Editor’s note: This is a series of Oral History recordings with Red in his last weeks with us. We recorded this Oral History project while he was in his hospital bed. The time we spent with Red was a gift. We aimed to preserve his experiences to continue sharing his gifts with all who appreciated him. He is a brilliant orator, and we have recorded over six hours of Oral History to share with the world. His spirit and memory will live on. – Johnny Mao
In Normandy in France, I guess my, my family kind of started in in the Normandy area in France and then they came over and then some part of my family also had to do with the foundation of the fuckin’ Danelaw, the Danish. The Danish came through and conquered England. And supposedly, this is a supposedly, I don’t know for sure. But supposedly a tiny village north of London, in England, that my family was rewarded for being loyal to the invading king or whatever and like settling the land and helping to like, raise taxes and stuff. But I don’t know for sure. But yeah, this distinct possibility my family line goes back like 1200 years, some shit. And basically, like as far as like, European wars are concerned, I think like, I’ve had like, a family member in every in every major crisis in Western Europe. I know some of my family members were mercenaries and stuff like that. But also….
Oh, I have like a long, long back cousin who served in the early US Navy, and he had Down Syndrome. And I think this is like before people even really knew what Down Syndrome was, and they didn’t, they didn’t use it as a means to reject him. They, in fact, he peeled potatoes in the hole of a naval ship his entire career. But yeah, and then like, of course, you know, the modern wars, and I think my dad narrowly missed Vietnam, which he was, I think he was sore about.
[Oh my god, because he wanted to go out and fight in a war?]
That’s why he was training me. That’s why he was training me to be this way. That’s why he gave me all that firearms training. That’s why he gave me martial arts training. That’s why he gave me all this training, leadership, stuff like that. Prior to me joining the Marine Corps, I didn’t actually end up joining the Marine Corps. That’s another story we will eventually tell. But yeah, he taught me all kinds of things. All types of combat tricks and stuff like that, he really went out of his way to teach me to be a violent person like with it, not just violent. It goes with the violent ability…
[Your dad trained you.]
Oh, yes. I was supposed to go, I was supposed to go into the Marine Corps and become a Scout Sniper in the Marines. Come on, man, like bolster the right wing fight. You know what I mean? My dad saw, my dad saw the wars coming pretty much, and he said, oh this guy literally said I want my kids to me part of that shit, like that’s wild, that’s wild to me that any parent would ever be like I’m gonna purposely throw my kids into the meat right? Like – “Get in the blender you little shit.” Heh.
But apparently we have a long line of dudes who are just ready to get put into blender. It’s like a family tradition for us. Apparently. So. That sort of explains like, I feel like that helps explain some of my more warlike tendencies.
As far as like leftists go, I’m very, very pro-war. Some some people might call it “right deviationist” or whatever, but those guys are dorks. Sometimes, you know in order to get shit done you gotta crack an egg and that’s just that.
But yeah, so I did not end up getting in the Marine Corps, et cetera, et cetera, but I still got the skills that he gave me. Joke’s on him.
Well no, not really, joke’s on me. He gets the last laugh, he smoke cigarettes, he chain smokes cigarettes his whole life, he’s fine. I have never seen the guy ever drink a cup of water in his life but he’s perfectly, perfectly fine.
And I got, fucking, a body riddled with cancer but life’s not fair, then you die. It is what it is. You know we change what we can while we’re here, and then we’re gone but yeah, so that’s, yeah, that’s that.
Heh heh heh heh.
[Do you know why your family came to the United States?]
So some of them came over on the Mayflower, or not the Mayflower, but some of those ships. And others came during the great migration across the ocean to colonize the United States, they called in tons of Germanic people and Irish people and Scottish people to come over to do these land grants or whatever. They were like four acres or eight acres or somethin’ crazy. And all you have to do is go find an empty plot and claim it.
And when they got there, they found out that Texas was basically, it might as well be Mars. And you can’t really do any effective planning there or nothing like that. And I suspect that my family came in and landed in Texas. They didn’t realize it, but at least over one generation, that it is just completely untenable to live in the high desert of Texas and brings anything worthwhile. And so I think that’s what motivated their turn west and north up into California. And then into Washington State.
I kind of talked about that earlier. Where I said, you know, my grandpa by the 70s they were up here by land, and on the cheap. And you got a burned out, burned out farmhouse on it, and my grandpa fucking handled it. Well, he never quite finished, but he 99.9% completed the house with his own hands and built this spectacular 14 acre little horse sanctuary area kind of thing.
We grew up with two horses. One died when I was really young and the other ones stuck around for a long time but we had a mule also when I was a kid and it was fun, it’s fun to mess with them. But yeah, then, but my family couldn’t really… we’re not really a horse money family. So when the horses passed, they didn’t get replaced but yeah, I’m not sure I’m not sure where the horses came from. Nobody ever explained to me the background of the horse or situation. But I do know that they roamed the full 14 acres of my grandpa’s property with absolutely no problem whatsoever they just wander around eating grass, they loved crab apples, and there’s a crab tree that grew almost to the fence where they could get them, but not quite, and it was so frustrating for them.
But they gave you an opportunity as a kid to go pick some fucking horse apples and give it to ‘em. And they love that stuff but one of the horses we had Mandy was just a dickhead by birth, but yeah! No matter how many apples you gave her, she would love nobody but my grandfather. I will see if I can get my auntie to send me the picture of me in full cowboy regalia on a horse when I was a little kid. I was looking real fly. I had like a purple, purple red, like a burgundy, burgundy sort of wine colored matching cowboy outfit. Absurd.
Really cute for a little kid. But yeah, so that’s that’s where my family came from. I don’t, I don’t know much about my grandmother’s side at all really. One side, my grandpa is the Coy family and my grandma is Bones. And I never ever quite got around to researching the background of the Bones family but it sounds fucking cool. I’ll eventually find out all the background and all that stuff but yeah, I just haven’t got to it yet.
[You’re gonna ask your Aunt?]
Oh, no, I’ve no, I don’t think she knows. either. I’m gonna do my own research. Like I always do. Using some assistance from professionals and stuff like that, but yeah.
[Okay, so you lived in Bremerton and then you also lived at this ranch?]
Bremerton is like right down the street from Gorst where the ranch is, the family property. It’s like literally like a 10 minute drive down the highway. So yeah, it’s basically the same place.
I mean, Gorst, where my grandpa lived, they called him the mayor of Gorst. Gorst is basically a little armpit between Poulsbo and Bremerton and Port Orchard. They has a tattoo shop, a gas station, a mattress store, and I think a head shop now, and a strip club called Toys Topless. Heh heh.
[Toys Tots?]
Toys Topless. Like toys without tops. They’re strippers.
Yeah, yeah and all there during childhood – we drive past that shit like 2, 3, 4 times a day. Like whenever we were out, like, “let’s go to the toy store!” Let’s go!
And my Aunt was definitely not ready to give us the stripper conversation. And she kept stonewalling us and it wasn’t actually until I was like 21 that I figured out it was a strip club and not a toy store. But yeah, just imagine two kids like banging on the windows pointing and screaming, like “let us go see the toys!”.
But no, for obvious reasons we were not not allowed to go to Toys Topless. But when I got an older and an adult, I hung out with many of their employees later on. Very nice young ladies. But when I was a kid, I still I was still under the impression that it was a toy store. What’s up?
[So you still have like family or people you know, out in Gorst?]
Yeah, as of right now of this recording, and this could change at any time, but my cousin is right now. My cousin, his wife, or wait yeah my cousin and her husband..Is that right? Anyway, my cousins and their sets of husbands, including an in-law, are inhabiting the family house. And then my Aunt built over our original family house which is basically a squatter shack right up the hill. (spits)
What was I saying? Oh yeah, so my Aunt bought all the family properties when my grandparents died. Knock down that old squatter shack and built herself a nice little modern rambler perfect for like…
Yeah. And my cousins are also out there.
[So your aunt is the person you stay in touch with?]
Yeah. Yeah, my Auntie’s an angel. She the only person in my life ever ever, ever ever ever in my life who had unwavering belief in me start to finish. She said she fell in love with me when I when I was born, like as soon as I appeared she could see him. She said “I fell in love with you and I vowed not to let nothing get in your way and basically took me under her wing as a son. Like she decided that minute what the plan was. Like I said before, you know my dad is a scary mother fuck. So they couldn’t just take us from him, that wouldn’t work. So they had to try other methods…
…What are we talking about?
[You said your dad was a scary mothefucker and your Aunt had full belief in you…]
Right. And so like yeah, she just filled in the cracks whereever she could. Yeah wherever my dad fell down, she would step in and made sure I had food to eat or clothes to wear. Like whatever…But yeah, she, I don’t know. She just saw something in me. And it’s just like the greatest unconditional love I’ve ever experienced. Yeah, she saved my human life. Like she began to teach me softness and being able to like take care of other people and learn skills, and like how to believe in myself outside of like, being able to harm people to get what I wanted.
Because if she had let that shit get unchecked, I would have been an absolute monster. And I talked about that earlier how they would take me out from the city. And like surround me with like, civilized civilization essentially. Clean and brush out my hair and get my teeth brushed and just take care of me and just like provide some time for me where I don’t have to tip toe through the house so I don’t get my ass beat. Just so like my mind, my body could relax.
My home was very, very stressful. And she knew that shit. You know what I mean? Like she, she knew my father wasn’t fit to raise no damn kids, but she was never in a place to take custody of us. But once I became like an adult, I went to go live with her full time in Port Orchard, you know, and fucked right out there for a couple of years. And in the meantime, I tried and failed to join the Marine Corps and that sent me into a fucking depression spiral like you wouldn’t fucking believe. It was like… Like imagine you trained your whole life for a sport? Like a big worldwide sports trophy – real big deal or whatever, right? Imagine showing up to the tournament, and then they immediately disqualify you. “Don’t call. We’ll call you.”
Yeah, well, they made such big promises to me because I was not the stereotypical marine… These stressful memories are kind of making my stomach kind of hurt.
[Yeah don’t forget to breathe. Breathe through it. Feel the air entering through your lips, your mouth, your lungs.] You’re hypnotizing me, Johnny? [No, it’s just it’s just a grounding.]
What were we talking about? [Oh, you’re talking about how the Marine Corps, how you weren’t the stereotypical Marine.]
Oh, right. I took the ASVAB and scored really super fucking hot. And the Marines were like, “We can pass you off to like, naval or army intelligence or counter intelligence” or whatever. You know, “You’re a smart kid basically, I don’t have anything for you”. And I even in the Officers Court, he was like, “You’re not a knucklehead”. But I was like, “I want a grenade and a rifle and I want to go fight that’s all I want. And I’ll fight and I’m gonna fight and I’ll do it better. Better than the fucking knuckleheads.” You know what I mean? Like, “I will bring things to the table or whatever.” But they didn’t…man… So yeah, they pass my number off to the to the Army guys and they’re like, “we used you in a counterintelligence or whatever, blah, blah blah blahs as a officer”. This and that.
I was like, I was like, “I told the other guy – I want to fight the enemy – I want to go to the front lines and shoot my gun and throw my grenades and and be in the dust.” And the fucking Army guy was just like, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Like he looked at me like, “Jesus Christ. You’re a sicko.”
But that’s just..I wanted…I was an infantry. I just wanted to be a door gunner. That was my thing. I wanted to be the guy who like, posts up and that’s what I wanted to do. My dad wanted me to be a sniper. But I wanted to be the fucking light machine gun dude from the window. Buuhhh-llet, buuhh-llet, du du.
And mow people down. That’s what I wanted to do. It just turns out there is actually not an M-O-S for door gunner. You have to become a helicopter tech first. And then hope that you get invited to the program. But yeah, man, I that’s what I wanted. I lived and dreamed and fucking ate and slept to become door gunner. Like, that’s all I wanted to do. Like I admire, I love that fucking. I mean, it’s fucked up now of course, but I loved that fucking scene in Full Metal Jacket where he’s just like rigging the machine gun. Just right on the helicopter. Yeah, I used to watch that over and over again and… door barons don’t get enough screen time lets say that. But that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted the big machine guns, put on that shit, or chain gun or whatever, put it on that shit and go to work.
[On a helicopter?]
Or wherever. I don’t give a shit. I did not give a shit. As long as you’re moving forward towards the gunfire and explosions, then that’s where I wanted to be. Period. Like, I was insistent. And so we did some tests or whatever. I think maybe honestly, I kind of think my grandma or my Auntie kind of fucking snitched on me. Because I don’t know how they found out I had Crohn’s disease. Maybe they can check medical records or something. I don’t know. But they called me and disqualified me. I got permanently disqualified. I can’t be drafted. I couldn’t be drafted. They’re not gonna draft me now, but I was completely disqualified just for having Crohn’s disease. It was just like, “Sorry boss, you know, you don’t get to be in the Marine Corps.” Click. Basically.
[I see. Because when they do background checks, like they can’t do like healthcare checks. That’s HIPAA. That’s HIPAA law.]
I would assume. but it’s absolutely military. Well, I don’t know how they found out, but they did.
And then 9/11 happened. I was on my couch at my Aunt’s house sleeping. I missed the first tower. I woke up just in time to see the second plane hit it. The third plane hit it.
Not my proudest moment. But I did call my my recruiter back up and I was like, “Are you sure you don’t need a fucking door gunner? Are you absolutely certain? And he was like “I can’t take you kid. No matter what. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. I can’t do it.” But since then, actually, the recruitment standards for US troops has dropped dramatically because they never make their recruitment quotas. So they lowered the standards, like they lowered the ASVAB standards and they like lowered the age. We can have all kinds of mad crimes and shit now and you couldn’t before. Like other health issues I’m I’m sure were crossed off the list because they need to trade the blood of our young people.
For fucking oil in the Middle East. They have to drain the fucking lives in the ongoing destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq due to depleted uranium. Those people are gonna suffer for generations from fuckin’ birth defects. And and we’re 20 years in well, I guess we’re kind of gone now, but 20 years of fucking fighting for these fucking good kids who could have been young leadership in our neighborhoods in our youth programs, in our like… You know, we could be building a society, instead, we fucking grind up our children for fucking money. And then we wonder why our country is fucked up.
Yeah, we send them to the fucking desert to go get their asses blown up so some fucking CEO can make an extra fucking dividend or whatever the hell they doin’, and never think about it again. Like they just, you know, they trade the lives of our children. And the taxes that we pay, they fucking trade those for private money. So like this whole thing going on in Ukraine right now, it’s just one big money laundering scheme, your’re trading your American public tax money straight to arms manufacturers.
You think that the fucking aid packages going to Ukraine got any fucking food in them? Hell no, maybe 1 or 2 percent. But the rest of that shit is fucking just straight up heavy arms and they’re basically in DC, DC and Virginia, they’re just – “Here’s a bill. Here’s your cash money. Here’s your bill, here’s your cash money.” Like every time you see a headline that says they gave $200 billion to Ukraine for military aid – what that means is we gave $200 billion to Raytheon, not the other way around. Ukrainian people aren’t gonna see any of that shit, any of that aid, any of that real money but they can have all the bullets and guns they can fucking eat at the buffet. But yeah, here we are 20 years later still taking our shoes off at the airport and whatnot. It’s absurd.
[So you’re pro or at one point and then at what point did you transition or realize..?]
A couple of years. A couple years later I’d spent a couple of years just fucking smoking drugs and feeling sorry for myself. Then what was your question?
[You were pro war, now you’re anti-war, how did that happen?]
I’m not anti-war, I’m maybe more pro war than I was then. I’m not pro-war – “The Bougeoise” – that’s the difference. And so when I say like I’m on the right or the left, basically it’s because I advocate for armed conflicts and actively prepare for it. Some people consider that a deviation for whatever reason or whatever, but I’m absolutely pro Myanmar’s citizens – kicking the shit out of their regime.
I appreciate the people struggling, like the little guys. I got all the sympathy for the ones being thrown into the fucking meat grinder. I’m anti-Bougeouise war. A Bougeoise war sacrifices our young people for the satisfaction of the blue haired cools who live in the fuckin’ high rise towers far from where we can see, and we get our lives traded for that shit.
Whereas a People’s War is based on a foundation of people. It values life over profits. That people’s war is not indiscriminate. It’s not total all out warfare. It is a different beast. And what’s really different about it’s aimed at, right? Sanctions and ground wars and all this shit are designed to punish the population into submission to overthrow their leadership, right? That’s not how a People’s Wars is going.
A People’s War is one with bread and baby formula. With work collectives and fucking community defense. It’s based on entirely different principles and aimed at entirely different actors.
But oh yeah to answer your question. I was in the Bremerton Library, or no it wasn’t the Bremerton Library but I was in a library somewhere. Oh, maybe East Bremerton or something. I could see in my mind’s eye but I can’t name it. But this lady in the library was walking by with a stack of books. And I just like pulled one off real quick because I was just I was I think I was trying it out in the rain or something, but I needed I felt like I needed to look like I was reading even though it’s not really libraries don’t give a shit about that or whatever right like you can just sit there sometimes and if you’re not bugging anyone they won’t bug you.
I’ve been beaten up my whole life so it I’m a little sensitive to authority. And at the time it made me trepidatious and so I just grabbed this, plugged this book out and it was fuckin’ Peter Kropotkin. I don’t remember the specific book it was but I devoured it. I ate that shit up in one whole day. And at the end I closed the lid on it and I was like, “Jesus Christ my dad is a stupid motherfucker.” Heh heh heh heh. I was like “Oh my god, my dad is an idiot.” I was reading it and I was like, “This guy, I cannot have respect for this man. He is up his own ass.” And so, that was the day I learned about anarchism, and the day I learned that my dad was a moron. It happens to everybody.
As it turns out my dad is not a nine foot tall superhero. He’s just some dickhead with bad ideas. It’s like you can throw a rock and find one of those guys. So, in any almost any direction. But yeah, I read some Kropotkin, and looking back you know, in retrospect my becoming anarchist right then it was like a necessary cleansing before I became a Marxist.
Because I was hurt, I was very hurt by authority. And so you know naturally, you know the people you look to for care and comfort – and they abuse you – it makes it hard for you to make those connections or whatever, later on, you know. Fuck authority or whatever, they fucked up you know, cause like, I felt the effects of that patriarchal authority, but I still had a very young and naive sense of what power is and isn’t, and what authority is and is not
And then, time went by, got a couple drug addictions, beat those up, and then I read Marx’s Price, Profit and Wages. I think that was what it was called. (No, no it’s not it’s right there.) I read that, and that book is basically like a tiny little express version of Capital, book one, or however you want to say it. But yeah it is basically a condensed version of Capital and it gets the point across real well. Then I read that and then I was like “Oh shit Kropotkin’s full of shit!” haha. So I had to kill another idol, I had to kill another idol in my mind I was like “Oh shit this guy sucks too.” Heh heh heh heh. (Right? I’ve never seen you cry so hard.)
So yeah, then I was like “Oh shit this is really hittin.” But then the rest of my political transition from there was much slower and fits and starts and stuff like that. Like I I went through all kinds of stupid phases. Like I was a Luxembourgist for a second, you know weird shit like that. Before I found it, I kind found my home. Well no, I didn’t find it, I dug that shit out let’s be clear. Nobody provided me with a space to just develop my politics. I fucking clawed that shit out of the earth, and went down there and did that damn thing myself. God. Yeah. But with no help or nothin’. At the time, I didn’t know nothing about Marx’s study group, or none of that shit. That was not something that was available to my generation at that point. You couldn’t just go to – I mean, you probably could just go to Marxists (.org) website. It’s probably old as hell, it’s probably older than me. But, you know, you can’t just or at least I couldn’t just go and look up whatever I wanted, you know, on the internet, and have this portal of knowledge and that wasn’t until a little bit later.
Yes, slowly, like, slowly and slowly and slowly slower – I started to fall in love out of anarchism. And as we progressed forward in our organizing stuff, I, you know, it’s fits and starts, fits and starts, fits and starts. I learned this thing, read this here. And then it kind of was like a slapshot education and didn’t really have any structure, it was kind of just whatever, like, whatever struck my interest and that’s like, alone and shotgunning it is not a real way to learn an ideology for sure.
Like, I now believe all learning is best in a group setting. Not the way we do in classrooms, but like, in a much different way. Talking about that another time but yeah. Yeah, that was like… Oh, and then long story short, if we’re just doing the political thing right now. I guess we are. You took me to an ISO meeting. You took to me that right? [Yeah, the Marxism conference, from the Occupy days.] Yeah. And I just remember going there and and listening to all these like brilliant speakers. And they had a bunch of great ideas and blahbitty blah, blah.
But no matter what, little poster boy I went up to, none of it was about serving anybody. You know what I mean, it was all internal circle jerk basically. Like, let’s learn, learn, learn. Okay, well, “We know what the problem is we’re all here in the ISO. Right?” We all agree that capitalism sucks. And the people should own the means of production. Like “Let’s get it?” You know what I mean?
Like I’ve always been out to win, I don’t play to prove a point. I never have like even when I played sports and stuff like that. And the reason I like eSports is because I want to crush my enemies before me and see them scattered, you know?
And like, I want to win. And so, I, you know, turned towards what I thought was most useful. And that was that was… I just felt like the ideas could be done. You know what I mean? Before I even discovered Mao, I was like, this needs to be like mixed with… something. I was like, these people are just scheduling meetings into meetings. But nobody’s really talking about like… solving anything. Even combatting a problem. So anyways, short story. I mean, we don’t need to do all the ISO conference, basically what happened was like, basically these people are pretty cool or whatever. Their ideas are wonderful. I love… I fell in love with the idea of socialism. But I knew for a fact that I didn’t want to do that shit with the ISO. RIP ISO, F in chat.
I see they were some overstarched fuckin’…(coughs, excuse me). I didn’t want to organize with a bunch of poindexters that just lived at meetings. Like, Meeting Lizards you know what I mean? That’s what I called them 🙂. People that lived for the meeting – you know what I mean?
I don’t live for the meeting. My meetings like: a CRC meeting. A Community Relief Core meeting is 45 minutes maximum. Like we do, we do a lot of like discussion. Before we have the main discussion and we come in with all of us ready to go and mix that shit together. And you know, take the time to have that honest conversation before you go into decision making mode. Like I never wanted to… Yeah, so I knew they could do better.
And so I brought some Marx and I started reading and figuring out Marx, Marxism.
And then I read Lenin.
And then I read Stalin.
And then all kinds of other things that I read in between these things. I am a voracious reader. And so I did my readings and the more that I read about Marx and Marxism the more that I loved it. I’ve always been a very practical person. So I like, appreciate how practical Marxism is. You can take it, and with the right instruction, apply it in your life and start changing shit around you in moments it feels like.
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Red Army Duck 