weird history artifacts and we can have a museum of cool people.
Oh yeah, I've been buying them with a budget that they pay me. But that's just me being the way to and died with money. I bought a Spanish Civil War Republic stamp. Oh nice, that's pretty cool. Which one? Oh, I don't remember. It's in my basement. I got to go look at it. I have a bad memory, sick. Yeah, they used them to raise funds a lot. They would sell them in other countries too, like oh cool, Yeah, I bought a Spanish Civil War Republic rifle. That's cool.
That would be more what I would want, But you know, it's pretty cool. I'll send you my little There are some things you can look for, Margaret, and then you can go in Gumbroker for hours, and then you can get one over from the chid. He doesn't know what he's selling.
My budget currently is at the Stamp Variety. There was like recently a friend of mine was working for a bookseller who had like a first edition I think it was a Living My Life by Emma Goldman with like a long inscription from Emma Goldman in the front. Oh wow, and like I wanted it really badly, but it was in the many thousands dollars category. And I'm into history,
but I feel like that level of history. I'm like, I actually think what Emma Goldman would want me to do is give that money to food, not bombs, you know, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you'll be directly.
Yeah yeah, Like if I was a museum, I would talk about this differently, right, My personal collection doesn't need.
That, no, yeah, yeah. These things should come to you as gifts from the friends.
Yeah, much like the gifts of bullets that they wanted to insert directly into the brains at very high speed of the people who had That's my transition back into where I was at. So they put up gotually these lists of names, and this included, of course the three Pashas, plus a bunch of commanders, administrators, and the leaders of that special organization that had done so much of the killing number one target though, that's Talat Pasha, the Grand Vizier.
In nineteen twenty in Boston, the Arf Regional Conference christened the whole thing Operation Nemesis because they're not a fucking name in operation.
Yeah. Kind of straight out of Massachusetts as well. I'd love to see it, yeah, yeah, real Megachusetts moment. It's fun because, like there's so many different.
Ways that people tell this story, and one of them is like, wow, Armenian exiles who weren't even there got together and it was just some middle class Americans, and it like divorces them from the political lineage that they were part of. But there's still like a little bit of truth to it, right, you know, You've got these like immigrants and children of immigrants getting together in New England to be like, all right, let's pull our money together with our middle class jobs and do this.
You know. Yeah, I think it may well have still been on the receiving end of bigotry for who they were, right, Like, that's definitely not inconceivable in early twentieth century America.
It's true, although the stuff that I've read about presents them as like being fairly attempted to integrate but I do not know. I've also read more from like the perspective of like their children, you know.
Okay, yeah, yeah, who is more Americanized in that second generation? Yeah.
The organizers of Operation Nemesis included a former editor of a newspaper, an accountant in Syracuse, New York, and Garro himself plus another general with twenty years of experience.
Is that the first accountant you've ever had on the podcast, Margaret? It might be.
And it's cool because there's actually you can listen to some of the other podcasts that are worth listening to. There's an NPR did one where it's like the accountant's like grandkid was going through his like stuff after he died and found all of the documents of Operation Nemesis and had never heard of it. Oh, he didn't tell anyone, His wife didn't know.
He kept it.
The secret of running this thing to his grave incredible.
You'd think there'd be some temptation, like on the on your deathbed if that person died in that way, to be like, oh, by the way, yeah, we got him back. Yeah that was me.
I'm a secret spy.
Yeah, yeah, the top up sec from that guy.
I know, I wouldn't last more than I'd be like calling my lawyer every week, be like, what do you think that the Statute of Limitations is on international conspiracies digital heads of state?
Yeah, I want to tweet it. Let me tweet it.
Yeah, all right, what if I go to Cuba, first.
City in Venezuela loggi on posting something and then wondering what to do with the rest of your life? Yeah, totally. And that's how you know I haven't gotten up too much.
All my petty crime is like in the stuff I write about, you know, like and then I was out of protest wearing all black. Anyway, So the Operation Nemesis was financed by middle class Armenian Americans who may or may not have known.
Where their money is going.
So the light way that people tell this story is they talk about it as a story of revenge, and like, that's true. It was vengeance, right, it's called Operation Nemesis. Well, Nemesis doesn't actually mean revenge, right, Nemesis is actually a more accurate word. It was a specific and important political
action that needed to take place. The people that they were going to kill were actively working to further the destruction of the Armenian people still, and maybe most importantly in terms of its impact, was the attempt to restore pride to the Armenian people. You will not survive ordering our genocide. The thing that's so inspiring to me about the story is how it's like, yeah, it's your wild eyed revolutionaries that are part of a grew out of
libertarian socialist democratic socialist movement. And it's your middle class Armenian American accountants, and it's your kind of disabled soldiers who have visions, all working together, all deeply focused on one mission that they pulled off against all odds. But there's also another take if you zoom out even further, and I'm going to get into it a little bit more about like geopolitics and all of it. The Western powers in Russia let it happen and nudged it along.
They were happy to let Armenians do their dirty work. But first they've got this whole plan. Now they've got Operation Nemesis. They have a list. Now they need volunteers, shortage of volunteers. The ads they put out in the newspapers were like bachelor's only, because they're like, this is a one way trip. We're asking you to go on, you might die.
Yeah, but what did the ad say though, and they just wanted hitman bachelor's only need apply. I think they were not like hit Man needed.
I think it was a little bit like, hey, Armenian exiles, like come apply for some important stuff. But like if it says bachelor's only, it is like a wink, wing, nudge, nudge, we're giving you a gun and pointing you you know.
Yeah, yeah, it's not like you're going to be an accountant. Yeah.
I actually think a lot of their op sec relied on the fact that no one spoke Armenian.
They have built in encryption.
Yeah, well, I mean later we'll talk about the encryption they actually used. But the fact that Armenian was like it allowed them to get away with even more I think, right. Yeah, Tillarian did not know about Operation Nemesis at first. He's a there in Constantinople and so he's like, all right, I figured it out. We should kill all of them, and I should find rich Armenians to fund it. He
has basically tried a one man Operation Nemesis. He is trying to build a parallel organization right because his mother keeps coming to him in his dreams and is like, hey, what's up, what are you doing? Yeah, you really got time to play video games.
Very early, other video games. Yeah. Did he know at this point did his family where they murdered in the genocide? Like, so his father survived.
I'm a little bit confused because some of the way that people write about it, they write about his visions as if they're true, or like as if they're like literal, Like I'm not quite sure whether his brother survived. I'm under the impression that his family died, Okay, Yeah, And like I I don't know, and I'm a little bit annoyed that I don't know is the answer to that? Yeah, Like at what point he was like sure they were gone or what?
Yeah, Well that's part of the thing, isn't it. Like I'm sure it takes away that closure in certainty totally. But he might have had it, and I just might not have read about it, even though I like kind of tried to look a bit, you know. Yeah, for sure.
So he's going around and he's like trying to find people to finance him in Constantinople, and then eventually he moves to Paris, which is a classic place to go bum around. He worked as a cobbler. He spent all of his time fantasizing about how to kill Talat Pasha. He didn't hang out with folks, He barely ate. All he thought about was this and then basically Nemesis, without telling him why, they sent him a telegram and a ticket to Boston, plus a visa and passport in his name.
It just rolls up in the post one day, like I think someone comes and gives it to him, okay, because they have like a bunch of diplomats and shit like that are part of Operation Nemesis, right, and so they like have gotten him all the paperwork. It's not even like I mean it's forged and that he didn't apply for it, right, but it's like real paperwork. And they've picked him to kill their number one enemy because he's shown such initiative already and he seems to be
very focused and committed. All the other assassinations Nemesis wanted quiet. This one they wanted done in public, and they wanted the assassin to turn himself in so that he could stand trial. This is how the Armenians would make their case to the world.
And so folks met him in New York as soon as he gets off the boat and they help him get on a train to Boston. He doesn't like any of these people. They're all like having fun, right, you know.
And he's just like eyes on the prize.
Yeah, he's like, what the fuck is wrong with everyone? They pick him up in Boston, they drive him to the newspaper. Tullarian's grouchy. Everyone's talking casually about the whole thing. He's just grim and driven. And eventually he meets people where he's he meets Garro right, and he's like, oh, okay, they have real revolutionaries here, right, They're serious. He wasn't much of a spy. He was a soldier. He wrote in his journal about how he wanted to grab people
and say to them, tell me where he is. I am a weapon. Aimy, which is a direct quote, and it goes hard.
Yeah, yeah, the just go hard. So they aimed him.
They put him on a steamship back to Paris, then to Geneva, where arf got in paper saying he was Persian, and sent him to Berlin with a student visa, which is where they were pretty sure Talt was living. His name was now Simon Tavicien a bunch of the genocidal fuckers were in Berlin. Actually, and when I say it's like this big organization we're actually gonna talk about at the end, it's about ten assassins and twelve spies and a few other people, and they work in seven countries.
It's like, really impressive, honestly what they did with so few people.
Yeah, no, that's genuinely impressive. Yeah.
So Nemesis, including Tellurian, found a reasonably high up guy pretty soon, and Tilarian was like, I should just kill that guy. But then he's like, no, I need to catch the bigger fish, right, you know, I need to hold on to this thing. And the young Turks had gone to Berlin because they had stashed a bunch of gold and Swiss and German banks and they wanted access
to it. Yeah, and plus they couldn't go to France because there's a ton of Armenians there and they're like, well, definitely recognized and killed in France, and the UK won't have them. And the Balkans were a bad place to be Muslim, so a lot of them went to Berlin. Someone went to Russia. We'll talk about that. The young Turks were arguing about how to move forward. Enver Pasha, for example, he was in with the Soviets and wanted to work with them in return for power, waiting to
bring the Islamic countries into the Soviet sphere. The Soviets were arming the Turkish nationalists who were fighting against the British occupation. It's a lot wanted to ally with the British, who were a capitalist nation who probably sold advertisements in the middle of history lessons you'd probably go to you went to university. I have no idea if you went to university in Britain, but I'm sure they interrupted their lectures to sell you bis skits.
Yeah, very very common. Yeah, tea, thank you, bask ma, mite, crumpets. Those the four cardinal directions of British nests. Yeah, and that's what we're advertised by is big crumpet. I don't know what a crumpet is. You don't know what a crump it is? Oh great? Is it what I would call a biscuit?
No?
No, no, okay, so no biscuits, cookie, Yes, that's correct, it's crump at a scone. No, No, crumpet is like a bread product, but the top is all bubbly. The closest analogy is like a half English muffin, I think. But it's good because the top is all bubbly, so it doesn't have like a crust on the top. So when you butter it, or you use your vegan substitute butter in our case, it sinks into the little bubbles, so it gets really buttery. That actually sounds really good.
They're really good. Yeah, I think trade Joe sometimes has him in America.
Yeah, okay, I'll give a crump at a chance and I'll toast you as I sorry, I know that it's really annoying. I was only easy ins because the UK came up and the thing and anyway, here's ads and we're back, and you missed a long conversation where James was defending the fact that the first floor is the second one.
Yeah, that is correct. I am actually a person who very often gets lost on lifts still after fifteen years and is God's saken country. It is one of the one of the ways in which I have failed to integrate as a migrant.
It's like the one thing that I'll like try and claim American supremacy on is the counting of floors. And I actually I wonder if people only care about it so deeply because we get lost.
You know, it impacts my quality of life. So yeah, it's something that I've become like a I refuse to compromise on it. But where do you go to Spain, Margaret, and you have half floors? Oh my god, I've been to Spain, but I like, I didn't run across have floors. If you ever lived in a really shitty apartment building in Spain, they have floors. Yeah, Like when you go in the lift, instead of having a door, it's just
like a mesh screen that you pull across. So like if you wanted to lose a limb at any point, you could just stick it out there and it would be gone. Yeah.
Yeah, I've been in the industrial elevators in the US or sometimes like that, like old warehouses and stuff.
Yeah yeah, yeah, that's exactly what it's like, except these ones are like the size of a coffin. Yeah.
That's how I feel about all elevators to me, is that they are all coffins. Oh, which is part of why everything's Oh I'm so American. I'm like everything's so small in Europe. I feel so constrained at all times.
Yeah, it is funny to watch American people that direct with European things, whereas I am like, everything is so massive in America. Why is it this big? Yeah, what's going on? It's still funny to my family will come here like fifteen years later and just be like, why are there so many milks? That's fair, that's the thing. Actually, the left and right can come together on this issue, right, there are too many milks. Yeah, that's fair.
And it's because all the alternative milks. We're still trying to find the right and pure one that doesn't destroy the environment, and it such a thing doesn't exist because of consumption and capital anyway, This is a milk cast, yeah, James. So I don't even want to say my favorite milk alternative because it's like wrong somehow. All of them are one by one proven to be bad. Yeah, much like countries where people fled to so Talat wanted to ally
with the British. Both Talat and Enver were waiting for the dust to settle before they could go home to Turkey, and they'd be fighting for a pan Islamic alliance of Turks and Arabs. Enver actually doesn't get got by Operation Nemesis. He dies in the classic way to die when you ally with the Red Army.
Does he get.
Purged, which is that he was machine gunned by the Red Army?
Yeah? Classic? Was it like a conscious machine gunning of him or just a general bumblefuck?
It was in a battle, this one. I actually can't like. He did the betrayal.
First.
He tried to do some independence from Moscow and they were like, all right, we're going to machine gun everyone, you know, Oh, okay, in a good fight whatever. I didn't read enough about Edvers passing.
Yeah, well he's dead. I just wanted to take potshots at Bolshevism. Yeah, no, anytime you want, please. Yeah.
So Nemesis is after Talat Pasha and they had to find one guy in a city of four million people, and they had almost no money with which to do it. They found him. They bribed border guards to tell them anytime Turkish nationals came and went. A diplomat, the Vice consul of the Republic of Armenia was passing information using diplomatic privilege across the world and they would write in
code and plus no one spoke Armenian anyway. So that helped some Armenians, fluent in Turkish without an accent, pretended to be Muslim Turks and joined Turkish cliques at school to learning what they could be Like, hey, yeah, like any important guys come over recently for no reason, just curious. They're probably better at it than I would have been. Yeah, Tillarian was not a fucking spy. He could barely speak German.
He had no natural affinity for languages, and so as Armenian friends, who had no idea he was an assassin, made him take German lessons. They're like, oh, come on, you're a student. He's like, not really a student, but he's enrolled in order to have cover, right, Yeah, they're.
Like, you got to learn German.
And he's like, he wants to scream, like no, I'm here to do a murder, you know, but he can't.
That's not a good idea. Kids don't do that, listeners.
He struggled with friends. Friends tried to be friends with him.
It's actually kind.
Of sweet how hard people worked to include him. I actually I find it really charming. Yeah, he didn't understand anyone who wasn't buried in deep mourning. His friends once dragged him out to dance. This is the most humanizing thing ever. They dragged him out to dance lessons against his protestations, and then he was so overcome by stress that he fainted, and so then he didn't have to go to dance lessons anymore. Yeah, we get on the friends for trying their best there.
I know, I know.
Slowly Nemesis made progress. One day, while watching a Turkish tobacco shop, he found the leaders of the special organization that had done so much of the killing. He followed them for miles. They went into the British embassy, and then he fainted and he lost them. He felt like he was losing his strength. He's getting sicker and sicker, and he's trying to convince Nemesis to just let him
kill those two leaders. He's already found, right, He's like, ah, my day's are numbered as a successful assassin guy, you know. But to Nemesis, the whole point is the killing in a public trial, and they needed to lot. Finally they got their Break's a lot in disguise without his mustache. It's like classic disguise, I know, but it like worked. They're like still not sure. For a really long time, you know.
Like, why would this do do this for himself? I have to find a picture of him with his mustache now and just check out like the yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, that is a prominent tash. Yeah wow, yeah he already went Fred points Yeah. Yeah. It's clearly in an integral part of his whole vibe, so I can see why he would look different without it. Yeah.
He has a very thick handlebar mustache that has curled up at the ends that looks like he's spending some time in Yeah, and it is like thicker than my head hair.
Yeah, and it's impressive. It looks like a slug, yeah, banana slug living on his lip there.
And he's like very it's like kind of like how he's known, you know.
Sure. Yeah. And so they see him at this train station because some young Turks are off on their way back to Turkey, right, and so they follow them there and then there's this huge Turkish man who's off to see them off, and so an Armenian who looks western eavesdropped and they didn't suspect him of understanding them, right, because they're like, oh, we're speaking Turkish, No one can understand what we're saying, you know, right, yeah, and folks
called him Pasha and this wasn't proof. A lot of people are getting called Pasha, right, Okay, you're going to say this seems like a fucking stupid thing to stick with that, like the honorifically you gave yourself.
I can't remember if in parts wad or too whether I talked about Pasha being an honorific Yeah you did, you mentioned it in me in one okay, cool, but yeah, no, totally it is. It was absolutely stupid of them, but it was like had started to become more of the style just kind of call it everyone that apparently, or okay, I don't know. That's at least what they argued when they were like I had to have been him, they said Pasha, and then people are like, no, just anyone will say that these days.
You know.
Yeah, it wasn't proof, but it was likely. They followed him home to his apartment building, and so now they know where he lives. They just don't know it's him. They sent someone around to pretend to want to rent a room in the same building, and they chatted up the landlady. You know, at the time, it's like a lady owns a house and has three rooms in it
and rents them out right. Yeah, and this tenant was a businessman whose room had been rented for him by the embassy, which is not how businessmen normally have their rooms rented.
No, that's an unusual one.
So Tillarian starts stalking this man, basically following him everywhere, learning his schedule. He's like every day at ten am he comes out and goes on a walk, and he's ready to kill the guy. He's like, all right, we got him, Like probably him, let's just kill him again.
Very poor persek that like having a daily routine where you do exactly same thing at the same time. Not a good way to avoid assassination. No, well, and actually one of his whole things. I don't think I put this in the script.
He kind of like a day or two before he died, the Brits who were setting him up to kill him, Yeah, were like, aren't you worried about assassination? And he's like, no, you can't go through your life living that way.
You're king.
I'm both it, yeah, like fucking yolo and that shit right is great?
Yeah, it just in the moment, Yeah, self, fund know where to be seen, et cetera.
Yeah, and his friends are like, look, you can't kill that man because we don't know it's him, and you cannot kill an innocent man by accident, And like, you know, I'm like telling this whole long story about like a bunch of killing, right, And I keep using the word murder just because it's a fun word. Yeah, but it's I mean, it's not murder, right. And more than that, it's like there is a difference.
You know.
People are like, all violence is violence. It's just not true. And everyone knows that on some level, you know, Yeah, it would be wrong to kill an innocent man that you think is your target. Whereas if all you care about is geopolitics, I'll kill a bunch of them. And as long as you got the right guy too, who cares.
You know. Yeah. So I I really respect Operation Nemesis for this, And I don't know how it would have gone. It's quite possible that the Armenians would have eventually confirmed his ID or just gone for it anyway, that's possible. Yeah, But what almost certainly happened is that Western powers who knew where he was were like, yeah, let's just tell the Armenians where he is, they'll take care of him. Because Talat Pasha had been meeting with the Brits to
try and like play forty chess or whatever. You know.
Yeah, he told them, look, we're ready to get the Islamic Soviets to revolt against the USSR if you support us. If you don't support us, we'll fucking kill you all in Turkey and drive you out, British bastards. The Brits were like.
We literally just beat you in a war. I'm not afraid of you.
I mean, there is an ongoing war happening in Turkey, and like the Brits are like not totally winning it, right, but like the random British spies are not fucking scared of this dude, And so what the Brits do? This is like one of those moments where you realize that like the Western world hates the non Western world far more than they hate each other. They go to the Soviets and they're like, hey, the Pasha's you know, the
young Turks are planning to fucking do an uprising. How should we play this?
Right?
And the Soviets are like, yeah, all right, let's fucking.
Kill the guy.
I just tell the Armenians where he is and take care of that.
Yeah. Yeah, the loyalty of states is always going to be to states, not people, right, Like totally see this, Like when you look at the war in BM. I'm writing a book about anarchists at war right now, and you look at the an s well, right when the conflict goes from being between states to about the state, right, yeah, when what is at stake it's not who will be
in charge, but that someone will be in charge. You see the world pivot really fucking quickly away from all these so called systems of alliances and blocks and organizations and treaties and such. Should everyone's just like no, we can't. Like every state starts to to want things right not to happen, And yeah, that's what they're doing here. I guess they always look out for each other first. No, totally.
And in this case, it's like we're more afraid of the scary pan Islamic you know, scary other than we are of this thing that we claim with all of our hearts. Is like all that matters is communism versus I mean, you can see it, and I.
Know we're mostly trying to avoid talking about coron events.
You can see it in current events where buying and is trying to be like, hey, Trump is basically Hitler Project twenty twenty five is real bad and then immediately is like, well soon we'll stop all campaigning, you know.
Yeah, yeah, it's uh yeah, I guess it's.
Similar because when they say like, we cannot have political violence in this country while in the middle of enacting the genocide against Palestine, what they mean is you can't kill politicians because I'm a politician. Yeah, you know, yeah, it's bad for all politicians, and so their loyalties are class loyalties essentially. Yeah, we would not be the first to note the disparity between political violence is terrible. What we send five hundred pound bombs to it throughout every
fucking week. Yeah. So the Brits are more afraid of Islam than they are of the USSR. They don't want Islamic revolt in their territories like India, and they also don't want Islamic to revolt in their territories that lead to India. The King of England has more Muslim subjects at this point than any monarch in the world. I think now that the Ottoman empire has gone, and so like Ariel don't want them revolting. This feels similarly they have a ton of Islamic Soviets and they don't want
to lose them. We are not one hundred percent sure that this is how Nemesis got confirmation. We know the Brits and the Soviets were like, let's let the Armenians kill him. And we also know that a few days later Tilerian got a ciphered telegram from Nemesis like headquarters in Geneva, saying like, yup, he's our guy, Go get him Champ, you know. And then my favorite way that we know, the British spy, the one who was going to meeting with Talat, he kept a detailed daily journal
every day except the assassination. I just took a day off, and then the next day he's like, huh the newspapers told me Talats dead.
Wow. Yeah, oh, just got back from my holiday and found this.
Yeah, which is still better that opsect than what we've been talking about earlier.
Yeah, yes, yeah, yes, yeah, it's true. Still the unspectacular.
It is very frustrating living a life where you're like I can't keep a proper journal, because you know, like.
Yeah, yeah, occasionally I'm complicit and murder.
Yeah, and so I feel reasonably confident that this is what happened, is that they were like, yeah, he's your guy. As soon as they had this confirmation, Telearian is like, man, you know what I need. I need to buy stuff, just sweet products and services, like a new apartment or whatever's advertised next, like these ads.
Yeah, he just begins to be a happy consumer. Yeah, and we're back. He got at least one of those things. You got a new apartment. Sweet.
Telearrian moved apartments to be across the street from his quarry. He told his landlord that the reason he was moving on short notice is that the gas light in his old apartment was affecting his conditions like epilepsy, and so he needed to be somewhere with electric light. There is a gas lighting, n hear, and I don't know where it is noted in his new spot. Tileririan just stayed vigil at the window, watching all hours of day and night,
scarcely sleeping. He'd leave his food on, he'd like fall asleep at his post.
Like oh yeah, this dude does have a tremendous amount of focus and drive. So it's genuinely quite quite impressive and concerning.
I have never read about anyone quite this single minded, you.
Know, Right, the whole years of his life, he's literally cared for nothing else.
Yeah, and he has gone to four countries at least in the process already, right, you know. And so the plan is simple. He's going to kill him and then he's going to stay by the body so that he can be arrested and go on trial. He's going to deny the conspiracy. He's not going to bring up the conspiracy, but he's going to say he's an angry Armenian who saw him and was overcome with anger. The next morning, a lot came out. Tilarian headed down to go to
a shooting. The lock on the front door of his place is broken, and he's like, oh no, and he's like trying to break it open, and he finally has to go wake someone up to help him open it. Yeah, and then it's too late, and so he's like, Okay, I'll wait for this guy to come back. He comes back at the same time, right, right, He doesn't come back that day. Tilarian loses his fucking mind. Right, He's like, it's blown. He saw me in the window. I fucking
ruined it. I am the disgrace to everything, you know. In the end, it was probably for the best that this happened because he hadn't cleaned up his place of all the notes and evidence yet. Oh yeah, you want to do that, so yeah, I know he should have done it sooner, but he did it in time. Yeah, he was busy with his window stuff. Yeah, exactly. He sent a friend away with all the evidence and then resumed his perch and then Tlot didn't.
Show up for days.
Ooh, and Tilearian is like losing his mind.
Yeah.
What actually happened is that it's a lot left town to go meet with the Brits. And this is when the Brits were like, aren't you afraid someone's gonna kill you?
And he's like, nah, not me. Yeah, I tell that passa no, sir.
No.
A man who's not afraid to shave off a mustache, ain't afraid of death.
Ego suicide was when you take mustache.
Yeah that's right.
I'm not the left to lose. Yeah yeah, yeah, just living free.
And then finally one day he's back home and he's back on his schedule with a ten am walk, and I think it's like he goes out to buy like cigarettes.
In the newspaper or something. Okay, yeah, classic nineteen twenties European guy vibe. Yeah no, absolutely, yeah, small coffee. Yeah.
I mean it's like, look before you know that cigarettes are bad for you. It's the good life. I'm gonna leave every day at ten in the morning and go read what's happening, walk around a nice city like, oh.
Yeah, it's great till someone shoots you in the face. He still smiles.
Yeah, he didn't have too long to think about what was happening.
Yeah, yeah, Drew. He was happy he was doing what he loved. Yeah, exactly, smoking or reading in his paper. Yeah.
Tilarian slips out when he sees him. He walks parallel to the murderer, like across the street for several blocks because he's like, okay, I need to get ahead of him, I need to come around, I need to confirm for certain I need to look him in the face. I think a little selfishly, he's like, I want to look this man in the face. But most importantly he's like, I am killing the right man. I need to have
visual confirmation that this is my target, you know. Yeah, So he walks a little bit faster for several blocks, crosses the street, turns around, walks towards him, so a lot Pasha never saw it coming. Tilarium saw him face to face for positive id held a luger to his head just under the ear. One shot blew his brains out. There's a ton of witnesses. Pretty immediately he flees because the crowd's mad. And then he like gets like a block or two and he's like, shit, I'm not supposed
to run. That's like the whole fucking thing, you know. So he like stops and he's caught up. The angry mob catches up with him and like kicks him and you know, starts beating him up pretty bad. He winds up in custody, like some cops break it up, and then they like bring him back to the body and he's like, yeah, I did it, like take me at jail whatever, you know. Yeah, and then he's on trial really quickly. And this is a huge, huge deal of
a trial for obvious reasons. Yeah, it only lasts three days.
Wow.
His defense was the old fuck that guy argument.
Classic.
So at this point he makes up a story. He describes in detail all the horrors of witnessing his own family be massacred and how he barely escaped through the mountains and you know, like I was on the death march, and a lot of details about all these horrible things that happened, you know, and it was all a lie. But he was telling the truth about what had happened in Meia, right, or to Armenians.
Right, He's just like making a composite character.
Yeah, he had seen brutality, but his cover story was a lie. The goal was to bring the eyes of the world onto the atrocities of the genocide. But if they found out he was just an assassin working for a conspiracy, he will surely hang and it'll kind of undermine some of the sort of moral high ground that the Armenians are presenting themselves to have. Yeah, one of the reasons the trial went so well for him is that Germany wanted him to get off.
That will help.
The geopolitics angle is like, it's like the less fun angle, but it helps. It's important to understand. Yeah, Germany is newly a republic and they're like, oh my god, I swear to god, we had nothing to do with the genocide. I was all the Ottomans, they're bad. I mean, look at them. There can we use orientalism here? Is that allowed?
I think so? And they're bad, We're good. We're good.
Germans would never hurt anyone, We'd never do a massmer We're Germany. Funny in retrospect.
To be fair, they were the wim Germans, you know, maybe different Germans, that's true. They were quite nice in many ways.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, one of the more interesting republics in history.
Yeah, it's true. Not the longest lasting.
No, the Germans couldn't afford to let the trial delve into their complicity, so they were like, we're not going to get super deep into all the details, you know, and we're gonna do this quickly. And so the prosecution was like, well, the Turks are really bad, so of course this guy had to kill him.
Amazing. Yeah read dub for like a district attorney. Yeah, yeah, I get it, dude, Like what we don't do the same totally.
Like I think they were like a little bit like and he probably shouldn't, you know, but I mean they they were like, yeah, absolutely, it's fine. The defense and the prosecution were on the same side of this because the defense's argument was yes, he did it and he should have, and the defense was incredibly well funded. This is like Operation Nemesis was a little bit shoe string and like had some money. Armenian expats just drop like
all their money on this case. Like I fucking would, yeah, you know, one hund Like I'd mortgage my house to get this man off if I'm an Armenian expat at this point.
You know, yeah, he's the one guy who has get like you said before, not only got revenge, that's one thing, but like stop this shit happening again or whatever. Yeah, toxic shit they were on next, you know, like, yeah, he struck a blow for the for your side.
Yeah, and like you just kind of can't do this. You can't kill all of us without dying, you know.
Yeah.
He made it so that if you kill Armenian people, that's consequences, like yeah, yeah.
His defense described how he was sickly, how he'd started fainting after the massacres he'd seen, and this is true. Witnesses would talk about seeing him faint in public at no point where they like, hey, uh, how come you're not actually in class, or hey, uh, why do.
You have a gun? Yeah?
You know, like they just like don't ask these questions. Yeah, they're the like subtext here is that I think Germany also knew about Operation Nemesis, right, and uh, witnesses came to testify about the genocide and this is their chance for media. And there are some details that were said during this that I'm not going to share that are even worse than the stuff I read last episode horror movie bad instead of war movie bad. Is what some
of the stuff that happened was. There were a bunch of star witnesses who came who had known to Lot personally, who were all on the like fuck that guy level, right, Like three people who knew him came to be like, yeah, but fuck that guy. There was this Westerner who had written a bunch of books about the previous massacres, the eighteen nineties massacres that you know, led to the attempted
assassination of the Sultan. Yeah, and then the highest ranking German military officer in Turkey during the war came and testified about Like, yeah, but fucked a lot, right.
It's a real like avengeous moment.
And it was a very like because we were good and us we had nothing to do with it.
Yeah, we couldn't stop. There's nothing we could do.
Yeah, I swear I will throw him under the bus at the first available. Oh look, he's already under the bus.
I did that. Let's stump on him now, yeah, I mean, like, good on him whatever, you know, I mean he should have stopped the China, say what was happening? Fuck him?
But like you know, and then there was this Armenian bishop who came from England to testify. You know, it's like this three day trial that happened right away. Like obviously this bishop was immediately like I am on the next fucking boat.
Yeah yeah he was. He had a suitcase backed yeah yeah, because you couldn't. He doesn't even have a plane back then He's get on a boat yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, a man was rowing. He was ready to go. Yeah. Immediately starts skiffing it across the channel, you know.
Yeah, he's just waiting at the belt of the Dutch border. You know, the entire time the whistle blows.
He starts running. He starts running. He's like a like a trathlete or something comes out of the water immediately runs.
Later, I think, I think I didn't put this part in the script. Later, this Armenian bishop helps smuggle to Leri into England.
Hell yeah.
And so after three days of testimony, the jury goes. It takes them less than three hours to agree, Fuck that guy is a legitimate excuse for killing this man. He was not a criminal. He was a hero, which I mean is true. And the courtroom exploded into applause and like women ran forward with flowers. The New York Times headline was they simply had to let him go
with an exclamation mark. But that one's like messy, it's a little bit like it's actually trying to grapple with some interesting stuff where they're like, how do we cope with the fact that you're never supposed to assassinate people? And that's wrong, but not killing this man would have been wrong too. We don't understand, you know.
Yeah, I guess there's a difference between like we shouldn't lock this man up or hang him and hell yeah, assassination.
Right, totally and clearly a lot of people are like, hell yeah, assassination.
Yeah, which is understandable. Yeah.
And then after the trial, Delarium was deported to Turkey. They were like, yeah, he got got out of here by way of Serbia. He didn't go to Turkey. As soon as agains a Serbia focks off with that bishop and gets to England nice. And then he gets to the US and he basically goes on this like whirlwind. Yeah fuck yeah, I killed that fucking guy. He took a victory lap. Yeah, he takes a victory lap around the US, around the Armenian diaspora, and then his mental health is better.
I was wondering that, like he had this mission, Like what's he going to do after his mission to done?
There's like photos of him smiling. I don't know whether epilepsy and stuff stopped. He dies of a seizure eventually, so I like, obviously actually don't know enough about medicine. Does seem like they'd be related to me because they're brain stuff, but I don't actually know. But yeah, his mental health improves, he retires from the Assassin game because look, if he is ever caught killing anyone ever again, this blows the entire conspiracy, right.
Yeah, you know, he's.
Done his work, you know, Yeah, he's hit the target if he wants to hit Yeah, He also never wants to kill anything again. Oh wow, including animals. He later, at some point he joins a gun club and he refuses to go hunting because he says, I'm never going to kill anything over again. I genuinely really like this man.
Yeah. No, these guys seem to be pretty right on.
He goes back to Serbia, he reconnects with his father. He reconnects to that woman at the very beginning where I was like, and then he kind of had this you know.
Oh, then they had to be chased for the revolution.
Yeah, which I'm actually secretly glad for because she was like fifteen, but like, yeah he was eighteen, Like I'm not mad, yeah yeah, yeah, like byoth children. Okay, yeah he was not a creep. Yeah no, yeah, he was chased for the revolution. He comes back and like he writes a lot in his journals about how he's like he needs to like prove that he's like worthy, you know, for.
Her and stuff, you know.
Yeah, and he marries her, ah, and they have two kids, and he starts working in his family's coffee wholesale trade with his father. And like, I think his either uncles or maybe like uncles in law or something. I didn't write that down, and then they end up moving in a couple different places. In nineteen fifty seven, they moved to San Francisco, and he worked for an Armenian like a famous Armenian restaurant tour whose name I didn't write
down because I didn't recognize it. And I do this thing where like when I write fiction, I try not to include names if they're not going to come up a couple of times, because otherwise I get overwhelmed as a reader and I don't remember anyone's names.
Yeah.
Yeah, he becomes like a Russian novel where you have to have a note pad with everyone's nameationship to each other.
Yeah, exactly. I try not to do that. And so that's why, like, since I'm not writing history, I'm telling history as a story, you know, like history books should have everyone's fucking names and the dates so that you can cross reference everything. I'm fully on board with that, but you know, it's like, I don't know I'm defending that. I'm not even like I'm explaining why I don't include the name of the restaurant.
Here that he worked for. Yeah, it makes sense.
And then he died of a stroke in nineteen sixty, not super old, not super young. I think that puts him in his sixties or seventies.
Yeah, most of his life happens after this, so right, like he's in his work, like his twenties.
Yeah, yeah, he's like twenty four to twenty five when he kills the guy.
Perfect. Yeah, he did it. You know, it's like a rare I don't know. Obviously, he's still probably carried unbelievable trauma for the rest of his life totally, but like, yeah, to see someone feel like they've kind of completed their circle. Yeah, I know a lot of people who survived these things lived for the rest of their life with survivor's skill or whatever else. Yeah, so he gets to do both.
He gets to live well and like also murder the dude who was responsible for murdering members of his family and community. No, you're right.
It's what we were talking about earlier, where they were like, is living well the best revenge? Or is killing the guy the best revenge? And the answer is why not both? Dot give Yeah you know, yeah, that's right. Yeah, you can have two. After Tillerian retired, Nemesis wasn't done. They killed at least six more high ranking young Turks who were behind the genocide. And they did all this with ten assassins, twelve additional spies, and a handful of other
diplomats and folks doing behind the scenes work. And there's like also really amazing stories and all of that I really recommend. I usually read one to two books and then read a lot of like academic articles and shit like that to provide context and fill in gaps and stuff. There's one book on this by Eric Bogosian, who also wrote that place Suburbia that I really liked as a kid, called Operation Nemesis, and it gets into more of the details after this, and it is absolutely worth reading, and
so I recommend it to any listeners. There's like a prison break. Believe me, there was a strong temptation to six part this, but instead I'm four parting it.
We can save them for it'll treat down the line.
Yeah, totally. And so they did all this work twelve ish people, seven countries, three continents, with the support of everyone from conservative Armenians who hated the Tashnags to the Toashnags themselves. And it's not bad for twenty fourish people because as Margaret Mead once put it, never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. She It's just
what she was going full Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I haven't bothered to look up more about who Margaret Meade was, but you know, I'm sure, I'm sure she would have been done with it. And that's where we're going to leave it for this week. The Armenian struggle continues, the
attempt to destroy them continue. That falls more under current events than history, but it's absolutely, unfortunately worth looking into, both their recent attempts to destroy them as a people by Azerbaijohn and also the potentially upcoming more of it. There's a lot of talk that's happening right now about how after this like climate conference in Azerbaijohn is over, they might do real bad stuff to Armenians again, and
that's worth looking into, unfortunately. Yeah, but what's also worth looking into is James's stuff.
Hi, what do you go? Yeah? I hope it won't be as as depressing as that thing, which is sad. What if I go? I have a Patreon. You could just search my name on Patreon and you can find it where I write about stuff. I write about things I am reading. I write stuff that I can't sell because freelance journalism is as dead as Talat Pasha at the moment someone has shut it in the face. It's a very very sad time for journalism. And yeah, you
can go that. I try and make stuff free after a while, some of the stuff you will have to pay me a little bit, just like a dollar is fine. That that's enough money. And sometimes I write about going outside there as well, and I do that for free because I want people to go outside. I believe it is good for you and it is how we all get through all of this shit. Aside from that, I would love to plug organize it with your friends. You don't have to organize across three continents to kill the
perpetrators of genocide. Instead, you can feed hungry people in your community. So do mutual aid. You don't need to read a bunch of books by like old white dudes with bids to understand mutual aid. Just get together with your friends and help people, and you will feel better and the people you're helping will feel better as well.
I remember, once I read this book, God, I think I even brought it up on a podcast recently, but
I'm much for as one of these. I read this book called Russia through a shot Glass, which is like a hobo traveling around in the USSR and he's like, you know, down and out or whatever, and it had this moment that explained something that I had never really truly internalized, where he's talking to this you know, this beggar and they're drinking under a bridge or something after day's work, and the beggar's like, yeah, no it I'm helping people and they help me, people give me money
and they feel better. And it's just like said on cynically. It's not like hey, I'm getting one on them or yeah whatever, like you know, it's like it's a man who's fallen through the cracks of the society that's supposedly perfect and you know whatever. But state capitalism is roughly as bad as regular capitalism. So yeah, feeding people, helping
people is good for both of you. It's instead of we have this idea of like exchange where like we have to each get something from the other, you know, whereas there's actually things that we can do that just make both people wealthier and feeding people is one of those things, so that's also my plug. Also also the go outside. I know it's kind of hot out the summer, but it's the coolest summer for the rest of your life, so go make the most of it.
It's God.
Yeah, get up early, go outside, which out for snakes if that's a thing where you live.
That is actually one of my biggest problems with the fact that I, like, I've been mostly trying to only go out once the peak of the sun is gone, but then it's like snake time and snakes central. Yeah, I've yet to see ral snakes in my property, and I'm very happy about that because I'm usually out with my dog and.
Yeah, that's scary. Way. Yeah, I got pursued by dad. I've never seen a rat snake like. I asked a snake expert about this. The informed conclusion seems to be that, just like people, some snakes are just assholes. Because this guy was, like, he wasn't just standing his ground right, who was coming at me? I thought it was going to come to come to blows. Didn't. Yeah, but I don't want to hurt snakes. Don't hurt snakes. They just snaking around. I mean like, I heard a snake before
you let it bite you. Yeah, if it's venomous, yes, don't go gently onto that good night of rattlesnake death.
Yeah, don't be like the post apocalyptic pacifist.
You lie down. Yeah, I mean, like whatever.
At the end of the day they fed in that dream, they were like running a like you know, a whole bunch of food, mutual aid stuff. And it's fine, you know, but yeah, whatever you can also, yeah, get ready for what's coming, and we'll all take care of each other through it and it'll be as well as we can make it. And yeah, yeah, I'll see you all next week when I talk about something really light and next week's topics.
It's light and fun, but it'll be interesting. Oh no, I'll talk to you then.
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