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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode so every episode of the week. That just happened. Is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ADS package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Hey everybody, this is it could happen here. I am Robert Evans. This is a podcast about things falling apart and sometimes how to put him back together today. This is another episode about the war in Ukraine. It's going to be eventually an interview with a Ukrainian anarchist militant who is fighting on behalf of of of Ukrainian people in that conflict. But here's a little introduction first so. Anarchists are all about the elimination of hierarchy, and since the state tends to be the hierarchy E thing around, most anarchist activists tend to either seek the destruction of the state or at least snatches of a life lived beyond its bounds. The most joyful moments in anarchist organized protests tend to be those brief liberatory windows where anything seems possible, and even, say, middle class suburban moms might feel briefly like they could tear down the walls of a federal courthouse. So the idea of anarchists joining and fighting in a national military. Commanding and being commanded in the hierarchy of a state's defense forces feels like a pretty big contradiction. Yet when the Russian Federation launched a massively expanded invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, many Ukrainian anarchists announced their intention to fight on the side of their government. Organizations like Rev Dia formed Militias which have been integrated into Ukrainian territorial defense forces. In one statement I found on the website enough is enough a militant representing Rev Dia. Explained their feelings this way. Ukrainian anarchists are at war with Russian expansionism, fascists and the government. They have created their own armed and call on us to join them. Every anarchist collective, an organization that understands the revolutionary task and the internationalist struggle, must transform its general anti war position into a position of engagement by participating in or strengthening the anarchist Ukrainian guerrilla struggle without suspensions and by attacking the Russian economic and political power victory in arms for the anarchists in Ukraine who stand against Russian imperialism. Fascist paramilitary groups and the Democratic government in Kiev. Solidarity with the Russian and Belarusian anarchists who are crawling in the democratic dungeons trying to stop the war. Let us give space to the people and not to the imperialist dreams that divide the planet into plots. We are forever with the invisible people of the world who are fighting for an inclusive, self organized and anti hierarchical world. So anarchists with revia and other Ukrainian organizations are very much acting in line with more than a century of anarchist tradition in Ukraine. During the Russian Revolution, famed Ukrainian anarchist warlord Nestor Makhno was forced to make a tough decision. Ukrainian nationalists threatened the central government that had arisen after the fall of the Czar, and Machno and his comrades decided to defend the democratic socialist government against the nationalists. From the book Anarchies Cossack quote. That decision faced the local. Anarchists with the problem, for it had them support governmental forces here, which, even if they were of the left, were nonetheless potential enemies of the masses, autonomy, machno reckoned at the time that as anarchists we must, paradox or no paradox, make up our minds to form a united front with the governmental forces. Keeping faith with anarchist principles, we will find a way to rise above these contradictions, and once the dark forces of reaction have been smashed, we will broaden and deepen the course of the revolution for the greater good of an enslaved humanity. Roughly one month into the expanded Russian invasion, I had the chance to sit down and interview an anarchist in Ukraine who was participating in the resistance to Putin's regime. We conducted our interview over the course of several days as his fighting schedule allowed, and we did so over voice messages and signal. His audio quality was thankfully quite good. I have condensed some bits of the interview, particularly my questions, to make things easier to understand, and I move some stuff around a little bit. I hope this is still pretty clear now. Here's our source introducing himself. What I would start you to tell about my story is. It's called me, Ilya. I am an anarchist from some neighboring country, but living in Ukraine for civil several years, I had to leave my homeland because of the political repressions against anarchists there. And for me, participation in this conflict. Has several dimensions. Once like they they 1st and simplest thing is that Ukraine, even though it's like highly imperfect state, like with a clear new liberal staff and some nationalists and far right influences in the political. But still is more like grey zone and more like. How to say pluralistic and free space? The state here has much less control than in Russia and Belarus, for example. I wanted to start by asking them about the elephant in any room where people are discussing left wing resistance in Ukraine, the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. It's important for people to like just talk about Azov and and and whatnot and not whitewash what's going on there. But it strikes me that they have a really effective social media campaign and they're they're sneaking a lot of videos and a lot of combat footage and whatnot out into kind of western mainstream media without people realizing it's Nazis. Well, to be honest, of course, far right movement is much more massive in Ukraine than any libertarian leftist. Movements at the moment. This I think is obvious for you, but at the same time sometimes conscious or unconscious pro Russian propagandists try to portray the situation as if it is Nazi state or something like all the resistance is far right or something, but actually general part of the state and also, which is more important of the grassroots popular resistance is just apolitical. In the sense that, like most of the army, are not in the politics, even though of course we aware that army is political institution itself, and especially all those people in the villages who are now taking up arms to guard their lands against the occupiers, they are also not politically affiliated. Somehow Ilya and many of his comrades see anarchist participation in the struggle against Russia as necessary for two reasons. The most basic is that Putin's regime is a threat to their life and freedom too. The secondary reason is that if they don't fight, they will have no ability to influence what happens in their country after the war. Today, this invasion, it really constructs the threat for the whole existence of this society, more society than to the state itself. Because this is a kind of attempt to export this totalitarian hell which were constructed in Russia more or less, and to confront this just not let it happen is already a task, I think. But of course to come to to defend some land against some occupation for me is too simplistic for the anarchist and revolutionary approach. So there come like more detailed reason I would reasons. I would say. First of all, I really believe that if Putin will be confronted intensively and successfully here, then it's very possible that it will break the spine of this regime in Russia and which may lead to revolutionary changes both in Russia and Belarus, because Belarus and dictatorship. Cysts like relies very much on Putin's support and so on. And another dimension is that any force which wants to be like really politically meaningful in Ukrainian society should take sides in this conflict. All people who say some dogmatic things like we are against all states, against all wars. This is not enough now. This is not a position now. And now this is really popular resistance like if you do not. If you do not join it for whatever reasons, then you exclude yourself from actual political process, because the the main questions will be like where are you and where were you in these events. And of course the right side is to confront this imperialist occupation. This can really give an opportunity to like for future and not for future, actually already today for organizing and mobilization. Of revolutionary libertarian forces. And constructing ourselves as some considerable significant movement. Like for example now there is this unit of territorial self-defense which anarchists participate in actively. This is now already around 50 people. Well, it was a like unimaginable at their recent years and months to have some gathering of 50. Turkish antifascist and so on as some joint unit. But now this is the reality and this mobilization is made because of this invasion actually. So this is something that makes sense at my opinion and another interesting thing, I think in context of comparing, for example, far left and far right, participating in Ukrainian political life and in current events, that of course for us any collaboration with the state is much more problematic than for the Nazis, because even they are like. Ideology and mindset, as far as I can evaluate it pretty allows them both any relations with the state structures and also any dirty schemes both with the state, with the business and with criminal sphere like. Our approach is are much more puristic, which is partly good of course, but also have some consequences for us to be much less adaptable as the movement to the real social, political, economical realities and for example now, currently. This is still an A question for anarchists. Should we join for example this territorial defense forces which is even though somehow militia like localized institution, but still of course like state affiliated force orchestrated and arranged by the state and subordinated to state Army hierarchical system? But we still believe that in current events. This participation, like it less compromise us, but more give us the tools to organize, to get experience and to get subjectivity, if we can say so in English, like to to, to become really an actor. And still it is within this frame is still possible to maintain political independence, and even some. Sort of structural independence. So this is not just people are going and joining the army and that's it. They are now just units at least up to the moment. This is not our story and and this is something, at least me personally. Reflecting on a lot, first I would like you mentioned you came to Ukraine from a neighboring country where repression of anarchists was more severe. I am interested prior to, you know, this stage of the invasion. Obviously the first invasion happened in 2014, but prior to this escalation, how would you describe state repression against anarchists in Ukraine? The degree to which anarchist organizing was opposed by the state, by the police in Ukraine? And then the follow up question to that would be as you guys saw this war building, could you elaborate on some of the discussions that happened about what to do about whether or not to form militias, whether or not or to what extent? To fight alongside the government so about state repressions against the anarchists in Ukraine in recent years, I would say that they were of course much less hard than, for example, in Belarus and Russia. Also because like for different reasons, because of in general of course more pluralist political culture and political situation in Ukraine, but also partly because the anarchist movement in after Maidan. Was not that organized and not that combative to really draw drive attention of the state to itself and also. What a need to say that in maybe 2019 and 20 this attention grew dramatically after several direct actions were taken by anarchists. For example some sabotage against cell phone towers of some Turkish affiliated company when Turkey invaded Rojava in the late autumn of 2019 and. Have to see and also several actions against some police stations. Some of these statements were placed in an anarchist fighter website and Telegram channel and so police and secret services got how to say very energetic in their attempts to find the people who did this even though they didn't succeed actually. So several house. Weights taken place, they also tried to depart one anarchist from Belarus, Alexei Brinkhoff, who stayed in Ukraine for several years while decided to move out from Lukashenko's regime and so. But they didn't depart actually. And also their house rates were not successful, so they didn't succeed in the in their repressions, so in last couple of years. This picture I would say vegetarian picture of 0, attention of the state to anarchist movement. It changed so it started to be like different way before. It actually also was some direct actions believed to be related with the revolutionary Action Anarchist group. It was if I'm not mistaken around 2017 and so on and this also. Were somehow prosecuted by by Ukrainian secret services are also about organised participation of different anarchist faction in the current resistance against their putinist imperialist aggression. Like about the most organized initiative you all in most numbered you already know, but there are several others smaller groups like. More like affinity groups or several friends participating in different units. We even cannot count it because we even don't know about everyone who participate. At this point. He started talking about an anarchist militant named Igor Wallachia who had been killed by a rocket in Kharkiv a few days earlier, before the war. While Chow had expressed a desire to organize a network of co-ops across Ukraine, he had also been active in providing support for anarchists. Jailed in Russia, Ilia referred to him. Is having been martyred, he was participating. I don't know either individually or with some of his friends from Harkov, but for example I knew nothing about their group and their participations. There is also Black Flag anarchist group from Lviv, which now as far as I know, participating in territorial self defence of Kiev. At least they released several photos and some short statement. This is something organized which I know. About and apart from that, I know, just as I already told her, told you, several affinity groups, groups of friends. The overall picture he painted of anarchist resistance in Ukraine was extremely atomized, due in part to pre war concerns about avoiding state repression and the myriad doctrinal differences between different kinds of anarchists. The war seems to have had a catalyzing effect which has made larger militant anarchist organizing possible for the first time in recent memory. Ilia was cautiously optimistic about this, but he and his comrades also recognized a danger. Here we are trying to avoid attention from the state services, from secret services, even though we still have to collaborate somehow with the military hierarchy and so on in this situation. But of course we understand that if we will attract undesirable attention, then probably. Enforces would try to destroy us or somehow assimilate, subjugate us. None of these scenarios are good for us and we are aware of it. So we try to have some publicity and at the same time to act ourselves in the way which will not drive repressive attention to us like immediately so up to now, within this frame of territorial defense. And I would like some civil volunteer activities and some other quite conventional activities of participating in this conflict against the putinist side. We believe that we can take the ground for the new conceptions and programs of like of libertarian cause and also some organizational developments like some organized structure. Which are of course not necessarily should be illegal from from the very first steps, but to establish some organizational bases and maybe hopefully ideological basis which will help us to act more actively both during the war and after war. Could you go into a little more detail about the ways in which you you all do your units do kind of interface with the state? I went on to ask how they organized. Combat units, and whether or not this reflected their broader beliefs about horizontal organizing. His basic answer was that the militias have to operate within a military command structure, and thus have to be broadly organized in the same way conventional military units are. However, being irregulars, their life outside of battle is much less regimented than what regular soldiers experience. So about military hierarchy in general. Of course, territorial defense forces are. Set by the state and they are included into the general structure of military hierarchy of regular army. In this sense we are of course generally not autonomous and what is what's been issued by superior command we should implement in life and should fulfill this orders. However, now territorial defense forces I would not speak about. All of them, because they limited since the very start of war. Within my own experience with this unit, this forces have like a lot of time for constructing itselves like our internal life, not that much regulated by the higher command, and also there is a sort of space of communication. With some commanders which are a little bit higher than us. So we have like good people who our comrades who set this opportunity for us to get organised within this frame of territorial defense. This was just our old friends who decided to join some territorial defense structure as officers already before this situation started to happen. So I think. But these people do really good job and they provide for us options to fill ourselves like comparatively free of course not in operational sense, cause like operational frame is being set by the higher command and like as one picture 1 scheme and in this aspect we of course just the one of the elements of the general plan. Of the fighting they putins regime invasion here, so I mean. Yes, as a unit we are governed by the military command, but this is really rarely that we see anyone apart, anyone of some officers or I don't know, generals or somebody else, or from above the military hierarchy we hear now occupied with the training, with the organizational constructing and with the like, improving our internal life. I'm not being like a really 100% orchestrated by any military. Military hierarchy people. So what about the internal structure? It is still supposed to be organized on the traditional army scheme. So every section has a commander unit in general has a commander. And this is not an elected people. This is not like really controlled from from below people. May be unfortunately or maybe this is necessary in the current situation. This is really hard to estimate to evaluate at the moment. In this manner our internal structure in the sense of like military structure is more or less traditional for the territorial defense. At the same time, of course we have more democratic internal culture. In general, territorial defense is people mostly organized on local basis and also. Out of volunteers. So people who came here are on their goodwill and not on some conspiracy, conscription or some contract which gives you a certain money or privileges. So because of this you already supposed to be somehow more free and more up to express your opinions and so on. And of course we as somehow leftist affiliated anarchist. Unit, of course, we encourage the internal discussion. Everyone, including all the commanders inside our regiment, are subjects to critic. And the discussion, even though maybe final words in the operational questions, are up to these people, and also is important that we maintain a total political autonomy in the sense that all the groups. And individuals who construct, who construct the unit we are part of, they like absolutely free to express their analysis, political analysis and conceptual conceptualisation of both of these events and our participation in them according to their like analysis, their attitude and so on. I also asked what it was like to fight ostensibly on the same side. His neo-Nazi elements like Azov, while Ilia and his unit are not anywhere close to the Azov Battalion. I wanted to know how he and his comrades dealt with the weird reality of being in the same broadside as people they might have battled in the street at one point. I would say that before war, of course, there was a lot of tensions between fascists and us not directly with the Azov, because Azov is like military unit, like this is not the guys you meet and fight in the streets. But of course there is like they tried to set like their own how to say Mafia, political empire I would call it or mafia like they had some businesses, some criminal stuff, some patronage from the Interior Ministry and also very different how to say far right groups which the leaders of our so-called Azov Movement which is much broader than. As of Battalion itself, they tried to utilize and instrumentalized to reach their own goals and with some of these groups. So of course we had like just street fights. For example, the elements closed to this Azov movement, they try to influence a lot, the Belarusian diaspora, the compositional diaspora in Kiev, for example, in the one year. Anniversary of the protests of 2020 in Belarus. There were there was fight in Kiev between anarchists who came to participate in demonstrations in this demonstration and the Nazis who attacked them in like aiming to somehow push them out from the Belarusian movement to influence it in their own way, like also just the usual. St Confrontation also took place all this time. There is quite visible and active Antifa movement in Kiev, which confronted Nazis on the streets and blocked sometimes. Several of their like initiatives and so on and also of course informational and propaganda struggle was held by us, by us during all this time since Maidan and of course before as well about the current military situation, like of course we are now actually part of 1 army with the right sector, Azov and so on. People we are under the same military command. And if we will be tasked to fight in the same place, the same enemy, we will be actually like at the same like part of the barricade. But this situation we need to deal with, like there are different opinions amongst our comrades and here about Azov and all the far rightists, they differs from that. They are actually our enemies. Like both now and also in any future, Ukraine in any future scenario, because these people promote like quite obviously absolutely opposite political and social goals than we. Other people say that another like other people say that now there is, how to say, a general deadly threat we are facing and we should fight regardless of left and right and something like this to fight the imperialist invasion. But I personally, me, I do not support this second assumption and position. I see this quite not really politically smart at my opinion. But what we here can agree on is that if we want to confront Nazis and the far right parts of the Ukrainian political and also military spectrum, then we need to develop our own stronger structure, our own stronger actor. Also, these somehow connected with the question about PR. You mentioned that, like we need our own PR, our own publicity and media work, and also our first of all, our own conceptions and ideological blueprints which we can suggest to Ukrainian society and present both inside Ukraine and abroad. And this is the work, this is the challenge and duty which we. Need to fulfill and hopefully like not hopefully, but actually we are working on this already now, so if you want to combat Azov now, now is not the time maybe to accuse them in some public statements, but this is time to develop alternative structure which will be able to really confront this reactionary currence. Welcome to it could happen here, a podcast that you have heard me introduce. Like, probably well, probably like 70 or 80 times by now. But yeah, you have heard me introduce this podcast enough times that you probably know what it's about. If you don't, it's about things falling apart and then putting it back together again. And today we are doing a historical things, tried to go back together and then fell apart again. Episodes and with me. I'm your host, Christopher Wong, and with me is Nicholas Scott, who is a PhD candidate in Latin American history at UVA. Nicholas, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, I'm, I'm excited to have you. And today we're going to be talking about. Something that we've, we've mentioned before on a few other episodes that we've done about Chile and about the Allende. But I think like, well, we definitely have not given enough attention and I think gets less attention in the sort of mainstream like left analysis of of what happened to Allende and what was going on in that. Which is the cordones. And Nick has written about this a lot and is also writing more about this and is doing research. Actually, do you do you care? Do you mind if I mention that you're in Chile doing research right now? No, totally. I'm, you know, that's where I am. I'm here. Two years after the pandemic took me away, I've finally been able to come back and resume my research. Yeah. And so, Nicholas, I think in your work, the thing that I think is, is different about it than a lot of the the. Stuff that you'll read about ayende and about the cordones is the sort of historicization of it. And so I I want, I was wondering if we can start back. I guess in the 60s and talk a bit about the sort of political situation that gets you to this sort of revolutionary moment. Yeah, that's great. I mean, I think that it's important that we start at an earlier moment to really understand how the cordones emerge as a specific culture, a specific urban space across the city of Santiago. You know, the the English translation of the Cordones Industriales would essentially just be industrial belts. So you can think of these as sort of sectors of the city where the majority of sort of heavy industry had been based and that these specters themselves were sort of remnants of the 19th century. Specifically the railroad lines that would sort of the the main thoroughfares into the city of Santiago from the countryside. You know, over the course of the early 20th century as you have the development of industry in in Chile and Santiago specifically. These are the same areas then where these factories are are being developed because you have pre-existing sort of transportation networks that they're able to take advantage of. The problem is, is that, you know, industrialization happens sort of in fits and starts. In the history of Chile and the other sort of problem is the problem of transportation itself. So for example, in the 1930s there's an urban plan that gets developed for Santiago Centro, or the central part of of Santiago, and they bring in an Austrian urban planner, Carl Bruner, to help with this. And while Carl Bruner essentially tries to do for Santiago what Hausman did for France, right widen boulevards. Make the city more accessible to new forms of transportation, right? Ideally, the car, buses, things of that nature. The problem is, is that he limited his work and his studies, as I said, just to the center of Santiago itself. The other problem is is that once Bruner leaves Santiago, the plan that's actually put into effect isn't necessarily all of his plan. It was sort of a patchwork that legislators sort of pick and choose from when they put this plan. Into effect. And so in between the 30s and the 1960s, you know, a lot is happening primarily you have these sort of twin processes of industrialization, sort of rapid industrialization that's taking place which also have this other process which is rural migration, sort of internal migration. And this isn't a process that's limited to just Chile, right. This is a region wide process that's happening all across Latin America. And you're having sort of two factors at play in this situation, right? You're having the push. Factor from the countryside, right, the lack of opportunity, lack of jobs, lack of secure employment from the countryside. And you're also having the pull factor, which is, you know, these industries that are springing up in the city, as well as the sort of infrastructure that a city would afford relative to the countryside. And these two processes sort of come to a head in the 1950s in Chile, and by the end of the 1950s it's clear to a growing set of people. Including Juan Parochia, who is an architect. That something needs to be done. There needs to be a new urban plan for the city of Santiago and this urban plan. What they try to do is it's the first time that there's a sort of intercommunal, which communal in this sense would be a rough translation to municipality and English. So it's really the first sort of inter municipal urban plan that tries to link networks together. And this is actually the first time that this word cordon industriale appears in, like an official government document, right? That's the first time that urban planners themselves are thinking about zones of the city. That are going to be specifically for industry. And so the idea is that they want to move a lot of the industry that has sprung up in those intervening years from the early 20th century that was located more in the center of the city. They want to move it out of the center of the city, you know, largely for things of pollution, safety, all of the things that go along with heavy industry, they want it further on the periphery. And so that's part of this urban plan that essentially tries to zone basically zone. These, these sectors. And so that's really where my dissertation starts. That's where my research really sort of starts, the stories and the late 1950s, early 1960s when these urban plans are taking effect. And So what I'm interested in then is, you know, how did the creation of these specific sectors of the city as industrial zones? How did they then give rise to an urban culture that will then manifest itself in a very revolutionary moment once I ended? Wants to power, yeah, and I think that that's an interesting. Way to look at it because I think. You know, because the, the, the, the, the process of sort of industry moving from the center of the urban core outwards is something that's happened I'd really across the world. Although mostly after that. And that's one of the one of the things that struck me about it. That's interesting. I want to ask you about which is. So to what extent is this, is this a different process than the kind of like? You know, the the kind of suburbanization that you see of, of industry in the US, for example, in 19 in like the 1980s or is it closer to, well, you know, I've talked about this I guess on the show in in the Chinese context too, where you have. I mean mostly pollution stuff has seen like some industries sort of like, I mean just literally getting pushed into into rural areas is it is it like is is it like those same kind of impulses or is there a different kind of? Like relation, I mean like how, how far out of the city like is the stuff like getting pushed to? That's a great question. It's a wonderful question. And you know, it is actually important. This is important to remember that at this time the city of Santiago, you know, just outside the city of Santiago is, is still largely rural, right where the first cordon will emerge on the southwestern side of the city is is still a largely rural part of the city itself. And so it is very similar to the dynamics that you're describing and that it is pushing. You know, away from where people are living, right? Two more rural places where there is more land both to build, right? So there is the availability of space, but there's also less people living in that space. So from the planners perspective it's considered better because the sort of, you know, chemical and heavy metal runoffs from a lot of the metal working factories, all of these things and the pollution from smokestacks, etcetera, you know, are less harmful. The problem then becomes, however. That the, as I mentioned, the rural migration and people that are migrating to the city, you know, there's not space in the center of the city for these people to live, right? So they're moving them to these same areas. So in some senses the sort of historical dynamics of the region are undercutting the sort of success of the planners when it comes to making these zones away from the city itself. I guess, I guess that that would be something also that that's interesting about this, which is that I think because like, you know, the sort of like decentralization of industry and the push into rural areas, I think largely did not produce a kind of like radical working class culture. But, but, but it seems like you have this countervailing factor here, which is that you have a bunch of people who are like. Who are coming into industrial work for the first time out of the countryside, which tends to be a very radical faction like it is, is, is, is that one of the things that gives you this sort of radical culture instead of the kind of like? Total disintegration of the class that you see. In the sort of later versions of this, this is such a beautiful question, and this, this question really lays at the heart of my research. So if we scope out just for a bit and think about this historiographically in Chile, there is a vein of historiography that is very concerned with these rural migrants, which once they arrive in the city are referred to as Pobladores, right, which we can roughly translate this sort of urban poor, right? And they're considered a sort of capital S social subject that is distinct. From a worker or from a working class, from a sociological point of view, right. And the reason this is is because a lot of them, while they are workers, you know, they are part of the working class. Functionally they're sort of social concern. And the social movement that is bound up or known as the sort of poblador movement is a movement for housing, right, because they are arriving at these sort of vacant parts of the city the they bring with them. This sort of, as you mentioned, their own histories of struggle from the countryside, of which the sort of main tactic is the Toma or seizure. Right. And So what they will do when they arrive in these places of land is that they will seize these lots and they will erect a structure on it. In doing so, then they would use that to stake a claim to profit as a claim of property rights, right, as a claim for their own proper home and everything that would go with it within. Within a city infrastructure, right utilities, sewage, etcetera, that's what they would leverage then as a claim for that. And so my project is essentially trying to break down this analytic barrier that has separated the poblador from the worker in the historiography, specifically in the historiography of things like the cordones and the popular unity years during ayende. Because as I mentioned, many of these people once they're moving to the cities and you know, moving into what would be referred to as. That's complementos or poblaciones. You know, they're looking for work and they're finding work a lot of these factories that are nearby where they're moving now. In doing so, however they're coming into contact, they're sort of mixing with the older generation of migrants that migrated from the north of Chile, right from the mining sector in the north of Chile following the Great Depression, which is the sort of historical birth of the labor movement in Chile, the nitrate sector. In the far north of Chile, which you know, following the development of sort of synthetic forms of explosives, nitrates are not saltpeter specifically is not as high in demand anymore. So you have a lot of people migrating to the city to begin working in industries there, right. So those sort of older working class who also have their own sort of history of struggle, history of tactics, et cetera and this newer form of worker, the poblador right, are mixing. And they're sort of mixing in these areas in specific. And that, to me is why it's so important to think about the cordones is more than just an organization that emerges in the early 1970s and really think about them as a space, as a geographic space that developed their own unique forms of local culture informed by these larger, more macro historical processes. Yeah, that, that, that that that seems like a much more. I don't know if I don't know if productive is the right word, though it is. But I think, yeah, I think that is a. A better way of thinking about it than what you usually see, because yeah, that, that kind of. The fact that yeah the the the fact that you have multiple different. Essentially like you have multiple different, so it's like sociological classes mixing you have you have their tactics sort of fusing and that developing its own culture that's that's distinct I think from a lot of the. You know, because this, this, this is a, this is a period of time like the the late 1960s, early 1970s is like the Golden Age of the factory occupation. And I think, you know, I think you you, you can draw similarities between that and between the cordones, but I think. I don't know. I mean, Italy is the version of this that that that I know the best. And that one I guess sort of also has a similar dynamic of you. You get, you get a bunch of you, you have this mixing of of sort of the old urban working class. But then you have a bunch of, you have this huge labor migration from from the South, from the rural areas that that mixes in there. And I'm wondering I guess like. When when you talk about sort of the culture of this, how how much of that is something that you think? Is like a a distinct product of like this exact configuration of of. Sort of social classes hitting each other and to what extent it's kind of like. A process that we've that you you, you you find in other places where you have a. You have these sort of migrant worker. Like first generation bracket worker bases hitting these sort of older industrial working classes. Yeah, no, I think that you're spot on, right. I think that this is a larger global history, right? This is a moment in which you are having a lot of migration from countryside into the city worldwide, right? You have a lot of French intellectuals at this moment thinking about sort of what does it mean that the city is perhaps becoming the new focus, the sort of new locus of social movements and social actions, you know, what does it mean that the city is dominant over the countryside and things like that. But I think it's different, or not necessarily different, but perhaps unique in the Chilean case is that this is a, you know, you have a a culture in Chile that is known the world over for its political culture, right? Everyone at this moment was thinking and talking politically and talking about big, you know, grand ideas of politics, not just, you know, sort of everyday politics, but but how did everyday politics inform these larger sort of social struggles? But this is still a moment when socialism is on the table, right? And so you have no, not that. This is different than other places in the world. Clearly, as you mentioned, in Italy, socialism is very much still on the table. Communism is very much still on the table there as well. But in Chile, what is different is that there is this idea that one could perhaps legislate socialism, right? Or that one could use the means of democracy to achieve socialism, right? That's going to make. The agenda government, so unique in this moment, but it would also makes the Cordones unique is this sort of relationship between social space and physical space in the city. So, for example, the very first quarter zone that emerges in 1972, studios maipu, as I mentioned earlier on the southwest of the city, that one, as I mentioned, because it had such close contact with the rural sector on that Edge, had a lot more solidarity between rural laborers. And factory laborers such that by 1973 you have factory laborers going out of their factory and helping rural laborers seize their properties and hold their properties away from the the the land owners essentially right and claiming sort of a redistributive, you know land for those who work it type of strategy. This is say different from the cordon that my dissertation is focused on vicuna Mackenna, which as as I mentioned a much larger segment of pobladores. Living nearby it, right? And so you have a much larger solidarity between the pobladores and between factory workers. And what makes that even more unique in this case is the role of the Catholic Church. And this is really one of the sort of new things that my dissertation is trying to do, is what is the role of the Catholic Church here? So, for example, the Catholic Church historically within this and within the historiography as well, has always been associated with the poblador movement, right? Because of this? Sort of connection to the countryside because of the churches sort of, you know, missionary kind of work and going out into the population, you know, poorer populations, especially following Vatican 2. Is that in which they begin to sort of have more outreach into the poor sectors. Umm, but it's never really seen, or rather very few scholars have thought about or looked at. What does this mean, then, for those individuals who may have lived in a poblacion, but who worked in a factory? In other words, what was the relationship between the sort of social, pastoral message of the church and the sort of socialism of a factory worker, and in the case the vicuna Mackenna? There's actually very strong. Points here. So specifically the San Cayetano parish which is located just to the West of the cordon proper was was fundamental in helping some of the workers established unions in in the cordon. So for example, the Sumar textile factory, which was functionally a city unto itself, this, this textile company had a series of different factories within its properties. So it had a cotton plant, it had a nylon plant, a silk plant. They had a polyester plant and each of these different plants then each had their own unions. And in Chile and the Labor Code in Chile from the 1930s, there were two different types of unions per factory or plant. You had the industrial union, which we could think of as the blue collar worker union, and then you had empleados union, which we can think of as a more white collar union. These would be the sort of professionals in the factory, the sort of technicians. The engineers, right, not so much the manual laborers, but everyone else in the factory. And in the case of Summar, specifically the cotton plant itself in the late 1960s, when they're trying to found their union for the first time, they don't have anywhere to go to find it to to found it, right, because they can't do it in the factory itself because management, the bosses will crack down on it. They don't have their own local yet because they haven't founded a union. And So what they ultimately do is they reach out to the parish priest and San Cayetano. Who is, you know, who offers them help and in doing so offers them a space to hold their first union vote? And that's actually how the Union of Sumar gets founded. And Sumar will go on to play a major role both in the cordones and then after the CORDONES during the dictatorship. It's a it's a very, very important factory in in this history. But it's often overlooked that, you know, the church played a very fundamental role in the sort of larger history of the working. Less formation of the sumar workers. I mean, it brings us to one of the things about this. That's I guess becoming to be better understood. But I think if you're a person who has not spent time looking at this might look kind of weird. Which is that, yeah, the Catholic Church in this. In in a lot of Latin America like takes, I mean, specialization to be like it, it takes this like very hard left turn. That, yeah, I mean, has all of these causes that like. You know, like you get like the the Italian version of it is like you get a bunch of priests who are just like, like, like clergymen literally doing kidnappings of like random government officials. And I think, yeah, I I I guess. In in, in in in this context. What? What did jesting to me I guess is yeah like how how much? OK so like what is the the you're talking you're talking about the sort of like the the the sort of pastoralism of of. This this sort of like social gospel. Message is is is, is there? Is there like a divide between the way the church is working in the city and the way is working in the countryside? Or is it just sort of like? It's all shifting left, but they're more the the the. The influence of the church is larger in among sort of rural and natural people. That's actually a really good question, and this is actually where I'm in the midst of sort of trying to figure this out. Specifically, for the past three weeks, I've actually been working in the church archives here in Santiago. And so that's actually the documents that I'm sort of sifting through as as we speak. And so one thing I can say for certain, as of now, what I've been able to sort of uncover is that, you know, the church was not homogeneous and it certainly wasn't monolithic, not in Latin America and definitely not in Santiago. You know, in the region itself, following Vatican to you have the Episcopal Conference of Latin America's Second Conference that takes place in the 1960s in medallion. And that's where the sort of the idea of liberation theology is born, right following median, then in Chile. The the Episcopal Conference of Chile, then is basically tasked with determining a way to fit its own pastoralism, its own sort of pastoral plan within these. New structures that they, you know, are a party to because they are part of this larger conference in Latin America itself. And so, you know, one thing that I have uncovered in the documents is that this is very much you begin to see a divide amongst the the bishops, amongst the church hierarchy here that are very, you know, interested in following this new plan of action. But they're also wary of some of the discourse that is surrounding this. So one example that. Comes to mind. Here is the idea of liberation itself, right? We often talk about liberation theology, and we often talk about it as though it was just sort of accepted wholesale by the church in Latin America. Well, a lot of the documents that I'm encountering here are there's great debate over the use of liberation, specifically because the idea of liberation is so tied up with Marxism. Right? And that is, you know, at this time the Catholic Church has a global institution. And Marxism as a global ideology are seen as antithetical. And here the idea that in the Church's view, at least from these documents, the the idea of Marxism that it's talking about when it's using Marxism is very much the Soviet Union, right? It's very much the sort of atheistic approach to the church, to religion that comes out of the early form of Marxism mechanism from early 20th century. And so there's a great debate on whether or not to use liberation. And ultimately you know the those supporting this discourse went out and and it is decided that liberation will be the words and the sort of discourse that the parish priests will use. But the other big thing that comes out of this in addition to this sort of discourse of liberation is this new idea of Catholic based communities, right? Is this whole new framework for. Sort of understanding a Christian community, right? Prior to this innovation of the base community, you know, a Christian community was defined by the hierarchy of the church, right? You have this sort of congregation, you have your parishes, you have the different sort of structural and bureaucratic. Designations that sort of link from a parish upward to the sort of church hierarchy itself. But the base community essentially is saying that, you know, wherever a few people gather and are studying the word of God or reading scripture or having theological debates, that that should be considered, you know, part of the church, should be considered that part of the church. And so in that sense, we can look at, say, Simon Caetano Parish and the work that it's doing with workers and the summar. Factory and sort of this has me thinking about, you know, what does it mean, you know, what do these base communities look like in practice? Is it possible for us to conceive of workers who are reaching out to their local priest for assistance as perhaps their own Christian based community? Or furthermore, you know, at this time in Chile, in addition to the leftist political parties, the socialist and the Communist, which is, you know, a majority of workers, the Christian Democrats are also a large force. In 1964, President Eduardo Frei is elected as a Christian Democrat, and he's the sort of what will initiate a process that will culminate with Allende's election in 1970. And by that I mean he initiates what he refers us to, a revolution in liberty, which is sort of a communitarian reformism that is essentially seen as perhaps forestalling Marxist revolution, a socialist revolution from taking place. But it's incredibly popular amongst working class and workers. And the Christian Democrat Party itself was a a very wide-ranging party that encompassed right wing elements but also left wing elements. Can we, can we talk a bit about? More about like what the Christian Democrats are because this is a thing that, like, doesn't really exist anymore. But was, I think, like a very important player like, I mean, there's, there's there's very powerful democratic parties in Europe is very powerful question democratic parties like across Latin America. Yeah. Can we talk a bit about like what that is and how that's different from like? You know how much different from just like your your generic, your generic sort of Socialist Party and how it's different even from your sort of, like, I don't know, you're like Labor Party Social Democrats? Yeah. No, I mean this is a, this is a great question and you're right, this isn't something that is sort of exists in the present moment. So it does seem very foreign to us. But really with the the sort of wager that the Christian Democrats make is that, you know in theory they agree for the need for structural change, right. In theory they the alleviation of poverty a more a more just distribution of wealth, right. But their ideas of justice and this is where the Christianity. Part of the Christian Democrat comes in right is that it is justice as understood in a Christian sense of justice, right. Not in a sort of more radical egalitarian sense of justice that say, a socialist or a communist would believe in. You know, so for a socialist or a communist, the sort of motor of history is class struggle, right. For a Christian Democrat, the motor of history is God and his son Jesus Christ. Right. And that is the sort of would be, I guess you could think of as the. The main difference, and then how that plays out in practical terms, would be in the for a communist or a socialist right, you want a sort of radical communism, dictatorship of the proletariat. These types of forms are very stagist movement through history. For a Christian Democrat, however, it's much more of a communitarian ethic, right? It's much more of a harmonization between, say, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, rather than an overthrowing and eradication of the bourgeoisie. By the proletariat, as it would be for, say, a socialist or communist. Yeah, and and I guess that that's something I wanted. Like, I I want to move a bit to talking about a yende briefly, because I think that's an interesting one of things you're talking about earlier. Is Ilande talking about, OK, well, we can have a democratic path to socialism and what's what's very interesting to me about. Both Ayende and what's happening in the cordones is that like, OK, so like that that is a that idea has been around for a very long time. And like there are a lot of people who take power who are like, OK, we're taking a democratic path to socialism and then, you know like a lot of Weimar like Germany, right is, is ruled by by the the German Social Democratic Party. And it's like, well, you look at what they do and they're not really like social listing. They're most, I mean you know, they're they're, they're, they're, they're doing things like they're doing like welfare reform. But that's a very different thing. Well and you know and you can see like the Labour Party in in in the UK for example. Well, like, OK, well though nationalized industries, right, but. You you don't see the kind of movements against like. The The You don't see the kind of movement against property that the movement to get sort of like. Like, you don't see an actual attempt to, like, eliminate the, which would see as a class in the same way that you do about Chile. And so I was wondering, like, what what makes like, what was it about this moment that someone who claimed that actually comes into power and starts doing it and starts doing it in a way that's not just the sort of like? You know when most like 90% of the time when someone rationalizes something, right? It's OK. So instead, instead of having. A boss that is. Instead of having a boss whose job it is to, like, make money for the stock market, you have a boss who works for the state. And there's there's very little sort of like structural change in how in how the bureaucracy is run, there's no change and like. You your individual relation to your boss does not change. She's still your boss. And that isn't? What happens in Chile, in, in, in, in the in the same way? Yeah, I'm interested why? Why, why, why this looks different here, I guess. Yeah. No, I think this is a great question, you know, and and so to to get to wynde, it is imperative that we start with Frey in 1964 and in some senses, we can start even in 1957, which is I end's first attempt at running for President. At this time, I Ende is running as essentially the last gasp, you could say, of the Popular Front, which emerged in the 1930s and into the 1940s. And had successfully United a large swath of the political parties in Chile. And this is what led to that earlier moment of industrialization, largely through the sort of policy known as import substitution. Industrialization in which, you know, the natural industries would be built. They would be protected via tariffs, price controls, and others that would stimulate local growth to produce products that would have otherwise been imported, however, by the late 1950s. Things have begun to bottleneck, right? Largely in the Chilean case, because a lot of the countryside is still under control of the latifundia of Grandis state, right? And which means that productivity isn't necessarily where it should be, but it also means that the labor force that's sort of stuck on the land as well isn't available then for the development of capital goods and industry. Right in the capital goods are what you need to really jump start industry wholesale. What Sheila does really well is. That sort of intermediary phase of making goods for individual consumption, right? Things of things of that nature. And So what I does in 1957 is the essentially trying to first run on a platform of industrialization and and to fix inflation, right? And he narrowly lose this. He he just barely loses the election in 1957. He'll who wins is Alessandri wins, and he will essentially adopt A very classical liberal. Approach a free market reforms, repression of Labor in some senses, freezing of any sort of gains of the labor movement, etcetera. This ultimately does not work, right. And so in 1964, you know, Shocker, you have calls then for a more revolutionary approach. Well, also what's happening in 1964, right as we're now in the wake of the Cuban Revolution which has taken place, which has put the Americas as a hemispheric designation. On notice that now it is possible to have sort of a revolution via insurrection via guerrilla warfare. Be successful, right? And not only be successful, but be successful in defeating the hegemon of the hemisphere, the United States and So what the United States will then do is launch the Alliance for Progress, which is essentially a way of funneling money into reformist minded governments as a way to appease these calls for revolution. That prevent that sort of Marxist revolution from taking place. So in the case of Chile, the alliance for progress will funnel many, many. Amounts of dollars into the fray administration, and fray wins the 1964 election handily. Now there's a great debate to be had on whether or not the OR whether the involvement of the CIA and the sort of scare tactic and fear mongering campaign went on in the 1964 campaign. Unfortunately, we just don't have the documents yet for this. Like we do for the 1970s and the lead up to the coup in the 1970s. You know, hopefully one day we'll have a better sense of really what went on. That explains such a a lopsided defeat of Ayende in 1964. So free will come to power in 1964. And actually the agrarian reform in Chile will begin under the Christian Democrats under phrase administration, financed in large part by the Alliance for Progress. Also the nationalization of copper, which will be fully nationalized under I ended in the 1970s, but it actually exists in a state of so-called negotiated nationalization under fray. Or what fray we would refer to as the Chilean lization of copper, in which Chile would take a very small right 51, you know, percent controlling in the copper companies, but would still have large the American copper companies, Anaconda and Kennecott specifically would still be the ones responsible for running the operations themselves. That's an interesting. I I guess. Weird historical thing because I know. OK, so like the this there. There have been a lot of times where the CIA has supported Lander form, which is very weird. Like they do it in Japan for example. And, you know, it's seen as seen as one of these things is like, OK, well, we have to do land reform in order to like, stop and stop an actual revolution from happening. So we'll do a sort of capitalist version of it. It's interesting to me that Chile does it because I feel like that that's not something that happens. In most of the other Latin American stage with the CIA gets involved. Yeah. Well, it's also, I mean the the Alliance for Progress is official government policy, you know, will be the one that starts the alliance and then it will continue into the LBJ administration following Kennedy's assassination. And so that is and you're right that regionally the alliance for progress is largely a failure. There are, however, a few successes and Chile was at the time held up as one of the successes and. Somewhat been borne out as one of the successes insofar as it is what initiates the agrarian reform in Chile. So so I guess. So OK, so. What you're saying is that there are there, there's, there's, there's a specific group of parties that the US backs at this. Who are trying to do this sort of who are trying to do some kind of reform. Like who are trying to do this sort of like the the class collaboration reform to stave off revolution thing and then I guess the like later policy becomes just do the do kind of insurgency on behalf of the land owners. Yeah, I mean the the way the fray, you know, as the fray administration continues, it becomes clear that his sort of reformist approaches as simply not working one is just not working on a macroeconomic level, right. Inflation is still happening, which has sort of been the, you know, enemy number one of the Chilean economy for most of the 20th century, right. Most of the 20th century in Chile is presidential administrations and economic economists, economic advisors are all struggling to understand. How to control inflation and you know fray thinks that they can figure it out via these sort of reforms via the agrarian reform via the sort of Chilean isation of the great mining wealth of the country in terms of factory or industry level. They essentially proposed this idea of sort of workers enterprises that is somewhat modeled off the Yugoslavian model, which is a much more communitarian. Approach, right. As you were saying earlier, you know the the boss is still there. Workers do have a stake in control of the enterprise, but private property still exists. So I guess it's still the boss like with that like how to what extent is it like if, if, if if you have this on a scale of like on the one hand on like the the extreme end you have, there's like nothing or maybe workers could own a share of a company and on the other end is like I don't know, like a like a 1930s, like like a 1937? Like Anarchist commune in Spain. Like how how how much control do they actually like? I don't like is is is this closer to something like the sort of like German codetermination system? Like how close to like Yugoslavia is this? Sorry, I'm trying to get a sense of like. Yeah, this is a lot of this. This is fascinating. In fact, one of my sort of dream projects or sort of dream archives to get into it ultimately be the Yugoslavian archives or former Yugoslavian archives because there is a lot of collaboration taking place between the Yugoslavian left and Chileans at this time. The problem is, is that a lot of this never really gets off the ground in practice. It is a lot of sort of things that exist on paper, reforms that are proposed, but reforms that never really get implemented. Which then has the effect of heightening expectations but not delivering on the goods, which pushes people further to the left right and pushes them to demand a more radical solution which they find in the 1970 campaign of Salvador Allende, right. And this is what really gets us to the to India's victory, which is the sort of failures of the fray administration to achieve the sort of revolution in liberty that he promises also the. Near the end of the fray administration, there's a massacre that takes place in the South of Chile and part the month that really solidifies, or if you will, sort of the final push or loss of legitimacy for the fray administration, as well as a pushing the sort of more popular classes to. Be opposed to the frame administration, be opposed to sort of the the Christian Democratic message of reformism and decides to sort of give revolution a chance. And it's into that moment that Salvador Allende reforms the coalition that he, you know, the original coalition that he runs on was was referred to as the FRAP. He forms a sort of new coalition in the lead up to the 1970 election, which would be the Popular Unity coalition and it's a coalition of leftist. Parties, primarily the Socialists, of which I endate is a member, and the Communists. And here it's important to remember in the Chilean case that the Socialists are actually to the left of the Communists, and the communists are a much more reserved approach to revolution and and by which I mean they're very much. Going to sort of have the, you know, they're, they're holding the party line right there, behold into the common turn, right. But they are also very much in line with the eye in days with in days view of legislating socialism. That's I guess another interesting aspect of this is like that's something I think also doesn't get discussed very much, which is this. Where. Like a lot of the like that, that was the the the party discipline being opposed from Moscow for like a lot of this. Like is explicitly telling them not to, like, explicitly saying don't do revolution, like hold and stabilize the situation. Is that the case like so? Sorry I. OK, this is again going back to me knowing Italy better. I know. Chile is is that is that something like how how long has that been policy from is is that like an old is that old Popular Front like stuff from them or is this is have has it like because I know like the US policy like so it's just like the Moscow line flips back and forth somewhat randomly depending on like what is going down and you're totally right it flips a lot especially in that 1930. And and into the you know once they establish the idea of the Popular Front that sort of does become the line the big change is takes place in 1950. Seven, there is a meeting of the common term in 1957, and that's when the idea of individual national roads to socialism becomes the official party line of the common term. And that is what then authorizes communist parties across the world to seek their own routes to socialism, right? So it no longer has to be a luminist, insurrectional model that no longer has to be a Cuban revolutionary model. It can be its own. So that when I yende proposes. This pluralist way of reaching socialism, that's what the Communists will link to. And and really that's what they'll hitch their wagon to. And we'll, we'll tow that line throughout the three years, throughout the 1000 days of the Allende government, which will then ultimately put them into conflict with the left wing of the Socialist Party, which is pushing for a much more radical, a radical shift. And that's really the sort of context that the cordon is emerge out of in 1972. It's the sort of growing factionalism, growing sectarianism within the ruling coalition of the popular unity. Yeah, I and I I guess this this is already going a lot of or some of the way to explaining why this looks different than a lot of the other sort of like. Or a lot of the other sort of socialist coalition governments, you see. Around the world, I mean, yeah, I mean partially just, yeah. The the influence of Yugoslavia is fascinating to me because I mean that's that explained that explains so much, right that that that explains why there's this sort of democratic component to it even even in even in this sort of reformist periods. And it explains why the expectation is that and not the sort of like even, not even like like Soviet style nationalization absolutely does not look like that. Yeah. So you're right that you know these, these multifaceted multi layer influences globally as well as locally. Within Chile as well as regionally produce something that is the first time that. So for example, Victory 1970 is the first time that an openly Marxist candidate will be elected president of the nation, elected democratically, and a free and fair election that is not contested or anything like that. Now that said, he wins by plurality, he only wins by about in in the 30%. Range. Now historically in Chile, a plurality victory is not a problem because you remand it to the Congress and the Congress typically will just rubber stamp the victory. Ayende, however, you know, there's a lot of apprehension about what he means for the country, what he means for the sort of landed deletes, what he means for the sort of oligarchs that control the grand monopolies in Chile. And so there is a lot of tension. Well, this is also then where? The actions the CIA backfire. So the work of the National Security Archive has done great work for uncovering the sort of two track plan that Nixon and Kissinger have for subverting the election of Ian Day and then ultimately preventing him from assuming power. And part of those tracks was to sort of foment some sort of crisis. And so the crisis that they attempt to foment involves General Renee Schneider. And it is. The attempt is that they're going to kidnap him and hold him hostage and use that as a way to prevent Ind from coming to power. Well, the problem is, is that that goes horribly wrong. The people that are carrying out the kidnapping are clearly unprepared for what happens. Things go haywire and Schneider is assassinated. He's shot accidentally and layered, dies, and the problem then becomes, you know, the nation is horrified. Actually, nation is horrified that this took place. And as a result, then ranks are closed around I indeed, and it has decided that they will approve his candidacy, his election, and he will be affirmed as the President. And you know, also what's happening in the background during the election and during the lead up to that vote is that the Popular Unity Coalition has its program. You know what we would think of as a campaign sort of platform, but part of the. Platform in the opportunities case was what they referred to as the sort of basic agreement between the coalition and the both the people of Chile, but also the political system, which in this basic agreement is sort of what we've been discussing this whole time, which is that ayende would not change fundamentally the political system, right. Any sort of nationalizations, any sort of economic restructuring that they would achieve or that they would try to achieve in Chile would be taken. Would take place would be used or one through the halls of Congress, right. Everything would be legislated, everything would still be remain the sort of Chilean government as normal, right. This is where you get Beyond's famous phrase that the revolution is going to be with empanadas and vino Tinto, right, with meat pies and red wine. Which means, you know, it's essentially not going to be a revolution of deprivation, right? It's not going to be a revolution that fundamentally changes. The structures of everyday life in Chile. This has been nicked. Happened here. Join us tomorrow for Part 2 of this interview where we walk through the Chilean Revolution, the Cordones, and their lasting impact on Chilean society. If you want to find more of Nicholas's work, he has an article coming out the next week or so in the made by History section of the Washington Post connecting the revolutionary period and the broader struggle for a dignified life to the modern inclusion of social rights in the proposed new post uprising Chilean constitution. You can find more of us that happened here pot on Twitter, Instagram, and we have two new. Podcast coming out the first is Ghost Church, hosted by the inimitable Jamie Loftus. It's a it's a deep look at the historical and contemporary practice of spiritualism and mediums who talk to ghosts. It is wonderful. Jamie is one of the best podcasters you ever do it and the first episode is out right now. You could find Ghost church wherever fine podcasts are distributed second on May Day, which is which is this Sunday, May 1st, the first episode of the Great Margaret Killjoy's new podcast, Cool People who did cool stuff is dropping. It's about, well, what the title says. It's the coolest revolutionaries, desperados and ordinary people in the right place and right time doing extremely cool stuff. And it's happening every Monday and Wednesday from here on out. So go give it a listen. When it drops on Mayday, it is going to be great. And yeah, it is. It is. It is a great time to be podcasting. There are there are many podcasts, so go listen to them now, after you're done with this one. Welcome to Ikeda. In here, a show that is once again today about the Chilean revolution. Here's Part 2 of my interview with Nicholas Scott. Yeah, I guess. I guess the next thing you look at is like how? How does what happens next phase yeah, it's exactly. Well, you know, especially by the end of the first year, things are looking very promising. So a few victories, more than a few victories, but a few key victories take place in in his first year in office in 1971, he submits his plan for the nationalization of the nation's mineral wealth, which is voted unanimously in Congress, which speaks to the level of broad support for. Chile having its own national sovereignty over its own resources, right. And this also then connects with sort of the theme that we've been developing this whole time, which is the sort of trends and regional and global similarities between Chile and elsewhere, right? A lot of the third world movement, a lot of countries in the so-called third world at that time are looking to nationalization as the way to extricate themselves from what they viewed as being in a relationship of dependency to circuits of global capitalism. Right. You have this whole idea of dependency theory that comes out of Latin America in specific and. The solution then is seen to be able to control one's own natural resources and and use that wealth to develop its own national industry right. This would overcome those sort of bottlenecks in the import substitution model, as well as allowing for more redistributive. Structure of wealth and or land within the individual countries themselves. So he gets his mineral wealth nationalization and passed. The Popular Unity Coalition also wins a series of off year or by elections at the local level and wins them so successfully that they will issue a alliance with the Christian Democrats who are not part of the coalition. The Popular Unity coalition. But they are also at this time not part of the. Opposition, which is largely controlled by the Nationalist Party. They're sort of in somewhere in the middle, but they're also in the point in the middle in which they control a large share of the Congress as well as the courts themselves. So they will not. So the popular unique coalition is sort of buoyed by the what it sees as the success at the ballot box. And it sees its success is getting its plans passed. And so they will issue an alliance with the Christian Democrats. And then the sort of other main thing that takes place in 1971 is that AYENDE is able to affect using macroeconomic policies that were functionally Keynesianism, right. And his economic minister, Pedro was puskarich. It will essentially allow for a redistribution of wealth in which workers receive sort of what they could, what we could consider bonuses, right, but sort of automatic increases that were affected from the top down in wages across. And the historian Peter Wynn, who published the sort of landmark study that really dominated the field of the history and historiography of the popular unity years. He published a book called The Weavers of Revolution that looks at the. Dover Textile Mill, which was the first mill that I ended a nationalizes. In 1971. And what when found during his research is that, you know, India's policies in 1971 allowed a majority of Chileans to purchase bed sheets for the first time in many of their lives. Bed sheets were not something that the majority of Chileans used, despite the fact that a majority of Chileans worked in the textile industry, right? The textile industry was one of the most developed industries in Chile at this moment. And so all of these things sort of come together, and by the end of 1971, signs are looking good. However, by the time sort of 1972 dawns, and as we're getting into the 1972, cracks are beginning to appear. There's another series of by elections in which the Popular Unity Coalition does not win, the Christian Democrats win. The election for the rector of the University of Chile is a shock defeat for the Popular Unity coalition and the Christian Democrat. Things that as well as in 1972 there is for the first time in the nation's history the Central Workers Federation of Labor. The coot has for the first time it's own open elections for its leadership. It was the first time the rank and file could elect the leadership of the National Labor Confederation and the Communists win the largest majority and the Socialists come in second. But just below the socialist and at the percentage level it was functionally the same. Where the Christian Democrats so much so that basically a court that the Popular Unity coalition sees that 1/4 of the working class of Chile identifies as a Christian Democrat. Meanwhile, economically, things are beginning to stall out. Inflation is beginning to creep back up. Production is not necessarily at the levels that the government would want it to be at, right? So the idea of winning the Battle of production begins, becomes the sort of watchword or rallying cry in 1972, and if the successes of 1971 had somewhat papered over the sectarian differences that we were discussing. Earlier, between say, the communists and socialists, by 1972 those sectarian differences are really spilling out into public view. So in mid 1972 you have the Communist Party. Member of the Communist Party is also a member of the Allende government or Orlando Mius pins and editorial, in which he essentially calls for the party, for the Coalition to sort of close ranks, to consolidate its gains. To reach out to the Christian Democrats to make an alliance and use that sort of consolidated alliance as the way to move forward on in the revolutionary path. The Socialists, however, specifically the left wing of the Socialist Party, which was sort of identified with Carlos Altamirano at the time, takes the opposite approach and says that know the solution isn't to consolidate to advance. The solution is to advance and consolidate by advancing. In other words, we shouldn't try to make an alliance that the Christian Democrats, because of their view the Christian Democrats were just for choir right, that we should essentially align ourselves with the popular classes. Yes, the rural laborers that are leading charge of the agrarian reform that's picking up speed rapidly in the countryside at this time, right? See, land seizures are taking place much more rapidly now. We should also place our alliances with the popular working classes, which at that moment, at the moment that this polemic is playing out in the Press of Chile, is the very same moment that you have the first cordone industrial emerged in city of Maipu. And it's into that sort of fractured moment that you have workers from a couple of plants that just happened to meet serendipitously on the steps of the Labor Ministry one day in about May of 1972. They had both been on strike and had both been demanding their incorporation into what was referred to as the social property area, which this was Allende's vision for creating a socialist economy and this was a plan that he had submitted to the Congress to restructure the Chilean economy into three parts. There would have a social property area that would be owned and operated by the state, would have a mixed property area that would be a sort of mixture 5050 between the state and private industry and you have a private property. Yeah, which would just be businesses, usual private enterprise. Absolutely. That plan had been stalled out because of opposition from the Christian Democrats that vetoed it and submitted their own alternative strategy, which then agenda vetoed. Became a constitutional crisis that got remanded to the Constitutional Tribunal in Chile, which ultimately it languished their through the end of the island government through 1973 during the coup has never really resolved. Nevertheless, workers saw the ability to be in put into the social property area as the solution to what they perceived as a revolutionary socialism right to be in a socialized economy and I mentioned earlier Peter when's work on the auditor? Next time they'll that's exactly what the workers that you offer did they decided to do. Now that is in opposition to Ayende and the popular unities plan, which was to put these sort of grand monopolies in the social property area, not necessarily smaller industries such as such as the Yatter textile mill in particular. There were other perhaps textile companies that have been slated for incorporation, but the problem is, is that the workers successfully petitioned and pressured ayende. One there in corporation, and that unleashed what win would refer to as a revolution from below. And that's what allowed the workers who seized the Labor ministry that day in 1972 to demand their incorporation into the social property area. Because there was a law on the books in Chile that stated that if there was an unresolved labor conflict with the factory that the state could intervene and essentially make state control of that factory, which would be the first step to them being incorporated. Into the social property area. And so it's out of that happenstance meeting on the doors to the Labor Ministry when they seize it and take it over, shut it down, that then the workers of this industrial sector on the West of Santiago begin meeting and they begin collaborating and they begin organizing themselves territorially. And I guess this is a good moment to apologize to our listeners that never really gave a good definition as to what a cordon industriale was in practice, essentially the. Sort of. Wager of this organization was that you could organize yourself territorially rather than by trade or industry, right? Which would be the traditional way that a Union would be structured? Metal workers organized with metal workers, class workers organized with class workers, textile, etcetera, etcetera. And never the twain shall meet in practice, right? It's all through bureaucratic structures, labor leaders, etcetera. As I mentioned, it wasn't until 1972 that the, you know, rank and file is ever able to vote themselves for their own national leadership. And so the idea of these workers is that they're going to create their sort of new form of organization and after. You know, deciding to do it, they seized the territory of serious maipu. They shut down traffic. And this road that they seized is one of the main roads into the city of Santiago from the West. Which means that the government had to respond immediately. As one worker, not worker, one government official put it. At the time, the workers were in the streets, we had to respond, right you're you're a government that claims to represent the working class. You're a government that it claims to be putting yourself on the road to socialism. And the workers have now cut off transportation into the city and are demanding sort of you to fulfill your promise. And so they had to respond ultimately. Just some of the workers that were striking at the time, specifically from the Perlak company, which was Canning company. They did win the incorporation into the social property area and however, other workers from other factories in the area did not win their incorporation, which then produced a March into the city of Santiago in late June. And it also produced a platform of struggle by what was referred to as the Workers command as three of my pool. And that's really the first document we have that shows that there is this new structure that is demanding that the government fulfill its promise, live up to its basic program. Now following that moment, however, there's sort of a period of demobilization that takes place in sort of mid 1972. And it's really not until October 1972 that you have the flourishing of this new form of organization of the cordon industriale across the city of Santiago. And the reason that it takes place in October of 1972 is because that's the moment that the opposition launches its first concerted effort to try and topple the Allende government. It's referred to as the bosses strike. And essentially what happens is there's a localized strike of truckers in the far South of Chile and the sort of business elites of the country are successful in. Transforming what is a very localized strike in the far South into a global lockout on the part of business owners, right? So they'll shutter factories, they'll shutter distribution centers of food stuffs, they'll completely shut down transportation networks in the city of Santiago and other cities across the country. So you can understand why they would call it the bosses strike. And this is the moment in that you have workers in these industrial zones that we start began our conversation with using this model that emerged in the southwest of. Of Santiago as this new model to seize their factories that they've been locked out of, to reorganize the production of their factories and to ensure distribution, you know, takes place of basic goods and services for local residents in their community. It's really what allows the Hyundai government to weather the storm of the October strike and the October crisis, as it will also be known. Ultimately, you know, that will reach a truce. In November that includes a cabinet shake up also includes integrating the military and cabinet as well as I was able to deploy the military to sort of keep the peace in some senses. So there is a story of graphical debate to be had between, you know, how much of it was the workers and the cordones saving the country and saving the government and how much of it was military remaining loyal to the government that allows them to sort of reach was referred to as the truce of November. So I guess I want to back up. For a second and talk about. What is the internal organization of the criminal actually look like? Like? Are we talking about councils? Is this bass assemblies? How, how, how does this actually work on a sort of like day-to-day basis? The great question and this is actually the question that has sort of dominated a lot of the scholarship on the cordon lists. Frank Good issued who is sort of the leading scholar of the cordones essentially used Marxist distinction of a class in itself and a class for itself to sort of unravel this question. So for, for good should the the cordon in itself is the sort of territory, right, that we begin our conversation with and then the cordon for itself is essentially the Workers Council? That is the governing body of the cordon itself, which was composed of already unionized workers, right. So it already is a tier of working class above, say, just your general worker that worked on the factory floor. So it's already a unionized worker and some of that occupies a power or a position of authority within the Union, IE already or on the Directorate or President, Vice President, Treasurer or secretary. So that main council is are elected within the sort of General Assembly of the cordon itself. Below you have then different commissions, right? You have a sort of propaganda press Commission, you have a cultural Commission, you have a sports Commission, you have the Security Commission, right, because at this time you had far right shock troops that would spark St Battles and that would harass workers that would also attack factories that have been seized so that they had security Commission, Frontline Defense Commission. You also had distribution commissions and then you had other commissions that would essentially seek to coordinate all of this that exists. So you had a sort of coordinating board just below the sort of general counsel. And then that's what was the mediation point between that sort of governing Council and your different commissions? How, how are the people who are like, who are on these commissions selected? Are they like, are they elected or is it just like, whoever wants to be on this thing? So it's a mix of both, right. So you, you're sort of main Council itself is elected via General Assembly in terms of the commissions, the smaller commissions. We sadly don't have great documentary evidence that you know lays out the process for that. So our best guess or our best understanding would be a mix of sort of volunteerism as well as some sort of within the Commission itself, some form of election, excuse me, that would take place to sort of a point ahead of that Commission that would then coordinate with the general counsel itself. Now, really, what this, you know what this sort of cuts to the heart of is that the history of the cordones is a very effervescent history. It's really easy to see the cordones in action right when they're doing things like seizing control of their territory and erecting barricades. But on that, day-to-day level, it's a relatively opaque sort of structure. It's really hard for us as historians to get a view into that, you know, one reason the good shoot is able to, you know? Unpack as much as he has and uncover as much as he has because he conducted a series of oral history interviews with many of the surviving workers. And that's really one of the foundational source bases we have that he published this in a book in which he published the full transcript of his interviews. So we don't, it's not just like an interpretive essay, it's the full transcript. And so that's that in combination with some of these coordinates had local presses that we have existing. Documentary evidence from that sort of would give, you know, your standard diagram of Council, Commission, Commission, Commission lines connecting them and things like that. But one of the other few documents that we have surviving documents we have is what's referred to as the manifesto of Cordon vicuna Mackenna. And this is the document that my research really is at the heart of my research because while the gunasena is recognized as sort of one of the most dynamic and strongest of the core. And it's behind the original, insidious maipu we really don't have a lot. We don't know a lot about what was going on in there. In fact, my research was born out of a conversation the first time I was in Chile conducting research for my masters at Tufts with go to shoot himself, who told me that, like, we really don't know a lot about what was going on day-to-day. And Fortuna McKenna would be really great if we could somehow find a way to do that. And, you know, that kind of stuck with me. That really wasn't my concern at the time. The concern at the time was trying to understand how the cordones that shifted from their emergence to the coup itself. Because I what I was seeing in a lot of the literature was that people were using sources from late 1973 once the Cordones are established and really showing up and press right there, showing up in the archive a lot more by 1973. And they're using documents from 1973 to describe their sort of founding in 1972. And the historian in me was kind of like, you know. Things change, right? And and things change both over time and space. And so my original concern was, you know, what made the sort of changes from the western side of the city to the eastern side of the city? But then when I got to UVA and began my doctoral work, I really wanted to zero in on Futuna McKenna. And really I was, you know, that that conversation with Frank was really ringing in my head. And so I, you know, I kind of at UVA, had to do another master's essay as part of the program there, despite having, you know, already done a master's thesis when I was at Tufts. Exactly. The thesis curse. But you know it. What it did, what it allowed me to do was to, you know, kind of play with the sources in ways that I may not have had the ability to do otherwise. Right? And so I really sat with this manifesto for a long period of time and really did a close reading of this document, which, you know, a lot of times this document has shown up in previous studies. It's shown up as a this is a document that emerges during the October. Crisis. It's the document we know we have from this one cordone here it is right. But what I uncovered was that the document itself, the document that is headed as the manifesto, is actually a reworked version of a document that had circulated previously during the October crisis that was produced by the Revolutionary Left Movement. The mirror, the far left party in the party, aren't they? Aren't they like guitarists? They are. They very much are. It's just a very far left party that is calling for more insurrectionary model. It's also calling for a worker peasant alliance, right? So it is this very much more traditional. Socialist revolutionary in that sense, compared to the sort of indest vision of socialism that that is being handed down from above, right. And so during the October crisis, there's this document that circulates by the opposition that's running the crisis that is essentially the. Petition the pliego in in Spanish would be the word, but essentially the petition of of Chile and the Mir takes issue with the fact that the bosses issued a petition in the name of Chile and so they issue a counter document that is the peoples partition the pliego del Pueblo. And it's a very long document. It's a very it reads as a essentially a manifesto for a new. Revolution to take place, right? Like how to transform the present crisis into a revolutionary breakthrough? And as you're saying, we're various model. In the tail end of the October crisis, as cordon vicuna Mackenna is consolidating itself, right itself forms after a factory seizure at elec metal, which then unites these sort of two nodes that existed in the territory at the North End and the South end into one sort of communication and solidarity network that will then become known as the cordone. As its first General Assembly, in which it takes this document from the mirror and begins to rework it. And that's then what becomes the manifesto of Corona vicuna Mackenna. And so in my research in my Masters essay at University of Virginia, what I did was I, you know, I really compared these two documents and looked for where the difference is. You know, what's showing up here that's not showing up in mirrors document, in other words, what? Glimpses can we get of the local culture of Aquina macana itself, and one of the key differences that I find. Is there's an entire section that begins the manifesto that was the crime of the bosses, the crimes of the bosses, and that exists in the mayor's document as well. But the crimes that are articulated are bear slight differences. But the in the manifesto itself, the final crime that is articulated is that the manifesto reads that it's a crime that the basic few elite in Chile continue to use the country's wealth. To support their privileges without giving a dignified life to a majority of Chileans. And this doesn't appear anywhere in the mirror's document. And it was something about this phrase of a dignified life that really just like cued my analytical senses that sort of raised the flags for me. And this is what then led me down the road that I'm on now, which is the road of looking at things like the church and the poblador movement. Because the idea of dignity and the idea of a dignified life is a key discourse that's circulating in the churches pastoralism. Right. Coming out as we were speaking about earlier, the discourse of dignity is really present in in the church's outreach efforts, but it's also present in this populator movement for housing. The idea of a dignified house as the end goal of their struggle is something that is, you know, rings out in the documents that we have access to and in the oral histories that we have. And so that really, you know, made me think like, what is it then about vicuna Mackenna that? Is allowing this to appear here. And you know, what can we then learn using this as our, you know, starting point and going out where? And so that's when I decided to sort of take the story back all the way to 1957 and look at things like the church, look at things like the poblador movement, but then also extend the story past the 1973. Which is when the coup takes place, which is, you know, in the historiography seen as this, you know, hard line. This break in in Chilean history that there's a before September 11th, 1973 and there's an after September 11th, 1973 and very few studies cross that line, especially studies with regards to the labor movement. The specifically the dignity thing is, is is really interesting to me too, because so I did an interview like. Oh God, like a month they go. Sort of. I've lost track of time, but I I did an interview with with with an Amazon organizer. And one of the things that was one of the things was like one of the things that he brought up is that one of the things that like we are fighting for is dignity and and yeah, and that's something specifically I've been thinking about more because like I think we talked about this a bit in in the interview itself, but like. Like dignity as a demand is a thing that you that you see all of the time in. Like? In, in in you know if, if, if, if, if you were talking to a bunch of people. Like on the street in the middle of improvement you will hear people talk about dignity. I mean, I think if if I'm remembering this correctly, this is, this is one of the, this is one of the big things. This is one of the big demands like the the the, the, the modern Chilean protest movements like that was one of their huge sort of focus. So yeah, but it's also something like I I have never like at any I don't think I've ever seen like a Communist Party, say the word dignity. Like, like I think it happens, I don't know, every once in a while like maybe. You see it if if you get a document that's that's not produced by the sort of ideological engines, but it's produced by like just a bunch of workers in a factory. But yeah, yeah, that that that's fascinating to me because yeah, because that. Yep. I don't know, it's, it's it seems like. Destructive for dignity. Both, yeah. Like has this thing as like a very specific discourse. From the church, but is also something that shows up in a lot of movements where. You're not dealing with the kind of like ideological rigidity that you get from let me know, like the mirror, not the mirror. Mirror is a like that that you know like that that's that's a very like like, this is a party. It has a line. It has a very sort of like. It's a living organization. Yeah. Yeah. And and it's fascinating to me that that, yeah that that you you can see these differences were even when they have influence, the thing that gets added is dignity. Yeah, I mean, there is, you know, I think that perhaps what has. Pushed studies of leftism, socialism, and labor movement away from the idea of dignity as an analytic object is there is tension here, right? Dignity is a highly individualized concept, but the solution for a dignified life for all Chileans, as per this document, were collective structural changes. And so there's this tension between a collective solution and an. Individual gain, right. And so I think that that both explains why this hasn't necessarily been a focus of a lot of studies before, but it also, you know, it gets to the historiography itself, which was, you know, a large product of the history here. And so things like the Christian Democrats and things like the church were seen as the enemy of the Popular Unity coalition, given the way that the, you know, the coup takes place and and things like that. And so anything that maybe had a whip. Of Christian democracy or Christianity or things like that was seen as as antithetical or incompatible with the study of of the left. It also gets to the tension that you were doing a really great job of of sort of unpacking, which is this tension between the national leadership of these parties and the National Union leadership and then everyday workers on the ground. Right. And, you know, that's I think really where the strength, and this was really the argument that I advanced in my master's thesis at UVA, is that. One of the central contradictions of the Ayende. Is there were competing ideas of socialism. So from the top down and from Ayende's view socialism was the traditional Soviet Union esque approach and so far as it was national economic Planning, Party hierarchies, things of that nature, right, discipline at the base and upward and upward planning from the top down. But what I think the manifesto. In the history of the China, China helps us understand is that for everyday individuals, that their idea of socialism didn't have anything to do with state economic planning. It didn't have anything to do with expertise and technocrats and things of that nature. It had to do with the idea that, like, I need sheets for my bed, I need food for my child, I need the ability to. You know, have enough sleep to be able to get up and go to the factory the next day, right? I need to be able to live a dignified life, to be able to then, you know, carry out my work, my obligation as a worker in the historical movement of socialism. And so I think that this is really what this tension is then, what allows for the sort of destabilization to take place as the opposition consolidates and ultimately destabilizes the Allende government in 1973. Yeah, and I think this is a tension that like. I mean, I think there's different versions of it too that you see. Sort of. Across history, like one of the ways that it manifests is. This battle between the people who think socialism is about like is is is national like State National Corporation, and people who think socialism is about like direct control at the point of production by the people who are doing the work. But but I think also, yeah, the, the the question of dignity is it's like it it's this it's like dignity is this expression that's like maximally bad for like if if if you're like, you know, if you're like a you're you're you're a material, you're like, you're a historical materialist theoretician, right. It's it's it's the worst possible slogan because on the one hand it's like, it's not materialist, right. Like what is dignity? There's no dignity has no class relation. Like what is that? You know and it's it's it's simultaneously like it's not material enough. It's too reformist because like, Oh well, you could give people dignity. By just buying them off or, like, increasing wages. Or you could have a class compromise and I can give you dignity. But then simultaneously, it's the thing that's too radical because the problem with dignity also is that, like, yeah, I don't know, like, there's there's no guarantee that you're going to get dignity if, like, your factory is controlled by the state. Like, exactly. Yeah. And This is why, like, you see almost identically the state is a boss, just by a different name. Yeah. And and, yeah, it's like, it's it's why you see like, the the uprisings that happen. I mean, really starting 1957 in Hungary. But yeah, This is why, like, they're uprising in Cyclovia looks almost identical to like the uprising that happens in France. It's because they're both like, there. There's. You know, you're you're like you the factory worker in a factory and chekhova Kia and you the factory worker in the factory in France are dealing with essentially the same thing. And so it's it's this kind of like. I don't know it. It seems like it's it's it's this perfect sort of like cipher for. All of these kind of political differences that that that that manifest this this this really old tension in. What the workers movement is going to be that's been being fought out since 1830s. And that. Yeah. But I think that, like, if we as scholars and if we as intellectuals are really serious about when we say that we're going to study things from below, then I think that we have to take the workers at their work, right. And so, like, for example, I presented a version of my of my master's thesis at a I studied was it a program in Bologna for a summer. And so I was presenting this and to the sort of, you know, and the Italian leftists in the room. They came, you know, came down on this question of it sounds like what they're describing isn't socialism because they're much more interested in distribution and not interested in the point of production, which isn't socialist. And, you know, and all I could say and all I could respond to this is like, that's what my subjects are using in the archive. And for me it's far more productive to look for those slippages and look for those spaces in the archive when they are saying something that may be different. And what we understand it to be and that's a lot more productive Ave for analysis. And that to me is really how we fulfill this obligation to study things from below is we have to actually take them at their word and understand and try to understand what that actually meant for them, right, and what that meant on an everyday basis. And I think that there's, there's a sort of like practical. Like? Organizational like like, you know, if if, if, if you today want to do something like this, like I I think, I think there's there's an imperative there too, which is that like. You you actually do have to take seriously what people think and how that's different from the way that like you the organizer or thinking about this, because those are things that don't overlap. And a lot of times, like, you know, and it's it is not enough to just be like, well, these people want dignity. What they actually want is socialism or like what they actually want is the abolition of the class is like, you have to. Like, believe them when they say that they want something. And, you know, and and and when you don't do that, and when you get these sort of disjuncts between, like when you get these discounts between the, the sort of the sort of party bureaucracy on the top and what, like people in the streets who are seizing factories want, like, yeah, I think, like things start to sort of come apart. Exactly. And I, you know, I think that that if we don't, you know, depart from the perspective of staying true to what the archive gives us, then there's only a risk that we're, you know, every historian, every scholar is going to inject their own interpretation onto a document. Right. But the best way to sort of safeguard that is to, you know, stay true to what it's saying and that, you know, the same goes for an activist and organizer As for an intellectual right, like if you don't depart from. The perspective of what your constituents or what your group is saying, you know, what they're really saying, the words that they're using to describe what they're demanding, then you're only ever going to just be trying to sort of fit the, you know, the the square peg in the round hole. Yeah. And and that can go really, really, really spectacularly wrong. Yeah. Exactly. And you know and that is you know what then leads to you know in the case of the cordones that will then lead to tensions that will really break out into the open in 1973 and early 1973 when the. Orlando, MIAs the same person that starts that polemic in 1972. By this point it becomes Finance Minister in the administration and presents a plan to sort of devolve some of the factories that have been seized during the October crisis right back to their original owners. And then this creates a huge problem, huge tension between the base, between workers in these factories that had sort of sacrificed everything and put their lives literally, put their lives on the line. To seize the factories in the 1st place. And so then you have another sort of moment of mobilization of the cordones across the city of Santiago in early 1973. That's very much an opposition to the government. Now can I can I ask a brief sort of framing question about this, which is that like, OK, so we talked about this in in in the interview we did with some modern Chilean activists, but like what, what, what is the population of Santiago relative to like the population of the entirety of Chile at this point? Like how? Yeah, that is a great question that I don't actually have statistics like that I can rattle off in my head, but you know, I mean, there's, there is. It is a great you know. Santiago is the most populous region. For sure. So rather the most populous city and then sort of metropolitan region itself is very densely populated. Is it still like like a pretty significant like population of the entire country or is it less? It is a significant population of the whole country for sure, but there is tension in this. And then this is kind of the reason why I always try to steer somewhat away from these types of questions because I'm sure this came up in your conversation with Julian activists is that, you know, there is the phrase that Santiago is not Chile. And so there is a, there is a tendency to rely on statistics of Santiago's population and the metropolitan region's population to say, like, oh, this is where the majority of people live. So if it happened in Santiago. That must be true for all of Chile, and that just isn't the case, right? Chile is a huge country. It may be very narrow, but this is very long N to South and it, you know, it is very distinct across the many regions of Chile. And so I very much am on the side of those that argue that Santiago is not Chile. Unfortunately, in the case the cordones, the majority of them do exist in Santiago. That said, in conception. You know another Chile further to the South of Santiago. There is one of the other cities that we know for sure actually did have cordones that were moderately successful as well. In fact, there is, and now I'm completely forgetting her name. But there is a historian that has published a book about the Cordones in Concepcion. That's one of the few studies that sort of tries to look at coordinates beyond Santiago itself. You know, and a very well taken point on your on my part here that like you know, a lot of our discussion today has been about Santiago and so is very much limited to, yeah, this is a, this is a problem that you get a lot with like large urban movements. Like, I mean I I run into Tiananmen all the time, where it's like. You know, OK, so Tiananmen, there's, there's, there's the big thing in Tiananmen. But this happens at like, cities all over China. And there's just nothing, there's like almost nothing that has ever sort of like been written or has gotten out of what happened to everywhere else in the country. And so you get this, you get this very myopic view of like, what was happening that I think loses a lot of the sort of, like, I mean, a lot of the diversity and a lot of the sort of. The IT you get a reality that is shaped by the specific experience of one place, which is not the specific experience of every other place. Right, exactly. So like in the case of like Santiago and Cordones, right, like the labor working class that's making up, this is factory labor, as we were saying, at the sort of level of consumer products, right. But say if you had a cordone and say Valparaiso, the sort of coastal city, the port city where you have a much different labor force, right, with dock workers, things like that, you're going to have a much different formation that's going to take place. And so as much as like my initial sort of attempt to understand the differences within the geography of Santiago, you know, I think was important, I always have to remind myself that like it's still just this one city, which is very different from the experience of a vast majority of Johannes. I mean, it's definitely a moment in which, you know, there is still a very large rural population for sure. And I guess like that that brings me so like. Yeah, in, in in terms of sort of. OK. I guess there there's two directions here. One I guess is about what is the like, what is the rural population doing? Like while this is going on. And the second one, well, I guess, I guess we could start there. Yeah. I mean, as we sort of mentioned earlier, there isn't a growing reform that is happening, right? And you are having a labor movement that is picking up rapid steam in the countryside, right. And you are having land seizures that is that are taking place and picking up steam. And so that's a lot of what's going on in the countryside is both an increase in land seizures and increasingly militant land seizures as that, but you're also having an increased unionization, right? So the Labor Code in Chile. Had a different set of regulations for rural labor than it did for urban or factory labor, right? And so one of the things that on the INA. That we see is a sort of flourishing of organized labor in the countryside. So you are having a lot of party militants going out into the countryside, as well as labor leaders locally in the countryside that are organizing rural laborers. So you are having mass union drives. Unfortunately, and I will be the first to admit that I am largely, you know, and this is again a consequence of like being an urban historian, I am largely ignorant of the the inner dynamics, what is happening on in in the countryside. Scholars like Florencia Mallon or Heidi Tinsman have both produced outstanding works on this question in terms of the the relationship between land seizures and gender and indigeneity that is taking place in the countryside. So I guess, yeah, so you know, OK. So we we, yeah, we can't get into too much detail on this, but I would would it be broadly like accurate to say that it it's not true that you're dealing with a situation where there's a huge sort of divide in the level of mobilization organization between the city and rural regions? Like that this, this isn't like a sort of like, like, you're not dealing with like a like a van de peasant situation where you have this enormous sort of reactionary base in the countryside. Yeah. No, you definitely don't. Yeah, it's definitely not that. And, you know, there are attempts over the course of the agenda years. You know, the mirror is one of the sort of fronts that this is playing out in, but even the colonies themselves. Right. So like, one of the initial rallies and sort of mobilizations of the Survios, mipu cordone is for the jailing. In imprisonment of a series of rural militants and rural laborers that in the area of Maya Melipilla. There are some activists and workers that are jailed and those the cordon actually marches into the city of Santiago, into the downtown part of Santiago to demand their release. And this is like a disparate geography here that we're talking about. And so it is, you know, this is an instance in which you're trying to see these sort of links be both be made and strengthened between factory labor in cities and rural labor in the countryside. And I guess that brings me to the second point which is like OK, so there is a right in Chile and it is not hay. Very much, yeah. Yeah. And and I guess one of the things I guess I wanted to talk about was so my, my impression about a lot of what is happening in 1973 has to do with the fact that Chiles like truckers movement is really right wing. And that that has well, OK. So part of that, part of that is the CIA, part of that is just this like a like part of it is the CIA's ability to keep striking truckers afloat and they're not working it on struck. Part of it also is a consequence from this moment in October, right, in which the national business elites and national economic elite in Chile transform that trucker strike into the bosses strike, right. You do have this alliance being formed and strengthened at that moment as well, which will as you're referring to in 1973, there is another trucker strike that takes place that is even more crippling in some senses than the initial one, and that also also, as I will mention literally every time, even though I. I don't know if I can say that on air, but the part that I can say on air is. Of yeah, I to their eternal, ignominious non glory. The AFL-CIO is also heavily involved in that. Which is fun and good. And yeah, AFL-CIO. Please stop overthrowing governments. We deal with for less. It's a very, it's a very interesting AFL-CIO history in relationship is actually very fascinating because during the dictatorship they will actually be on the other side and actually helping labor get back on its feet and as a key point of resistance. So they're in the late 1970s organizing a boycott of Chilean products, which actually is a key point of pressure on the dictatorship to begin allowing for new, for a sort of new labor movement to begin emerging. Yeah, which that at some point like. I don't. I don't think it can happen here, but I I just did the podcast name. Hey. But yeah. Like I don't think, I don't think it can be this time, but like, yeah, it's at some point I do want to take a deeper dive into sort of like what the AFL-CIO is doing during this. Because they are like they're all over like, yeah. There's a fascinating history. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean like, you know, like one of my, my, my, my, my last AFL-CIO. What are you doing thing for this episode is I. So they they they FCA has a policy where like they don't like, they don't associate with like like state. Main federations and they make one exception for it and it's state Union federation of the military dictatorship in South Korea, which is like, it's like, oh, good job guys like doing great here. This is, this is going great. Yeah, but but. Yeah, I guess can we, can we get into sort of the the? The, the, the crises that like are the crises that like precipitate the end of ayende. Totally, yeah. So by this point, you know, as I mentioned, by 1971 the opposition is largely disarticulated you have the National Party, you have this sort of far right organization that would be translated as Fatherland and Freedom Patriot. Deliver that, or I translated as Fatherland and freedom because I think it has a better, it conjures it better, others will translate it as fatherland and liberty. But I'm a sucker for alliterative. Forms. And so that's the translation that I use. I also think it conjures more of the sort of fascistic elements, which is very much was a fascist organization. Listen it too. I mean, a lot of you know, Los Chicago boys will have ties to Patria Libertad. And so there have, you know, rightist shock troops that are fomenting conflicts in the streets that are also setting off bombs that are crippling the power grid, especially much later in 1973, but following that moment in 1971 when the popular Unity government issues the alliance with the Christian Democrats. The Christian that pushes the Christian Democrats to begin forming an alliance with the National Party. And what happens then is that the left wing of the Christian Democrats splits from that party to form its own party of left Christians. But then the consequence of that is that that means that the the more rightist elements of the Christian Democrat Party can consolidate their power and strengthen their ties with the national power. So that by, you know, late 1972 and very much by the March 1970. 3 elections, which were sort of the key electoral moment that everyone was looking to at this moment, you have a you have a solid alliance of the right now, the iyanda coalition will win the March 1973 elections, and that is really the moment that scholars agree. That the the switches sort of flipped for the opposition. And if they realized that they can no longer defeat the popular Unity coalition at the ballot box and that they now need to use extra constitutional means, right? And so they begin developing sort of deploying the full force of those means. And here is a point where the role of gender is very important because a lot of what the right will do will be to mobilize the power of the the power and symbol of women. Protesting. As a way to deal legitimate the government and to de legitimate key figures in the Ind administration so earlier there is a key protest that happens, which is the March of angry Pots. And this is a, you know, a very traditional form of protest in Latin America, which the Casa Lazo, right, the sort of banging of pots and pans in protest. But the right organizes it to be largely carried out by women as a way to protest what is seen as a. You know, a lack of supply of basic food necessities for families in Chile, which you know, we now know is a result of black market speculation and hoarding on a lot of the part of the sort of distribution centers controlled by the right. Nevertheless, they essentially use this symbol of women heads of households. Marching in the streets in opposition to India. So that's one thing that happens later in 1973. They will sort of reuse this tactic and deploy women to protest in front of the houses of key military figures that are in the Cabinet of India at this point. This will then force the resignation of some of these figures from the Ayende cabinet and then one of the key figures that has been replaced in the cabinet. Is none other than Apostol. Pinochet there will be welcomed into the cabinet and specifically will be welcomed into the cabinet because he is seen as a strict constitutionalist in the Chilean military and is not seen as any sort of threat to what is going on. Meanwhile, in late June of 1973 there was an attempted coup that takes place in which you have a rogue regiment of the Chilean army deploying tanks in front of Lameda. The presidential palace in Santiago that is large, that is put down. It's also one of the last moments that the court donates themselves, will mobilize, and that all the coronus in Santiago will seize their territories, erect barricades, cut off transportation to prevent any sort of large scale coup from taking place. Essentially to try and isolate that regiment just within front of Lameda to allow for the. Wings of the armed forces that are still loyal to the president at this point, to put that down so that is put down. And then in between late June 1973 and September 11th, 1973 is what scholars specifically Peter Wynn referred to as a creeping coup begins to take place. And the creeping coup has you know a multi fastest strategy. As I mentioned earlier there is the bombing of electrical grids. So you have you know increasing blackouts, instability, things of that nature, right fear mongering and very real sense palpable senses. You also have a shake up. Amongst different members of different branches of the armed forces, which those that are loyal to the Constitution that are the Constitutionalists are pushed out. And as a result, then you have the coup plotters that are, you know, ready to essentially overthrow the government, achieve positions of authority in which that they can give orders. And this is a key factor. This may seem like a small factor, but the Chilean military had historically been trained in the Prussian model of military training, right? So it was a very strict, regimented, hierarchical structure in which historically have been very loyal within that hierarchy. So it was important that the coup plotters would achieve positions of higher authority to be able to actually effectuate a coup, especially after the attempted coup fails in June. On the morning of September 11th, 1973, you have Hawker Hunter jets that began bombing the presidential palace, and you have a deployment of military forces throughout the city to put down any sort of armed force or any sort of resistance, right? Leading up to this moment, you had deployments of both the Chilean militarized police that caught aneiros, which are actually functionally militarized. They're part of the armed forces in Chile. It's not just militarized in the sense of tactics. Weaponry to raid factories in the search of arms, right? Things of that nature. So you already had this sort of daily occurrence taking place. In consequence of that, right? Is that then these forces know the weak spots in these factories, they know the capabilities of these factories and things like that. Cordone, Vicuna, Mackenna will actually be the place that will witness some of the fiercest fighting of what would be referred to as the Battle of Santiago. You know, often when we talk about the Chilean. Do we talk about strictly as September 11th, 1973? The Battle of Santiago actually rages for a few days after September 11th? It's not just a quick Umm you know, in and out mission there is, there is. There are forms of resistance that take place and Fuqua McKenna is one of the the places that this takes place. There are two Chilean historians, Mario Garcez and Sebastian Leyva that published a a masterful wonderful book that is all about. It's called the coup in Lewa and La Legua was a historic poblacion that was just to the West of the Pokuna Macana factory. And the workers of factories in China, China, specifically the Sumar textile mill that we mentioned earlier, will essentially lead a March gathering other workers, saving those that they can and essentially holding their ground for as long as they can in the publication of LAGUA. And in fact, I have some testimonies of workers and documents that I have. Covered. One worker in particular described the the battle that raged there as as being like hell on Earth, that they had helicopters firing from the sky. They had tanks surrounding them, so they were under fire from both the the the land and the air. And so ultimately then, the government is overthrown, right? Ayende, it's unclear to this day if I end a committed suicide, if he was killed, we just, we don't know. We do know that he refused to leave the presidential palace. We do know that he delivers one final address, very famous address. Over the radio of Chile and then after that we we know that that his corpse appears in a lot of the materials that that the military will put out. Military takes control of communication networks. Many of the communication networks and press networks were already controlled by the right, so it was very easy for them to to gain access to these methods. To sort of spread their message. And this is where things, you know, historically speaking, get very interesting in the difference between our sort of conventional wisdom and what actually took place or takes place, right. The original structure of the military junta that takes command was designed as a tripartite structure that would rotate amongst different branches of the armed forces to prevent precisely what happens with the figure of. Postal Pinochet taking power himself to prevent such a thing from happening, right? Ultimately though, over the course of the 1970s you have peanut consolidating power. In fact, if you've ever seen the image of him that's sitting cross arm with the sunglasses on, that's like one of the most recognizable photos of him from this time. That photo is actually the actual original version of the photo. You have the full junta behind him taking a picture, but over time. Yeah, and it's not so much even he did it, but it's that that photo just overtime became so associated with him because of such a jarring image of him sitting there that it it sort of functionally recreated the sort of purging that he takes that he'll carry out, essentially. You know also what they will do immediately is that they will close the Congress, they will dissolve the coot, the National Labor Federation that we discussed earlier, and they will essentially dissolve the conciliation councils that oversaw any sort of collective bargaining. They will freeze any sort of petitions plecos from factory laborers, and they will begin to purge labor leaders across both the national spectrum. Of Labour leadership as well, as you know, through the course of the 1974 and well into 1975 will be again purging factory level leaderships. They will institutionalized torture, they will institutionalized forced disappearance and all of these things. Constitute how they are essentially able to to hold on to power. In those early days, there's a state of siege that is declared, which means that all civil liberties have essentially been suspended and all of this is in the name of national security, and that's really the key thing. And so. Everything from the labor movement is shut down and then it will begin to reemerge. And that's really like where I think my research and my dissertation and other key intervention that that I'm trying to make is that, you know, 1973 wasn't the end of the story. Like, yes, it was the end of the coronus induced regalis with a capital C and a capital I. But the idea of a territorial labor organization will reemerge in the late 1970s and in the 1980s, when protests against the dictatorship began to flourish. And this is something that, I mean, I guess this is sort of projecting into the future, but this is something that I was, I don't know, I been thinking about and I don't quite. Know how to think about, which is the connection between like, can we draw a line between the cordona is the sort of the the Pro democracy movement that eventually, like through Pinochet's incompetence and their skill, like, brings down the dictatorship and the they're really vibrant. Like? I mean really for the last like 20 years, like incredibly vibrant, sort of like. Student protests. But I mean just sort of like like leftist St movements in Chile because I mean, like, I don't know, like, I I guess. The the the impression that I got when I was talking to. Like the Chilean organizers was that. Like organized labor wasn't playing much of a role in this. And so, yeah, I guess I was wondering like how, how, how do we think about sort of this trajectory? And I know this is like 50 years, but no, I mean, I mean, my dissertation is trying to to sort of branch this full trajectory and it's a beautiful, wonderful question. And you're right, you know, the, the activists that you spoke to, that is a very common commonly held view and it's a commonly held view for a couple of reasons. One is that one of the what is seen as one of the main protagonists. In the Pro democracy movements that take place in the 1980s are precisely those figures we talked about at the very beginning of our conversation. The Pobladores, the Pobladores are seen as the protagonists that protest the dictatorship, largely because they are right. This is I'm not trying to say that they were, not by any means, they clearly were. We have great studies of this. Kathy Schneider's book, shantytown protests in Chile is just a a wonderful study of this they were. Protagonists and the the geographic space, the site of the Poblaciones is where a lot of the protests are going down. But. Labor did play a part and Labor did play a key part, and this is part of my argument is that not only does labor play a part, labor plays a key part in. Initiating the protests that began in the early 1980s. Now by the late 1980s, the their people are certainly right that labor is no longer anything close to the power it was pre 1973 or even earlier in that decade by any means but in the late 1970s, in the early 1980s specifically in the space of Akuna Makena and workers that are coming out of that tradition. Play incredibly instrumental in key roles. So, for example, there's a gentleman, Manuel Bustos is a member of the Christian Democratic Party. He's a worker at the Summar textile mill in the cotton plant. Specifically, he will at the time become president of Summars cottons union. He will then go on to, along with other labor leaders found, the National Union coordinator, or the CNS. You will become president of that, and he will become one of the key figures, along with other labor leaders that will initiate and lead to the Pro Democracy protests that began in the early 1980s. So much so that he is at one point relegated, which this is a way. One of the tactics the military used would be to relegate perceived agitators or provocateurs to different parts of the country. Right out of state. Santiago, in the case of Bustos. So at one point, he is relegated to the far north of the country. He's also exiled at a certain point. He's also jailed at a certain point. So even if we, you know, even if we don't look at the archival record in terms of what Bustos is saying, what Bustos is doing, if we just look at what the military is doing to boost us and to his colleagues in the CNS, then we that should tell us that they perceive them as a legitimate. Threat and that they perceive labor as a legitimate threat and this really, you know. Explains why you have a shift in the dictatorships policies with regard to labor between the early 1970s, the late 1970s and 80s. So here I'm drawing a lot on the work of Rodrigo Araya who is a scholar here in Chile who has done great deal in showing that early in the dictatorship you had a series of Labor leaders who were opposed to agenda, who were still labor, right, still pro labor, but anti leftist. And anti ayende who take control of some of the key labor federations, namely the Copper Federation. And begin to sort of. Designate themselves as the key figures of Labor, and there's an attempt then by the dictatorship to essentially make a corporatist model of Labor and integrate them and control them from the top down. Fortunately that backfires, because in doing so they the military refuses to recognize some of these individuals and instill their own sort of puppets, if you will, their own labor leaders. Which then causes resentment, which then pushes that group to an oppositional stance, which then allows for more connective tissue, more connections to be made between that group, which would be loosely referred to as the group of 10, and individuals such as Bustos and others that are forming. That's National Union coordinator. Those two groups will ultimately, in the early 1980s, form a new group, which is the National Workers Command. And this actually group is formed at a point in which Bustos himself is been exiled out of the country. So, you know, there's a debate to be had whether or not the formation of the command was an attempt to consolidate control away from the Union coordinator and Bustos, which was much more open to working with members of the left. And the communists at the time compared to say the group of 10 who you know were much more opposed to working with leftists. So that's really, you know, one of the big differences between labor and a pre 1973. And a post 1973. Is there's still a struggle for labor rights, protection of workers and unionism's, right to strike, right to collectively bargain. But what's missing in that post 1973. Or rather what has been murdered, disappeared, tortured, executed by the dictatorship, is a theory of power. For unions, right, the sort of leftist influence, you know, you could call it Marxism Leninism. You can call it sort of a social democracy, but some theory of power that animated unionism and animated the labor movement in the pre 1973. That is not is is essentially been purged over that course of the 1970s into the 1980s. But in addition to these sort of national level developments, which you know, for me boost those is the straight line that connects the territory of the Clinica to this national level. Within Buena Mccanna itself, you have two groups that begin to emerge in the late 1970s, nineteen 80s. The first would be the Solidarity Group and then the second would be union unity. And both of these new organizations emerge of Aquafina and emerge specifically as. Territorial organizations of Labor. So they are in opposition to what Bustos and others are trying to do, which is reform the sort of National Labor hierarchy, hierarchy bureaucratic or, you know, the bureaucratic. Excuse me, approach to labor. They are specifically opposed to that and are arguing that labor should be organized territorially because it allows a greater flexibility for the workers to respond to the new realities of a dictatorship, and specifically to the new realities of the new constitution that the dictatorship puts in place in 1980, as well as the new labor plan that they put in place through a series of laws in the late 1970s and early 1980s. That severely curtail Labor's ability to both organize. So for example, the closed shop is essentially done away with. They also will limit the ability to strike you could you can strike, however, after 30 days. The the management can begin hiring scab laborers, essentially to break the strike. And if a strike lasted past 60 days, that the management was allowed to fire all the striking workers because after 60 days they were considered to have walked off the job and were no longer considered employees. Also, one of the key, you know, innovations that the sort of technocratic advisors to the dictatorship as implements in the new Labor Code is the. Individual labor contract, right, which means that workers now are contracted individually, which also then prevents any sort of national level union from bargaining on behalf of a sector wide or an industry wide contract that is no longer allowed. And so it's for all of those reasons that you have these two groups begin to emerge and saying no, we need to focus our efforts on the base and we need to focus them territorially. And for me that is a straight line. Between the legacy of the CORDONES and what we're seeing in the 1980s and then the other sort of discursive straight line, like if that's the material connection, the discursive straight line is that these. Organizations are using the discourse of dignity and dignified life in the extant source material that we have. That makes sense, and I think that also, but that also, I guess. Partly explains why like why organized labor like. Ceases after that point because I guess it is just sort of like. The It's the sort of the the the neoliberal shifts in what's happening in terms of the actual law and then. Actually I don't know. I guess I should ask about this. Like is there also a sort of like like? Do you also get a sort of like? Like and and another sort of geographic shift in in how factories are distributed like through the use totally. You have essentially a deindustrialization, a policy of deindustrialization and you have a total reversion to what we can think of as a 19th century economic export economy for Chile, right. So you have much more focus and investment into commodity exports, be it the fishing sector, the agricultural sector. Things like that, right? So like, for example, if you go into your grocery store and look at some of the fruits, specifically, say, grapes, more often than not they're to come from Chile. Especially in off seasons, right? The benefit of Chile being in the southern hemisphere for say consumers in the United States is that then you have access to things that you wouldn't have access to otherwise and so the dictatorship will prioritize this over the idea of industry so you have a total reversion to importing. Goods and services that would have been produced nationally or locally. And So what this means then for a lot of the labor that happens in these zones. Right. As you have massive layoffs, that's another innovation that the dictatorship and the Chicago boys will introduce is the ability for management to fire at a mass level and have that be legal. And so you have high you have skyrocketing unemployment amongst factory label labor such that like, yes, by the 1980s have a refounding of a National Labor confederation. Also the acronym being the Coot. The difference, however, is that it's under such a much different labor framework. It's also in a situation in which industrial labor is just not the main sector of Labor. And in its founding statutes, if the Coot Pre 1973 was identified as the only National Labor confederation, the statutes post 1973 in the late 80s, when it's reformed, allows for there to be other national confederations. And actually, this is one of the great debates. That takes place between those organizations at the base, InFocus McKenna and these national level organizations is whether or not there should be one labor confederation or whether or not there should be many different labor confederations organized along ideological lines, which is essentially a code word for anti communism, right? The the idea of the ideological labor central was a way to exclude the left from gaining control and organized labor like it had in the pre 1973. And so by the dawn of 1990s, when democracy, or rather when democratic elections, returned to Chile. You have labor in a much different position and that's why you have this very weakening. Series or. Under the Concertacion government, the ruling coalition, the Governing Coalition that takes power in 1990 with Patricio and winning the presidency. Just much different. And it's it's straightjacketed legally because the 1980 Constitution is still in place, right? It's still in place to this day. And that's actually, then it's the period the concert has. You know, that is the period where you really have the most weakening of Labor. It's also the period we have the most privatizations that are taking place of former state loan companies. It's we could say that it's the period that is the most neoliberal. In Chile relative to the civilian, the period of civilian military dictatorship. Yeah. And I guess that's sort of like that that that's the thing that I guess gets you to. Well, the last sort of 20 years of like of student LED protests and of sort of ecological protest. I mean, I guess you, like the Mapuche, have always been like fighting, but the the way that from from Spanish colonial. Yeah, indigenous group that was never conquered by the Spanish. Yeah, but I get, I guess like the, the, the, the access on which the left is sort of like built on like through that. Just shifts and that's I guess where you get the modern. Like the the sort of modern like configuration of the left that's been in the streets in the last sort of like if you do. And this is this is the reason why I sort of draw a hard line ending my study in 2010 for two reasons. One is that it's the 2010 is the first is the election of Pinetta to the presidency, Sebastian Pinata as his first term in 2010. And so it's the first moment that someone from the concert passion is not elected as the president. They had governed sent from 1990 to 2010. So that's really the what Peter Wynn and other scholars have referred to as the peanut chip. Which extends all the way from 1973 to that moment, is inclusive of the Concertacion government because of their adherence to the neoliberal economic model. That's when that period ends, in 2010. Also, a year later in 2011 is when the student protests are, and that's when you have a. A new cycle in Chilean social movements led by the students right prior, you know, post the the return of democracy again, the return of democratic elections in 1990. I think this is a very important distinction between a return to democracy and a return of democratic elections, which seems to be a confusion between, not a confusion, but a a slippage between the form of democracy, IE free and fair elections, and the content of democracy. And so a lot of people refer to 1990, the return to democracy. But I think that the past 30 years of of governance in Chile shows us especially the past two years of uprising and resistance against that model show us that democracy has yet to to fully return. But in that. You know in the 1990s on St protests were not seeing. As an affected effective measure as as as the way to protest, right, they obviously were effective in the period of dictatorship, but after that there are no there. There's a not, not necessarily a discrediting of sorts, right, but there is not the emphasis on them that there was during the dictatorship and certainly not that there was in the pre 1973. It's not until the students take to the streets in 2011. That you have this revival of the street protest as a as a viable form of resistance and protest in Chile. And you know it's no surprise then that in October 2019 when the the SEO the uprising takes place that its students that were once again the vanguard of this and you know when they're jumping turnstiles in the subways to in protest of a proposed transportation hike. I was. I was actually lucky enough to be living here in early 2020 pre pandemic, and a lot of people that I spoke to at protests and things like that were very quick to tell me that it was not 30 pesos, it's 30 years that they were protesting. You know, and I guess that also like the left wing forces that took over the state, like the it's it's it's the reason why a lot of that winds up sort of being about the Constitution. Because, yeah, you know, you still have this. You still have Pinochet's like, exactly the 1980. Commission remains intact. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I used to know the name of this is one of the episodes I think, I think like the the guy who wrote it, like. Was like an enormous Hayek fanboy and called it like the Constitution of Liberty or something. It yeah, it was. It was. It was a hand selected team of very few individuals that was handpicked by the dictatorship to write the Constitution. You know, there was the there was a veneer of democratic support insofar as the dictatorship in 1980 holds a referendum on whether or not to vote up, down, yes or no for the new constitution. Right. The Yes vote won. However, there is many sources at the time, as well as scholars that have claimed that that victory was not a valid victory by any means. But you know. Right now in the post 2019. A sort of effect of the uprising that took place is there is a constitutional convention that's taking place as we speak here in Santiago that's headquartered in the former National Congress during the dictatorship the. The Congress has moved to the port city of Valparaiso, away from Santiago. But in the Old National Congress building is where the new constitution convention is taking place. And actually, two nights ago there was a marathon voting session in which a series of social rights were adopted into the cost, into the text of the new constitution, and these social rights included, among other things, the right to unionization, the right to strike, the right to collectively bargain. The right for workers via unions to have a say in the direction and business of an enterprise of a business itself, to participate in management, essentially. But it also included things such as a right to healthcare, a publicly funded healthcare system, the right to Social Security publicly funded, and it included a right to housing, which specifically included the phrase of a right to a dignified and adequate home. As well as our right to the city, that included the phrase that the right to the city is for the development of a dignified life. And so really, that is kind of the epilogue to to the story that we've been talking about this whole time now. You know, we don't know if the Constitution itself will be adopted. There's going to be an exit vote on September 4th of this year in which Chileans under a It's a mandatory vote will vote up or down on whether or not to adopt the new constitution. So we can't say for certain if these rights will actually become rights of citizenship in Chile. But as of now, those rights are included in the text that will be voted on in September. Yeah. And I think, I think that's a pretty good place to end it unless you have anything else that you want to. No, I think that that's a really, you know, there's a really nice symmetry there. And, you know, I stayed up far too late the other night watching that vote. I think it went to like 2 in the morning. But it was, you know, it was an exciting thing to see and you know it is an exciting moment to to be here in Chile, especially after having to be away for two years during during the pandemic. Yeah. Well, thank, thank you so much for thank you so much for talking with us. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a it's been a real pleasure. You know, and I hope that my ramblings are are sensible to your listeners and that they're able to take something from it because I do think there is an importance in this history especially, you know this year is the 50 year anniversary of the cordones emergence. And so it's a great time to, to sort of spread knowledge of this, this moment and truly in history. Yeah. And I guess do you have anything like that you want to plug? No, I don't have anything specifically. Yeah, no, it's still cranking away in the archives and working on my dissertation. So sadly I don't have a a book to plug or anything like that. But you know, give me a couple of years and hopefully I will have a book. It comes out. Yeah. Yeah, well in the meantime you 2 can form a. Large section of industrial democracy in your workplace involves taking it over. Ohh yeah. Go, go do that. This this has been it could happen here. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram. It happened here. Pod, actually. By the time this is dropping, we will be a few days away from Margaret Killjoys new series, cool people who did cool stuff, which is rad. You're going to hear a lot of cool people doing cool things. That is dropping on Mayday on May 1st. And after that we have we have another show dropping which is which is which is Ghost Church about ghost churchy things. It's going to be good. It's Jamie Loftus. It's Jamie Loftus doing Jamie Loftus things about a bunch of a bunch of, sort of like American ghost churches and people who talk to ghosts. So yeah, go listen to that. Have fun. Bye, everyone. Hello, welcome to it could happen here. The podcast that is my podcast. Now. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and with me is the Webby award-winning Sophie Lichterman as our producer, as well as the actual hosts of the show. Who? Go without mentioning because I don't see any reason to include them. Can that just be the intro to every episode from now? Yeah. This is better than our like all of our regular intros. I loved that. Yeah, So what are we talking about today? Also on podcast Garrison Davis and Christopher Wong. Hello. Yes, so so today we are we are talking about the. Sort of long and incredibly tragic history of Japanese anarchism. Well, OK, I should ask about this. Japanese anarchism before World War Two, because after World War Two was an entirely different story, and as much as I love people and construction helmets, just like beating the **** out of cops with large sticks, that story is extremely complicated. If you want to hear me talk more about that story a little bit, the third part of my Nobusuke Kishi episode has a lot of people in construction help us with sticks. But. Yeah, no, this is. You know, OK, so the history of anarchism generally is, is the history of tragedy. But even by by anarchist standards, the history of Japanese anarchism is just an absolute welter of heartbreak and loss. Out of all of the people that we're going to talk about today, exactly one of the non Russian anarchists is going to live to see world the end of World War Two and he's Korean. Every single other person is either going to be executed by the state, assassinated, kill themselves, drink themselves to death. So this is good. This is. Which you please story in a lot of ways. Good to have one of those optimistic episodes every once in a while. Yeah, you know, I mean, I think the the, the the longest gets thrown down a well. Well, OK, it's it's unclear whether anyone got thrown down. I'm sorry, I'm skipping ahead and I don't actually know. We will get to the wells. Yeah. I also. OK, so there's a lot of Japanese anarchists and we don't have that much time. So if you're like in a Sawa sakutaro Stan, I'm sorry we can't cover all of them. And do you ever think about the history of racism in Japan that is weird? Is that the beginning of the story predates they're actually being anarchists in Japan? Or specifically, they're being Japanese anarchists. There's this huge degree of sort of like cultural exchange and influence running between. Japan and Russia, by virtue of the fact that they are, you know, next to each other. And especially in the 1870s and 80s, this is one of the sort of. This is important to get because Russia in this. Is like, this is like the hotbed of anarchism, right? Like they're they're, they're killing this car, they're, they're, they're doing all the things, they're going to the countryside, they're the Russian anarchists are sort of on the move. And a lot of famous Russian anarchists wind up like in Japan. Bakunin is there for like he he like. He has some extremely complicated arrangement who he like sneaks on a boat. And he, like, gets out and he beats one of the sort of like samurai, like Meiji Restoration Revolutionaries, and they chat for a bit and then he leaves. So he you know, but it's not. This is when he was escaping Siberia. Yeah, I think, yeah. Escaping Siberia. And then he somehow convinces, like. The American Embassy or something to like, let him on a boat to Japan. It's a very weird story. It's like all things bacon in our but. The the most probably anarchist to spend time in Japan is Lev Mechnikov. Mechnikov is like, he's like a pretty big deal in in Russian revolutionary circles like he's he's considered like. OK, so the, the, the, the big sort of like anarchists? Left wing movement in Japan is is, is the populist right. It's called the Romantics. And there there's two big figures in it. There's I, Nicola Turner, schefsky and this guy. Uh, left metchikoff and. You know, he's a metric off, like he knows everyone he knows, like he he's friends with just like every single person and we will get to bore his friends later. But like he's a counterpart of Bakunin, he he has he has a very similar career to bacon in a lot of ways, where he just sort of like. Runs especially like Eastern Europe. He's like runs around the world being in revolutions. Which is good work if you can get it. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty exciting. He doesn't die, which is sort of incredible. Oh. Well, I love that for him, so he's still around. Are you guys? Ohhh, yeah, this is very sad. You know why he. Look, look, this is this is the goal of Russian cosmos? No. Is it actually cosmicism? I've no idea. Yeah, I think it's the cosmonaut people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They bring back all the dead people. Oh no, I don't know about this. I only know a weird thing where there was like anarchist cosmonauts in like 1920s Russia. Yeah, yeah. So that they're there. Their whole thing was like I. OK, so they they they they thought that the anarchists had like been defeated in the revolution because they were insufficiently committed to bringing the dead back to life and that that that, you know, the whole thing was like they they like they're they're some of the people who were involved in, like, the Soviet, like, rocket programs. And they're doing this because they want to colonize the moon and Mars so they can fit all of the dead proletariat. They're going back to life. Wait, are you telling the truth to me? You know, this is all true. This is amazing. I've been I've been trying to fight for the anarchist Necromancer League for so long, which our slogan is raise the dead to fight like hell for the living. That's that's incredible. But yeah, no, like the Russian cosmicism, it's a weird one, cosmicism. It's like a weird mix of like like natural philosophy, quote UN quote, which is just like different folks are like folk magic or whatever and like religion and spiritual stuff. But also it's like a predecessor to like the modern transhumanism. It's an it's an interesting little collection of of ideas that was popular at like, the very beginning of the 20th century. It's part of my thesis that I. No one normal has ever been involved in the production of a rocket like, I mean, this Jack Parsons, Parsons, you have like on the Soviet and then there's just like the Nazis and it's like 00 normal people. I have no counter argument there was that because there was that guy who did all the multi stage rocketry, the nihilist who killed the czar, who built the bomb that killed the czar he like. When I talk about this in my podcast. Oh, probably already. Listen to this. You have a podcast. Whoa. Yeah, I really just. I'm here. I'm going to plug this every like 5 minutes on this episode. You could learn about the bomb maker who killed the Czar and his uh, what he brought to the world in terms of rocketry and manned rocket travel. Anyway. Please continue on. What? On what show, Margaret? Well, OK, is this podcast that I'm recording on right now? When does it come out? When are you listening to it, dear readers? OK, well then, next Monday you can listen to cool people who did cool stuff. Which is my podcast. Yeah, I'm so good at my job. Anyway, my job is to interrupt you with please tell me more about the cosmos and how they relate to Japan. The calls was actually nothing to do with this, unfortunately, but yeah, but. Lev Lev Mechnikov like he also he he like fights with Garibaldi to reunify Italy. He's just like all over the place. But he he's an interesting guy because. OK, so there's like a lot of foreigners who go to Japan. But he like makes Japanese friends and like learns Japanese before he goes there, which makes him like utterly different than like 99% of the people who are writing like Westerners who are writing about Japan in this. Who, like, don't speak very good Japanese and never leave their houses. So nothing has changed? Yeah. Yeah. Well, except weirdly, this one guys doing better. Oh no. I mean, nothing has changed from now or no or no Westerners, actually, they just pretend to care about Japan. OK, yeah, it's it's it's time. There's actually that's one of the running themes of these two episodes is like, there's a lot of stuff about this, about anarchism and about Japan, just like, don't change. But, you know, so one of the things that, uh, Meshkov winds up doing is he winds up spending two years teaching at this thing called the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages. And this this is a bunch of major impacts, one of which is is on mechanical himself. Who? She becomes heavily influenced by by the major restoration, which she thinks of as like this like. He looks at this as like as a revolution like this is an artificial revolution. This is the most successful social revolution of the 19th century. It's like he thinks that it's like destroyed the sort of stratified class system and creates this like possibility of like mass social mobility for commoners. And OK, so this is like not the best interpretation of what's going on with with the Meiji Restoration where, I mean, so the major restoration sort of ends the fuel system in in in Japan. It does a lot of other bad things. What is it like, I don't know that much about this. Yeah. So maybe the audience doesn't either. OK. So the major restoration is a thing that happens where? So Japan has been ruled by a Shogun for like a long time and the Shogun runs the fuel system. It's very elaborate. Everyone has. Sort of hierarchical casts. But eventually, there's this kind of. Like that, there's there's this sort of. It's complicated. It's this kind of nationalist movements by a bunch of like a bunch of the samurai clans who this is happening in 1860s and they mobilized to overthrow like the shogunate and basically like restore the Emperor to power. The emperor has been like a puppet, had like figurehead guy for like 200 years and they bring him back to power I. Because I'm a hack of a fraud and a fraud, I'm forgetting their exact slogan. It's it's something like. It's Revere the Emperor and I can't remember what the other part of the slogan is. It's very similar to the to the Boxer Rebellion slogan. It's it's the sort of, I mean there's a lot of things going on here. It's kind of a reaction to so in the in the 1860s like. Japan is sort of forcibly opened to the world by like Commodore Perry showing up with a bunch of like the largest gunboats anyone has ever seen. And this, like, this forces Japan to sort of, like, abandoned its isolationist positions. And. Yeah. And and, you know, and you get this sort of class of intellectuals, you're looking at this and they're going like, OK, if we don't do something, like, we're going to get colonized. And so they do. And the thing they do is that they do this revolution and they overthrow that, they overthrow the shogunate. There's all this, like there's like a trillion anime set in this. Because there's like, there's there's like, like there there are there are squads of samurai swordsmen like running around like stabbing each other in Tokyo with like. Photo and like it's it's wild. It is, it is a, it is a time and and this sort of. This is what sort of consolidates the modern Japanese nation state. You know, I've talked about this in my kisha episodes. Like, it sets off this wave of colonialism. They like, they conquer Hokkaido, they conquer the real islands. They do all this horrible colonialism stuff. But there's there's. It it's really unclear what the revolution is actually going to mean because like there has been a revolution, right? Like the the sort of like fetal, like class system has been swept away. There's all of this sort of, there's all this energy and the masses. There's like one of the things that Meshkov finds is like he so he, he gets to Japan. In like this in the 18th 1870s, and he's seeing like the first signs of discontentment with with the the sort of the, the, the the major restoration. Which is the restoration of the emperor. Because there's a lot of people who look at this and we're like, oh, hey, we're gonna, we're finally like, defeated the sort of oligarch class that like rules all of us. And then there'd oligarch class. And they're like, wait, hold on. And so there's like, there's a series of, like, X samurai rebellions. There's this whole sort of like, like he like, Meshkov literally, like, gets there in the middle of an uprising. And he's just like, industry. He has nobody. What's going on? Because the guy he'd been talking to winds up being in the uprising and. You know, so it gets there. But what he sees also is he sees this upheaval, but he sees that this enormous network of, like, cooperative movements, and he's a bunch of mutual aid groups. He sees like villages who are like, pooling all of the resources they can send kids to, like school and the cities he sees, like he sees the government failing to provide services for people because there's uprising going on and also the government. And so people are sort of people taking care of each other. And this has an enormous influence on him. And he starts to, you know, like the way he thinks about anarchism changes and he seems like he he starts to think about sort of like anarchism as cooperation, like mutual cooperation between people who like mutual aid enters this sort of lexicon and. OK, so. That there's a there's a, a modern historian named. Show Kanashi who writes this book called Anarchist Modern Anarchist Modernity cooperativism. Wait, hold on. Yeah, anarchist modernity, cooperativism in Japanese, Russian intellectual relationship, modern Japan. And he makes the argument basically that Lachy title. Yeah, there's there's two, there's it's a better title than I'm reading it because there's there's two. There's like a headache and like a subheading. Read it straight because I'm a clown. But he's making the argument that this this is like, this is actually like something that's very important to the development of neural communism. Because this guy, he knows everyone. Like the the anarchist geographer, like Elise recluse. I can't pronounce his name. I think it's clue recluse. Yeah, I think so. But I can't. Not with a gun to my head. I'm not sure. Yeah, anyway, yeah, like they're roommates. Like, they're like they lived together for, like a while. And like, he he, he writes the Japan entry and like, the encyclopedia, he's friends with Dropkin and. After, after his sort of, like, thought starts to change about mutual aid, you start to see a lot of the same stuff like, you know, like this is like he's there before chicken writes mutual aid. And then you see, you see all the sort of mutual aid stuff popping up in your pocket. And, you know, I I don't know how seriously to take the argument that like. You're sort of seeing like that, that a lot of this theory is sort of a rebound of reflection of what they were seeing in Japanese society. But it's interesting and I think I should mention it because. I don't know, like there's there's this whole sort of intellectual sphere of people who are like associated with anarchists. The other thing that happens in this. Is that like. So there there's a bunch of, like Meshkov like has a bunch of friends in Russia who all got arrested because they were in like terrorist groups. And he he's able to get like a whole bunch of these people to like, he's able to get them like exiled. And their exile is they go to Japan, they teach with him. And so suddenly OK, there's like. There's like a bunch of people who are now, like, these populists are like writing stories about, like, the stuff they were doing and like all the people who are still fighting in in Russia. So there's suddenly there's all these people who are, like, reading about the Russian populists in Japan and and. You know, and this is there's, there's this kind of like anarchist cultural sphere that exists in Japan like before. There's anarchists. Like the other examples. Anarchists, yeah, yeah. For Japanese anarchists, they'll be like 1, like. Yeah, there's like a couple of Russian anarchists and like, yeah, but I like Meshkov leaves one. But the other big thing with this is Tolstoy, who is like Tolstoy in in like the 1880s, eighteen 90s, like early 1900s. He's like, he's like he. I think he's like the the most translated author, like on Earth in Japan. And it's they're not just reading his, like, literary work. They're reading his, like, theology, his political work. Which is important because Tolstoy is like a Christian anarcho pacifist, right? Yeah. And and this influences this. There's this kind of like. There's there's a lot of sort of like left wing, anti imperial strains of Christianity that pop up in Japan, and this is one of the reasons for this because everyone's reading Tolstoy. And so you you you get the seeds of this anarchist movements that eventually sprout into a man named Ohh God, this guy's name is actually hard. Kotoku Shusui I I'm butchering the last part of it. I'm sorry I'm Japanese does not extend to this. Many use and eyes in a row, but cotaco. He's he, he's an interesting. Guy, because so he doesn't. So he has like a whole career before it becomes an anarchist. He's like, he's a very prominent journalist intellectual, like he writes in a newspaper, it's very famous, everyone reads it, and he's the heir apparent to this other, like very famous sort of liberal journalist who, again, because Lev Meshkov knows literally everyone, was like a friend of left Mechnikov. I don't. He just knows every single person on Earth. It's incredible. Yeah, now that rules goals, you know? Yeah, unless he ever turned, if he ever snitched to be terrible. Apparently they never did. So yeah. No. Yeah. I mean, it's still around. So, I mean, he he still could snitch. You still around. Still the chance. I guess everybody was snitch on his dead. So. Yeah, makes it harder. The ethics get blurry or. Yeah, yeah. O coku is like, he's kind of like a standard livable, but he gets involved with with the anti war movements and specifically this is the the anti wise, it's anti a lot of wars because Japan is fighting an enormous series of wars in the early 1900s. Yeah, they kicked Russia's *** at that point. Yeah, yeah, like they fight Japan, they fight Japan. Sorry, they fight China. Yeah, and do you know who else is fighting China? I don't know. I'm afraid to know. The products and services that support the show are we supported by American nationalism. Apparently, yes? And we're back with the first brush with the first actual Japanese anarchist. O in 1900, Kotaku writes this book called Imperialism, Monster of the 20th Century, which is like, this is a better title. Good, yeah, yeah, great job, he rules. And this certificate for a number of reasons, one of which is that, like, this is one of the first major, like, books about imperialism. Like there are some other Western writers who stuff like predates this, but like, this is 1900, this is before Lenin has written about imperialism. This is before, like Hobbs in this is before Luxembourg and I'm just going to read it. A little bit from it, because it rules. So this is from the first section. It's called imperialism, a wildfire in an open field. Imperialism spreads like a wildfire in an open field. All nations bow down to worship this new God, sing hymns to praise it, and have created a cult to pay to pay it adoration. Look at the world that surrounds us. In England, both governments and citizens have become fervent acolytes of imperialism. In Germany, the war loving emperor never loses a chance to extol his virtues. As for Russia, the regime has long practiced a policy of imperialism. France, Austria and Italy are all delighted to join the fray. Even a young country like the United States has recently shown its eagerness to master this new skill and finally this trend. To reach Japan. Ever since our great victory in the South Japanese War, Japanese of all classes burned with fervor to join the race for an empire like a wild horse freed from its harness. So, you know, the one thing that he got incorrect, as as I understand by spending a lot of time on Twitter, is that actually only the United States is imperialist and any actions, especially by Russia. I was very confused that he included Russia as the I can't finish this sentence of the straight face. What Russia would be also, how could it be imperialism if Lennon hadn't yet defined the term for this is OK, this is the whole thing. OK, so, so kodoku gets, like, a lot of **** from this book because for like, from later on, Japanese leftists are like, he's insufficiently materialists. Like, yeah, he is mostly just talked like the books mostly about, like, how patriotism and nationalism, like, create this stuff, doesn't look at economics much, but like, OK, there's a whole problem here, which is that if you try to apply Lennon's definition of imperialism to Japan, it doesn't work. Because, like, what would Japan is invading China. They have like, I think it's like 50 total factories. Yeah, like everything is completely backwards. Like it's like. Yeah. And like, you know, it's like, like, like, lenins imperialism is supposed to be, like, the highest stage of capitalism, but then you go to Japan. Japan's, like, barely started their decision to capitalism. Like, if lenins imperialism is supposed to be like, debt exports, right? But Japan is just conquering countries while they're just literally, like, borrowing massively from other states to fund industrial relations. Everything does nothing. None of it works. And Kotaku gets like, again, he has, like, a lot of **** for this, but it's like, no, he's right. Like, Lennon is. Lennon is wrong. What is analysis? If you try to apply it, Japan does not work and goodness does. So imagine, yeah. And, you know, cotaco, I think, like he he's keyed into things that the Marxists aren't. But like specifically about like about the power of nationalism, because, you know, I mean, like obviously if if you go a bit later, it's like, well, all of these people who are like, oh, imperialism is the highest age of capitalism and then all of their parties vote to go to war with each other in World War One. Like, you know, OK, welcome. Think like gets this because his relationship to socialism and anti imperialism are like backward from the Marxist right where the Marxists arrived at anti imperialism like from their Marxism. But Coco like becomes a socialist because he sees it as a way to stop wars. Like that's like his big thing is he's in the anti war and he wants his wars to stop. And that's the right direction to do ****. Yeah, you should do **** because, like, you don't pick the label. Because what's cool? You pick, you figure out what you believe, and then you pick the label that fits what you believe instead of the other way around. You know? Yeah. And and you know, it means that he's less sort of like. He's less dogmatic than like his successors because. You know, I mean because he he he's work he's working off of his actual principles versus sort of like this like dictation stuff. And I mean he's, he's he in 1903 he publishes to socialism, which is like this is like the first like socialist like book written by Japanese person. It's one of the I think there may be like one or two other ones that are before this is like the first big one. And he so he's also like he's involved in founding the Japanese Socialist Party and then he gets like arrested and sent to the US. And something happens when he's in the. I don't know, there's. I've seen like 6 conflicting accounts. Like, I've seen accounts that say he joins, he joins the WW I I don't know. I've seen other people say he lived. He lived in a commune like he definitely read your pocket. And he like becomes an anarchist. Let's decide. He did all of these things. Yeah, lived in a commune and tried to organize the commune with the WW. But you know, I mean he he this guy is enormously influential in history of Japanese left like he is the guy when he comes back in 1906. He's the guy who introduced the concept of the general strike Japan. Yeah. Like he's the first guy to write about it. He's very cool. He he also like, yeah you know he started pushing this and start this. He starts pushing anarchism and sort of direct action. This is like instead of like doing commentary stuff and he translates like her pockets work in Japanese. He translates the like the company's manifesto. He says labor organizing. He sort of like all over the place and. You know, like labor and the anti war movement are like two of the like big currents are producing anarchists but the the other like big current that's making anarchists. Is feminism. Because. OK, so I stop me if this isn't any way surprising, but the late 1800s and early 1900s are not a time to be a woman in Japan. Really? Yeah. It's not a good time, like, anywhere. But it's not even now. It's not the best. Yeah. I mean, it could be improved. I will say it's it's it's better than this. This is like, sure. Like. The the major regime is sort of like consolidating itself is as is consolidating itself. It gets like progressively more like patriarchal, misogynist. I'm going to read from the book Reflections on the way to the gallows, which is this is a great book. It's it's also a collection of yeah well, so that that's God, I forget. One of the Japanese anarchists who's about to die like that's the title of like, a piece that she wrote. And they think this book is like a collection of Jack of Japanese feminist writings, mostly from people who get killed by the state. Because that's what happens when you come to Japan in this. Oh yeah, it's bad. All right. OK, so I'm going to read the quote from this. In 1892, the government forbid women to make a political speeches and in 1890 made it illegal for women to participate in political activities whatsoever. Women were forbidden to even listen to political speeches. The police security regulations of 1900 reinforced these strictures. Article five of the regulations prohibited women from forming any political organization whatsoever. Jesus. Yeah, it's like that's like a level of restriction that like. I'm not sure I've ever seen like that explicit level of. No, you can't do this. Yeah. I feel like it's usually implicit in a lot of Western countries. And then also like one of the things that really strikes sticks out to me about that is that I'm so used to thinking about. I think people tend to think about like this like linear progress model where like if you go back really far, like all women and all other oppressed categories had it terrible and then just slowly gets better or whatever. But if they're passing these laws in 1900, there's an implicit. It was a little better before 1900. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's very specifically gets worse on like. So one of the things with the. The 1898 Legal code is that it like, it literally, just legally enshrines like patriarchal control of the households. And this is, this is a massive reactionary shift in Jack in sort of jeopardize like domestic and political culture like this, like that, that kind of patriarchal control. The household was like a thing in some samurai families, but like it wasn't a thing for there. There's a huge number of popular classes like that didn't exist and they just legislated into existence and like. You know, I mean like the things that the things that they're applying here like women need consent of their father to marry for this, another quote for the book, one of the provisions held that quote cripples and disabled persons and wives cannot undertake any legal action. ******* hell. Uh huh? Yeah. So this is this is this is an incredibly reactionary state. And there's also, like, there's a lot of sex trafficking going on, like, like, actual, like there is a lot of people just being grabbed off the street. It's a it's a it is a disaster. And it is into this patriarchal mess that, like several generations of Japanese market feminists, step into. The most famous of the first round is Kino Zuko. Who's she? She's a socialist author. Who? Converse to well, she's originally socialist and she covered anarchism, which is like a thing that happens a lot in this. And she, she's working as a journalist and you know, she she's she's like, she's a very sort of controversial figure. The government, like hates her. So she meets Kotaku and they have an affair. And this is like one of the other things that keeps happening here is there's a lot of, like, free love stuff going around the Japanese anarchist circle this time and. This this has two consequences. What is a lot of men use it to be really ****** and means there was like, there is a again this is, this is, this is the big like. Nothing has ever changed the movement. There are so many relationship drama things. Nothing has changed so many times. The flat circle like like there are two different times when the most famous Japanese anarchist man and the most famous Japanese anarchist women wind up in a relationship. It ends with them splitting the movement and them both dying in prison like this happens. Twice that exact sequence happens. Twice. It's not, it's. Like they're they're just, they're just doing polycule ****. Like it's. They just need better mediators. Yeah, well, I mean, this is this is the thing with like the Japanese, like the Japanese anarchist movement, like has a huge feminist wing, but like, the men still suck. Like we just keep being bad. And so, you know, the other thing about this is that I. Kono suko is like enormously more militant than like almost every other any other anarchist that's alive in Japan at this point. And so in 1910, she gets involved with the plan to assassinate the emperor. And this becomes known as the high treason incidents. And the state like gets wind of this. They arrest her, they arrest. Uh. Kotaku and they arrest like 22 other 22 yeah, 22 other anarchists. Now like. Five of these people are, like, even tangentially involved in this plot. Umm. But they this is OK so I I I can't say that the the the Japanese government only does this to anarchist because I do this to fascists like once, but if they do this thing where? OK, so they have a bunch of people that they want to execute, right? So they they find one person who's like an ideological figure, and they're like, OK, you're now in the middle of this and you're the link between, like, this group and this other group. Want to kill this other group want to kill this other group want to kill. And so they convict. Like chelsio. And kind of sacred, like they they all get convicted. They all get executed. Yeah. And so this case is also interesting because there's a bunch of people who the the state like wanted to kill, but they couldn't because they've already arrested. They'd already did. Like this is like two years after like a mass arrest of like half of the Japanese, I guess. And so they have all these people who are in prison. And it's like, even by, like the standards of the Japanese state, it's like, OK, how are we going to convict all of these people who have been in prison for two years of trying to, of, like, being a part of this plot to kill the emperor that was like, organized outside of the jail. And so this, this is the thing that saves like a huge portion of the Japanese anarchist movements that saves it from literally into like, this. The hydrogen incident kills, like most of the famous anarchists in Japan, but at least like, like a couple alive. That's why they're alive, because they were all in prison. Oh God. Wait, how are they going to kill the Emperor? I the the plant didn't get very far. I think they were trying to use a bomb, but the police got wind of it like very, very early, not class. So they never really got much like past the planning stage. This is a shame. Yeah, yeah. And do you know what else never gets very far past past the planning stage when they're trying to assassinate the Emperor of Japan? Is it the ads? Because they don't know how to do direct action? Because they're too enmeshed in capitalism? That, that is that is actually exactly what we were talking about. Margaret, thank you so much. And we're back. I I was genuinely trying to see if I could, like, think of a of a company that had, like, tried to kill the Japanese emperor. And I couldn't think of 1. And I was like, hmm, this says something about society. This does. This is a real, real solid critique we have here. I really hope that 10 years from now, this all seems very dated. Like, of course someone's major company has tried to. Never mind. Once again, one can dream. So kind of sokaku is dead. Kotaku is also dead. And this, this means that it's time for sort of like another generation of of anarchists to try to fill in the gaps. Wait, so they're executed. Yeah, they're dead. Like they they just die. And they they kill. They kill, they kill like 22 of the anarchists or something. OK. And I mean, this is this is a huge purge, but they wind up executing just like. There's just like a like a a sympathetic like Buddhist priest that's executed. I. One is this. This is 1911. Sorry. OK, yeah, this is 1911. And actually there's another thing about this. Kinosaki becomes the first woman ever executed by the Japanese state. She will not be the last. Like oh boy. Understand? Yeah, I mean equal rights, equal fights. There's another, like, very influential arcanist who's emerged so slightly after, like, just like in like. 19141915 is eito Noah. She's an egoist anarchist who eventually, less finally, finally we figured out that that's all I have to say, buddy. So that's like almost all I have to say she she, she takes over the editorial position of this, this magazine called Bluestocking magazine, which is like Japan's. I think it's like, this is like the most important feminist magazine in Japan. And she takes over the editorial staff about it. And her her work is really interesting in a lot of ways, because it it it it just. It just straight up is contemporary feminism in a way that, like, a lot of the stuff in this. Isn't like if if if you go and read the arguments she's having, she's arguing that sex work should be legal and that everyone should be, should be able to get abortions because women should have autonomy over their bodies. Yeah, it's like. Yeah, well, sometimes. This is not gonna end well for her. Well, she know, but you know what that is also, it doesn't end well for any of us on a long enough timeline. You know, like, all that matters is the time. What we sure, but this is time we articularly bad. OK, fine. Yeah. So yeah, and I think so. She's able to do this for like a year and the Japanese state looks at this, it is like absolutely not and and shuts the magazine down. And so she gets forced to move on to other things. And the other thing she moved on she moves on to is being extremely, heavily involved in the free love movement. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. And and but also, and this is the thing that's that's interesting about this sort of period of Japanese anarchism is that, like, the egoists are all also syndicalists. Yeah. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and she she so she she's like heavily involved in labor organizing and this is how she comes into contact with her partner who she's. He's like cheating on her imprisoned husband who will later form the Japanese Communist Party. Oh wow, that is, that's a lot of stuff happening. There's there's so much, there's so much beef. It's it's incredible. There's there's this, like, we haven't even gotten to the wild part of this relationship yet. OK, which is so, so OK, so she comes in contact with her partner or person who will become her partner, Asagi Sakai, who was like dating another very famous Japanese Marco feminist who she stabs him in the neck over the fact that he's in multiple relationships at once. So this isn't really a free love situation from her point of view. Yeah, this is this is the thing. It keeps happening with free love in this. It's like, you gotta like, you gotta lay down. You gotta make sure everyone's OK with everything. They sure seem to say the right things in theory, but then in practice they sure, yeah, sure do fall apart. Huh. Isn't that funny? Yeah. And this two divides the the Japanese anime. But did she win? Did she succeed? Did she kill him or did he survive the the no, he survived. OK, yeah, I just. I have a there's a special place in my heart for a split slit throats of patriarchal men. Anyway, so. It's like, it's Sakai is also very heavily involved in labor organizing. And he he he's one of the guys who, like, turns anarchist labor into, like a serious political force. Which is maybe it's like that they survived. Yeah, like it's probably not good, but. All of the guys in this story like suck. Except. Do I have an accept here? What about the Korean guy who? Oh yeah, yeah, we got him. Yeah. He he's he's. I kind of like, I think he's actually fine. Yeah. I think maybe the end of his story gets weird. Yeah, well, we'll get to that in a second. But yeah. So Asagi Sakai has like, he has this, like, fusion of like, egoism and syndicalism, where like the individual ego will be liberated through collective action. But the goal of the workers movement is not to just, like, end poverty. It's to, like, liberate the individual and give themselves developments. And he's also this, like, incredibly fierce. Like, like one of his big thing is that, like, he does not want intellectuals anywhere near the workers movement. Like, does not. We just went to this, so absolutely not. Yeah. And this is because, like, again, he's been around for ages. Like, he becomes an anarchist around the time when. Kotaku doesn't like, you know six, so he's been like a routed he's one of the guys who survives the high treason incident because he was already in prison. Hmm. OK, alright. And so he he like he's one of the people who like keeps the sort of flame of anarchism alive after like they're pushing 1911. But unfortunately for him and for Ito Noah, they get caught up in the the Kanto earthquake of 1923, which is this like this earthquake between Yokohama and Tokyo alone kills 200,000 people. It is like it is like it is one of the worst, like national disasters. It's it's really bad, and it immediately gets worse. The state wouldn't use a natural disaster to try and further its aims through extralegal means. Yeah, so. OK, I'm gonna start with one of the ways that the genocide of Korean people in Japan at this time starts is so there's a bunch of Korean workers in a longshore union that's been organized by this built in, like leftist union Guy named Yamaguchi Sakayan. And OK, so like, they're in this longshore union, there's just a disaster. They start doing Detroit, they start going out, they start taking care of survivors, start giving people food. But, you know, they they're like waving red flags and stuff. And the Japanese police lose their minds and are like, Oh my God, they're the, the, the. The Koreans are doing socialism and they just are killing them. And they there's this whole thing about, like, there's these rumors started, like, Koreans are ****** Japanese women, and it turns into this thing about, like, looting, and then, like, Korean malcontents are supposed to be, like, overrunning police stations and the lynch mobs. The ones are mostly targeting Koreans, but they're also like, if you're Chinese, if you're from Brooklyn Islands, like, they're killing you too. They kill 2000 Koreans in Tokyo and another 2000 in Yokohama and like 2000 Koreans in Yokohama. That is half the Korean population of the city. And these people die, like, horribly, like, because it's not like, so the police are actively hunting them down. Like, the entirety of Japanese society like, remembers that they really like killing people, and they really like. Getting and like, I mean you have people like taking their like ceremonial swords from like their ancestors who were the major revolution. Like they're taking their katanas, going industry and murdering people with them. Like people just like have fish hooks and they're just murdering people in the street. And this goes on for like this goes on for days and one of the things that happens in this is. Well, OK, so the the. One of the other thing happens in. That the Japanese government starts, like arresting random leftists and executing them. Yeah, and that's what was supposed to happen to Noah to echo NOAA and Osaka Sakai. But they get arrested by a squad of military police led by. Masahiko. I'm a casu who just she just murders them. There's like conflicting stories of how this happened. I there's there's one version of it where like he kills them and like their six year old nephew and throws their bodies on a well, there's another version of it where they get strangled and that he strangled him in prison. And this is like a huge outrage, but it's not a huge outrage because he murdered them. It's a huge outrage because he supposed to wait for the trial. I mean and. Yeah, and this is one of the things that like this is, this is part of how like fascism comes to Japan, is that like, he becomes a hero for the fascist, right? Like he goes to prison for 10 years supposedly, but he only serves 3 and then he gets out, he becomes a hero and then he becomes basically the head of like the the the sort of fascist secret police and the like Manchurian puppet state. But on the upside, he uh, when Japan loses the war, he kills himself. So. When I yay with the the story I had heard was that the thrown in the well story and I remember it. It stuck with me so much because the first time I met anarchists from Japan they they gave me a scene and it was like Japanese anarchist martyrs, you know like the martyrs of our movement or whatever and I was like looking through it and or all of these children. And. It just, like, really emotionally affected me that I was like, oh y'all's martyrs include all of these like. Let it not like like literally like like 6 year olds and stuff, because yeah, you know, they they came and and killed not just the grown up anarchist, but the baby anarchists or whatever as well. I know it must have happened lots of places, but it just it really stuck with me. So whether it's true or not the the story I heard was the story about the well and it it's stuck with me. Yeah, I mean like the the level of repression in Japan, like. It's. It's unlike anything I've ever seen that's not in a country that's literally in the middle of a civil war. Like they just, they just like murder people like constantly. Yeah. And this is one of the other things, like one of the things that starts the right wing, like turn in Japanese society is when is when the earthquake happens and the government is like. Like they're like the police are being like, it's the Koreans need to go fight the Koreans. So they do. And, like, I mean, yeah, like, wait, they, like, blame the earthquake on the Koreans? Yeah. Well, so everything is, there's this fire. The fire kills like 60,000 people like it. It consumes. They're like, they're the urban core of what's the name of that city? I. The urban core of Yokohama just goes up in flames. Like 60,000 people burned to death. And that's the government needs some explanation for. Yeah, it's horrible. But like, the government simulation for it, they're like, Oh well, blame the Koreans. And then suddenly all of these people are just like. Like, the whole of Japanese society just goes into this total mobilization, like kill mode thing, and they just murdered enormous numbers of people and this and like that. This has this enormous sort of like, like cultural affecting people back to the right and shifting people back towards militarism because now they've like, you know, like they've tasted blood, they've like they've gotten this sort of sense of it. Yeah, it it is brutal. And before we go, we're going to kill off one more anarchist. We're killing off the royal team. Can we kill off the other team instead? Unfortunately, no. None of them die in this story. It's the worst. All of the assassination attempts fail. It's so sad. Yeah, I'm sorry. That's all right. Because I forgot how depressing this because I was I was remembering Part 2 of this, which is just like absolutely hilarious. Kind of pointless, like ideological battle over like things that are kind of dumb. And then I forgot about the first part of the story, which is everyone gets executed, so the last person we're talking about gets executed. Is is Fumiko Kaneko, who is? From mcconico. So she she she's a nihilist. Anarchist. But she's different from like everyone else we've talked about today so far. Because. When she's a kid, she gets sent to live in Japanese occupied Korea. And so she goes there and she gets like horribly abused by her family, which leads to become like, leads to her becoming a nihilist. But it means that like. OK, so like a lot of the anarchists. Like in Japan talk a big game and get about anti like imperialism, right? And like they will do things like, yeah like they they will go fight police to try to stop a war from happening, but they don't really. Talk to. People in Korea very much. And from Volcanica was like the exception to that because, you know, she lived there for a long time. And she she winds up marrying Pacquiao, who is a very influential Korean anarchist. And they they do a bunch of organizing they specifically like. Their thing is they're trying to like get, they're trying to like, empty the the Japanese occupation. And, you know, they're they're doing great work. And then, unfortunately, after the earthquake, she and Pacquiao are, and stop me if you've heard this one before, they are sentenced to death for a supposed plot to kill the emperor. Wait, we now? Yeah, we already did this part. You're just repeating. Yeah. Yeah. Then you would again. This is the second time, like, they just keep doing this and this one. It's unclear if there was actually a plot and if there was a plot, it's unclear to what extent Fumio Canico was, like, involved with it. But while she's getting interrogated, she's like, Oh yeah, no, like, I hate the emperor. I was absolutely involved in a plot to kill him. Like I was making a bomb to kill him. So I'm an anarchist. Here's like an incredibly detailed sketch of, like, all of the oppression in Japanese society. But I'm just going to tell you, like, the person who's like, like the court examiner, who's like. And and. You know, there's a thing that happens where she and Pacquiao are like are handed pardons as like the sort of like mercy of the emperor thing. And Pacquiao, like, takes it. But here you kind of go. Like they hand her the paper and she tears it to shreds in front of them. And it's so embarrassing that, like, the record of what happened is like sealed until after World War Two. Because it was a big, like, it was like a big media scandal, all of the stuff with them being arrested, right? And I'm, I'm, yeah, I don't actually know more, but I watched a movie once. There's a great movie about this called anarchist from Colony, this part of it. Yeah, yeah. And she yeah. And like, yeah, it's just like whole thing. Like, the government also kind of doesn't want to assassinate them because it looks really bad that. I mean, they've they've, they've picked, they've they've arrested two random people who, like, have done nothing and they're going to kill them. But thermochemical, like, no. Like I, I believe in the things that I believe in and I I will literally like tear up this pardon and die for it. And so she tears out the pardon, and so she goes to prison. And she lives long enough to write like the greatest entry in in the genre of anarcho feminist, a Japanese narco feminist, prison memoirs, which is an entire genre. There's like multiple books. Because this it keeps happening and these people get arrested and sent to prison and it's called the prison memoirs of a Japanese woman. It's great. Everyone should go read it. It's it's also extremely depressing because her life sucks. But. Yeah, it's it's it's it's good, yeah. And so now having killed off the leading intellectuals of anarchism again for the second time in a generation, you would think that this would this would kill the movement like, I think, I think like 99% of movements. Like if if you kill, they're leading intellectuals, like all of them, like twice in like 12 years, like the movement collapses. Yeah, that. But at the very beginning there was the guy who said keep the intellectuals away from the labor organizing. Maybe he was right. Well, but this is yeah. The incredible thing about this is no, it doesn't. It doesn't kill them. They they they keep going, like, and they, they they have, they have one last glorious, glorious and absolutely baffling. Hurrah, OK. Of like infighting. Extremely weird and funny infighting. OK, so yeah, that's we're going to be talking about next episode. All right. Yeah. It is it time for the plug of the plug? Yes. Ohe Ohe Margaret, you have a new podcast. I do about that. It's on this very network, cool zone media. On this very network. I have my own podcast. Is it called cool people who did cool stuff and does it? I believe so. Does it come out on May 2nd? And is it produced by the Webby Award-winning Sophie Lichterman? Uh, perhaps in two episodes? Drop every Monday and Wednesday? I think they do. That is super, super exciting, and you can find that wherever you get your podcasts. I, if I remember correctly, anywhere you get them. Like if there's a peddler on the corner who sells you podcasts, you're paying that. She gets gets your podcasts. Yeah, gets your podcasts half off today. 2/2 for one. Exactly. And where and where can people follow you on the interwebs? Well, for now, you can follow me on Twitter before the mass exodus at Magpie. Killjoy. And you can follow me on Instagram, which we've all known for a very long time, is owned by evil people. And that is magpie. No, Margaret Killjoy, because I wasn't clever enough to get my own name in both places. I don't know why I'm explaining this to you, but you can follow me on social media and that's where I am. And I post pictures of my dog that keeps barking in the background while I'm trying to record this episode. But but if you if you follow Margaret, you'll see her dog and you'll understand that it is worth it because he is handsome. Very nice and agrees. Well, I'm very excited to start listening to CPWD. CS was the best. Is that the episode? Yeah, so. I guess I'm starting this one. I'd hide. Welcome to make it happen here. It's a show. If you're listening to this episode, you probably listen to the last one. I hope you know, you know what it's about. Yeah, please do don't start. I mean, I guess you could start with this one, because this one is sort of wildly different from the last one, but. This one we're rewriting it so they all survive. Yeah, I mean, I don't. No one gets executed this episode. Yes, that is, that is a win. That's and the costs come. The Russian cosmist come and they resurrect at least Kaneko Fumiko. The rest, give or take, whatever. Maybe the children could be resurrected. That's how I would prioritize it, in that order. That makes sense. Yeah. And that voice you're hearing is Margaret Killjoy, host of cool, host of CPWD CS. Cool people who did cool stuff are calls on media podcast that is launching its first episode on May 2nd. And episodes are every Monday and Wednesday. I did it OK. That's true. All of the things are true except the cosmos part of the cosmos. I don't know, maybe, maybe, maybe they'll still pull it off as as of yet. So we're going to go back a little bit. We ended last episode in 19231924 with everyone sort of dead. But the the reason that also didn't wipe out the the anarchist movement was that Thursday does another sort of wing of it, and the other wing of it is in in 1918, nineteen 171918, the labor movement in Japan reemerges and it reemerges because there's the war like Japan fights over one and there's just like mass inflation and deprivation. And so even though striking is like unbelievably illegal, people do it anyways because the alternative is just starving to death. And so. There's this reformist trade union that eventually becomes Japanese Confederation of Labor that swells in numbers to about 30,000 people and actually like 30,000 people is like. It doesn't sound like that big for a union. I think this is the biggest any Union is going to get in this. I think this Union might get slightly bigger from that, but like. Yeah, most of the unions don't crack 20K because the the the size of the Japanese industrial working class isn't that big and also the amount of repression is unbelievable. But, you know, having 30,000 people. In your Union means that I your Union is now the site of Japanese intra left conflict. Which is wonderful. I mean, it only took three people there is actually like, what the **** people up? Yeah, it's great. There's like, you know, there's a period where everyone kind of gets along like, like all of them were like everyone in Japanese left knows each other. Like all they're all dating each other. Like this is true. Like, you know, we've been talking all the energy each other. The anarchist, the communists are all dating each other. Like the reformists are also dating each other, like they're all sort of like. Everyone knows each other, and for like a bit they're sort of able to get along. But with with with the the the Japanese Confederation of Labor. This lasts for like one year. And by 1921, the anarchist and the Bolsheviks have split over the question of the USSR after the anarchist published, like Emma Goldman, writing about how it's bad actually. And suddenly these two factions are like, yeah, these factions are like fighting tooth and nail for control of like, the entire left. Because like, these these groups are like the anarchists and communists are in every social movement. Like they're they're in, they're in labor, they're in the feminist movement. They're in this movement like we really talked about, but is going on in the background of all this, which is the burakumin liberation movement on the burakumin are this like this, like hereditary class? I'm pronouncing that extremely badly, and I apologize, but this hereditary class, like the old fuel system, which is like technically abolished in the 1800s, but like. Discrimination against them continues. It's it's very similar to like the like the untouchable, like untouchables in India. And so they they have this sort of movements and the anarchists back and the communists like, waffle on it because they're Bolsheviks. It takes him like a while before they're like, no, no, 1925, we're we're fully backing this now. And so, yeah, that gets wrapped up in this giant battle for the control of the left. And the battle for the control of the left leads to like, one of history's most common alliances, which is Bolsheviks. Allying with reformists who like also favor like centralized control to fight the anarchists who don't want centralized control. Yeah, they're men do things. Yep. And labor movement, this plays out in this battle over like, where power is supposed to be in a union confederation. So, you know, the question basically, is it supposed to be in the federation bureaucracy like the people, like the the sort of high level of the bureaucracy itself, or is it supposed to be in the unions who are like the part of this federation? And and this has real consequences, you know, like in a lot of sort of centralized union federations like the Central Union bureaucracy, the people who decide if you can strike or not. And, you know, this is extremely useful to both reformist bureaucrats who want to make sure nobody goes on strike because they have their deal with the capitalists and they don't want a revolution happen. And it's also very useful for the Bolsheviks, who want to make sure they can purge anyone who they don't like and also want to make sure the the union movement is just like an extension of their politics. And so there's, there's this huge battle and it ends with basically like both the Bolsheviks and the reformist pull out of the Union. Wow. So the anarchists win. Well, sort of. Well, they they the, the Purick victory. There's like nothing left. Yeah, well, it's not. There's nothing. So, like 20,000 members go with the reformists, like 12,000 go with the Bolsheviks. About 8000 go with the anarchists. OK, so it's not the best, but they they they rebuild and and into this phrase steps. Arguably Japan's greatest anarchist theorists of of this. Hottish shuzo. And this guy is a character, like he's he's. He's barely known in Japan. I mean, there was a sort of like Renaissance in in how to shiso scholarship when this one guy named John corrupt wrote this book called How to Shuzo Hada Shuzo and pure anarchism and interwar Japan, which is a mouthful of a title. But I'm just going to keep plugging this because this is the book that made me an anarchist. Like this is like, I checked this book out from the library and I read it and I was like, Oh my God, I'm an artist now. So yeah, **** yeah. Yeah. He has, he's like, OK, she still has a wild story. She's born in Japan in December 8th, 1886 and he sort of like bounces around like different manual labor jobs in Tokyo. And like at one point he he he he wants to be like a he tries to be like, I don't know if it's a long trip, like he wants to be like a sailor. So he gets on a boat and he's going to be a sailor. And then he after like 1 sail ride to Taiwan, he immediately decides he doesn't want to be a sailor anymore. He just gets off the boat and leaves and doesn't come back. I feel like that's what I would do if I decided. Yeah, like that job. Especially like the the 19, like 20s. That job seems awful. Yeah, you're like, oh, I want adventure. And then you're like, oh, adventure means bad things happen. Yeah, no good. It's like, I mean, I guess I understand why all these people are anarchists because, like, that is a terrible job. But yeah. So she's so wise up, sort of just like wandering around Taiwan. And one of the things that happens when he's wanting to Taiwan, by the way, is a, a Japanese colony at this point. OK. And while he's wandering around Taiwan, he becomes a Christian and he, like goes to school. It's like a theologian, but he drops out. But then he somehow still becomes a pastor because. I don't know. This guy's career is wild. Now, she's always not like a noble pastor. He rapidly starts ******* off like everyone around him because he's like every all of his sermons are just him antagonizing rich people and preaching this like very, very left wing version of the gospel. It's like, read the Bible. Yeah. It's incredible that there's a great quote from hashizume and pure anarchism into war Japan about his time as a pastor from like someone who was there. It was a pastor. Hattis sermons were superb, so much so that I thought it was a shame that more people were not there. Hear them? It was like the Bible talking in the spirit of pure socialism. But one of my friends admired Pastor Hatta so much that he asked him to celebrate his marriage. Yeah. And, you know, this, like, this does not make priest just going around. Yeah, yeah, I see. Well, it's funny because. So he starts, like, as a Christian, right? But like, he just, like, progressively keeps getting more and more left wing and and keeps realizing that, like, OK, so there's the Kingdom of God in heaven, right. But like, what if we did that here? And. And, like, as he's getting, like, as he's ******* off more of the church and as like, they're there, their infighting gets bigger. He's becoming just more and more of an anarchist. And by the end. You just, like, gets he gets booted out by his church and he's just like, OK, I'm addicted propagandist now. And so 1924, he just like leaves and he's like, well, I'm anarchist now, OK? And she's all becomes what's known as a pure anarchist. And this is something that is like entirely unique to Japan, that, like, there there's nothing, there's this doesn't exist anywhere else. And and this is different than like basically every other anarchist theorist and movement in Japan until this point has been like something you can find parallels with and other anarchist movements around the globe, like they're nihilists and lots of countries exist everywhere, like they're syndicalist literally in every country that's ever existed. And they mostly sort of believe the same things. You know, you get some like. Like? Oh, so you Saki is like? Combination of egoism and syndicalism is like, it's cool, but like just, I like that idea. Yeah, yeah, that's a good idea. But it's also not like, it's like, he's like he's not the first person to ever do this right. And like the Japanese syndicalist movement is built in the mold of like the the French syndicalists and the CGT, which is this big Union actually still around today there. So in like the very early 1900s there were there, there were sort of Narcos, Nicholas Union, like 1906. They have this famous charter that's like anarchist, but then they go reformist and they like they vote for World War One and now they're famous for it. There's been like 12 things that probably could have been a revolution in France if the CGT had ever a single time went to the barricades and they never do. That's never ever. That's like their whole thing. Like they sat out base 68 like, that's that's yeah. This, this is retribution. Yeah. Yeah. And they said, oh, maybe 68. It's like, it's incredible. But, you know, but, you know, in like 1906, right. The Japanese look like circus looking at this like, Oh my God, this just this union has like millions of people. It is like it's an enormous syndicalist union. Yeah, which is cool. So yeah, yeah. And like, you know, they they, they the, the Japanese anarchists do is sort of their standard syndicalist things like they're building up democratic unions. They're like working towards a general strike. The zombies are production and they're like fighting for a society or production is run by workers themselves, blah, blah, blah, blah. I I shouldn't blah, blah blah. That's actually it's it's cool, it's fine. But uh, pure anarchism is not that. I'm dying to know what pure anarchism is. This new anarchism just dropped, I'm excited, 100 years ago. It's it's kind of it's it's a version of rural communism. But like. What if you like, really, really rigorously applied narco communism and and this is the this is the thing. It doesn't exist anywhere else because everywhere, like in the West and in Latin America, like syndicalism and anarchism and anarcho communism, just like fuse. Yeah. To the point where, like, not really, like there's not really, not really separately, like nobody's written article communist theory and like 100 years. Like like they they said, you know, they basically ceased to be separate tendencies. But in Japan, the syndicalists and the incoms like fighting it out to the death. And in this, this produces pure anarchism, and it rules. We're going to talk about what it is because it's both wonderful and incredibly silly at the same time. So, OK, so to understand what they're arguing about because this is this is this, this causes, like a huge fracture in the annex treatments. I think we need to sort of like go into like the vulgar Marxist conception of class structure that's kind of shared by the syndicalists. OK. So, OK, OK, so you're, you're you're OK. The important thing about this is that, like, this doesn't work in Japan like that the vulgar theory of like, Marco's class structure, right? Is that like, OK, so you're supposed to have the great industrial proletariat, like it's supposed to become a majority of the population. It's supposed to be unified and organized by, like, the discipline of the factory. System and the entire world is supposed to reduce to two classes like the the the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Like one class of people who have nothing to sell but their labor. One class of people who exist purely to like, extract wealth from people because you entirely supported by owning things. And you know eventually these are supposed to like, if you read your Communist manifesto, eventually these two classes are supposed to like meet themselves in like a final conflict or the proletariat defeats. It's called yeah, yeah. Ragnarok, yeah, and you know, the story defeats them and then they they abolished the conditions of their own existence as a class and you get stateless, classless, muddiness society. It's like a free association of workers and this is what communism is. And uh, famously, this never happened. Yeah, and just for you. What about the immortal science? Yeah, yeah. You know, well, the, the, the immortal science. Yeah, this, this is the, this is the problem with the moral science is that one, instead of unifying the industrial proletariat, capitalism, like divides it and just sort of like, like literally spatially, like kicks them into suburbs. And you get this sort of like the system where instead of, like, unifying everyone into one class, everyone is now this, like, completely alienated, like Boomer living in a suburb, even if it's still work in a factory. And the other problem is that there's never just two classes. And this is the problem that, like, yeah, all the other ones are our enemies. Yeah, that's weird, too. And, you know, but this is a real problem, right? Because, like, the marks run into this in Russia, where it's like, OK, so we we did our thing, we did our urban proletariat revolution. But, like, there's all these peasants, and they don't like us because we keep taking their grant at gunpoint. And but, but, you know, you have, you have this one problem but and everything was like popular. Yeah, it goes great, right? It's not nothing bad ever happens. They don't famously have to kill enormous numbers of these people. But then like, you know, there's something weird happens, which is in China. Stalin managed to get like the entire herb, like the entire urban Chinese working class like built, working class killed. And so Mao has to like make a revolution with peasants. And so, you know, peasants become this sort of like. You know, this, this sort of like this, this is what the actual revolutionary subject of communism wants it being like, from like China to Colombia is these peasants. But like, you know, OK, so your theory of the industrial proletariat already down the toilet, and this is what shuzo is reacting to you like. He looks at Japanese society and there's like 5 people who do wage labor. Mostly. There's this enormous, like, like, for like 14 million people who are tenant farmers who are, like, trying to support their families and these, like, tiny plots or rented land. But, you know, and like, Senator Mark's theory is like, well, OK, these people won't have. May be absorbed into capitalism right by there will be driven by competition or whatever into the market, but like, they're not, it's not happening. They're just sitting there and they're just really poor and paying their landlords and patient. Yeah, well, you just got to wait for all of Japan to be in, like annihilated to be saved by the 2nd war. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's it's it's going great. But it's also like there's all these other like classes too. Like there's these classes of like there's just like petty traders, for example, or like like low level got like really low level government officials. Hmm, like like, you know, you're like like a clerk, for example. Who just don't fit into this sort of class schema at all. Like if, if, if, if Mark some things about like, like small, like, I don't know, people who like cut wood and then go into a town and sell it like they're like, well, these people are pretty bourgeois, like they're reactionaries. And there's this whole history of like. Anarchists organizing people like this, who marches, just sort of like stare at like Bolivia has this where like anarchist organized these like these, indigenous, like, they're not really these indigenous artisans whose things like, they go to market, they saw their craft and the Marxists were just like, why do we care about these people? Like, why yeah, not. Workers. And it always seems like the better. I don't know, whenever I was like, presented with the basic analysis of like, OK, we've got the proletariat who have terrible lives and factories, and then you have the lumpenproletariat who refuse that kind of work and are like beggars and thieves and people doing work outside of the traditional system or whatever. And then you have the petty bourgeoisie who are like, you know, owned stores or artisans or whatever, and then you have the bourgeoisie over it. And it's just always funny to me because I look at I'm like, well, clearly the only ones that would be worth being would be lumping proletariat. Television, see, like, they're the only one to get to have any fun. Like, yeah, you know, and and I think, like, like, this is the problem that that Shuzo sees. And I'm going to read part of a krups book about his solution to this. I think it's really interesting. Given the failure of the available methods of class analysis to capture the subtleties of Japan's social structure, Hata developed the notion of the propertyless masses as an alternative concept of the proletariat. The propertyless masses was a wide-ranging term, which encompassed tenant farmers, small traders, petty officials, artisans, and even wage laborers when they are prepared to forsake their preoccupation with narrowly defending advantages. That accompanied their urban lifestyle and we're ready to throw in their lot with the other oppressed strata. Yeah, that makes sense. That's just the 99%, you know, it's the like. Versus the haves and the have nots like OK well it's it's kind of but but look there's there's a crucial difference here which is that like. OK, so. The the, The the other. Like the. The really big thing about the pure anarchy is that they don't believe in class struggle, OK? And the reason why they don't believe in class struggle is that they think that. OK. So they they look at the history of the union movement. Right. And it's like, OK, so how has the union movement ended capitalism? It's like, no. So like, OK, what, what does it actually do? And the answer is it gets people slightly more money under capitalism, which is nice too. Yeah. Which. Which is nice. But it's also like shuso, like adopts tube. There's another Japanese anarchists who has this metaphor. It's like he he compares it to like, people fighting inside of, like, a bandit gang. Where it's like OK, so if you have you have like fight like the the bosses of the bandit gang are obviously exploiting like the the the lower level people and the bandit gang. But you know, if even even if the even if the the, the low level people in this bandit gang like take over, they're not actually going to stop being a bandit gang, right. It's just that the, the, the, the, the distribution of where the bandit gang wealth is going changes. And this is a big thing for, for, for the the periodic. The pianists are, you know, they're looking at the industrial working classes like this is tiny and they're they're all exploding in the countryside. Hmm. And so because of that, like they they they they they look at this, they they look at the the Union movement and they they look at it at like class struggle, like classical TM, like class struggle. And they're like, well, this doesn't cause a revolution. All this does is just like sort of reorients like who's in power inside of what the Bolsheviks did, right? Yeah. But but it's not just what the they the Bolsheviks. But like, it's also like there is analysis of what a union is, is that you're like class struggles just defending your position under capitalism. But you're also fighting very specifically narrowly for your class, right? So if you're like a factory worker, right, you're fighting for you and the other factory workers you're not fighting for, like, I don't know, like a tenant farm. But you're not even fighting from, like for like the guy down the street who bakes bread. It's like you're, you know, these these things that are like that are what they like, instruments of class struggles like your workers council, your unions, your Soviets like, they don't actually get rid of class. It's just now another class has power. And it doesn't matter if it's sort of like, and this is what they're arguing, is it doesn't matter if it's like. Democratic it doesn't matter if it's like. You know, like there there's no difference in how the actual eventually the the class dynamics will play out. It doesn't matter if it's like, you know, like Lenin making like Stalin making himself dictator or you have a bunch of democratic like Soviets because they're both so instruments, class, power, they're both sort of just going to reproduce. This this whole system and. Yeah. And so they they, they they they have this thing that they they they counterpose, which is like class struggle is just about like stuff is happening inside the system, but that's different from revolution, which is like destroying the system entirely. And this is where you get into. His stuff about the division of labour. Which is I think is really interesting because it I I think. This this sphere of pure anarchism got to a bunch of critiques of stuff that people have gotten to now, but they got to it in like, 1920. Where, OK, so choose like one of his big things is that, like, the division of Labor is inherently exploitative? Because it, like, it destroys sort of rural communal living, and it replaces it with the centralization of expertise and centralization of power. And he also thinks that, like, science is like a capitalist engine that's used to, like, create the division of Labor, and then it's used to create, like, mechanization, and it's used to create, like, labor exploitation. Yeah. That's that sounds like modern. A lot of, like, stuff that I've read more modern. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Except this is like, they're doing this in, like, like, 1927. Yeah. You know what else is a capitalist engine of exploitation? Products and services the podcast industrial complex. It's true. And we're back with a more things that are exploitative and the the well, no resolution, theoretically, theoretically not well, yes, yes. But we we, we, we have, we have to get, we have to get to the last exploitative thing, which is the thing I talked a bit about this earlier, but. Like the pure, Anticus argued that like cities inherently are this concentration of wealth and resources and power, and so, like farmers and workers need to work together to destroy all forms of power, including cities. And this sounds a lot like primitivism. Yeah it does. Although you know they wouldn't necessarily be like wrapping the farmers and I think, I think primitives might be the wrong term, but it's definitely a lot of like the anti tech stuff. Yeah it's it's interesting. OK, so they have they have like they they they thread this needle where. So like there are people in this. Who want to just go back to peer rural agrarianism and don't want there to be technology and. The pure anarchists are like no, we still want technology, but we don't want the division of Labor. So they're like, we like our reaping machines so we don't have to work as much when we're farming. We just don't want everyone to live in apartments. Yeah, I mean, even the reaping machine, I don't know, like, it's kind of unclear to me how this is exactly supposed to work because. Like what? We'll get into this. I guess we just get into this now, which is like, OK, so they really don't like the division of Labor because they think the division of Labor like. Well, they have, they have like, there's like 3 critiques of 1 is that like when you have the division of Labor, labor becomes like mechanized, industrialized and when that happens? Labor because, like, it gets reduced to just like a cog you put in a machine. Hmm. And they they see this is. This is like an inherent like thing that happens with labor specialization is you just end up like. Being a person who makes 1 repetitive move in a factory over and over again. Like you're not free because of this. And they also argue that like specialization means that people only care about like, the labor that they do. And so that this gives you, like, an identity that that divides workers from one sector. Like, say, if you're, if you're, you know you're like a coal miner, right? Your daily experience is so utterly different than a Baker. And it's not just like your experience, it's like it's like you're knowledge is different. The other person is not gonna like, the Baker's not going to understand what you're doing. And you keep wanting to argue against this political position that I know it's 100 years old. I keep trying to be harsh. No, it misunderstands the nature of specialization and all, you know? But then I'm like, alright, I I can't go back and convince these people. Yeah, yeah, I think, like I I think, OK, this is I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to. Put on my, my, my marks my like weird left com marks, noise and go. It's a critique, not a platform, which is not they they actually want as a platform, but like I think it would have been a great critique and not a very good platform. Yeah, their platform, yeah. I mean I think there's interesting elements of it, like they have this argument that like. OK, so if if you have your like your your syndicalists like society, right? Where? OK, so you you have a bunch of, like, you have a bunch of, like, coal miners. You have a bunch of people who like, make pots and pans. But you you need to coordinate your labor, OK, because you because you you you have like specialization. You have branches of Labor. And their argument is that, OK, so, well, the city goes way you do this, you have coordinating committees, right? You you, like, elect a person you, like, send them to a coordinating Council and the Coordinating Council, like coordinate stuff. OK. And she's just like, well, that's just gonna she's just like things like that's gonna turn into a state, like you're gonna create a permanent class. Even if you rotate people, you're you're you're creating an administrative body that's going to like, rebuild the state again. And. Yeah, like, OK, like I'm making this, like shrugging gesture that the audience gets. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, yeah. I don't. OK. So like I don't think he's right about, like, most of this. Like, I think he's sort of wrong about, like almost all of it. The the the thing, the thing that stuck with me though, when I read this is. Like his specific critique of syndicalism, which is that it maintains like the structure of the old World. Hmm. Because if if if you're a syndicalist and your your society is based on unions running their workplaces. Then you you've maintained the division of Labor, but you've also maintained like. The basic like geographic, physical, technological, and organizational structure of capitalism. Like all, all of the, like, all of that stuff is still in the same place and you're still sort of like going there to do your job and and I think there there is an interesting sort of like like I think there was a genuine interesting critique there of. Yeah, like how? How how do you make sure that you aren't just sort of? Reproducing that stuff. And. Like like I mean I don't know like. The critique of why would you want to build a society that's structured along the lines of production? Like why what? Why do you want your structure, your society around work like, that's awful. I I like that about the pure anarchist, where they were kind of like, let's let's let's throw away the Marxist ship for a minute and like, just actually like figure out what we want and like, I like that about it. But I I dislike the idea of like, well, it's, it's. It would be my problem if syndicalism and most of the syndicalists I met believe in syndicalism as a method and not an end result, right? It's a way of building workers power, not a way to create a society. But but if syndicalists were like everyone must wake up and go to their work job and then make 8 widgets, but it's collectively determined which widgets that you make right? Like **** that, but also if it was like everyone goes and wakes up and goes to their collective farm and maybe we use reaping machines and maybe we don't and it's just like. I guess so. Unexcited by. It's like one of the reasons, like a lot of the, like, nitpicky branches of anarchism don't they interest me? But I don't like subscribe to any of them is because I'm like, well. What if some people like this **** and some people like this ****? Like, you know, maybe there could be ******* different. Imagine that we could have a plurality of economic models, systems, but you know, whatever. I'm now arguing with that people who I probably would like. This is, this is interesting. Like, well, I don't know, because these guys like. They they have like the Maoist thing going on where like they will like attack other leftist groups who like don't like, follow their line. And so this is where this whole thing is wild, because it was one of the other things like the. The, the, the the pure anarchists are like completely convinced that syndicalism is like a sort of like, well, they think it's just like it's not an anarchist thing, it's just like a tendency to labor movements. And they also think that like, it's basically like a bastardized form of Marxism. Because they're not, like, entirely wrong about either of those things, but yeah, it's different at different places and times. Yeah, but it's like the thing the thing they have it like, because they're they're completely convinced that syndicalism will inevitably just, like, turn into like, Soviet communism. It's like, yeah, it's it's incredibly silly, but like, like this. You know, I like on the one hand like they they are kind of inventing a lot of the sort of like like. They're inventing a lot of the sort of like. Some OK, some bad arguments about, uh, like specialization and stuff like. Some anti work stuff too that like is going to be around later. Yeah, they're also inventing a lot of stuff that's like. Yeah. And you know, initially this kind of like new theory doesn't have this doesn't have an enormous effect. In 1920s in 1926, the the the Federation of Black Youth, or COCORAN, has its first public meeting and they, they have a bunch of cool slogans. There's slogans role they have. The emancipation of workers must be carried out by the workers themselves. We insist on libertarian federation, destroy the political movement, get rid of, reject the proletarian party, get rid of professional activists and down with all oppressive laws and ordinances that isn't entirely based platform. Yeah. Alright, sweet. Alright. It's it's good. Yeah. And you know everything despite the fact that it's called the Federation of Black Youth. This is like not a youth. I mean there's like youth in it, but like it's it's this thing's backed by like. Remember those printers unions that I was talking about last episode that I was like, I had like set up? So they're all heavily involved in this and they do a bunch of cool labor stuff like they they get involved in, like there's a bunch of tram worker strikes to get involved in. They they're in this the, the Japanese musical instrument company strike, which is like there's like over 1000 people on strike for like over 100 days. And there's there's this great split where like, so the leadership of the Union is Bolshevik, but like a bunch of the like. A bunch of the ordinary people in the Union are anarchists and so you have there's like, this is fun tension going around. You know, they're, they're, they're doing the stuff and then the anarchist form. Zankoku Jiran, which is the the all Japanese Libertarian Federation of Labor Unions, which is a, it's a federation of 25 unions. Wait, these are the pure anarchy that you're talking about that are doing all this. Oh so sorry. At at this point they they haven't split yet. Ohh. OK because I was like this sounds like all the stuff that they said that they don't want to do. Yeah well this is the other. The other wild thing about this is that like, OK so the the entirety of like of like puranic theory, right, is about how like unions don't do revolutions and that class struggle but like they still do strikes. Like they still do all the normal stuff. It's kind of wild. OK, I kind of like that. Yeah, you know, and like and this that that's sort of how they're able to get along in this early period. And these unions like, OK, so there's like a lot of printers unions in this because the print unions are just really anarchists. But there's like, there's a tenant Farmers Union, there's also like rubber unions and it grows to like 15,000 workers almost immediately. And yeah, they're doing a lot of cool stuff. Like they they have, they have these huge demonstrations in support of Sacco and Vanzetti. The US is killing for being anarchists and also Italians just like. Yeah, the one time Antalan racism was real. And. 100 years ago, **** was real different than it is now. And it doesn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah and and for for for one year this like this works great. You know like the the. Yeah the the unions up to like I think they get up to like 20,000 thirty thousand members like it gets pretty big. But then in 1927 intense conflict between the syndicalists and the and the the Pure Anarchist breakout and this gets so bad so fast that like the international Working Man's Association which is the like the giant International like Federation of syndicalist movements like sends them a letter that are like hey Cindy glisten, Archer communist get along every literally everywhere else on Earth. They're chill. You guys like chill. And the darker communists in Kolkata and their response is we are fighting quote the betrayers opportunist and union imperialists in Sengoku Jerins ranks. Easy. Oh, This is why we can't have nice things. Yeah, it's great. It gets better. It gets better. So, so better than we always lose. Yeah, because, you know, OK, look in the 1928 conference, so single Conjuring, which is the, the, the, the Union federation, like, they they have they have this conference, they have the yearly conference 1928. And there's just like giant battle over, like what the organization's platform is going to be a thing that doesn't matter at all, except it's a proxy ideological fight and both sides just start screaming at each other. You know I'm gonna read this description from how does shiso and Puranic has been towards Japan? Uh-huh. Coconut members barricaded the barrack to the the anarchists, syndicalists, jeering and cat calling them. And the proceedings degenerated to the level where it was almost impossible to hear the speeches. Eventually the Anarcho syndicalist decided they had had enough. Unfurling their black flags, they walked out of the hall to a chorus of taunts such as believers, blind believers, and central authority. Bolsheviks have betrayers. Alright, get over yourself. Oh my God. OK, two, to be fair to the pure anarchist ohh one. So OK a bunch of the syndicalist unions start leaving and one of them does actually join the Bolsheviks, but like all the other ones don't because they're not and you get this. There's like they have like the syndicalists and the the periodics of dueling magazines. There's one called Black Flag, there's one called Black battle and like so Cochran, which is like the youth thing, like the syndicalist, the anarchists are still in it together and they like they start just like fighting each other in the street when they run into each other because they. But this is more depressing than everyone getting murdered after the earthquake, not the genocide part of the anarchist killing part. Yeah, yeah. It's it's like, it's incredible, you know? And like, yeah, they they. What's interesting about this, though, is that, like the anarcho communists like when the union splits, like almost all of the people stay with the actual communists, even though the other communists like explicitly saying we're not fighting for, like, wage increases, we're just fighting for revolution. Which is fine, I'm alright with that, yeah, but there's interesting stuff to words like they're also. So because they have this thing that's like, OK, so the urban workers are like exploiting the boy, OK? They're right about it's complicated because it's like they think the urban workers are exploiting the countryside, but they also don't think that the solution to it is to just, like, turn it the other way around. They think that, like, the workers and the tenant farmers just work together to, like, make the oppression go away. That seems like a reasonable stance on it. Yeah. But it means, you know, they're interested in, like, they're interested in the rural movement in a way that, like, the other Japanese left movements aren't. But unfortunately, you know, OK. There's a big debate as to whether this split like, actually. Like, like how big a role the split had in the collapse of anarchism? Because like by by by like by like 1931 like the fascists have just straight up taken over Manchuria like. Think things have gotten so fast that it's like it's unclear whether. The split mattered at all. Yeah. Yeah, but you know, they run into this problem where like. Like? Cocoran. Like, the state really hates them. And they have a bunch of them get arrested and they, they, you know, they respond to being arrested by, like, getting more militant. But then that just, you know, that fuels the cycle of them getting arrested for. And people just leave because they're like, well, OK, if I'm in this organization, like, or I'll just going to like, get shot. I mean, that's the clandestinely spiral. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it's just real problem. And, like, how does she do himself? Becomes just, like, incredibly depressed by the depression of Movement 1932. He just leaves, like, he's just out. He, like, renounces anarchism. He abuses his wife because this is the story of a bunch of guys who sucked. And then he started stabbers. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess, OK, he he did it to him. He. Yeah, he drinks all that. He got it done on his own. And, you know, so he, he, he, he dies and he like, kills himself. Well, I don't think he was doing on purpose, but he just dies from drinking too much in 1934. And that year, actually, the darker communists, narcos and close, like, get back together. But it doesn't matter because by this point the fascists are just sort of in power. And yeah, the anarchists, they they do, they do one last rural uprising and they they fight a lot of cops and then all of them get arrested. And anarchism just sort of dies until the end of World War Two. OK. And yeah, it's, you know, OK, anarchism does reemerge after the war, but that's like that, that's a whole nother story and entirely. What what I will say about it is if you see those those construction hats from like 1968 protests and you see one that's just all black it doesn't have like a name written on it like those are the anarchists cool whistle around and you know and and custom in Japan like survives to this day there's there's a book called the Manual for a Worldwide for a worldwide minute revolts that like one day I swear to God I'm actually going to read. But he is really big in China. Well OK I say really big in China it's very influential in. A very small subcultural anarchist scene in China, but I'm talking about them because it heavily influenced, like the the people who wrote the lying flat manifesto. We're like, we're very heavily influenced by this stuff that's so inflated manifesto. Oh, OK, OK, so we did the episode about this a while back, but lying flat was this thing in China, I guess, still going on. But, like, people were just like it. It's kind of, it was kind of the version of antiwork or most people, like, discovered Diogenes and we're like, what if I just didn't work, right? What if I just, like, lived on, like, I worked like, one day a month and then lived on like, nothing so I didn't have to work? Or if I just quit? What if I just, like, stop doing all of this capitalist stuff? And what if I, like, stop having to deal with this patriarchy? What if I just like. You know, yeah. And it takes some kind of like, yeah, yeah, they're great. They lots of fun. Diogenes quotes, lots of, like, the manifesto they released is like very, like, very anarchist. And yeah, like that whole thing that was like this. This is a big enough social movement that like, like, Xi Jinping, like, mentioned it in a speech. OK. And so, yeah, like Japanese orgasm still has influence to the state. Yeah, it's a big deal for them. They were like, yeah, had to kind of concerned about it. Yeah. This the same way a whole bunch of like oligarchs got concerned about the anti work stuff you saw like anti work hit pieces in the past like six months it was yeah, it's like similar things being like, well this better not catch on more because that could really suck for us. That's as optimistic of a note as you could possibly get out of the story, which is that they're still around and they still influence things that matter. So and hopefully they don't. Fight each other more than the state. Yeah, don't don't do that like I. Like yes. I guess I will make my controversial sometimes it's OK to stab an abuser under the throat stance, but also don't purge all your syndicalists because on the accusation of Bolshevism hot take, don't purge all yours. Yeah, yeah. Don't don't systematize violence like that. You know, you're like this individual guy just did this thing and I'm real upset that he just did it to me and there's like a throat. I'm not actually making an actual advocacy. I'm talking about how sometimes when that has happened in history. That seemed kind of cool, but. Yeah, not the, not the systemic. Kick out all the people who have this minor. I mean it's really funny to me because I'm like, I'm like huge anti infighting. Then people are like, don't you spend all your time fighting tankies on the Internet. I'm like, they want to make a state that's different. Yeah, they believe that they everyone should be thrown in jail. That is a different thing. Umm. Also, I don't like. You gotta manage the polycule drama like you gotta manage. It's got to be kept under control. You cannot allow your entire scene to be factionalized over rival Poly fuels and anarchists control your polycule drama, quotations and parenthesis. Impossible. Oh, see, that's why you just need more. No, maybe it's like you need more multigenerational anarchists, because I think people in their 40s give less of a **** about a lot of the trauma. But then I'm like. Maybe that's not true. Maybe people in their 40s would give just as much of a **** about all the drama. Anarchism. Wonderful idea. Yep, yeah, that's good. And Speaking of wonderful ideas, it is time for us to do the plugs. First, I just want to plug Jamie Loftus's new cool Zone Media podcast Ghost Church by Jamie Loftus. By the time this drops, episode one will be out and episode two will be dropping off with the next Monday, I believe. Yes, exactly. And we also have another podcast on closer media with one Margaret Killjoy called Cool People who did cool stuff. Margaret, you wanted to tell us about that? Should I start working on that? I'll get it done by Monday. OK, cool. I have a new podcast called Cool People who did cool stuff, which is uh. About cool people who did did cool stuff and you might like it. If you like stories about people who I can't say cool stuff again, I'll have to use come up with more synonyms. Really, it's just all a competition to see how many synonyms for cool I can come up with without using the word based because I feel like I'm too old to use the word based without. Really, this is what you are here for, so I'm much more eloquent on my podcast, which you can catch every Monday and Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. Probably wherever you got this podcast is where you can find it. And the trailer is out now. So you can go and you can listen to the trailer where I talk about some anarchist bank robbers who broke out of prison. Because why would you be in prison when you could be outside of prison, which is generally the preferable position to be in with the exception of like every now and then like people break out out of jail by like someone goes to jail on purpose, but they have like hacksaw blades in their shoes and ****. That would be cool too. So more breaking your friends out of jail and less chasing them out of the room, jeering at them is my general rule. I hate to make rules, but if I were to make one, it would be that. And you can hear me talk about those kinds of stories on the podcast. Well, thank you. Thank. Thank you so much for joining. Joining us today for for Chris too. Talk about the wonderful, wonderful history of Japanese anarchism and the many and the many deaths that are associated in those poor people and the like. The basic like a like a mini Korean genocide. Yeah, yeah. Intense. Well, that's it for us today, because by this on Twitter, Instagram. What happened to your pot and cold stone media? See you next week and go listen to podcasts. We have many of them. Wow. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen here as a production of cool zone media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for. It could happen here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com/sources. Thanks for listening.