Gladio Free Europe Gladio Free Europe

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There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen. Vladimir Lenin surprisingly did not say these words about 2014, a year that saw monumental pivots in culture, technology, and world events and arguably never ended at all.

Liam and Russian Sam are joined this week by their good friend Jackson or Grace Cathedral Park, a longtime advocate of the concept of "The Long 2014." They discuss how the last years of the Obama administration inaugurated a lasting vibe shift, from rise of Netflix to the brutal emergence of ISIS, or the ways that the parallel development of Black Lives Matter and the odious GamerGate galvanized masses of young Americans into extremely different forms of political rebellion.

Join Gladio Free Europe for our most recent historical exploration yet, and decide for yourself whether the Long 2014 has yet come to a close.

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The Dune series has gone through a revival of late thanks to the film adaptations of Denis Villeneuve, but what are we to make of it? In this episode we explore Dune through the lens of its author, Frank Herbert. His beliefs defy easy political classification according to today's preconceived notions, making him difficult to situate. Herbert was a libertarian who was deeply uneasy with market forces, a localist with great sympathy for indigenous and anticolonial causes, and a dyed in the wool environmentalist who voted for Reagan, on top of being a fiend for psychedelics and an inveterate JFK hater. What are we to make of all this?

In addition to Herbert's personal beliefs and political philosophy, we explore the many different real-world influences that filled in the details of Herbert's world. Although the series is set some 20,000 years in the future, traces of currently existing human cultures persisted and gave color to this world, from the martial spirit of Caucasian and North African liberation fighters to a liberal mishmash of Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, and other beliefs which continue to inform the faiths and actions of the peoples of this world.

So just who was Frank Herbert, how did this inform his writing, and what went into the worldbuilding of the Duniverse? Find out on this week's episode of Gladio Free Europe.

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Since the 17th century, nearly 10 million Irish people left their homes for an uncertain life abroad. While stories of Irish settlement in the United States and Canada are well-known, the lives of tens of thousands of Irish people who settled in Latin America are much more obscure.

In the first Gladio Free Europe solo episode, Liam runs through the long history of the Irish presence in Latin America. As early as the time of Shakespeare many Irish people began pledging their service to the formidable Spanish Empire, out of desperation, defiance, or duty to their Catholic faith. These Irish volunteers, later termed "the Wild Geese," were deployed on Spanish military adventures across the entire known world, but saw their most notable success in the American colonies. Some Irishmen would settle in Latin America as members of the colonial elite, while others would shake the foundations of the Spanish empire and push toward independence.

The Irish experience in Latin America would have its most brilliant moment in the middle of the 19th century, after Spain had been evicted from the American continent and a new hegemon emerged. At the start of the Mexican-American war, a group of mistreated Irish recruits and survivors of the great famine defected from American service to join the enemy. Driven by both Catholic and republican ideals, these men would form their own unit to defend the Mexican state against United States aggression. Although the San Patricio Battalion would be short-lived, they played a crucial role in halting the American advance and their sacrifice is a testament to over two centuries of Hispanic-Hibernian cooperation.

Ending song: El Caballo by The Chieftains

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In 1675, the Puritan colonies in North America were fighting for their lives. A brilliant young commander named Metacomet assembled a Native American coalition that upended a half-century of colonialism, pushed the English back to the coast, and would come very close to obliterating settler life in New England.

In this episode of Gladio Free Europe, Liam and Russian Sam return to colonial New England to cover King Philip's War, a conflict that is little-known today, but provides one of the greatest "What Ifs" of American history. The psychological terror of Metacomet's revolt, and the brutal English reprisals that followed, would have enormous implications on the development of racial hierarchy and the expulsion of indigenous peoples. And while Metacomet was not even 40 when he was drawn and quartered by the English, he would live forever in the nightmares of the Puritans and the memories of Native Americans, as one of the greatest icons of resistance and rebellion this continent has seen.

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Related Episodes:
E59 Indigenous New England and the First Thanksgiving

E90 After the First Thanksgiving

E84 The Ainu Before Japan

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In November 1622, the great diplomat Squanto died while leading a trade expedition with his English allies. Only a year had passed since he formed a treaty between the Pilgrims of Plymouth and the indigenous Wampanoag people. While the early years of English-Indian relations were marked by cooperation and accommodation, including the famous Thanksgiving feast, Squanto's passing marked a descent into a period of slowly ramping hostilities, culminating in the first war fought between English settlers and Native Americans.

This episode of Gladio Free Europe explores the continuing history of colonial New England, across the 1620s and '30s as the English population rapidly swelled, in large part due to the establish of the new Massachusetts Bay colony which would quickly overshadow Plymouth and the original Pilgrims. While the Pilgrims and Puritans maintained warm relations with some native peoples, such as the great Mohegan chief Uncas, competition over land and resources drew them into conflict with others.

Though little known today, the Pequot War would have particularly grave consequences on English-indigenous relations, as it set the precedent for mass slaughter of Indian women and children and ended with the enslavement of the entire Pequot nation. Massachusetts and Connecticut are not remembered as slave societies, but captive Native Americans formed an essential role in the colonial economy and helped normalize the institutions of slavery and racial segregation across the English colonies.

Listen to understand how the peace of the First Thanksgiving collapsed into the bloodshed and subjugation that defined the American colonial experience, and try to uncover how the consequences of this turn towards violence shaped our country for the worse for centuries to come.

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In 1615, just days before the New Year, famed astronomer Johannes Kepler received the news that would change his life. His mother Katharina had been accused as a witch. Over the next 6 years, the Keplers would battle these charges with every means at their disposal, just as the world around them began to collapse into the carnage of the Thirty Years' War.

Gladio Free Europe continues our foray into the dusky world of European witchcraft with our account of the witch of Katharina Kepler. Liam and Russian Sam explore how at the cusp of modernity, one of the figures most responsible for heralding changes in science and reason found himself battling against the forces of superstition. While a belief in witchcraft is now rightfully considered archaic and irrational, many people in this time attempted to reconcile theories of black magic with modern techniques of logic and rhetoric. This makes Katharina's charges, and her son's attempts to fight them, an amazing chapter of the history of both science and magic in Early Modern Europe.

This episode touches on so many topics and themes explored on this podcast in previous years. The story of Katharina Kepler is a incredible skeleton key for understanding the changes that erupted out of Germany over 400 years ago and, in that bloody process, gave us the modern world.