Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People did Cool Stuff. You're a weekly reminder that Wednesday comes after Monday, and so if this part came after the first part. I'm your host, Marta Kiljoy and my guest is James. It's down. Hi, Hi, James, Hi, lovely to be here. We were just talking about Wallace and Grommitt because we are terrible people and know nothing about England except Wallace and Grommit.
And it's a good we we we're wre It's some Gromit respects over here. It's a high point of British culture imperialism.
I think I.
Haven't watched since I was a kid, but I didn't think there's anything problematic, Like.
I don't know, probably the achieved that penguin. I'm not sure. Yeah, maybe they did not kind to the to the sheep. Who knows, but also not problematic. It's Sophie Hi, Sophiehi. And our audio engineer is Daniel Hi. Danel Hi, Danille Hi, Daniel.
Our theme music was written for us by unwoman. And if we seem a little distracted, it's because some shit's happening right now as we record that we don't know what's going to happen, but we're not going to tell you what it is because you're you live in the future and either nothing happened last week or lots of stuff happened last week. Anyway, This is part two of a four parter about Operation Nemesis and Armenian resistance to genocide. And when we last left our heroes they were like,
we don't like this. What do you mean the first Armenian genocide. That's a terrible name for a thing that's happening to us. What are you getting at Because spoiler alert, it's going to get worse than twenty years. But it's the eighteen nineties and the Sultan wants to simplify his kingdom. The Sultan has overseen wide scale massacre of Armenian populations and they organize to do something about it. They started defending themselves by setting up Friend of the Pod revolutionary
socialist organizations that were unabashedly into terrorism. I didn't set out to have be a friend of the Pod, but it is a thing that people have hit upon a lot in life. When you're in the middle of being mass murdered, is to resist by the means that are available. To.
Yeah, it does work. It's it's one of the few ways to not get mass murdered or it to minimize the mass murdering.
Yeah, unfortunately, well we don't really have an ab we can't like scientific death at history. But oh, that would be dark. Oh I would totally watch a TV show where people anyway whatever, like once we invent time machines and we just destroy them all. I'm a little bit off track. I love this. I love this.
That would be a great podcast. Marga goes back in time. She has five Kalashni coughs. Who will she give them to?
Yeah, and two boats put in the boat. Yeah, you're the Marines now. Because Armenian resistance culture has always been well historically was actually pretty interestingly leftist and anti authoritarian. This goes back a long time, back to future friend of the pod, the Polician who's I'll know how to pronounce their name by the time I talk about them.
More Christian rebels of the seventh century who revolted against feudalism, the superstitions of the church, and the oppression of women by men, which is pretty early to start having a revolt for those things.
Yet into it, I'd love to see that. Yeah, I'm excited to learn more about them one day.
Yeah, well, we'll build a time machine and we'll give them collestional coughs and see what happens. Sick. Probably it'll be that if you take the most ardent revolutionary and give them a koalestion of cough within a month, or worse than the Zar himself, but you know whatever. Fast forward back to the eighteen nineties and these early Armenian nationalist movements. They start off honestly pretty cool as far
as I can tell. They're really into forming a secular democracy that doesn't discriminate regardless of ethnicity, gender, or immigration status. Like specifically, they're like, hey, it doesn't matter whether or not you're born here, Like, we want everyone to be treated the same. This is far better than modern quote unquote democracies. Yeah, including this one. Yeah. The most famous of these organizations doesn't get called ARF, and that is
a shame. It's the Armenian Revolutionary Federation or ARF. They're mostly called mostly called toshnog.
Okay, also cool wood, fun wood to say, no, that's true, good bad name, that's true.
ARF is just fun. Because I'm a terrible person. The fighter. They were mostly called toshnog their fighters are called Tashnog's and arf was started by mixture of anarchists, socialists, and nationalists, which is a ow the kind of thing only the nineteenth century is providing. Yeah yeah, yeah, or probably the twenty first century. Yay, but we'll know better this time and it'll be worse. They desire to create a quote libertarian socialist society in Armenia with freedom of religion and
speech and assembly and all that shit. They were founded by folks in a blurry space between socialism, anarchism, and nationalism. Like it was less like I'm an anarchist and I'm joining this, I'm a socialist, I'm a nationalist. It was like a little a little stew you know. Yeah.
I think that was probably a lot more common back then, Like we see that a lot of other movements around the turn of the twentieth century. Right, Yeah, you don't have to like have a flag in your bio. You can just be a person who has heterodox beliefs taken from different sources.
Yeah yeah, Now I'm like imagining what their flag. Anyway, they probably had a flag, and they also the founders this cut their teeth as part of the Russian nihilists. They were like just part of the people run around trying to explode the czar or I think that this was people's will who are a little bit distinct but are not I don't know, whatever the blurry speaking of a stew of revolutionary terrorists, that's where they come from, the stew of revolutionary terrorists in Russia. The arf is
still around somewhere along the way. They got shitty, at least according to an Armenian that I talked to, they started leaning way more into the nationalism and like homophobia and like pure bloodlines and if you're not the right kind of Christian you're bad, they know, and less on the socialism and not at all in the anarchism these days.
I think that this shift started happening in the twentieth century, probably in the interwar period, like shortly after the events we're going to be talking about this week and next week, but I couldn't promise you. But in the meantime, before they became reactionaries, they started off really cool. I think, as justus as I can figure, they did cool stuff. And there's a bunch of other groups as well, including one that's like more properly Marxist, but they're less woven
into this particular story. And so these groups they just went around defending Armenian people, and they did that by killing collaborators and spies and dumping their bodies on the streets with like notes attached to them being like, shouldn't a snitch, motherfucker. I don't know what the notes said. The notes said, do you know, shouldn't snitch? Motherfucker? Yeah, And they raised money for their cause by kidnapping wealthy Armenians and holding them for ransom. Okay, impressive, real Robin
hood vibes. Yeah. And their other big thing that they were into was handing out illegal firearms to villagers so that people could themselves defend themselves from me. Yeah. Yeah. Every time they get a little bit cooler, I know. Okay, and then here's where they either peak cool or start
going bad. Who knows. If you just read about it and out of context, it's kind of like neat flavoring because they are these anarchist socialist nationalists, Christian Holy Army fighting for a secular state in gender equality through gorilla campaigns and terrorism. But they are like also into all this religious iconography even though they're fighting for a secular state. The volunteer fighters take on a name that means devotee.
Some workers for the party were called apostles, and the gorilla fighters in the hills were called martyrs for the cause because they weren't expected to survive. Interesting, Yeah, I.
Get lots of and I'm thinking specifically of the Kurdish freedom gorillas, So you use their culture of martyrdom is very developed there.
Yeah, like outside of a religious context. Yeah, and this is like within a religious context but also within a pro secular Yeah.
That's reading like, yeah, they're religious, but they're not like a theocrat.
Yeah, it's like a culturally religious thing. Again, the best I can read about this, you know, and the word for their actions like what we would call like an action or a direct action or a military campaign or something they would call a holy task. Oh wow, the holy work. I don't know. I like, I just like the idea of this like holy work of ensuring religious freedom, including freedom from religion. Yeah, I can appreciate that. And then before they would go into battle, priests would come
out and bless them. But despite this resistance, Muslim violence against the Christians continued, and it's like, again, we can't ab test. It's possible that this was not as complete because of this culture of resistance. We do know that ARF was incredibly influential, but the massacre of Armenians, the culture of massacre continues. They are especially priests, get it.
I think this is when they start crucifying everyone. It's like, I'm not gonna get into the specific examples because I'm gonna do it later when we talk about the genocide and I'm sorry, but it feels necessary, so I'm not gonna do it this time. So, but it's bad, It's really bad. And so the ARF and the other groups are like, well, how the fuck do we get the world to know about what we're facing? And this is
a major problem that Armenians continue to face to this day. Yeah, and so they're like, well, why don't we go raid and occupy a huge bank that's owned by the Westerners, the Imperial Bank Ottoman. Okay, love this, yeah, no, this is watching a movie about all of this. In eighteen
ninety six, they do just that. Two dozen Tashnag fighters run into the bank, throwing bombs, they shoot and kill a guard, they get hostages, like dozens of hostages, and they occupy the building, and they go through the building and they put dynamite on every floor so that like if someone fucks with them, that they're all going out. Yeah, the early mutually issued destruction. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I love this era because, like the I feel like, at no point, possibly we're approaching another point where this will be the case again, has the state and just like random groups of people motivated by whatever been like roughly at a par in terms of their capacity to do violence, right, Like, everyone has fucking dynamite. People are getting maxim guns, you know, like, yeah, there's nothing the cops have that you don't. There's no Apache helicopter to come after you.
No, that's a good point. Although there is artillery involved in this story, but I mean soon enough, there's artillery in all sides, right, yeah, it's just a tube. Yeah. And so the Sultan is like, well, it's not my fucking bank. I'll just kill you all. Fuck the hostages.
I'm just gonna kill everyone. But the Western forces that are like kind of occupying this place already because they have so many economic interests, they tell the Sultan they point guns at the Sultan's palace and they are like, if you blow up our bank, we will level the palace of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. It's when you know, capitalism done taken out of the yeah, exactly.
And so this three way standoff. One of the arf guys was this twenty four year old who went by the name of Arman Garo and he's later going to become one of the masterminds of Operation Nemesis and like a big important, like Armenian politician, and we'll talk about
him a bunch. He was born into a wealthy family and he had been studying abroad in France when he learned about how Armenians were being treated back home and he was like, not fuck that, and he volunteered to fight and he didn't show up and like I'm in charge. He actually the actual military commander of this operation was a seventeen year old named Babkinsuni and he was killed during the takeover, and so I think Arman wound up in charge or because he's like so important and immortalized.
Later I kind of get the sense that maybe they were like he was there, so therefore he's in charge. Because the later he's in charge of everything, right, post promoted. Yeah, but I'm I'm not sure. Maybe he was in charge. He ended up negotiating with the Westerners, and the Westerners negotiated surrender with the Sultan, and the bank occupiers were all whisked away to Europe. Some of them were deported to Argentina. And the implication is that it did not
go well for them. They were never heard from again. Okay, none of their demands were met. Meanwhile, during the bank occupation, Turkish paramilitary is just like angry militia's classic villain of the pod. These Islamic students in white turbans with clubs filled with nails went around and killed thousands of Armenians in the streets of Constantinople. It's like one of those things where like, wow, this has happened in Western Europe, we would fucking know about this, you know, right.
Yeah, it's done a good They've done a good job of like kind of hiding this from most people's knowledge of world history.
Yeah, but at the moment this did bring the ARF action, did bring the whole oppression of the Armenian people into the international spotlight. So the AARF saw it as a victory, but like kind of in this like god were so fucked way where they're like, yeah, hooray, thousands of us were going to die anyway, and thousands of us died. But people were looking and no, I'm not going to do an ad transition there as too too. I'm gonna get another paragraph before I do it. Can't do it,
She's podcast enough. Yet after the bank occupation, nothing was getting better, and so the ARF was like, well, this is the end of the nineteenth century and let's just kill the sultan. Yeah, why not go for broke? Yeah, much like you can go broke, I mean four broke with all of our gambling ads, go gamble. That's always a good idea. Wow, wow, thanks Gat, Thanks proud of myself. Here they are and we're back, and we were talking about assassinating world leaders in history.
I like you added that that's a special caveat to keep us from getting an FBI visit.
Yeah, And they were like, you know, he's particularly good at assassinating world leaders. You know, he's famous for it. Who do you think the ARF is gonna call their anarchist friends? Yep, yes, I love it. They're like, we need to get ourselves some anarchists. It's possible that a fuck ten of them were anarchists themselves, and it just wasn't noted in the text that I read, you know, because the two things. Okay, I have learned that if it's not written by a socialist, it leaves out all
of the left right. And if it was written by socialists, it leaves out the anarchists. And if it was written by anarchists, it leaves out women. All of them leave out women. This is the Margaret rule of history books written in the twentieth century.
Yeah, this is true, and you get there are some good books on anarchist women in Spain.
Okay, fair enough, but they had to be written because of the twenty the historians the twentieth century, which is okay. One of the reasons I'm annoyed is that all of the anarchists who were like doing the shit and all the revolutionaries who were doing the shit were like, half of us are women. We love we're fighting for gender equality. Check out, I'm going to name drop all the people
who are doing all this cool shit. And then the like fucking armchair historians of the twentieth century were like and then de Rudy single handedly save Spain or whatever.
Yeah, I often see that de Ruti like single handedly like led their resistance to the coup, Like now, I see it on social media, and it's just yeah, it's a betrayal of everything he would have staid for.
And so this is a example of both of these categories that have been largely left out. But now that they have an assassin, they can't leave out the anarchists completely. So they went and they got two Belgian anarchists, a married couple. You will be shocked to know that I don't know the woman's name. I can't find it. Oh god. I had to reinsert her based on context, knowing that she was absolutely part of this plot and absolutely involved because she had to run from the cops in the end. Anyway,
Margaret is angry at historians. Yeah, it's a story of that's the free space these days on the Bingo. So the narrative is always a Belgian anarchist named Edward Joris came and helped them, even though his wife was one hundred percent part of the plot. Fuck you history books. I know more about Edward, so I'm gonna talk a little bit about him. He was a man whose anarchist politics led him to believe quite strongly an anti colonial struggle, so he was down to get involved. And they all decided,
let's do a time bomb. Let's do a car time bomb. And they called it Operation Dragon because the Armenians they are good, solid namers, just classic names. Operation Dragon, operation Nemesis.
Nemesis is a fantastic one, like you can't go wrong with that. No, no, they're yeah Dragon unless they find your plans and they pretty much know you're going to blow shit up with Operation Dragon.
I have the word sedition tattooed on my hands, so I like to believe that this my speech will somehow apply in the court situation.
Yeah, that's why Margaret was unforciate, unable to attend January to sixth.
I was so mad that the seditionists. So one of the reasons that this is interesting to me that they plan this car bomb to kill the Sultan is because history does record the anarchist as inventors of the car bomb. Sorry about that, but yeah, I hate a car bomb. That's sad. I've been subject to no probmity to car bombs. Yeah, this one. In nineteen twenty, the Wall street car bombing, which was bad and it was fucked up and I'm mad about it, but it was done by anarchists.
You know, we have the first podcast network to live podcast a car bomb, Margaret, that's one of our claims.
Like really, yeah, I know. Robert and I were we were having drinks on the roof of a building just to opposite the Thai Burmese border when a car bomb went off and I happened to be recording on my little little little podcasting machine and you can hear you can hear us being like oh ah, and then wondering when we're going to hear the airplane because like thinking it was a regular bomb and it'd be like no, and then everyone sort of being like are there any
more bombs? And then someone found on Facebook, like almost instantly, right, and it did. These folks love to be posted on Facebook, and there were pictures of this car bomb that we were. We tried to get across too closer to visit it, but it was not possible at that time.
So that's fair. I'm glad you all chose to continue to be alive instead of prioritizing getting close to the bomb. The real real win for cool sat and media though. Yeah, head crews have done that, has he? Yeah, so anarchists were the first podcast yeah yeah, yeah, and twenty one hundred years prior to that, we get called the first
car bombers for a shitty bombing. But fifteen years before that, uh, we tried to car bomb the Sultan and it was a larger pluralistic We'll talk about the pluralism of that movement, but you know, the Belgians were involved. Their target. The Sultan was really paranoid about being assassinated. He like had this thing he was like he felt like he shouldn't get assassinated. He'd prefer not to you know.
Yeah, it chose if you've lived a good life, if you're worried about multiple people trying to assassinate you, I think.
Yeah, totally. For some reason, he was aware of the fact that he was like massacring a ton of people. And this was like also the peak era of like what if the solution is just to kill that one guy though? Yeah, And every night he slept in a different room of his palace and he fed his meals to his cats and dogs to test for poison. But he was the formal leader of Islam, so he had
to go to a public service every Friday. The way I know women were involved in this plot is because the way that they scouted was that they would all dress up as young couples looking for blessings for their weddings. So at least half of the scouts were women, unless they were substantially ahead of their time. I did manage to find one woman's name who was involved in the plot.
This makes us I'm clearly pro this plot like whatever as a Marxist bombmaker named Anna Nellon's her and her also bomb maker husband died later that year in a tragic and entirely foreseeable We were making bombs at home and then the bombs went off accident.
Yeah, and it's now bomb area, you know. Yeah, don't be smoking if you're making your bombs at home.
Yeah, something like the ultimate like Devil Make Care archetype is the smoking bomb maker in an apartment in like the Lower East Side in like eighteen nineties.
Yeah, I've interviewed a couple of bomb makers who have had a lot of substantial parts of their bodies to smoking while making bombs. Yeah, it's so like, it's so it's obviously a terrible and traumatic event. But like again, we met these bomb makers, Robert and I, and we were having a couple of beers and guys like, yeah, so telling good stories and he's like, oh yeah, my friend, my friend we always made the bombs together. And we're like, what happened to your friend? And he's like, well, one
day we were making bombs. And then you could just see everyone being like, well you're smoking a cigarette, bro. It'll be like we went for a cigarette affect for fuck's sake.
Fuck. Yeah.
And that's like tip for you today, vape if your if your bomb maker, I guess we'll get.
Get large when you when you pick amateur bomb maker as you're like profession it's because you're like, I'm not gonna live very long.
Yeah, you're probably in a bit of a pickle anyway to be considering it as a career move.
Yeah. Maybe some people do it for the purity of the art, you know, sure, yeah, totally. So they made this car time bomb. They slipped the bomb car into the procession of wagons alongside with the sultan, and then the fucking sultan stopped to talk to someone for like a minute, and so the bomb went off and missed him. This killed one of the bombers, and it killed twenty six members of the Sultan's retinue. But sadly, no Sultan always blowing up the bridesmaids, never blowing up the brides.
That's true for Obama and true for anyway. Oh, it's a dark joke. Thank you, thank you. Yeah. In response not to my joke, but to the assassination attempt on the leader of all of Islam and the Ottoman Empire, hundreds of folks were arrested and tortured, including the Belgian anarchist guy. His wife slipped authorities, and then there was this massive protest movement in Belgium to put pressure on the salt and to free him. Love that. And then here's where you know that the Ottoman Empire is a
little bit weak to the west right now. It worked.
Yeah, yeah, if Belgium is pushing you around that, he said, yeah for the person who tried to blow up your leader.
Yeah yeah. Still huge win for Belgians and got no and Edward Joris, who went home and presumably presumed a happy and hopefully on event. I would rest on those laurels for the rest of my life.
Yeah, but you know, Ector Joris, maybe maybebe went straight back to the bump factory.
Yeah, who fucking knows. Meanwhile, the ARF aren't the only folks who hate the Sultan. Those young Turks. It's either a click or secret society. It depends on We won't put it of Ottoman officers. They wanted the constitution back. Well, not for very long, but they claimed that they wanted the constitution back. Formally, their name is the Committee of Union and Progress, but everyone calls them the Young Turks ARF and the Young Turks. In nineteen oh eight, they
pull it off. They stage a bloodless coup and they take power away from the Sultan, who stays on briefly as a figurehead. Everyone was like, holy shit, this rules. We fucking did it. We have a constitution. It's all roses from here on out. Muslims and Christians are literally singing and dancing together in the streets. They're like, we
fucking did it together. Fuck, yeah, we rule. Yeah. A representational government might give them rights, and it might allow them to be modern enough to fend off Europe, which was buying them out piece by piece and destroying their culture. Right elected to this new parliament, is Arman Garo from the bank takeover the one who had negotiated it, and the ARF is now legitimate. And the other Armenian revolutionaries they're like, hey, this is going to go badly, y'all.
Shouldn't help the young Turks. I hope enough of them were alive. Later. I told you so the ARF, but I couldn't promise. Yeah, there was this brief attempt at a counter coup from the right wing after this, you know, bloodless coup or whatever, And in the end, the old Sultan was ousted entirely. The new Sultan is a figurehead of the cup the young Turks. And I don't know if you knew this, James, but did you know that power consistently corrupts revolutionaries every single time.
Yeah, it's a thing that that's been said that the people do talk about maybe bad, maybe power bad.
Well, right away the young Turks became autocrats and started murdering their rivals and their allies. Cool. Soon enough, tens of thousands of Armenians are being slaughtered. Fucking again, this isn't even the This is this is like an intermission genocide. This is the second Genosid that Okay, it's dark warm up genocide. Yeah, Western Europe is starting to put together kind of like a peacekeeping intervention. They're like, hey, what's
happening over there, you guys? Okay, Like we've been hearing some stuff by nineteen thirteen, but that gets interrupted by World War One. Yeah, by nineteen thirteen, the young Turks are like, just kidding, we are not doing democracy. The Central Committee is in charge. Who's the Central Committee not telling? The moderates are out? Racist nationalists are in. There are three guys who do the most of being in charge, although they're not the only people. It's Talat Pasha, Enver
Pasha and Jamal Pasha. Pasha is an honorific anyone holding a top level position within the Ottoman Empire, Governor's general shit like that. I've seen the young Turks compared to the Nazis time and time again, and it seems apt I don't have like a butt here. You have sociologists and poets building up a nationalist ideology that is explicitly opposed to religious and ethnic diversity. This new country is for the Turks and only the Turks. And maybe the
most in charge man is Talat Pasha. He's a huge, strong, man with a Walris mustache. He's also, like a lot of the young Turks, not particularly ethnically Turkish. He's mostly noted as a Bulgarian Muslim, although his Wikipedia says Bulgarian Romanian Turkish descent. The first inclination this is a fuck, sorry Sophie and me and the listener. The first inclination of how they like to solve their problems is how they decided to deal with the problem of stray dog
in Constantinople. Oh no, they wanted to deal with straight dogs. So they wound and rounded up eighty thousand dogs and then dropped them on a small animalize each other and starve and ships passing by. I could hear the tortured howls of dogs before they died. Oh no, they did a dog genocide. They did second time in like six weeks that you and or Robert have surprised me with horrible dog genocide. I know, I was real sad when I listened to the Bastards episode that talked about it.
I don't I think it's worth understanding how fucking monsters.
No it is, yeah, because you've had to go to the extra step of like if you wanted the dogs to die there. You could just kill them. Yeah, but they've they've decided to put them on a genocide island.
Yeah.
Wow, now popular tourists. It's not because of that, but oh great, Yeah, what's the island called?
And put it in? I was like skipping through this part. I was like, Aha, what is the minimum number of facts I can put in here to get across the gravity? You know? Yeah? Because fuck I dogs. Dogs are not morally culpable in the way that humans are capable of being. Yeah, because they're all perfect angels. M h. Much like the perfect angels that we sell the ax it. I don't know how we could sell and.
We can't make it. We can't make an island joke. I think we're legally prohibited from.
No. No an angel joke. I was trying to Okay, no, I got nothing. I don't know why you're sad to go sad by this stuff and then come back and we're back, and now we're gonna there's a world war right now? Sorry guys. Yeah, Joe and Biden went to sleep and yeah, now he's transported back. Joe Biden, if you're listening, you are in World War one right now. Again on the Western front. He's like, what's that, Jack,
you got ice cream? Yeah, that's right. All you got to do is beat the Germans and you can get some ice cream, Joe, save us from the hunt, Joseph. Yeah, the Ottomans, we're almost certainly going to end up siding with Germany, but not as like certainly certainly because it's not it's not really the Ottoman Empire. It's the young Turks who are in charge, right, Yeah, and a lot
of them are Francophiles, right. They all come out of this like we like constitutional democracy as long as we can murder all of our rivals and not have a constitutional democracy, which frankly is also how most Western governments would prefer to be, I think. But yeah, some of them were Francophiles, others were Prussia. Files But Germany and the Ottoman Empire we're both like, yeah, we hate fuck Russia. We hate Russia. So that's the main reason why I
was like always going to be Germany. I think the Ottomans joined the Germans, and the way they did this was firing on Russian ports from the Black Sea. That's a good way to let people know, isn't it. I know, I know. It's just just a nice little reminder that I mean, I guess to be fair, I feel like, if you're Russia, you can just kind of assume the Ottoman Empires at war with you. Yeah a moment. Yeah, you don't want to be you don't want to be
caught sleeping. And the Western Powers didn't mind that Turkey, that the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers or whatever on some level because they wanted Everyone wants Turkey, right right, it's the carving up but Turkey. I'm sure this joke has been made. That's why they want you to call it Turkia now because people will not stop. But I think they got mad about people posting pictures of Turkey's
in replied to them on an x formerly known as Twitter. Yeah, seizing Turkey would be key to seizing all of the Arab areas too, and the Suez Canal, which would save you from needing to sail all the way around Africa. So like Britain and France are like, wouldn't that be sweet? You know? And then the young Turks fell for the classic blunder. James, you ever tried to invade Russia? No, I've been to Russia.
But it was more in a sort of non invasive posture when I okay, okay, I just went to the hotel from the nineteen eighty Olympics and Scott really drunk with my friends for every night.
Yeah, it's great. I got some stories when I used to travel way more. I like didn't go to Russia because my Greek friend was telling me about going to Russia and like the level of scrutiny and bureaucracy that they put on everyone who's coming in and how terrifying it is. Yeah, Like he was on the train and he was going into Russia and they stopped him and they were like, it's like eleven fifty eight pm and they're like, oh, it says here that you're visas for tomorrow.
You can't come in. And he's like, I don't speak Russian. And he's trying to speak in like Greek and English and stuff, you know, and and so he has to interpret through the woman sitting next to him, and then eventually the the guard. Eventually it turns midnight and he's like, can you let me in now? And they're like fine, and he says thank you in Russian, and so then the guard gets mad again and it's like you could speak Russia this old time, you fucking liar, like, and
I was like, no, I'm good out of Bulgaria. But I didn't go to I didn't go to Russia. I'm sure Bulgaria was nice too. It was nice, although at the time Bulgaria is the place where everything is confusing and backwards, and there were Nazis tagging a cab over swastikas.
Okay, fascinating. Acab is a grand unifying principle of a lot of organizations that wouldn't otherwise agree on very much.
I know. And also a lot of organizations that totally love cops. They just want them to be their cops.
Yeah, yeah, well that is that is an unfortunate problem with many, yeah, many organizations.
Yeah.
There's a good book called thirteen twelve about football aultras which looks at like left and right football altras and how they abder to take the cops. Oh shit, okay, very good book, would recommend it. So Invading Russia. The Ottoman Empire decides to invade Russia in December, and that's the one two punch. Don't invade Russia. Don't invade Russia. In December, like yeah, that's yeah, bad cool. Seventy thousand soldiers died. However, overall the Ottoman Empires called the Southern Front.
They did whole Constantinople, which no one expected. They fought off the British, the Australian and the New Zealanders and this one campaign and the Turkish commander told as soldiers, I'm not ordering you to fight, I am ordering you to die.
Well at least you.
Know, yeah, we had great feat of aritory theh Yeah, it's like very quotable.
I wouldn't feel good about it, yeah, yeah, true. And in all of this in World War One, the young Turks are like, I bet the Armenians will go over to the enemy, and like, first of all, well look sure, who could blame them? Right, yeah, why not? What do you going to lose? Yeah, Armenian freedom fighters were absolutely sabotaging the Turkish. They were cutting telegraph wires and spine and moving guns around and shit. Some a few thousand of them crossed into Russia to volunteer because enemy of
your enemy and all that shit. In fact, Armangaro, the arf guy who had occupied the bank and then later been in Parliament, he went and fought for Russia. But this is a few thousand Armenians out of two million Armenians living there. The overwhelming majority of Armenians considered themselves to be part of the Ottoman Empire. And for hundreds of years Christians had been paying that extra millet tax right which actually exempted them from conscription. That was like
part of the whole point. Not under the Young Turks. Oh great, and for a little while, oh Sparta, Okay, for a little while, the Armenians were in the Turkish army. They had guns, they had officers, and shit. They're like, yeah, we're part of the Ottoman Empire. We've helped you come to power. Let's do our thing. By February nineteen fifteen, the Young Turks forced all of the Christians into what
were called labor battalions. That's not a good thing. No, these are slave units in which the soldiers are worked to death. The point was to work them to death. Yeah, anyone who had the t merity, tenacity, whatever. Anyone who didn't die while working was marched off and murdered in
the desert. And so at this point people are like, oh, this is this is like bad, right, this is like, now what we want to have happened, and so you started getting resistance to this right away, and so the Christians and I think with the help of sympathetic Muslims. But I haven't done enough research about this part of it yet. I know a little bit about it. Later, they set up an underground network of in Constantinople to help people skip out on being conscripted into slave labor
death camp time. And this was called the Army of the Attics, which is a sick name. Yeah, thousands of Christians were sheltered in addicts and behind false walls all through Constantinople. Like sweet. The more I read this story, the more I was like, World War One is just World War II.
Yeah, yes, we have less like a mythology around it.
Yeah, because Western Europe is so up its own ass that at least in America, which I'm now calling part of Western Europe or whatever, that World War one is just French and German people and trenches who are sad and killing each other with machine guns, which is bad, right, But no, there's a genocide of people based on being religious minorities that kills millions, that involves people hiding in addicts, and like whatever, Yeah, it's the same shit.
I think it's they're both creatures of like you have this decline of like absolute monarchy and like religion having the claim on universal truth, and then to replace that we get nationalism, and we get nationalism we do in group out group. And this is what happens in World one, this is what happens in World War two, is what happens in the Armenian genocide, it's what happens in many
of the other genocides, like the creatures of the same thing. Yeah, the fascists just went a little bit harder, and we find their aesthetic a little bit more repugnant. So we created this good versus evil narrative which like fascists or evil, but like, yeah, it doesn't necessarily mean everyone of find them is good.
And so at this point, the Ottomans are saying, how do we solve the Armenian question? And that is what they called it cool, and so they decided to eliminate all Armenians living in Anatolia and basically all Christians. They disguised these as deportations and hit it by the fog of war. And they didn't say, let's do a genocide, one because no one says that, and two because that
word didn't exist. That word was created in part because of what happens next, which is my opposite of a cliffhanger, because normally you want to make people excited about what comes next. For a cliffhanger, this is one of the worst things that's happened in the history of the world. But the cool people special is finding the people doing amazing things during the darkest chapters of history. And there's a lot of those people and they're coming up next week. Yay, yay.
One of the things that really surprised me we're reading about all this is just how much tied into all of these like revolutionary socialist organizations and all of it. It was like, like it always is. I feel like the few times I've seen it, it's been presented as it sort of just comes out of nowhere, you know, Yeah, and very few things come out of nowhere.
Yeah, And like we do a disservice and we remove them from context, right because like how we get to a place where we can do genocide is it's shit
that's extremely fucking relevant right now. Yeah, Like if we are watching a genocide happen as we are, like we're just seeing this global crackdown or refugees, Like we need to think about that too, And I think we do that with World War two as well, right we like oh right by, you know, like nineteen thirty three, poof, they're the Nazis, like totally we don't look at you know, like, oh wow, what economic recession. I want to like the thing that will never happen again.
And one of the things that really stands out to me that I've been like thinking a lot about after doing this particular research, is this whole thing where like they're not allowed to be armed and everyone else around them is armed, right, Yeah. And one of the reasons I think about it is that, like I get why there's this like liberal and progressive desire to reduce them number of guns in our society, right, Like women are safer if their husbands don't own guns. That is just
a fucking thing, you know. And so it's like I get why we're talking about all of that, And it feels like this inescapable thing that that genocide is like way more common then people tend to think that the like absolute worst things that humanity can do to each other happens way more often then people want to admit. People want to talk about the Nazis as this complete outlier with nothing else like it before or after.
You know, yeah, like I know, if I can maybe like bang my anarchist drama a bit, like, I think it's very hard again, if we are historians who are enabled unable to conceive of human society existing in a modern fashion outside of the state, to look at how often the state is a tool for genocide, right, and how often a state is created by or for genocide, And yeah, like that doesn't I think if you accept that analysis, then it doesn't follow that it's a good
idea to allow the state to have a monopoly on the tools by which it can do killing. And that leads to people should own guns. But yeah, unfortunately, we're in a particularly fucked time in human history where you know, things like, like, we have other problems, right, Misogyny is
a problem. That's why women are at risk if their domestic partner's own guns, right, or specifically male domestic partners, I guess, And we have many other societal problems of alienation, and this leads to these things like mass shootings, which are fucking horrific. Like I don't have the answer at all of those things, but yeah, I do think like like we're at a time when I don't know, if we look at things that have led to genocide, Like it's a scary fucking time in human history, is what
I'm saying. And you know, the Left party right now in American politics is the party which has presided over record numbers of migrant deaths more than the fucking right party did in the trumpeter and like it's just not even a thing that we talk about very much in the mass media, and that scares the shit out of me.
Yeah no, And it's it's you know, it's like and I don't want to, like I don't know what to specifically do about it. I don't. This is not me saying like everyone should go out and get firearms, although I think that it is useful for some people to familiarize familiarize themselves with the use of them, and like
safe environments and things like that. But it's like it's just a it's a sketchy time and and I think that like people are often coming and so swinging so hard on these like easy answers where they're like, of course guns are great, and you're like, well, the only reason that we should have firearms is because the other side does.
You know, yeah, bad, they kill people Like I just I am a person who enjoys guns. I have lots of them. I like to buy old ones and fix them up. But like, yeah, I would love a world where it didn't exist. Yeah, and like, I mean, but.
Then again, you know, some of the worst atrocities that have happened in history happened with swords, you know, fucking machetes. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. I guess that's where we'll leave it. And next week we will talk about the Armenian genocide, but we're also going to talk about Operation Nemesis and how people resisted in ways that are more complex. And it's like, no matter what, the simple version of the story is really cool, but the deeper version of the story is even cooler.
I'm excited to hear that. Yeah. Hell yeah, I love a good resisted story anyway.
Yeah, anything you want to plug, I will plug building community and mutual aid. Like, I think the solution to whatever the fuck is going to happen.
Is each other.
It's not the state, it's not any political party. It's building community and showing up for one another, and that includes down at the border where you can come and volunteer. Someone who listened to our podcast came this week and I was so happy, like, oh hell yeah, someone do it. Came from the internet to the passenger seat of my
truck and we went around and helped people. So yeah, you don't have to come to a border with the people who need help everywhere, and building strong communities like these strong communities that went and killed like Genesee Dais is the way to fix your problems.
So do that.
Make friends. You don't have to get guns, but if you can make PB and J sandwiches for hungry people, then you're doing the work.
It's that either like Simpsons or Futurama. I mean that's like guns for the people who want guns and not guns for the people who want not guns.
Yeah, yeah, that's perfect and fucking free food for everyone and to sleep and yeah if you want to gun, cool, but going to save you on your own, you make friends, look after them.
And I will plug giving food away to people. It is never wrong. Sometimes it's complex. Sometimes there's like things you can get into the complicated nature of blah blah blah blah blah. But like overall, you don't know what else to do. Find your local food, not bombs. Yeah, make a fucking lentil. It's the instrument of the revolution. Oh maybe I want eat lentils. No, I I always eat dumplanes after after recording. There's not a lot of
vegan comfort food. And where I live, rocery store, you're outside of the hot land of the vegan Yeah, cake, but there are dumplanes at the grocery store that happened to be vegan, and they are my comfort food. And I eat dinner later on recording nights, and now everyone knows that I'm currently hungry. That is what everyone has learned. But one of the best, like the same is like you're talking to people who come up because of the show,
who are volunteering at the border. You know, I was recently talking to someone who was like, hey, cool Zone media talking about how important feeding people is. Is how I like started spending most of my time making soup for people. Oh yes, it's it's really cool. Thanks listeners for participating in creating a better culture. And Sophia, you got anything you want to plug? We're sunscreen hell yeah, damn.
Yeah, So if you said that, because I today I'm wearing a sleeveless top and it's painfully obvious that parts of me have not.
Seen the sun for like ten months, and I'm extremely wear sunscreen even if you don't leave your house. I'm going to pitch the two rules of sleeves. I've probably done this on the show before, but I feel like you need to know them. James stout. The two rules of sleeves are suns out, guns out, m classic and it's corollary. Sun's gone, sleeves gone. Ah Okay, I like that. Yeah, so if you have an option, Yeah, so there's no sleeves, that's the rule. Yeah, you didn't need them. They're, uh,
you know, thing of the past. Yeah, we're sunscreen. All right, see you all next week. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. Or more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.