The podcast is called Gladio Free Europe and we have been hard at work for months to create something both captivating and listenable. Yesterday we finally launched officially after releasing a couple of episodes while still figuring out the ropes. Gladio Free Europe is a history podcast which recalls the historical context of various pieces of media with a healthy dose of humor thrown into the mix.
For our official debut episode, we tackled the enigmatic figure of Egor Letov, one of the greatest Russian rock musicians of all time. But Letov was more than just a musician: for many years he was a leading political activist, one of the cofounders of the National Bolshevik Party, commonly known as the Nazbols. (In)famous for their flag, a Nazi flag with a black hammer and sickle swapped in for the swastika, the Nazbols were conceived as a coalition of far-left and far-right forces united in the battle against capitalism and the disastrous policies of Boris Yeltsin. We talk about Letov's life, music, and the peculiar late Soviet and early Russian context which made such a formation possible. On our website, linked above, you will also find supplementary materials, including new translations for a few of Letov's songs as well as never before translated interviews he had given.
We've also released a few episodes preview episodes before the Letov episode as we were still getting a hang of the ropes in podcasting. So far we have done episodes on the right-wing Israeli rap scene in the early 2000s, the Wasp Network in Miami in the 90s, and an episode about the Taiping Rebellion. You can find those on our website or in the podcast app of your choosing.
We are really looking forward to hearing your feedback, and if you like what you hear you are welcome to follow us on Twitter at @GladioFreeEuro. Cheers!
1 hour deep - great work
Couple of notes to others: first: nazbols are closer to situationists (I guess) they did shit to do shit, they didn’t participate in pogroms as far as I know, mainly symbolic direct action; second: you can still hear grob everywhere, where people can be with guitar - parks, campfires, campuses