smash the state, pet the pups
December 7, 2016 4:05 PM   Subscribe

An American in Syria: The young United States florist headed to Raqqa, Syria, as a volunteer with the People’s Defense Units, or YPG, is known to most of Weird Twitter as PissPigGranddad.
posted by Potomac Avenue (24 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
all hail PissPigGranddad! he's one of my friend's best friends and seems like a very solid dude. blessings be upon him
posted by burgerrr at 4:13 PM on December 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


Wow, shit, someone from Twitter actually went and did something. I'm kind of impressed. He seems like a good guy too, so, you know, hope he stays safe, hope he's victorious.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:22 PM on December 7, 2016


(Also, yeah, "PissPigGranddad vs. Islamic State" is one of those things only this millennium could give us, I think.)
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:24 PM on December 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


i always kind of had a weird feeling about the spanish civil war volunteers, not a bad feeling, a weird one, wanted to know whod do that shit and now i know and bless a twitter
posted by beefetish at 4:34 PM on December 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


MAYBE
posted by Potomac Avenue at 4:36 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


What's a male florist?
posted by carsonb at 4:52 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I tried to find a few of his tweets I liked but they seem to be deleted (for probably obvious reasons) so I'm just gonna say this dude is brave and funny as hell.
posted by griphus at 4:54 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


What's a male florist?
I mean, we don't want to imply they're not as good, it's just to distinguish them from normal florists.
posted by verb at 4:54 PM on December 7, 2016 [19 favorites]


smash the state, pet the pups

Long as you don't get those two backwards...
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:59 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Wow, shit, someone from Twitter actually went and did something. I'm kind of impressed. He seems like a good guy too, so, you know, hope he stays safe, hope he's victorious.
Also, just to be that guy — the common trope of pitting "Twitter versus Action" is and always will be really annoying. There are plenty of people who do the hard and ugly work of activism, community development, and (yes) even armed conflict who also talk on Twitter. Many of them don't make showy photo albums of their mideast adventures — and because they are being observed on Twitter by people who are not involved or laboring in the same communities, it's assumed that they're just "keyboard warriors."

This isn't to say you're making those same conflations, or that PissPigGrandad is insincere in his beliefs because he does post funny pictures of puppies and AK47s. But it's worth remembering.
posted by verb at 5:00 PM on December 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


What's a male florist?

Pretty badass apparently.
posted by adept256 at 5:00 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


One of my curses is life is to keep having EXTREMELY 21st Century things happening to me all the time (yes hiponeypot your gay Dubai based lover via snapchat saves to gain access you quasi journalist you) and one of them is having regular party conversation be "oh hell is piss pig grandpa okay?"
posted by The Whelk at 5:04 PM on December 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


That man is a treasure.
posted by Grandysaur at 6:28 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


i always kind of had a weird feeling about the spanish civil war volunteers, not a bad feeling, a weird one, wanted to know whod do that shit and now i know and bless a twitter

Yeah I guess that is what the International Brigades look like in the 21st century. I'm okay with that.
posted by atoxyl at 7:41 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


What's a male florist?

Worth 20+ Daeshis, same as in town
posted by RogerB at 7:53 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]




Taking a rare break from self-imposed metafilter exile to say FUCK YEAH PISSPIG GET THE GRAY WOLF.

Here's an interview with him. He is real fucking legit.

Also he's funny af imo.
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 10:00 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Yeah I guess that is what the International Brigades look like in the 21st century. I'm okay with that.

Or POUM if you prefer. Or others - I really don't know what's most comparable but that's the actual faction George Orwell joined which is what I had been thinking of in the first place.
posted by atoxyl at 3:17 AM on December 8, 2016


An IWW named Michael Israel was killed in Rojava on the 29th.

Some other international volunteers have also been killed. I'm of the mind that no one who goes doesn't know they could die, and that - lacking other obligations - one is free to dispose of one's life as one chooses.

The world seems a much darker and more precarious place than it did a couple of months ago, and it seems to make more sense, honestly, to risk your life in the service of meaning. If all our lives are being shortened by the trumpocalypse, taking risks in order to give meaning to your life becomes a more attractive option.
posted by Frowner at 7:07 AM on December 8, 2016 [7 favorites]


I courageously continue to tweet while he fights. I don't know where I found the strength to carry on, but I would like to attri--
posted by Theta States at 11:20 AM on December 8, 2016


What's a male florist?

20 dinar, same as in Raqqa.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:21 PM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


If both the moral and economic case for communism depends on an international struggle, this is especially admirable stuff from someone who seems really sincere about his beliefs. Plus PissPigGranddad has this great recurring video bit where he gets a British YPG mate to say 'Bob's your uncle,' and every time I watch it, it stays just as funny and charming.

(I like, by the way, that this post is serving the same basic function for leftists on MeFi as the election threads for liberals.)
posted by Collaterly Sisters at 12:26 AM on December 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


(in fact I’ve heard good old [Vladimir] Lenin quoted a few times re: our organization)

What other Lenins did editors think I might confuse this as a reference toward
posted by beerperson at 11:23 AM on December 9, 2016


is he the Black Beatle of song
posted by beerperson at 11:34 AM on December 9, 2016


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