November 5, 2024 • 34 mins
Mia and James take a break from America to discuss the history of Guy Fawkes Day, the heroes of the German Peasants War, and the future of trans cinema.
Sources:
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/real-story-of-bonfire-night/
https://www.ajc.org/news/on-luther-and-his-lies
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/guy-fawkes-bonfire-night/index.html
https://deadline.com/2024/10/lilly-wachowski-anarchists-united-grants-1236161483/
https://www.autostraddle.com/lilly-wachowski-interview/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to Ikadapa here a podcast taking place on a
day they will live in infamy and set a country ablaze.
I am, of course referring to Guy Fox Day. I'm
your host, be along with these James.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
I'm here. I'm excited. I'm excited to share with people
some of our national traditions in the United Kingdom.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah, and so as a person from the country who
won who won the Revolution? I get to do the
British episode because you should. I fucking yes.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
So all right.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
The the thing about the Gunpowder plot is that, like
another event occurring in November fifth, there are no heroes
and everyone like sucks shit. Yes, So in order in
order to return to a type of heroes and to
get the context of what the fuck is going on here,
we're taking a digression because I am never going to
(00:59):
get an other chance to talk about this part of
history unless I read a Martin Luther episode. So or
going all the way back to the origins of the
split between Protestantism and.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Catholicism.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Good.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah, I was raised to Lutheran, Okay, so I got
a very very sanitized version of who Martin Luther was,
and that I read about that Martin Luther actually was,
and I was like, holy shit, yeah, different dude, Martin Luther.
And this is the part also that doesn't really get
talked about in the sort of lutherm tradition because Lutheran,
the Lutheran tradition is not a revolutionary tradition. Shall we
(01:33):
say that the thing that Lutheran did, we started Protestant
dism by accident, was accidentally kicked off a genuine, full
scale social revolution in Europe with his attacks on the
Catholic Church. He was not trying to do this, yeah,
but he very quickly has has in fact accidentally done this,
and through the sort of breach that he'd opened, and
(01:54):
like the ironclad walls of Catholic monarchical rule, came the
German Peasants Wars. And my favorite dude in this entire
period of time, uh, Flora Gear.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
But the thing I familiar with flor good name.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Oh this guy rules. This guy fucking rips. Okay, there
is a Knight who.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
There's a lot of debate about this, but the sources.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
That I've read a long time ago, when I was
reading about this guy says that he is the only
like they are the only like knights, like mounted knights
in like the entire history of Europe to defect and
join a peasant revolution.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Oh, they're these guys, they're like the yeah Night so something.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, the Black Company. Yeah yeah, he rules, Yeah, it slaps.
So the drim peasant wars kickoff, and he he he
joins the peasant revolution with this sword that is supposedly
inscribed with the words neither cross nor crown.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Unbelievably based.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
He fucking protost Yeah. Yeah, And and his thing came
in the Black Company, which is part like, it's part knights,
part like peasants just basically run around the regia and
kill the shit out of nobles and priests and like
spread the spread, spread the glorious fire of the peasant revolution.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
What hero. Yeah, it's awesome. I've found a picture of
him strong chin as well. Yeah, I will say powerful
Joe line.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, And I mean he has an interesting sort of
conflicting legacy. So he gets killed eventually because the giant
presant revolution is eventually destroyed, and we'll talk about Martin
Luther's role in that in a second, But he has
this interesting legacy where he's taken up as a national
hero by like every kind of non establishment faction of
(03:35):
German politics. So he's like like there's an SS division
named after him. He's also like one of the heroes
of East Germany. Yeah, I can see it this Yeah,
and like this is one of these things were like
and like in twenty and thirties Germany you will have
communist social Democrats and the Nazis all singing like the
same songs about this guy.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
You know, he's one of the.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Few sort of redeemable figures in German history. Yeah, I
think he fucking rips.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
And this is what happens with national myth making, right,
you just take sing and make it class. It's like
you mold it to whatever you want it to be,
whatever you want you a national story to be. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, and like like this happens with Makno and Ukraine.
This happiest with what we talked was on Margaret Show
and I did. We did a bunch of episodes about
anarchism in Korea, and like they do this with a
bunch of Korean anarchists too. They become like national like
state heroes, and it's like, well, okay, this guy would
have absolutely shot you. Like this is one of these
things where it's like if you if, if you, if
you were to show if you were to show this
(04:30):
guy the SS, he'd be like, what the fuck?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Like me get my sword out again.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Yeah, it's time, It's time to start the killing again.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, And very specifically, Geary is like he'd actually had
known Martin Luther back before he like joined the peasants,
and like specifically the fact that they're they're like these
peasants are like sacking castles and killing priests and like
the ruling class very specifically makes is like, like the
fact that the ruling class could conceivably be in danger
is it that convinces Martin Luther to become I think
(05:02):
I've been this argument on the show before, but I
think he is, at very worst, like the second greatest
kind of revolutionary in like the last four or five
hundred years, because I hold that the greatest kind of
revolutionary is the one who starts the revolution and then realizes,
holy shit, I can't control this and I don't like
where it's going, and then immediately turns kind of revolutionary
to kill everyone who was involved. No, not like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(05:26):
So the product of this is that Martin Luther writes
this book kind of long pamphlet called against the murderous
beving hordes the Peasants and aligns himself with the princes. Yeah,
and you know, so then this is the start of
what it's eventually a century.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
You know, there's a couple of centuries of religious war
in here. We're gonna get to you.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
But this is in a lot of ways, I think
the beginning of the reproach ma between Catholicism and Protestantism,
because yeah, because class is more yeah yeah, and that
that actually, weirdly is an extremely important part of the
story of Guy fox Day. Yes, yeah, yeah. And you know,
the other thing that Luther's up to in this period
(06:11):
is trying to outflank the Catholics on anti Semitism, which
is pretty hard because like so this is the early
this is the early like fifteen hundreds, right, Yeah, we
are like forty years out from two Spanish monarchs like
expelling the Jews from Spain.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yeah, so like sixteenth century anti Semitism is like peak.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
I don't know, it's it's hard to exactly like tear
list the like periods of anti Semitism, but like right,
like the Holocaust. Holocaust is obviously number one. And then
like this period like the Kolelmannitsky pull Grom and like
some of the stuff in late nineteen like late eighteen
hundreds Russia or like yeah, some like the worst periods
in human history for this.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Yeah, this is pretty horrific shit.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
And and Luther decides that he's going to like outflank
the Catholics and anti Semitism, and so he writes this
book called on the Jews and their Lies, which is like, yeah,
the first version of this that I wrote had a
joke here about how it could have been written by Hitler.
But then I then I like did a little bit
of reading about it and was like, holy shit that
(07:14):
this specific thing was used by like Nazi Like, oh,
I'm sure Lutheran pastors specifically justifiedly that the Holocaust in
like thirty eight. So that's great. Yeah, how cool. Yeah,
So this is this is you know, this is the
sort of formation of like what you could call like
the Protestant counter revolution against the sort of social revolutionary
(07:34):
forces they kicked off right. Well, the antie sumptus like
hardline stuff is a bit later, but there's there's one
more kind of big uprising which is very funny, which
is that the Anabaptist in Munster who formed this like
oh yeah, pretty base democratic commune that eventually kind of
turns into like a sex cult thing, but like in
a way that's more like people realize they could be
(07:55):
poly than it is like normal sex cult people.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
So it's people like like emerging from an extremely constrained
like socialized sexuality.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
I guess, yeah, And you know, so this is like
this is you know, those are the two sort of
periods of like high of like the highest levels of
class conflict that are the result of the prosc information.
And this kind of ends with Munster when they all
get killed by the monarchies. And this is something about
(08:28):
the European peasantry. I don't know, Maybe one day I'll
do a project and why the European passantry was so
much worse at doing were volts in the Chinese peasantry
because the Chinese pasantry knocks off dynasties all the time.
Like the Chinese central government is like one hundred thousand
times more formidable as a force than like any of
these dipshit like Holy Roman Empire principalities. But the Chinese
peasantry did it anyway that I don't know. The German
(08:50):
peasantry fought hard, it doesn't go great for them.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah, I mean the entirety of the European society is
structured along like the state monopoly on violence. How oh yeah,
Like feudalism is like the scene kwandaonn of feudalism is
having the ability to kill all your peasants.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Yeah, And it's it's a it's a it's a system.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
And I think this is something that like, you know,
this is there's reflection of this you see in sort
of like fantasy a lot, right, where like people will
write monarchies and then you'll get like or like he's
using like the science station right where like people people
understand what's bad about a democracy because you've all lived
in one and you know all the ways.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
That it sucks.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
But because most of us like haven't lived under an
actual monarchy. Well okay, even then even then ye compared
to this ship.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Yeah, like people don't understand how just hideous this shit is.
And this is gonna play a role.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
I mean this this is like again, this is like
the thing that starts the French Revolution, where the first time.
That not the first time, but like when people actually
like start beating the monarchists. Seriously, people to this tendency
to remember like the violence of French Revolution. It's like, yeah,
there was a lot of shit that was very bad.
But also like these people, these people that they are fighting,
(10:09):
these are these are people who for hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of years, anytime anyone has like even dared
to talk back to them, has just fucking murdered them,
their families and everyone around them.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Yeah, like as horribly as possible.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah, yeah, and you know, and like as as the
process of their them holding on to their fucking deranged
hereditary power system. And the consequence of this is that once,
once these revolutions are put down, sort of Processtism versus Catholicism.
Like it's not fully this because it's like there are
sort of popular e I mean not in the good sense,
(10:43):
but there are sort of like more mass like Catholicism
versus proetism stuff, but like a lot of it politically
becomes the domain of like princes who are either sort
of running wars that are like nominally religious based, although
like go look on what side France enters on the
(11:04):
Thirty Years War in about twenty years when when France
enters out the side of a Protestants to figure out exactly
how much right. But like, you know, but this kind
of conflict becomes this this kind of more the actual
politics becomes centralized in the ruling class. The metaphor that
popped in mind to me is one that will make
sense to about four people. But it's kind of like
the way that all politics became centralized in the Bath
(11:26):
Party and Serrie over the course of like the sixties
and seventies, like all where like you have this mass politics,
but the only politics that matters is the military and
the military factions, the military fighting it out. Like that's
kind of what's happening here, is that like all of
these princes are sort of centralizing religious power. But this
means that like religious wars quote unquote, in conflict becomes
the domain of like these coups and counter coups by
(11:48):
like princes, and they're like noble factions and shit. Yeah,
and that's where we find ourselves in the year sixteen
oh four, at the beginning of the Gunpowder Treason. And
but before before we get that, do you know, what
else supports the unpowdered treason seventeenth century?
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Ye, yeah, definitely Chumper casino.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Yeah, they really major funders.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Yeah, it's okay if you lose your money. I jumped
at casino guys because they're trying to blow up the
houses of Parliament.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
We are back. We are back to the past. We're
back to I guess the future of where we were
several seconds before that. So England famously became Protestant when
King Henry the Eighth wanted a new wife and the
Pope wouldn't let him get a new wife.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Yeah, yeah, anohing new wife, right, Like was it like no,
this this was new ife? Wait, that's a rhyme for
this divorce divorced, beheaded, survived, had survived. Yeah yeah, I
think yeah, it was the first divorced because after that
he just went he went ham on the wives.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
And so through this incredibly silly chain of events, they
leave the Catholic Church and become Protestants through Anglicanism, which.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Is Catholicism light.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Like yeah, and I think it's more Catholicism light because
like Lutheranism also gets described to Becautholicism light. Yeah, but
I can emphatically state there is a major difference because
I came, I was raised Lutheran, and I fucking have
no guilt whatsoever, No guilt, zero, I feel bad about nothing.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
It's no shame. Catholicism to England is more or less
Catholicism minus Pope.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Yeah, And obviously they differ over time because yeah, because
it's just the drift of history, they evolved differently.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah yeah. But then but this this starts like actual
a series of kind of horrendous religious conflicts inside of
the UK where just like a bunch of random people
get killed because once princes become the people controlling religions,
everything gets unbelievably stupid really quickly.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Yeah, it's just a vehicle for like elite fucking ambition,
yeah right, that they can pick a faction and use
that to get a little bit higher up the ladder.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
So there's like there's a series of like cups encounter
coups to attempt to like reinstall Catholic rule or get
rid of and like it's all really boring, Like it's
it's so boring I cannot have.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Like yeah, let me tell you, may I did that
in history in school for years somehow I became that
to get a PhD in history. But that shit was dull.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
It's it's hideously boring, like which is insane because like
like bloody Mary is involved in this and it's still boring.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Oh yeah, there's a lot of beheadings. The princes in
the Tower famously did a little dead children, a lot
of a lot of murder.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Yeah, but boring murder, which is staggering. How do you
make murder boring?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Easy?
Speaker 4 (14:41):
Ah, you do this shit.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Yeah, Shakespeare wrote some good place about this shit. And
for those of you who are interested, yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Go go consult that.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
So by sixteen oh four, a group of guys that
would eventually extend to like thirteen Catholic guys start to
form a a frankly not very good plan to do
a coup and appoint the child king to restore Catholic
rule to England, the child queen.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, they love a child king.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
So this plan has Okay, I'm separating it out into
three stages. I don't know whether it's fair to, but
I'm doing it. So Part one, use a bunch of
gunpowder to blow up the English Parliament. Okay, now this
is something that's very important to understand what's happening here.
This is not a parliament in the sense that we
understand it today. Like, this is not like a representative
(15:36):
body like the parliament is. Basically it's an assembly assembly
of nobles. Right, It's the instrument of power of the
English aristocracy, Yeah, which is one of the greatest forces
for human evil in the entirety of human like the
three hundred thousand year history of humanity.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, we don't have it. Britain doesn't have a universal
franchise until after eighteen thirty two, so.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Like yeah, and this is this is this is sixteen
oh five, yeah, right, like and throughout that whole period
that the the powers for the aristocracy like ways, but
this is their unbelievably powerful.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
They don't have an universal manhood suffrage even until later
eighteen forty eight. Before that, every constituency it has its
own franchise rules, which makes Parliament even fucking weirder.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
Yah.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
You have some that like proto democratic, and you have
some where it's just a guy yep, and he just
shows up to Parliament and represents himself. Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, So you know this part of the plan the
blowing up the parliament plan great, we love it. We
support destroying the English aristocracy. Yeah, always great.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Yet the king, why not it's going to was it
going to be at the state opening of Parliament?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I think it was it was going to be at
some session of parliament with the King was going to
be there.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
That was part of parliament. So fun fact, Britain still
does this incredibly antiquated.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Like barbaric country.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yeah, this is where the we need China to conquer
the UK and established civilization there, like they like Britain.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Britain couldn't even do a bourgeois revolution. Do you know
how easy it is to do a bourgeois revolution.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Like Son, Yet Send pulled it on because Britain.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Has the most established fucking aristocracy in the world. So,
oh my god. The body stay opening in Parliament, which
still happens to this day, right incredibly like antiquated procedure.
They search the sellers of Parliament before and no one
else is trying to blow them up, like this is
now part of the part of the and like there's
a whole that's like an exchange of hostages, like like
(17:33):
there are all these things that are built in from
bizarre episodes in British histories. They send someone from Parliament
to Buckingham Palace to be like a hostage for the.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Duration.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
It's an incredible This is the stupidest system and the
like it the British The British system, like I think,
functionally it is a more advanced democratic system than the
American system, but in terms of the way that it's
like seizure works.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
It is like like the American Constitution, which is like
one of the most progressive constitutions, like a constitution that
failed to enshrine one person, one vote. Yeah right, Like
that constitution looks like fucking star Trek compared to like
watching the stupid ass king the hauling around a scepter.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Yeah, some dude bangs three times and then yeah yeah,
it just gets in there and reads his speech.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah. So so part two of the gunpowder plot is
to kill the king, who's going to be there too.
This is also great. We like killing the king, and
the cool Zone media is a pro killing the king
register establishment.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Yes, regicide rules, we love it.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
It's great. Part three is to install a Catholic theocracy
or a place the Protestant one, and we simply do
not love this.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
The ship sucks. That's why we diverge sadly. Yeah, yeah,
this vote's very bad. Via Vendetta may have misled you
about the intentions of Guy Forks.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yes, and we'll get to Viva Vendetta because that's I
think that's an important part of the closing of this story.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
So the plan falls apart. The plotters get betrayed.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Guy Fox, who's the guy who's supposed to light the gunpowder,
gets caught and like tortured, which is really funny because
you'll read accounts.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
I'm going to read a bit from an account from.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Somewhat dubiously named English Heritage dot org that is like
they're just quite pretty good on this.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Yeah, they like they own lots of like big old
houses and stuff. Like if you want to go and
see like a manor house, you're pretty going to give
them some money to go in. Like it's it's not
like as bad as something named English Heritage could have been.
Guess it could be a lot more racist in an
open and explicit way.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yeah yeah, now, but like they to think about this, right,
is like they don't actually disribe what happened to him
during his interrogation as torture even though they tortured the
shit out of this guy. Oh yeah, like the king
was there, well, they tortured the shit out of this guy.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yeah yeah, very unpleasant, I imagine.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
And so eventually, like all the plotters are like either
captured or killed. And I'm gonna read this from that
that English Heritage article quote. Each was found guilty and
sentenced to a trader's death by the grizzly ordeal of hanging, drawing,
and quartering. Oh yeah, the men were hanged. It's so bad.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
I love this shit. When I was in school, you
don't understand how great this is for like eight year
old boys.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah, but Jesus fucking Christ. So they were hanged, cut
down while still alive, castrated, dismembered, and beheaded, and then
their bodies were cut into quarters and displayed for all
to see and for birds to feast upon. Ye. According
to all accounts, all face their fates bravely. So these
like and it is something that like is genuinely important
to understand because we're going to get to the French
(20:43):
Revolution part of the story very soon. These people are
fucking dranged. They're like they're psychopaths, like they just they
do this as public entertainments. Yeah. Yeah, like they hang
people and then cut them down and castrate them and
then dismember and behead them while they're alive, Like they
do this like for fun.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Yeah. Isn't this the opening scene of uh just spinding
punished by Fuco? Doesn't he describe it?
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, And like you know, like this is this is
the thing you have to remember about the French Revolution
is that like these are the people who rule Europe
for like seven hundred years, oh yeah, or like these
motherfuckers and so you know, like they they stopped the
gunpowder trees and no one gets blown up, and November
fifth like immediately gets declared a holiday, but it's not
(21:31):
really the same holiday as as we have today. I'm
gonna read again from that article quote. Since sixteen seventy
three and up until the nineteenth century, some crowds have
paraded an effigy of the pope through this tree sprung
up above a bonfire. This symbolized continuing prejudice, prejudice towards Catholics,
which again, like you motherfuckers weren't Catholics until like fucking
(21:53):
seven seconds ago. Like what is wrong with you people
like I like you, you were all Catholics until your
king decided to make a fake pope so he could
get divorced.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Like what the fuck? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Yeah, the antim goes pretty hard, like for.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
A country where like you, like you were all literally
Catholics until the king decided you weren't.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
What is it?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Oh my god, I hate Christian so much. Shit sucks
so badly.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Talking of parades, have you have you read about the
Lewis bonfire in Sussex?
Speaker 4 (22:30):
No?
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Okay, they like they go super hard for BM finite.
They also like I think it was the same day
or something that some Protestants will burned at the steak there. Great,
they have this big parade where they like they drag,
like I think it's burning barrels of like pitch or tar.
Possibly those are the same thing they have. Like I'm
going to invite you to google Lewis Lewis Bonfire and
(22:54):
just just tell me what the first image you see is.
Speaker 5 (22:58):
Oh Jesus Christ, No, yeah that's correct.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Yeah, yeah, what you see is jump scared.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
So they don't just burn guy forks in they have
these big sort of every every year they'll have like
the person of the year they're going to burn so
like effigies that they've burned include David Cameron, don't be
Clarkson except blatter like some of it got surprisingly hard,
(23:33):
Like I think at some point like there's like a
formal like they've been investigated by the police. Fake. Nearly
all of them are against politicians, so you know, we
probably should have mentioned that they also burned a Romani caravan,
which is pretty fucking terrible.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yeah, all right, speak speaking speaking of burning David Cameron,
do you know who else burns David Cameron?
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Is it the goods and services that support this podcast?
Speaker 4 (23:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (23:59):
Great, yeah, yeah, we're now returning.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Let's go back to that thing I was reading about
what happened to them them paying the Pope? Yeah, sontheless?
This symbolized continuing prejudice against Catholics. However, during the French Revolution,
English and Irish Catholics fought for Britain, which found itself
on the same side of the Pope, and perhaps because
of this, in around eighteen hundred, Guy Fox seems to
(24:32):
have finally entered the picture as the boogeyman of Bonfire Night,
rather than the Pope. Fox was barely mentioned in fifth
November sermons in the eighteenth century, and his name doesn't
feature in the titles of books attracted four eighteen hundred.
But after that date his name began to appear, and
Fox seems to have quickly become a central character in
English popular culture, often portrayed as a dashing, doomed anti hero. Yeah,
(24:53):
and this is a reminder that Protestant isn't versus Catholic.
Catholicism is a fucking joke. The ruling class has always
had one religion counter revolution, and when their asses are
on the line, Protestant terrorists and Catholic Supreme Court justices
can work together just find to make sure you can't
get a fucking abortion.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
So you know what we have here. And this is
an interesting thing in the sense that like, like Guy
Fox becoming the guy that Guy Fox Day is about,
and not like the pope is literally an icon of
sort of like of kind of revolution.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Like specifically against a French revolution.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
But it's interesting because it's like this eventually seems to
kind of have backfired because Guy Fox kind of like
becomes the central figure. Right but then, and this is
something that like This article also mentions that I want
to go into more. Everything sort of changes again about
this when the movie Viva Vendetta gets made.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Yeah, it's very strange.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yeah, and let's actually so before we do day, can
you talk a little bit more about like what people
do during Guy Fox Day because it's fun.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Yeah, totally. Yeah, So it is fun.
Speaker 6 (26:00):
It is.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
It's a nice like a little as burnings in effigy go,
you know, a fun one. At least. What we used
to do I grew up in a more rural area
is we'd all everyone if you had like wood, or
you chop down a tree, you know, on your land,
or you had old furniture, you'd all bring it to
one place, right, big field, you pilot and you're with
it's fucking high. It's like a couple of stories high
(26:22):
by the time down, and then you go down. On
the fifth of November, everyone gets fireworks. This is where
I'll tell my fireworks story very amusingly. When I was younger,
everyone in my village club together to buy one of
those fireworks displays, you know, where it's like a box
and you light one fuse and they all go off. Yeah.
Oh shit, So we've set that up my dad and
his mate and we're in the van there. We've lit
(26:44):
it and then we've we're sort of standing there like
ready to go ooh ah. Unfortunately we've placed it upside down,
fucking bouncing off the ground and then it flips on
the side just behind the van and smashing the van.
So yeah, what do you do is you get fireworks,
(27:07):
You shoot them at your friends, you shoot them in
the air. You have a massive bonfire, like and it's
this is November Britain, right, so you know days are
short nights so long, everything's wet, so you're using a
lot of petrol to start the bonfire, like, you know,
irresponsible amountable. You just have a huge fire. And then
if you have old clothes at least, I'm sure it's
(27:29):
different if you grow up in like a more urban setting.
What we would do is we get old clothes, tie
the bottom of the trousers together, tie the wrists together,
and then you stuffle that with straw bedding that you have, right,
and then you put a head on it pets like
a bag, like a plastic bag or flower bag. You
draw a little face on it and that's your guy.
(27:51):
You can go around to people's houses and ask for
a penny for the guy. That's that had sort of
become quite old fashioned by the time I was a child.
But you make these guys and then you take them
down there and then you you put them on top
of the bonfire before you light it, and everyone watches
as he catches on fire and burns to death. And
you have toffee apples at the other thing, apples and
(28:14):
dipped in toffee.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, I used to like it.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
And you have sparklers, you know, which is you know,
a little sparker on a stick. Yeah, it was fun.
It's got something for every age. A little kid, you
have a sparker, and then once you get to you know,
like ten twelve, you can shoot fireworks at your friends
and like really it's something for everyone, and I guess
unless you're Catholic. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
But that's the thing though, that the Cathars hasn't been Protestantism.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
It's very secularized.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah, like they've been united, they've been united in the
single Greek British religion of kind of revolution.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
So now everyone can celebrate and fox stay together.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Yeah, it's true. And it's supposed to like reinforce the
state and be like, if you fuck with the state,
we will burn you, which Viva Vendetta kind of I
guess messes with a little bit.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
But yeah, and this I think is actually a really
interesting process because I think Guy Fox now is most
known for the Guy Fox mask, which was one of
the symbol and the symbol of anonymous and like one
of the.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
Symbols of Yeah, but it wasn't before that.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
And parts of how this happens is so it is
a character named Guy Fox in Alan Moore's view for
Vendetta and VI for Vendetta is not about a Catholic
plot to establish the Catholic rule.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
In in Britain.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Yeah, this is about like effectively the government of the
UK is going to have in five years when they
just like completely descend into fascism. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
I would know that far away now, to be honest.
Speaker 6 (29:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah. And it's about that government getting overthrown by an
anarchist revolution.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
And it's like this because like you know, Alan Moore
is a leftist. It's made by the Wachowskis of like
of Matri's fame, who are also trans leftists. We're gonna
close on them actually, but you know, sort of what
happens to you, right, is like this mask becomes a
symbol of like kind of like really altogether detached from
the original figure of Guy Fox and like to the
form of this movie, Like this becomes the symbol of
(29:59):
like the twenty eleven like occupy cycle revolutions everywhere, and
like like one of my most sort of like harrowing
memories like coming up in that movement was of this
like twenty fourteen, everything's covering things. By twenty fourteen, everything's
going to shit, right, Like the Serians of War is
kicked off.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
They were Bob massacrering.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Egypt has like slaughtered a bunch of protesters, and Egypt's
like just under full military rule. And there's a like
there are like Palestinian kids like wearing Guy Foss masks,
and there's like this image that haunts me. There's video
and an image of it of this kid. Is like
this kid's like seventeen, maybe like sixteen seventeen, like wearing
(30:37):
this mask and he walks around a cord and this
really sniper just fucking shoots him the head. And there's
this picture of him with like this just like mask
with a hole in it next to his face, and
he's just like lying there on the floor, and it's
like one of the things that is like the reason
why the way I am now is because of that shit. Yeah,
and you know, in some sense like he's become it
(30:57):
weirdly and enduring danger to the state in way that
he would be extremely pissed about, which, yeah, very funny
to me.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Yeah, it started as a graphic novel, right, it was
a graphic novel before.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
Yeah, yeah, it was an alanrograp novel.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yeah, And I want to close on on the Wachowskis,
and specifically I wanted to shout out so again like
the watch House. He's made the movie Viva Vedeta, which
is the thing that like popularized it and is in
a lot of sense responsible for like the aesthetic of
the twenty eleven revolutions. And she's founded a new project
called Anarchist United. I'm going to quote from an interview
(31:32):
with her quote. It will be a studio wholly owned
by a foundation. It's owned by this five O one
C three. The five of one C three provides grants
for artists and young filmmakers with marginalized points of view.
Hopefully those people will create stuff, bring it over to
the studio. The studio can make it and then fund
the foundation. So you create this evergreen operation that can
hopefully exist outside of the studio system if necessary. And
(31:52):
so they're making a bunch of trans shit, like they're
adapting Gretchen Felken Martin's Manhunt, which is like the transfer
mass like Book of the Last Like like it's a
book about trans misogogy and it's getting We're getting a
fucking adapted. So yeah, it's really cool. And yeah, like
I think, I think, I don't know that. That's the
(32:13):
thing I want to close on is like a note
of hope of like even the most deranged kind of
revolutionaries actions against the state and sometimes ricochet around four
hundred years later into like revolutionary movement.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Bounce back into transferm films. And it's like I often
think about Hunger Games, like, yeah, the Hunger Game symbol.
I would love to into the lady who wrote Hunger Games.
I think she's quite like doesn't like the media attention
so much from what I've heard. Yeah, but like that
became the symbol of the like around the Milky Alliance
right in Hong Kong, mean mar obviously even in Thailand
(32:53):
they use, Yeah, and think it's fascinating how these things
have these cultural and like, yeah, they sort of bounce around,
becomes athing, compete different from what they were.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Well, and and you know it's this weird thing too,
because like the Hunger Games was born of Susan Collins,
like flipping channels between coverage of like the like watching
the bombing in the Iraq War and reality TV. Yeah,
I remember reading that and you see and you watch
like this rebound of this, like like the intense reaction
of this cultural moment to round two thousand and three,
two thousand and four, like like what of the peaks
(33:25):
of American like kind of revolution rebounds route. It's suddenly
a bunch of like a bunch of a bunch of
revolutionaries of VMBAR are doing the like fucking two Biggers thing.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Yeah, yeah, doing the Cup Scouts.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah. And so you know, this is one of these
things where like you know, who knows where where your
story one day is going to end up in rebound two.
But yeah, if if if we survived this, we are
promised that this year was the beginning of the golden
age of leftist transcenema. So let's let's fucking get their war.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
And yeah, yeah, if you're in England, enjoy burning it tonight.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
If in America, who knows, maybe.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Soy birding shit tonight. It could Happen Here is a
production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
fool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can now find sources for it Could Happen here,
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to Ikadapa here a podcast taking place on a
day they will live in infamy and set a country ablaze.
I am, of course referring to Guy Fox Day. I'm
your host, be along with these James.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
I'm here. I'm excited. I'm excited to share with people
some of our national traditions in the United Kingdom.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah, and so as a person from the country who
won who won the Revolution? I get to do the
British episode because you should. I fucking yes.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
So all right.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
The the thing about the Gunpowder plot is that, like
another event occurring in November fifth, there are no heroes
and everyone like sucks shit. Yes, So in order in
order to return to a type of heroes and to
get the context of what the fuck is going on here,
we're taking a digression because I am never going to
(00:59):
get an other chance to talk about this part of
history unless I read a Martin Luther episode. So or
going all the way back to the origins of the
split between Protestantism and.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Catholicism.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Good.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah, I was raised to Lutheran, Okay, so I got
a very very sanitized version of who Martin Luther was,
and that I read about that Martin Luther actually was,
and I was like, holy shit, yeah, different dude, Martin Luther.
And this is the part also that doesn't really get
talked about in the sort of lutherm tradition because Lutheran,
the Lutheran tradition is not a revolutionary tradition. Shall we
(01:33):
say that the thing that Lutheran did, we started Protestant
dism by accident, was accidentally kicked off a genuine, full
scale social revolution in Europe with his attacks on the
Catholic Church. He was not trying to do this, yeah,
but he very quickly has has in fact accidentally done this,
and through the sort of breach that he'd opened, and
(01:54):
like the ironclad walls of Catholic monarchical rule, came the
German Peasants Wars. And my favorite dude in this entire
period of time, uh, Flora Gear.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
But the thing I familiar with flor good name.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Oh this guy rules. This guy fucking rips. Okay, there
is a Knight who.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
There's a lot of debate about this, but the sources.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
That I've read a long time ago, when I was
reading about this guy says that he is the only
like they are the only like knights, like mounted knights
in like the entire history of Europe to defect and
join a peasant revolution.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Oh, they're these guys, they're like the yeah Night so something.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, the Black Company. Yeah yeah, he rules, Yeah, it slaps.
So the drim peasant wars kickoff, and he he he
joins the peasant revolution with this sword that is supposedly
inscribed with the words neither cross nor crown.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Unbelievably based.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
He fucking protost Yeah. Yeah, And and his thing came
in the Black Company, which is part like, it's part knights,
part like peasants just basically run around the regia and
kill the shit out of nobles and priests and like
spread the spread, spread the glorious fire of the peasant revolution.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
What hero. Yeah, it's awesome. I've found a picture of
him strong chin as well. Yeah, I will say powerful
Joe line.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, And I mean he has an interesting sort of
conflicting legacy. So he gets killed eventually because the giant
presant revolution is eventually destroyed, and we'll talk about Martin
Luther's role in that in a second, But he has
this interesting legacy where he's taken up as a national
hero by like every kind of non establishment faction of
(03:35):
German politics. So he's like like there's an SS division
named after him. He's also like one of the heroes
of East Germany. Yeah, I can see it this Yeah,
and like this is one of these things were like
and like in twenty and thirties Germany you will have
communist social Democrats and the Nazis all singing like the
same songs about this guy.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
You know, he's one of the.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Few sort of redeemable figures in German history. Yeah, I
think he fucking rips.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
And this is what happens with national myth making, right,
you just take sing and make it class. It's like
you mold it to whatever you want it to be,
whatever you want you a national story to be. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, and like like this happens with Makno and Ukraine.
This happiest with what we talked was on Margaret Show
and I did. We did a bunch of episodes about
anarchism in Korea, and like they do this with a
bunch of Korean anarchists too. They become like national like
state heroes, and it's like, well, okay, this guy would
have absolutely shot you. Like this is one of these
things where it's like if you if, if you, if
you were to show if you were to show this
(04:30):
guy the SS, he'd be like, what the fuck?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Like me get my sword out again.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Yeah, it's time, It's time to start the killing again.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, And very specifically, Geary is like he'd actually had
known Martin Luther back before he like joined the peasants,
and like specifically the fact that they're they're like these
peasants are like sacking castles and killing priests and like
the ruling class very specifically makes is like, like the
fact that the ruling class could conceivably be in danger
is it that convinces Martin Luther to become I think
(05:02):
I've been this argument on the show before, but I
think he is, at very worst, like the second greatest
kind of revolutionary in like the last four or five
hundred years, because I hold that the greatest kind of
revolutionary is the one who starts the revolution and then realizes,
holy shit, I can't control this and I don't like
where it's going, and then immediately turns kind of revolutionary
to kill everyone who was involved. No, not like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(05:26):
So the product of this is that Martin Luther writes
this book kind of long pamphlet called against the murderous
beving hordes the Peasants and aligns himself with the princes. Yeah,
and you know, so then this is the start of
what it's eventually a century.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
You know, there's a couple of centuries of religious war
in here. We're gonna get to you.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
But this is in a lot of ways, I think
the beginning of the reproach ma between Catholicism and Protestantism,
because yeah, because class is more yeah yeah, and that
that actually, weirdly is an extremely important part of the
story of Guy fox Day. Yes, yeah, yeah. And you know,
the other thing that Luther's up to in this period
(06:11):
is trying to outflank the Catholics on anti Semitism, which
is pretty hard because like so this is the early
this is the early like fifteen hundreds, right, Yeah, we
are like forty years out from two Spanish monarchs like
expelling the Jews from Spain.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yeah, so like sixteenth century anti Semitism is like peak.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
I don't know, it's it's hard to exactly like tear
list the like periods of anti Semitism, but like right,
like the Holocaust. Holocaust is obviously number one. And then
like this period like the Kolelmannitsky pull Grom and like
some of the stuff in late nineteen like late eighteen
hundreds Russia or like yeah, some like the worst periods
in human history for this.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Yeah, this is pretty horrific shit.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
And and Luther decides that he's going to like outflank
the Catholics and anti Semitism, and so he writes this
book called on the Jews and their Lies, which is like, yeah,
the first version of this that I wrote had a
joke here about how it could have been written by Hitler.
But then I then I like did a little bit
of reading about it and was like, holy shit that
(07:14):
this specific thing was used by like Nazi Like, oh,
I'm sure Lutheran pastors specifically justifiedly that the Holocaust in
like thirty eight. So that's great. Yeah, how cool. Yeah,
So this is this is you know, this is the
sort of formation of like what you could call like
the Protestant counter revolution against the sort of social revolutionary
(07:34):
forces they kicked off right. Well, the antie sumptus like
hardline stuff is a bit later, but there's there's one
more kind of big uprising which is very funny, which
is that the Anabaptist in Munster who formed this like
oh yeah, pretty base democratic commune that eventually kind of
turns into like a sex cult thing, but like in
a way that's more like people realize they could be
(07:55):
poly than it is like normal sex cult people.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
So it's people like like emerging from an extremely constrained
like socialized sexuality.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
I guess, yeah, And you know, so this is like
this is you know, those are the two sort of
periods of like high of like the highest levels of
class conflict that are the result of the prosc information.
And this kind of ends with Munster when they all
get killed by the monarchies. And this is something about
(08:28):
the European peasantry. I don't know, Maybe one day I'll
do a project and why the European passantry was so
much worse at doing were volts in the Chinese peasantry
because the Chinese pasantry knocks off dynasties all the time.
Like the Chinese central government is like one hundred thousand
times more formidable as a force than like any of
these dipshit like Holy Roman Empire principalities. But the Chinese
peasantry did it anyway that I don't know. The German
(08:50):
peasantry fought hard, it doesn't go great for them.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah, I mean the entirety of the European society is
structured along like the state monopoly on violence. How oh yeah,
Like feudalism is like the scene kwandaonn of feudalism is
having the ability to kill all your peasants.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Yeah, And it's it's a it's a it's a system.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
And I think this is something that like, you know,
this is there's reflection of this you see in sort
of like fantasy a lot, right, where like people will
write monarchies and then you'll get like or like he's
using like the science station right where like people people
understand what's bad about a democracy because you've all lived
in one and you know all the ways.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
That it sucks.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
But because most of us like haven't lived under an
actual monarchy. Well okay, even then even then ye compared
to this ship.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Yeah, like people don't understand how just hideous this shit is.
And this is gonna play a role.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
I mean this this is like again, this is like
the thing that starts the French Revolution, where the first time.
That not the first time, but like when people actually
like start beating the monarchists. Seriously, people to this tendency
to remember like the violence of French Revolution. It's like, yeah,
there was a lot of shit that was very bad.
But also like these people, these people that they are fighting,
(10:09):
these are these are people who for hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of years, anytime anyone has like even dared
to talk back to them, has just fucking murdered them,
their families and everyone around them.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Yeah, like as horribly as possible.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah, yeah, and you know, and like as as the
process of their them holding on to their fucking deranged
hereditary power system. And the consequence of this is that once,
once these revolutions are put down, sort of Processtism versus Catholicism.
Like it's not fully this because it's like there are
sort of popular e I mean not in the good sense,
(10:43):
but there are sort of like more mass like Catholicism
versus proetism stuff, but like a lot of it politically
becomes the domain of like princes who are either sort
of running wars that are like nominally religious based, although
like go look on what side France enters on the
(11:04):
Thirty Years War in about twenty years when when France
enters out the side of a Protestants to figure out exactly
how much right. But like, you know, but this kind
of conflict becomes this this kind of more the actual
politics becomes centralized in the ruling class. The metaphor that
popped in mind to me is one that will make
sense to about four people. But it's kind of like
the way that all politics became centralized in the Bath
(11:26):
Party and Serrie over the course of like the sixties
and seventies, like all where like you have this mass politics,
but the only politics that matters is the military and
the military factions, the military fighting it out. Like that's
kind of what's happening here, is that like all of
these princes are sort of centralizing religious power. But this
means that like religious wars quote unquote, in conflict becomes
the domain of like these coups and counter coups by
(11:48):
like princes, and they're like noble factions and shit. Yeah,
and that's where we find ourselves in the year sixteen
oh four, at the beginning of the Gunpowder Treason. And
but before before we get that, do you know, what
else supports the unpowdered treason seventeenth century?
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Ye, yeah, definitely Chumper casino.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Yeah, they really major funders.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Yeah, it's okay if you lose your money. I jumped
at casino guys because they're trying to blow up the
houses of Parliament.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
We are back. We are back to the past. We're
back to I guess the future of where we were
several seconds before that. So England famously became Protestant when
King Henry the Eighth wanted a new wife and the
Pope wouldn't let him get a new wife.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Yeah, yeah, anohing new wife, right, Like was it like no,
this this was new ife? Wait, that's a rhyme for
this divorce divorced, beheaded, survived, had survived. Yeah yeah, I
think yeah, it was the first divorced because after that
he just went he went ham on the wives.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
And so through this incredibly silly chain of events, they
leave the Catholic Church and become Protestants through Anglicanism, which.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Is Catholicism light.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Like yeah, and I think it's more Catholicism light because
like Lutheranism also gets described to Becautholicism light. Yeah, but
I can emphatically state there is a major difference because
I came, I was raised Lutheran, and I fucking have
no guilt whatsoever, No guilt, zero, I feel bad about nothing.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
It's no shame. Catholicism to England is more or less
Catholicism minus Pope.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Yeah, And obviously they differ over time because yeah, because
it's just the drift of history, they evolved differently.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah yeah. But then but this this starts like actual
a series of kind of horrendous religious conflicts inside of
the UK where just like a bunch of random people
get killed because once princes become the people controlling religions,
everything gets unbelievably stupid really quickly.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Yeah, it's just a vehicle for like elite fucking ambition,
yeah right, that they can pick a faction and use
that to get a little bit higher up the ladder.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
So there's like there's a series of like cups encounter
coups to attempt to like reinstall Catholic rule or get
rid of and like it's all really boring, Like it's
it's so boring I cannot have.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Like yeah, let me tell you, may I did that
in history in school for years somehow I became that
to get a PhD in history. But that shit was dull.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
It's it's hideously boring, like which is insane because like
like bloody Mary is involved in this and it's still boring.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Oh yeah, there's a lot of beheadings. The princes in
the Tower famously did a little dead children, a lot
of a lot of murder.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Yeah, but boring murder, which is staggering. How do you
make murder boring?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Easy?
Speaker 4 (14:41):
Ah, you do this shit.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Yeah, Shakespeare wrote some good place about this shit. And
for those of you who are interested, yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Go go consult that.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
So by sixteen oh four, a group of guys that
would eventually extend to like thirteen Catholic guys start to
form a a frankly not very good plan to do
a coup and appoint the child king to restore Catholic
rule to England, the child queen.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, they love a child king.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
So this plan has Okay, I'm separating it out into
three stages. I don't know whether it's fair to, but
I'm doing it. So Part one, use a bunch of
gunpowder to blow up the English Parliament. Okay, now this
is something that's very important to understand what's happening here.
This is not a parliament in the sense that we
understand it today. Like, this is not like a representative
(15:36):
body like the parliament is. Basically it's an assembly assembly
of nobles. Right, It's the instrument of power of the
English aristocracy, Yeah, which is one of the greatest forces
for human evil in the entirety of human like the
three hundred thousand year history of humanity.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, we don't have it. Britain doesn't have a universal
franchise until after eighteen thirty two, so.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Like yeah, and this is this is this is sixteen
oh five, yeah, right, like and throughout that whole period
that the the powers for the aristocracy like ways, but
this is their unbelievably powerful.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
They don't have an universal manhood suffrage even until later
eighteen forty eight. Before that, every constituency it has its
own franchise rules, which makes Parliament even fucking weirder.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
Yah.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
You have some that like proto democratic, and you have
some where it's just a guy yep, and he just
shows up to Parliament and represents himself. Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, So you know this part of the plan the
blowing up the parliament plan great, we love it. We
support destroying the English aristocracy. Yeah, always great.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Yet the king, why not it's going to was it
going to be at the state opening of Parliament?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I think it was it was going to be at
some session of parliament with the King was going to
be there.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
That was part of parliament. So fun fact, Britain still
does this incredibly antiquated.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Like barbaric country.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yeah, this is where the we need China to conquer
the UK and established civilization there, like they like Britain.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Britain couldn't even do a bourgeois revolution. Do you know
how easy it is to do a bourgeois revolution.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Like Son, Yet Send pulled it on because Britain.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Has the most established fucking aristocracy in the world. So,
oh my god. The body stay opening in Parliament, which
still happens to this day, right incredibly like antiquated procedure.
They search the sellers of Parliament before and no one
else is trying to blow them up, like this is
now part of the part of the and like there's
a whole that's like an exchange of hostages, like like
(17:33):
there are all these things that are built in from
bizarre episodes in British histories. They send someone from Parliament
to Buckingham Palace to be like a hostage for the.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Duration.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
It's an incredible This is the stupidest system and the
like it the British The British system, like I think,
functionally it is a more advanced democratic system than the
American system, but in terms of the way that it's
like seizure works.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
It is like like the American Constitution, which is like
one of the most progressive constitutions, like a constitution that
failed to enshrine one person, one vote. Yeah right, Like
that constitution looks like fucking star Trek compared to like
watching the stupid ass king the hauling around a scepter.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Yeah, some dude bangs three times and then yeah yeah,
it just gets in there and reads his speech.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah. So so part two of the gunpowder plot is
to kill the king, who's going to be there too.
This is also great. We like killing the king, and
the cool Zone media is a pro killing the king
register establishment.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Yes, regicide rules, we love it.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
It's great. Part three is to install a Catholic theocracy
or a place the Protestant one, and we simply do
not love this.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
The ship sucks. That's why we diverge sadly. Yeah, yeah,
this vote's very bad. Via Vendetta may have misled you
about the intentions of Guy Forks.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yes, and we'll get to Viva Vendetta because that's I
think that's an important part of the closing of this story.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
So the plan falls apart. The plotters get betrayed.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Guy Fox, who's the guy who's supposed to light the gunpowder,
gets caught and like tortured, which is really funny because
you'll read accounts.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
I'm going to read a bit from an account from.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Somewhat dubiously named English Heritage dot org that is like
they're just quite pretty good on this.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Yeah, they like they own lots of like big old
houses and stuff. Like if you want to go and
see like a manor house, you're pretty going to give
them some money to go in. Like it's it's not
like as bad as something named English Heritage could have been.
Guess it could be a lot more racist in an
open and explicit way.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yeah yeah, now, but like they to think about this, right,
is like they don't actually disribe what happened to him
during his interrogation as torture even though they tortured the
shit out of this guy. Oh yeah, like the king
was there, well, they tortured the shit out of this guy.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yeah yeah, very unpleasant, I imagine.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
And so eventually, like all the plotters are like either
captured or killed. And I'm gonna read this from that
that English Heritage article quote. Each was found guilty and
sentenced to a trader's death by the grizzly ordeal of hanging, drawing,
and quartering. Oh yeah, the men were hanged. It's so bad.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
I love this shit. When I was in school, you
don't understand how great this is for like eight year
old boys.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah, but Jesus fucking Christ. So they were hanged, cut
down while still alive, castrated, dismembered, and beheaded, and then
their bodies were cut into quarters and displayed for all
to see and for birds to feast upon. Ye. According
to all accounts, all face their fates bravely. So these
like and it is something that like is genuinely important
to understand because we're going to get to the French
(20:43):
Revolution part of the story very soon. These people are
fucking dranged. They're like they're psychopaths, like they just they
do this as public entertainments. Yeah. Yeah, like they hang
people and then cut them down and castrate them and
then dismember and behead them while they're alive, Like they
do this like for fun.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Yeah. Isn't this the opening scene of uh just spinding
punished by Fuco? Doesn't he describe it?
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, And like you know, like this is this is
the thing you have to remember about the French Revolution
is that like these are the people who rule Europe
for like seven hundred years, oh yeah, or like these
motherfuckers and so you know, like they they stopped the
gunpowder trees and no one gets blown up, and November
fifth like immediately gets declared a holiday, but it's not
(21:31):
really the same holiday as as we have today. I'm
gonna read again from that article quote. Since sixteen seventy
three and up until the nineteenth century, some crowds have
paraded an effigy of the pope through this tree sprung
up above a bonfire. This symbolized continuing prejudice, prejudice towards Catholics,
which again, like you motherfuckers weren't Catholics until like fucking
(21:53):
seven seconds ago. Like what is wrong with you people
like I like you, you were all Catholics until your
king decided to make a fake pope so he could
get divorced.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Like what the fuck? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Yeah, the antim goes pretty hard, like for.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
A country where like you, like you were all literally
Catholics until the king decided you weren't.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
What is it?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Oh my god, I hate Christian so much. Shit sucks
so badly.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Talking of parades, have you have you read about the
Lewis bonfire in Sussex?
Speaker 4 (22:30):
No?
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Okay, they like they go super hard for BM finite.
They also like I think it was the same day
or something that some Protestants will burned at the steak there. Great,
they have this big parade where they like they drag,
like I think it's burning barrels of like pitch or tar.
Possibly those are the same thing they have. Like I'm
going to invite you to google Lewis Lewis Bonfire and
(22:54):
just just tell me what the first image you see is.
Speaker 5 (22:58):
Oh Jesus Christ, No, yeah that's correct.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Yeah, yeah, what you see is jump scared.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
So they don't just burn guy forks in they have
these big sort of every every year they'll have like
the person of the year they're going to burn so
like effigies that they've burned include David Cameron, don't be
Clarkson except blatter like some of it got surprisingly hard,
(23:33):
Like I think at some point like there's like a
formal like they've been investigated by the police. Fake. Nearly
all of them are against politicians, so you know, we
probably should have mentioned that they also burned a Romani caravan,
which is pretty fucking terrible.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yeah, all right, speak speaking speaking of burning David Cameron,
do you know who else burns David Cameron?
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Is it the goods and services that support this podcast?
Speaker 4 (23:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (23:59):
Great, yeah, yeah, we're now returning.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Let's go back to that thing I was reading about
what happened to them them paying the Pope? Yeah, sontheless?
This symbolized continuing prejudice against Catholics. However, during the French Revolution,
English and Irish Catholics fought for Britain, which found itself
on the same side of the Pope, and perhaps because
of this, in around eighteen hundred, Guy Fox seems to
(24:32):
have finally entered the picture as the boogeyman of Bonfire Night,
rather than the Pope. Fox was barely mentioned in fifth
November sermons in the eighteenth century, and his name doesn't
feature in the titles of books attracted four eighteen hundred.
But after that date his name began to appear, and
Fox seems to have quickly become a central character in
English popular culture, often portrayed as a dashing, doomed anti hero. Yeah,
(24:53):
and this is a reminder that Protestant isn't versus Catholic.
Catholicism is a fucking joke. The ruling class has always
had one religion counter revolution, and when their asses are
on the line, Protestant terrorists and Catholic Supreme Court justices
can work together just find to make sure you can't
get a fucking abortion.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
So you know what we have here. And this is
an interesting thing in the sense that like, like Guy
Fox becoming the guy that Guy Fox Day is about,
and not like the pope is literally an icon of
sort of like of kind of revolution.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Like specifically against a French revolution.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
But it's interesting because it's like this eventually seems to
kind of have backfired because Guy Fox kind of like
becomes the central figure. Right but then, and this is
something that like This article also mentions that I want
to go into more. Everything sort of changes again about
this when the movie Viva Vendetta gets made.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Yeah, it's very strange.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yeah, and let's actually so before we do day, can
you talk a little bit more about like what people
do during Guy Fox Day because it's fun.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Yeah, totally. Yeah, So it is fun.
Speaker 6 (26:00):
It is.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
It's a nice like a little as burnings in effigy go,
you know, a fun one. At least. What we used
to do I grew up in a more rural area
is we'd all everyone if you had like wood, or
you chop down a tree, you know, on your land,
or you had old furniture, you'd all bring it to
one place, right, big field, you pilot and you're with
it's fucking high. It's like a couple of stories high
(26:22):
by the time down, and then you go down. On
the fifth of November, everyone gets fireworks. This is where
I'll tell my fireworks story very amusingly. When I was younger,
everyone in my village club together to buy one of
those fireworks displays, you know, where it's like a box
and you light one fuse and they all go off. Yeah.
Oh shit, So we've set that up my dad and
his mate and we're in the van there. We've lit
(26:44):
it and then we've we're sort of standing there like
ready to go ooh ah. Unfortunately we've placed it upside down,
fucking bouncing off the ground and then it flips on
the side just behind the van and smashing the van.
So yeah, what do you do is you get fireworks,
(27:07):
You shoot them at your friends, you shoot them in
the air. You have a massive bonfire, like and it's
this is November Britain, right, so you know days are
short nights so long, everything's wet, so you're using a
lot of petrol to start the bonfire, like, you know,
irresponsible amountable. You just have a huge fire. And then
if you have old clothes at least, I'm sure it's
(27:29):
different if you grow up in like a more urban setting.
What we would do is we get old clothes, tie
the bottom of the trousers together, tie the wrists together,
and then you stuffle that with straw bedding that you have, right,
and then you put a head on it pets like
a bag, like a plastic bag or flower bag. You
draw a little face on it and that's your guy.
(27:51):
You can go around to people's houses and ask for
a penny for the guy. That's that had sort of
become quite old fashioned by the time I was a child.
But you make these guys and then you take them
down there and then you you put them on top
of the bonfire before you light it, and everyone watches
as he catches on fire and burns to death. And
you have toffee apples at the other thing, apples and
(28:14):
dipped in toffee.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, I used to like it.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
And you have sparklers, you know, which is you know,
a little sparker on a stick. Yeah, it was fun.
It's got something for every age. A little kid, you
have a sparker, and then once you get to you know,
like ten twelve, you can shoot fireworks at your friends
and like really it's something for everyone, and I guess
unless you're Catholic. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
But that's the thing though, that the Cathars hasn't been Protestantism.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
It's very secularized.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah, like they've been united, they've been united in the
single Greek British religion of kind of revolution.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
So now everyone can celebrate and fox stay together.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Yeah, it's true. And it's supposed to like reinforce the
state and be like, if you fuck with the state,
we will burn you, which Viva Vendetta kind of I
guess messes with a little bit.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
But yeah, and this I think is actually a really
interesting process because I think Guy Fox now is most
known for the Guy Fox mask, which was one of
the symbol and the symbol of anonymous and like one
of the.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
Symbols of Yeah, but it wasn't before that.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
And parts of how this happens is so it is
a character named Guy Fox in Alan Moore's view for
Vendetta and VI for Vendetta is not about a Catholic
plot to establish the Catholic rule.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
In in Britain.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Yeah, this is about like effectively the government of the
UK is going to have in five years when they
just like completely descend into fascism. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
I would know that far away now, to be honest.
Speaker 6 (29:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah. And it's about that government getting overthrown by an
anarchist revolution.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
And it's like this because like you know, Alan Moore
is a leftist. It's made by the Wachowskis of like
of Matri's fame, who are also trans leftists. We're gonna
close on them actually, but you know, sort of what
happens to you, right, is like this mask becomes a
symbol of like kind of like really altogether detached from
the original figure of Guy Fox and like to the
form of this movie, Like this becomes the symbol of
(29:59):
like the twenty eleven like occupy cycle revolutions everywhere, and
like like one of my most sort of like harrowing
memories like coming up in that movement was of this
like twenty fourteen, everything's covering things. By twenty fourteen, everything's
going to shit, right, Like the Serians of War is
kicked off.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
They were Bob massacrering.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Egypt has like slaughtered a bunch of protesters, and Egypt's
like just under full military rule. And there's a like
there are like Palestinian kids like wearing Guy Foss masks,
and there's like this image that haunts me. There's video
and an image of it of this kid. Is like
this kid's like seventeen, maybe like sixteen seventeen, like wearing
(30:37):
this mask and he walks around a cord and this
really sniper just fucking shoots him the head. And there's
this picture of him with like this just like mask
with a hole in it next to his face, and
he's just like lying there on the floor, and it's
like one of the things that is like the reason
why the way I am now is because of that shit. Yeah,
and you know, in some sense like he's become it
(30:57):
weirdly and enduring danger to the state in way that
he would be extremely pissed about, which, yeah, very funny
to me.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Yeah, it started as a graphic novel, right, it was
a graphic novel before.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
Yeah, yeah, it was an alanrograp novel.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yeah, And I want to close on on the Wachowskis,
and specifically I wanted to shout out so again like
the watch House. He's made the movie Viva Vedeta, which
is the thing that like popularized it and is in
a lot of sense responsible for like the aesthetic of
the twenty eleven revolutions. And she's founded a new project
called Anarchist United. I'm going to quote from an interview
(31:32):
with her quote. It will be a studio wholly owned
by a foundation. It's owned by this five O one
C three. The five of one C three provides grants
for artists and young filmmakers with marginalized points of view.
Hopefully those people will create stuff, bring it over to
the studio. The studio can make it and then fund
the foundation. So you create this evergreen operation that can
hopefully exist outside of the studio system if necessary. And
(31:52):
so they're making a bunch of trans shit, like they're
adapting Gretchen Felken Martin's Manhunt, which is like the transfer
mass like Book of the Last Like like it's a
book about trans misogogy and it's getting We're getting a
fucking adapted. So yeah, it's really cool. And yeah, like
I think, I think, I don't know that. That's the
(32:13):
thing I want to close on is like a note
of hope of like even the most deranged kind of
revolutionaries actions against the state and sometimes ricochet around four
hundred years later into like revolutionary movement.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Bounce back into transferm films. And it's like I often
think about Hunger Games, like, yeah, the Hunger Game symbol.
I would love to into the lady who wrote Hunger Games.
I think she's quite like doesn't like the media attention
so much from what I've heard. Yeah, but like that
became the symbol of the like around the Milky Alliance
right in Hong Kong, mean mar obviously even in Thailand
(32:53):
they use, Yeah, and think it's fascinating how these things
have these cultural and like, yeah, they sort of bounce around,
becomes athing, compete different from what they were.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Well, and and you know it's this weird thing too,
because like the Hunger Games was born of Susan Collins,
like flipping channels between coverage of like the like watching
the bombing in the Iraq War and reality TV. Yeah,
I remember reading that and you see and you watch
like this rebound of this, like like the intense reaction
of this cultural moment to round two thousand and three,
two thousand and four, like like what of the peaks
(33:25):
of American like kind of revolution rebounds route. It's suddenly
a bunch of like a bunch of a bunch of
revolutionaries of VMBAR are doing the like fucking two Biggers thing.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Yeah, yeah, doing the Cup Scouts.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah. And so you know, this is one of these
things where like you know, who knows where where your
story one day is going to end up in rebound two.
But yeah, if if if we survived this, we are
promised that this year was the beginning of the golden
age of leftist transcenema. So let's let's fucking get their war.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
And yeah, yeah, if you're in England, enjoy burning it tonight.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
If in America, who knows, maybe.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Soy birding shit tonight. It could Happen Here is a
production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
fool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can now find sources for it Could Happen here,
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
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James Stout
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