Part Two: The Anarchist Revolution in the Spanish Civil War

In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with comedian, writer and podcast host Jamie Loftus about the time that millions of anarchists and their allies collectivized in Spain while fighting off a fascist invasion.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff
the podcast about rebels and rabble and revolutionaries and some
other words that start with our. I don't feel like
I should have one more, Sophie Jamie will pumping out
race cars, race cars. They said race cards, and that
would have been nearly as no, no, no no. It

(00:24):
was a zoom connection. I said, race cars. Okay, well
on we go, okay, really started the starting the episode.
I don't know on a bummer. I wasn't intending I
was just race car. I was just talking about I
was just thinking about Lightning mc queen. Jamie. Jamie got

(00:46):
me a like between waffle maker for uh, I forgot
it was some holiday or some birthday like two years ago.
It's phenomenal. I mean, is it just a regular waffle
iron or is it or waffle maker? But you like,
does the imprint of Lightning McQueen. It's not just any wafflemaker.

(01:06):
And Owen Wilson voiced car, a corporate car voice by
Owen Wilson, um, and I celebrate that for some reason.
I do like the movie Cars and Cars three cars
two not as much. And that's my that's my word
on the matter. And That's why I said race cars. Anyways,

(01:26):
this is your show marker? Am I supposed to say that?
Take you out of this whole? I'm your one. Okay,
here's where I mean. I have no idea who that is.
I have no idea is it a Nascar thing or
is it a movie thing? This is where I do
feel it's it's I constantly have to tell Robert what

(01:50):
basic pop culture literacy is. Like the time I had
to tell Mariana Grande was, um, Lightning McQueen. You know,
I would actually be curious, but your take on the
cars franchises, Um, you know, it's it's it's hit or
miss movie to movie. But but at times I would
say it could be arolic and good time to quote

(02:13):
every review I've ever read. Okay, I'd probably like it.
Oh yeah, okay, smiling you know he's children. Yeah yeah, No,
I live under a rock and I try to smile
a nod through a lot of pop culture conversations. Even
though I really like pop music, Like I listen to
more pop music than any other style of music. Um,

(02:34):
but I only listen to very specific pop music. So
I still completely don't know certain people are listeners listeners listeners.
I had the great, great, great joy last week telling
Margaret who Harry Styles is, and oh my god, it
was the time of my life. I was like, listen

(02:57):
to this song, listen to this song, listen to this
song on and I like it. It's good music. Why, yes,
yes it is. I just tell a lot of people
I worked with recently who do Alipa was. Margaret does
not know who that is. I kind of know who
that is. Dolipa makes great pop music, great dance music,

(03:17):
and my favorite thing about Dualipa is that she is
a terrible performer. She has great music, and then if
you watch her on stage, it looks like, look, it's
like a weekend at Bernie's situation. You're like, is this
person alive? It gives it as well though she gives
it a hundred and ten in the studio, but on

(03:38):
stage she's given it. It's wild and I've never seen
her perform live, and now I really want to. I'll
link you to some stuffs. Um, sorry for derailing what
with the lighting, McQueen of it all? No, no, no,

(03:58):
it's okay. I've always terrified that they Basically every time
I come on, I'm like I hope no one talks
about sports because I think sports are cool, but I
have nothing to I don't know anything about them. You know,
it would be fun if I if I tried to
to double con everyone on the call by being like,
Dualipa is a famous baseball player, famous first base player,

(04:23):
I would have believed you. I would have been like, no,
I swear I could swear I knew that one, but
I guess I did. No. No, she's on the Dodgers. Yeah. No.
I listened to seven I live in to Sebdaliza, and
I listened to Banks, and I listened to Um Billie
Eilish and Thanks Rocks, Oh Billy, that's I mean, that's
a big one. I love how dark pop music is,

(04:44):
and I really like dark stuff. This is me trying
to dig myself out of this hole. Um. But the thing,
I do have lots of weird opinions about our people
who have been dead for a hundred years, who have
no impact upon society anymore. And I don't have as
much knowledge there. So wait, as second told me, okay,
I will my guest this week. We can get to

(05:07):
this part. My guest this week is Jamie Loftus took
seven minutes. I love it. Um, Jamie loft is ak
the only person who can make a podcast about a
comic strip I didn't like as a kid and then
have me riveted. The only person who can make me
feel better about the time in high school. And I
decided to get really into cool edgy literature like Nabokov,

(05:30):
and I had to make sure I pronounced that right,
um in I mean that is that and lightning McQueen culture.
I really I really could have gotten you for, but
truly very little else. Okay, thrilled to be here, thrilled
to be I guess technically back Yeah, yeah, I mean

(05:52):
I think for anyone who's not listening. He was like,
we just record these in one take. Um, we have
a five minute break, but you all had to wait
two days. So I had some toast. Did anyone have
any snacks? I have a bowl of fruit that I
can't eat because it will make noise. I pet my
dog the whole time, but she's a snack. Actually she's

(06:15):
a whole meal. So Sophie, Sophie's teething on her own dog.
And that's Sophie on the call. Sophie is my producer,
I wrote in here a joke, and it no longer
works in the flow of things, so I'm not going
to use it. I did appreciate it when I when
I read it, though, thanks. I'm going to use that
joke later. I'm going to recycle that joke because no

(06:36):
one's heard it except to you. It's really funny, all right.
So this week, and port Jamie doesn't get to know it.
So this week we're talking about the motherfuckering anarchists in
the Spanish Civil War. And you probably need to go
listen to part one. Go listen to part one, please,
I would have needed to. Yeah, all right, So where
we last left our heroes almost seven after seventy years

(06:57):
of organizing, educating, striking active stayed doing a murder here
or they're three prime ministers dead at least one resigned,
all in the service of trying not to starve. They've
beaten back a fascist invasion and handed been handed a
bunch of guns by the government. So you know what
time it is. It's the opposite of dictator time. It's expropriation,

(07:21):
basically the same appropriation, which is the annoying jargon word
in academic leftism. For stealing shipped back from rich people
that they shouldn't have had in the first place. Okay,
so it is peanutparter jolly time. Yes, absolutely, so a
lot of revolutionaries wasted their time in the nineteenth century,
well period, I could just end the sentence there, but

(07:42):
they wasted a lot of time in the nineteenth century
arguing I could also end the sentence there about whether
peasants or urban workers were like the quote proper revolutionary class.
But the anarchists in Spain didn't have this problem because
they weren't detached theorists arguing about who would make a revolution.
They were just peasants and urban workers. So they were like,

(08:03):
we should make the revolution. The answer as us and
they have been trying for decades to collectivize their workplaces
through all sorts of means, but the most effective one
turned out to be having a revolution. So they finally
have their chance seventy years and they did not let
this chance pass them up. Within a year, they had
se the industry and Catalonia collectivized, which means that they

(08:24):
had like taken it over. We're running it with the
workers themselves running the factories. That is a absurdive I
mean like that, that's an impressive amount of organization to
happen on such a short timeline. Yeah, and se agriculture
in the nearby region of Aragon was collectivized, and other

(08:46):
places all over Republican Health Spain that I don't have
the numbers in front of me for those were the
two biggest areas. But it was all over Republican Health Spain.
And it was all in this decentralized fashion, not from
the top down. So when workers took their factories over
from their bosses, efficiency shot up. And this always made
sense to me, like who knows how to run a
factory better than the people who run the factory, who

(09:09):
like do the work. Sometimes they would elect administrators from
their own ranks. Um. I actually think in some cases
old bosses continued working in factories as equal as to
everyone else, as like administrators. I'm not sure because I
read that, but it sounds so utopian that I like
don't quite want to believe it. I mean, I actually
want to believe it that I want to believe it too.

(09:31):
But they didn't give like any specific examples of that
happening or anything like that. No, it was it was
It was a little bit of a throwaway line and
a piece, and so I was like, it's a nice fantasy.
I hope it really happened, Yeah, exactly. And so what
they would do is they would elect administrator and they
would give them a mandate. They say, well, we're electing
you to accomplish the following thing. And if the administrator

(09:54):
deviated from that, not if they failed, I think, but
if they like weren't doing what they were supposed to do,
they we just recall that person an elect a new one,
which is the way that theoretically democracy is supposed to work.
Is that you don't like people to like tell you
what to do. You would like people to like handle stuff,
you know. M hm. They made health care free. New

(10:14):
hospitals were built pretty much right away. These like collectively
run hospitals the doctors, because the doctors went where they
needed instead of where the rich were, and so they
were able to get a lot more done. And they
also collectivized agriculture, and one of the things that's kind
of important to me is that they didn't force collectivization
on small farmers. They which is a big difference in

(10:37):
the sort of theory and practice of anarchist communism versus
authoritarian communism. So people did go to the big landowners
who owned all of the land that everyone was just
gig economy working for, and stole all their ship back
and we're like, this is our land now, sorry, and
they would set up these collective farms on it. But
if someone says I don't want to be a collective farmer,
I just want to farm for myself, they wo'll be like, Okay,

(10:59):
here's your land, you can go do that. And so
a lot of people went and did that, and they
became small farmers or they already wore small farmers or whatever.
And then they were like, after about a year, they
would look over and they'd see the collective farms doing
so much better, and they're like, Okay, never mind, I
want to go collectivize and cool. And it matters to
me because then it's it's it's their choice, right, And

(11:21):
I don't know, I get really teary eyed about that.
There's actually times throughout history where like people have been
killed for saying, hey, why don't we um instead of
forcing people to collectivize, offer them the chance to collective us.
And then the only thing was that basically they all
believe that wage labor was exploitation, so you couldn't hire employees.
But if you worked at yourself, like you and your

(11:41):
family or whatever you can, you can have land into it. Yeah,
that's an extremely powerful thing to see your peers making
it work and then have to, like, I don't know,
question everything you've ever been told and be like, no,
this clearly does work better and they're happier and they're
that's that's very beautiful. Yeah. And so it wasn't just workplaces.

(12:04):
Schools in popular education were like their thing, and so
there's massive literacy campaigns. It's very low literacy rates among
the workers prior to this, and everywhere they go they
set up schools and they start teaching children and adults both.
And the economy was different in different places, right, because
this wasn't a overnight I mean, it was actually very fast,
but it wasn't a complete and total transformation of all

(12:24):
elements of all parts of republic in Spain. So everything
is kind of in this hybrid model and the economy
looks different. So some places, if there's enough of something,
if there's surplus of whatever, you can literally just walk
into the communal storehouse and take the thing you need.
If you're like, I want to can of peaches, I
don't know why you want a can of peaches. I
think the song just came into my head when I

(12:45):
needed an example. I was like, there's been there's been
great works of art about of peaches. Yeah, they come
from a can there put there by a collective. And
you don't know who Lightning mc queen is. You know,
it's very weird, selective lack of knowledge. What I try
to do is like pick a couple of pop culture
things and then reference. This isn't a good example because

(13:06):
songs from the nineties, but alright, sometimes trying to come
over with a couple of pop culture things and like
drop them into things so that people think I'm hipping
with it and then yeah, we get it. Yeah, and
then smiling nod when people talk about things I don't
know about. Um, what's great is I'm starting to know
your tell. Oh great, somebody's going to have a soundboard install.

(13:29):
I'm gonna I'm siren start going. No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna,
I'm gonna help you gotta wave with a lie. Alright, alright,
so the producer does Okay, so some places you could
just walk in and take stuff, including cans of peaches,
and there's no money, no ration cards, no labor vouchers
for some of these things. In some places, other stuff

(13:51):
that's scarce, you might have to pay for it, and
in some places you would pay with a ration card.
Basically they would go around and say, like how much
does your family need, and then this is your ration
hard for that amount, so it's not tied into how
much you work. And then in other places, I think,
I think, but I'm not certain that that was slightly
more of the case in rural places and in urban
places this other method was more common, but I'm not
certain about that. In other places it was labor vouchers.

(14:16):
So basically like one hour's work is equal to one
hour's work regardless of what job you do, um in
order to try and avoid economic inequality, and and there's
like you know, lots of people have argued about whether
this you know, someone who has to go to school
for a very long time to be able to what
they do whatever. This I'm not trying to like claim

(14:36):
this is a touchy subject, but that but that is
I mean definitely forward to us. So yeah, um so
one source I read claimed that about a third of
the Spanish population was involved in this revolution to one
degree or another, like seven to eight million people were
involved in this, and of course this is only in

(14:57):
areas that weren't controlled by Franco. And so they and
the c n T is kind of running most of this,
but not all of it. And they talk a big
utopian game, and they work their fucking asses off to
try to live up to their utopian ideals. But they
did not always succeed. There's there's all kinds of ship
they sucked up, and like, for one thing, a lot
of people were like suddenly anarchists overnight, and so this

(15:22):
did lead to mob justice and unjustified violence I guess
called the red terror by the when the fascist takeover,
they call it the red terror, as compared to like
the fascist violence gets called the white terror. Everyone in
like nineteenth century Europe is really into every political ideology
having a color. And yeah, I am I was trying

(15:43):
to think of a funny reason why that might be,
but I think it might just be a them thing. Yeah,
a lot of what gets called atrocities, I'm not going
to call atrocities. A lot of it water atrocities. But like,
for example, the biggest thing that is controversial is they
killed a lot of Catholic priests, and which looks really
bad at first glance, and a lot of times I
think it was really bad. I think a lot of

(16:03):
times it was unjustified. But a lot of other times
they were very specifically killing the people who were like
had been snitching them out and getting everyone killed and
were like the center of right wing politics that was
literally working with the fascists and literally allied with the
invading army. So in many cases, Catholic priests what could

(16:25):
be aligned with being called like right wing thought leaders. Yeah, totally.
It would be like the local person in your village
who's feeding information to the fascist and army that is invading. Yeah,
strategically I see it, and it gets it gets messier
than that. But one thing that I think matters is

(16:47):
that it wasn't on a systemic level like the CNT
was never like and we hereby call for everyone to
run around and you know, do this stuff. And actually
a lot of people were to try and stop the
unjustified elements of it. A Again, I feel bad anytime
I'm like, let me defend atrocities because I'm like, I'm
not I guess I'm trying to say it's messier than
it is presented. Sure, sure, I know, I think I

(17:09):
think that's completely fair. And some of the other violences
against like landowners and stuff who were like, you can't
steal our land, and like we're going to steal your land.
But one of the reasons we know about the Red
Terror is because they actually did believe in free speech
and so in the anarchists in particular, so the acts
of violence and stuff would get recorded and would get
out because they weren't stopping foreign journalists. I'm sure there

(17:32):
were individual instances where people try to stop them. I
don't know, but I'm very aware of multiple instances where
foreign journalists are writing about these things and are not
stopped from writing about these things. As compared to the
White Terror, which the fascists really like preventing people from
oven free speech and writing. Um not known for their
love of in spite of there's often screaming it. They

(17:57):
actually do not like free speech as aims to making
them look bad. Correct the So the other thing that
the anarchists talked a big game about and worked really
hard at but did not always pull off was women's
liberation and gender equality. And they were miles ahead of
the Republicans, who were miles ahead of the fascists, but

(18:19):
they still had miles to go, and there were a
lot of people working too to cross those miles. I've
now destroyed that analogy by taking it too far. Um.
It's also not a specific miles were crossed either way. Yeah,
it might have been kilometer. Actually, I have no idea
what people used to measure distance twenties or thirties Spain.
So how dare you americanized that analogy for every for

(18:41):
for all three of our benefit right? Totally. So. The
anarchists have been fighting for the liberation of women for
a long ast time, to various series of success like
at an anarchist conference in eighteen seventy two sixty years prior,
they had declared that women need to be equal to
men in the workplace, in the home, both. But that
was a conference of mostly men who said that, sure,

(19:02):
and a lot of the women involved were really interested
in the destruction of the patriarchal family model and free
love and what they called plural love, which I think
would just actually be polyamory. Abounded, and they also were
huge into teaching birth control, and they actually created this
whole working class theory for family planning because everything had

(19:22):
to like tie back into class politics for them, because
they're zealots sometimes sure, and mostly I think that they
wanted it because they believed in the freedom of the
individual to make choices. But they were like, Okay, poor
women suffer. These are women saying coming up with these things.
Poor women suffer the most from having large families that
are hard to feed, and beyond that, the the poor,
which of which our anarchists are included, If they have

(19:45):
fewer children, it lowers the pool of labor and gives
more power to individual laborers, thus reducing unemployment. And also
if there's fewer kids, there's fewer people to go get
shipped off to war. Cool cool reproductive policy. Oh my god, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I mean, I'm not not shocked to hear it. I

(20:06):
was in the show I'm working on right now. There
was I'm sure, I mean you've probably heard of her before,
but Victoria Woodhall, who was like the first woman to
ever Oh I get to teach you something, yeah, please
do there. Well, I didn't I didn't understand the term
free love as it existed in the nineteenth century. UM.

(20:28):
So I found out because I'm writing and working on
a show about um the Ghost Church of America American spiritualism,
and there was a spiritualist presidential candidate in the early
eighteen seventies I think it was seventy two. She was
like ostracized from her own religious community who believe in

(20:50):
talking to spirits because they were like, well, yeah, ghosts
are real, but a woman as president ridiculous. But she
was running on a platform that involved It was a
women's rights platform, it was a spiritualism platform, and it
was a free love platform. And the only thing that, like,

(21:10):
her definition of that was even more limited. It was
like it didn't even include the concept of polyamory. It
just said, you can get divorced without being you know,
like thrown out of society and let's maybe think about um,
you know, reproductive rights. And she was thrown out of

(21:32):
Ghost Church. So any nineteenth century, I just had never
heard free love in the nineteenth century since and you're like, wow,
this is incredibly low stakes, Like holy cow, yeah, I
think you know, and some of these people were pushing
for something. It looks like polyamory. But yeah, I think
a lot of them was like secular marriage, you know,

(21:53):
the idea that you could kind of enter and leave, right.
Most of them are pushing for like our mom, you know, lives,
which I guess is what it eventually allowed to. But yeah,
I just was kind of interested in, like the evolution
of the term free love and how it was kind
of demonized for for no reason. Yeah, it's like the

(22:15):
Simpsons thing where the like I was saying, boot turns,
you know, and they're like, free love means you get
to sleep whoever you want. Like we're not saying that.
I'm like, I'm saying that, right, but then you're like,
we are saying that also, Like, let's have a conversation
about why you feel so weird about polyamory, you fucking weirdos.
Mind your own fucking business. Some of the some of
the women that I was reading about for this this

(22:35):
chunk about the fight for gender equality within the CNT.
It would talk about the way that they would like
scandalize their family. There there would be like third generation anarchists,
and they would scandalize their parents by going on bicycle
trips that are like mixed men and women where they're
all like twenty years old, and I'm like, the past
is wild, Like we've got bigger fish to fry, and

(22:57):
we're already frying them. Why are you being weird about
my bike? Like, yeah, I'm just trying to have a weekend. Yeah. So,
because men within the CNT were failing regularly, a bunch
of women got together and we're like, we have we
have to do something about this. And actually a lot
for a while a lot of anarchists women just didn't
join the CNT and they just did their anarchist organizing

(23:18):
outside of that institution. But I think as things started
the heat up, it became like this is a lot
of the sort of more independent anarchists joined the c
n T out of like, well, we're having a revolution
and this is the organizing body, so let's join the
organizing body of it. And so in the nineteen thirties
a bunch of different anarchists women were talking about this
problem more and more, and so two different groups of

(23:39):
women in the CNT, one in Madrid and one in Barcelona,
where two groups were founded to address it. And the
Madrid faction called itself Mhadas Libra's Free Women, which is
a way cooler name than the Barcelona name, which translates
to feminine culture group. I mean, not untrue, but could
use a second draft. Fortunately, what they did is in

(24:01):
Barcelona they just changed their name to my head of Sleebrius.
Also good call, Good Call. So I don't know if
you knew this, Jamie, but one of the main sponsors
that we're trying to have on this show is anything
that's good, and in particular, anything that isn't a product
or a service, but it's just a concept that is
a good concept. That's what we're trying to to get advertising.
Sometimes I think we have to take other ads as well. Um,

(24:22):
I've been a big advocate of the potato and tap water,
but if there's anything that's just sort of generally good
potable tap water, there's anything so generally good you'd like
to be sponsored by, Oh, something I would like to
be sponsored by? Yeah, I would need to be sponsored by,
um my neighbor's lemon tree, which in many ways I

(24:45):
am sponsored by because sometimes she'll be like, there's too
many lemons, and now there's a bag of them on
your front step, and I think that it's it's one
of the best parts of my week, and it seems
to bring her joy as well. So I'd like to
bring my my neighbor's lemon tree into the mix. And
that's also a really good metaphor for the whole hope

(25:05):
thing that we've trying to go for here. All right, well,
we are only sponsored by those things, and anything else
that we're sponsored by slipped in by accident. Here's some ads. Okay,
we are back and we are talking about the women
of Muhetta sleep Rest, which I guess it is repetitive.

(25:25):
The so so one of the initiators of muhetaslie Brest,
and they didn't use the word founder because that sounded
too hierarchical, because anarchists are caricatures of themselves. Love them,
I love them. Yeah. Was this lesbian anarchist poet named
Lucia Sanchez sour No, and she would write about the

(25:47):
need for basically feminism, although they actually very consciously didn't
call themselves feminists because they didn't trust feminism to be
not trying to create power over men, because they had
only been exposed to certain elements of feminism, I guess
um and has caused tension years and years later, like
decades later, they were like, we don't like it these

(26:08):
young feminists because they're just trying to like take over
and they hate the men or whatever. Classic feminists. Yeah,
but at the time, they're having a revolution and they're
fighting for women's inclusion and they're creating women only groups
within it. And and so they start a magazine called
Mohadibras and then also wrote about these issues in the
main newspaper of the CNT And what what year are

(26:29):
we in now? Just thirty six I believe they start
the magazine, and then thirty seven, I think is when
it becomes groups. And the whole Spanish Civil War period
is ninety six and nineteen thirty nine basically. So they
end up founding this nationwide sorry initiating nationwide federation of
thirty thousand autonomous women. And they had a whole bunch

(26:50):
of goals, so they just started working towards all of
them all at once. They would set up flying daycare
centers so women could drop their kids off if they
wanted to go to organizing meeting. Because this is a
way in which women were being disincluded from the process
of creating a new society. They set up women centers
to teach adult women. They focused on fighting in illiteracy,

(27:11):
which was even worse among women. They also taught birth
control and self pleasure and they Oh my gosh, I
know these people just rule um. Originally the entire episode
was literally just going to be about them, and then
I like wrote the context around them, and I was like,
in order to understand the context the first episode, were
you like, were you like cool people, cool stuff? Yeah?

(27:33):
These are these are cool people who did cool stuff
my head of sleeves. Absolutely. They are like the pinnacle
of the cool ones in here. And they they taught
trades that were traditionally only practiced by men, like auto
mechanics and tram driving. They were not themselves and militia,
but they supported the women who were fighting in the militias.
And they led military trainings. And I don't know if

(27:55):
you've ever gone to any training that's about how to
and things like that, but learning from men is not
always the best environment for learning. Who does it perhaps
feel a little unsafe? Yeah, weird, no kidding, because historically

(28:20):
I don't see the tension. I don't see where that
would come from. Yeah, I think it was like some
specific thing that was happening only in the nineties in Spain.
It must have just been a generational thing. I can't
relate with that at all. So so it was it
was women showing women how to shoot guns. Amazing, Yeah,
and like lead military, you know, excursions and all that stuff,

(28:43):
because they're in all of this is happening. There's also
a war on right, and at the at the start
of the war, women were in the fight. They were
absolutely like they're at the very beginning. But and actually
originally there's one of the reasons there's so many photos
of women with fools from the Spanish Civil War is
that people used as propaganda. I think on both sides.

(29:05):
I think the fascists were like, look at these terrible
people they have women fight, and the anarchists women were like, look,
we're awesome, We're gonna take pictures. But then I think
some of the like leftist men were like, let's shame
leftist men into fighting by taking pictures of women fighting
and being like, you coward, these women are doing they're
fighting for you. I hate that. I would fully still

(29:27):
believe if that were happening right now where it's like,
isn't it upsetting to say, oh, the left needs their
women to fight. You're like, yeah, yeah, that's cool, Like yeah,
that's okay, right, Like I mean, regardless, I'm glad that
I'm going to look up the pictures right now. I'm
thrilled they exist. And so gradually pressure from the government

(29:52):
removed women from the front lines. And one of the
most baffling and angry making things in this whole thing
is that the anarchists in the end went along with it,
and so women were no longer allowed to fight in
the front lines of the military. And I think it
was happening around the same time that all of the
militias were starting to get incorporated into the regular army,
which is stuff that I'll get too later. And so

(30:14):
there's like I'll read stories about, actually I'll come up
later about a woman who you know, went and fought
fascists and then ended up an a munitions factory at
the end of the war or whatever instead. And there's
a lot of things where they basically, like the government
was often the ones supplying the guns, and they would say,
if you let women fight in your militia, we won't
give you any guns anymore. I don't know. And and
the reason for This is that all of the government

(30:37):
didn't really want there to be a revolution against the
government for some strange reason, and they also specifically didn't
want to alienate the potential allies of England and France,
which spoiler alert, are not their allies and never become
their allies. But they're like afraid of seeming too radical,
not the anarchists they love seeming too radical. But the

(30:59):
government is like, we look crazy to the Western, proper good,
patriarchal world by having women on the front lines, you're
making us look bad. So by the end of the war,
women are no longer at least openly. I assumed that
there was probably many women fighting covertly, but I don't
have any evidence about that. I just that every single

(31:20):
war that's ever happened women fighting, it just usually covertly.
That is so again, it's like not particularly surprising, but
that that is an issue where fascists and uh, because
who are men They're like, well, you know, we don't
disagree on everything. We don't believe in women's rights per se.

(31:42):
So mostly that I think it's mostly the Republican men
and the like. Sure, but you kind you know, honestly, like, yeah,
you know far better than I do. I mean, it's
certainly I mean it not to drawn immediate parallel, but
you know, I'm far be it for me to say

(32:03):
a center left men doesn't want women to have rights.
There's a bajillion examples that live within a you know,
a mile of ye. And there's also far left men
and anarchists, men who feel the exact same way, and
like you know, can't say it in public, but act
that way in private, and I would hope less. And

(32:26):
so I was saying that a lot of anarchists were
second or third generation in the movement, but some radicalize
their parents. And I want to tell you about one
of my favorite of the meherdas librist women. Pepita Karpena
was raised working class, like like, started as a seamstress
when she was twelve, and two of her five siblings
died in infancy, and and she hung out with more

(32:47):
with boys more than girls. And so when the boys
started getting recruited to union meetings, she started going to
and when she was like fourteen or something, she started
going to meetings, and she described herself as a mascot
to the anarchist steel workers union. And when her dad
complained basically being like, your fourteen you go and hang
out with these like anergas steelworker union men, so cool.

(33:07):
And so she's like, well, dad, come to So Dad
goes and Dad is like, oh, this is cool, and
he signs up UM and so now she's committed an
archo syndicalist and she starts organizing her fellow seamstresses. She's
a teenager, and the bosses find some excuse to fire her,
and it's really transparently because of a union organizing so

(33:27):
a lot, awful lot of steel workers. And the way
it gets described in the piece that I read is
they complained, but I believe that this is very in
quotes that they complained and they complained to the boss
and then she was reinstated. So and she wrote memoirs,
but only they're only available in Spanish and French, and

(33:48):
I don't read either of those particularly well, So I
don't know exactly what happened, but I basically think that
they just showed up more like you're gonna fucking give
her job back? Wow, that is I mean, truly, I'm
trying to think of if there's anything. I've definitely moved
my parents further to the left. I don't think I
fully radicalize them. I think the best radicalization job I

(34:08):
ever pulled was getting my dad into Bright Eyes. That's
pretty good. Not easy to do. I'm not easy. It
wasn't easy and it took time. Okay, I know you do.
I could tell because you didn't do. I brought my
I got my dad to come to a Bright Eyes

(34:29):
concert that he thought it was dangerous for me to
go to alone. And I made him stand in the
back the whole time and pretend he didn't know me.
And then at the end he was like, that was
pretty good. That is that's a really good dad move.
You know. It's like, all right, if you're going to come,
then you're not allowed to pretend to know me. And
he accepted this, and it seems like he, like my
memory is he was standing on the kind of this

(34:51):
like back line of parents that were probably all running
a similar bargain with their fourteen year old. I mean
that's where we stay and all day every day. Yeah,
quick shout out, quick shout out to. I just want
to quickly plug my dad. The time I saw Bright

(35:13):
Eyes was because I didn't know who they were. It's
so impressed them that they let me in. I was
like a hitchhiking, like living out of a backpack, dirty kid,
and I was hanging out outside a Bright Eyes show
waiting for my friend to give me a ride somewhere
who was in the show. And the percussionist of Bright
Eyes was really excited to talk to us and and said,
well you know. I was like, oh, we are in

(35:34):
a band and he was like yeah, and I was
like what band are you and he's like, oh, I'm
in Bright Eyes. And I was like what do you
all sound like? And he's like you haven't heard of us?
And I was like no, who. He was like power
move al right, Well yeah I know exactly. It was
great and she was like, well, I'll let you in
and I was like I'm here with all my friends
and he was like, I'll put you all on the
guest list and I was like okay, and wow, you

(35:54):
really you really shook him to his core by not
knowing who Bright Eyes was. He's like, oh, yeah, well
are about to know? I know. And I enjoyed it.
It's very good show. Um, they put on a fun show.
That is what a what a beautiful story and well
for everybody, happy alright, So Pepito, her niece, eventually writes

(36:19):
a novelization of her biography, which is just cool as hell.
But that's I want give me that confidence for one
half of one second. That's awesome. And so during the
war she joins the militia called Libertarian Youth. And as
a side note, libertarian was an anarchist term for socialism

(36:41):
in the nineteenth century, and it was actually very consciously stolen,
Like there's a literal quote. I don't have it written
down in here anymore. I got cut from the script
at some point. But if you if you look up
the word libertarian on Wikipedia, there's the direct quote from
Murray Rothbard where he's like, we stole this word from
the anarchist Fuck. Yeah. So anyway, that's so dark. I
get that I wasn't aware of of that lineage. That's

(37:03):
extremely dark, and so so it is. I mean, I
know that this is true, but it's just always a
bummer to hear that like explicitly stated of like, oh
those moments where you have to explain the complicated history
of a word. That probably means that some asshole has
won and taken the word at some point. And that's
why so people, you know, centuries later, will Um or

(37:26):
decades later at least will Um get bored and stop
listening to you. Yeah, yeah, I'm talking about a war
where then the Republicans and the Libertarians are the left
side of the you know, are the leftists? I mean,
I am confused. They won totally. So before she turns eighteen,

(37:47):
she assaults a fascist barracks. God damn. And then later
she works at a grenade factory. It might be a
munitions factory, but she made grenades at the factory, So
I'm going to call it a grenade factory because it's
a cooler word for her. It was a grenade factory.
And she stayed in anarchist her entire life. She survives
the war. She she worked at an anarchist research institute.

(38:09):
She participated in conversations about feminism and the movement. And
I could just and so she's working at this library,
and I just really like the idea of walking into
a library and then the woman in her eighties is
helping you, and it's like, oh, I used to make
grenades to throw it fascists. After I was done throwing
grenades at fascist Anyway, what can I help you? Find
that is better than the beginning of Titanic. Yeah, we're like,

(38:35):
who's this woman did? She's like, oh, it's it's better
than being than the naked drawing on the Titanic. I
made grenades, um, Yeah, to kill fascists with that, and
I want that version of titan I you work in Hollywood. Yeah,
it's my job to go do this. So if we

(38:58):
don't listen to that part, Leonardo DiCaprio has drawn a
pencil sketch of a topless let's do it woman making
grenades to kill fascists with which you might need a
like voice bubble, which makes it less artful to state
her political beliefs. But I think we could will make
it work. It's just okay. So while anarchists are collectivising

(39:23):
huge chunks of Spain, they and others are are fighting
against the fascists, and at the very beginning it's looking
good for the Republic. The republic is the non fascists.
The fascists. When they take a little less than half
the army, a little less than half the navy, they
take more than half the guns. They also take most
of the officers, and all the best ships, and the
most experienced troops by far. Okay, it actually wasn't looking

(39:46):
very good at the beginning, but their initial crew was defeated,
and the Republican had the major cities, the industry, more
land and more people, and they had the militias. Plus
England and France are right there, and there's no way
they're going to let fascists take over country right on
their doorstep. Doesn't sound like them to me. Yeah, I'm
just kidding, That's exactly what they do. Yeah. So, and

(40:08):
I'm like mad at some ship that communist did during
the war, and some communists are mad about the ship
the anarchist did during the war. But the reason that
Spain lost had nothing to do with any of that.
Spain lost because it was outgunned. And the reason it
was outgunned is because the fascist countries Italy and Germany
were right the funk there with guns and troops and
everything like immediately, whereas the Great Defenders of Democracy signed
a non intervention pact, ignoring the fact that the other

(40:31):
side was ignoring this pact, and then they enforced this
pact by setting up a fucking naval blockade to make
sure that no one would help the republic which didn't
stop US companies Texico and GM from collaborating with the
fascist either. Wow icons icons one and all. So the
reason that Franco won the Spanish Civil War, and the

(40:52):
reason that Spain was fascist for forty years is because
the upper classes of England and France were either one
fucking cowards afraid of cause in the World War, which
spoiler alert happened anyway, or they were just putting their
class interests first and we're afraid of a leftist Spain, um.
But it really was just the upper classes. The working

(41:13):
classes were like, no fuck fascism and socialism and anarchism,
communism and all that other ship. And so there's huge
demonstrations in France, for example, advocating for the French to
sell arms the Spanish Republic. But huge demonstrations don't always
do anything. And so the Republic is fighting with what
one volunteer called museum relics. They have like World War

(41:34):
One rifles and obsolete machine guns, and the fascists were
fighting with modern ship. Okay. And when Franco comes, he
comes as a conqueror. He's cut his teeth in colonial
conquest in Africa, and it was his colonial army that
he invaded with, and he had with him tens of thousands.
I've read thirty thousand, and I've read seventy eight thousand
Moroccan troops, mostly Muslim. God. Okay, so the Republic, so

(42:01):
Franco absolutely racializes this, and he's like, he refers to
them as savages, and he basically is like using the
fear of the other against the Republic. The Republic itself
sometimes played into this and sometimes didn't. It's like sometimes
they would like, we must stop these invading savage hordes.

(42:22):
Um the anarchist didn't say that kind of ship. Fortunately,
at least as far as like I or the people
I talked to were able to find. But it's a
part that gets left out of a lot of the
conversations about the Spanish Civil War because no one quite
wants to admit that a huge chunk of the people
fighting for the right wing were the troops who were
recruited in a colonial state, the colonial state of Morocco.

(42:44):
Thank you for clarifying that, though, because I do feel
like that is like, I mean, it's you know, not
like not too surprising to hear that there were people
on the left who played into colonialism, but we're also
like politically aligned in a way that like holds up
in the modern sense. And it's just that's incredibly dark

(43:10):
and messy, and yeah, I'm glad that that like distinction
is made because sometimes it's i don't know it conflicts
like this. You're like, oh, well, yeah, the good is
sometimes bad. Yeah, totally totally, And there's a lot of
that's that happens in this warm um so so Franco side.
In history books, they either get called the fascists or
more often they get called the nationalists. But they did

(43:32):
not call themselves nationalists. They called themselves nationals, which is like,
instead of calling themselves the Spanish patriots, they were calling
themselves the Spanish people. You know, It's like their name
was the Spaniards. Basically, they're the nationals and because all
of their enemies are race traders and Jews and not
real Spaniards from their point of view. Um. During the
lead up to the conflict, again this will be totally

(43:54):
unfamiliar to the modern audience, the fascist spread propaganda complaining
about uh Judeo Lshevik Mason's um. They were complaining about
a secret society Jewish communist conspiracy, which basically means Q
and On fucking invaded Spain, which is you know, an

(44:14):
interesting visual, an interesting visual. God, I'm still stuck on.
Forcing colonialized Moroccans to participate is just like so, I mean,
and it happens a million times throughout history, but it's
just like so upsetting to be reminded of that's yeah,

(44:37):
and Q and On to have to fight alongside I know, mhm, yeah,
I I like, I thought really hard about I was like,
you know, there's there's stuff about race that doesn't get
talked about enough with the Spanish Civil War, and I'm
going to try and touch on it where I can,
but a lot of it is sort of like kind
of beyond my, h my level of knowledge. Um yeah,

(45:00):
I mean I I don't have, you know, extensive knowledge
on that end, either, but it's I do, yeah, I
do feel like any time, any like when sometimes when
war is discussed, the levels of colonial participation and like
how colonialism affects major um military units is like not
even addressed, and then you have to like seek out

(45:21):
information on your own. And of course it's always the
worst possible thing you could imagine, and I wish I
was like more standardized and how we talk about wars anyways. No,
I mean, and it's like, because everyone is when they're
trying to write, when they're claiming to write neutral history,
everyone's writing propaganda for one side or the other or
some complicated mix or whatever. And and that's like one
of the reasons that I'm so upfront about my biases.

(45:43):
But then I try to undercut it because it's like
I have to dig to find context about they launched
the invasion from Morocco, and yet I have to dig
defined information about how the colonization ties into it, you know,
which is so like absurd and intentional and like, yeah,
so the Republic is not without allies, although they're largely

(46:06):
without allies. There two allies are Mexico, who's offering them
money and diplomatic help, like they do a lot of
the diplomacy stuff that happens. And then the USSR and
the U s s R is their main military ally,
but they're not actually sending stuff for free. Basically, the
Republic transfers almost all of their gold reserves to the

(46:26):
Soviet Union and basically buy guns and tanks and ship
in advance, and they get some modern stuff and some
like really old, terrible stuff, and the a few troops
as well came to help, but nothing compared to like
like Germany was pretty openly practicing how do we bomb
a city into oblivion by going to Spain and and

(46:47):
practicing it. And that's where Picasso's Guernica comes from. Okay, okay,
So just like this twisted dress rehearsal situation totally. So
the USSR donates stuff and it comes with a very
heavy price that I'll get into more in a little bit.
But it was the politically motivated working class, and in
particular like rank and file communists of other countries who

(47:10):
come through for the Republic. The famed International Brigade, which
was mostly communist running, was the biggest chunk of the volunteers.
Plus a ton of people coming from outside that framework
who come and join the militias, and they're they're generally
organized by language group in nationality, so you like show
up and join like the French speaking chunk and go
off and fight the fascists or you know, there's a

(47:31):
lot of people coming from all over the place in
really kind of beautiful ways. The the US force was
called the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and it was three thousands strong,
and there was white troops and black troops intermingled in
the same units. And this is the is called the
first time US soldiers fought in mixed units. Although actually
another episode that I'm researching right now about the Battle
of Blair Mountain had on a kind of smaller scale,

(47:54):
had also black and white mixed troops. Um. Interesting, but
this is still dea decades before the U. S. Army
integrates its units. Sure, and Oliver Law is a black
communist from the US and he's the first African American
to lead white U. S troops at a higher level
of command. First season charge I know, right, um, the

(48:16):
first season charge of the machine Gun Company, and then
later he's in charge of the entire Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
Although he's killed during the fighting at a place called
Mosquito Ridge, which is a terrible name. I was like,
not not not on the same caliber of name as
Oliver Law. Yeah, Mosquito Ridge, God, I know what a

(48:37):
place to die. I know that sounds like the worst
preschool ever. It's preschool Hunger Games, a militarized preschool. Welcome
to Mosquito Ridge and it's just the baby month that's

(48:58):
killing each other. Yeah. Uh so, so exiled Jews who
are leaving Nazi occupied areas fought in the brigades as well,
which of course the fascists made a big stink about.
And almost a third of the U S volunteers were
also Jewish. So basically, like the international working class was like,

(49:19):
this is a big fucking deal. This is not just
about Spain. This is about we need to stop fascism,
we need to stop racism, we need to stop all
of these things. And like it's kind of like everybody's
proxy war except for the Western democracies who are like,
well we don't we don't know, we don't know these
guys again, none nothing you can relate with. Now, that's that.

(49:40):
So there, so there was like an awareness that solidarity
was necessary, um like selfishly and and selfishly a little
bit on that front, right yeah, okay, um, And so
I had to figure out how to shoehorn and irish
the Irish and to hear somehow and here's what I'm
gonna do, my people, thank you. Yeah. So, so the

(50:01):
Irish volunteers come to Spain too, But the thing is, um,
more than twice as many of them come to join
the wrong side. No, but but okay, and so they
come in and joined the nationalists And what year is
this be my family? Yeah? Well, and it's because the

(50:22):
Catholic Church is under attack. From their point of view,
the war wasn't being presented like now most of the
time you'll see it as democracy versus fascism, because it was,
but it also got presented as communism versus Catholicism, which,
to be clear, it also was. You know, so less
than four hundred Irish volunteers fight for the Republic, mostly communists,

(50:42):
and then seven hundred fight for the fascists. But here's
where it gets better. The fascist Irish sucked at fighting.
They were good, so awful that it rules. They showed up,
they accidentally fired on other fascists and killed a bunch
of fascists, and then they were just so drunken unruly

(51:03):
that everyone just refused to take them into their like command,
and then they got sent home. That's real fun, that
is I mean, that sounds like a mean story someone
would tell about Irish people to humiliate them, but in
this case they simply just did it. Yeah. Well, well, well, um,

(51:29):
you know, at least this time generational alcoholism. Um one
in a way, and they were just sent home. They're
just like, you're not a valuable addition. Yeah, because yeah, yeah,
I'm proud to say that we were terrible at being fascists.

(51:50):
You were too drunk to be effective fascists. And that
is beautiful, that is really funny. But the but but
but the other side, they weren't sent home, or was
everybody sent home? Just the fascist Irish wars sent you know,
the other side. The Irish stated thought they shot in
the right direction. Yeah, which actually means that both sides

(52:12):
came and shot fascists. It's just once came intending to
shoot fascists and one side came. So sorry, fellow fascist.
M hilarious, great love it. Ten out of ten. Thanks,
And here's where I should have a clever ad break transition,
but I don't have one. So instead here's the Oh wait,

(52:34):
Sophie has one. I was gonna say, do you know
what else is ten out of ten? Jamie's neighbor's lemon tree.
Oh that's true. And I hear she's advertising with us, Yeah,
and all of the other sponsors of this show. But
you can listen to now and we are back and

(52:58):
we're going to talk about the weirdest part of the
whole thing. Oh wait, we haven't gotten to the weirdest
part yet. No, no, because we haven't gotten to the
anarchists and government. Okay, Margaret acted. Anarchists and government. What Yeah,
that's the title of the section in the script. So

(53:23):
on the fourth of September ninety six, this kind of
moderate socialist, Francisco Largo Caballero, was appointed Prime Minister pretty
much to run the war effort. He had been leader
of the socialist union the U g T, which is
smaller than the CNT, but it was still very notable union,
and after three months, on December four, he managed to
convince the C and T to let him appoint four

(53:43):
of them as ministers into the government. I think basically
because he genuinely believed in the Popular Front thing that
everyone should work together, and or that he was trying
to bring the anarchist to heal so that they play
ball with the rest of the left and coordinate when
the war against the fascists, which don't actually have to
be opposing thoughts for him, you know, sure, this is controversial.

(54:04):
Anarchists joining the government. It was controversial with everyone. The
Soviet aligned folks did not like it. The Western democracies
did not like it. The rank and file anarchists did
not like it. You wouldn't think so. Uh. One scholar
I talked to referred to it as sort of a
generation war with within the anarchists. The older anarchists were

(54:25):
more all right with this. They were like, look, whatever
it takes to get this ship done. Uh. And the
younger ones, we know what the fuck I do. Like
when someone manages to come up with an idea that
pisses everybody off, no matter what their police system, it's
a rare. It's I feel like, it's almost kind of
really hard to do. But anarchists joining government definitely falls

(54:46):
into that. Even some of the anarchists who joined the
government were also piste off about it. Um two of them,
because two of the people who join are sort of
moderate and two of them are way more radical, and
they end up the ministers of Commerce, Industry, health and
Justice in Spain. So so I'm gonna tell you about them. So.

(55:07):
Jowan Piero was a glassmaker who spent his whole life
working in a cooperatively run glass factory in Catalonia, which
is actually a co op that survived until two thousand
and eight, but Joan he did not survive as long,
so it's a long time. Yeah. As Minister of Industry,
he tried to pass a resolution to collectivize all of
the industry in Spain, since that was the anarchist goal,

(55:28):
but the law got rewritten over and over again by
the rest of the government until it was basically meaningless,
which is pretty much they did better rather than working
the government to collectivised. They did much better when they
like showed up with guns and said we're taking over
the factory because we're the people who work here. But
he puts a lot of finance towards cooperative industry, especially
anything related to war production. And then because of this,

(55:50):
I think he gets demoted to Commissioner of electricity, and
then he flees the country when the country falls to fascism,
and then he's captured by fucking Nazis in France, went
back to Spain and xcuted by Franco bo Okay, yikes, Okay.
So Juan Lopez Sanchez was an anarchist construction worker, and
like Joan, he was kind of a moderate. He was

(56:11):
less super excited about anarchism and were excited about trade
unionism and his balance between the two. He but he
did do six years in jail for fighting for anarchy
from twenty six, which is longer than I've ever been
in jail fighting for anarchy, So I'm not going to
cast the first stone about that. Sure, he he winds
up the Minister of Commerce, but then when Franco takes over,

(56:32):
he fucks off for a couple of decades and then
he comes back and he's no longer an anarchist and
he talked it on the CNT and he gets really
into this weird version of syndicalism as fascistic. So actually,
funck this guy, and I will be the first to
cast stones. Actually many people probably cost stones. Had what
a journey, Yeah, I know. So then you have another
Joan Joan Garcia y Oliver. He gets called alternatively, uh

(56:56):
Joan or Juan, but Joan is the Catalan name, and
he was Catalan, so I'm gonna go with up anyway.
He was born super fucking poor. His mom worked quote
on the street, which is probably euthanism for sex work.
I wish people would stop being so shitty to sex workers.
And act like it's especially shameful, Like why am I
reading anarchist history where it's like this guy step three
bosses and chucked a bomb into a crowd of rich people,

(57:17):
but they're like too afraid to say like this lady
fun dudes first, like tiptoeing around skating sex work like yeah, yeah,
people are babies. Yeah. So he works in a bag
factory since he was eleven. He became an anarchist the
age of eighteen and nineteen nineteen nine, but by two
he's part of an anarchist gorilla group called fucking Crucible, uh,

(57:40):
which also had this boring name of Solidarity, but they
had Crucible as one of their names, and that's the
better name, so I'm using it. Yeah, let's go. And
there's at least four women in this like guerrilla gang
of anarchists. And these were the people doing the This
is the equivalent of the people who are like rolling
around three on a motorcycle. You know. Um, they're into
the retaliatory assassination game against the bosses and they were good.

(58:04):
Yeah yeah, So Juan claims that they were the best
working class terrorists. That's his claim, and in another a
good band name a good day, yeah, which is actually
that breaks my rule usually when people say that's a
good band name, it actually is a terrible band name.
But I would totally listen to a band called Working

(58:25):
Class Terrorists. I also would. Yeah. Um, in the early ties,
they kill a fucking cardinal, which is the rank just
below Pope because he'd been hiring pistoleros to kill anarchists.
Had they pulled that one off, I don't know. I
want to know more about it. Um. And then after
he kills the cardinal, this is like thees, he fox

(58:46):
off to France and then he plots to kill both
the Spanish king and Mussolini. But I think the plan
never got very far because I haven't found but I
haven't found the details. So he crosses back over to Catalonia.
He gets arrested, he gets released with all the other
politic prisoners, one a different time that all the political
prisoners get released, and so you know, and then he
lives a nice quiet life. Just kidding, Okay. So he

(59:08):
tries twice to overthrow the Second Republic with the rest
of the CNT. He's thrown in jail both times. Once again,
he's released when they arrest when they release all the
anarchist prisoners. He also invented, probably invented the red and
black flag, which is the black flag with like it's
like a triangle of red and a triangle of black.
It's kind of the Yeah, it's like the main anarchist

(59:30):
flag besides a black flag. Yeah. And when the war
breaks out, he helps organize militias. He joins one and
he marches the front to shoot fascists. And then he
becomes the Minister of Justice. And as the Minister of
Justice he ends court fees and then destroys criminal records. Um, okay, okay,

(59:50):
I'm on board. Yeah. And then after the war he
goes into exile in Mexico, and I think he actually
does live quietly after that, but I'm not sure. Oh,
and finally, you've got I like doing my list of characters,
Like even though these are these are some of the
more complicated characters. But Frederica Montseiny, she's the Minister of Health.
She's also the first woman minister in Spanish history. M

(01:00:13):
and I first ran across her when I was researching
anarchist fiction back in the day. Because she was a
second generation anarchist. Her parents ran a bunch of periodicals,
including fiction periodicals, and so she wrote books as a teenager.
She just like wrote novels that her parents published. That's
so cool. And then she married an anarchist who was
sellmates with her dad, which I don't know, it just

(01:00:34):
seems weird to me, but maybe that's totally a normal
thing to do. I'm going to go out on a
limb and call me. You know, listeners, feel free to
call me closed minded and evil. I think that that's
maybe weird. Yeah, I'm gonna bravely say that's weird. Yeah,
and maybe you know, I mean, who knows, Like maybe
the fact I don't whatever. Anyway, I mean, if your

(01:00:54):
dad happens to be salmates with your sal mate, that's now,
that's just a rom com. So totally. Yeah, it's a
rom comp with the anarchists on motorcycles. That's okay. I'm
coming around to the idea. Okay. Cool. So as Minister
of Health, she vehemently did not want to be Minister
of Health, but basically the rest of the CNT was like,

(01:01:15):
we really actually need to do this, So she agrees,
and so um, she's made Minister of Health and she
legalizes abortion and in December n six. It's the same
year that Stalin criminalized abortion in the USSR, which means
that when she legalizes abortion, Spain becomes the only country
in the Western world with legal abortion, which I'm like

(01:01:37):
kind of like proud of that one, you know, that's
really cool. Yeah, I mean, that's like incredible. Yeah. She
also sets up educational facilities for women and onlike previous
ventures that the government had been setting up. She lets
in unmarried women and sex workers into the educational facilities.
She also helps get orphans and other kids the funk
to France and out of Spain as the fascist like

(01:02:00):
slowly taking over, and then when the war goes badly
and it's all over, she she foks off to France herself.
At first, she's turned away from the border with like
all the other starving refugees, but then someone recognized her
and she's like important with a capital I, so they
like led her across the border and she stays rad
She works on organizing anarchist in France. She tries to
start secret anarchist groups and fascist Spain all that kind

(01:02:22):
of ship. There's one other anarchist politician to talk about.
This is just so weird to me that, Like, I'm like,
it's a fascinating every time I hear the phrase, it
like pins your brain as no no yeah, uh yeah,
and it is sort of no no, I mean, but whatever,
it's yeah sure, Okay. So the mayor of Madrid is

(01:02:47):
also the director of prisons. It's an anarchist. So now
that it's like a triple neck, you know. And so
I'm thinking, how the fund does this happen? And the
answer is kind of in Tristan, Okay, he um Melchor
Rodriguez Garcia. He was a former prisoner and he was

(01:03:07):
a prison rights activist and and basically what he does
when he's a director of prisons in Madrid is he
stops people from lynching the prisoners because there's this revolution
happening and also this war happening, and so there's all
of these nationalists and fascist and right wing prisoners and
everyone's like, we're gonna go kill them, and he's like,

(01:03:31):
you can't. There are prisoners. We actually have to treat them. Okay,
they're prisoners of war whatever. And so weirdly, that's the
way that you become the anarchist director of prisons is
that you defend the prisoners. That's always such an absolute
mind funk because it's so rare, Like I feel like

(01:03:52):
changing the system from the inside is a dog whistle
that's so frequently weaponized that when there is an example
of it, you're like that, what, what's the catch? What
is there? A catch there? Actually kind of isn't with him,
But I think the catches that none of this would
have worked if it wasn't happening at the same time
as a revolution and a war. Um, maybe without the

(01:04:16):
ward better without the war. But like if like someone
just became the director of prisons to defend the prisoners,
it wouldn't work. It would only work in this like
larger contexts pushed for collectivization. Like that's I mean, that's
my opinion about it. I you know, that makes sense.
But um, And the other thing that he did, which
I think is really cool, is that the Soviets the

(01:04:37):
Communists were running these illegal secret prisons and they were
like torturing everyone, including other leftists, and doing all this
terrible stuff I'm gonna get to in a minute. And
he worked to uncover and reveal the secret prisons. So
he was like this anti prison guy who also ran
prisons and it's fucking messy. Um. And the reason he
was the mayor I believe, I'm not I'm less versed
in this guy than some of the other people. I

(01:04:57):
found him, like right near the end of my research,
I was like, what the fuck? And I think he's
the mayor because everyone else fucks off and he's like, well,
someone's kind of stick around, like until the bitter end,
and so he sticks around to the bitter end. So
he's actually I think the person who hands over like
coordinates the surrender to Franco fascinating. And during then he's

(01:05:21):
put on trial, of course, because the fascists take over
and he's put on trial, and during his sentencing, a
bunch of fascists, including this like high up general, I say,
this is the guy who kept people from killing me.
So he gets a lighter sentence. They instead of sends
him to death, he gets like four years, so he's
like honored by the fascists. I was like, this is like,

(01:05:45):
this is giving me a migraine. I know, I know,
I have no idea how I feel about any of this.
I want okay, h sure, sure, sure. So anyway, anarchists
and government is propagandized heavily by the moderate left in

(01:06:06):
the Stalinists to be like, we've got to do something
about these fucking anarchists, and they want to use it
to let the Communists take over, basically because the Communists
didn't want a social revolution because the Spanish Civil War
is so weird, all right, almost done breaking your head

(01:06:26):
with this. I think Stalin is like, we have a
delicate balance of power and the time is not right
for Spain to have a revolution, so I'm not going
to let them do it, because they didn't want to
alienate France and England in the US by seeming too radical. Um,
And so the communists kept trying to convince the anarchists
like to accept a quote controlled democracy, which was a

(01:06:48):
euphemism for dictatorship, like a leftist dictatorship. So a lot
of people are really happy this revolution, right, there's like
seven eight million people involved in the revolution, and all
these people are like suddenly in charge of their own lives.
They're overall pretty stoked, and and they're pulling it off
like they're fighting a war and having a revolution. But
then there's a lot of people who really aren't happy

(01:07:10):
that both of these things are happening at once. Some
of them o post collectivization on principle, some are afraid
that they're going to alienate their allies, and some are
just jealous that the anarchists are doing it instead of them,
which I think is Stalin's thing. I think Stalin was
just jealous, but I don't know. So, but what Stalin wants,
Stalin gets because he's the only one giving them guns

(01:07:32):
and he has all their gold. M hmm. So what
happens is huge chunks of the republic forces who are
busy fighting fascists, turn their attention away from the war
effort to go and fight against the revolution and decollective
ized Spain. Oh here's where the story gets dark. I'm sorry. Okay,

(01:07:56):
so we're on a roll. We're on a roll for
a while there. I know. I think that's how they
felt too. They were like not to channel how they
may have felt. But okay, okay, Well they had a
good run and they did. Yeah, they had a really
good run. And so there's a telephone exchange in Barcelona

(01:08:17):
and the anarchists run it. And the telephone exchange is
like the old timey thing with a you know, a
person's like listening to the phone call and connects you
and like pushes wires around in a big board, you know.
And so it's a very like secure job, right because
you need to have someone you trust doing it, and
it's a it's a very important position or whatever. And
the communists in the Republic don't want the anarchists to
be running anymore. So in seven they lay siege to

(01:08:41):
the building. Well they try to just take over, and
then the anarchists are like fuck you, and they like
lock the doors and there's a siege. Fighting breaks out
all over Barcelona in a conflict that called gets called
may Days, and in like a week, five dred to
a thousand people are dead. God of like literal in
fighting between um not actually just the anarchist I'm gonna

(01:09:02):
get to them in a second. Some of the I'll
get to in a second. And it mostly ended because
the anarchist ministers encouraged the anarchists to put down their
guns and seek a truce. So the anarchists actually were
the ones being like, we can't do this in fighting anymore.
We need to stop, okay. Um. Federica Montseny, the woman
of the Minister of Health. She drives around Barcelona and

(01:09:25):
personally is telling people please stop fighting. I really don't
know how I feel about this, and neither did the anarchists.
You know, um, the communists didn't have mixed feelings. What
they did is tried to assassinate her. On May six seven,
they shot into her car, wounding two of the people
in her car. She escaped unharmed. Okay, And at this

(01:09:47):
point in my mind, basically it's like they're losing the
war because they're losing what they're fighting for. You know.
So the socialist prime Minister and the anarchists are forced
out of government, and the communists kind of step in.
Some people refer to neg and the new prime Minister
as a dictator. Other people don't. And they go and
they actively dismantle the cooperative setup that have been set
up over the past year, and the C and T

(01:10:11):
leadership lets it happen, and it's like, we just gotta
let this happen because the only thing that matters is
keeping the militias fighting out the front lines against fascism.
The rank and file are fucking pissed about it. They
arrest anarchists, they pillage collective storehouses, they smash up furniture,
even though like governor of Aragon is like, you can't

(01:10:31):
do this, stop force decollectivizing um, But it wasn't a
law and order thing, so they just defy him. You know.
Authoritarians always are like, oh, we're doing it for law
and order, but they know they're just breaking the law. Yeah. Yeah,
as always it is the opposite. Yeah, they arrest six
D organizers of collectives. They take the land that have

(01:10:52):
been collectivized and give it back to the landowners, who
are almost all fascists in that like they are on
the fascist side of the war. Shocked. Yeah. They even
take the animals that the like collectives have raised themselves
and give them back quote to the fascists. And they
someplaces they stole the seedstocks from the collective forms. I mean,

(01:11:14):
it's that's that's just getting petty, Oh my god. And
so they decollectivized about of the collectives and Arragon. And
they also are like running around like Bandit style, robbing
food deliveries and the only robbing food deliveries from the
collectives to sort of make the collectives less efficient. Now

(01:11:35):
I'm gonna tell you about the other people who are
anarchists were on the sort of right side of all
of us from my point of view. The POOM, the
po U M and they're most famous because two Brits,
Eric and Eileen Blair, Eric Blair being more famous as
George Orwell, the name he wrote under, are fighting in
the Pum at the time that this happens. So the

(01:11:57):
pumare Marxists and everyone and the Soviets fucking hate him
because they're not Bolsheviks. They get called Trotskyists because everyone
who's not Bolshevik gets called a Trotskyist. At this time,
they didn't actually follow Trotsky. It's just like a weird pejorative. Yeah,
it's like, you don't like Stalin, you must be a Trotskyist,

(01:12:18):
even though like Trotsky. When they formed the POM, the
leader who formed the poem was friends with Lennon and
Trotsky and he was like and Troutsky was like, don't, don't,
don't do that, and he was like, I'm going to
do it anyway, And then they get called Trotskyists anyway.
So so Orwell isn't the POM and he's off fighting
fascists and he gets shot through the fucking neck by
fascists and he wakes up in the hospital during the

(01:12:41):
May Days in Barcelona and he has to flee the
country under a fake name because the Stalinists are trying
to get him because he was fighting alongside the pom
what's the name he uses? Oh, I don't know. Oh
my god, I thought that you were like, no, no,
I wish, I wish I Oh, that would be amazing
if that's how he got his Yeah, okay, well rewrite history.
My head was about to explode. Okay, all right, but

(01:13:04):
he uses it different. So he has many suit in Yeah,
I mean, he basically just like they're out to get him,
and he's like fucking him and his wife flee and
they had actually been spying on him, and eventually they
uncovered all these documents that like him and especially his
wife Eileen, were being inspied upon by the Stalinists. And
he wasn't even a Marxist. He had joined the Marxists.
He actually said that if he had did it over again,
he would have joined the anarchists. But he joined the

(01:13:25):
Marxist because he didn't like the state Communists and he
wanted to throw grenades as fascist, so he went and
did it, you know, I mean sure, a relatable impulse. Yeah,
so his him his quote about all of this in
his memoir Homage to Catalonia. Except for the small revolutionary
groups which exist in all countries, the whole world was
determined upon preventing revolution. In Spain, in particular, the Communist Party,

(01:13:47):
with Soviet Russia behind it, had thrown its whole weight
against the revolution. It was the Communist thesis that revolution
at this stage would be fatal, and that what was
to be aimed at in Spain was not workers control
but bourgeois democracy. It really needs pointing out why liberal
capitalist opinion took the same line. Well, uh, it's again,
I have no personal framework for that sort of mentality,

(01:14:11):
so I guess I'll just have to take his word
for it. Okay. So, the one of the founders of
the poem is this guy named Andrea nin and the
Soviets disappear him. They just like fucking kidnap him, and
then basically they want him to confess to being a
fascist so that they can justify all of these attacks.
So they torture him to try and get him to

(01:14:32):
say that he's a fascist, but he won't break, so
they literally flay him alive. And then he dies after
they torture him to death. Oh my god. And graffiti
goes up everywhere all over Republican held portions of Spain
and say where is nin um. Stalinists also work the
economic front against the revolution. They try to undermine collective

(01:14:55):
industry everywhere they go, like they'll do ship like start
a collective and be like, hey, we'll make all the
ball bearings and then not make the ball bearings, like
just like petty ship, classic prank, I know, And so
then the tramps can't move, and so then they can't
get the munitions to the front to fight the fascists.
And they would refuse or delay any deliveries to any

(01:15:17):
of the anarchists run industry. They would refuse to arm
the militias until the militias like gave up being militias
and joined the regular army. And eventually the militias did.
The militias were like, all right, you fucking win, will
join the regular army because the main thing we care
about is defeating fascism. And and there's one other group
besides the anarchists and the Marxists that I want to

(01:15:40):
point out that the Stalinists betrayed and that group is
the Stalinists. Margaret, Sorry, I need to go bastards on
this when when you say that, you're saying what exactly?

(01:16:03):
So Okay, at one point in Madrid, the capital, it's
under siege most of the war because the fascists wanted
and it's not in a good position, it's not in
the center of strength for the republic. So actually I
think it wasn't the capital during the time. I think
they moved the capital, but I don't remember. So it
was saved by the International Brigades at one point, which

(01:16:25):
was led Bias, and the International Brigades were unfortunately used
kind of his cannon fodder and thrown at the front.
Like but I'll get to that. But a Soviet general
named Manfred Stern was part of saving led the International
Brigades to save the capital, and he was a die
hard Bolshevik. He had fought in the Russian Revolution, He
led spies in the US. He gone everywhere and done

(01:16:46):
everything for the u SSR, including defend the city of Madrid,
and he kept up morale. He got better weapons to troops,
and then Stalin got even more fucking paranoid and started
purging the Red Army. So while the war is still happy,
name Stern is recalled back to Russia, whereupon is not
only stripped of his titles but his fucking name, and

(01:17:06):
he sent nameless off to the goolog where he dies
of exhaustion after more than a decade of suffering. Oh
my god, there, Okay, the indignities are infinite in that. Okay, yeah,
I you know the tricky thing with being on these

(01:17:29):
shows and sometimes you're like, conversation wise, that's where I
would put a joke and that's what I've been brought
here to do. But sometimes you're just putting a real
pickle and and you're do you that's that's I don't
love it. That's no good. Sorry. They shouldn't have done

(01:17:56):
that to him. No, no, no, no, I that is um,
that's extremely Uh, that's extremely sad. I was. It's say
because when we started talking about him, I was like,
Manfred stan Stern, another great name, another great and I
stand by that. Yeah, yeah, that's probably where they took
it from him. Yeah, they were of a name. And

(01:18:19):
so so I come at Stalin really hard in this because,
oh my god, fuck Stalin. But I don't want to
deny the bravery of individual communists. We're fighting fascism in Spain.
Most of the International Brigade we're communists. The anarchists actually
told for an anarchists, stay at home, send us money
and guns, but do ship at home. Mhm. Something like
one third of the International volunteers died in Spain, which

(01:18:40):
is unfathomably high. Yeah, that's surprising. Yeah. One report I
saw claim that only seven percent of the original volunteers
returned home on the wounded. And it didn't help that
the Soviets used them like shock troops and ken fodder
at the shore. But so by nine after three years
of fighting, it's all over. Franco take Spain. Everywhere he

(01:19:02):
conquers atrocities follow their systemic rape and murder done in
the name of quote cleaning the country. There's some specific,
bad misogynist stuff that I'm not going to get into,
but anyone who wants to confine out about and I've
seen sources that claim anywhere from a twenty thousand to
four hundred thousand civilians were killed during the White Terror.

(01:19:23):
Counting has made very hard because Franco was in charge
for the next forty years and he didn't exactly work
very hard to uncover all the evil society perpetuated. So
that's actually work. That's happening now is people are digging
up all the bodies, all the mass graves. In the end,
the fascists killed more civilians than they killed enemy combatants,
and the fascist overall they're like like funk anyone who

(01:19:44):
targets civilians. But the fascists killed three to ten times
more civilians depending on the sources. You look at half
a million to a million people died in the war,
more than half of the civilians. And Franco took power
and held it to his death until But here's the
weird sort of positive spin I came up with for it.

(01:20:06):
One thing that happened. Yeah, thanks, I worked really hard
on this. Uh. Franco didn't join the Second World War,
and one reason he didn't is that he was in
no condition to His hold on Spain was not strong,
his military had just had the fight of their lives.
And it's just conjecture on my part, but it feels
like if he'd pulled off the coup he'd wanted to,

(01:20:27):
the access Powers would have had a whole other fucking
country on their side. And I don't I actually don't
personally guess that would have tipped the scales enough to
have the Access Powers win World War two, but it
sure wouldn't have helped. So I'm not saying the anarchists
one World War two, but you know, but they didn't not. Yeah,

(01:20:47):
and if fucking England and France had actually helped Spain
or not actively hindered it, then the Republican and the
Republic had pulled off a victory, the Allies would have
had another country. The Spanish exiles. A ton of people
fled Spain right, and they threw down hard in World
War Two as partisans in France, mostly American volunteers who
tried to get back into the fight against fascism, got

(01:21:09):
labeled with a pejorative by the government. They were called
premature anti fascists. I'm gonna I'm gonna read you a
quote about it, because there's this this guy, Bernard Knox,
who's a classicist. He's mostly remembered for his like academic
achievements about classic works of literature, but during World War
Two he was like a paratrooper who worked behind enemy

(01:21:29):
lines in France and Italy, coordinating with the partisans. And
before that he fought in defense of Madrid and the
International Brigades. As he describes it, premature anti fascist was
an FBI code word for communist. It was the label
affixed to the dossiers of those Americans who fought in
the Brigades when after Pearl Harbor and some of them
before they enlisted in the U. S. Army. It was

(01:21:52):
the signal to assign them to non combat units or
inactive fronts and to deny them the promotions they deserved
because the U. S was Hi, well you you were
against fascist, but but not when we were against fascists,
So fuck you. So it means less when you're doing it.
And I love love a little exceptional as rhetoric thrown

(01:22:13):
in as garnish, what a treat, jeez. It's always any
time that there is like a bizarro relabeling like that done,
it always sounds so fucking horrible too. Like you hear
that phrase, You're like, what are you talking about? It's
I guess like a lot of FBI coding be described

(01:22:37):
as that, just embarrassing sounding. I know he has this
whole thing and it's like essay, he wrote about it,
and then like I think eighties or something he wrote
this essay about it was like premature anti fascist, Like,
how do you be prematurely anti fascist? It's like being
prematurely anti racist. You're just always supposed to be against
this right, Like it's a like it's a health risk.

(01:23:01):
They like, well, you're prematurely anti fascist and if you
keep doing what you're doing, the problem will worsen. You'll
be a committed anti fascist. It's a little Yeah. It
sounds like a pediatrician being like, please don't smoke cigarettes. Yeah,
um so so his story. In a brief version of

(01:23:22):
his story, anarchist sailors bring him across to Spain. His
small British contingent showed up. As his friend put it,
and this is the quote in his this is actual
quote in my paraphrasing quote. They were there to quote
set an example of training and discipline and shaving to
the anarchist militias and shaving yeah yeah, which is so
perfectly British that I love it and also means that

(01:23:43):
I think he meant it like, you know, like comradilee.
You know, he was like ha ha ha, We'll go
show them, you know, spend your Spanish anarchists how to
do the real fight and shave their whiskers. I can't
to a British accent. Don't even pretend like that. I
can hear it. I can hear it. Yes, that's you know,
weird of them, but um, you know, not my business.

(01:24:07):
And so he fights the defense of Madrid, and much
like or well the other British volunteer who fights in
the front, he gets shot through the neck by fascists,
uh and survives. Interesting he's left for dead because they
hit an artery and he's just bleeding arterial bleeding. His
companions are like, we don't have any medical care and
we gotta go, So they leave him, and then he

(01:24:27):
comes to and then walks over and catches up with them,
and they're all like, holy sh it. Uh sorry, I
just picture what that would look like. Yeah, hey guys,
wait up. Uh. So they said him home to England,
and he's no longer a communist because he's like, he

(01:24:49):
just sees all the betrayals coming out of the USSR
and he doesn't become like a something elsist. He's just
not a communist anymore. And he's still an anti fascist.
So he joins the fight for World War two and
he warts to coordinate efforts with the partisans, and in
Italy he meets these partisans and they're like, not sure
they're going to trust the U. S. Troops. And he
shows up and he's like, oh yeah, I was in
Madrid and they were like fuck, yeah, you're our guy,

(01:25:11):
and they like help him coordinate and help coordinate them,
you know, war against miscellani. So I have one more
story about the lingering effects of the Spanish Civil War,
and this one was related to me in person, and
so it was not citable and it is absolutely prone
to the wanderings of the oral tradition. So please consider this,
dear listeners. A I love the oral tradition. A piece

(01:25:34):
of oral tradition. So there's a place called the Institute
for Social History in Amsterdam. It's an archive that I um.
It's where a lot of the I went there wants
to go look at anarchist fiction from the Spanish Civil War.
And it was started ninety five by Dutch socialist who
during World War Two spent most of his time getting
Jewish kids away from Nazis. And when I was in

(01:25:55):
Amsterdam doing research at the Institute, my host told me
this story. My host is not from the Institute, so
again not trying to verify this a bunch of anarchists,
librarians and archives. They're seeing the end of the war
coming fast and so they start loading up train cars
with archival materials, just everything from the war, all of
the Republic and the revolution, all the newspapers, all the pamphlets,

(01:26:16):
everything that they can find to archives. They're like, we
gotta get this ship out of here. The fascists are
going to destroy it. So they get the funk out
on basically like the last train out of town. As
the Fascist takeover. They go up to Amsterdam, they leave
it at the Ish the Institute I I. S. H.
And a couple of years later, right before the Nazi occupation,
archives get most of the Isshes collection over to England
because the Nazis are invading there and they didn't bring

(01:26:39):
it back to The Nazis are gone, so all the
Spanish Civil War stuff is up in Amsterdam. And then
Franco Dice and these old krusty Spanish anarchists, they're like, funk,
all of our stuff is up in Amsterdam. So they
they grab rifles and they head on up to Amsterdam
and they stormed the building and at know, I like

(01:27:00):
to imagine them in like little Spanish Civil war hats.
You should look up sometimes, the Spanish Civil War hats,
the CNT hats. They're really cute, Okay. And so they
run in with rifles which were antiquated back when they
were used forty years or you know, they were like
they used their original rifles. I don't know about that part,
but I liked what else they getting rifles? Out of
my mind they did, yeah, I imagine they didn't update

(01:27:22):
the yeah, the rank. Yeah. And so they show up
and they're like, give us our shipped back. And then
the archivist, because archives and librarians are the best people
in the entire world. They're like, so the thing is,
your stuff is safe here and where we can take
care of it. But we'll show you how to use
the photo copiers and you can make copies of everything.

(01:27:44):
We're not taking it. It's okay. Yeah, And the old
anarchist veterans are like, yes, show us how to use
the photo copiers. Wait, this is going to be kind
of fogged up. This is a really sweet story, you know,
it makes me really happy. Um. And then they head
off back to Spain with their photo copies of their
old newspapers, and the originals are still held to this

(01:28:07):
day by badest archivists, and you can go see them
and research them. That is so awesome. Oh my god,
what a beautiful thank you for really saving a little
golden nugget for the end. That is. I'm going to
be thinking about that for weeks and months. That's awesome. Sure.
So that's that's the bird's eye view of the Spanish
Civil War, as best as I can tell it. I

(01:28:32):
learned so much today. I only knew, um truly the
most bullet pointy bullet points of the Spanish Civil War.
I've learned so much. And I learned who a race
car is, whose name I've already forgot, Margaret. His name
is Lightning McQueen. Now I was, I will say, my

(01:28:52):
mind wandered for just a second when we were recording
the second episode, and I was like, where is Lightning
McQueen politically a lot mind? And I was kind of struggling,
and then I realized, I knew in my heart that
some weirdo has written an essay about what the answer
actually is, and so I'll send it to you and

(01:29:13):
I find it. I would guess that Lightning McQueen and
I would have some gripes. I think, I think centrist,
I do. Yeah, well, he's you know, he's a product
of the Disney But that doesn't mean he can't zoom
away because he's not a real he's a car centrist.
In the Spanish Civil War, I don't know where they were, no, none,

(01:29:38):
that's true. Yeah, it was a very polarized situation. Well,
i'll get back to you on Lightning McQueen's politics. But
I truly learned so so much. I have like a
million names written down of that I want to go
down an infinity rabbit hole about. And the fact that
your final story is strictly the rural tradition is even better.

(01:30:02):
I don't if that story isn't true, I never want
to know any actual and accuracy. I don't care. That's
how I feel. Also, all of my journalistic instincts I
just flushed down the toilet. That story needs to be true.
The folk tale. Yeah, and if you're listening and you

(01:30:22):
were one of those, it's probably too late for you
to be one of those Spanish anarchists at this point.
Never mind, But I mean, if if you if you
can confirm it reach out if you can disprove it,
die with that secret. Thank you. Yeah, Timmy pluggables for us. Yeah,
if you, Uh, I want to listen to Ghost Church.

(01:30:46):
That's the new show I have coming out on cool
Zone Media right now, produced by Sophie licked Derman and
edited by Ian Johnson. It's a show about the American
spiritualist movement in the US. I thought it would be
when I sort of embarked on it. I was meeting
new spiritualists who are also old spiritualists. I did research

(01:31:09):
in the history I sort of I'm working on an
episode right now that's about Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan
Doyle falling into decades long feud over whether you can
talk to ghosts or not. UM. There's all sorts of
wild ship to learn about. UM. I really enjoyed putting
it together, and if you're remotely interested in industrial era

(01:31:31):
uh US weirdness or ghostie ship and supernatural ship in general,
you should check it out. I highly recommend it. Thank you.
I'm so glad you're listening. Yeah. Uh, Margaret, do you
want to plug you up? Plug your book? I have
a book coming out in September from a k Press

(01:31:53):
that will be available for pre order in June, which
is probably when you're listening to this episode or maybe
you're listening to it far into the future. And the
book is called We Won't Be Here Tomorrow. It comes
out from a k Press. I think already said that part.
And you can also follow me on Twitter at Magpie
kill Joy and you can follow me on Instagram at
Margaret Killjoy. And that is the end of my plug ables. Sophie,

(01:32:19):
where can people follow you on social media? Uh that
you can follow me at why Underscore? So if you
underscore why on Twitter and you can My handles have
too many underscores. I did not think this. Can follow
me on Instagram at Sophie Underscore Array Underscore of Underscore,

(01:32:39):
shy on Instagram. But it is worth it because my
dog is really cute. This is true. It is true. Anyways,
well we'll be We'll be back Monday. Was it was
some more hope? I feel hopeful we did it. Mission accomplished.

(01:32:59):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
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