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How The Walking Dead Taught Us To Resist Tyranny | Zombie Book Club Ep 95
In this episode of Zombie Book Club, hosts Dan and Leah delve into the resistance against Negan's authoritarian rule in The Walking Dead. Analyzing the responses of Alexandria, Hilltop, the Kingdom, and Oceanside, they explore how each community transitions from trauma-induced reactions to organized rebellion. The discussion highlights the evolution from submission to strategic coalition-building, emphasizing the importance of unity and resilience in the face of oppression.
Drawing parallels to Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, the episode examines how the series mirrors real-world strategies for resisting authoritarianism. Themes such as refusing anticipatory obedience, defending institutions, and maintaining truth are explored through the actions of characters like Rick, Michonne, Maggie, and Ezekiel. This episode offers insights into the dynamics of resistance, both in a fictional post-apocalyptic world and in contemporary society.
Contact & Relevant Links:
- Timothy Snyder:
- Official Website: timothysnyder.org
- BlueSky: @timothysnyder.bsky.social
- Books: On Tyranny at Penguin Random House
- Audiobook: On Tyranny
- The Walking Dead Resources:
- The Walking Dead Wiki: walkingdead.fandom.com
- Living Dead Weekend
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Welcome to the Zombie Book Club. And I was supposed to fix the lawnmower today.
Speaker 2:Did you just realize that?
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is a revolution and the revolution will not be televised because it's a podcast, I mean people keep assuming that we have a video version because podcasts have become videocasts.
Speaker 2:We don't, which I'm offended by. I don't want you to see my face.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what am I supposed to do? Make faces at you. I'm Dan, and when I'm not doing a revolution, I'm writing a book about the fight against tyrannical New World Order that springs up like weeds after a zombie outbreak or leads to the zombie outbreak. It does a little of both Zombie outbreak happens and they just kind of don't do anything to stop it.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm Leah and I have a question for you, dan. Oh, okay. What does the walking dead have to teach us about standing up to tyrannical dictators?
Speaker 1:Oh, I have. I guess we'll have to find out in this episode.
Speaker 2:The whole point of the episode. That's what we're talking about it is. It's a casual debt. It's just me and Dan, which is sometimes my favorite because he's cute over there. I'm cute, table for me. If you ever see us in person, you're just gonna see me like batting my eyes at this man every day, all day. That's what she does, it's true, I'm doing it right now. Stop it. Uh, it's a casual dead and we're following up on episode 92.
Speaker 1:yeah, the uh episode where we talked about Negan being a dictator and how that lines up with the dictator's playbook. You know a step-by-step instructional if you want to be a dictator.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's not why we made that episode, though, Although I guess it could be used for nefarious means.
Speaker 1:You can use it anywhere you want, yeah.
Speaker 2:But we actually did that episode to set up for this episode. So I would recommend, if you've not listened to episode 92, go check it out. I think it's one of our best ones. We certainly got that feedback from a lot of listeners, so thank, you all for your kind words. We've had a lot of comments that we're very excited about the things that we said, from people who refused to watch Walking Dead after Negan killed some very beloved characters, so I feel like that's a high compliment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this episode we're also going to be talking about things that happened after most people gave up watching it. Yeah, and I don't care what Jack Callahan says, it does not go downhill after season six, maybe after season nine, but that's a different story that we'll talk about on a different day starting a feud with jack callahan, yeah I'm calling you out jack callahan and I'm gonna take all your beans you already have enough beans.
Speaker 1:We literally just hoarded a bunch well, we're hoarding, so we need more. Okay, we have like 120 pounds of like beans and lentils we do.
Speaker 2:and then, dan, you asked me yesterday, should we buy more? And I said no, we need to go through what we have.
Speaker 1:We need more beans. We need Jack's beans and stock. That's right yeah.
Speaker 2:But completely off topic, as we always do, totally off topic. Today we're exploring four communities that you learn about after Negan does his awful thing by murdering Glenn PS. Lots of spoilers here, so I'm assuming if you're listening to this, you've ever watched it or you're probably never going to watch it. So enjoy, we're going to give you the rundown of the show. There's four communities Alexandria, which is Rick and Michonne's community, the Hilltop, the Kingdom and Oceanside and talk about how they moved from sort of survival mode, when they were being, uh, tyrannically oppressed by negan, to actually working together to have collective liberation leah.
Speaker 1:What do their, their journeys teach us about real world authoritarianism, trauma and reclaiming power?
Speaker 2:why are you asking me a question? That's the answer. The episode is this answer oh, because I did it.
Speaker 1:Oh, we're going to talk about that.
Speaker 2:Yes, okay, uh, and we'll connect it back to the present. Uh, if you're honestly anywhere in the world, tyranny is always a potential. Yeah, so I feel like these are, these are things that I don't know.
Speaker 2:I wish we'd learned in school, but uh, you know, school's typically controlled by the people in power, so I sure didn't really openly want us learning about their tyrannical ways no, not until university did I learn about tyranny, but we're going to connect, uh, the experiences of these four communities in fighting back against negan's dictator, dictatorial uh ways, dictator, dictator ways um, by presenting some lessons in connection with what they did to timothy snyder's on tyranny, which is a book that dan read recently, yeah, and is high up there on the list of books that people should be reading right now. Yeah, or really should have been reading before again, but true, we all gotta catch up it's uh.
Speaker 1:It's available as a as a paperback book. It's available as an audiobook. I'm pretty sure the audiobook was, if not insanely cheap and it's also a very light read. The audio book itself was like two hours.
Speaker 2:A light. Okay, so light. I don't think it's light in content. Oh no, it's very heavy.
Speaker 1:It's not like you're reading.
Speaker 2:It's not zombie date night. You're not going to have a chuckle, I don't think when you read this.
Speaker 1:But each chapter is organized in a way that each chapter is a lesson in resisting tyranny Excellent, and is something I think people should read right now.
Speaker 2:But first we release episodes every Sunday. So submit to our tyranny by subscribing. Do it Submit.
Speaker 1:Turn us into Tyrannosaurus Rexes. What? That's what Tyrannosaurus Rex means. It's the tyrannical king, the terrible king of the lizards. Really, that's what?
Speaker 2:it actually means I learned something today, okay, but first we've got to do some life updates, because it is a casual dead. Oh yeah, do we have updates? The big thing I wanted to talk about was Living Dead Weekend. I don't know about you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is an update.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you've been back to work for two weeks and you're basically I'm dead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm undead. Actually, I've died and risen as a corpse and that corpse is talking to you right now.
Speaker 2:It's so my dream man. Oh no, that sounds bad. That sounds like I'm a necrophilia. Yeah, yeah, no, I don't. I don't mean that, it's a joke, in case anybody's concerned about my preferences. Anyhow, yeah, we're preparing for Living Dead weekend, so that means that we are pausing on interviews until sometime in the summer Not sure yet when those will reconvene. Not sure yet when those will reconvene, but right now life is very busy with ordering all of the things like stickers and T-shirts and banners and microphones so that we can interview folks at Living Dead Weekend. And if you haven't heard of Living Dead Weekend, it's at the mall where Dawn of the Dead was filmed, near Pittsburgh, pennsylvania, and it's happening June 6th through the 8th, so we really hope we get to see you there. Yeah, it's going to. It's happening June 6th through the 8th, so we really hope we get to see you there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's going to be quite the time. It might even be the last Living Dead weekend, though there is a petition going around to keep Walmart from turning it into a Walmart.
Speaker 2:Yeah, shout out to Steph from Listeners of the Dead podcast who alerted us to that on the Discord. So I signed. Yeah, I still have to sign, but I'm going to.
Speaker 1:I from listeners of the dead podcast who alerted us to that on the discord, so I signed. Yeah, I still have to sign, but I'm going to.
Speaker 2:I intend to, as soon as I, uh, come fully back to life we should put that petition in the show notes, because it only has like a thousand signers right now. Yeah, we'll put it in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Um, I'm back to work and it's been. It's been rough. That's also another reason why, like, it's probably best that we hold off on interviews for a while, because I just don't have it in me. We've done some since I went back to work and I got through them, but I was not at my 100% self for sure, because I'm just destroyed. A lot of things happened in my first week back to work. Somebody almost died.
Speaker 2:A few times.
Speaker 1:One of my coworkers backed over the foreman at our job with a sweeper machine and I don't know if that person's alive. I have not gotten an update yet. It's been a week.
Speaker 2:They don't tell me anything. The last you heard was that they were in a hospital, stable but not out of the woods, which I'm like, but not out of the woods, which I'm like. Stable and out of the woods, I'm like that does. That's very vague.
Speaker 1:He has a heartbeat, I guess.
Speaker 2:It's not really your business with the person's health situation is technically, but it would be nice to know if they're okay.
Speaker 1:Just in a broad way. I'll have to find somebody who knows, who knows some information. I haven't really been around anybody that knew anything. I'm always the one with the information. In this case, because I was uh backed up to the mill for doing milling, but they shave off the top layers of asphalt so that we could put down new asphalt and uh happened way behind me and uh, so I, I was, I was there, and everybody else that I've had contact with this week is asking me for information. I'm like I don't know. His bottom half was facing the wrong direction when he left, and that's all the information I have for you. So, yeah, he got pretty messed up, and that was my first week back to work.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to actually do the rant, so just imagine the rant that I would do if we had the time, about how I feel about. If you're hearing our dog making choking sounds in the background, that's because I think he just puked on our carpet. Oh, I upset ziggy. You did because I'm worried about you, oh no, oh ziggy.
Speaker 1:Is he okay, little bear?
Speaker 2:I'm sure he's okay, ziggy oh you're such a sweet little, empathetic baby. Uh, what was I saying, right? I would love to rant right now about how capitalism puts you all in these incredibly risky situations, and I'd also like to rant about your boss, who you've never named. So can I, or should I not? I?
Speaker 2:um, if you want to, I guess all I know is that he texted you the next day and said we gotta double down on our safety briefings, of which there have never been any. Yeah, because that's this world. Um and uh, if you get fired for that, I don't care, because that means that you're a whistleblower. I'm blowing the whistle, yeah um, shitty behavior.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it'll just mean that I don't have to work for a while anyways, if I get fired yeah, if you go, I'm pretty sure there'll be wrongful termination.
Speaker 2:So anyways, yeah, my point is is telling the truth yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm not going to go down that road, because that is not the tyranny we're resisting today. In fact, that is one of the examples of things that sometimes you just have to survive. Yeah, it's called. Sometimes you have to do the job that you can do and accept the risks, and it's scary to know that Dan is going into that situation every day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, besides coal mining, it's the most dangerous job in America. Actually, I think it's like very close truck driving or specifically the job that you're doing um, but all of it yeah yeah, it's. It's really rough um anything can happen you never know I won't have a cave collapse on me, though, so I don't know.
Speaker 2:I feel like whatever will happen, uh, would be pretty quick something I think about, obviously, is how devastated I would be if you were harmed um and or dead. And then I think about that, that I have no idea how to upload anything on the podcast, so all I could do is post something on instagram and be like sorry, I don't, I don't know how to do this and dan's dan's dead. Somebody help. I don't know how buzzsprout works dan's dead.
Speaker 1:I'm grieving and I have to learn buzzsprout now.
Speaker 2:I think your dark humor has rubbed off on me, dan. Yeah, never made a joke about you dying before. I hope our listeners are still going to listen, but you know what? It's going to get brighter, because we're talking about the resistance today. Yeah, lots of real life lessons. So just a quick introduction to the four communities that we follow in the Walking Dead in the time frame where Negan shows up. Yeah, first we have Alexandria. You want to tell us about Alexandria, dan?
Speaker 1:Yeah, alexandria. We find this at the end of Season 5 or the beginning of Season 6. No end of Season 5. Rick and crew find this community. It's a safe suburban refuge, um, built on order and optimism. They have a really great leader, tall steel walls that were very well designed by an engineer. They have solar panels, they have hot water, they have sewage, they have food and they have little potlucks. And the biggest concern, that the people inside this town have is.
Speaker 2:can anybody find me a pasta maker so we can have fresh pasta instead of dried pasta? And that, just to be clear, is the community that Rick and his crew become a part of. Yes, so that's the main community that we follow. Then we have the hilltop. How would you describe the hilltop, Dan?
Speaker 1:This is a settlement. So if you could, if you've seen like old forts, like a pioneer village yeah, they have. They have wooden palisades, which is a fancy way of saying a wall that's made out of logs with spikes at the top, um, surrounding a big um like plantation mansion. It's a historical building. I think it's actually like the governor's mansion in virginia or something something like that and it's got it's.
Speaker 2:It's a place that, like you know, you might go when you were a kid on a field trip to like learn about the olden days. It has all the olden days, things, um, and people like reenacting it, except for now, and the apocalypse has been turned into a community again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's led by a man named gregory, who's who we find immediately is a very weak leader, very cowardly, sniveling, sniveling has never spent a minute outside those walls. He was lucky enough to be there at the beginning and for that he has made himself the leader of that. But things happen and later spoiler alert it becomes led by Maggie. Much better choice, yeah. And then we have the kingdom. The kingdom is the kingdom.
Speaker 2:The kingdom is the kingdom of King Ezekiel, who has a pet tiger, because previous to the apocalypse, he was a zookeeper and he rescued this tiger. Yeah, because they this him and this tiger just hang out in the community theater in this little town that they have taken over and built walls around and, um, somehow people decided that he's a king. He speaks in a british accent.
Speaker 1:yeah, a fake one a shakespearean way of of speaking, because he used to be um in a like a local actor, local acting guild.
Speaker 2:And he has like nights, and it's very weird, it's. It's like they just all decided to suspend their disbelief and be like all right, king Ezekiel, you've got a. You've got a tiger, you're definitely in charge. Thankfully, he's a nice guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's all. It's all very theatrical, Like it's all make believe, but that's kind of how he's organized his community is that it's easier for them to just be like. We live in a fairytale, make-em-up night kingdom where we have a king who is like a Shakespearean king and always has these Shakespearean words of wisdom and is a strong leader and even though it's all very silly, it works and they're able to keep themselves alive during the apocalypse just by having a little bit of imagination.
Speaker 2:Yeah and belief together, and then we have Oceanside.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we don't see a whole lot of Oceanside right away. We discover this later on. They are a hidden enclave of all women who's the? The male members of their, of their society were all killed off by Negan at a previous point in time.
Speaker 2:And they ran away and formed a new community by the ocean, hence the name Oceanside.
Speaker 1:And they're very secretive because they do not want Negan to find them. As far as, as far as negan's concerned, they're all gone. They all probably died and that's the way that they want to keep it. So they're hidden in the woods, they're by the ocean, they, uh, they fish, they forage.
Speaker 2:It's a major secret, yeah so those are the four communities, and what I want to do first is just walk through how each of them initially reacted to negan and then, what was the turning point of resistance? Because I think, particularly in our us context right now, that's a question we're all asking. Like there is fighting happening back. For sure, yeah, we're also not negan levels yet, um, but there is this question of like, is it going to get to that point where we're going to need to fight back even more than we are right now? Um, and there's also lots of examples of people just licking boots. Yeah, in this day and age, republicans, you should delete that part, because I know I'm not supposed to be political oh, that ship has already sailed um, yeah, so let's talk about Alexandria.
Speaker 2:So again, I think it was probably like a year ago. We had an episode about the trauma responses and how they were demonstrated really beautifully in the show Black Summer, and calling that one back out, because this is another example of where you see various strategies of just survival and you're initially hit by this tyrannical dictator, guy negan, and he's really put you through some shit and you don't know what to do. You're going to do one of these things and in alexandria's case, they tried to fight first, but they weren't prepared. Yeah, as we talked about in episode 92, rick is like brutally, brutally humiliated. Yeah, he didn't know his enemy. No, lost a lot of people, um, and so he submits completely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he has no other choice. He could continue to resist and surely die and more likely just get his people brutally murdered by a psychopath.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or he could completely submit and maybe save some of them.
Speaker 2:And so he chooses to submit. And that means they give up all their weapons, all of their supplies, all of their autonomy as a community where before they were thriving. Yeah, so the turning point for Alexandria is more awful. Murder of Spencer. Who is who?
Speaker 1:Dan Spencer was the son of Diana, who was the first leader of Alexandria. She was, I think, a senator and after the zombies came back, came to this town, brought a lot of people with her and was its de facto leader.
Speaker 2:Yeah, zombies came back. You just said From the dead, from the dead. Oh okay, I see what you're saying, right, that makes sense. Dead from the dead, from the dead? Oh okay, I see what you're saying, right, that makes sense. Uh, the other thing that happens is there is some uh, slow, brewing, quiet rebellion, which is really important to to note, uh, but it doesn't work because their supposed allies, the scavengers, which we like to think of as trash people because they live in a giant, uh dump, garbage dump. Yeah, they claim to be allied with Alexandria, but they switch and they betray them and Alexandria gets even more fucked. Because now Negan is pissed, right, he's regretting his choice of thinking of people as human, as human resources, and is wondering why he'd save them at all in the first place. Yeah, quote unquote as the savior. And so rick has just given up. At that point he's totally demoralized at michonne. Badass. Michonne comes in and says we have to believe that we can do this.
Speaker 1:We have to fight back, otherwise it's an inevitable death for all of us yeah, um, and that's that is unfortunately where it where it goes, sometimes with a third author. Author it's whatever Torian dictatorships Cause cause. They don't care about your safety or your survival. They're using you as a resource, and if you no longer serve a purpose to them, they don't necessarily certainly care if you live or die. If you no longer serve a purpose to them, they don't necessarily care if you live or die. If you live a happy life, if you're healthy. They only want what they can extract from you, and you can either live long enough until you become useless to them and then die, or you can die fighting back.
Speaker 2:And the key change here with michonne is that she says hey, we've actually started to meet some other communities now. We know about the hilltop, we know about oceanside, we know about the kingdom. What? What if we convince them to fight with us? That's the only way this is going to work. And so they actually form a coalition, which is very difficult because each of those groups have their own challenges they're dealing with. So we'll get into that more in a little bit, let's let's talk about the Hilltop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the Hilltop are in full freeze Freeze from the beginning, frozen, you might even say, because Gregory is just a coward. A coward and immediately without, without any any of the stuff that negan had to do with rick's group. Gregory was just like you want half of our stuff? That's fine, cool, come and get it. You want to take our people away? Cool. You want to assassinate me? That's fine too.
Speaker 2:I think he was kind of a freeze fawn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely um combo yeah, because because he mostly dealt with the character, simon, who would come and he would try to impress Simon and be like I found a case of whiskey, here's some tequila, and Simon would always kind of debuff all of those niceties with a smile and be like, well, this isn't really my kind of thing, but thanks anyway. I'm going to give this to Negan and say it was me, because he knows who he's dealing with. He knows who Gregory is, yeah. So yeah, they follow the orders of the saviors and try, and they lay low, they try not to attract attention, they avoid conflict entirely until until rick's group comes along and uh, a very pregnant maggie, a pregnant woman again a woman steps up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in the hilltop gotta give cred um to people with uteruses during their their the time that they need somebody the most yeah, but you gotta remember they're a mad pregnant woman, which I think is somebody you don't want to fuck with because negan brutally murdered her husband which is why many of the people listening now, uh, stopped watching yeah, and you know what you missed by stop watching. You missed maggie's incredible phoenix arc as just being such a badass.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the turning point for Hilltop was it took place not too long after Glenn's death. The events that unfolded that led to Glenn's death and the confrontation of Negan was actually Gregory's first attempt to take control of the situation. He thought that Rick's group could go out and take out the Saviors because Gregory had intel. He knew where the Saviors were. He knew that they would be sleeping at night because they don't think that anyone is stupid enough to attack them. They, the Saviors, wanted Gregory assassinated, sent some of his own people back to chop off his head and bring it back to the saviors. Gregory didn't like that because he wants to protect himself, hires rick, rick and crew, goes out to the place where the saviors are, kills all the saviors every single one of them except that was a satellite outpost, literally at a satellite antenna station. Lesson.
Speaker 2:Prepare, prepare and make sure you've done a lot of spying on your enemy.
Speaker 1:First, Know your enemy. I'm sure we'll talk about that exact thing in this breakdown.
Speaker 2:And Maggie ends up in the hilltop because she needs a doctor, because she's pregnant.
Speaker 1:She needs a doctor. They have one. And also they're looking for Maggie Because Maggie is a threat. Because she's pregnant, she needs a doctor. They have one. And also they're looking for Maggie because Maggie is a threat, because she's angry.
Speaker 2:Glenn's wife, yeah, and I'm pretty sure, doesn't she say she's going to kill him?
Speaker 1:I think so I'm sure.
Speaker 2:I'm shocked he didn't kill her right there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but he has principles.
Speaker 2:That's true, also talked about in episode 92. But it's incredible because under maggie's leadership even like she's kind of slowly becoming an informal leader, even if she's not the official one with greg, people come to respect her and then she full out, builds an army, she teaches them how to fight and says we have to fight, we have to, we have to fight back against these people because they're gonna we're all gonna die anyways if we don't yeah, and that brings us to the kingdom.
Speaker 1:Um, the kingdom had a very interesting relationship. All of these outposts had a very different relationship with Negan, but most of them were being dominated. The hilltop was being dominated. Alexandria's getting so dominated it's being destroyed by Negan because Negan's mad at them, by Negan, because Negan's mad at them. The kingdom, on the other hand, I think, is far enough away that Negan can't really put forth the resources to have such a tight grip on them. But knowing that Ezekiel is more likely to negotiate and try to keep peace between them, they have an agreement. So they'll just provide the amount of food that they are asking for, which isn't as much as a lot of the other places, because they're cooperating and as long as the saviors stay on their side of the tracks and Ezekiel stays where he stays, then there's no need for anybody to fight and ezekiel can maintain his military and also what's important there is that niga or not negan as king ezekiel, I gotta keep him calling him king the whole time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, king ezekiel doesn't let the community know this is happening hiding it, there's a couple of his uh like main trusted knights are the ones who go and deliver the, the food, and people don't know, until he starts to ask for more and more and more, and then people start to notice. Also, king Ezekiel falls in love with Carol and that's a whole wonderful sidebar.
Speaker 1:Carol is kind of kept in the dark about a lot of what's going on with Negan until much later in that season yeah, lot of what's going on with Negan until much later in that season. She finds out through Ezekiel and what's going on there, because the turning point for the kingdom was the death of Benjamin. So Benjamin is taken under Morgan's wing to learn the peaceful ways of Aikido, because Benjamin is a horrible fighter in any other respect. So Ezekiel tasks Benjamin to learn under Morgan so that he can be an effective fighter and maybe find a new path where the other paths were not working. And while this is happening, he's going out on missions with Morgan and he gets killed by the saviors, accidentally, but still the saviors killed him. Yeah, um, and that isn't. That is the the breaking point, because they've already been talking to rick turn down rick, um, and then also with some urging from carol, after learning what the situation, um, that's, that's when he decides to join the resistance.
Speaker 2:And there is a point where he stops calling himself King and he stops using his weird accent voice and I feel like it's around the same time.
Speaker 1:I think it's much later. You think so. Well, I think it's in season eight, oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Don't listen to me. I don't have the memory that Dan does. Yeah, okay, last but not least, oceanside. Oceanside absolutely pandas, yeah, okay, last but not least, oceanside oceanside, absolutely flight they, they got, they ran destroyed and they they ran and, honestly, that was the right choice, because negan was going to make them all a part of his harem and I don't know what would have happened to the kids.
Speaker 1:To be frank, yeah, um, they would have either been in his harem or he, they would have been his slaves or dead kids, the people, the women yeah, let's.
Speaker 2:I don't. I think negan had a weird soft spot for kids, so they might have been okay, but he probably would have used them as leverage to get whatever he wanted from the women of oceanside yeah, definitely everybody is leverage to negan yeah so they create a completely secret community yeah, um yeah, so secretive that if you discover their community, they have a lot of conversations about whether or not they're going to execute you, because that's how badly they want to stay a secret.
Speaker 1:They can't risk even one person wandering into their village and then walking out alive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but of course, because it's the Walking Dead, one of Rick's crew, Tara, happens to find them accidentally Again. A whole fun thing you should just watch. We won't tell you all the details of that, but it's interesting. And she convinces them not to kill her and let her go home and she promises she will never tell anybody.
Speaker 1:Well, she does that, but also the person running Oceanside was like, yeah, you can go, and then sends assassins after her All right.
Speaker 2:I Like, yeah, you can go, and then sends assassins after her. All right, I forgot about that detail and she got away though, yeah. So much, so much there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was quite an episode, yeah.
Speaker 2:So Tara I mean because Tara does escape, she risks everything and goes back and says, like we need you to fight with us, we have to have you fight with us if we have a chance of making this happen, yeah, yeah, and they turn them down.
Speaker 1:But there's also like, if they didn't join up, rick's crew was like, well then, we need your weapons, and they steal all their guns.
Speaker 2:And then eventually they join on physically too.
Speaker 1:It's complex. They show up at the very final fight to help despite being robbed by them. To help despite being robbed by them.
Speaker 2:I will say I think it's already an example of you know, you have these four distinct communities with four different ways of being, four different ways of surviving and coping being under a dictatorship. And it's not building the coalition, is not conflict free. We're going to have disagreements with the people that we need to work with. We might need to steal their weapons and hopefully they forgive us later is basically that's the lesson from Oceanside Steal their weapons and hopefully they forgive us later is basically that's the lesson from Oceanside Steal their weapons and ask for forgiveness later.
Speaker 1:So now we're going to talk about how the Walking Dead, their lessons of resistance and the book On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder have a lot in common. And this is the stuff that I love, because you can watch so many movies and so many TV shows that think that they know what resisting tyranny is, but it just kind of turns into a slow motion action, gunfight, yeah, and I love when things like the Walking Dead actually think about how to fight against a dictator like negan and they there's so many examples that are are perfect yeah, they learn from their initial um not thinking it through like going to kill people in the satellite outpost, thinking it's negan's house and only house, and realize they need to be strategic.
Speaker 2:Strategy is the thing that's going to stop the cycle of obedience um, and it's going to be that strategy and community solidarity, that goal of collective liberation that we all have to win together, is ultimately what gets them there yeah, and this, the, the walking dead could have very easily just been rick confronting negan and winning, but the, the, the reality of it is that we, we all, have to fight.
Speaker 1:We either all fight, we all risk everything and either lose everything or win, or you know, like in the example of um, you know the assassination attempt against negan that failed. It was one person being alone, alone, a lone wolf, and it didn't work. So in On Tyranny. Timothy Snyder discusses the 20 civic lessons to resist tyranny and we're going to go through those. Number one, first chapter. We're just going to go over the basic overview of each chapter and how they correlate to the events of the Walking Dead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then your homework is to think about. What does that mean for me right now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also I think you'll find a lot more examples of the Walking Dead. These are just a few, and you're going to find examples of this in real everyday life as we face tyranny. Number one do not obey in advance. We hear this a lot these days, but tyrannies depend on citizens preemptively surrendering their rights before being forced. That's what the Mango Mussolini was hoping for. Is that we would just say okay, you want to be a dictator? We love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll just do what you say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so a great example of this is when Rick and Alexandria refused to submit to the Saviors before meeting Negan for the first time. Granted, it didn't go well, and when they did meet Negan, because they pissed Negan off.
Speaker 2:But they also saw Negan's true character very quickly yeah.
Speaker 1:But there were so many times when the Saviors were like, are you going to give up? Yet they brought out a leader of a former community who'd done something similar to Rick and they kept on showing him like, hey, we're going to execute this guy, and they ended up hanging him from a bridge, from a tow chain, all kinds of things they were just trying to show. This is how many people we got. This is what we do to people. You want to give up yet? Yeah, and he just wouldn't. And the idea of not giving in advance is that you don't want to just allow them to just walk all over you. You have to make them work for it. When you make them work for it, you have more time to organize, you have more time to act and you have more resources.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a real life. Recent example is Mohsen Madawi, who was detained. He's a green card holder, I think, a Columbia University former student, or maybe current student, who actively spoke out in support of a free Palestine and he was going to be probably sent to El Salvador or something else awful, but thankfully he was detained in Vermont and the Vermont judge stopped it. He's been released now, but when he was released think about it His life was at risk, yeah, and he came out of uh detention center and he gave a speech and he said all the things about, like, continuing to fight back and he's not going to be afraid.
Speaker 2:And this is the time for us to speak up. And I think that's a an incredible example when I have people like my mom messaging me, being like, are you sure you want to do this, that or the other? Or even like, talk about these things in the podcast because I want you to be safe. And I'm like, if I, if we all, are just quiet, eventually what happened to the kingdom will happen to us. Because the kingdom chooses to obey right away, the hilltop chooses to obey right away and over time, eventually they come for them. Yeah, that's always what will happen yeah the second one is defend institutions.
Speaker 2:Uh, timothy snyder says you need to support and protect democratic institutions like courts, media and local governments. So how does that show up in a world that seems like it's been in anarchy for a long time?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a little bit harder to find the institutions in the Walking Dead, because that's kind of the idea of the zombie apocalypse is they're all gone. But however, that's kind of the idea of the zombie apocalypse is they're all gone. But however, the Hilltop has its own community, has its own leadership. The kingdom also has its own sovereignty. Maggie shows up to protect the Hilltop's leadership, even though Gregory is a sniveling worm, and she's making sure that the community doesn't collapse under the Savior's pressure. And the kingdom is also feeling that pressure and has to make a decision before it gets worse, because the kingdom is asking for more and more.
Speaker 2:You mean, the saviors are asking for more and more.
Speaker 1:The saviors are asking for more and more from the kingdom and the kingdom is under a lot of stress from the kingdom, and the kingdom is under a lot of stress. They have problems and they can't keep up with that. And on top of that they're seeing the violence of Negan's people and they have to make a choice whether or not they're going to just lie down and take it or fight back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you see some other interesting examples. I think about Alexandria. Like they have community meetings to talk about what to have happen. It's not just Rick's only decision all the time, like there is actual pushback. And did they not vote, dan? Or am I not remembering correctly? They did vote? Yeah, they have to vote to make a decision, to even fight back, so it becomes a collective decision. They're all owning, and so it becomes a collective decision. They're all owning, and so that's. It feels a little bit lighter because obviously we're talking the apocalypse here. People there aren't full on courts and federal governments around, but they did still try to figure out how to do thrive in whatever way you can. And if, uh, all of the leaders of those groups had just defaulted to being like me again, again, all of them have ultimately been decimated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, uh, number three beware the one party state. Now that's. That sounds like something that's going on these days. Yeah, authoritarians often aim to destroy competition and monopolize power. So again, ezekiel keeps the kingdom diplomatically distant as long as possible, resisting the full savior control. And same with the others. It's just, I feel like the kingdom is a really great example of that. Yeah, because they still had their sovereignty. Number four take responsibility for the face of the world. Your behavior creates the political culture around you. Don't wait for others to act.
Speaker 1:Gabriel has a very interesting story where he starts off very much as the coward and he does a lot of very cowardly things. Um, some of those things that really jeopardized the safety of everybody at alexandria. He's the reason that in season six, uh, or at the end of season five, zombies get inside the fence and cause problems. But Gabriel realizes that hiding in church is cowardice and he decides that on moral grounds it's more morally correct to stand up and fight against the tyranny. And he decides that he's going to fight, even if it means killing, even though he says that he'll try to avoid it as much as possible. But he has to protect on moral grounds.
Speaker 2:I think Michonne, for example, just the way that she showed up and said we have to fight is an example of not waiting for others to act. I'm morally conflicted with the stealing of weapons from Oceanside, but that was an example where it's like, okay, we don't have you with us, but we need to act. Yeah, so we're going to move forward.
Speaker 1:Also the conversations that they're having with the other communities. They have this conversation with Oceanside, they have this conversation with the kingdom and the hilltop and they also have it with the trash people and they say that we have to take responsibility for this and we have to solve this problem, the savior problem, and we can do it if we all come together. Those are conversations that they're having with everybody.
Speaker 2:I want to point out here too that psychologically, like our species, the human, the homo sapien, likes to belong, likes to follow the crowd a lot of the time. Who belong likes to follow the crowd a lot of the time. And I think that when you're in moments where shit is scary, um, that idea, that bystander effect, that I think most people know what that is comes into play, which is we're all looking at each other, saying are you gonna do anything? Because if you do something, then I'll do something, yeah. And if you just see people living their normal lives and not doing anything and not saying anything, then I think it makes people think even the threat is less than it is, and so it really is important to act. Luigi Mangione did not wait for others to act.
Speaker 1:If he did, indeed, kill the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. Yeah, free Luigi. Remember professional ethics. Stay true to professional standards. Doctors, lawyers, teachers can defend society. Um, we see this a few times and, uh, a really great example. And I I I feel like it took multiple viewings to even remember that this happened. But the character jesus not you know jesus jesus, but the one named Jesus, who lives at the hilltop. Who lives at the hilltop rejects Rick and Daryl's treatment of the savior prisoners. Rick and Daryl are questioning a savior during the war and they say, yeah, if you just tell us where to go next, we'll let you go. And he's like, okay, I'll tell you. And then they shot him and Jesus had a really big problem with that. He's like you said you were going to let him go. Also, jesus talks Maggie into keeping the saviors as prisoners instead of executing them at the hilltop. That's another perfect example, and a lot of the people that they captured as saviors later on in the seasons became very valuable members of their group after the saviors were defeated.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a very powerful lesson.
Speaker 1:And also a character is introduced named Sadiq, who was found by Carl in the woods, and he keeps his healer's ethics from his father intact, even amid the war. He's going to help anyone who needs help.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Sadiq's a doctor. That's not clear. He's a doctor. Yeah, very, comes in handy for Maggie that he shows up in the woods, that's true.
Speaker 1:Number six be wary of paramilitaries. Armed groups outside of state control are a classic warning sign of tyranny. Oh God, in today's world we have things like ICE, and most recently we've learned about a department called HSI Homeland Security Investigations who's responsible for making a lot of people disappear right now. They were a very unheard of group within law enforcement, but now they're showing up and taking people off the streets and sending them to countries without due process.
Speaker 2:A real life example of this that just happened a few days ago, as of this recording, it came out on April 28th is the executive order quote I love how absolutely ridiculous these names of the executive orders are Strengthening and unleashing America's law enforcement to pursue criminals and protect innocent citizens. Have you heard of this executive order, dan?
Speaker 1:No, it sounds like quite a word salad there.
Speaker 2:It is. Basically, it directs the federal government to expand resources and support for state and local law enforcement to, and training and using military equipment. So no longer just the awful resources cops have, but now you can invoke like I need a tank. I feel like we're heading towards a Tiananmen Square kind of a situation that we can use this excess force to arrest people who are not complying with Trump's equity policies, which are not equity policies, they are about.
Speaker 2:Anybody who's like, wants to continue to, for example, have any kind of diversity equity inclusion programs as a part of their state programs, or doesn't implement any of the executive orders that Trump has put in place, is now at risk of being arrested. Essentially, yeah, there are a lot of legal challenges to this right now, but what Trump is saying is that DEI efforts allegedly endanger public safety and the goal of his executive order is to create a law abiding society by aggressively policing crime quote, unquote, unquote and removing perceived constraints on police authority. This is a direct attack on state's autonomy, because that's obviously where the most resistance is happening right now, and so, as you were describing um this, it just sounded like a perfect example of the things that he's trying to do yeah, I mean I think you can find an example of everything in this book happening right now.
Speaker 1:Like number seven be reflective if you must be armed. This applies to law enforcement, military and anyone that carries a weapon and might have to carry out the president's orders and might have to carry out the president's orders. And it says if you carry weapons, do so responsibly and think deeply about your actions as a resistor. So a good example of this is Dwight who, despite being a savior lieutenant, he becomes an inside agent because he reflects on the cost of his loyalty to Negan Losing his wife.
Speaker 2:Yeah, losing his wife and having his face burned off, yeah, yeah, dwight's an example again where you could just perceive Dwight as only the enemy. And there are these moments where he finally turns and that is an important thing to look at everybody right now as a potential ally. I'm not saying that you shouldn't fight back against Dwight when he's on Negan's side, but if he turns, align with him, but with some wariness. That's my advice that comes out of this one with him, but with some wariness.
Speaker 1:That's my advice that comes out of this one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm a veteran, so I've had to carry a weapon in combat and a lot of the PTSD that I face from that time is the moral injury that comes from knowing that our government wasn't necessarily in the right when it came to the wars that we fought.
Speaker 1:There's definitely those times where I feel like it's either you or me, and I'm going to choose me, and that's something I don't necessarily feel bad about. But one thing that I do feel bad about is having to fight against people who were just simply defending their own country, the same way that I would do if an invading army invaded our country. Um, and the propaganda spun it so that we were, we were the ones liberating these people from their oppressive regime, which is, you know, not true. We could argue about that because you know Saddam Hussein wasn't great but at the same time, like it wasn't their choice to have us come in and do that and the measures that we put in place far exceeded what was justified to do it. And also, it was done illegally, according to the United Nations and NATO.
Speaker 2:Do you think this lesson here be reflective? You must be armed is also about all the people who are currently working for the government, absolutely With guns. I think we were talking in the car ride on our way to breakfast. This is what we talk about at 7 in the morning, folks. We're talking about a world where the police start to defect and fight back and fight with us at that.
Speaker 1:If it gets to a world like that, yeah, and I think that, if I mean, especially if you're listening to this podcast and you're a member of the military or police force, you probably are thinking differently from the way that they want you to think as, as their soldier, who can pull the trigger for them? Um, and this is that. That lesson's for you. So, like every time you're told that you have to do something with that weapon, you have to think is this legal, is this justified?
Speaker 2:Is it moral?
Speaker 1:Is it?
Speaker 2:moral?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because legal is not always going to be moral, yeah, uh, and some always going to be moral, yeah, and some people don't have a choice, like when you, when you join the military, you are contractually obligated to serve out your time unless they release you from your duties, and in that case you have a duty to disobey if you are told to do something illegal or immoral, and we can talk about that in depth if it comes to that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, Lesson number eight stand out. Yeah, be willing to be conspicuous when resisting injustice. Again, my shout out to all of the human beings who have spoken up at their own risk the last little while. There's been so many. There was even one in Vermont recently that I don't know if she lost her job or not. We should follow up on that. But JD Vance was visiting her town. It was at her resort, ski resort and she decided to use her daily ski weather report as a condemnation of JD Vance and at the end said probably going to lose my job for doing this, but fuck you.
Speaker 1:That's a paraphrase this, but uh, fuck you, that's a paraphrase. Yeah, she said it much more eloquently.
Speaker 2:She was much more eloquent, but it definitely was a fuck you and I've been making, if anybody's interested in contributing. I've been making a google spreadsheet list because unfortunately, that's my best option, uh, for sharing things, which is a list of people that I consider to be heroes for the ways that they've spoken up, and she's one of the people on that list.
Speaker 1:Yeah, an example of that in the Walking Dead was Carl's solo assault on the sanctuary. He goes off and tries to go on a suicide mission to kill Negan, which was entirely reckless but also just a clear act of resistance. And the only reason that he survived is because Negan has a soft spot for kids. Yeah, he won't kill a kid.
Speaker 2:This is an example where standing out it's like that, not waiting to act. Like what can you do now to stand out so that others who are not ready will follow? What protests can you attend? What rallies can you attend? Where can you share a message of an alternative view for the future than the one that we're staring down the barrel? Of All of the ways that you can stand out and stand up right now, do it.
Speaker 1:Also wasn't on my list, but also Rosita and her assassination attempt of Negan in broad daylight with a homemade bullet was also pretty amazing and clear act of resistance.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Number nine. Be kind to our language no-transcript.
Speaker 2:Awful, but this is. They are a direct example of being kind to our language, or rather the opposite, because all of it is doublespeak, all of it is 1984 lies, and so it's really important that we say things for what they are. It's also really important not to make false equivalents and say, for example, that we are exactly in the same situation as 1939 Germany. Yes, there are similarities, and we should be deeply concerned and doing all the things to fight back against that. However, it is not 1939 Germany, and sometimes I've seen some posts out there and people talking about what's happening, and what they've done is they've made things seem even worse or scarier than they are and made connections to things that are not quite accurate, when the thing that is they're upset about is, on its face, wrong. It doesn't need to be exaggerated, it doesn't need to be conflated into something else. For what it is, it's wrong and we should be very precise in our language. And what we're talking about is happening.
Speaker 1:I think a really good example of that is both in the ways that the administration takes one sliver of truth and adds seven or eight lies to it to make you think that they are truthful about the things that they're lying about. The same thing can be said about somebody who is using a sliver of truth and then blowing out of proportion to try to make you afraid of what's happening, Like that thing's happening but it's out of proportion. And if you look at the one part that's blown out of proportion, that can take away all of the legitimacy of that truth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, naming Negan for what he is a dictator and calling out specifically that they are not saviors is really important. I don't know if there were specific moments of them doing that, but I will say that when you're fawning or in freeze mode, you might just be playing the game like they were in the kingdom and the hilltop and not and be like, yeah, the saviors, like even just calling them that. The more that we use their language about themselves, the more we brainwash ourselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah um, and that's yeah. Calling them saviors only only helps them and their propaganda. And by calling them saviors only helps them in their propaganda and by calling them what they are is the only way that you can actually fight them. Yep, number 10, believe in the truth. I love believing in the truth, because without truth there is no freedom. Defend facts and reality.
Speaker 2:So essential in this time, and it connects right back to number nine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, eugene has a really interesting story. When he is captured by Negan and taken to the sanctuary, he's wrestling with this self-justification of the lies that he's being told at the sanctuary and also he believes those lies because they protect him. He's now being protected at the sanctuary and also he believes those lies because they protect him. He's now being protected at the sanctuary. The thing that he wants the most is to be safe, to be sheltered from the outside world. They gave him an apartment, they gave him a video game console, they gave him respect and power, and the only way that he can have those things is to believe the propaganda. Yeah, but ultimately he accepts the truth and he ends up returning to the group to help sabotage Negan's ammunition Spoiler alert Eugene the unlikely hero.
Speaker 1:The unlikely hero.
Speaker 2:Number 11. Wish Rook had thought about this right at the very beginning of the first time they encountered Negan's people. Investigate, seek out facts, verify sources.
Speaker 1:Don't let your understanding be controlled out the savior outpost, the main one, the sanctuary for weaknesses, treating the resistance as a matter of careful preparation instead of acting blindly like her first assassination attempt with Eugene's bullet. Things don't go the way they planned, but they did do the recon and learned a lot of things. Recon and learned a lot of things rosita. Rosita wanted to go on a suicide mission because she was really upset about what happened to abraham um, and then sasha, who was also very upset about what happened to abraham um, ends up stealing rosita's thunder and doing it herself yeah, there's a there's a weird love triangle situation there that you should watch the show.
Speaker 2:For I'm going to keep pushing the show being like watch it, number 12. This one surprised me because I had not read the book, so I was like, oh, I want Dan to unpack this one for me. Make eye contact and small talk, personal trust and relationships are vital in a collapsing society.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think the idea behind this is, instead of just leaving everything up to messages and notes or phone calls, you have to meet in person, you have to be face to face, otherwise you can't really build that trust. It doesn't really mean anything if it's just notes between each other. You can betray a note. You can't betray somebody that you're standing face to face with. Yeah, I mean you can, but it's just notes between each other. You can betray a note, you can't betray somebody that you're standing face to face with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you can, but it's hard. It's like when I'm playing Catan. They're just computer people to me. So I do all kinds of I'm just robbing them and basically being my own dictator, colonizer on that game because they're not real people. If I had to look them in the eye, I that is actually true.
Speaker 1:There's a few examples of this in the series Jesus and Maggie. They build bonds with the hilltop survivors. That's how she usurps Gregory, because Gregory is just spending time in his office drinking gin. Maggie is out there with the people shaking hands, talking to them, solving their problems. Jesus is the same way. He's a very hands-on person. He's out there getting everybody the things that they need, because he's very gifted in exploring the wasteland, and they're making those bonds real. They're cementing those bonds by being in person.
Speaker 1:Another great example is just the way that Rick contacts the other communities. He could send messengers to all the communities at once and save a lot of time, but he knows he has to be there in person. He has to go, talk to Ezekiel. He has to make that journey, despite the fact that it's very far away, very dangerous and very expensive, fuel-wise and time-wise for them to be away, especially when they have so much that they need to do in order to just stay alive. But he knows that he has to go there and he has to talk to Ezekiel, because if they're not face-to-face, talking and explaining these things, ezekiel will never understand.
Speaker 2:Which really is also. I think some of these really build on each other. Because the next one is practice corporeal politics Corporeal fancy word for body politics. It means showing up physically, attending protests, meetings, elections. Presence matters. Having those one-to-one connections and building that trust in real time and learning how to work together in real time is going to be what makes the difference.
Speaker 1:And, like I was just saying, rick and Maggie, they personally attend these meetings with Ezekiel. Also, they go to Oceanside and even though they don't convince Oceanside right away to join them, they do show up and save their asses. At the end they plant a seed.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And he went to Jadis and the garbage people to build a physical alliance instead of just sending messages, and even though Jadis and the garbage people betray Rick, he had to do it. The only way that he could do it is in person, and they ended up actually making a relationship between him and their people. They just happened to get a better deal from Negan, and that's how they work. They want a better deal. Yeah, number 14. I love this one. This is my favorite one. Establish a private life, create safe spaces outside the reach of the regime, protect family, culture and identity.
Speaker 2:This is why I make everybody I love talk to me on Signal now. Yeah, you want to talk to me. You're on the end-to-end encrypted chat.
Speaker 1:Right For the private life? Yeah, um, this is. This is about taking care of yourself, this is about protecting your culture and your identity. So this is, like you know, maybe having friends over and listening to music and, for brief moments, just pretending that everything's okay and just going about business as usual to maintain your own sanity.
Speaker 1:So there was a great episode with Rick and Michonne where they are trying to find weapons and not finding a whole lot. They have no food, they have no weapons, they have no nothing. Negan wants his shit at the end of the week and they need guns. And they go out and they're not finding a whole lot of anything because, you know, at this point in the world, everything's kind of been picked over, um, and they are just going to be out there alone and just enjoy each other's company. And they sure do intent, um, and while they're doing that, they're just like you know, they just keep on pushing it out, one day at a time they're like I don't want to go back, let's just stay out here a few more days, like. They're just like trying to just live in this moment as much as they can, and they end up finding everything that they need accidentally, because they stayed out longer than they intended to yeah, and then they had a lovely love affair.
Speaker 2:Well, they were already in love, but they did it a lot, I think yeah. It's implied they boned so much. I think that might be when the baby was made. That's a possibility.
Speaker 1:Really possible.
Speaker 2:I'm not, I can't, don't quote me on that. I'd have to look at the timeline. I think small things like this, like choosing not to look at social media on the weekends, is like one of my things, or Dan and I, you know, yesterday morning we were talking about stuff, obviously on the drive to breakfast. We got to breakfast, we talked about a little bit more and then I looked at Dan and I said I think I'm done for the weekend and you're like good Cause, I also am done and doing that is really important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the you know this is. It's important because it's refusing to let, in this case, negan own all aspects of your life. And that's kind of how it feels like the news is right now, because I feel like the orange Hitler is just permeating everything that I see or do. I can't go on the internet without seeing something fucking horrible from this fucking asshole. Yeah, he's just doing more and more asshole things. This weekend he said that he is getting rid of Veterans Day, and you know there's so many things to be upset about and this is not one of them. And it actually had the opposite effect on me this weekend. But, like you know, I should have avoided seeing that in the first place and just kept it to myself. But this had the opposite effect and I just laughed out loud because it's like it's already on the fucking calendar.
Speaker 2:Asshole, it's having a temper tantrum. Basically, yeah, because they learned about, or trump learned about, the june 6th protests, veteran protests that's coming, yeah, and it's like, like what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1:take away my uh, my once a year free denny's meal, like I don't get the fucking day off, asshole. I have to work on veterans day just like everybody else.
Speaker 2:And it is that balance of like. I think there's a lot of push to want to know everything all the time and, as we talked about in previous episodes, we all know that that's not actually sustainable, because our little human brains were meant to hang out with like 50 other people in the woods. This is too much information. So we've also talked in the past about how it's helpful to like pick a thing that is your thing or a couple of things that are your thing. Make sure you're up to date on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's very similar to establishing a private life Like you're, just if you just pick one fight, don't try to fight all the fights, because you're just going to burn yourself out. They win by making you give up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pick one fight, but know who's working on other things and act together when you need to.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is great. I really love Timothy Snyder's brain because it's almost like he really thought this through. Number 15 is contribute to good causes, support causes, organizations and groups working for truth and justice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot of them out there right now. Of course, do your research so you're not just getting scammed by some guy who's like, yeah, contribute to me, I can fix all of it to me, I can fix all of it. But there's places like ActBlue, which is under attack right now, which is primarily a fund for Democrat politicians. They do a lot of other stuff too, and they are responsible for a lot of organizing of grassroots events. But you can find your own. You don't have to pick that one. There's so many others. Pick what you like.
Speaker 2:Pick local.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pick local.
Speaker 2:You know what's really great there's not a chapter near us, otherwise I'd be a part of it is Food, not Bombs. Check them out, yeah, but just something that can make a tangible local difference is great, and or just a broader difference, and focus on that and then you can have the rest of your life back. Yeah, it's also really. I think 14 and 15 are good reminders about the agency that we have.
Speaker 1:uh, that and that can make you feel better too if you remember that you can actually do something um, it's hard to find like a direct example of this in the walking dead because there aren't, you know, there aren there, aren't like nonprofits in the Walking Dead universe. But one example I could think of is Gabriel. When he is captured by Negan and he's at the sanctuary he meets the good Dr Carson, who was taken away from the hilltop during a time where Maggie needed a doctor and before Sadiq showed up, and before Sadiq showed up, yes, and Gabriel has this flu thing going on and he's been temporarily blinded by it. He's blind because he put dead people juice on him and now he has this fever. So he risks everything to get Dr Carson out of the sanctuary and back to Hilltop and it's a wild episode. I don't remember how that went.
Speaker 2:That's why we'll watch it again one day, yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know if Dr Carson made it, maybe he did, I don't remember. I think another good example, and this happens at the end of season eight, I want to say but Maggie meets this new group, um, and it is, it's, it's three women and they're traveling in a van and they are trading, uh, food and goods, things that the survivors need for things like records, like vinyl records, music, music. They're specific, no spoken word, but they're collecting music and they are also giving out survival guides. They've written a survival guide how to restart society. They're giving out knowledge and we don't learn a whole lot about these people, but we do know that Maggie, at one point, goes with them and tries to help their cause. And that's a great example of a good cause in that world, because you know very expensive to operate by giving out food and supplies and knowledge just for vinyl records, truly, um. But they're doing it because they they want to preserve culture and they want to educate people and help them survive.
Speaker 2:Perfect example of a good cause and they're the woman that she meets is an example of somebody who's just focused on that one thing yeah um, or even maggie focusing on building up an army and the skill set of the hilltop people is like.
Speaker 1:That's the contribution she focused on making, which was kind of pivotal, and ezekiel helped people uh escape the the dread of the apocalypse by creating a fantasy world where he where he was a king and he had a pet tiger he was a very regal king.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I also might have bought into it.
Speaker 1:I was like, fine, he was a good leader yeah, even if, even if all of his leadership skills he learned from Shakespeare, he did a great job Number 16.
Speaker 2:Learn from peers in other countries. We don't get to do that in this series until Daryl Dixon and France, yeah, but I think we can draw parallels to the other communities in learning from each other. The subtitle here is learn resistance techniques from those who have faced tyranny elsewhere.
Speaker 1:And we have a lot of examples of that in the real world. But in the Walking Dead, rick adapts Ezekiel's more strategic patience after realizing that brute force like attacking the outpost, for example, would not defeat Negan, and he learns a lot from Ezekiel to be more patient, to be more strategic, to plan his moment and to trap his enemy. This next one is something that I'm doing at work every single day, because I work with a lot of people whose political ideas I don't know and I don't think that they're great, because I mean, let's be fair, I don't work with the smartest people in the world. Listen for dangerous words. Watch for euphemisms that justify cruelty, like loyalty, purity, enemy of the people.
Speaker 1:In the real world we have words like illegals, some other words that I'm not going to say. Lots of words have been used to justify cruelty towards people, and now those are the words that a lot of white supremacists think it's unfair, that they're not allowed to say anymore, and they think that they are being scrutinized unfairly for not being able to use those horrible words. That's true. So in the Walking Dead, simon echoes Negan's ruthless philosophy of people are a resource. He doesn't like saying this, but it's something that Negan drills into him Simon's kind of a psychopath. Simon just wants to put bullets in all of his problems.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I have been thinking and understanding more and more how people get to that conclusion, but it is still not the best conclusion to come to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but Dwight and the others. They listen carefully and realize that Simon's extremism could be used against Negan. Later Simon thinks that Negan's approach isn't the best approach, that they are using too many resources, that they are wasting their time with people that should just be wiped off the face of the earth. So eventually Simon stages his own revolution against Negan because he wants to be in charge.
Speaker 2:He would have been an awful dictator too. Yeah, glad that didn't happen. He would have been a psychopath. 18, be calm when the unthinkable happens. Practice resilience so you can act whenever disaster strikes. I need to work on this.
Speaker 1:I'm not very good at being calm when bad things happen.
Speaker 2:This is where practice in advance is going to help you in the moment. So, in the same way that we've seen a lot of great posts out there and reminders to practice saying nothing when things are hard, which is an example of being calm, shut the fuck up, don't say anything. That's practice. Meditation practice helps, mantra practice helps. I don't know what your practice is, but like what is the thing that helps you calm yourself? Practice that on a daily basis so that when you're in the moment where something awful is happening, you can rely on that to help get you back to a space to be able to act and not react in just rage, anger or terror.
Speaker 1:I found writing hilarious roasts about people in the government is the way that I can contain my rage the best and stay calm.
Speaker 2:So when the unthinkable happens, you're watching me be arrested and taken away by ICE. You're going to just make a joke about it to make yourself calm.
Speaker 1:No, that doesn't seem like an appropriate response to the situation. However, if I'm witnessing on the street somebody being hauled off by masked men, I might say something along the lines of uh hey, hey guys, what's up? Um, did you run out of uh, two-year-olds with cancer to deport, burn? Are you arresting adults now instead of children, I mean?
Speaker 2:you could say that, yeah, if I was getting arrested, um, not that I think that's going to happen, because again peon over here. But who fucking knows in this world, who knows? Sasha is a great example of this. At first she is enraged because obviously her love, abraham, is also brutally murdered. He didn't get as much care from the broad public watching the show as Glenn and I agree, honestly he wasn't that great of a character. But whatever, sasha loved him and she was pretty upset for a long time.
Speaker 2:Somebody loved him. But she found a way to get to a place of calm and clarity about how she's going to fight back. And she actually does a suicide infiltration mission against Negan and fucks up his plans pretty badly and she had to maintain her calm to do that and have a really clear resolution on what she needed to do next.
Speaker 1:Negan very much wanted to turn Sasha into one of his lieutenants. He saw the potential of Sasha, yeah, and she makes him believe that she wants to help him and that she's willing to do whatever it takes, as long as none of her friends in Alexandria get killed. And he's like well, if you join me and do what you're supposed to, then I can guarantee you that no one will unnecessarily die as long as everything goes well. You have to convince him of that, that's your job. And she says okay. And then she makes contact with Eugene and gets him to sneak her a pill that would poison her a ricin pill that he'd made previously for somebody else and then didn't give it to them and hides inside of a casket and that he has control of Sasha and that's how he's going to dominate Alexandria. But when he opens it up, she is fully a zombie and almost takes a bite out of Negan's neck and it completely fucks up his entire plan and causes chaos.
Speaker 2:I was trying not to spoil this, but you're doing a really good job of describing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like you've got to understand that moment. But, yeah, spoiler, I guess Number 19. This is something that I've decided to put more on display. I have recently bought a hat that identifies me as a veteran. I tried to buy the least obnoxious veteran hat and let me tell you that is difficult.
Speaker 2:It's a great hat, though you look cute in it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you, Number 19,. Be a patriot. Patriotism means supporting democratic ideals, not unthinking loyalty to leaders. I think this also applies to taking back the idea of patriotism away from the people who want to pervert the meaning of it. So Maggie frames the Hilltops' resistance as fighting for their children's future, not just revenge, a true civic-minded rebellion. Same with Rick, same with Ezekiel. They're fighting for their existence. They are fighting with patriotism for their own communities, not for their own personal grievances. And right now, when we're out there protesting in the streets and whatever comes after, that's something that we have to remember. We have to take back that patriotism and say we are doing this for our country, not just because we don't like it when people wearing a lot of bronzer are in charge.
Speaker 2:Right, and that leaves us with number 20, a really great way to end. Be as courageous as you can us with number 20, a really great way to end Be as courageous as you can.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you have to risk everything to resist tyranny. Yeah, so in the final confrontation at the end of the war against Negan, negan really has the drop on them. He has figured out their end goal, their end plan and he has shown up with every fighter. He has Every fighter has ammunition, fully automatic weapons, and they're not going to let them get away. He's like you know what. You're no longer a. In all likelihood, they're going to have to give their own lives to free themselves from the future of Negan's wrath. And they have decided all together, collectively, we would rather die than be ruled by you. And we're going to fight even though you have us completely surrounded, and all you have to do is just fire on us and we're all dead. And they decide we're still not bending the knee. Um, and then something happens, and I'm not going to spoil that oh my god, that's funny, so hopefully that inspiring.
Speaker 2:I can definitely say that just listening to it and talking about it, this feels like a hype fest. I'm like, yeah, what are we going to do next, dan? I'm like punching the air right now, if you can picture me doing that oh the air. But I think the big lesson here is that the Walking Dead is more than just entertainment. It's more than just gore for the sake of gore. There are real things you can take away from it and it's certainly maybe a little more fun way to get a summary of On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. I hope that you've enjoyed it and found something that you can hold on to. It's great to have examples.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, the communities in the Walking Dead did not defeat Negan just by surviving. They did it by learning that leadership has to be collective, that trauma shows up in many ways and survival is part of it. But you can't just stop at survival. You have to figure out what you need next and that real change takes strategy, connection and courage and ultimately, believing in a better world and like what that looks like, imagining what else this could be. It's not just defense. We got to think offense. Where are we fighting for? What kind of a world do we want have? Because otherwise we're going to just return back to some kind of status quo. We're going to get a Simon or then a Negan you know like, or it'll be slightly less intense but still awful for a lot of people. Because, as always, I think it's important to remind ourselves, if you're living in the U S, that things are really bad now, but a lot of what they're doing was already happening.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was just externalized elsewhere or to other people who were not white, straight and Christian.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and naturalized citizens. So we'll leave you with that. This was yeah, go fight the good fight. Yeah, punch the air. Or somebody a Nazi specifically? Yeah, Punch the air. Or somebody a Nazi specifically, yeah, and that's what Dan wants to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one day I'm going to punch me a Nazi. Thanks for joining the zombie book club. I hope that this lived up to episode 92., episode about Negan and his dictatorship. I know that was a banger for a lot of people, so I hope this one was at least half as good.
Speaker 2:I really want to just know if anybody's going to go back and watch it.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, let us know. Let us know if we sold you on an episode 92. If you want to support us, you can leave a rating or a review. You could join a protest, yeah that'd be great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tell review, you could join a protest?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that'd be great.
Speaker 2:Tell us about what you're doing too. I love hearing what people are doing.
Speaker 1:You could donate to a good cause. Or you could send us a voicemail up to three minutes Actually send us a voicemail up to three minutes and tell us how you plan to fight back against tyranny. Just leave out anything violent At 614-699-0006. We do not want DHI listening to our voicemails. So, yeah, you can also sign up for our newsletter there, you can, so you can stay in touch with us or follow us on Instagram at zombie book club podcast, or you can join the Brain Munchers collective Discord and all of those links are in the description. Thanks for listening everybody. The end is, oh so very nigh.
Speaker 2:But that means a new dawn is coming. Dun, dun, dun Yup. Keep the hope alive, you gotta remember. I just keep remembering that even if we don't fix this in our lifetime or in the next four years, if we give up, that means we are giving that freedom up and collective liberation possibility up for the folks to come after us. So we just gotta keep going and we keep on believing. You know, I think that's gonna be the song for this post.
Speaker 1:Yeah don't stop believing. Just hold on to that feeling. I'm not singing it because I cannot hit those notes.
Speaker 2:bye everybody, bye everyone. Don't stop believing, just hold on to that feeling. I'm not singing it because I cannot hit those notes.
Speaker 1:Bye everybody, bye everyone, Bye, don't stop Wow.
Speaker 2:Just hold on to that feeling.
