Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 127 - The Battle of Athens

Episode Date: November 2, 2020

One day in in 1946 a group of WWII Veterans grabbed their weapons and went to war against police brutality and electoral fraud. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: https://www.americanheritage.com/battle-athens https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/battle-athens-group.html http://csws.utk.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/2000-White-Bill-Transcript.pdf

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow Led by Donkeys podcast. The first and only, hopefully, election episode. Because even I don't hate myself this much. With me today is Francis from The Hell of a way to die not nate uh and shocks the guy we drag onto every fucking podcast now what's up guys i'm i'm excited it's debate three and instead of watching the debate i'm far away from it talking to you guys and uh i'm just hoping that uh you weren't holding the uh delay the heaven when you just said uh the only election episode you'll ever do. Because, you know, there could be a second connotation to that.

And, you know, things are bad. Yeah, there could be no more elections. Right. Both of those things are possible. But I think the more likely scenario is we are not around in four years. Now, obviously, we're not talking about this election we're talking about a election uh and i believe this is not the only time that we've recorded during a debate uh because we're just not gonna fucking watch that shit um i'm talking about what is known now

as the battle of athens uh i have a little bit of an intro here. And I generally don't do this, but I have to frame this episode correctly. So for our foreign listeners or not American listeners, we have an election coming up. One that will surely not impact your everyday life. The 2020 election has been, at least in my lifetime, one of the more contentious I can think of, not only from the candidates, but regular American people. Faced on either side with systemic corruption in our systems, police brutality, lies, and the soulless machinations of electoral system that mostly exist to churn through regular people as simply a combustible

fuel for wealth and power hoarding. Things seem more hopeless than ever. That is why we're going to talk about how this exact thing happened in 1946 in a very small community in Tennessee and why it was solved through collective direct action by America's most powerful Antifa force ever assembled, that being World War II veterans and guns. They solved it with copious amounts of violence some sometimes the troops are good let's find out if this is one of those times i i can rest assured this is gonna be maybe the only time i ever do an episode that's

like veterans good actually um so before we get to talk about a whole bunch of angry veterans shooting at cops which we'll get to we have to talk a little bit about mcminn county tennessee circa 1940 a place i had never heard of before this i love i love mcminn county it's big known in the in the punk scene for its uh for its hoot nannies with mohawks i don don't know. I've had many a good barn raising there. It's a deeply weird place. I've only driven through Tennessee, so I don't know.

I keep my summer home there. A few people know this. I actually commute back and forth between Boston and Big Bend County, Tennessee. I would love to take you and throw you in a Kentucky holler somewhere. Not because I think you'd get fucked up, but just you speak. It's such different languages. Two completely different languages would be getting spoken there.

So we should absolutely do that. We'll bring the Boston boy down to the Midwest. We'll get you a hot dish. We'll meet halfway with the Trillbillies. I know Kentucky isn't the fucking Midwest. I know. Arguable. I know we're going to get yelled at about that.

Anyway, sorry. Go ahead. I managed to survive in Kentucky for three years, though even my way of speaking was thought of as very strange. I mean, because it is. I mean, you know, Michigan. And it's only three hours away from where I grew up. This is Northern Kentucky. I can't say anything for Southern Kentucky. I've never been there. So Athens, Tennessee is a town of barely 7,000 people or was. I have no idea how many people live there now. It's a town that was so rural

that it wasn't really a question of if you were a farmer but which farm you worked at. The town's roads were all unpaved and most daily conversations were crop related or talking about the ongoing war. Politics was something most normal people

simply did not give a shit about because it was innocent and small town stuff. Nobody cared. The nearest thing that you could consider a city was 50 miles away, a long distance when you consider most people had no means of transportation. And it was also a city that was so small that it still didn't really affect Athens' everyday life in any meaningful way. It wasn't a big city. It was just and compared to athens it was not a village it was not yeah now there's another good reason as to why politics were something most people like kind of didn't care about um most southern states at the time you know before the southern strategy hit uh like

athens and mcmahon county were thoroughly under the control of democrats and that control was Southern states at the time, before the Southern strategy hit, like Athens and McMinn County, were thoroughly under the control of Democrats. And that control was unbroken and unchallenged. I'm not going to go into the Southern strategy. That's for someone to scream at Dinesh D'Souza about in his Twitter comments. But yeah, it hadn't hit yet. Now, political control was much different than what we understand today, where people are just kind of racist and throw Bibles at people. Instead, it was a political system that was enforced and controlled by regional bosses. Now, I use the term bosses very purposefully because it was pretty much a mob show. So, warlords.

Yeah, warlords if they were significantly less cool. Or like Tammany Hall. If they had a whole bunch of T-55 tanks. That hadn't been invented yet. I know. T-32 tanks. What did the Russians have during the revolution? T-34s.

T-34s. There we go. And McMinn County wishes they actually, this whole episode would be significantly cooler if the veterans brought tanks back with them. So in this case this whole system was ran by a guy named e.h crump which might be the most southern 1940s name i have ever fucking heard um crump had been the former mayor of memphis memphis tennessee but actually got thrown out of office when it became obvious that he was making a fuckload of money off prohibition and was actually more of a mob boss than a politician.

But that did not mean that he fell from power. Actually, he managed to get more of it. Because being an overt crime boss meant that he could just do more things openly when he was no longer in public office. And once he was kicked out of office he became significantly more powerful than he ever was as the mayor of memphis um he used money and backroom deals and mostly like some pretty serious blackmail to effectively control every major seat of power in the state this includes the governor um now like if now if you happen to run in any of these places where he happened to hold sway, uh,

you had to prove it to him that you would benefit him. Like you being elected or running for this office would benefit him. And if you try to run without his say, so he would just crush you with immense resources. Um, thank God. Politics aren't like that anymore. That's right.

Uh, this meant that if, like if people got elected they would almost only be running against other people that he had previously supported but had run like run afoul of him in some way um oh and i know what i'm i'm just what were you saying i was just gonna say weird i can't imagine something like that anyway now to take a big sip of whiskey and turn to every part of the primary before now. Yeah, and I understand a lot what I'm describing just seems like modern politics. This was new for the time.

And like, like, Crump's people didn't win just by like funneling money behind people. Like, Crump's people didn't win just by, like, funneling money behind people. It was almost always, like, the backbone of all of his operations were massive voter fraud, intimidation, ballot stuffing. Like, he was just a straight-up criminal. So, like, if you got rid of those two things, he could just work for either one of the political parties. Though, actually, voter intimidation is, and if you live in California, voting fraud or electoral fraud, hot topic by putting out fake ballot boxes if you're the California Republican GOP. Now, in McMinn County, this didn't mean a whole lot to them because they were so small that Trump didn't actually care to take over their local politics. they were so small that Crump didn't actually care to take over their local politics. That changed in

1936 when a guy named Paul Cantrell ran for county sheriff. He was from a different county and the townsfolk really didn't like people from coming outside their county coming in and taking power. So there was a pretty vigorous campaign against him. But since Cantrell

was handpicked by E.H. Crump, he wanted a landslide. Um, and everybody accused him of stealing the election, but because the sheriffs were in control of the elect of the ballot boxes, there was no proof. Uh, so they couldn't challenge it.

Weird how that happens. So, okay. So is the, is the belief that they fuck with the ballots themselves or that they're just, because I mean, in a small community like this, I don't see how you can really like, I don't know, like you can't Mitch McConnell it, right? Where you just like buy your seat with a huge war chest because nobody lives there. You know, I don't know. I'm just curious how that works.

So generally it was just overt bribes, bribes, blackmail, things like that. We'll talk about a little bit later. But for instance, like McMinn County, the ballot boxes are centralized and protected in the jail by the sheriff until the commission could come and pick them up or count them physically. So they're all alone with the ballot boxes for hours well and so i guess i mean you know kind of getting to francis is this like more of a case of like ballot stuffing or is this more a case of like okay i you know just curious too because one of the things i like i don't know particularly over the course of like the last like uh, you know, a few months of the election and whatever. And one of the things I've been thinking about, you know, the idea of the secret ballots and everything is like such a recent phenomenon. You know, like it used to be like, you know, back in like the 1800s and the early 1900s, even, you know, when you went to go vote, you went to go vote in like the, you know, really in smaller communities.

You want to go vote in the local town square and just kind of like had to cast your ballot essentially in front of everybody so like there were more like kind of over attempts at intimidation because you know they knew like if you you know voted for not their guy so i don't know if it's you know more like that or if it's just like they're you know or it's more like a you know north korean thing where you know you get 105 percent. Like a lot of that is true to an extent. Um, some of it is like, uh, like poll taxes were a thing,

uh, in this election because it's 1946. Right. And, uh, they would, if you happen to not have the receipt for your poll tax, which is actually kind of common.

Um, and you, they knew you were going to vote for someone that they supported, they'd allow you to cast your ballot anyway. Stuff like that. It's all pretty overtly corrupt to the point that everybody knew about it, but there was no proof.

Okay. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. Yeah, and it wouldn't have mattered anyway because many members of the Electoral Commission were also chosen by Crump. Okay. So it's not great. So I'm just kind of like getting you coming and going.

It doesn't really matter. Even if things don't work out, like stuff in the ballot box, you're still going to... It's going to go to the commissioners who are appointed by him anyway. And nobody's looking too hard into it. Yeah. Which is why we got to where we're going to go to the commissioners who are appointed by him anyway. And nobody's looking too hard into it, which is why we got to where we're going to. Now, you're probably wondering, why sheriff? Why not just go for mayor, which he eventually does?

But sheriff seems kind of unimportant position for a guy as powerful as Crump to try to steal, right? It helps to understand just how the position worked at the time. Now, without going into the history of law enforcement too much, which is something I'm not going to fuck with, Robert Evans did a great series on it called Behind the Police. I encourage you to listen to talk about that a little bit more. But the ideas of a civil service and the concept of professional law enforcement hadn't really been introduced to the area, or most areas, for that matter.

Thankfully, all those problems have since been ironed out, and the American people have the utmost confidence in their local law enforcement. But rural sheriffs, like the elected position, were paid, but their deputies were not. Instead, they would earn their paychecks through kickbacks to the amount of people they arrested, booked, and incarcerated. A portion of that money would then go

to the sheriff, and then a portion of that money would then go to Crump and his functionaries. So it's nothing but a series of kickbacks. So it's civil asset forfeiture, but without so much of the formality. Right. There was paperwork involved.

And if that sounds like all this money sounds like not a whole lot for a guy as rich and powerful as Crump, you'd be right. This is called a bounty system, and it made money, but it required record keeping because this is a legal bounty

as prescribed by the state, and you had to give evidence for that. So it was much easier to just arrest people and force them into bribing you at higher rates than the bounty system would pay. The more money you had, the more money they would take, which is a shockingly progressive system of highway banditry, I guess. But you do not, in fact, have to hand it to the corrupt cops. This also meant that things like gambling dens, organized crime, moonshiners, and stuff like that would run rampant as long as they simply paid their bribe.

Operations who didn't would then be closed down or the cops would seize them and then rent them out to people who they knew would pay their bribes. So they were a mob. They were just a giant gang. Solid Uber, but for moonshine. This works for me. pretty much they were just a giant gang oh solid uber but for moonshine this works yeah yeah i mean this this this frankly speaks to me and i i i look forward to learning more about this startup except uh i guess moonshine without like the o's and the e and the i mention mention i think they just yeah it's just soylent but in the in the woods. The extent of this corruption was so open

that it was kind of known statewide that, hey, if you want to do some crimes, Athens is the place to do it. So another reason that Crump installed sheriffs like Cantrell in small towns was to get a foothold in the area, uh, because he had,

uh, designs and larger office and power. Um, because like we talked about a little, they, the sheriffs kind of controlled the election. Um, you bring your ballot by hand to a ballot box,

uh, which then after you, after, you know, the polls were closed, those boxes would then be secured by the sheriffs and delivered to the jail for counting. Meaning, technically, if you had a sheriff who then, remember, hires all of his deputies, you control every election, assuming that you hire a crooked piece of shit to be sheriff. Or at least finagle a crooked piece of shit sheriff into office, which is what he did.

crooked piece of shit of shit sheriff into office which is what he did um in 1940 election sent george woods a guy on cantrell's payroll to the state legislature uh woods promptly introduced quote an act to redistrict mcminn county um it reduced the number of voting precincts from 23 to 12 and cut down the number of justices of the peace from 14 to 7 of these 7 4 were openly being paid by cantrell uh when government when governor prentice cooper again great southern name in the 40s uh signed woods's bill into law on february 15th 1941 it effectively uh like any republican opposition died in mcmahon county because now every layer of the power structure is being paid by crump or cantrell or both um it's like a pyramid scheme for political construction construct like these his upline. They're sitting there selling It Works body wraps.

Brain pills. So like we've kind of talked about before, this might just sound like politics being politics to us, but McMinn County is and was a deeply strange place in American political history. For instance, during the Civil War, Tennessee was on the side of the Confederacy, though it was pretty contested, and Tennessee supplied more regiments to the Union than any other Confederate state, which was pretty common. But also, McMinn County was deeply in the Confederate part of it, and they sided with the Union, just the single county. Also, in the 1800s, when Spain and the U..s was on the verge of war the county itself declared war

first wait on who just to be clear spain all right i just so you know i just want to make sure you know you never know it's just randomly declares war in the u.s some fucking hard people come from mcmahon county man i hope they got that on a t-shirt. It's like a deep independent streak, right? So when these outsiders moved in to do their bullshit, they were pretty upset. And there's actually a good hint that Cantrell and Crump wouldn't be able to pull this off if it wasn't for a little thing called World War II going on at the time. called World War II going on at the time because despite the population of the county being kind of low, a huge amount of the population left to go fight the war. 10% of all men left the county to go fight

and shoot Nazis in the face. This drained the county of manpower, but also actual people to stand up against political corruption. People in the town suffering under political repression and overt oppression of cantrell openly began to say wait until the gi's get back shit will be different uh wait till your dad gets home no there's a t-shirt uh so in 1945 and 1946 that exact thing began to happen. And they weren't returning home not knowing what was happening.

They knew and had been hearing rumors through letters and everything else, especially because this is a very small town and word travels very fast among soldiers from McMinn County. They already heard about Cantrell and his goon squad. Their parents had written them letters about the thugs in uniform had been terrorizing the town and there was even a pretty well-known story of one soldier going home on leave and getting jumped and beaten to death by the cops over his paycheck so like everybody knew some shit was going down as soon as they got home according to local veteran Bill White everybody knew about it uh but like they tried to push it from their head because remember they're going home for the first time and for some of them in years uh and at the time soldiers who uh who are getting out of the military being

mustered out so to speak got an allowance in like hundreds and hundreds of dollars and they would just be given to them in a lump sum uh and yeah, which sounds like a very bad thing to do. And they, of course, these teenagers and people in the early mid-20s or whatever, would immediately go out and spend it on bars, getting fights and stuff like that. And this is when they met the local cops. The cops knew about the mustering out pay. So they'd come up with reasons to arrest the soldiers, steal their money money and throw them in jail to collect the bounty uh which is fucked up um and then uh after more than one soldier got his ass beaten robbed by the cops the veterans started to get pretty pissed off this is this is like the first time i i feel like but they're veterans how do you do that to them

like but i mean it's world World War II veterans, yeah. Right, obviously not me and Joe because we went to a shithead war, but you know, these people like fought Nazis for a while. I don't understand being like, yeah, now we're going to steal their money and shit on them a little bit.

Like there was just a war, man. Leave them alone. Yeah, you would think if like, like I get like maybe other war veterans, especially like Vietnam were treated treated with apathy, nobody really cared all that much, or if you believe in some stories, outright disgust. If there's one generation of veterans, everybody's like, even the shitty mobster cops, like, yeah, can't jump those guys. It would be like World War II vets, but they're like, nah, fuck them, steal their paycheck. And like, so eventually a collection of these veterans

got together in 1946 and decided they had enough of this shit. But unfortunately for them, they believed in electoralism. So as Cantrell was running for office. Oh, you dumb bastards. Oh, you sweet summer child. Yeah, and they will quickly learn that

electoralism works when it's backed with a gun. So, Cantrell was running for re-election, so they decided to stand against him and everyone he supported for various different local offices. The veterans didn't much care about politics or political parties. They didn't actually have any

stances, except fuck that guy. So they formed a completely non-partisan political party that really didn't actually have any stances except fuck that guy so they formed a completely non-partisan political party that really didn't have any stances other than your vote will be counted like that was like we won't steal your vote we won't steal the election just vote for us and don't vote for cantrell that was it um i've heard worse yeah like like look we'll figure it out when we get elected but at least we won't steal your shit and like admittedly it was a good choice because there are veterans of you know years-long horrible overseas war they're not going to be intimidated by violence by like other people had been like okay i'm they're like if anybody is more comfortable with violence it'd be people

who just came back from world war ii do you think i have a problem with killing one is also just like you know just a lot of people running for office with a lot of untreated ptsd absolutely yeah and you're gonna see shines of that throughout this entire incident they're like it's like it's very obvious that these guys only know how to solve their problems through violence on both sides and like one side isn't used to being having violence being visited against them and the the whole time the veteran's like, no, I'm going to go get my gun and we'll solve this. So to run against Cantrell, they chose a hard motherfucker named Knox Henry.

He had fought in North Africa, had been wounded multiple times, and had a local reputation for being quick to get into and fight fistfights and drinking a lot. I mean, I wouldn't fight a guy named nox henry like if i was at a bar and some guy said his name was nox henry and we were having words no i'm good i don't want that i don't want no that smoke uh no i don't know if any of those things would be the main trait i would be looking for for someone running for public office but like

different times man i don't know we've done worse if we're honest i mean you know absolutely yeah i know i mean he didn't he's also bar flies we got that going for us yeah i know some bar flies had probably left the office i mean they couldn't be any worse than like a lot of other people soon rumors of trouble began uh between the two sides and it became pretty obvious that things were going to get out of control uh so the mayor of athens decided that he was just going to leave town uh and he took a nice long vacation just just the mayor left um like i'm getting the fuck out of here uh this unfold like this cowardly ass move seated control the town to the sheriff because apparently towns were weird back then like if the if the mayor of honolulu decided to just leave it's not like the chief of police is

like i am king now well i i imagine when you're living in a community that only has like 7 000 people you're just like look and for whatever reason if the mayor goes on vacation i'm the interim mayor or whatever like you know it's a it's a progression that wouldn't happen in honolulu but now during all this cantrerell decided that he might actually lose. So he decided to spread stories and rumors that his deputies had caught veterans printing off fake ballots so they could rig the election. The veterans countered that if anybody could bring one of these fake ballots that they supposedly created, they'd pay you $1,000. Nobody could because they didn't exist. They supposedly create, they'd pay you a thousand dollars.

Nobody could because they didn't exist. And so the veterans decided once again to simply like their campaign slogan was like, your vote will be counted. They'll be, and furthermore, they will make sure of it. So like, then things began to get heated up between the two sides with with other towns and counties like uh neighboring counties and stuff uh knowing exactly what kind of person cantrell was and what he would do so like veteran groups from other counties reached out to the mcminn county veterans like hey do you guys need backup we'll make sure the cops can't rig the election so we also would like to come and do violence please yes we would also like to commit violence against the cops just every single one of them remembering a really bad exchange they had with mps while they were deployed or whatever so in response cantrell brought in dozens and dozens of hired goons many of whom were just criminals thieves and mobsters from georgia that he deputized them

armed them with uh pistols shotguns and tommy guns and stationed them throughout every ballot box in the county now we need to be we need to to clarify because you know this is joe's podcast we're talking about the state of georgia not the soviet um georgia country correct uh actually no he flew in a whole bunch of people named like yorgi shakasvili and armed them to the teeth you only you only think that joe stalin died he actually ended up uh fighting a fucking war in tennis in uh kentucky the last day it's like a harry turtle dove uh novel the last days of stalin it's him him getting uh getting gunned down by a sheriff during the

election in yeah like buttfuck Tennessee defending his fucking still just like fucking shooting an owl with revenue agents they didn't like that he brought that fancy vodka down here and started to undercut their whiskey sales this

Stalin is much better now I'm going to be a hairy turtle dove tanky now This Stalin is much better. Now I'm going to be a Harry Turtle Dove tankie now. This is a much better version of Stalin. Yeah, I'm going to write this book and then I'm going to say, no, this is the only Stalin I stand now, is the one who decided to leave it all behind

after World War II and went and ran for local politics and booted a whole bunch of corrupt cops out of... I mean, come on. This is the exact movie that America needs right now. I mean, I'm excited for the Louisville Soviet, if I'm honest.

I'm excited to see where this one goes. I'm willing to hear it out. So, when voting day began, hundreds of new deputies and hundreds of veterans flooded Athens. But the deputies began to arrest legally appointed poll watchers because, you know, there's such thing. Poll watchers aren't just like weird militia types of guns.

They're a legal entity that exists. That's what you call the guy who has to administer the urinalysis. I mean, that's been a whole mess on Twitter over the course of the past week, if we're honest. So seeing this, hundreds of veterans gathered outside a local shop, knowing that something was up. They knew at 4 p.m. when the polls closed, the cops would take all the ballots back to the jail to be counted, at which one point they would then just steal the election.

So like the actual casting of ballots was kind of a formality. Some veterans said they should immediately mobilize and chase the cops off from the polling station by force and then take them over. The idea was turned down for fear of creating an open battle with the cops or unarmed civilians. Because I should be clear here, the civilians 100% support the veterans, which will become increasingly obvious.

But the decision was made that anyone who didn't have a weapon with them should go home and get theirs and then come back just in case. Though most of them had brought their weapons. just in case. Though most of them had brought their weapons. By 3pm, Tom Gillespie, who is an elderly black farmer, stepped in the 11th Precinct polling place.

A guy named Wendy Wise, who was a Cantrell deputy. Wait, none of these are real names. Wendy Wise, that's just not a name. It's just definitely a mobster name. Hunter's like, go get Wendy. No, not dumb Wendy.

Wendy Wise. He told Gillespie, hey, N-word, you can't vote here. When Tom protested and pulled out his receipt for his poll tax, because that's normally why poll tax existed existed was to stop black people from voting. Why struck him in the face with brass knuckles? Gillespie dropped his ballot and turn and ran for the door. So wise pulled out a pistol and shot him in the back as he, as he reached the sidewalk because state sanctioned murder of black people in

the U S is his tale as old as time. Thankfully this doesn't happen anymore um now remember this is broad daylight in the middle of a crowded place um and it was as though the waterworks building was this particular ballot um so like angry people began to gather like you just shot that fucking unarmed person in the back um so deputies panicked and locked themselves inside of the of the waterworks building and they also took two veteran poll watchers with them hostage um because when you've already done this many shitty things you might as well just keep going right um soon crowds began once you reach a felony you know you might as well just keep going for it. I don't know.

Just rack them up. If there's one safe place to commit a hate crime in America, it's 1940s Tennessee. Fair enough. And if a cop is about to not get away with shooting an unarmed black person in Tennessee in 1940s, that man is probably going to die. And I hope that's where the story goes you know what's actually shocking is people were quite upset about this obvious instance of racial violence um because crowds began to form and heckle them for shooting an unarmed man in the back um and when a few unarmed veterans approached the building to be like hey what the fuck why is pointing a gun at them to which point a veteran's responded by yelling quote let's go get our guns and then running back to where they

stored their guns um that's a perfect that's a perfect uh lions led by donkey quote the lions led by donkeys let's go get our guns. It sounds like something out of a fucking Mel Brooks film. That's like a line out of Blazing Saddles. Let's go get our guns. And then everyone just runs off and gets their guns. Yeah, that's like a filler for a Western. But the chief deputy heard that and dispatched two cops to follow them and arrest them when they went to go get their guns.

I honestly don't think that they had broken a law yet, but like, whatever, they're corrupt. And when the cops came upon them at the store where they had their guns and had been full of other veterans with guns, the cops were then taken captive at gunpoint. So two more were sent to see what happened to the first two. And a crowd of townspeople formed outside the shop where the veterans had turned into their headquarters to see what was going on. Because they saw a fistfight break out and cops get jumped and whatever. And they also went to cheer them on for fighting the cops. whatever um and they also went to cheer them on for fighting the cops uh so when when those cops showed up when the next group of cops showed up uh armed and with their guns drawn the crowd turned on them and began to beat them and drug them inside for the veterans so like uh things

are getting rapidly out of hand here are we talking like so like do you know like are we talking like we're like all the, are we talking like where all the sheriff's deputies at this point, where they'll just carry, I don't know, a.38 revolver or something? Some of them had shotguns and Tommy guns. Okay.

Because remember, you can buy a Tommy gun at the hardware store. Yeah. They weren't all piled into an MRAP with an LDAR on top of it no no um the crowd began then began to demand that the veterans kill the cops for revenge for shooting tom gillespie and the and some of the like half the veterans were like yeah all right uh we should do that's fair like they shot one of us we should shoot of them. But several others didn't suddenly want to like find themselves executing cops in the street.

Which like good call. Weak. Weak. That post nut clarity. You know, just like, oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Whoa, whoa. Let's not murder people for a minute here.

Let's not start killing people yet. But they did fear for their captives' lives should they leave the shop and the townsfolk descend upon them and tear them apart. So the captives were then driven 10 miles outside of town and chained to some trees

to save them from the people that they have been terrorizing. Meanwhile, at a different polling station, two watchers named Harold and Dooley, again, great Southern names, looked on in growing frustration as deputies allowed people without poll tax receipts, people who were minors,

and for people who were just out of town to vote, you know, doing voter fraud. Finally, Harrell had enough as he watched an underage cousin that he knew to be Cantrell's cousin to hand her ballot to a cop which then the cop was going to put in in the bowling box or the ballot box he then grabbed

the cop's wrist to stop them from putting in the ballot box the cop then produced a blackjack and beat the ever-loving shit out of harrell a task made significantly easier by the fact that harrell had lost his arm and most of the fingers on the other hand in fighting in north africa cool good yeah i yeah real real real good there cop uh the cops enclosed the polling place and took the two veteran poll watchers hostage which seems to happen a lot um seems to be a growing theme for these cops yeah uh by now it was.m., and people were mad, but just beginning to think this election was like all the others, and there was nothing that they could do to stop the fraud. The ballot boxes had been brought to the jail, and the day was lost. It had been stolen again despite their best efforts.

This included many of the veterans, but not a guy named Bill White, a veteran of the Pacific and all-around bad motherfucker. Bill is still alive and does interviews about this from time to time, and he's fucking hilarious. You need to get him on. You absolutely need to do an interview about it then. He's in his 90s. I don't know if he still can, but I'm willing to try. A lot of this information comes from a book that he was heavily interviewed for, as well as the oral history that he put forth for McMinn County on this.

Because this might shock you. People really don't like to talk about this. It's more of a local history thing. So Bill gathered what he called the fighting group. It was about a dozen veterans. He grabbed a truck and made for the local National Guard armory. grabbed a truck and made for the local National Guard armory. According to White, he, quote,

broke down the armory doors and took all the rifles, two Thompson submachine guns, and all the ammunition we could carry, loaded up in a two-ton truck, and went back to the GI headquarters and passed out 70 high-powered rifles and two bandoliers of ammunition to each person. Let's go get our guns indeed. Yeah. At this point, Cantrellll a guy named mansfield who is a state representative and about 50 deputies were locked in the jail with the ballot boxes

with them were two members of the election commission counting the votes and almost certainly fucking with the results so the gi's gathered across the street and then put someone in the high ground with a thompson sub machine gun so they could have like covering fire. Because remember, they just did this for real, like a lot. Now everybody is very heavily armed and more than a few were very drunk. I mean, this is like the, you know, I got one last job to do. It's just like, I don't. But you really love that last fight. Yeah. Like at this point, all of them are just looking for a reason to fuck someone up with the grand that they stole

but like also for the right reasons i mean like it's just kind of funny because like you know what is it the uh all the news about the those uh michigan militia weirdos came out like what like two weeks ago and they were doing like you know like 15 different like slow passes past the governor's mansion and then like talking about like you know like google and shit doing like you know like 15 different like slow passes past the governor's mansion and then like talking about like you know like google and shit on like you know mackinac island and whatever and then like meanwhile these guys just like drove like looted the national guard armory and just like figured this shit out you know it's interesting uh i haven't looked into that a whole lot even though i'm from michigan did they really start looking into mackinac island of

all places yeah so last i heard so they were looking at a place that sells fudge yeah well so that and like and of course like infamously like does not have cars and like is only serviced by only cars and ambulance so like you know you would have had to like they would have had to like kidnap like the governor i guess like around her security detail and then like bundle her into like they have carriages there so like you know like bundle her into a carriage and then like get i guess like bring her to a ferry and then hijack a ferry uh it's like very stupid which like we're talking like a you know like i mean don't get me wrong i i appreciate like when someone wants to like commit like a,

you know, a historical crime in the modern day. So like, it would have been cool if they did like, you know, like a stagecoach robbery and like fucking 2020. Um, and like piracy on militia raid.

Yeah. Like, you know, like it'd be cool. Like if they actually like wandered their way into being like, you know, the, you know,

the first dumb motherfuckers to like domestically get tied for, you know, tried for piracy since like, I don't know, like who the fuck knows when like, you know, motherfuckers would have actually ended up getting tried under admiralty law.

It would have been amazing. It's every libertarians wet dream. Yeah. Like, you know, they're actually going to fucking fringe on the flag and would have made some shit, you know,

like original title three jurisdiction motherfuckers. But yeah, but no, supposedly they were also looking at the Mackinac Island, like, you know, governor's like resort as well as her like actual like residence. God, that's so dumb. That's so dumb. I believe it. Speaking of like not dumb people from Michigan. So these veterans, right veterans gathered outside the jail. Then Bill White says that he did this.

It's actually really interesting that Bill White's admitting to all this because of all the felonies I'm about to talk about. Also, they've already kidnapped eight goddamn cops. cocks uh bill white screamed out from across the road uh to bring to come out bring all the ballot boxes or they'd fucking shoot him um and then uh but it's more diplomatically later as lay siege to the jail but like you know uh well i'm willing to believe what White said is real because he's drunk and heavily armed. A few deputies were outside of the jail for security and booked it for the jail door. And some historians argue over who shot first. But thankfully, Bill White irons all that out by admitting that he shot first. And immediately shot a cop in the back with an M1 Garand.

This caused everyone else in the GI crew to open fire, hitting another deputy. And they kind of crawled their way inside. And then everybody just kind of openly just started waylaying the jail with fire. But that didn't do much because it's a brick building. Now, according to Bill White, several of the GIs had a moment of clarity, realizing this might be their last chance to run

and get away with all of the laws they just broke because nobody's entirely sure of who's in their group. That's anonymity in a large group. But they had clearly done enough to spend the rest of their lives in prison but bill white had definitely done enough to be executed at this point um but then the idea was kind of dropped and everybody just went back to shooting at the cops uh which is a weird moment of solidarity like we're all gonna be executed for this but you know we're we've gone too far

we might as well just keep shooting at the cops yeah they're not gonna un-execute us at this point it's not gonna it's not gonna get better so we might as well go forward when you also have to figure like you know these guys are in like the living memory of like i don't know like the you know the uh the army running down the bonus march and like you know about and you know like the the history of labor actions from like they're you know the 30 in the 20s 30s and through the 40s you know, like the history of labor actions from like, you know, the 30s and the 20s, 30s and through the 40s, you know, so like they're pretty used to at this point of just being like, well, I guess. Guess they're going to kill us now if they catch us. Yeah, I mean, these guys were all pretty open with their exception, like just accepting that they were going to die, but they didn't really care, which I could respect that. but they didn't really care,

which I could respect that. And this is also compounded by Cantrell and Mansfield who are screaming out the window that the state police or the National Guard was on its way, both of which was a complete lie. Funnier still, when they tried to have that happen, Cantrell called the sheriff of Polk County and was like, hey, we need fucking backup

and told them about the situation. The sheriff refused, asking Cantrell, quoterell quote what do you think I'm fucking crazy uh again it may and maybe there's an off chance uh that like the sheriff of Polk County was like no I kind of want the veterans to kill you. You're kind of a huge bastard. Like I said, that moment of clarity didn't last long because the cops opened fire, returned fire rather, and wounded someone. And so several of the GIs began making Molotov cocktails and others had raided the local hardware store for dynamite because hardware stores were way fucking cooler back then. hardware store for dynamite because hardware stores were way fucking cooler back then you could buy a tommy gun uh at the at the hardware store alongside your dynamite until like the late 40s early 50s uh way cooler um

yeah you used to be able to buy opium over the counter too like america was it's wild that we survived like it's wild that anybody survived victorian times but also wild that as a species we managed to you know or as americans we managed to get through all of this stuff because if it wasn't like living in rural areas where just like dynamite was stacked on shelves next to tommy guns and everybody could just get whatever you wanted. It was living in New York City with pestilence and dirt and horseshit all over the place and stuff. The fact that

obviously it's not like this here in 1945, but we've managed to get through so much. I do have to have a little correction. It was until 1934 that you could buy a Tommy gun at a hardware store. But in 1946, a dynamite was still cool.

Yeah, I was going to say, because I think there was a... Up until the Heller decision issued with the fucking Roberts court, there was a fairly subtle precedent that you were not entitled to just like buy assault weapons in uh the united states um like that was like definitely like a thing for like a long period of time like you know because like that was after like you know like prohibition and you know like fucking uh yeah you know that's mostly what it's like yeah exactly i mean like you know it used to be the way that like you know the cops would decide that they were going to outgun criminals just by restricting the sale of arms and not buying a bunch of shit off the DOD.

Or, I guess, being given a bunch of shit off the DOD. Even then, though, the idea that during the Spanish... I was saying something like this a few days ago. The idea that during the Spanish influenza epidemic, I was saying this other like this a few days ago like the the idea that like during the spanish influenza epidemic like you know you i'm sure that there were probably newspaper articles about like no just take some patent medicine that's full of fucking cocaine and like you know go to work like it doesn't matter if your co-workers are dying like you'll work double time you'll work fucking 36 hours at a stretch like it doesn't even fucking matter anymore yeah um and i mean if this is 2020 mcminn county would have just been given a sherman tank

right they would yeah or like you know just an m2 abrams they would just driven one over from like fort knox jokes on you the motherfuckers would have break down 20 feet out the gate i know i've worked on those tanks they're awful that's why that's why they break down 20 feet out the gate. Yeah, I can't change the oil out of my car, but here you go, kid. Work on this tank. I'm sure they'll be fine.

So when this is happening, when there's a full exchange of gunfire, straight up 100% firefight going on, an ambulance appeared outside the jail, pulled on out of nowhere. So the GI is thinking it was for taking away the wounded and dead. Let it go by. They're like, well pulled out of nowhere. So the GI is thinking it was for taking away the wounded and dead. Let it go by. They're like,

well, you know, we would do this for the Nazis. I guess we should do this for the cops too. We should at least give them the Geneva convention. Yeah. Which is more than they've ever given anybody in the town. So yeah,

they, they were, they were waiting for like the, the wounded and the dead to get loaded up um so they were waiting for the wounded and the dead to get loaded up and that's when they when the ambulance is pulling away they realize that just cantrell and mansfield were in the back uh and they actually left all the wounded behind in the jail so they got pretty pissed at that it was just an escape route for him so at 2 a.m a drunk gi chucked a bundle of dynamite at the jail but apparently couldn't throw for shit uh and the the bundle landed short

exploded and sent a patrol car flipping through the air which admittedly is cool as hell uh i mean that fucking rules i think it was and one of them was under mansfield's personal car uh so uh three more bundles were thrown landing in a nearby porch under another under a patrol car and then the third one finally landing against the jail wall all of which exploded around the same time that rules and yeah so all they yeah they finally got a stick a bundle of dynamite to blow up against the wall um when that happened like it went off and the gis immediately rushed in for close combat uh because remember they just did this to like nazis and japanese soldiers so they're like fine whatever we can do this to americans too uh they like went rushing

in with like submachine guns and hand tools um only to find the deputies crying and surrendering with their hands in the air. That's what they did. I believe that's what the kids call fucking around and finding out. I'm surprised that they didn't, like, as soon as Cantrell got bussed out of there, but they left all the wounded. Like, I would have been like, oh, well, fuck this. I give up. I'm sorry. I didn't realize he was that big of a shithead.

Right, like, I'm not well fuck this. I give up. I'm sorry. I didn't realize he was that big of a shithead. Right? Like I'm not dying for management. Fuck that shit. Like, I can't imagine. I mean, maybe at this point, you know,

when they're like, these guys are going to fucking murder us if we, if we surrender, um, because they seem like they might, you know, from all the machine gun fire. Um,

but I mean, I, after watching my boss fucking escape and leave me behind i would have i would have immediately ran into the woods i would have done something i wouldn't just sat there uh but whatever but i'm also not a mobster turned cop so you know whatever um but you know when the when the when the the townsfolk saw that all of this was over um they descended upon the surrendering cops like a fucking plague um so did the soldiers

was it like one of those things where the soldiers were just like you know you're standing over them it's just like oh we surrender we surrendered like oh then now you're not gonna let us die it's like we're not gonna kill you but they are and then all the all the the people come in with like shovels and and rakes and stuff and kill them yeah i was gonna say i'm like i'm like picturing like the last scene from what is it the the beast when oh yeah like all the women from the village just like go in and just like murder the shit out of the soviets yeah exactly um not on purpose uh like i i don't think the gi's thought this is gonna happen because like why would you expect your entire town to like lynch the cops you know uh but you know the the the gi's were like arresting them effectively

like doing a citizen's arrest and then, um, like grab the ballot boxes. And that's when like the, the town pretty much let out 10 years of pent up rage. Um, a guy named minus Wilberg, uh, again, just a lot of like fucking Stella name,

like also not for nothing, but like the existence of someone named Tipper Gore makes a whole lot more sense. Now that I've heard this story. Minus was known... Tell me about Minus, my new favorite person. He was known for being

the worst cop in town, like being an absolute fucking asshole. So the townspeople held him down and slashed his throat. Holy shit. Yeah. And then the jail superintendent was shot in the face uh at a point blank range by someone with a with a pistol blowing his jaw off but not killing him

uh and then we remember our friend windy wise uh the guy who shot tom gillespie he was nearly beaten to death by townspeople, but pretty much his life was saved by the veterans. Now, after a tense few minutes, the GIs were able to stop the mass lynching that was occurring in front of them and then lock their prisoners

right back into the jail they had just taken over and then posted guards to keep the townspeople and I guess other cops away. I don't know. Probably mostly the townspeople. It sounds keep the townspeople and I guess other cops away. I don't know. Probably mostly the townspeople. It sounds like the townspeople, the next ones were like, I'll throw dynamite too.

We're going to kill them. Yeah. Now, when the smoke cleared, somehow nobody on either side was dead. Even the guy that got his throat slashed managed to survive. Yeah. But that did not... It just didn't have the heart in it yeah i mean i mean i i'm i'm happy nobody was murdered uh but like you would expect someone to be murdered after all this

um especially you know getting lynched well then like the guys who like even like the uh the guys who got shot in like the initial like encounter like they were still like kicking around oh yeah yeah which is really weird. It specifically noted that nobody was murdered. Nobody died. But that didn't stop the New York Times from running a headline the very next day that said, Tennessee Sheriff is slain in Election Day violence. It took them weeks

to correct it. That's my New York Times. Yep. Now, after this, an impromptu martial law was put in place by the soldiers themselves. They patrolled the town and set up outposts. They also armed townspeople

and kind of set up like a collective defense because they assumed that Mansfield was going to send the National Guard or another army of cops after them. And they had no intention on surrendering. They were going to fight them, too. But they never came. Everybody just kind of let them take over, which is not an outcome I expected.

Now, the town folk themselves applauded them for obviously saving them from 10 years of Cantrell fuckery. for obviously saving them from 10 years of Cantrell fuckery. But the national news decried them because even in 1946, civility politics were alive and dumb as fuck. You can't slash the throats of your enemies. That's just not very nice. I mean, if you can, vote them out. If that doesn't work, do what you do.

Right, if that doesn't work, don't just shoot him in the face. You should protest or something. It's like, no, I think shooting the guy in the face made things change a lot quicker. What if Bill White was like, guys, guys, I have an idea. I started a YouGov petition. I think we can figure this out. So another small side story here. This might maybe sound familiar.

The national news jumped on the town of Athens, but not for the reason that you'd expect. For over a year afterwards, they hung on every single word that came out of Athens and every single crime, which, by the way, Athens was now cop-free. Athens and every single crime, which by the way, Athens was now cop-free. So they said every single time a crime was reported, like, look at the lawlessness that the GIs have created. And every crime was reported

as more evidence of the GIs being the bad guys. In reality, crime had actually dropped significantly in the absence of organized crime organization known as the McMinn County Sheriff's Office. office like no one was getting jumped on the side of the road for their paycheck anymore oh yeah it's it's weird that that happened i mean you know lord knows that at least the mainstream media you know recognizes the mistake and everything is you know it's

currently you know reporting in a very uh non-part, unbiased way from, I don't know, Minneapolis? Yeah. Yeah. Thankfully, they don't do this anymore. So on the 4th of August, Pat Mansfield telegraphed his resignation, who was the guy that was running in place of Cantrell. who was the guy that was running in place of Cantrell. And Governor McCord, the governor of the state, requested that Henry Knox, or sorry, Knox Henry,

I always get that backwards because Knox is definitely a last name, requested that he fill the unexpired term of the sheriff, which would end on September 1st. So he was appointed immediately. And the next day, State Representative George Woods returned to the county under GI protection to convene the election commission that certified the election, and Knox Henry was officially made the sheriff.

A cheer rang out in the courthouse when Woods read out the numbers the numbers as nox was elected by over a thousand votes uh over his opponent now good for them yeah electoral politics works when you shoot somebody in the face would you would you shoot enough people, things get done. Now, what followed? The Lions Led by Junkies podcast does not endorse violent revolution. Yeah, that is not binding legal advice. Please do not cite. If you decide to go weirdly leftist soft sit

and decide to undertake any sort of insurrectionary action, please do not cite this in your inevitable FBI statement please don't mention us in your manifesto all of this occurred in Minecraft this is actually

had a really weird after effect which was more fear mongering yeah obviously the the civility thing we talked about but also the local news which was more fear mongering. Uh, the fuck you say? Yeah. Obviously the, uh, the civility thing we talked about, but also the local news and other places were saying that like these

nonpartisan world war two veterans, where it was going to start a nationwide movement, you know, effectively forcing the corrupt political establishment to cede power to people who are sick of their shit. Um, Oh no. no and yeah like you know and pretty they pretty much daydreamed about a revolution uh obviously that never happened um because it turned out that the veterans weren't actually all that uh like interested in politics

they really just fucking hated their what was happening in their town. It was very, very local. The people all just kind of went home. Knox Henry served two terms as sheriff before just getting sick of politics and quitting. And nothing else really came of it. To this day in Athens... That would be my move, I think. Yeah, I mean, it's surprising he did two terms. He was hoping he could change some stuff, but he really couldn't because that's what happens

when you think you can change things from the inside. I think at the end of it, he's like, man, we were only changing things when we were shooting people. Now, to this day in Athens, from what I could find, and according to the articles that I sourced for this, there's no memorial or signage of any kind that denotes what happened there. That one day where the direct action of a community uprooted and destroyed entrenched American political corruption. And, you know, it worked. It's probably, I'm sure there's no reason that nobody wants to commemorate that with a memorial of any kind.

I'm sure there's no reason that nobody wants to commemorate that with a memorial of any kind. Yeah. It's weird that, you know, the national news media and, you know, history books, history textbooks and everything else.

It's strange how that, you know, that hasn't been more directly popularized, you know, kind of similar to how it's strange that, you know, like most labor history in the United States hasn't been popularized or even how like,

you know, Martin Luther King is now remembered as the kind of this like big huggable teddy bear and not you know like a uh you know christian socialist who like you know heavily believed in like workers rights the communist gun owner right yeah who carried a gun with them pretty much everywhere yeah as the as did pretty much everybody who was in the civil rights movement back in the day. The putatively non-violent civil rights movement that was actually very heavily armed, just a thing that you won't read in any textbook.

No, everybody joined hand, walked across the bridge, and then suddenly racism ended. Yeah, no, there was the... I'm pretty sure that there was something about fire hoses and dogs, and then Little Rock, and, there was the I'm pretty sure that there was, you know, something about fire hoses and dogs and then Little Rock. And then, you know, and then there was a march on Washington and then and then Obama was elected and then racism in the United States. At least that's what I remember from my from, you know, my my understanding history. history so so joe so all all of this i would say all of this happens they they kick them out they take over the town and then nothing just nobody ever talks about it again does

is is this is this one place like particularly liberal or something like no they're no longer the people declaring war on on the confederacy i mean i don't know enough about like modern day mcmahon county to say that like they don't they haven't lost the independent streak or whatever i'm sure they're they still have a deeply weird political history like we all like every locale does if you look far enough but it was a very isolated incident um some gi's attempted to make this this a regional political movement and all pretty much died because the political superstructure that holds the system in place generally aren't okay

with people attempting to destabilize it with a nonpartisan political party that's mostly just based on, yo, fuck those guys, vote for us instead. But I mean, it died out obviously you know stuff like this like we just talked about we don't like to remember it because it sets a dangerous precedent for people who are in power um it's you know kind of like the same reason why people don't like to talk about shay's rebellion uh or any other any other popular movement that's ever happened in the United States. Or more Americans are probably more interested in Spartacus than any of their own slave rebellions.

Because we like to have these things at arm's length. I mean, I'm not an American historian. I didn't even major in American history. But it seems like of most people americans are deeply uncomfortable with their own militant history when it comes to certain things like american history is written by people who wanted to change things figured out they couldn't and then shot it in the face until it changed like that's our entire history at no point was popular sentiment even during like the revolution full of racist slave-owning assholes and libertarians they realized like hmm we can't solve this in the house of burgesses we

have to shoot british people uh you know like we have to shoot them until they go away as it turns out we tried to be nice you wouldn't go away so now we have to shoot you well not even like not even like shooting but like literal tar and feathering which is like such a horrific thing when you actually like fucking think about it but like you know i mean like that was you know i my uh you know my first office was like directly above like you know the scene of the fucking boston massacre like yeah i mean shit like that you know is you know directly you know related to like the way they're like we conduct politics now but we now, but we just kind of think that everything was like, everyone debated

each other until we got revolution, I guess. And then George Washington was just the best person. He debated King George, and that was how the American Revolution was won. And similarly, Lincoln debated

Jefferson Davis, and that's how the Civil War was won. We've just been this weirdly apolitical society somehow that has progressed at this point. Well, I think that's why we get a lot of what we saw, especially in the heat of the height of the protests especially like the autonomous on seattle things like that uh you have a complete divorcing of reality of american history because they don't want you to know that that's how i say they like them you know the monolithic all they uh like people who write our textbooks people people who debate politics, people who consider themselves wonks of literally any kind really don't want to learn that every... I mean, that's why I do a show on military history, because history is formed through militant violence. Very few times in history are they not.

And that goes almost doubly for American history. I mean, the civil rights movement was very goddamn close of becoming a militant movement. And it was in a lot of corners. People were shot. There was popular uprisings. People brought guns where they went to keep themselves safe and to reject the state. These things occurred. Did they win on their own?

No. Did they have a part in it yes absolutely but it's like i think that's one of the things that bothers me the most about that is you know people act like uh rebellions and revolutions are 100 fought with weapons and they're not you know every single revolution has a political side of it you The civil rights movement had civil disobedience alongside militant rejection. The IRA had political parties operating alongside of it. The Russian Revolution

had an entire political side of it. The Armenian Revolution always has. You work through the ballot and the gun. That's literal history. The only thing that changed in recent history is we just don't like to think about it so much because it makes people uncomfortable. I mean,

it should, you should not be comfortable with militant violence, but divorcing the two things like the, the two subs, like how things ended up the way they are, why these GIs came to the point that like, Hmm, this election thing isn't working.

Electoralism is not working for us because the people who control electoralism are the ones we're running against and you're not they're not gonna let you vote them out of power right you know uh so we are gonna apply violence until the conditions have been such change until that is the case um that's much more common in history than people are comfortable um coming to terms with well because yeah you know well yeah and i mean like you know and similarly like uh you know like um one of the one of the you know i've recommended to other people one of the most instructive books i've read over the course of

like the last year has been uh was called uh we will shoot back and it's about the history of like armed violence and i want to say it was the uh the mississippi civil rights movement like dating all the way back to like you know essentially like you know the history of armed violence. And I want to say it was the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, dating all the way back to essentially the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of Jim Crow. And one of the things you realize is that so much of the ground that was eventually laid for different voter registration campaigns and civil rights campaigns and everything else was secured by all these folks who were from various different nonviolent movements who were able to go out and organize during the day and then go home to go back and sleep at night at a house that was guarded by

folks who were hiding out in the bushes with rifles and taking shifts on the one road to the house in a car and intercepting anyone who was along the way, which is not necessarily the way that ideally a civil society should operate. But at the same time, there's a reason why there were workers' militias in the 1880s, and there's a reason why strikers responded to Pinkertons with violence in the 1930s, and there's a reason why civil rights campaigners had to secure themselves with armed guards in the 1950s and 1960s. I mean, it's always been something where you really have to make sure that the ability to engage in those campaigns is something that is hard fought and hard won and is something that we forget at our peril.

Yeah, I think that's a good way to end this. Before we commit too many crimes and Patreon demonetizes me. Demonetizes me. I think it's a good place to end it we're not going to have

a question from the legion today because everybody's busy watching the election or watching the debate um and i know this this won't come out until not this coming monday but the monday after that but you know that i guess that's that's how we'll we'll leave you with that wonderful heartwarming message of militancy. Again, it's always good to have Yolan, especially when we're talking about off-the-wall shit that I cannot get away with talking about with anybody else. So thanks for coming on. And until next time,

I'm actually not going to figure out a quippy way to end this because whatever I'm going to say is probably illegal. Rewind about 30 minutes and do that instead.