Speaker 1: M oh, well, I was doing it as you were
Speaker 1: doing it. I could have done it. I really would
Speaker 1: have done it for you. If I will do that. Well,
Speaker 1: this is Behind the Bastards, a podcast where I will
Speaker 1: not do an impression of Sophie because I want to
Speaker 1: keep our work relationship. No, please, please, please do it.
Speaker 1: That's how you sound. We are Wow. This is a
Speaker 1: podcast about the worst people in all of history. Speaking
Speaker 1: of the worst people in all of history. Andrew T,
Speaker 1: I am that king. Uh no, not not the worst
Speaker 1: person in all of history. But you're fighting some of
Speaker 1: the worst people in all of history on the lines
Speaker 1: of the strike against those Hollywood motherfuckers. It really is.
Speaker 2: I should but yes, those you are all Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: the bad Hollywood motherfuckers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm on I'm on a strike.
Speaker 2: I'm a member of the Writer's Guild of America. And
Speaker 2: also I realized the other day I did a project
Speaker 2: for Writers Guild of Canada, which I don't really know
Speaker 2: how that all worked, but I did have sign some paperwork.
Speaker 1: So exciting, exciting.
Speaker 2: It might be might have a union up up north
Speaker 2: of the border. Also, but yeah, it is like the
Speaker 2: clowns that run the studios. It's shocking, Like how if
Speaker 2: they were doing their jobs remotely correctly, None, no one
Speaker 2: reasonable would know their names now, like, not one of them.
Speaker 1: No, And there's only one wild outside of the current
Speaker 1: crop of studio heads. There is only one studio executive
Speaker 1: I can name, and it's my namesake, Robert Evans, not
Speaker 1: because of anything he did as a studio head, but
Speaker 1: because of his contributions to cocaine sciences, which I do respect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's I mean, there's like reasons one might
Speaker 2: know about them, but honestly, like I a person who's
Speaker 2: worked in you know, television for years now prior to
Speaker 2: the strike, Like I guess I knew who Bob Iiker was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Disney, but the Disney I don't.
Speaker 2: Think any of us had any Like I don't know
Speaker 2: you'd hear these names, but it'd be one in one
Speaker 2: of your the other, like they should be anonymous rich shadows.
Speaker 1: They could have one knows, cash checks for millions of
Speaker 1: dollars a year and had nobody know who they are
Speaker 1: or be angry at them. But they wanted tens of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars a year, and so they've decided to
Speaker 1: cause problems for themselves.
Speaker 2: Like I think by the way, you're even that joke
Speaker 2: is off by an order of magnitude. Yeah, you're like
Speaker 2: to baseline hundreds and try to get millions or billions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's probably more accurate. Speaking of corrupt motherfuckers. Yeah, Andrew, who,
Speaker 1: what do you know about G Gordon Liddy A less
Speaker 1: than I should? Yeah, everyone does, now we've I don't
Speaker 1: think this violates any of the WGA stuff. There were
Speaker 1: two big Watergate shows that launched recently. Like all TV
Speaker 1: shows about historical moments, both of them are wrong in
Speaker 1: specific interesting ways and accurate in other more minor ways.
Speaker 1: Neither of them really get into Both of them feature g.
Speaker 1: Gordon LIDDI neither of them really accurately describe him as
Speaker 1: a person, Like one of them kind of picks the
Speaker 1: he was this absolute unhinged, like maniac fucking cartoon character,
Speaker 1: and one of them like portrays him as like this
Speaker 1: violent psychopath, and the reality is he was, like there
Speaker 1: were pieces of that in him, and he is. He
Speaker 1: is a crazy He's one of the craziest bastards to
Speaker 1: ever be involved in American politics. But neither of them,
Speaker 1: neither of them quite get it. I think what's most
Speaker 1: fascinating about this weirdo. He is such a fucking weirdo.
Speaker 1: And so you know, there's plenty of Watergate podcasts like
Speaker 1: you can. You can spend a whole week learning about Watergate,
Speaker 1: listening to like five different fucking shows on the matter.
Speaker 1: I really just wanted to focus on on g Gordon Liddy,
Speaker 1: both because I grew up. He was definitely on the
Speaker 1: radio a lot when I was a kid, so I
Speaker 1: have a lot of experience with mister Liddy, but also
Speaker 1: he is he's the proto type of all of these
Speaker 1: fucking right wing media freaks that we are deluged with today,
Speaker 1: think like and they're all They're all aping g Gordon Liddy,
Speaker 1: Stephen Crowder, you know, whenever he wears his fucking shoulder
Speaker 1: holster to go, you know, be a little fucking abusive
Speaker 1: prick on his on his dumb ass fucking political YouTube
Speaker 1: show or whatever. I guess he's on Rumble now, Alex Jones,
Speaker 1: when he like lie about all these hardcore violence he's
Speaker 1: done and how tough he is, how he could kill
Speaker 1: a man without blinking, you know, Enrique Tario talking about
Speaker 1: how like you know, oh, I don't regret anything ha
Speaker 1: ha ha. Oh, please don't throw me in prison for
Speaker 1: twenty two years, mister Jeff. Like, they are all aping
Speaker 1: aspects of g. Gordon Liddy, but none of them. None
Speaker 1: of them have what Liddy had in the center. None
Speaker 1: of them are number one, none of them are actually
Speaker 1: as committed. They're all grifters. And Lyddy had some grifter
Speaker 1: in him. But Lyddy was a believer. He was a
Speaker 1: believer in terrible things like but he was he was
Speaker 1: not like, he was not like all of those the
Speaker 1: guys I just named are completely hollow in their center.
Speaker 1: Lily was not. Now the center of him was something
Speaker 1: like dark and evil and like unsettling and greasy, but
Speaker 1: there was there was mass there, you know.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, yeah, I mean you're still yeah, certain kinds
Speaker 2: of dark chocolate, but the darkest of chocolate, I get you, right,
Speaker 2: That's the innovation is or I guess right, that's what
Speaker 2: makes you the og is like actually believing the shit
Speaker 2: as yea being like a clear shill.
Speaker 1: Yeah he's he was not just a shill. I mean
Speaker 1: that was a part of him. And in fact he's
Speaker 1: like one of I think he might be the first
Speaker 1: of these guys to like really get into shilling gold.
Speaker 1: So that's interesting. He's fascinating again. There's there's there's both.
Speaker 1: There's some weight to him, there's a degree he's he's
Speaker 1: an original too. All of these guys are very much
Speaker 1: consciously aping g Gordon Liddy, and Liddy was an original figure.
Speaker 1: You know. The other thing that's interesting about Liddy is
Speaker 1: that he wrote an autobiography and it is like number
Speaker 1: one most of the time. When you get these guys
Speaker 1: who are at the center of like a massive politic,
Speaker 1: you think, think about the Trump administration, right, how within
Speaker 1: like a month or two of him. Honestly, like while
Speaker 1: he was still in office, there were fucking books coming
Speaker 1: out left and right. As soon as one of these
Speaker 1: guys would get fired, right, you know, somebody would get
Speaker 1: like two million dollars and hooked up with a ghost
Speaker 1: writer about it being Badaboo. You've got you know, fucking
Speaker 1: the Mooch's memoir about his weekend the Trump White Ats
Speaker 1: or whatever. Yeah, the room where it happens, starring some
Speaker 1: guy whose name I've already fucking forgotten. Yeah, from Twitter,
Speaker 1: from from from all these fucking weirdos. But it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, these are cash grabs. Right, most of these
Speaker 1: are cash grabs. You know. Again, you're you're sort of
Speaker 1: stretching out someone who probably doesn't have that much that's
Speaker 1: interesting to say. So you can get a couple of
Speaker 1: anecdotes that will go viral in like a Business Insider article,
Speaker 1: and you're just kind of hoping that, like, yeah, the
Speaker 1: the the fame of the administration will make the book
Speaker 1: worth whatever they're paying for it. Lyddy's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of that for Watergate. Right, all of these guys write books,
Speaker 1: you know. John Deane's got his fucking book, you know,
Speaker 1: And Lyddy writes a book after he gets out of prison.
Speaker 1: Lyddy writes his own book. And it is like I
Speaker 1: read part of what I do is I like read anytime,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm one of these bastards and they've written
Speaker 1: a book about their life. I'll get in there. I
Speaker 1: have never read a crazier autobiography than she Gordon Liddi's.
Speaker 1: And it is it is pure Lyddy. Right, we're not
Speaker 1: talking about this is not like, you know, adulterated by
Speaker 1: some fucking publishing house trying to massage his image. He's
Speaker 1: trying to massage his image sure at points, but like
Speaker 1: it is, it is a it's like that. You know,
Speaker 1: we did for about a year, you know, off and
Speaker 1: on my friend's Katie Cody and I would talk about
Speaker 1: Ben Shapiro's novel because like when once some somebody writes
Speaker 1: a novel, you can't not learn things about them, right
Speaker 1: from that process. You get so much more with Lyddie's
Speaker 1: Saudo biography. So episode one is largely going to be
Speaker 1: us reading through his depiction of his early life and childhood,
Speaker 1: and I will be fact checking it wherever I can.
Speaker 1: There's a lot I can't fact check, right because Liddy's
Speaker 1: talking about like what he was thinking and feelings like
Speaker 1: an eight year old, right, I can't. I don't have
Speaker 1: outside I'm not gonna like refer to John Dene's hire,
Speaker 1: you know, but we will bring it out. You know,
Speaker 1: I read Dean's memoir for this too. I read a
Speaker 1: book called King Richard. You know, We've got a bunch
Speaker 1: of other sort of a number of other sources on
Speaker 1: like the Watergate stuff and on his career before Watergate
Speaker 1: was in the FBI. But for this early part, we're
Speaker 1: just gonna be Lyddy. You know that that's gonna be
Speaker 1: a significant amount of what we talk about. So without
Speaker 1: further ado, I guess I should roll roll in with this.
Speaker 1: Are you ready to learn about Let's get Lyddy? Sorry
Speaker 1: about our best Republican Yeah, that's that's the thing is
Speaker 1: g Gordon Lyddy would be such a great name for
Speaker 1: like like a SoundCloud wrapper. That's the real tragedy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was born too early. Tragedy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Daniel, can you can you add just like a
Speaker 3: let's get Lyddy and then can you add just like
Speaker 3: some really awesome sound effect here?
Speaker 1: Please? Sure, let's get Lyddy. I don't understand this, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna soldier Dane will understand the reference because he's
Speaker 1: Lyddy would have wanted me to soldier forward. He never
Speaker 1: thought about what was happening either. George Gordon battle Liddy
Speaker 1: was born on November thirtieth, nineteen thirty in Brooklyn, New York.
Speaker 1: His father, Sylvester, was a lawyer and stockbroker. He would
Speaker 1: eventually be one of the men responsible for bringing Volvo
Speaker 1: to the United States. So we have G. Gordon, but
Speaker 1: he his dad to thank for American Volvos. If you're
Speaker 1: a Volvo driver. His mother Maria. That's not nothing. His mother,
Speaker 1: Maria was a homemaker. Now I just read his name
Speaker 1: Gordon Battle lyddy, given the fact that he is a
Speaker 1: violent madman as an or at least he puts on
Speaker 1: the image of a violent madman as an adult, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna guess everyone's wondering, like, what the fuck is the
Speaker 1: story behind that name? But like, the fact is, as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, his parents weren't like nuts, right,
Speaker 1: And the story here is actually like pretty tame. It's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting, but it's not like wild. He's named
Speaker 1: his namesake is a was a New York lawyer and
Speaker 1: Democratic politician named George Gordon Battle, which is a pretty
Speaker 1: cool guy, a pretty cool name, and he seemed to
Speaker 1: have been a pretty cool guy. He was defense attorney
Speaker 1: for Earl Browner, who was the head of the US
Speaker 1: Communist Party. He helped raise money for a number of
Speaker 1: really good causes. He was the chairman of the National
Speaker 1: Committee on Prison Labor Reform, and he's one of the
Speaker 1: men who fought hard to stop Central Park from being
Speaker 1: developed right from like it being replaced with like buildings
Speaker 1: and shit. Right. He was childless, but he spent his
Speaker 1: entire working life fighting to add more public playgrounds to
Speaker 1: New York City. If you grew up in New York
Speaker 1: City and spent time on a playground, Gordon Battle George
Speaker 1: Battle has a lot to do with that, and in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen twenties, seeing what was going on in Europe,
Speaker 1: came a tireless opponent of anti Semitism for the last
Speaker 1: act of his life. So yeah, like a pretty cool guy,
Speaker 1: smart psychond tell this might key you into the fact
Speaker 1: that g Gordon Liddy's parents were not politically the kind
Speaker 1: of people you might expect to likese raise a fascist,
Speaker 1: political criminal right Like, they were not, Like, it's not
Speaker 1: one of these cases where you've got like, you know,
Speaker 1: super hard right family who's like really mentally abusive to
Speaker 1: their kid, and you're just like, I see why this
Speaker 1: dude grew up to be a piece of no. Like, again,
Speaker 1: they're not perfect people, Like we'll cover some of that,
Speaker 1: but they seem to have not been the folks you
Speaker 1: might expect, right, and the story of how they wound
Speaker 1: up raising this maniac anyway is fascinating. So he grows
Speaker 1: up affluent, his family is kind of upper middle class
Speaker 1: when he's a little kid, and like Rich by the
Speaker 1: time he's in his teens, I think would be fair
Speaker 1: to say Liddy's despite the affluence, Liddy's early childhood was
Speaker 1: not pleasant. This was not due specifically primarily to his parents' actions,
Speaker 1: but rather to a quirk of his psychology. He was
Speaker 1: terrified of everything. Now, in his defense, his world was frightening.
Speaker 1: The world of nineteen thirty is a scary place to
Speaker 1: be a child, and this was kind of exacerbated by
Speaker 1: the fact that the family home lay directly underneath the
Speaker 1: path of the Hindenburg Zeppelin. So as a little kid,
Speaker 1: his earliest memory is this monster in the sky, just
Speaker 1: like barreling over his house making this terrifying noise. In
Speaker 1: his autobiography, he recalls being just absolutely piss horrified by
Speaker 1: the quote bloated shapes, swelling and roaring with incredible power
Speaker 1: as it came on and on, trapping me in the
Speaker 1: bottom of the box and blotting out the sky. The
Speaker 1: box in this instance is his backyard and hoboken with
Speaker 1: a family moved soon after his birth. But like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's his earliest memory is like the Hindenburg, terrifying. There's
Speaker 1: like a dragon in the sky ampuk it he was
Speaker 1: now he may be lying about he was not yet
Speaker 1: two when this happened, and like, so I always kind
Speaker 1: of a little grain assault when people talk about remembering
Speaker 1: shit that happens with their two but it does. People
Speaker 1: do remember shit from that time, so not impossible. And
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know why he would lie about this. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's always like the world's most awful people are the
Speaker 1: world's most scared people in a way that it's like, so,
Speaker 1: you know, it would be cute if you didn't give
Speaker 1: these people half the you know, any of the power
Speaker 1: they have. This is this is why we need to
Speaker 1: be so careful about like not giving people power, because yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't. You never know what's going on you want.
Speaker 1: You see, like a kid at the playground, that kid
Speaker 1: could be brewing up some Hitler particles, right, Like, you
Speaker 1: never know what's going on in their heads. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to read a quote from his autobiography here. I
Speaker 1: had been walking for six months, but due to the
Speaker 1: concern of my mother, I hadn't yet spoken an intelligible
Speaker 1: word I beget or to the concern of my mother,
Speaker 1: I hadn't yet spoken an intelligible word. I began to
Speaker 1: speak immediately to articulate my first memory, absolute overwhelming fear.
Speaker 1: So he starts speaking to try to express to his
Speaker 1: mom how scared he is of the Zeppelin now. His
Speaker 1: second memory comes in the spring of nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: when he and his mother and sister had moved to
Speaker 1: d C temporarily. Their grandfather was dying of terminal cancer,
Speaker 1: and Sylvester wanted to care for his father. I think
Speaker 1: he didn't want the family to have to be there.
Speaker 1: Maybe their grandpa didn't want his grandkids to see him
Speaker 1: like that. But while he was there, he experienced like,
Speaker 1: while you know, he's living with his mom in d C,
Speaker 1: there's like a fire drill at the building they're living,
Speaker 1: like a surprise fire drill, and he's too young to
Speaker 1: really understand it. So he recalls experiencing absolute overwhelming fear. Quote.
Speaker 1: The early memories that follow are still fragmented, but the
Speaker 1: theme is common. Lying on the floor, or as my
Speaker 1: paternal grandmother lashed me with a leather harness, shouting bad,
Speaker 1: bad fear, my mother insisting I not use my left
Speaker 1: hand as she forced me into right handedness, and my
Speaker 1: inability to understand why more Fear rounding the corner and
Speaker 1: coming upon a truck mounted vacuum, a giant air hose
Speaker 1: sneaking across the sidewalk from a huge bag suction engine
Speaker 1: rolling as it cleaned the flus of coal furnaces, running
Speaker 1: from the sound, and the threat no certainty that I
Speaker 1: would be sucked inside the monster bag. Fear soon My
Speaker 1: every waking moment was ruled by that overriding emotion, fear.
Speaker 1: So you've got this mix of like, yeah, understandable stuff, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: his grandma was, you know, very aggressive with her punishment
Speaker 1: of him. I don't think uncommonly so for the area,
Speaker 1: but like that's a scary thing to deal with. His
Speaker 1: mom didn't want him to be left handed, and like
Speaker 1: that scared him. And then like just shit, he and
Speaker 1: these like nightmare vacuums driving around cleaning out flues and shit,
Speaker 1: you know, he's just scared of everything as a kid.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: That also, though, I will say, having said the last thing,
Speaker 2: I guess if he's taking all these pains to I
Speaker 2: guess I'm just so conditioned to assume he's like a
Speaker 2: lying lunatic that if he's trying to convince us how
Speaker 2: scared he was.
Speaker 1: Now I'm thinking he simply wasn't. I mean maybe right,
Speaker 1: Like that's the thing, one way or the other. He
Speaker 1: does say a lot about him, but like, right, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know why he would lie about
Speaker 1: this in particular. I guess, you know, because it builds
Speaker 1: to something later. But like, yeah, I don't find this unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Like when I was elementary school, I had a teacher
Speaker 1: who like would harass me about using my left hand right,
Speaker 1: like that was not an uncommon thing back, especially for Catholics. Right,
Speaker 1: if it's written to it, this is like post jail,
Speaker 1: though I guess it's like it's nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: He writes, this is like this is how I'm trying
Speaker 2: to justify my the way I am. That that would
Speaker 2: be my only thought as to, yeah, whether or not
Speaker 2: it's a lie. But the emphasis this yeah, because the
Speaker 2: other counterpoint is everything he described is very COVID. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of people are afraid of those things. I
Speaker 2: don't see how you're more afraid of those things.
Speaker 1: A lot of kids grow I think what's interesting is
Speaker 1: sort of his reaction to the fear. But he he
Speaker 1: has as we'll talk about he develops a I don't
Speaker 1: think the fear that he has is abnormal, because a
Speaker 1: lot of kids get scared of weird shit. I think
Speaker 1: his his obsession with like his fear as a failure,
Speaker 1: a moral failing for him is the thing that is
Speaker 1: interesting to look what I Yeah, that is kind of
Speaker 1: where we're going here. So he's also a sickly kid.
Speaker 1: He has probably I think it would be asthma, and
Speaker 1: so his his treatment for this is that he would
Speaker 1: spend hours every day in a tint in his bedroom
Speaker 1: breathing medicated steam with a mustard plast, a mustard plast
Speaker 1: on his chest. The gold there was to relieve mucus congestion,
Speaker 1: to stop his persistent cough. And it's here I should
Speaker 1: note some of the something, which is that g Gordon
Speaker 1: Lyddy and I actually have a lot in common because
Speaker 1: I had the I had the modern version of that.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, I had asthma and I
Speaker 1: would have to spend hours almost every night hooked up
Speaker 1: to this weird machine the size of a projector that
Speaker 1: like pumped all butterol missed into my lungs. Like that
Speaker 1: was like a thing that I had to do as
Speaker 1: a little kid. I was like reading that was weird
Speaker 1: because I was like, oh, yeah, I've been through that,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's not I think Liddy's certainly that's
Speaker 1: Liddy's experience. Seems like it was more physically unpleasant, but
Speaker 1: even like mine was not painful, but it is this
Speaker 1: weird thing that kind of separates you from like other kids,
Speaker 1: from your your your brothers and sisters, from your your
Speaker 1: family members, you're and stuff like the fact that you
Speaker 1: have to spend all this time like attached to this machine,
Speaker 1: like I'm sure it also to do something, you know,
Speaker 1: a sick yeah, yeah, yeah, in order to keep breathing right. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My asthma was ever that bad.
Speaker 2: But I did have a trip where I came back
Speaker 2: and yeah, I had the I I think they had
Speaker 2: a manual version of this at the at the urgent Care,
Speaker 2: which was just like, I don't know, a fucking fire
Speaker 2: extinguishers volume, Yeah.
Speaker 1: What we need. I don't understand why these don't exist.
Speaker 1: Andrew is our butterol cigarettes. I would smoke those still,
Speaker 1: you know, I want I just want to I just
Speaker 1: want to chain smoke for health. You know, it's.
Speaker 2: Probably not impossible to get a little vape cartridge of LB.
Speaker 1: Just just vaping out bututerol. Like you know, I just
Speaker 1: blow it. I'm still health about you fuckers.
Speaker 2: Blowing steroid clouds, steroid cotton.
Speaker 1: This is a fifty to fifty mix of al butterol
Speaker 1: and tobacco. Oh my god, that would make my flavor.
Speaker 1: That would burst my heart. Yeah, it seems healthy. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got this experience, and I think, probably to a degree,
Speaker 1: separates him from it. And you have to when you're
Speaker 1: doing this. Lyddy is always a guy who lives inside
Speaker 1: his head to a significant extent. He's and that's part
Speaker 1: of why he's so unhinged, as he's always he's thinking
Speaker 1: about like very strange things all the time. His mind
Speaker 1: is like NonStop going in these kind of manic circles.
Speaker 1: That is part of why he becomes like the plotter
Speaker 1: that he becomes. And I think, you know, given that
Speaker 1: I went through something similar, I kind of might tie
Speaker 1: some of it back to that, Like it's hard not
Speaker 1: to just sort of get stuck in your own head
Speaker 1: a lot when you have that as an early life experience.
Speaker 1: His grandpa dies in thirty five and the family moves
Speaker 1: back to Hoboken together, you know, and he's he you know,
Speaker 1: is a is a weird little kid, he recalls being
Speaker 1: because he's kind of raised in the city and the suburbs,
Speaker 1: absolutely terrified of the natural world. As a little kid,
Speaker 1: nature was so alien to him that like one of
Speaker 1: his earliest fears is the fact that moths would arrive
Speaker 1: at nighttime. Quote. I had been frightened for the first
Speaker 1: time a moth fluttered against my bedroom window on a
Speaker 1: warm summer night, the light through a giant shadow on
Speaker 1: the opposite wall, terrifying me, frantic screams, then my mother
Speaker 1: explaining it was just a harmless moth or perhaps a miller.
Speaker 1: From that moment on, the night was filled with giant
Speaker 1: moth millers out to get me. I knew it. So
Speaker 1: my fear grew each to experience breeding more so he's
Speaker 1: by at least if you believe his sort of yah
Speaker 1: recitation of events, he is just stacking up these like
Speaker 1: very normal experiences that are deeply traumatizing to him.
Speaker 2: And like, yeah, I guess it's like, I mean, right now,
Speaker 2: I see what you're saying about, Like why would he
Speaker 2: make this up?
Speaker 1: Yeah, in this detail and this like yeah, I think
Speaker 1: some of this must be true. Is does he play
Speaker 1: it up? Sure? I mean, that's the kind of guy
Speaker 1: that he is, you know. And I also think I'm
Speaker 1: certain the way you know, this happens to all of
Speaker 1: us to some extent over time. You know, your memories,
Speaker 1: you think on them, you change them, you tell stories.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe you jazz something up for a story
Speaker 1: you tell somebody, and like that makes it into your memory. Right,
Speaker 1: So I think there's probably just something obviously as happens
Speaker 1: to most people, because I do think he probably believes
Speaker 1: a lot of this, whether or not it's all literally true.
Speaker 1: Another one of his most searing in a literal sense
Speaker 1: early moments is later that same summer, you know, where
Speaker 1: he becomes terrified of moths. His parents take him camping
Speaker 1: in the woods, maybe to try to get him over
Speaker 1: that fear. And in the morning, he's like poking around
Speaker 1: their campfire spot and he picks up a coal that
Speaker 1: he doesn't realize is burning, and it like hurts him.
Speaker 1: It burns his hand. Now, I think most kids have
Speaker 1: a version of that. I burnt myself in a car
Speaker 1: lighter by accident when I was a kid. We used
Speaker 1: to have those and if you're a gen z kid.
Speaker 1: We used to have cigarette lighters built into every car.
Speaker 1: If you want to know how much your grandparents smoked.
Speaker 1: That was just the world for a while. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and electronic like lighter yeah, flame. No, he popped out
Speaker 1: of the car and I'll light your cigarette.
Speaker 2: I tried to pick up a spent sparkler moments after
Speaker 2: it had got out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not wise again, almost a I'm gonna guess
Speaker 1: very close to one hundred percent of people listening, whether
Speaker 1: or not they remember it. At a moment like this,
Speaker 1: it's basically every kid you know touches something hot at
Speaker 1: some point and hurts themselves. Lyddy describes this as investing
Speaker 1: in him a pathological fear of both fire and pain,
Speaker 1: and his suffering increased when his doctor prescribed him regular
Speaker 1: hypodermic injections for his respiratory I think these are allergy shots,
Speaker 1: which I also got as a kid. So again, this
Speaker 1: becomes like this constant regular because he's doing this every month.
Speaker 1: This is just like this endless fucking train of horror
Speaker 1: for him, where like he's just constantly dreading the next
Speaker 1: time he's gonna go get this shot and deal with
Speaker 1: this pain. Right at the same time, he develops you
Speaker 1: know what's to be his worst childhood terror, which is
Speaker 1: a fear of God. Again very common. His family is
Speaker 1: this poor kid is just miserable. His family is super Catholic,
Speaker 1: and he goes to a Catholic school that Lyddy refers
Speaker 1: to exclusively as SS. I believe the s's stand for
Speaker 1: it's it's the Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Church. I
Speaker 1: think the two s's are Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
Speaker 1: But he's also he talks about the Naziss constantly in
Speaker 1: this in moments where it has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: what he's like referencing, Like, he loves bringing up the SS.
Speaker 1: So I don't think anyone else called the school this,
Speaker 1: I think you is just he found it another way
Speaker 1: he could write SS out and so he had to
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 2: I mean that's another thing the modern loves to do
Speaker 2: is just remind you that zis just a little bit.
Speaker 1: Oh, Andrew Hitler didn't love the Nazis as much as
Speaker 1: g Gordon Lyddy did. This guy, Ah, it's so funny.
Speaker 1: Here's how he describes his religious upbringing. Quote, God we
Speaker 1: were informed was omnipotent, unlimited power, demanded and deserved the
Speaker 1: utmost reverence and deference, and left no room for a
Speaker 1: sloppily performed sign of the cross. An imprecise sign of
Speaker 1: the cross was an insult to God, punishable by a
Speaker 1: sudden crack on the head from monitoring nuns. Such punishment
Speaker 1: was to be received gratefully, otherwise retribution might come from
Speaker 1: God himself. The retribution of Almighty God for a sloppily
Speaker 1: made sign of the cross was terrible. Only last year
Speaker 1: we were solemnly assured a lazy, a reverent, careless boy
Speaker 1: had made a sloppy sign of the cross while saying
Speaker 1: his nightly prayers. The good nuns alas were not present
Speaker 1: to crack him on the head, and as God was
Speaker 1: not one to let such a sin go unpunished. The
Speaker 1: next morning, the little boy found his right arm withered, twisted,
Speaker 1: and paralyzed for life. Ah yeah, I love the Catholic shit.
Speaker 1: Such ah so funny, My God just ruining children, just
Speaker 1: just going off like a bomb in millions of childhoods
Speaker 1: around the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah for making the gang sign, Lazil.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fucking up to get the Catholic gang sign.
Speaker 2: Like what the fuck are you talking about God? You
Speaker 2: do this all the what God has so much time?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, imagine like it's so hard for me to
Speaker 1: get into the head of someone who is like, yes,
Speaker 1: God is constantly watching small children to see if they
Speaker 1: make like a minor mistake in the positioning of their hands,
Speaker 1: and he will cripple them for life for doing so.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, because like none of them ever frame it
Speaker 1: as like, yeah, you know, I'm a Catholic because God's
Speaker 1: fucking nuts, like this is the only way to avoid
Speaker 1: his anger, like fuck, fuck the guy, but I just
Speaker 1: don't want to death, Like yeah, I'd like I'm a
Speaker 1: little bit more, you know, if people prefer to do
Speaker 1: him a little bit more like a mob boss, like yeah,
Speaker 1: if you don't pay your protection, he's gonna fuck you up.
Speaker 1: What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: What are you gonna do? It's got I guess there
Speaker 1: are some people who talk about him that way, but
Speaker 1: usually it's all dressed up and anyway whatever. Well, salvation
Speaker 1: are the ones that are like, if there is a God,
Speaker 1: what's preventing you from raping and murdering? And and that
Speaker 1: those are the people you have to look at the
Speaker 1: hardest because you're like, uh, I mean I could think
Speaker 1: of things man a lot. I don't really want to
Speaker 1: do those things. I guess it's. Yeah, So whether or
Speaker 1: not he exaggerated his experience here, and I don't think
Speaker 1: he did. I know some people, including my dad, who
Speaker 1: grew up Catholic in this, well, my dad was, you know,
Speaker 1: not this old, but like I've known people who were
Speaker 1: kind of from you know, around that period of time
Speaker 1: and raised in Catholic schools, and like you get stories
Speaker 1: like this from the nuns. A lot of old Catholics
Speaker 1: have horror stories from the nuns. And yeah, the fact
Speaker 1: that Liddy's like like living in fucking constant fear of
Speaker 1: God is not like when I was a kid, I
Speaker 1: had a period of time I went through like that.
Speaker 1: We're like I would just be terrified because I'd like
Speaker 1: killed a bug or something while playing and like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, if I like damned myself to hell for eternity.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't tell kids about stuff like that, you know. Well,
Speaker 1: it's the same as.
Speaker 2: Like dare too because the and you're like, oh.
Speaker 1: None of this matters, I'm gonna murder all the bugs
Speaker 1: fucking you know, I'm the reason there aren't any fucking
Speaker 1: fireflies anymore. I wiped them all out, you know, just
Speaker 1: just just to spite the Lord got them anyway. Speaking
Speaker 1: of genocide, you know who else likes wiping out? You know,
Speaker 1: the natural world in order.
Speaker 2: To extinctions doesn't have to be ansde every gedocide.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, not every genocide, but some you know, some genocides. Yes,
Speaker 1: his ads, we're back so so far, most of Liddy's
Speaker 1: experiences in the world have been terrifying and negative. But
Speaker 1: he did have one shining really, he had two shining
Speaker 1: things that one of them is reading. He becomes a
Speaker 1: reader from an early age. He finds himself particularly in
Speaker 1: love with like a lot of this kind of colonial fiction,
Speaker 1: Ruyard Kipling and the like, you know, the stuff you
Speaker 1: would expect. And then the other thing that he has
Speaker 1: he viewed as kind of a wholly positive thing from
Speaker 1: his childhood was patriotism. The nuns, he said, introduced him
Speaker 1: to authority, first God and then the flag. After morning prayers,
Speaker 1: they would pledge allegiance to the flag. And you know,
Speaker 1: the nuns were as strict about this as anything else.
Speaker 1: Here's how he writes about learning how to do the
Speaker 1: pledge of allegiance. We stood at rigid attention, facing the flag,
Speaker 1: in lines straight enough to rival those of the mast
Speaker 1: SS and Lenny rievenstalls triumph of the will began at
Speaker 1: the words to the flag. We shot out our right
Speaker 1: arms and unison palms down straight as so many spears
Speaker 1: aimed directly at the flag. It was the salute of
Speaker 1: Caesar's legions, recently popular in Germany, Italy and Spain. Is
Speaker 1: that not true? Oh yeah, no, there you can find
Speaker 1: pictures of American schools. It was not like universal, but
Speaker 1: it was not wildly uncommon for kids in some schools
Speaker 1: and some you know, fucking especially some private schools to
Speaker 1: do the fascist salute, you know, which was previously the
Speaker 1: Roman salute, right, or at least a variant of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's not like other kids have this experience, right,
Speaker 1: there's no reason you think he's lying about this. It
Speaker 1: is insane that he just like he has he's described
Speaker 1: because he's describing it as like the SS. But he
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that in like a negative sense like he has.
Speaker 1: There's at no point does he like think about this
Speaker 1: kind of fucked up to do that? Is it bad?
Speaker 1: If we look at like where the Nazis win. Does
Speaker 1: it may be bad to do this with kids? Absolutely
Speaker 1: not for a second. Does g Gordon Lyddy consider that
Speaker 1: he was organized? We were as organized as thes, my friends,
Speaker 1: my buddies, the ssh what a maniac. So, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is where we should introduce his second mother, the
Speaker 1: family housekeeper, a German immigrant named Toresa. Now, if you've
Speaker 1: had like rich or very upper middle class friends, you know,
Speaker 1: when you were a kid, you may have like known
Speaker 1: someone who had like a nanny, a full time nanny,
Speaker 1: sometimes even a live in nanny who like helped raise
Speaker 1: them as a kid. I had a friend who grew
Speaker 1: up in a similar circumstance and expressed to me at
Speaker 1: one point that it was like really confusing to him
Speaker 1: as a little kid because he kind of didn't know
Speaker 1: entirely whether this was his mom or his mom was
Speaker 1: his mom, because like the nanny did a lot more.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh, that was like, yeah, that is
Speaker 1: kind of a weird thing to put a kid through, right,
Speaker 1: And there's this moment that kids like that tend to
Speaker 1: have where they like realize this person who is kind
Speaker 1: of a mom to them is an employee of their parents, right,
Speaker 1: is there because they're being paid. It's taking care of
Speaker 1: them because they're being paid, And like that can mess
Speaker 1: you up a bit. In Gordon's case, this is going
Speaker 1: to mess him up a lot because Teresa is also
Speaker 1: a literal Nazi. She is a German immigrant to the
Speaker 1: United States. She's absolutely obsessed with the Nazis. With Hitler,
Speaker 1: she tells him all of these wonderful stories of her homeland, Germany,
Speaker 1: all of these different myths and legends, and she talks
Speaker 1: to him constantly about this terrible war that Germany went
Speaker 1: through before he was born, and how afterwards the country
Speaker 1: fell into chaos. But now a hero has arisen and
Speaker 1: is in the process of saving the German nation. Quote.
Speaker 1: Great roads were being built, and unlike in the United States,
Speaker 1: everyone in German and he now had a job. My
Speaker 1: mother had won an Emerson shortwave radio in a raffle
Speaker 1: at Sspeter and Paul Parrish and Teresa and I would
Speaker 1: listen to programs broadcast from her native land, the volume
Speaker 1: swelling and receding in cycles. Now Lyddy had listened to
Speaker 1: FDR on the radio like most Americans in the Great Depression,
Speaker 1: and he had found some comfort in that saying, we
Speaker 1: have nothing to fear but fear itself as a scared
Speaker 1: little kid, but nothing in his life up to that
Speaker 1: point had inspired or influenced him the way his first
Speaker 1: Hitler speech did. This is the defining moment of his childhood.
Speaker 1: Now in his autobiography, Lyddy claims to have had a
Speaker 1: memory like a tape recorder. Given how bad he actually
Speaker 1: is as a spy, I think he's lying about this,
Speaker 1: but he claims. He claims that he can replay audio
Speaker 1: perfectly in his head and like sometimes an involuntary switch
Speaker 1: will throw and he'll hear music that will like launch
Speaker 1: him into a certain emotional state. I don't know the
Speaker 1: degree to which I think that he's telling the truth
Speaker 1: about this, But also, I'm gonna read you this paragraph.
Speaker 1: I don't know fully why you would lie about this.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. The music that poured through the Emerson
Speaker 1: from Germany was marshal and inspiring. I lost myself and
Speaker 1: its strains. It made me feel a strength inside I
Speaker 1: had never known before from playmates who were German, I
Speaker 1: learned some of the language. One day, Teresa was excited
Speaker 1: he was going to be on the radio just wait
Speaker 1: till I hear him speak eagerly. I joined her at
Speaker 1: the Emerson. First, the music, the now familiar strains of
Speaker 1: a song that started defan Hoch raise the banner. It
Speaker 1: was a rousing, powerful anthem, the horsted Vessel song. Now, Cambrew,
Speaker 1: we got to take a second here, do you know
Speaker 1: what the horse vessel lied is? No, it's the horse
Speaker 1: vessel song. Horst. So back during the rise of the
Speaker 1: Nazi Parties, before Hitler's in power, Joseph Goebbels, the future
Speaker 1: Propaganda Minister, ran the party's Berlin operations, and a big
Speaker 1: part of his plan was to Winstan get a series
Speaker 1: of running fights and raids with communists and social Democrats
Speaker 1: in order to spark media condemnation of chaos and disrupt
Speaker 1: the organizing of the party's enemies. Right, he's both trying
Speaker 1: to get like the media flipping out about like, ah,
Speaker 1: there's so much chaos. We really need a law and
Speaker 1: order guy in office, and also trying to like physically
Speaker 1: murder and hurt, you know, two for one. So you
Speaker 1: do the violence and then you step into self the violence. Now,
Speaker 1: one of Joe's top thugs is a guy named Horst
Speaker 1: vessel and Horst is a construction worker. He is a
Speaker 1: low level gangster and a pimp. He is running a
Speaker 1: prostitution racket out of his apartment, and his landlady, he
Speaker 1: was a widow of a Communist party member, is scared
Speaker 1: that she will lose the apartment if the police catched
Speaker 1: Horset running an illegal business out of it. Now, there
Speaker 1: is a debate about precisely what happened, but the generally
Speaker 1: accepted story is that Horst refused to pay his rent
Speaker 1: and threatened to beat his landlady. She goes to a
Speaker 1: local Communist bar to get some of her husband's old
Speaker 1: friends to help her evict him. Horst was also an
Speaker 1: assault leader for Joseph Goebbels, so go you know. He
Speaker 1: was known for running vicious raids on these very poor
Speaker 1: Berlin neighborhoods where he would beat people nearly to death.
Speaker 1: The Communists that his landlady goes to had been victimized
Speaker 1: by Horse before and they knew about him. So when
Speaker 1: she comes to them and is like, this guy is
Speaker 1: causing me problems, They're like, let's just fucking off this
Speaker 1: son of a bitch. So they shoot the bastard in
Speaker 1: the head Joseph Goebbels never want to let a murder
Speaker 1: go to waste turns Horst into a martyred saint, and
Speaker 1: his death is used as evidence of communist evil. The
Speaker 1: song that g Gordon Liddy like is listens to and
Speaker 1: is like inspired by as a child, was written in
Speaker 1: the honor of this, like Murderer and Pimp, and became
Speaker 1: the official anthem of the Nazi Party. So that's what
Speaker 1: he's listening to. Right, Oh, yeah, God, he's like eight, right,
Speaker 1: he's eight or nine.
Speaker 2: You know what's so interesting about this is it really
Speaker 2: puts like paid to the and like this is obvious
Speaker 2: to anyone who's not a fucking idiot, but like, you know,
Speaker 2: people growing up. It's like, you know, I grew up
Speaker 2: in like Reagan times and it's like, oh, the sanitization
Speaker 2: of Reagan and like, oh, Republicans aren't Like Republicans today
Speaker 2: are really bad, but they weren't always like this. We
Speaker 2: used to be able to get along. And like not
Speaker 2: if you're alive today, not one person alive today has
Speaker 2: been a party to a right wing that was quote reasonable.
Speaker 1: No, no, this is like goes back a very far time.
Speaker 1: Like this is not well, I mean, honestly, if you
Speaker 1: lived in fucking Portland through twenty twenty, we had a
Speaker 1: fucking right wing gangster get killed. Here. That like not
Speaker 1: an uncommon story to what happened with Horst. But g
Speaker 1: Gordon Liddy as a small child, loves this song about
Speaker 1: a dead Nazi pimp. But he loves Hitler's voice even more.
Speaker 1: He was again, is this kid whose entire life is
Speaker 1: feel who was absolutely overwhelmed by terror all day? According
Speaker 1: to him, Uh, he is drawn by the pure confidence
Speaker 1: in Hitler's voice. Here was the very antithesis of fear, sheer,
Speaker 1: animal confidence and power of will. He sent an electric
Speaker 1: current through my body, and as the massive audience thundered
Speaker 1: its absolute support and determination, the hair on the back
Speaker 1: of my neck rose, and I realized that I had
Speaker 1: stopped breathing. And this is like the moment that teaches him.
Speaker 1: He has this like powerful realization of like you can
Speaker 1: conquer fear, and like sets him on this course to like,
Speaker 1: you know, conquer it, like to become the master of
Speaker 1: his fear in his pain, just like Hitler.
Speaker 2: That's so wild. It's so wild that you would admit
Speaker 2: this shit like this.
Speaker 1: And it is it's weird, like again that you would
Speaker 1: put this in a book after fucking yeah, to launch
Speaker 1: your career as a talk show hosts.
Speaker 2: This is basically same the same people that like respond
Speaker 2: to like Jordan Peterson.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh my god, he would have loved Jordan Peterson.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But it's it's like in the way that like, I
Speaker 1: feel like most Jordan Peterson fans you see now like
Speaker 1: don't admit that this is what they're driven by. That's
Speaker 1: so weird to hear it so baldly said like this,
Speaker 1: That's the thing. All of these modern guys, a lot
Speaker 1: of these like modern right wing media people are basically Nazis,
Speaker 1: have friends who are literal Nazis, like the Signpost shit,
Speaker 1: you know, they'll do the Fuintest stuff. But even Flintes,
Speaker 1: even Nick Fuintes, doesn't write shit like this. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it is like remarkable that you would just put
Speaker 1: this down. It's fascinating. Liddy never is going to shed
Speaker 1: this deep fascination with Hitler in the Nazis. It's almost
Speaker 1: like a fucking what's the word here, It's almost like
Speaker 1: a fucking syndrome for him, right, Like it's a reflex
Speaker 1: like bringing up the Nazis, like, he can't help it,
Speaker 1: you know. And again he would always claim he never
Speaker 1: claims to be a Nazi, right, he would say, obviously
Speaker 1: Hitler was a monster. I learned later they had gone far,
Speaker 1: you know, much too far, and like you know, had
Speaker 1: to be stopped. And on most fascists who said this,
Speaker 1: I would be like, oh, this is just a shallow
Speaker 1: attempt to allay suspicion. Lyddy's case is weirder because, for
Speaker 1: one thing, he's admitting all of this when he doesn't
Speaker 1: need to. He is absolutely no doubt, in my mind,
Speaker 1: a bone deep fascist rights has died in the wole
Speaker 1: it committed, a fucking fascists has ever existed, you know,
Speaker 1: this alt he is an ultimate follower. He's like a
Speaker 1: born henchman in constant search for a fearer. But I
Speaker 1: actually think he's not lying when he says he doesn't
Speaker 1: consider himself fully a Nazi. And I the reason why
Speaker 1: is very simple. It's his dad, right. He worshiped his father,
Speaker 1: so Sylvester Liddy was his son's hero. And in his
Speaker 1: autobiography over and over again he repeats this belief that,
Speaker 1: like his dad, is almost incapable of error, and his
Speaker 1: dad hates Nazis, and it's one of those things. Liddy's
Speaker 1: definitely a fascist. His dad hatred of Nazi. If you've
Speaker 1: you've seen that meme of like the cheeto stuck in
Speaker 1: the place of like the the lock. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like that's the one thing keeping him from like just
Speaker 1: becoming a full on neo Nazi. I guess, I.
Speaker 2: Guess that is the thing that is translated to the
Speaker 2: modern right wing too, is like like they espouse everything
Speaker 2: the Nazis.
Speaker 1: Believe they are friendly neo.
Speaker 2: Nazis, but will also say shit like well like socialism
Speaker 2: is the real you know, they love a national socialist
Speaker 2: part or like the Democrats are the real Nazis, and
Speaker 2: you're like, I mean, they really just have it both ways.
Speaker 2: They like recognize Nazi is a bad thing to be
Speaker 2: but they don't recognize or they recognize that the word
Speaker 2: nazis a bad thing to be called.
Speaker 1: It's I think with Lyddy, I think what interests me
Speaker 1: about him is that the conflict is a little different because,
Speaker 1: like number one, most of the guys that you're talking
Speaker 1: talking about would never admit to like having this much
Speaker 1: admiration of Hitler in the Nazis right, because it would
Speaker 1: be giving away too much, right right. I don't know
Speaker 1: how to characterize the exact nature of his belief, but
Speaker 1: I do kind of think it's one of those like
Speaker 1: he was his entire life ready to fully embrace Hitler
Speaker 1: in the Nazis. It was just his respect for his
Speaker 1: dad holding back like this tiny this like creaking broken down,
Speaker 1: damn holding back the flood of Nazi water. And in fact,
Speaker 1: so when his you know, Gordon hears his first Hitler
Speaker 1: speech and he like goes to his dad to be like,
Speaker 1: I've just heard the most incredible guy. And when Sylvester
Speaker 1: is like, wait are you talking about Hitler? No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: fuck that dude. He is a monster. He's going to
Speaker 1: lead the world and do a horrible, horrible war. You
Speaker 1: are not allowed to listen to him anymore. And I
Speaker 1: kind of wonder if his dad hadn't been this guy,
Speaker 1: does Liddy just become like a full on Nazi like
Speaker 1: his he marching with like fucking George Lincoln Rockwell, like
Speaker 1: completely you know, swastika mask off, you know, fucking doing
Speaker 1: shots with David Duke. Yeah right, yeah, probably, yes, maybe
Speaker 1: there's a good shit. Similarly, that that's.
Speaker 2: Like the type of thing that was like again quote
Speaker 2: unquote acceptable at the time, or it was like a
Speaker 2: you know in the time, it was a type of
Speaker 2: political expression that was like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I don't know, this is like the weirdest,
Speaker 1: like characterizing this exactly is the weirdest part to me here.
Speaker 1: So you know, so again, very young Liddy spends the
Speaker 1: end of the nineteen thirties, when he is like eight
Speaker 1: or nine, treating Hitler like a forbidden dessert, right, or
Speaker 1: like a hidden playboy magazine. Right. He can't be caught
Speaker 1: listening to him, right, And he will claim later this
Speaker 1: isn't because I'm I loved Hitler's you know politics, It's
Speaker 1: because I just found him magnetic. It's like we you
Speaker 1: absolutely were in look at this politics. You are a
Speaker 1: bone deep fact. No one has ever been more of
Speaker 1: a fascist than ug Gordon Lyddy. It's really like like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I like the I like the fucking what the confidence
Speaker 1: and the auditory style. Yeah, I don't know, man, Broye,
Speaker 1: there's other confident ass motherfuckers out there. So Teresa is
Speaker 1: like a big influence on him in this because you know,
Speaker 1: while he can't be caught in the open listening to
Speaker 1: his Hitler speeches. It becomes this like thing that they share,
Speaker 1: right that like when his dad's out and like no
Speaker 1: one else is around, they'll listen to some Hitler speeches, right,
Speaker 1: They'll turn on the radio and like sneak it together.
Speaker 1: And again, she is the primary female influence in his
Speaker 1: early childhood. And like, I don't know, I think actually
Speaker 1: honestly reading this, I thought back to how when I
Speaker 1: was a little kid and my mom was out of town,
Speaker 1: my dad and I would watch like South Park, right,
Speaker 1: which I wasn't allowed to watch, but like my dad
Speaker 1: would kind of you know, And that's a powerful thing
Speaker 1: as a kid, you know, whatever it is for you,
Speaker 1: Like if you've got like an adult in your life,
Speaker 1: who will be like, hey, you know, normally, you know,
Speaker 1: I had to watch you know, horror movies. But let's
Speaker 1: put on Friday the thirteenth or whatever. Just been the
Speaker 1: rest of your life you love fucking you know, horror
Speaker 1: movies or whatever. Like for him, that's Hitler, then that's
Speaker 1: the experience he has. That's like woman who raises him.
Speaker 2: You know, let's get on, let's get what they're talking about.
Speaker 1: Adoll Hitler. Now, obviously fascists are bad at estimating risk,
Speaker 1: and Teresa was not careful enough with her attempts to
Speaker 1: propagandaize this kid. Eventually h Sylvester catches them. Quote it
Speaker 1: was bad enough that he would come home on warm
Speaker 1: days to the voice of Joseph Goebbel's booming sonorously from
Speaker 1: the Emerson worst when he found our address was on
Speaker 1: the German embassy mailing list for Nazi propaganda. The Hindenburg, however,
Speaker 1: was the last straw. The problem was that Teresa did
Speaker 1: not accept the official crash explanation, but static electricity ignited
Speaker 1: hydrogen being vinted as part of the landing procedure. She
Speaker 1: was certain the Hindenburg had been sabotaged by the United States.
Speaker 1: This is it, Hindenburgh truth there, that's okay, this is
Speaker 1: so true. That's so wild about this is like this
Speaker 1: is his autobiography. Yes, yes, he's writing all of this out.
Speaker 2: You could, if you wanted to, for instance, attempt to
Speaker 2: rehabilitate your image in the nineteen eighties, simply just say,
Speaker 2: you know, I was a sickly child, and I loved
Speaker 2: fucking the rate, I love the radio. But then in
Speaker 2: you know, that could all of everything that you've said
Speaker 2: so far could be two and a half sentences and
Speaker 2: starts wherever the shit that's relevant.
Speaker 1: Yes, well that's kind of why I believe a lot
Speaker 1: of this, right because like there's definitely he lies for
Speaker 1: a number of especially when we get to Watergate. There's
Speaker 1: like a lot of shit that he just like is
Speaker 1: bullshit that he brings up about like John Dene and stuff,
Speaker 1: like a lot of stuff that is not true in
Speaker 1: this that is like legacy making, myth making. But like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what why of lying the first How
Speaker 1: does this help you?
Speaker 3: G Gordon Lyndy, Like the fascists are already on your side. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like so like this may just be yeah, we thought
Speaker 3: this would be your This is to try to like
Speaker 3: broad in the audience a little bit, get a little
Speaker 3: like you know, some ragged Democrats whatever, No fuck is this.
Speaker 1: This is something unique, something totally unique, and you know
Speaker 1: what else is unique? And sponsors of our podcast, none
Speaker 1: of whom were raised by a Nazi. Well probably probably
Speaker 1: most of whom were not raised by Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's some real a list sponsors you could get, though,
Speaker 2: were definitely raised by.
Speaker 1: The Reagan coin. People might have been raised by a Nazi?
Speaker 1: Is that ed Eddie Volkswagon, you know, buyer sponsored this fucker. Sure,
Speaker 1: hopefully Volvo pops in or something. You know, we're back.
Speaker 1: So Sylvester not a perfect dad, right, But his reaction
Speaker 1: to all of this, everything that happens, does kind of
Speaker 1: make me think that he was trying to do the
Speaker 1: best he knew, how because when he when he like
Speaker 1: comes in eventually, he like comes in on like Teresa
Speaker 1: Rantick about how the Hindenburg was an inside job or whatever,
Speaker 1: and he fires, he fires her, and he he eventually
Speaker 1: he brings in a new maid, and he I think,
Speaker 1: because he's so concerned that his son is becoming a Nazi.
Speaker 1: The new maid he picks is a Jewish refugee named
Speaker 1: Sophie who had just escaped Nazi Germany. And I think
Speaker 1: his goal here is both like, give this refugee a
Speaker 1: decent job, and also like, well maybe if my son
Speaker 1: meets this woman who has been victimized by Hitler's reshime,
Speaker 1: it will deradicalize him. I don't know. Again, we can
Speaker 1: argue was that the right call, but I think he's
Speaker 1: trying Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's so tough. That's that's a
Speaker 1: wild situation to be a day.
Speaker 2: I see what you're trying to do here, but that
Speaker 2: could go so yeah, amazingly wrong.
Speaker 1: And Lyddy does not like her. He claims later he
Speaker 1: came to like respect and you know, have empathy for her,
Speaker 1: but he does not write about her very much, so
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true. In Hitler, Liddy continued
Speaker 1: to see a totem of strength and icon to emulate
Speaker 1: in purging his body and mind to fear and weakness
Speaker 1: that he felt characterized his childhood. Now. While Liddy was
Speaker 1: falling in love with Hitler, he had a few other
Speaker 1: childhood heroes growing up. Quote frequently ill I was nursed
Speaker 1: patiently by my mother, who used the occasions to teach
Speaker 1: me the family history and various tales of personal courage
Speaker 1: and accomplishment against odds. To keep from boring me by repetition,
Speaker 1: she would make up stories of high valor, usually about
Speaker 1: American Indians and their warriors ability to resist the most
Speaker 1: horrible tortures without the slightest indication of discomfort. Among her
Speaker 1: true story was that of Glenn Cunningham, a farm boy.
Speaker 1: His legs were burned so badly he would never walk again,
Speaker 1: and who became our national champion. In the mile of
Speaker 1: family members, my mother's favorite was her older brother Raymond.
Speaker 1: He too was slightly built, but that hadn't stopped him
Speaker 1: from being the leader of all the boys in the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: from fighting off much larger boys who tried to force
Speaker 1: him from the Prime Street corner for selling magazines in Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. From becoming an eagle scout, from putting himself
Speaker 1: through Georgetown University and it's law school. I learned how
Speaker 1: Uncle Ray had been there when John Dillinger was slain
Speaker 1: in Chicago, how he was wounded at the gun battle
Speaker 1: in which mab Barker and her gang were shot or captured,
Speaker 1: and that he hadn't even noticed his wound until aft
Speaker 1: of the battle and had not bothered to report it.
Speaker 1: His Uncle Ray becomes an FBI agent, right, And to
Speaker 1: be clear, there's not actually any evidence that Ray was
Speaker 1: nearby when John Dillinger was killed, but this is probably
Speaker 1: family law rather than Gordon lying. I think he does
Speaker 1: grow up and taught this right. And I think Uncle
Speaker 1: Ray is a giant piece shit and the fabulous too,
Speaker 1: also a terrible influence. But this is so these two
Speaker 1: things are critical to understand. Letty, he grows up like
Speaker 1: afraid constantly, and like you know, just this like kid,
Speaker 1: he's like short, he's small, he feels like he's weak,
Speaker 1: and he's always scared. And his mom is constantly trying
Speaker 1: to build him up by telling him stories about his
Speaker 1: like great grandfather and his grandfather and like how good
Speaker 1: his dad wasn't boxing and his uncle Raymond is killing
Speaker 1: all these people. And this like drives him crazy a
Speaker 1: little bit, right, Like the fact that the fact that
Speaker 1: he feels like he has to become worthy of these
Speaker 1: men who are in his genetic line, and he feels
Speaker 1: like he's so weak and scared all the time. Like this,
Speaker 1: this like fucks him up as a kid, right yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So he grows more and more ashamed of his perfectly
Speaker 1: natural reactions to the world. Now, part of what incites
Speaker 1: this is that he had, by this point read a
Speaker 1: book by America First Leader Charles Lindberg, in which Lindbergh
Speaker 1: discussed that he had picked his wife based on her
Speaker 1: racial characteristics because he wanted them to breed genetic powerful
Speaker 1: children together. So he has this sort of idea in
Speaker 1: his head that like I come from a line of powerful,
Speaker 1: like genetically powerful men, and it's my responsibility to become
Speaker 1: worthy of the genes of my ancestors. Right and right
Speaker 1: now I'm too weak. I'll never be worthy of breeding
Speaker 1: with an Aryan princess if I don't conquer my fear
Speaker 1: of the heroes.
Speaker 2: And you know what, to be fair, except for the
Speaker 2: Aryan part.
Speaker 1: Listen, why that's why you do half the shit you do,
Speaker 1: you know, to just impress the person you want to fuck. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's fair. In his case, it's like a theoretical person, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And he has to become worthy of the semen that
Speaker 1: he's inherited from his dad and his uncle. So of
Speaker 1: all the heroes in his childhood, his dad and his
Speaker 1: uncle Ray are the living ones he actually knew. Ray
Speaker 1: again is a short guy, but he's dating a model
Speaker 1: and this model is much taller than him, which g
Speaker 1: Gordon Liddy finds very attractive. He's always got kind of
Speaker 1: a king for that. And he carried Ray would always,
Speaker 1: you know, when he'd come over to see the family,
Speaker 1: he would like always be wearing a gun and he
Speaker 1: would brag about who he was carrying a thirty eight
Speaker 1: super automatic there was powerful handgun in the world. Lyddy
Speaker 1: repeats it a bunch. This is the most powerful handgun
Speaker 1: in the world. My uncle has got the best gun
Speaker 1: in the whole planet. That is a debatable claim handgun wise,
Speaker 1: but I think he probably heard it from Ray and
Speaker 1: repeated it all his life. Gordon grew obsessed with his
Speaker 1: uncle's sight arm, and since this was the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: gun safety was not a priority. Quote. One day, when
Speaker 1: I was five, I slipped into Ray's room and found
Speaker 1: it lodged in the lid of his suitcase. This was
Speaker 1: a rarity. Not only was it something I feared, so
Speaker 1: did everyone else. My curiosity got the better of my fear,
Speaker 1: an uncommon occurrence. Quietly, I withdrew the pistol and examined it,
Speaker 1: then managed to get the hammer back at the safety off.
Speaker 1: Proud of this accomplishment, I walked into the room where
Speaker 1: the adult sat Chadow to show them what I had found.
Speaker 1: Uncle Ray spotted me immediately he knew the pistol was loaded.
Speaker 1: Ray's rising He placed himself directly in front of the muzzle,
Speaker 1: smiled warmly, then reached down and placed his finger between
Speaker 1: the hammer and the firing bin. He grasped the piece
Speaker 1: and gently disarmed me. This gun, he informed me quietly,
Speaker 1: was his. He would get one for me soon. Thereafter
Speaker 1: he did a pistol replica of the colt. So a
Speaker 1: couple of livings there, Uncle Ray, I think maybe the
Speaker 1: wrong thing to do is to give the kid who
Speaker 1: has just stolen your gun and pointed it at some
Speaker 1: adults an exact replica of that pistol. There might be
Speaker 1: other lessons to teach first, is what I'm saying, right like,
Speaker 1: don't point guns at the people.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I guess I don't know the layout
Speaker 2: of this living room either. By I don't feel like
Speaker 2: Ray had to step right in front of the pistol
Speaker 2: to do this stuff.
Speaker 1: Feel like he had other options. Yeah, come from the side.
Speaker 1: Maybe don't leave a loaded and chambered thirty eight Super
Speaker 1: in your fucking suitcase in your room with kids around. Ray.
Speaker 1: You never know, Yeah, everyone was so drunk back then,
Speaker 1: right Like, Yeah, you never know when you're gonna really
Speaker 1: want to win the argument. No, exactly, you might, you could.
Speaker 1: You might need that thirty eight Super at any moment. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: from what I can it's also very funny to be
Speaker 1: because like today. Back then, you know, thirty eight Super
Speaker 1: was one of the more power certainly one of the
Speaker 1: most powerful handgun rounds that was available to people today.
Speaker 1: The thing that's most famous for is like Cartel guys
Speaker 1: love getting nineteen elevens plated in gold and thirty eight Super.
Speaker 1: That's like the Cartel pistol, right, like if you want
Speaker 1: to be yeah, Like it's like yeah, So that is
Speaker 1: kind of amusing to me. All of this nonsense, this
Speaker 1: like worship of men in his family, his like Hitler shit,
Speaker 1: his constant fear, he he it leads him to have
Speaker 1: this kind of like obsession with making a reality of
Speaker 1: my genetic potential. That's the way he describes it, you know, right,
Speaker 1: He's got to like he's got to fix himself so
Speaker 1: that he can earn his genes. So this starts with
Speaker 1: his first fear, the Hindenburg and its last runs before
Speaker 1: the disaster, Lyddy had made his parents take him to
Speaker 1: watch it so he could stand out underneath it and
Speaker 1: force himself not to run away. His success in this
Speaker 1: thrilled him, and it made him commit to conquering other fears.
Speaker 1: Since he was scared of heights, he started hanging out
Speaker 1: with a boy he knew who ran around on the
Speaker 1: rooftops of nearby buildings do what you might call kind
Speaker 1: of early parkourship. That boy also took Lyddy to the docks,
Speaker 1: which is this like forbidden place with all these scary
Speaker 1: foreigners in it. And on one occasion they're snooping around
Speaker 1: a boat and they get yelled at and they both
Speaker 1: run away, and Lyddy spends days beating himself up, like
Speaker 1: he's almost like mortifying his skin because he's so ashamed
Speaker 1: that he didn't like confront the guy or something instead
Speaker 1: of running away from this sailor when he's breaking onto
Speaker 1: a boat. Now, in order to deal with this, he
Speaker 1: keeps going back to the boat, and his goal is
Speaker 1: he just wants to hide on it near the saale
Speaker 1: to prove that he's not scared of them. He conquers
Speaker 1: this fear, but he earns a new one, which is
Speaker 1: that there's these giant wharf rats around and one of
Speaker 1: them like chases him off the boat, and he kind
Speaker 1: of loses his mind in a panic. And for a
Speaker 1: year or more, this tears at him, the fact that
Speaker 1: he's like reacted with fear to these rats. But then
Speaker 1: About a year later, when he's nine, the family cat
Speaker 1: brings a dead rat into the house, and I don't
Speaker 1: really know what to do here other than read you
Speaker 1: what followed. The carcass was still warm and remarkably undamaged.
Speaker 1: To demonstrate to myself my lack of fear, instead of
Speaker 1: using a stick, I picked it up with my hands,
Speaker 1: then looked for a place to bury it. As I
Speaker 1: walked towards the trees in the back, I saw some
Speaker 1: old bricks and got the idea for a test to
Speaker 1: destroy forever any dread I still might harbor for rats.
Speaker 1: I put the rat down and with the loose bricks
Speaker 1: built a small enclosure in the gravel next to the garage.
Speaker 1: I filled it with broken twigs, bark in small branches,
Speaker 1: and went into the kitchen for matches. For the next hour,
Speaker 1: I roasted the dead rat. Then I removed the burned
Speaker 1: carcass with a stick and let it cool. With a
Speaker 1: scout knife, I skinned it, then cut off and ate
Speaker 1: the roasted haunches of the rat meat, this tasteless and stringy. Finally,
Speaker 1: I dismantled the little fireplace and burned the rest of
Speaker 1: the carcass. As I stamped down the earth over the
Speaker 1: remnants of my meal. I spotted the cat Tommy. I
Speaker 1: smiled as the thought occurred to me. From now on,
Speaker 1: rats could fear me as they feared cats. After all,
Speaker 1: I hate them too. Oh my god. If your child
Speaker 1: has that experience, that's so far beyond serial killer shit.
Speaker 1: Like serial killer shit is like torturing and animals. It's
Speaker 1: not doing that. Sania's already dead, but in some ways
Speaker 1: it's more alien and weird, like I must conquer the
Speaker 1: rats will fear me if I've eaten them. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what works.
Speaker 2: That's just so like also like totally cool to never
Speaker 2: tell anyone that story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a story you keep to yourself. Andrew's so
Speaker 1: wild to say this out loud. This is this is
Speaker 1: the thirties. Your parents are putting you in an institution
Speaker 1: if you tell them that story. Yeah, I just right.
Speaker 1: But that's what happens in the thirty that's just early
Speaker 1: enough in the twentieth century or close enough to the
Speaker 1: depression that like you might find one or two people
Speaker 1: that it's like been their brother. Yeah, but not for
Speaker 1: that reason, right, yes, yes, right, So if you hear
Speaker 1: the whole thing, he will always be, you know, for
Speaker 1: the rest of his childhood, obsessive with this need to
Speaker 1: conquer various fears and prove himself a man. Now, the
Speaker 1: thing that he wants to ultimately do, the number one way, really,
Speaker 1: the only thing in his mind that's going to cure
Speaker 1: him forever of this sort of like inadequacy syndrome he has,
Speaker 1: is to go to war. Right That's the ultimate way
Speaker 1: to prove that you're a man and worthy of your
Speaker 1: genes is killing some people. And luckily for him, World
Speaker 1: War two, you know, kicks off right around the time
Speaker 1: he's starting to become, you know, an adolescent. Unfortunately for him,
Speaker 1: he's like eleven or twelve when the US gets into it,
Speaker 1: and there's at least like six years he's got a
Speaker 1: weight before he's going to be able to enlist. His
Speaker 1: only meaningful feeling about the war then, is not like
Speaker 1: horror at all the people dying, you know, fear that
Speaker 1: maybe his country will lose any of that. He's he's terrified.
Speaker 1: His greatest fear is that he won't have time to
Speaker 1: fight in it. He won't get to go to war, right, Like,
Speaker 1: That's that's really what fucks him up. So while he
Speaker 1: suffers through this torturous weight. He decides the rational thing
Speaker 1: to do is to prepare himself to be a soldier,
Speaker 1: and Gordon that meant one thing killing Now later in
Speaker 1: life he is going to be famous for just absolutely
Speaker 1: this guy. There's never been a dude who fetishized guns
Speaker 1: more than G. Gordon Liddy or violence more than G.
Speaker 1: Gordon LIDDI. But Lyddy is not. He's not naturally a
Speaker 1: violent person. He's not someone to whom actually carrying out
Speaker 1: violence is like a thing he's immediately comfortable with, right,
Speaker 1: and so he's going to have He's going to dedicate,
Speaker 1: like his adolescent years, to becoming comfortable with carrying out
Speaker 1: violence for no good reason, right, not like violence he
Speaker 1: needs to carry out because he's ashamed of the fact
Speaker 1: that he's like not comfortable killing things. Now. The easiest
Speaker 1: way in his mind to become comfortable with violence is
Speaker 1: to get a gun and start shooting animals. But again, Sylvester,
Speaker 1: his dad understands who his boy is and is like, no,
Speaker 1: we're not getting you a gun. We are we are
Speaker 1: absolutely not buying you a gun. You have to think
Speaker 1: he knew his boy and was like, the last thing
Speaker 1: this the last thing my Hitler loving child needs is
Speaker 1: a firearm.
Speaker 2: I mean, there has to be some real concern when
Speaker 2: this kid really wants to go fight a World War two.
Speaker 1: Which, yeah, the closest Sylvester will get is buying his
Speaker 1: kid a Daisy bb gun. And this is also going
Speaker 1: to prove an error because Liddy's a little too smart
Speaker 1: for his own good. So he looks up at the
Speaker 1: library the recipe for black powder and he starts making
Speaker 1: his own gunpowder. He buys charcoal and sulfur and saltpeter
Speaker 1: from the pharmacy, claiming his mother needs it for canning.
Speaker 1: You can use sulfur and saltpeter, you can use for canning.
Speaker 1: I think the charcoal was probably for the fire. And
Speaker 1: then from a neighborhood kid, he says he buys a
Speaker 1: six inch long section of gun barrel and twenty two
Speaker 1: caliber that included a chamber, right, because you need the
Speaker 1: chamber in order to make a gun the work. So
Speaker 1: he saws off the barrel of his Daisy and he
Speaker 1: attaches the twenty two barrel by friction fit, and then
Speaker 1: he like basically he builds this into a functioning twenty
Speaker 1: two caliber rifle using like it's very janky, Like it's
Speaker 1: got like a plunger fire type situation here, Like it
Speaker 1: sounds like a very dangerous and inaccurate firearm. But it
Speaker 1: does function. It has no sight, like you cannot really
Speaker 1: aim at very well. But he claims he shoots and
Speaker 1: hits a squirrel with it. Right now, this is pretty
Speaker 1: fucked up because you shouldn't shoot an animal with a
Speaker 1: weapon that you can't be precise with right because you may,
Speaker 1: for example, hid it in the guts and it will
Speaker 1: die in agonizing death as opposed to dying quick, which
Speaker 1: is what happens. He shoots the squirrel in the belly,
Speaker 1: and he has to like kill it, right, He has
Speaker 1: to like execute it at close range, and he, you know,
Speaker 1: he doesn't eat the squirrel. He doesn't what you can do.
Speaker 1: He has like no use for the body. He's just
Speaker 1: killing it to kill it. So he he executes it
Speaker 1: and then he cuts off its tail to tie around
Speaker 1: his handlebars. Now this is definitely like serial killer adjacent shit.
Speaker 1: Lyddy claims that he doesn't feel excited or happy after
Speaker 1: doing it. In fact, he's horrified by it, like like
Speaker 1: it haunts him and like his mom catches him doing
Speaker 1: it too, so like that's probably part of you know,
Speaker 1: why he feels bad and this this is what really
Speaker 1: fucks him up, because the thing that fucks him up
Speaker 1: is not that he he hurts this squirrel or that
Speaker 1: he kills it, but that he feels bad about hurting
Speaker 1: the squirrel, and that fucks him up because he feels like, now,
Speaker 1: I'll never be able to be a soldier if, like,
Speaker 1: I can't kill a squirrel without feeling anything, how can
Speaker 1: I kill men? Right? That has its own internal logic.
Speaker 1: There's a lot going on there, and none of it's
Speaker 1: any good. How could I expect to be a soldier
Speaker 1: in the war. I had to do something to free
Speaker 1: myself from this disabling emotionalism. The widowest fascist here, he
Speaker 1: is such a fucking like the deepest fascist. There's more
Speaker 1: like fucking young Hitler has more like redeeming quality, says
Speaker 1: a kid, than fucking g Gordon Lyddy. Oh god, it's
Speaker 1: fucked up, so man. The thing he eventually lands on
Speaker 1: was volunteering to help with his neighbor's small chicken farm.
Speaker 1: He offers to basically, yeah, he's got this neighbor with
Speaker 1: a chicken farm, and he's like, look, I need to
Speaker 1: learn how to kill all, like gut and kill all
Speaker 1: of the chickens that you need killed. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you've never done this, killing butchering chickens and specifically
Speaker 1: like gutting and preparing them to be eaten is a
Speaker 1: very it's a particularly unpleasant process. Like chickens in my
Speaker 1: in and a lot of people's opinions are like a
Speaker 1: less pleasant animal to like butcher than a lot of
Speaker 1: other animals. So the guy who owns this farm is like, yeah, sure, Gordon,
Speaker 1: you could fucking kill all of my chickens. And so
Speaker 1: that's like again bad adulting. Also this if this kid
Speaker 1: comes to you being like I need to kill something,
Speaker 1: Can I kill you? I have to learn how to
Speaker 1: kill efficiently and without emotion or thought. Right, that's how
Speaker 1: he phrases it. So apparently he claims he learns how
Speaker 1: to kill without feeling that by murdering all of these chickens,
Speaker 1: you know, I was satisfied. When it came my turn
Speaker 1: to go to war, I would be ready. And like
Speaker 1: I should note here, giguldn't Liddy never killed anybody, right,
Speaker 1: not for lack of trying, but like I honestly don't
Speaker 1: know if he ever, like was the kind of guy
Speaker 1: who would have been good at this. So much of
Speaker 1: this is like he's got this is like an image
Speaker 1: he wants to present. He wants people to think of
Speaker 1: him as a badass, as a killer, as a dangerous man, right,
Speaker 1: you know, as this guy who could do without thinking, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't think killing chickens actually prepared him for murdering people.
Speaker 1: Part of which is that, like I don't, he never
Speaker 1: kills anybody, right, He's never in combat, He never experiences
Speaker 1: anything like this, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean part of the part of the wa to
Speaker 2: be dispassionate killer issue is thinking that working in this
Speaker 2: slaughterhouse might help you become a dispassionate killer.
Speaker 1: Nope, absolutely not, is it. Like, Yeah, there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot here, including the fact that like Adolf Hitler, a
Speaker 1: fucking man with a lot of blood on his hands,
Speaker 1: never could have worked at a chicken slaughtering like he was.
Speaker 1: He was too Like again, the dude was a vegetarian.
Speaker 1: He was like horrified by the suffering of animals, didn't
Speaker 1: care about people suffering, you know. But yeah, just a
Speaker 1: dangerous maniac. G Gordon Liddie, one of the one of
Speaker 1: the least one of the least mentally uh uh healthy individuals,
Speaker 1: one of the most dangerous brains ever to be born.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to be given power, Yeah, of any kind, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: This is a man who needed like dedicated care right
Speaker 1: of some sort. He needed a lot of people focused
Speaker 1: on stopping him from being a danger to him, mitigating
Speaker 1: mitigating his risk to others. Yeah if and yeah that
Speaker 1: that that never happened. So Jesus, we are building to
Speaker 1: how he masterminds the Watergate break in badly. Again. This
Speaker 1: is a man who is bad at everything but being
Speaker 1: a media guy. Right, He's pretty effect of it, being
Speaker 1: like a right wing media figure. He's a terrible failure
Speaker 1: at every other aspect of his life pretty much. Some
Speaker 1: people say he was a pretty good lawyer, you know,
Speaker 1: so maybe I'll give him that. We'll talk about that too,
Speaker 1: So we'll find out. Right now, Andrew, let's talk about
Speaker 1: how are you doing. I'm you know, I'm alive. We're
Speaker 1: just uh, you know, still just striking and hanging out
Speaker 1: and podcast. It's great. Love it. I don't love it,
Speaker 1: but it's just you know, what are you gonna do? Excellent. Well,
Speaker 1: support the strike, you know, help out. Oh yes, I
Speaker 1: pulled up.
Speaker 2: A link if you are listening to this and you
Speaker 2: are some the entertainment community fund to search for that,
Speaker 2: I don't know whatever, ask chat GPT to find it
Speaker 2: for you don't do that. And yeah, and I do
Speaker 2: a podcast called you know as this racist we are.
Speaker 1: We're doing some picket line diaries just to do uh
Speaker 1: you know what the actual uh sandals on the ground
Speaker 1: of being on strike is like. So, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, check out those picket diaries. And until next time, folks,
Speaker 1: remember David Zaslov's home addresses. Oh you probably we'll probably
Speaker 1: bleep that. Not the first time we've had to bleep
Speaker 1: that uns Yeah, good stuff. Behind the Bastards is a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us
Speaker 1: out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.