Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to cool People do
Speaker 1: cool stuff. You're weekly reminder that sometimes when there's bad stuff,
Speaker 1: there's people trying to do good stuff, even if it
Speaker 1: goes really badly sometimes like today's story. But we're going
Speaker 1: to get to that, but first, I'm your host, Margaret
Speaker 1: Kiljoy and my guest is Carl.
Speaker 2: Hi. Carl, it's so cool to be back. Every time
Speaker 2: I get a chance to be on anything on Cool
Speaker 2: Zone Media, I'm super excited. When I saw the invite,
Speaker 2: I was like absolutely. People ask me like, what's the topic.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't know, but I'm there, so here
Speaker 2: I am. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Famously, I like to not tell my guests what we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about, and that's an example. You've a
Speaker 1: listener probably know what we're going to talk about because
Speaker 1: it's in the title and sharene our producer Hi, Sharen Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm here as well, also, Carl, as someone who books
Speaker 1: the guests, your response time and enthusiasm is always appreciated.
Speaker 3: It's very It makes my job so easy, so thank
Speaker 3: you for that.
Speaker 2: It lets you know that I'm jitimate about what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: For anyone who doesn't know Carl and his work. Carl
Speaker 1: runs in Range TV and it's really good. Do you
Speaker 1: want to explain what that means?
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, I appreciate that. So in Range TV
Speaker 2: is ostensibly a firearms related media project, but I actually
Speaker 2: wrote this little paragraph to like describe my channel better
Speaker 2: because it's hard to describe kind of So I'm like
Speaker 2: I considered a media community building project. But one of
Speaker 2: the things that differentiates us from like a lot of
Speaker 2: the other firearms stuff in the world is that we're
Speaker 2: actively anti racist, pro human liberation and staunchly for LGBTQ
Speaker 2: plus rights, and that kind of puts us in a
Speaker 2: weird space in firearms land. So it's been an interesting walk.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the things that's come up over and
Speaker 1: over again on this show is how groups of people
Speaker 1: are disarmed before they're murdered in mass.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and that's the challenge I have with a
Speaker 2: lot of people that are like not necessarily firearms people already,
Speaker 2: especially people that are like left of center. Whatever that means,
Speaker 2: is that we don't talk about the realities of that
Speaker 2: that firearms have been used so many times to oppress,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot of times where fire has been
Speaker 2: used to liberate and we leave that out of the conversation.
Speaker 1: And it's complicated and kind of not what we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about today, but it's tangentially related to what
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about today, because well, first of
Speaker 1: do the rest of the introductions, the auto engineering is
Speaker 1: done by Daniel. Everyone's just to say hi to Daniel
Speaker 1: Hi Danel Hi, Daniel, I said hi.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I was muted. Sorry Daniel Hi Danel.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's right, okay, And our theme music is written
Speaker 1: for ud by Unwoman. This week, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about one of the most famous and misunderstood direct actions
Speaker 1: in history. And I want to start with a thought experiment.
Speaker 1: Let's think about John Brown. This is not a John
Speaker 1: Brown episode. The pop history version of John Brown is
Speaker 1: that he's like a bit of a zealot who goes
Speaker 1: to war against slavery without the support of anyone and
Speaker 1: he loses.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The actual historical version of him is that he's a
Speaker 1: bit of a zealot who went to war against slavery
Speaker 1: with the backing of a multi racial and cross class
Speaker 1: alliance of abolitionists. He individually lost has lost his life famously.
Speaker 1: The media spectacle around his trial is more or less
Speaker 1: what sparked the South to attempt secession and therefore sparked
Speaker 1: the Civil War and therefore brought the end of legal
Speaker 1: chattel slavery in one of the most powerful slave empires
Speaker 1: the world has ever known. So John Brown died and
Speaker 1: then won. It happens that way sometimes, right, Okay, my
Speaker 1: thought experiment, and it's I don't want to linger on
Speaker 1: it too long, but imagine for a moment if the
Speaker 1: South had won the Civil War, Imagine how history would
Speaker 1: look at John Brown. Probably my argument is that a
Speaker 1: lot of people would accuse him of either being an
Speaker 1: unwitting friend of the South, or they might accuse him
Speaker 1: of having been an agent of the South doing like
Speaker 1: a false flag attack, since, after all, his actions spurred
Speaker 1: the growth of the Confederacy. They absolutely did. His actions
Speaker 1: spurred the growth of the Confederacy. They just were immediately smashed. Well,
Speaker 1: not immediately. It took a lot of work and a
Speaker 1: lot of people died doing it. But so that's my argument.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if that tracks with y'all.
Speaker 2: But that makes a lot of sense because now when
Speaker 2: we see John Brown, and that's actually very timely because
Speaker 2: not very long ago. I did the whole episode series
Speaker 2: about John Brown and got a really deep dived dove
Speaker 2: into that conversation. And of course you see people now
Speaker 2: that are well, not my people, but they'll say things
Speaker 2: where they call him a terrorist and he was this
Speaker 2: evil man that killed lots of innocent people and all
Speaker 2: the things. And there's some truth to that. Of course,
Speaker 2: he didn't kill some probably innocent people. But the fact is,
Speaker 2: if you flip that on the side, and like you said,
Speaker 2: if it was the other way around, then the Confederacy won. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the narrative of him being the agent provocateur that instigated
Speaker 2: the battle that allowed them to be victorious in their
Speaker 2: quote unquote war for states rights would make a lot
Speaker 2: of sense. He would be, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: That's weird. I haven't thought about it, yeah, because it's
Speaker 2: hard to think about it that way.
Speaker 1: Right, and it's not fun to think about it. But
Speaker 1: there's other times in place. Okay, So other white abolitionists
Speaker 1: did not act like John Brown. Now, plenty of black
Speaker 1: abolitionists led slaver volts, of course, right, other white people
Speaker 1: didn't act like John Brown because they thought in their
Speaker 1: way that being strategic, as they understood it was more
Speaker 1: important than doing what is immediately a moral necessity. It
Speaker 1: is obvious in retrospect that it is a moral necessity
Speaker 1: to attack slave empires with all available vigor.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I mean I think John Brown and others
Speaker 2: said this that were more of his mindset, which was
Speaker 2: he didn't bring the violence. The violence was already here, absolutely,
Speaker 2: But this idea of just financially supporting and slightly bumping
Speaker 2: the Overton window, well maybe it would have worked over
Speaker 2: a couple hundred years. Maybe, but how many people's lives
Speaker 2: are ruined and how much horror happens in those couple
Speaker 2: of hundred.
Speaker 1: Years, right, totally. And you know, there had been efforts
Speaker 1: around the birth of the I mean, we're going to
Speaker 1: do a whole long series about the abolitionists at some point.
Speaker 1: We've talked a lot about on the show already. But
Speaker 1: you know, all these points to like slowly phase it out, right, like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, they theoretically shut down the trans Atlantic slave trade,
Speaker 1: and they like, we're like, oh, only people who are
Speaker 1: born here can be enslaved, and then you know, and
Speaker 1: then later they were like, well you can keep the
Speaker 1: guys you already own, but then maybe their kids are
Speaker 1: for you know, people talked about all kinds of shit,
Speaker 1: and then a lot of people, including a lot of
Speaker 1: enslaved people and formerly enslaved people, were like, no, we're
Speaker 1: just going to shoot you until this problem stops. You know.
Speaker 1: But I think people often misunderstand the difference between moral
Speaker 1: and strategic action, and what is actually strategic is more
Speaker 1: or less unknowable. You can make some guesses right in
Speaker 1: the short term, you tend not to know. We can
Speaker 1: look at it in retrospect and immediately know. We can
Speaker 1: Monday morning quarterback. I'm good at sports. The other thing
Speaker 1: I want to say is that most attacks are not
Speaker 1: false flag attacks. Claiming that something was a false flag attack,
Speaker 1: I would argue, and I'm going to explain why I'm
Speaker 1: talking about this in a minute, but I would argue,
Speaker 1: this is the refuge of people who are afraid to
Speaker 1: do what they know is right. Time and time again.
Speaker 1: Often we're like, oh, that person did a thing, and
Speaker 1: that was a bad idea. So clearly the other side
Speaker 1: did it as a way to excuse the fact that
Speaker 1: they have not taken meaningful action. So all that up front,
Speaker 1: I told you it's gonna be paragraphs before I would
Speaker 1: tell you what we're talking about. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about the biggest and most famous quote unquote false flag
Speaker 1: attack in all of history, the one that is used
Speaker 1: as shorthand for an attack that authoritarians used to centralize power.
Speaker 1: Because this week on Cool People Did Cool Stuff, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the fucking Reichstag Fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's the one, ain't it. That's the one that
Speaker 2: supposedly that's the biggest false flag of all that justified
Speaker 2: the Enabling Act and all the things that Hitler used
Speaker 2: to turn it into a true dictatorship. Yep.
Speaker 1: I'm curious what you all. I've been asking my friends
Speaker 1: this all week, Like Carl, I suspect you you know
Speaker 1: a bit about this topic, but coming into it, what
Speaker 1: do you all know about the Reichstag Fire. I'm curious
Speaker 1: both of you.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, my basic understanding is you have this
Speaker 2: little Dutch boy, I believe his name was vander Lub.
Speaker 2: If I'm pronouncing that properly, is that correct?
Speaker 1: And I have it later in my script how to
Speaker 1: pronounce it, but I don't have in front of me.
Speaker 2: Well that was. If it's a mispronunciation, we'll fix that later,
Speaker 2: but the narrative was that his zealotry towards the Nazis
Speaker 2: would have said, his zelotry against their democratically elected government
Speaker 2: was that he proved him so that he was that
Speaker 2: the radicals of the left and the communists would burn
Speaker 2: down this symbol of the nation state and their power
Speaker 2: by setting fire to the Reichstag. Yeah. I think the
Speaker 2: opposite of that would be, these are fascists and Nazis
Speaker 2: and evil, and I'm going to burn down the symbol
Speaker 2: of their power.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean it makes sense, right, And when
Speaker 2: you open the door to that thing, much like you
Speaker 2: great reference to John Brown, you don't know what's coming
Speaker 2: out of the other. Like John Brown's actions at Harper's
Speaker 2: Ferry didn't go the way he wanted, but ultimately it worked, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, coming out of the gate, you know anything
Speaker 1: about the Reichshtag fire, heard anything?
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm going to boldly just be honest and say, no,
Speaker 3: I don't know anything about this great No, No that
Speaker 3: makes sense other than it was like almost like the
Speaker 3: first shot fire that started like at all, that's all
Speaker 3: I really know. It was just like the Yeah, one
Speaker 3: of those big events in history books that you learn
Speaker 3: about and then I forget about mutually. But audience members,
Speaker 3: if you are like me, feel no shame. I don't
Speaker 3: know anything ever either.
Speaker 1: I mean I was like that a week ago, well, okay,
Speaker 1: a year ago, I was like, oh, the Reichstag fire,
Speaker 1: that thing that was famously a false flag attack that
Speaker 1: the Nazis used. It's like all I knew, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then at some point I was like, I wonder
Speaker 1: who did that, and I like looked it up and
Speaker 1: I was like, this isn't the story I've heard, and
Speaker 1: so I had it I like to do list and yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's funny because I always come
Speaker 1: in and be like I know everything about history, and
Speaker 1: it's like, no, I know everything about the thing that
Speaker 1: I have just spent the past week reading books about.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: That's fair. That's fair. What we learn in school is
Speaker 3: so truncated, and so unless you really do your own research,
Speaker 3: you're not going to learn much about the world.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think it's a mixed bag, right. It's
Speaker 2: truncated and it's also formulated, so it's like it's the
Speaker 2: product of what a lot of people, over a long
Speaker 2: time have wanted you to learn, right, But it's also
Speaker 2: just they just leave out a lot of stuff. And yeah,
Speaker 2: sometimes I don't know if it's a sin of emission
Speaker 2: intentionally or just accidental, but the landscape turns into not
Speaker 2: really what it is. When you dig into stuff, it's
Speaker 2: like WHOA really? Wow? Exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'm going to give you a little spoiler.
Speaker 1: The reason that so many people think it was a
Speaker 1: false flag attack is because nineteen thirties communists are a
Speaker 1: bunch of homophobes.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to defend that thesis, although much later
Speaker 1: in the episode, I.
Speaker 3: Love what Margaret defend the thesis.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, that part was like, that was the like holy
Speaker 1: shit moment of this whole thing for me, because most
Speaker 1: leftist history doesn't want to talk about that part for
Speaker 1: some weird reason. So we're going to start this story
Speaker 1: by talking about the rise of the Nazis, because you
Speaker 1: know what, I needed a refresher. I didn't know a
Speaker 1: lot of it. We're going to start more recently than
Speaker 1: we sometimes do. During World War One. Germany was a
Speaker 1: strange thing. It was a constitutional empire. It had twenty
Speaker 1: five states, four kingdoms, five duchies, seven principalities, three free
Speaker 1: Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory, and a partridge in
Speaker 1: a pear tree. One of the four kingdoms was Prussia,
Speaker 1: which made up about two thirds of Germany by both
Speaker 1: population and land mass. The King of Prussia was also
Speaker 1: the emperor, the Kaiser. This is the second Reich, right
Speaker 1: Hitler's famously the third Reich. This is the second one.
Speaker 1: It had a constitution and a parliament, but at the
Speaker 1: end of the y, the Kaiser's in charge. In fact,
Speaker 1: in nineteen fourteen, the German parliament did its first enabling act,
Speaker 1: like Karl talked about earlier, and this is the first
Speaker 1: one it did under its constitution to limit basic rights
Speaker 1: of the populace to help the war effort. They're like, wow,
Speaker 1: there's a war on. We can't have all those democracy
Speaker 1: fucking things up, you know, like people only have freedom
Speaker 1: when like I feel like it. Basically, the constitution had
Speaker 1: a we will follow this constitution until we don't want
Speaker 1: to clause, well, until the Kaiser doesn't want to. Famously,
Speaker 1: this did not work. Germany still lost the war, the
Speaker 1: Great War, in fact, and the empire collapsed in November
Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen. A Republic grew up in its place. First,
Speaker 1: they tried to have a revolution. They actually tried to
Speaker 1: do like a kind of a communist revolution that a
Speaker 1: bunch of anarchists were involved in. And I'll talk about
Speaker 1: it eventually one of these days. And B Traven who
Speaker 1: wrote The Death Ship and the Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen the movie this Treasure of Sera Madre?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, well never mind, you all didn't grow up with
Speaker 1: an older sister made you watch old movies. But there's
Speaker 1: this old movie called Treasure Sier Madre. The point of
Speaker 1: this is that the guy who wrote this book, you
Speaker 1: all don't know what I'm talking about, was an anarchist
Speaker 1: who had fled Germany. But we'll talk about that some
Speaker 1: other time. He lived under cover.
Speaker 3: Is it a good movie? Should I add it to
Speaker 3: my letterbox?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 3: Watch list?
Speaker 1: You know, like, it's interesting if you like old movies.
Speaker 1: It's fun, it has class politics. It's like weird because
Speaker 1: it's these like white dudes who are down and out
Speaker 1: in Mexico who want to go gold prospecting, but they're
Speaker 1: like vagabonds living on the street and they're like hustling
Speaker 1: all the rich white people who are there by being like, hey,
Speaker 1: help a fellow American. Now, just buy me a cigarette,
Speaker 1: and the guy's like, you've asked me like three times.
Speaker 1: He's like cock crap. Anyway, So Betraving, one day you're
Speaker 1: going to be the hero of this story because you
Speaker 1: were so fascinating. That's not how we're talking about. They
Speaker 1: become a republic after the revolution fails. They become the
Speaker 1: Weimar Republic, and we've done a bunch of episodes about
Speaker 1: the Vymar Republic because they're really fucking interesting and cool.
Speaker 1: There's all these like queer youth groups that are fighting nuts,
Speaker 1: and we've done episodes about the a narcosyndicalists who ran
Speaker 1: hundreds of illegal abortion clinics, providing millions of safe abortions
Speaker 1: in Weimar Germany. If you wanted an abortion, you were
Speaker 1: going to either the syndicalists or the people who syndicalists trained.
Speaker 1: The Weimar Republic was a wildly interesting place. Everyone as
Speaker 1: hungry as fuck. The reparations that they had to pay
Speaker 1: the rest of countries is crippling the economy, and a
Speaker 1: million types of leftists and right wing folks are forming
Speaker 1: gangs and fighting each other in the streets. People are
Speaker 1: making all kinds of cool art. Human sexuality is being
Speaker 1: researched for the first time in Western history, like as
Speaker 1: like a science. And the way it worked governmentally is
Speaker 1: like this. You have an elected president and you have
Speaker 1: an elected parliament, which is called the Reichstag, which just
Speaker 1: stands for Parliament of the Empire. Basically, the parliament meets
Speaker 1: in a building that is also called the Reichstag. The
Speaker 1: president then appoints a chancellor who introduces legislation to the reichstock.
Speaker 1: So the chancellor is a poin. Everyone else is elected,
Speaker 1: and theoretically the chancellor's supposed to be the Guy's always
Speaker 1: a guy. I think the person in charge of whatever group,
Speaker 1: whatever political party, is the most seats in parliament, it's
Speaker 1: gonna come up. I normally kind of skim over a
Speaker 1: lot of this shit, but I think it's important. In
Speaker 1: this story. The president can dismiss his cabinet and his chancellor.
Speaker 1: I asked, Okay, so there's this thing that happens. I
Speaker 1: think whenever I'm reading history about like Europe and other democracies,
Speaker 1: I'm so used to the way that the US works
Speaker 1: that you read about things and you're like, oh, and
Speaker 1: then they dismiss the parliament. I'm like, what the fuck, Like,
Speaker 1: holy shit, what is that? Like, that's like crazy shit
Speaker 1: is happening. And you're like, no, that's a this is
Speaker 1: what they do, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we saw actions similar like that in France just recently, right,
Speaker 2: I mean that's what yep, So it's not this is
Speaker 2: still going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no totally. And that's the like, so things seem
Speaker 1: a little bit more heated than they sometimes are. I mean,
Speaker 1: things are peeded in France right now and stuff, right,
Speaker 1: but it's like these specific actions are not quite as
Speaker 1: like why old as they might seem to us in
Speaker 1: our weird two party thing. He can dissolve the parliament
Speaker 1: and call for new elections if the parliament isn't getting
Speaker 1: shit done, right, Like if you just elect a bunch
Speaker 1: of people who all hate each other, nothing can get done.
Speaker 1: They're like, all right, well, all you fucking go home.
Speaker 1: We're gonna just do this again, you know. And in
Speaker 1: national emergencies, the president has Article forty eight, which is
Speaker 1: the right to be a dictator. So this is actually
Speaker 1: not wait, what the right to be that's like a thing,
Speaker 1: uh huh, it's in the constitution of Germany in the
Speaker 1: Weimar Republic, because well it's kind of the same constitution
Speaker 1: that they had in the Empire. Like when I say
Speaker 1: all that's changed, I have not read these documents side
Speaker 1: by side. But all that's changed is now your emperor
Speaker 1: is elected, you know, because he's still appointing the chancellor.
Speaker 1: He's still able to call himself a dictator anytime he wants.
Speaker 1: The only difference is that he's elected again. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's other differences. And among all these different political groups
Speaker 1: that's fucking around trying to take power is famously the
Speaker 1: National Socialist Workers Party aka the Nazis. This for a
Speaker 1: very long time, is a tiny minority party. Their main
Speaker 1: claim to fame is that their leader this like shitty
Speaker 1: artist named Adolf Hitler. Most people haven't heard of him.
Speaker 1: He's really obscure artist. Is my best joke I have
Speaker 1: in the whole script. Sorry everyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very hipster stuff. I mean, if you haven't
Speaker 2: seen it, it's yeah, it's pretty rare.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got that weird, edgy mustache. He's got Charlie
Speaker 1: Chaplin like, he's funny. He tried and failed to stage
Speaker 1: a coup in nineteen twenty three. That's like all anyone
Speaker 1: knows about the Nazis. It's like, I mean, they're like
Speaker 1: the Proud Boys or something. People are like, what, there's
Speaker 1: that group. I don't know. They seem to do some
Speaker 1: bad shit. There's like ten of them, right, you know.
Speaker 1: And the reason that they're named the National Socialists is
Speaker 1: that they're a right wing party that is supernationalist. But
Speaker 1: initially they had some anti capitalist and anti bourgeois ideas
Speaker 1: floating round within it, much like you see in the
Speaker 1: Modern Republican Party where RNC this week as we recorded
Speaker 1: two weeks ago, as you're listening, they're up there being
Speaker 1: like and fuck the elite, am I right? And then
Speaker 1: like all the richest people in the world are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: fuck us, no, some other guy Jews, I mean they
Speaker 1: mean Jews, right, That's.
Speaker 2: What it always comes down to. Yeah, But see they're socialists.
Speaker 2: They just proved their point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so they were actually borrowing some ideas from leftism,
Speaker 1: many of which are ideas that we should analyze and
Speaker 1: wonder how we talk about, right, because this is one
Speaker 1: of the ways that anti Semitism creeps into some things
Speaker 1: sometimes is when whatever all the left Nazis are gonna
Speaker 1: get murdered soon. They're all dead. By the time everything happens,
Speaker 1: they all get fucking killed by the other Nazis. So
Speaker 1: no more left Nazis.
Speaker 2: The Night of the Long Knives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no more gay Nazis. Whatever. After the failed coup,
Speaker 1: Hitler was like, all right, how can I take power
Speaker 1: in a legal way? And what he should have done
Speaker 1: is run political ads, which we don't run on this podcast.
Speaker 1: We have some lines, and one of our lines is
Speaker 1: that we don't do political ads. If you hear one,
Speaker 1: it is actually a mistake. Instead of usually where I'm like,
Speaker 1: you're ad for anything bad, it's a mistake, Like, no,
Speaker 1: everything is bad. We live in a hell world of capitalism.
Speaker 1: But at least there's no political ads coming up. I
Speaker 1: hope here they are the non political ads. Ooh, we're back,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to vote with my dollar for gambling
Speaker 1: whatever we sold.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I subsist entirely on only Hello Fresh.
Speaker 2: It's the only way I stay a lout.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's right, you heard it here first.
Speaker 2: If a company doesn't send me a box of food
Speaker 2: to my door, I just die. I don't know what
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I tried one or not. I'm not gonna say
Speaker 1: which one. I tried it, and then I felt so
Speaker 1: bad about the waste of the like box that had
Speaker 1: the fucking thing, and then and all of the yeah,
Speaker 1: and then also like I live like like mail service
Speaker 1: is not fast where I live. It's not even that
Speaker 1: I live like so far from civilization. It's that I
Speaker 1: live in a really underserved area because no one cares
Speaker 1: about the people who live here because they're rural and
Speaker 1: poor and so like everything takes like a week to
Speaker 1: get here, and it's more like hello on fresh, it's
Speaker 1: not that's not the even the one I used. That's
Speaker 1: not the one I used. Please don't get mad at me.
Speaker 2: Hello, been sitting in the back of the truck sweating
Speaker 2: for a week.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I go to the grocery store, which is good.
Speaker 2: Which is only nominally better, right, I mean, it's like
Speaker 2: this sells green ones, but now it's a little wilted.
Speaker 1: And also all the weird packaging is not I don't
Speaker 1: have to see it.
Speaker 2: Right, No, that's that's that's done for you. They throw
Speaker 2: that away so you don't have to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Actually I shred all the cardboard and
Speaker 1: then compost it. But that's because I am strange.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's a good way to deal with it.
Speaker 3: Actually, yeah that's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, they used to burn it and know that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's legal. I used to recycle
Speaker 1: it all. I used to drive it to another state
Speaker 1: to recycle it. That's what I'm going to claim. No
Speaker 1: one here does that, absolutely, no one here does that.
Speaker 1: They don't recycle cardboard where I live, I don't. Recycling's fake?
Speaker 2: Do they even know what recycling is? I mean, that's
Speaker 2: some places, don't I know.
Speaker 1: They might just be a step ahead and know that
Speaker 1: it's all fake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an instance in which the wrong take
Speaker 2: is the right take because they're skeptical of it. It
Speaker 2: turns out they're not wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, what else people should be skeptical of is the Nazis.
Speaker 1: There's actually no you should actually just kill them. So
Speaker 1: they got really into party politics after their failed coup
Speaker 1: didn't work. They were like, all right, what's the legal
Speaker 1: way to take power again? Something that we have no
Speaker 1: idea about people trying to do in the United States,
Speaker 1: And so they campaigned on a platform that's like fuck
Speaker 1: Commi's fuck Jews, go Germany. That's their main points of unity. Specifically,
Speaker 1: they're like, fuck everyone who signed the Treaty of Si
Speaker 1: they're traders. Germany should have won, should have just kept
Speaker 1: sending boys into a grinder that no one can see.
Speaker 1: The face I'm making, but it's not a positive one.
Speaker 1: And when I say it wasn't a big deal of
Speaker 1: a party at the time, in nineteen twenty eight, they
Speaker 1: had one hundred thousand members. There's like sixty five million
Speaker 1: people in Germany. They had one hundred thousand of them
Speaker 1: and they won two point six percent of the vote.
Speaker 3: But then the.
Speaker 1: World economy fucking collapsed. Thirty percent of Germany was soon unemployed.
Speaker 1: And when the economy is fucked, people look for easy answers.
Speaker 1: They're looking for people to blame. By nineteen thirty, the
Speaker 1: Nazis had eighteen point three percent of the vote and
Speaker 1: they were the second biggest party after the Social Democrats.
Speaker 1: The Communist Party also saw a huge burst of activity.
Speaker 1: Two they're trailing at ten percent of the vote. When
Speaker 1: Weimar the Republic first started out, they had a moderate
Speaker 1: Social Democrat for president. This is the whole thing that's like,
Speaker 1: really confusing because if you use any political term, you
Speaker 1: mean a completely different thing decade to decade in country
Speaker 1: to country. Right, a social democrat in Germany is like
Speaker 1: a centrist. A social democrat in Germany is a kind
Speaker 1: of a democrat. Now in the US, right they have
Speaker 1: his moderate social democrat for a president, but that guy
Speaker 1: died in office. So in nineteen twenty five, the right
Speaker 1: all got together to run one candidate together, this guy
Speaker 1: Paul von Hindenberg, most famous for blowing up as a limp.
Speaker 2: No, they named the balloon after the zeppr No, I know,
Speaker 2: but he was a famous general that got lots of
Speaker 2: people killed in the war.
Speaker 1: Yeah he was. I think he was in charge of
Speaker 1: Germany and World War One. You know more about this,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah he was. He was pretty much like their military head,
Speaker 2: for lack of a better term, And so the general
Speaker 2: German war effort was Hindenburg down. Wow. Okay, I mean
Speaker 2: you said you still had the Kaiser Wilhelm, right, but
Speaker 2: like Hindenburg was the military arm of that.
Speaker 1: Okay. So this guy who had famously lost them a
Speaker 1: war and gotten all of their kids killed. They voted
Speaker 1: into office in nineteen twenty five and he doesn't have
Speaker 1: a political party, which is kind of that part's impressive.
Speaker 1: He ran as an independent, but it's because he didn't
Speaker 1: go with one right wing party. He was all of them.
Speaker 1: He was the voice of all the right wingers. He
Speaker 1: actually didn't like the Nazis, even though he is absolutely
Speaker 1: the one who put them into power. We'll talk about that.
Speaker 2: Do you mean like he kind of pulled a unite
Speaker 2: the right.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, we talk about history, completely devoid of
Speaker 1: all things. It's a coincidence that I'm doing the Reichstag
Speaker 1: fire episode right now. Yeah. So he's old as fuck
Speaker 1: when he's elected, totally unfamiliar to the modern American audience.
Speaker 1: He's like seventy nine or something when he's elected, which
Speaker 1: is younger than by a young Chap Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: two years younger than Biden. He didn't like the Nazis
Speaker 1: all that much. He signs the government over to Hitler. Eventually,
Speaker 1: we'll get to that. By nineteen thirty, parliament is divided
Speaker 1: as fuck. It keeps not getting anything done. It's deadlocked.
Speaker 1: Hindenburg dissolves the parliament. There's new elections. They get dead locked.
Speaker 1: He dissolves the parliament over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: They just try again roll the dice. Slowly, right wing
Speaker 1: parties get their shit together and they are claiming more
Speaker 1: and more of parliament. In July nineteen thirty two, the
Speaker 1: Nazis came out on top. They had thirty seven percent
Speaker 1: of the vote. Traditionally, the president would appoint a chancellor
Speaker 1: from whichever party had the most seats in parliament. Originally,
Speaker 1: Hindenburg was like, I don't want to do that. Hitler sucks.
Speaker 1: Look at his mustache.
Speaker 2: Well, I think even Hindenberg considered them sort of just
Speaker 2: like brutal, somewhat unintelligent street thugs. Yeah, it was like
Speaker 2: the general vibe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because they were, you know, because he's like
Speaker 1: an old fashioned right wing guy. He was like, let's
Speaker 1: have law and order in an emperor or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, no, totally. So they were just these
Speaker 2: like street thugs that were what's the word unsophisticated would
Speaker 2: probably be the way to put it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes sense. And it didn't help that Hitler
Speaker 1: had actually just run against Hindenburg for president in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two election, but Hindenburg soundly beat him. But
Speaker 1: the right wing of the country, all the industrialists and shit,
Speaker 1: are like, come on, appoint our guy chancellor. What could
Speaker 1: go wrong? Look at him, He's Hitler. Look at our
Speaker 1: fake babyface. He's an artist, he's sensitive. More specifically, they
Speaker 1: were like, we must stop this Communist menace. If we
Speaker 1: don't put Hitler in charge, will be the USSR. And
Speaker 1: this is not what would have happened in nineteen eighteen.
Speaker 1: The Communist Party had some teeth at this point, they're
Speaker 1: pulling in ten percent of the electorate, but they're like
Speaker 1: committed to party politics. They're kind of boring. But on
Speaker 1: January thirtieth, nineteen thirty three, Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as
Speaker 1: the Chancellor of Germany. And it's worth pointing out that
Speaker 1: people always talk about people being like, well, Hitler was
Speaker 1: democratically elected, and I know I'm being pedantic when I
Speaker 1: say this, but he actually wasn't. There was like later
Speaker 1: a thing where he forced people to vote for him.
Speaker 1: After we'll get to it. His party was the majority
Speaker 1: party and he was appointed chancellor. Carl, you seem no.
Speaker 2: I mean, I was just thinking. I actually made that
Speaker 2: statement early on as we were recording the podcast, and
Speaker 2: you're right, I think I don't know if i'd use
Speaker 2: the word pedantic. But he was appointed, but appointed through
Speaker 2: a system in which his party held the great majority,
Speaker 2: so therefore it was still common and therefore by electing
Speaker 2: the party to their highest percentage, they sort of have
Speaker 2: indirectly democratically elected Hitler. How's that?
Speaker 1: I think that that's true. But it's also worth understanding
Speaker 1: that it was a plurality, not a majority. Not to
Speaker 1: be like the German people were great, right, like clearly
Speaker 1: not one of the shining moments of democracy right here
Speaker 1: is when it put Hitler in power and German people
Speaker 1: didn't have a civil war over it.
Speaker 2: Right, So what was the percentage you said they held?
Speaker 2: They held like thirty six percent of parliament or something.
Speaker 1: You said, yeah, thirty seven Yeah, So thirty seven.
Speaker 2: Percent is still a minority of the majority of people.
Speaker 2: So Hitler getting to chancellorship is still not the will
Speaker 2: of the greatest amount of people, right, It's just the
Speaker 2: greatest majority of people who voted, right.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, I so is the only reason Hindenburgh gave
Speaker 3: in an appointed him chancellor because of that growing numbers?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: Is that the only reason?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: Why did he change his mind on the guy?
Speaker 1: I think it was the pressure from the industrialist convincing
Speaker 1: him that the Communists needed to be stopped, that Hitler
Speaker 1: was the best chance of stopping the communist menace. That
Speaker 1: is my best read on it, but I have only
Speaker 1: read maybe four paragraphs about that particular thing. You know, fair, No,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Yeah, So Hitler now in power. I
Speaker 1: swear we're going to get to fun arsen and shit.
Speaker 1: Although it goes really badly, but it's interesting at least
Speaker 1: as part of Hitler's attempt to be appointed, he was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm only going to want two ministers from my party, right,
Speaker 1: because like Hindenburg is like, oh, the Nazis gonna try
Speaker 1: and take over the Council or whatever, which is like
Speaker 1: the thing that advises the that isn't the parliament, you know.
Speaker 1: All I want is the Interior minister. And then I
Speaker 1: want this guy Goring, who is the president of the
Speaker 1: Nazis in the Reichstag, like he's the main guy there.
Speaker 1: But I want him to be a minister without portfolio,
Speaker 1: and I want him in charge of the Prussian cops,
Speaker 1: which is the majority of the cops in the country.
Speaker 1: So Hitler gets to be Chancellor and he hits the
Speaker 1: ground fucking running. This is a January nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 1: He is hitlering write out the box. On February twenty second,
Speaker 1: the Nazis created the essay the storm Troopers, made up
Speaker 1: of fifty thousand Nazis, to be an auxiliary police force
Speaker 1: under direct fascist control, and the new cabinet got the
Speaker 1: president to dissolve the Reichstag again, and they were like,
Speaker 1: all right, we're going to get this time. You're going
Speaker 1: to dissolve the parliament. We're going to vote in to
Speaker 1: write people. And so they call for an election on
Speaker 1: March fifth, nineteen thirty three. Along the way back in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two, the year before, non Nazi right wingers
Speaker 1: had written this kind of Remember earlier I was saying,
Speaker 1: there's an article forty eight that like, hey, you can
Speaker 1: just be a dictator if you want. Thing mm hmm.
Speaker 1: They also wrote this thing. It's kind of in a
Speaker 1: case of emergency, break glass decree that is the decree
Speaker 1: of the Reich President for the Protection of the People
Speaker 1: and State. And it basically was like, hey, if the
Speaker 1: communists try to have a revolution, here is the plan
Speaker 1: by which we will declare martial law. We will centralize
Speaker 1: all authority. We will suspend the constitution, we will suspend
Speaker 1: free press, free assembly, free speech, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: It allows for up to three months of protective custody
Speaker 1: of anyone suspected of doing crime. And so they just
Speaker 1: like write this and then they like sit on it.
Speaker 1: And the fun thing about giving more power to the
Speaker 1: state is that even though this wasn't the Nazis who
Speaker 1: wrote this, you're giving power to whoever comes after you too.
Speaker 1: Like the Nazis, people.
Speaker 2: Always forget about that the thing you do today you
Speaker 2: think is cool, might have really bad ramifications later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's make more laws with which to criminalize people.
Speaker 1: That's going to go really well.
Speaker 2: And even if your guys okay right now, the next
Speaker 2: guy might not be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: It's also interesting to note this is off a little
Speaker 2: off topic, but when you talk about that act that
Speaker 2: allowed them to like essentially centralize and control the state
Speaker 2: in the case of an emergency, that similar law was
Speaker 2: the well a law similar to it was what they
Speaker 2: tried to use an Operation Valkyrie plot, uh huh to
Speaker 2: overthrow Hitler almost exactly the same sort of thing. There
Speaker 2: was this protection plan. They were going to say that
Speaker 2: Hitler was dead, and therefore all power must be centralized,
Speaker 2: and they were just going to take over the state
Speaker 2: from within, very similar attempt. It just didn't work.
Speaker 1: No, it makes sense. I mean, like, you know, you're
Speaker 1: creating levers for the state and you're going to use
Speaker 1: it all kinds of ways. There's like all sorts of
Speaker 1: things later about how maybe some of these laws that
Speaker 1: the Nazis did were unconstitutional that therefore is used to
Speaker 1: like vacate people's or whatever. So the Nazis are like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to keep this little piece of possibility around, right,
Speaker 1: We want this document around in case something happens, and
Speaker 1: there are I need to act in case something happens.
Speaker 1: One of their key electoral strategies is to summon up
Speaker 1: the boogeyman of the Communist Party to claim that the
Speaker 1: Communists are planning a revolution. As far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: the Communists were not planning a revolution. There is this
Speaker 1: thing where like no one tells the truth about communists,
Speaker 1: The communists don't tell the truth about communists, the anti
Speaker 1: communists don't tell the truth about communists. I read like
Speaker 1: eight things being like the Communists were not planning a revolution,
Speaker 1: but like some of those were on like Workerspaper dot
Speaker 1: org or whatever, right, you know, and like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be mad at them if they were. I mean,
Speaker 1: I would be right because I hate tankies, but like,
Speaker 1: you know, like they're better than not whatever.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Yeah, it's like you almost have to take it
Speaker 2: on vibes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I agree with the overall consensus that
Speaker 1: the vibes was that they were not planning a revolution.
Speaker 1: And part of that is that on February twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three, the Nazis raided the Communist Party headquarters anyhow,
Speaker 1: in the middle of an election cycle, transparently trying to
Speaker 1: interfere with the election. And two things happened that make
Speaker 1: me think the Communist weren't planning a revolution. One, they
Speaker 1: kind of rolled over and took it. Two, the Nazis
Speaker 1: didn't find anything that was like, hey, we're planning a revolution,
Speaker 1: you know. And then on February twenty seventh, three days later,
Speaker 1: a Council Communist which is different than a Communist party
Speaker 1: and oh we're going to get into it, set the
Speaker 1: Reichstag on fire and everything changed pretty much for the worst.
Speaker 1: And now we're going to back up and tell you
Speaker 1: the story of a young Dutch council communist, this week's
Speaker 1: cool person who did something that turned out very badly,
Speaker 1: Marnus vonder Luba. And you know what Marnus vonder Luba liked.
Speaker 1: He liked buying stuff. He did not he had no money,
Speaker 1: His life was shit. He was a working class person
Speaker 1: who suffered greatly on the job multiple times, who was
Speaker 1: actually really cool and interesting, and he would have no
Speaker 1: interest in what we're about to advertise. But here it
Speaker 1: is anyway, and we're back.
Speaker 2: I bet if vander Luba had some of that stuff
Speaker 2: we just heard about, he wouldn't have been a communist.
Speaker 1: I know he would have been like, I can just
Speaker 1: do this instead. This is so much better than I mean. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this and you're not currently half
Speaker 1: starving and disabled from workplace accidents, which might be you,
Speaker 1: because that is people who are still alive and exist today,
Speaker 1: then you had it better than Marnus. Marnas vonder Luba
Speaker 1: was born on January thirteenth, nineteen eleven, in the city
Speaker 1: of Leiden in the southern Netherlands. He was born to
Speaker 1: a sort of classic working class family at the time
Speaker 1: in that it was all fucked up. His father was
Speaker 1: a traveling salesman who ditched the family pretty much right off,
Speaker 1: like right after he was born. His mother worked hard
Speaker 1: as fuck. She was already a divorced woman with six
Speaker 1: kids before she had her little Marinus, so he has
Speaker 1: got two full siblings and four half siblings I think,
Speaker 1: and she worked running a little shop despite being an asthmatic.
Speaker 1: With the aforementioned seven children and no husband and no money,
Speaker 1: she's fucking impressive for a little while. She couldn't handle
Speaker 1: the burden, and Marnus was placed in a boarding school
Speaker 1: for poor kids and orphans. I think he gets back
Speaker 1: out of that at some point. He did well in school.
Speaker 1: His mother died when he was fucking ten years old,
Speaker 1: and he immediately has to start caretaking his three younger
Speaker 1: nieces who are also part of the picture. And by
Speaker 1: the time he's fourteen or actually I think substantially younger
Speaker 1: than that based on some of the other timing of
Speaker 1: some other events. But people why be accurate when whatever
Speaker 1: I cross reference like eight articles and they don't agree
Speaker 1: with each other about dates. At least by fourteen, if
Speaker 1: not younger, he is working to help his half sister
Speaker 1: bring in money to support all the kids all the
Speaker 1: while he's doing this. This man is impressive. This boy
Speaker 1: is impressive. He keeps himself in school. He works as
Speaker 1: an apprentice mason during the day and then takes evening
Speaker 1: classes at night like a thirty year old would, except
Speaker 1: he is fourteen years old and like whatever, and for
Speaker 1: some weird reason he didn't like how the economy worked.
Speaker 1: His fellow workers started teaching a Marxism, and soon enough
Speaker 1: he's in this group called the Sewer, which is a
Speaker 1: youth organization of the Dutch Communist Party. But he doesn't
Speaker 1: like authority, he never did and he never will, so
Speaker 1: he's not always going to sit easily in the Communist Party,
Speaker 1: and he keeps teaching himself on his own. He goes
Speaker 1: to the library. In addition to taking evening classes and
Speaker 1: working all day and supporting this family when he's a child,
Speaker 1: he also goes to the library and is like constantly
Speaker 1: there and reading books like he's sixteen, reading Marx and
Speaker 1: Henry Ford.
Speaker 2: Like so you're saying he's pulling himself up by his bootstraps.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of.
Speaker 2: I mean, like.
Speaker 1: He is not drowning the way that society wanted him
Speaker 1: to you know.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, this guy should be destined for utter failure,
Speaker 2: right yeah.
Speaker 1: At some point while he's a young mason, like I
Speaker 1: read that this happened when he was thirteen, and then
Speaker 1: another thing was that he whatever you've already heard me
Speaker 1: complain about this. At some point he is very young
Speaker 1: and a group of fellow workers play a practical joke
Speaker 1: on him. I think they were bullying him. They dump
Speaker 1: a bucket on his head. Quicklime from the bucket gets
Speaker 1: into his eyes. He has to go to the hospital.
Speaker 1: He has left with thirty percent vision in his left eye.
Speaker 1: What a fun prank a hah, we sure showed you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the worst form of the ice bucket challenge.
Speaker 3: But also like calling a bullying a joke, like been there,
Speaker 3: done that?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Like, oh, it's just a joke.
Speaker 1: Uh No, they actually I think it's because these articles
Speaker 1: are written in like the seventies, you know, they're like, ah,
Speaker 1: so sad joshing around right exactly, yeah, just boys boys, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. A famous quote from Robert E. Lee about the Klan,
Speaker 2: that's what he called the Klan. When the Klan was
Speaker 2: first active, he was like, oh boys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, are you serious? Yep, I had no idea.
Speaker 1: And that's why boys should be a pol I mean, anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm doing my part anyway. So oh my god, Mark,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. That's my best joke. It just
Speaker 1: wasn't written into my script.
Speaker 3: That was the best one so far.
Speaker 1: You're right, yeah. A few years later, so he's got
Speaker 1: thirty percent vision in his left eye. A few years later,
Speaker 1: he's sixteen years old. And when you hear like apprentice Mason,
Speaker 1: whenever I hear apprentice, I'm like, oh, you know, he's
Speaker 1: like there with like an old man who has a
Speaker 1: beer and his like son, this is how you use
Speaker 1: a trowel, right, Like, No, he's like fucking dangerously building
Speaker 1: buildings and getting hurt and like being fucked over. When
Speaker 1: he is sixteen years old, a job injury happens where
Speaker 1: rubble drops into his eye, his other eye. He is
Speaker 1: in the hospital for months and his right eye is
Speaker 1: permanently damaged. At this point and for the rest of
Speaker 1: his life, his vision isn't about where he can recognize
Speaker 1: who someone is when they're about a meter away. And
Speaker 1: so I mean I think that the word for that
Speaker 1: is blind. But I'm not one hundred percent certain. A
Speaker 1: lot of articles refer to it as half blind. He
Speaker 1: might be like legally blind. Whatever. He is disabled, and
Speaker 1: he keeps fucking going, partly because he has no money,
Speaker 1: right and he has to. He gets some disability payments,
Speaker 1: but it's not enough to support him or his siblings
Speaker 1: and his nieces and shit, so he keeps working every
Speaker 1: odd job he can get. He as a teenager, he
Speaker 1: is a grocery clerk, a waiter, a sailor, and of
Speaker 1: course a guy who sells potatoes in the street, all
Speaker 1: while he's blind enough that he can only recognize people
Speaker 1: a meter away. In his free time. I don't know
Speaker 1: how I have his free time. He has two things
Speaker 1: he does all the time in his free time. I
Speaker 1: think he just doesn't sleep. He swims and is into sports.
Speaker 1: It's like thing comes up where like there's this challenge
Speaker 1: where if you swim the channel, which I think is
Speaker 1: the channel between like England and the mainland or whatever,
Speaker 1: the first dutch Man to do it is going to
Speaker 1: get five thousand unit of money. That is a meaningless
Speaker 1: thing to Margaret, probably guilders, but I don't know, because
Speaker 1: I didn't write down and now I'm completely off my script,
Speaker 1: so I'll just go back to my script. So he's
Speaker 1: like into sports and he wants to go swim it.
Speaker 1: But both years he's gonna do it, it's like the
Speaker 1: weather's too dangerous and he's like, I'm gonna do it anyway,
Speaker 1: and they're like, no, you're not allowed. We will not
Speaker 1: give you the money if you go swim right now.
Speaker 1: The other thing he does with is copious free time
Speaker 1: is he is super active in communist groups, and the
Speaker 1: cops fucking hate him. He is at every demonstration and strike.
Speaker 1: He is supporting unemployed workers. He is constantly arguing with
Speaker 1: the Communist Party because he doesn't actually like party politics
Speaker 1: and he believes in democratic workplace, self management and direct action.
Speaker 1: He has briefly the chairman for the local party because
Speaker 1: he's like really active, and then the other guy goes
Speaker 1: away for a while, and then he starts a radical
Speaker 1: choir and there's like feeder and shit that he puts on.
Speaker 1: He's fucking like twenty two or some shit, but he's
Speaker 1: been an adult since he was like ten, so you know,
Speaker 1: by nineteen twenty nine he has resigned from the party
Speaker 1: four different times, and he keeps drifting towards another position,
Speaker 1: keep teasing you with but I'm not gonna talk about yet.
Speaker 1: I know you are at the edge of your seat,
Speaker 1: wanting to hear what Margaret's to say about council communism.
Speaker 1: He's a strong orator, but he's also mostly just strong.
Speaker 1: He will do things like climb up lamp posts to
Speaker 1: get a better vantage point with which to shout about
Speaker 1: workers organization. Soapbox. Fuck a soapbox, I'm a lamp poster.
Speaker 1: He's fucking cool. I really like this guy.
Speaker 2: I mean, and he's doing this mostly blind. As you said,
Speaker 2: it's it's pretty wild.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, anyone that the cops hate like, that's
Speaker 3: that's my guy, you know, I know he's onto something.
Speaker 1: Well, here we go.
Speaker 2: That's a recurring theme, right, you look back in history
Speaker 2: and if the cops hate the guy, there's probably something
Speaker 2: cool going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, true, Yeah, totally. At one point, a cop tells
Speaker 1: him that he can't sell communist newspapers in the street,
Speaker 1: so he throws the cop through a window.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's the sickest thing I've ever heard. That's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the imbligation is like picks up and throw. But
Speaker 1: who knows so.
Speaker 3: He's really that strong.
Speaker 1: He is, like his nickname is the name of some
Speaker 1: like boxer that's around at the time. He's like he's
Speaker 1: like heavy set and strong and like fucking works out constantly,
Speaker 1: I think, and throws cops through windows for fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some strong nestor mock no vibes here. It's
Speaker 2: like gunfights over book clubs, cops through windows over no pamphlets, right,
Speaker 2: really similar vibes, honestly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And he goes to jail for two weeks for
Speaker 1: doing this. To be fair, if it was only a
Speaker 1: two week crime in the United States, I think a
Speaker 1: lot more cops would go through a lot more windows.
Speaker 3: Oh in a heart beat, if I could throw anybody,
Speaker 3: it would be a cop through window and I get
Speaker 3: two weeks of jail.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. I'm like I could do two weeks. Yeah. See,
Speaker 1: I would just retire on that, right, I'd be like,
Speaker 1: I just become a podcaster. I'd be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: welcome to cool people did cool stuff.
Speaker 2: My name is MARYA.
Speaker 1: Kilder. You might know me from having thrown a cop
Speaker 1: through a window fifteen years ago.
Speaker 3: That's all you need.
Speaker 1: How I got this gravelly voice. Yeah, Meanwhile, he's starting
Speaker 1: to realize he doesn't have much of a future in
Speaker 1: the Netherlands because he keeps getting kicked out of the
Speaker 1: party that he's part of. And he also the cops
Speaker 1: keep putting him in jail for things, because I think
Speaker 1: it must be some weird Dutch law where you're not
Speaker 1: allowed to beat up cops, because that's not the only
Speaker 1: time he does it. There's a bunch of times that
Speaker 1: he's like in a brawl with cops and he goes
Speaker 1: to jail.
Speaker 3: I feel like it's a lot most places.
Speaker 1: Though, No, huh, you're not allowed to assault Officers's weird.
Speaker 1: We pay their salary.
Speaker 2: I thought it was okay in Ohio or something. Yeah,
Speaker 2: okay in Ohio.
Speaker 1: Oh probably if you're listening to this in Ohio. Wait, no,
Speaker 1: never mind, it's himself now, all right. So, even though
Speaker 1: he's like starting to get disillusioned with communism and socialism
Speaker 1: as like a or he loves socialism, he's starting to
Speaker 1: get disillusioned with like party communism. He really wants to
Speaker 1: go to Russia. It's the country of socialism. And he's
Speaker 1: also the other thing that he's like really concerned with
Speaker 1: is he's concerned about the rising tide of fascism in
Speaker 1: neighboring Germany. So in April nineteen thirty one this part
Speaker 1: I have read two accounts of, and neither one makes
Speaker 1: sense and both poorly translate. He tried to get his
Speaker 1: local communists to help him get a bunch of propaganda
Speaker 1: postcards that he could sell to fund his trip, and
Speaker 1: they were like, nah, we're good, We're not gonna help
Speaker 1: you do that. So he is done with the party forever.
Speaker 1: He's like, you're not gonna fucking help me make postcards.
Speaker 2: Fuck you.
Speaker 1: That seems to be the final straw here. I've read
Speaker 1: that it's propaganda postcards. I've also read that it's like
Speaker 1: photo postcards, and so it might be that he was
Speaker 1: like trying to get equipment and maybe he's like selling
Speaker 1: pictures of like himself. I don't know either way. You know,
Speaker 1: he's a poor vagabond who wants to do whatever he
Speaker 1: can do to get some money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I just crossed my mind. It was
Speaker 2: early OnlyFans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I mean I genuinely think that that as
Speaker 1: a possibility here, I am.
Speaker 2: Not certain sure, Yeah, we don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there's a lot of like we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about his sexuality and whether or not I did sex work
Speaker 1: later on. So he's never again a member of the
Speaker 1: Communist Party, and he leaves and he goes to Berlin
Speaker 1: and he tries to get a visa to Russia and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, that costs a bunch of money, and
Speaker 1: he's like, wait, really, but I haven't any money, and
Speaker 1: they're like, sucks to be you. The whole thing, he's
Speaker 1: just like walking. I think he's also hitchhiking, but he's
Speaker 1: just like he walks everywhere. At one point, he like
Speaker 1: sets off. He's like, I'm gonna even walk to China.
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to go to China, and I don't
Speaker 1: know else to get there. I'm poor, so I guess
Speaker 1: I'll just walk there, you know. And so he can't
Speaker 1: go to Russia. He can't get a visa, so he
Speaker 1: turns around and like walks back to the Netherlands again.
Speaker 1: I think he hit shikes. He gets arrested at the
Speaker 1: border for illegally selling Communist postcards and he spends ten
Speaker 1: days in jail. He's not above a little bit of
Speaker 1: pettiness and a little bit of vandalism. At one point,
Speaker 1: in I think Leiden. He goes to the Bureau of
Speaker 1: Aid to the Unemployed, like a social workplace, you know,
Speaker 1: and he's like, hey, can I get funds to start
Speaker 1: a library for workers in the unemployed and they're like, no,
Speaker 1: we don't do social projects. And so he was like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna break your fucking windows. I don't know if
Speaker 1: he said it, but he did it. And they send
Speaker 1: him to three months in prison for this, and he
Speaker 1: was like, what if instead of going to prison, I
Speaker 1: just go bagabond to Europe. So he skips town. Doesn't
Speaker 1: want to go to prison for some weird reason.
Speaker 2: So these are windows he did not break with a
Speaker 2: cop because he only would have gotten two weeks for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, no, totally yeah right right yeah yeah, rock
Speaker 1: through a window, like you might hurt the rock. You know,
Speaker 1: people care about rocks.
Speaker 3: I will say. His responses to things are pure gold, like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it. And he's on team always carry
Speaker 1: a boulder, throw that boulder through the window.
Speaker 3: Classic strong guy. Shit will he was carrying a boulder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so he kind of vagabounds around through Europe.
Speaker 1: He sleeps where he can. At one point he tries
Speaker 1: to convince a sex worker to quit or drob to
Speaker 1: marry him, and she's like, no, I'm good, I want
Speaker 1: to know more about that part.
Speaker 2: That's a movie. That's the premise for a movie right there. Yeah, movie.
Speaker 1: I know. His whole life would be a movie if
Speaker 1: it weren't for the way he got done dirty by
Speaker 1: every single political actor in Europe a couple of years
Speaker 1: from now. Because he gets done dirty and he's like
Speaker 1: all right, and he keeps wandering and then he throws
Speaker 1: down and strikes everywhere he goes. He's like wandering around
Speaker 1: Budapest and shit, and he's doing seasonal labor everywhere he
Speaker 1: can go, and he's sleeping on, you know, in barns
Speaker 1: and shit, I think. And then he's arrested for trying
Speaker 1: to sneak into Russia from Poland. The Polish police catch
Speaker 1: him and they send him back to the Netherlands. After
Speaker 1: he spends like two weeks in jail again, and then
Speaker 1: they send him back to the Netherlands and they're like,
Speaker 1: you got three months for throwing rocks through windows, coming buddy,
Speaker 1: And so he goes to jail for like three months.
Speaker 1: At some point, I think while he's in jail, he
Speaker 1: goes on hunger strike and then and he publishes a
Speaker 1: paper for the unemployed after he gets out, and just
Speaker 1: to make him a single complete cool people bingo card
Speaker 1: all on his own are a tinerant potato salesman who
Speaker 1: has escaped imprisonment, gets to merculosis at the age of
Speaker 1: twenty four in his eyes and at this point he
Speaker 1: is like, fairly certain he's going to go completely blind.
Speaker 2: His eyes did something really wrong past life, I know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's at this point he actually has a
Speaker 1: conversation with one of his friends, a communist friend of his.
Speaker 1: I think he is a council communist, where he's saying
Speaker 1: something like, hey, I don't understand why people would kill themselves.
Speaker 1: He should just kill Hitler instead, you know. And then
Speaker 1: his friend is like, nah, I blow up the Reichstog,
Speaker 1: and uh, that probably sat in him at some point,
Speaker 1: you know, But he's left the Communist party. What he
Speaker 1: does after that, where he finds his political home, and
Speaker 1: how he tried to start a civil war to beat Hitler,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about on Wednesday. So you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: wait two whole days to hear Margaret talk about counsel.
Speaker 1: I know you all care more about the arson. But
Speaker 1: before you can hear Margaret talk about council communism, that's Martis.
Speaker 1: What do y'all think of him so far?
Speaker 3: I love him?
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I love him. Let's all look
Speaker 1: at a picture of him.
Speaker 3: Oh, I would love to see a photo of him.
Speaker 3: It just makes me sad that like someone, I mean
Speaker 3: like people, people have hard lives, and it just makes
Speaker 3: me depressed.
Speaker 1: I know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Well, what's sad about this is like exactly where this
Speaker 2: episode is, or at least part of this episode's discussing is
Speaker 2: like the basic how many people have never heard of
Speaker 2: his name? Right? They might even not even know about
Speaker 2: the rex Dog fire. But even someone who is pretty
Speaker 2: well versed in this, I didn't know all these details
Speaker 2: about this man. I knew that he was essentially accused
Speaker 2: of the false flag operation at the Reichs Dog and
Speaker 2: that he started a fire, and that bad things happened
Speaker 2: to him as a result. But that's all I knew, right,
Speaker 2: like this depth of how and why he became the
Speaker 2: person he became, and frankly, the obvious reasons people become
Speaker 2: the people they are for so many things that happened
Speaker 2: to them and a society that doesn't care isn't part
Speaker 2: of the general narrative because of the way it was
Speaker 2: narrated after the fact.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, and if you hear his actual life, you
Speaker 1: kind of can't believe he was a Nazi agent. And
Speaker 1: we'll get into why. I feel very confident about saying
Speaker 1: that more in the next episode. But Shrank, can you
Speaker 1: see did the screen sharing work? Can you see Marnus?
Speaker 3: Yes, I see Marnus that I say his name probably
Speaker 3: is Yeah, and I also see the day he dies
Speaker 3: a spoiler alert for me.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, uh huh. But he wasn't getting out of
Speaker 1: this one alive.
Speaker 3: No, it's that makes me sad.
Speaker 1: But he lived a very full life for how old
Speaker 1: he was when he died. But yeah, but yeah, no,
Speaker 1: he's a handsome and broad man with a I am
Speaker 1: a criminal and fine with it look on his face
Speaker 1: in his mug shot, it does look very strong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he does have that look. I must say, like,
Speaker 2: and I bet you like not getting out of this alive.
Speaker 2: None of us are technically, but like my guess is
Speaker 2: considering like things like, well, I someone shouldn't commit suicide,
Speaker 2: they should just kill Hitler. That kind of stuff. I
Speaker 2: don't think he ever thought he was going to anyway,
Speaker 2: that's my guess.
Speaker 1: No, I don't think he did either. We'll talk more
Speaker 1: about his motivations and shit on Wednesday, but first we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about you, Carl and the stuff you do.
Speaker 1: Oh cool.
Speaker 2: Thanks. Yeah. So, as we talked about very basically at
Speaker 2: the beginning, I run a media effort sometimes I refer
Speaker 2: to as a YouTuber, but it's more than that. In
Speaker 2: range TV. You can find my website inrange dot tv,
Speaker 2: and I'm distributing my content about multiple different distribution points
Speaker 2: because you should and decentralize everything as much as you can,
Speaker 2: because YouTube do anyways. And we also run events that
Speaker 2: we call brutality matches, which are an actually inclusive space
Speaker 2: for people who are interested in acquiring better skills with
Speaker 2: firearms or just building community or having a good time
Speaker 2: amongst people they know they're going to be safe around. Ironically,
Speaker 2: even though it's a shooting event.
Speaker 4: Can call brutality, Yeah, call brutality, but I know the
Speaker 4: irony of things, right, But like, I run those as well,
Speaker 4: and so it's really a multi tiered effort and hopefully
Speaker 4: bringing things to the table about not just guns but the.
Speaker 2: Sociological impact of those items in our societies, whether for
Speaker 2: good or for bad, and try to take that concept
Speaker 2: and talk about it and understand it in broader scope
Speaker 2: than just nuts bolts and like trajectories or ballistics.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, hell yeah. I have a book. It's called
Speaker 1: The Sapling Cage. It is amazing. It's the best thing
Speaker 1: that's ever been written by anyone, or at least by me.
Speaker 1: And I've written a bunch of stuff and it's the
Speaker 1: best thing I've written, so Matt, obviously, it's very good.
Speaker 1: It comes out September twenty fourth from Feminist Press. Is
Speaker 1: currently available for pre order in the United States. You
Speaker 1: can pre order it from Firestorm Books. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can pre order from pretty much anywhere, but if you
Speaker 1: get from Firestorm Books, you get it signed by me.
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to sign many book plates in
Speaker 1: the very near future. My publisher was like, do you
Speaker 1: want to put a cap on the number of book
Speaker 1: plates that you have to sign? And I was like, no,
Speaker 1: what a good problem to have. And we'll see how
Speaker 1: I feel about this decision in approximately three weeks. But
Speaker 1: it's called The Sapling Cage, out September twenty fourth from
Speaker 1: feminist press Sherean you got anything you want.
Speaker 3: To plug, not particularly go buy or pre order markets book.
Speaker 3: I want everyone to do that, so.
Speaker 1: Go do it, okay, and go listen to Shreen's episodes
Speaker 1: If it could happen here if you want to keep
Speaker 1: up with things that are actually currently happening instead of
Speaker 1: just things that happened hundred years ago that I make
Speaker 1: vague references to how they relate to the current events.
Speaker 1: All Right, see you all Wednesday. Cool People Who Did
Speaker 1: Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 3: Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.