Patreon Bonus episode 70. Today we're speaking to journalist and researcher Matthew Petty about something very interesting

There's a lot to it, but basically we're looking into Armenian resistance militant militant groups, the PKK and Lebanon, Palestine,

leftist internationalism, all sorts is a good one. So there's this research

right, it kind of all ties in with the PKK and Lebanon

volunteers fighting in wars that are not necessarily in their country not just now but back in the

day with this Armenian war hero essentially

why don't you take us back to the start and just explain this research you've been

doing and lead us from there right so you know back about five years ago there was this big wave of American

mostly leftist you had kind of a mixed bag but you know a lot of ideologically left

wing people joining the Rojava Revolution, the Kurdish-led

revolution in Syria. And you know a lot of people compared this to the Spanish

Civil War from the 1930s when a lot of

communists rallied to defend the second Spanish Republic from the fascist

uprising and you know this is all well and good but there is actually a more recent

comparison within the region itself which is left-wing foreign fighters in the Lebanese civil war

and you know a a lot of the predecessors

to the Rojava Revolution itself actually came out of this.

Also, you know, one of the big, big figures who looms very large over the current

conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan also came out of this milieu so I did

my undergrad dissertation on this and yeah this is basically I mean this is the

late Cold War is a very different world from now but the ghost of it still live with us today.

Right, so maybe we should start then about this the Armenian guy right?

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