WEBVTT - Part One: The Reichstag Fire Was Not An Inside Job 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:06.559 Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to cool People do 0:00:06.640 --> 0:00:10.920 cool stuff. You're weekly reminder that sometimes when there's bad stuff, 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:13.360 there's people trying to do good stuff, even if it 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:16.240 goes really badly sometimes like today's story. But we're going 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:19.440 to get to that, but first, I'm your host, Margaret 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:21.840 Kiljoy and my guest is Carl. 0:00:22.239 --> 0:00:24.600 Hi. Carl, it's so cool to be back. Every time 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:26.840 I get a chance to be on anything on Cool 0:00:26.880 --> 0:00:28.920 Zone Media, I'm super excited. When I saw the invite, 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:31.520 I was like absolutely. People ask me like, what's the topic. 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:33.200 I'm like, I don't know, but I'm there, so here 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:34.800 I am. Yeah. 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:38.000 Famously, I like to not tell my guests what we're 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:41.040 going to talk about, and that's an example. You've a 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:43.280 listener probably know what we're going to talk about because 0:00:43.280 --> 0:00:47.440 it's in the title and sharene our producer Hi, Sharen Hi, 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:51.280 I'm here as well, also, Carl, as someone who books 0:00:51.280 --> 0:00:55.160 the guests, your response time and enthusiasm is always appreciated. 0:00:55.440 --> 0:00:58.000 It's very It makes my job so easy, so thank 0:00:58.040 --> 0:00:58.360 you for that. 0:00:58.960 --> 0:01:01.080 It lets you know that I'm jitimate about what I'm saying. 0:01:01.120 --> 0:01:02.160 Yeah, for sure. 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:05.640 For anyone who doesn't know Carl and his work. Carl 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:08.640 runs in Range TV and it's really good. Do you 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:09.959 want to explain what that means? 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:13.160 Yeah, thank you, I appreciate that. So in Range TV 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:17.760 is ostensibly a firearms related media project, but I actually 0:01:17.760 --> 0:01:20.240 wrote this little paragraph to like describe my channel better 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:22.360 because it's hard to describe kind of So I'm like 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:25.680 I considered a media community building project. But one of 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:28.360 the things that differentiates us from like a lot of 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:30.360 the other firearms stuff in the world is that we're 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:34.920 actively anti racist, pro human liberation and staunchly for LGBTQ 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:36.760 plus rights, and that kind of puts us in a 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:39.960 weird space in firearms land. So it's been an interesting walk. 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:43.000 Yeah. One of the things that's come up over and 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:47.040 over again on this show is how groups of people 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:50.280 are disarmed before they're murdered in mass. 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:53.120 So yeah, and that's the challenge I have with a 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:56.160 lot of people that are like not necessarily firearms people already, 0:01:56.200 --> 0:01:59.400 especially people that are like left of center. Whatever that means, 0:01:59.880 --> 0:02:02.680 is that we don't talk about the realities of that 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:05.000 that firearms have been used so many times to oppress, 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:07.360 but there's a lot of times where fire has been 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:09.920 used to liberate and we leave that out of the conversation. 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:13.240 And it's complicated and kind of not what we're going 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:15.840 to talk about today, but it's tangentially related to what 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:18.280 we're going to talk about today, because well, first of 0:02:18.360 --> 0:02:21.240 do the rest of the introductions, the auto engineering is 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:23.120 done by Daniel. Everyone's just to say hi to Daniel 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:26.680 Hi Danel Hi, Daniel, I said hi. 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:29.400 Sorry, I was muted. Sorry Daniel Hi Danel. 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:33.120 Okay, that's right, okay, And our theme music is written 0:02:33.160 --> 0:02:36.680 for ud by Unwoman. This week, we're going to talk 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:40.800 about one of the most famous and misunderstood direct actions 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:44.600 in history. And I want to start with a thought experiment. 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:47.679 Let's think about John Brown. This is not a John 0:02:47.720 --> 0:02:51.440 Brown episode. The pop history version of John Brown is 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:53.079 that he's like a bit of a zealot who goes 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:55.640 to war against slavery without the support of anyone and 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:56.200 he loses. 0:02:56.360 --> 0:02:56.560 Right. 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:00.480 The actual historical version of him is that he's a 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:03.000 bit of a zealot who went to war against slavery 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:05.480 with the backing of a multi racial and cross class 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:10.800 alliance of abolitionists. He individually lost has lost his life famously. 0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:14.960 The media spectacle around his trial is more or less 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:18.639 what sparked the South to attempt secession and therefore sparked 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:21.639 the Civil War and therefore brought the end of legal 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:24.519 chattel slavery in one of the most powerful slave empires 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:29.360 the world has ever known. So John Brown died and 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:34.280 then won. It happens that way sometimes, right, Okay, my 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:36.920 thought experiment, and it's I don't want to linger on 0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:39.840 it too long, but imagine for a moment if the 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:43.520 South had won the Civil War, Imagine how history would 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:48.400 look at John Brown. Probably my argument is that a 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:50.240 lot of people would accuse him of either being an 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:53.760 unwitting friend of the South, or they might accuse him 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:55.800 of having been an agent of the South doing like 0:03:55.840 --> 0:03:59.960 a false flag attack, since, after all, his actions spurred 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:03.080 the growth of the Confederacy. They absolutely did. His actions 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:08.800 spurred the growth of the Confederacy. They just were immediately smashed. Well, 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:10.760 not immediately. It took a lot of work and a 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:14.160 lot of people died doing it. But so that's my argument. 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:16.599 I'm wondering if that tracks with y'all. 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:19.599 But that makes a lot of sense because now when 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:22.080 we see John Brown, and that's actually very timely because 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:24.720 not very long ago. I did the whole episode series 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:28.039 about John Brown and got a really deep dived dove 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:31.239 into that conversation. And of course you see people now 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:33.960 that are well, not my people, but they'll say things 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:35.880 where they call him a terrorist and he was this 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:38.600 evil man that killed lots of innocent people and all 0:04:38.600 --> 0:04:40.560 the things. And there's some truth to that. Of course, 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:45.000 he didn't kill some probably innocent people. But the fact is, 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:46.720 if you flip that on the side, and like you said, 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:50.080 if it was the other way around, then the Confederacy won. Yeah, 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:53.200 the narrative of him being the agent provocateur that instigated 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:55.360 the battle that allowed them to be victorious in their 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:58.680 quote unquote war for states rights would make a lot 0:04:58.680 --> 0:05:00.880 of sense. He would be, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. 0:05:01.279 --> 0:05:04.240 That's weird. I haven't thought about it, yeah, because it's 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:05.640 hard to think about it that way. 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:07.839 Right, and it's not fun to think about it. But 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:11.960 there's other times in place. Okay, So other white abolitionists 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:14.680 did not act like John Brown. Now, plenty of black 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:18.479 abolitionists led slaver volts, of course, right, other white people 0:05:18.520 --> 0:05:20.960 didn't act like John Brown because they thought in their 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:24.520 way that being strategic, as they understood it was more 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:28.800 important than doing what is immediately a moral necessity. It 0:05:28.920 --> 0:05:31.960 is obvious in retrospect that it is a moral necessity 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:34.719 to attack slave empires with all available vigor. 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:38.400 Right, Yeah, I mean I think John Brown and others 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:40.440 said this that were more of his mindset, which was 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:44.240 he didn't bring the violence. The violence was already here, absolutely, 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:47.239 But this idea of just financially supporting and slightly bumping 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:50.400 the Overton window, well maybe it would have worked over 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:53.760 a couple hundred years. Maybe, but how many people's lives 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:55.920 are ruined and how much horror happens in those couple 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:56.560 of hundred. 0:05:56.400 --> 0:06:00.160 Years, right, totally. And you know, there had been efforts 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:01.720 around the birth of the I mean, we're going to 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:03.880 do a whole long series about the abolitionists at some point. 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:05.520 We've talked a lot about on the show already. But 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:09.960 you know, all these points to like slowly phase it out, right, like, oh, well, 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:13.159 you know, they theoretically shut down the trans Atlantic slave trade, 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:15.200 and they like, we're like, oh, only people who are 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:17.960 born here can be enslaved, and then you know, and 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:19.919 then later they were like, well you can keep the 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:22.520 guys you already own, but then maybe their kids are 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:24.039 for you know, people talked about all kinds of shit, 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:26.520 and then a lot of people, including a lot of 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:29.159 enslaved people and formerly enslaved people, were like, no, we're 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:31.960 just going to shoot you until this problem stops. You know. 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:37.000 But I think people often misunderstand the difference between moral 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:42.120 and strategic action, and what is actually strategic is more 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:45.520 or less unknowable. You can make some guesses right in 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:48.280 the short term, you tend not to know. We can 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:51.040 look at it in retrospect and immediately know. We can 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:55.720 Monday morning quarterback. I'm good at sports. The other thing 0:06:56.080 --> 0:06:59.120 I want to say is that most attacks are not 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:03.520 false flag attacks. Claiming that something was a false flag attack, 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:06.640 I would argue, and I'm going to explain why I'm 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:08.520 talking about this in a minute, but I would argue, 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:10.560 this is the refuge of people who are afraid to 0:07:10.560 --> 0:07:12.840 do what they know is right. Time and time again. 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:17.080 Often we're like, oh, that person did a thing, and 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:19.400 that was a bad idea. So clearly the other side 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:22.920 did it as a way to excuse the fact that 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:28.160 they have not taken meaningful action. So all that up front, 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:29.920 I told you it's gonna be paragraphs before I would 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:32.320 tell you what we're talking about. I want to talk 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:35.240 about the biggest and most famous quote unquote false flag 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:37.480 attack in all of history, the one that is used 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:41.640 as shorthand for an attack that authoritarians used to centralize power. 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:44.440 Because this week on Cool People Did Cool Stuff, we're 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:46.119 going to talk about the fucking Reichstag Fire. 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:49.160 Yeah. That's the one, ain't it. That's the one that 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:52.760 supposedly that's the biggest false flag of all that justified 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:55.520 the Enabling Act and all the things that Hitler used 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:58.640 to turn it into a true dictatorship. Yep. 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:01.360 I'm curious what you all. I've been asking my friends 0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:04.760 this all week, Like Carl, I suspect you you know 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:07.960 a bit about this topic, but coming into it, what 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:10.000 do you all know about the Reichstag Fire. I'm curious 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:10.360 both of you. 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:13.240 Oh, I mean, my basic understanding is you have this 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:15.160 little Dutch boy, I believe his name was vander Lub. 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:17.360 If I'm pronouncing that properly, is that correct? 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:19.720 And I have it later in my script how to 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:21.520 pronounce it, but I don't have in front of me. 0:08:22.160 --> 0:08:24.840 Well that was. If it's a mispronunciation, we'll fix that later, 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:30.280 but the narrative was that his zealotry towards the Nazis 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:34.720 would have said, his zelotry against their democratically elected government 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:36.880 was that he proved him so that he was that 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:39.760 the radicals of the left and the communists would burn 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:42.680 down this symbol of the nation state and their power 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:45.200 by setting fire to the Reichstag. Yeah. I think the 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:48.400 opposite of that would be, these are fascists and Nazis 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:50.480 and evil, and I'm going to burn down the symbol 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:51.120 of their power. 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:51.880 Yeah. 0:08:51.920 --> 0:08:54.800 So yeah, I mean it makes sense, right, And when 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:57.080 you open the door to that thing, much like you 0:08:57.360 --> 0:08:59.440 great reference to John Brown, you don't know what's coming 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:02.360 out of the other. Like John Brown's actions at Harper's 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:06.120 Ferry didn't go the way he wanted, but ultimately it worked, right. 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:08.840 I mean, coming out of the gate, you know anything 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:10.600 about the Reichshtag fire, heard anything? 0:09:11.480 --> 0:09:16.480 Okay, I'm going to boldly just be honest and say, no, 0:09:16.840 --> 0:09:19.720 I don't know anything about this great No, No that 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:22.320 makes sense other than it was like almost like the 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:24.840 first shot fire that started like at all, that's all 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:27.520 I really know. It was just like the Yeah, one 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:29.600 of those big events in history books that you learn 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:33.440 about and then I forget about mutually. But audience members, 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:36.120 if you are like me, feel no shame. I don't 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:38.120 know anything ever either. 0:09:39.120 --> 0:09:42.840 I mean I was like that a week ago, well, okay, 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:45.760 a year ago, I was like, oh, the Reichstag fire, 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:48.000 that thing that was famously a false flag attack that 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:51.400 the Nazis used. It's like all I knew, right, yeah, 0:09:51.440 --> 0:09:53.520 and then at some point I was like, I wonder 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:55.280 who did that, and I like looked it up and 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:59.480 I was like, this isn't the story I've heard, and 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:01.560 so I had it I like to do list and yeah. 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:03.080 I mean, you know, it's funny because I always come 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:04.599 in and be like I know everything about history, and 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:06.120 it's like, no, I know everything about the thing that 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:08.319 I have just spent the past week reading books about. 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:09.760 You know. 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:12.520 That's fair. That's fair. What we learn in school is 0:10:12.559 --> 0:10:17.480 so truncated, and so unless you really do your own research, 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:19.200 you're not going to learn much about the world. 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:21.800 So yeah, I think it's a mixed bag, right. It's 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:24.920 truncated and it's also formulated, so it's like it's the 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:27.040 product of what a lot of people, over a long 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:29.199 time have wanted you to learn, right, But it's also 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:31.720 just they just leave out a lot of stuff. And yeah, 0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:33.800 sometimes I don't know if it's a sin of emission 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:37.440 intentionally or just accidental, but the landscape turns into not 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:39.199 really what it is. When you dig into stuff, it's 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:41.600 like WHOA really? Wow? Exactly. 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:44.440 Yeah, And I'm going to give you a little spoiler. 0:10:44.559 --> 0:10:46.640 The reason that so many people think it was a 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:50.640 false flag attack is because nineteen thirties communists are a 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:51.559 bunch of homophobes. 0:10:52.600 --> 0:10:52.800 Wow. 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:56.120 And I'm going to defend that thesis, although much later 0:10:56.160 --> 0:10:57.920 in the episode, I. 0:10:57.840 --> 0:10:59.800 Love what Margaret defend the thesis. 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:01.000 Yeah. 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:03.960 No, that part was like, that was the like holy 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:07.400 shit moment of this whole thing for me, because most 0:11:07.480 --> 0:11:09.360 leftist history doesn't want to talk about that part for 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:14.120 some weird reason. So we're going to start this story 0:11:14.160 --> 0:11:16.760 by talking about the rise of the Nazis, because you 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:19.880 know what, I needed a refresher. I didn't know a 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:23.320 lot of it. We're going to start more recently than 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:27.760 we sometimes do. During World War One. Germany was a 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:32.280 strange thing. It was a constitutional empire. It had twenty 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:36.079 five states, four kingdoms, five duchies, seven principalities, three free 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:40.079 Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory, and a partridge in 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:43.800 a pear tree. One of the four kingdoms was Prussia, 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:46.480 which made up about two thirds of Germany by both 0:11:46.480 --> 0:11:49.920 population and land mass. The King of Prussia was also 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:53.240 the emperor, the Kaiser. This is the second Reich, right 0:11:53.320 --> 0:11:56.880 Hitler's famously the third Reich. This is the second one. 0:11:57.080 --> 0:11:59.599 It had a constitution and a parliament, but at the 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:02.440 end of the y, the Kaiser's in charge. In fact, 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:06.520 in nineteen fourteen, the German parliament did its first enabling act, 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:08.839 like Karl talked about earlier, and this is the first 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:12.840 one it did under its constitution to limit basic rights 0:12:12.840 --> 0:12:15.000 of the populace to help the war effort. They're like, wow, 0:12:15.040 --> 0:12:16.960 there's a war on. We can't have all those democracy 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:20.040 fucking things up, you know, like people only have freedom 0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:25.400 when like I feel like it. Basically, the constitution had 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:27.640 a we will follow this constitution until we don't want 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:31.760 to clause, well, until the Kaiser doesn't want to. Famously, 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:35.560 this did not work. Germany still lost the war, the 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:39.040 Great War, in fact, and the empire collapsed in November 0:12:39.120 --> 0:12:42.360 nineteen eighteen. A Republic grew up in its place. First, 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:44.040 they tried to have a revolution. They actually tried to 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:45.599 do like a kind of a communist revolution that a 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:47.440 bunch of anarchists were involved in. And I'll talk about 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:50.439 it eventually one of these days. And B Traven who 0:12:50.440 --> 0:12:52.760 wrote The Death Ship and the Treasure of the Sierra Madre. 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:54.760 Have you ever seen the movie this Treasure of Sera Madre? 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:55.559 No? 0:12:56.240 --> 0:12:58.319 Okay, well never mind, you all didn't grow up with 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:00.320 an older sister made you watch old movies. But there's 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:03.280 this old movie called Treasure Sier Madre. The point of 0:13:03.280 --> 0:13:04.560 this is that the guy who wrote this book, you 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:06.040 all don't know what I'm talking about, was an anarchist 0:13:06.080 --> 0:13:08.720 who had fled Germany. But we'll talk about that some 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:10.240 other time. He lived under cover. 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:12.120 Is it a good movie? Should I add it to 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:12.760 my letterbox? 0:13:12.840 --> 0:13:13.200 Uh? 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:13.880 Watch list? 0:13:14.800 --> 0:13:18.439 You know, like, it's interesting if you like old movies. 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:20.760 It's fun, it has class politics. It's like weird because 0:13:20.760 --> 0:13:22.920 it's these like white dudes who are down and out 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:25.559 in Mexico who want to go gold prospecting, but they're 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:28.600 like vagabonds living on the street and they're like hustling 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:31.200 all the rich white people who are there by being like, hey, 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:34.160 help a fellow American. Now, just buy me a cigarette, 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:36.600 and the guy's like, you've asked me like three times. 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:42.280 He's like cock crap. Anyway, So Betraving, one day you're 0:13:42.320 --> 0:13:43.960 going to be the hero of this story because you 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:47.920 were so fascinating. That's not how we're talking about. They 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:51.559 become a republic after the revolution fails. They become the 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:53.960 Weimar Republic, and we've done a bunch of episodes about 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:56.600 the Vymar Republic because they're really fucking interesting and cool. 0:13:57.440 --> 0:14:00.000 There's all these like queer youth groups that are fighting nuts, 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:02.760 and we've done episodes about the a narcosyndicalists who ran 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:06.319 hundreds of illegal abortion clinics, providing millions of safe abortions 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:08.480 in Weimar Germany. If you wanted an abortion, you were 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:11.199 going to either the syndicalists or the people who syndicalists trained. 0:14:12.360 --> 0:14:16.320 The Weimar Republic was a wildly interesting place. Everyone as 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:19.040 hungry as fuck. The reparations that they had to pay 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:22.760 the rest of countries is crippling the economy, and a 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:25.680 million types of leftists and right wing folks are forming 0:14:25.720 --> 0:14:28.920 gangs and fighting each other in the streets. People are 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:31.680 making all kinds of cool art. Human sexuality is being 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:33.880 researched for the first time in Western history, like as 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:38.960 like a science. And the way it worked governmentally is 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:42.320 like this. You have an elected president and you have 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:45.880 an elected parliament, which is called the Reichstag, which just 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:51.640 stands for Parliament of the Empire. Basically, the parliament meets 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:55.320 in a building that is also called the Reichstag. The 0:14:55.320 --> 0:14:59.080 president then appoints a chancellor who introduces legislation to the reichstock. 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:01.800 So the chancellor is a poin. Everyone else is elected, 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:06.840 and theoretically the chancellor's supposed to be the Guy's always 0:15:06.880 --> 0:15:10.640 a guy. I think the person in charge of whatever group, 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:13.800 whatever political party, is the most seats in parliament, it's 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:15.720 gonna come up. I normally kind of skim over a 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:17.640 lot of this shit, but I think it's important. In 0:15:17.640 --> 0:15:21.960 this story. The president can dismiss his cabinet and his chancellor. 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:23.600 I asked, Okay, so there's this thing that happens. I 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:26.479 think whenever I'm reading history about like Europe and other democracies, 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:28.000 I'm so used to the way that the US works 0:15:28.440 --> 0:15:29.800 that you read about things and you're like, oh, and 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:33.200 then they dismiss the parliament. I'm like, what the fuck, Like, 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:38.040 holy shit, what is that? Like, that's like crazy shit 0:15:38.200 --> 0:15:40.480 is happening. And you're like, no, that's a this is 0:15:40.520 --> 0:15:41.960 what they do, you know. 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:45.600 Yeah, we saw actions similar like that in France just recently, right, 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:48.040 I mean that's what yep, So it's not this is 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:48.640 still going on. 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:52.240 Yeah, no totally. And that's the like, so things seem 0:15:52.280 --> 0:15:54.240 a little bit more heated than they sometimes are. I mean, 0:15:54.240 --> 0:15:56.240 things are peeded in France right now and stuff, right, 0:15:56.320 --> 0:15:58.880 but it's like these specific actions are not quite as 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:02.440 like why old as they might seem to us in 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:06.840 our weird two party thing. He can dissolve the parliament 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:08.920 and call for new elections if the parliament isn't getting 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:10.560 shit done, right, Like if you just elect a bunch 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:12.920 of people who all hate each other, nothing can get done. 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:14.640 They're like, all right, well, all you fucking go home. 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:17.560 We're gonna just do this again, you know. And in 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:22.080 national emergencies, the president has Article forty eight, which is 0:16:22.120 --> 0:16:25.320 the right to be a dictator. So this is actually 0:16:26.080 --> 0:16:29.080 not wait, what the right to be that's like a thing, 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:32.120 uh huh, it's in the constitution of Germany in the 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:36.320 Weimar Republic, because well it's kind of the same constitution 0:16:36.440 --> 0:16:39.240 that they had in the Empire. Like when I say 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:42.360 all that's changed, I have not read these documents side 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:45.520 by side. But all that's changed is now your emperor 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:49.880 is elected, you know, because he's still appointing the chancellor. 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:52.840 He's still able to call himself a dictator anytime he wants. 0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:56.680 The only difference is that he's elected again. I'm sure 0:16:56.680 --> 0:17:01.840 there's other differences. And among all these different political groups 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:06.000 that's fucking around trying to take power is famously the 0:17:06.080 --> 0:17:10.560 National Socialist Workers Party aka the Nazis. This for a 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:14.720 very long time, is a tiny minority party. Their main 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:17.359 claim to fame is that their leader this like shitty 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:20.159 artist named Adolf Hitler. Most people haven't heard of him. 0:17:20.200 --> 0:17:22.960 He's really obscure artist. Is my best joke I have 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:25.000 in the whole script. Sorry everyone. 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:27.440 Yeah, it's very hipster stuff. I mean, if you haven't 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:29.120 seen it, it's yeah, it's pretty rare. 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:32.800 Yeah, he's got that weird, edgy mustache. He's got Charlie 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:36.879 Chaplin like, he's funny. He tried and failed to stage 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:39.399 a coup in nineteen twenty three. That's like all anyone 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:41.439 knows about the Nazis. It's like, I mean, they're like 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:43.320 the Proud Boys or something. People are like, what, there's 0:17:43.359 --> 0:17:45.359 that group. I don't know. They seem to do some 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:47.520 bad shit. There's like ten of them, right, you know. 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:52.280 And the reason that they're named the National Socialists is 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:56.000 that they're a right wing party that is supernationalist. But 0:17:56.119 --> 0:17:59.560 initially they had some anti capitalist and anti bourgeois ideas 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:02.760 floating round within it, much like you see in the 0:18:02.760 --> 0:18:06.200 Modern Republican Party where RNC this week as we recorded 0:18:06.240 --> 0:18:09.000 two weeks ago, as you're listening, they're up there being 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:12.040 like and fuck the elite, am I right? And then 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:15.040 like all the richest people in the world are like, yeah, 0:18:15.080 --> 0:18:18.439 fuck us, no, some other guy Jews, I mean they 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:20.840 mean Jews, right, That's. 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:23.359 What it always comes down to. Yeah, But see they're socialists. 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:24.480 They just proved their point. 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:29.400 Yeah, and so they were actually borrowing some ideas from leftism, 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:32.000 many of which are ideas that we should analyze and 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:33.840 wonder how we talk about, right, because this is one 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:35.840 of the ways that anti Semitism creeps into some things 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:39.240 sometimes is when whatever all the left Nazis are gonna 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:42.880 get murdered soon. They're all dead. By the time everything happens, 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:45.399 they all get fucking killed by the other Nazis. So 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:46.720 no more left Nazis. 0:18:46.760 --> 0:18:48.000 The Night of the Long Knives. 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:53.600 Yeah, yeah, no more gay Nazis. Whatever. After the failed coup, 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:57.879 Hitler was like, all right, how can I take power 0:18:58.000 --> 0:19:00.240 in a legal way? And what he should have done 0:19:00.480 --> 0:19:03.560 is run political ads, which we don't run on this podcast. 0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:06.520 We have some lines, and one of our lines is 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:08.680 that we don't do political ads. If you hear one, 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:11.080 it is actually a mistake. Instead of usually where I'm like, 0:19:11.520 --> 0:19:13.879 you're ad for anything bad, it's a mistake, Like, no, 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:17.640 everything is bad. We live in a hell world of capitalism. 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:20.760 But at least there's no political ads coming up. I 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:34.560