Speaker 1: M. What's Katie and mc Cody's Robert Evans here with
Speaker 1: Cody Johnston and Katie Stole And this is a special
Speaker 1: seven part episodes Hin the Bastards. Um, Hello, how are
Speaker 1: you hell? Doing good? Ready? We're here already, We're back
Speaker 1: from vacation. We watched the debates last night. We did.
Speaker 1: We're all a little bit strung out, a little strung out,
Speaker 1: so let me tell you, let me, let me explain
Speaker 1: what's going on today. This is a podcast where every
Speaker 1: week I talked about the worst people in all of
Speaker 1: history and exhaustive detail, and a couple of months ago
Speaker 1: we talked about a particularly shitty person named George Lincoln Rockwell.
Speaker 1: Three part episode was to act as a a booster
Speaker 1: for a go fund me campaign I had to raise
Speaker 1: money for conflict journalism, and in exchange for getting funded,
Speaker 1: I promised to write an audio book called The War
Speaker 1: on Everyone, which I have written in which I have read,
Speaker 1: and by the time this airs will be available on
Speaker 1: the website if you go to the War on Everyone
Speaker 1: dot com. Uh you following through on your promises? Look
Speaker 1: in me following through on my promises? Uh? So. I
Speaker 1: also went to Syria with the money made for that
Speaker 1: and just now got back. Now. One of the caveats
Speaker 1: of doing things like going to Syria for two weeks
Speaker 1: is that it would cause me to fall behind and
Speaker 1: collapse in on myself like a dying star if I
Speaker 1: tried to keep up with my workload. So in addition
Speaker 1: to running, just me reading the audio book on the
Speaker 1: website for free ad free, as I promised forever you know,
Speaker 1: no no cost, no ads, you can just listen to
Speaker 1: the audio book. I'm also going to read the audio
Speaker 1: book to y'all and have it as a special two
Speaker 1: weeks section of the show because that allows me to
Speaker 1: both do the trip and not die from overworking. It's
Speaker 1: a wonderful plan, So thank you both for helping me
Speaker 1: make this possible. Listening to I just want you to
Speaker 1: hear how loud this script is. It's hefty. It made
Speaker 1: the whole table shake three words. We got a lot
Speaker 1: to get through. It's like, yeah, like sixty something pages.
Speaker 1: Now to accompany us, I have, of course my traditional
Speaker 1: sera lee throwing bagels, but I also have some new
Speaker 1: throwing equipment. I have some Mots brand apple juice and
Speaker 1: a plastic container. I have a metal Starbucks refreshers. And
Speaker 1: I also have a metal can of Lacroix. I have
Speaker 1: this mayonnaise squeeze to I'm very excited to see what
Speaker 1: happens with that. And I have a partially open sack
Speaker 1: of oranges. So, clement Um, the full drinks make me nervous.
Speaker 1: We should all be nervous, A little bit slowed on
Speaker 1: all this electrical garrity. Might I threw a can of
Speaker 1: coffee earlier off the air and it didn't burst. You
Speaker 1: also threw a knife at stove Sophie. I threw a
Speaker 1: knife towards Sophie show she could open something with it.
Speaker 1: What happened though, Well, she ran out of the way.
Speaker 1: And also what happened What happened to the knife? Well,
Speaker 1: it open when it hit the ground. Do you think
Speaker 1: maybe it could have opened with hit her hand if
Speaker 1: she tried to catch it. No, that's never happened with
Speaker 1: a knife before. You people were not here. You people,
Speaker 1: this is your audio. But I could throw the knife too.
Speaker 1: That is a good point, Cody, thank you. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: Well what's fun about that is it's going to bounce
Speaker 1: off these soundboards and I don't know what will happen
Speaker 1: that it's gonna be interesting. Everyone, protect your eyes. Is
Speaker 1: that mayonnaise opened yet? Hasn't been opened? No, it has
Speaker 1: been opened. Let's see if it has the foil on it? Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: that's what I want to know. Should I brought it up?
Speaker 1: And I shouldn't have said anything. Cody hates I do
Speaker 1: hate mayonnaise. I have inappropriate nicknames for it. The Devil's come. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: see what I told you. Well, at some point in
Speaker 1: this episode, I'm going to lick the bottom of this
Speaker 1: mayonnaise in a way that will be calculated to make
Speaker 1: you feel uncomfortable. Thank you, Thank me, though, I'm fine
Speaker 1: with it you maybe Devil's com angels come. There's there's
Speaker 1: a distinctly non zero change. We will all have the
Speaker 1: apple juice. Sounds delicious, thank you. Yeah, I want the
Speaker 1: apple juice, and then maybe one of those refreshers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's more in the fridge. These are for throwing.
Speaker 1: What do you do with them post throw? Though? And
Speaker 1: everything about what happens to things after I throw them?
Speaker 1: So I could scavenge for those potentially, Yeah, theoretically, theoretically,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna wait to throw them until we get
Speaker 1: a little bit further into the show today, he's yourself, Cody,
Speaker 1: You mean after we've started, after we finally started vamping
Speaker 1: for twenty minutes. Yeah, well we had a lot to
Speaker 1: get through. Yeah, we had to talk about Devil's com
Speaker 1: Angels Come. But why would it be angels come, Cody
Speaker 1: saying that I like all kinds of come Devil's Come,
Speaker 1: Angels Come. Yes, do I regret it absolutely, because now
Speaker 1: it's on the Internet forever and there's no way it
Speaker 1: can be edited out. No, you can't edit audio. So
Speaker 1: without further ado, the war on everyone. Thank you, Thank
Speaker 1: you for that reaction. Chapter one, The Eternal Fascist m hmm.
Speaker 1: On November nine, tenth night, Nazi stormtroopers and party members
Speaker 1: took to the streets of cities throughout Germany. They burned synagogues,
Speaker 1: shattered the windows of Jewish owned buildings, beaten, murdered hundreds
Speaker 1: upon hundreds of Jewish people in the streets. This bloody
Speaker 1: pegram is known to history as Christal Knocked, the Night
Speaker 1: of Broken Glass. It's one of those moments in history
Speaker 1: so shocking and brutal that it's become stained in our
Speaker 1: collective consciousness. A single moment of horror forever printed on
Speaker 1: the human psyche. Adolf Hitler and the other members of
Speaker 1: the Nazi high command considered Christal Knock to have been
Speaker 1: a failure. Rather than being enthused by the violence, the
Speaker 1: German people were horrified by this outpouring of brutality. World
Speaker 1: media harshly condemned Hitler's regime, and from their plush offices
Speaker 1: in Berlin, the Fewer and his inner circle began to
Speaker 1: revise their plans on how to sell anti Semitic brutality
Speaker 1: to their people. M Joseph Gebbels decided that film was
Speaker 1: the right medium to help crack this nut. His efforts
Speaker 1: culminated in the nineteen forty production The Eternal Jew. The
Speaker 1: essential through line of this particularly vile piece of propaganda
Speaker 1: was the idea that Jewish people were an age old
Speaker 1: parasitic force leaching off their host nations and almost habitually
Speaker 1: working to undermine and destabilize them. As with most pieces
Speaker 1: of racist propaganda, the Eternal Jew reveals more about the
Speaker 1: men who made it than it does about Judaism. There
Speaker 1: is no eternal Jew, but there might be an eternal Fascist.
Speaker 1: Umberto Echo was probably the first person to really grasp
Speaker 1: this idea and try to define it. His nine essay
Speaker 1: or Fascism is still one of the single best pieces
Speaker 1: of writing on the subject. Now Echo is an Italian novelist,
Speaker 1: a literary critic, and a professor who was born into
Speaker 1: Fascist Italy. In nineteen forty two, at the age of ten,
Speaker 1: he won an award in a provincial competition for young
Speaker 1: fascists where he gave an elaborate positive answer to the
Speaker 1: question should we die for the glory of Mussolini and
Speaker 1: the immortal destiny of Italy? I mean, that is a
Speaker 1: good question. I asked myself that every day. Good question
Speaker 1: for a ten year old? Should we die for the
Speaker 1: glory of Mussolini? Um? No, you're not going to get
Speaker 1: an award? Yeah? Yeah, no, no is now. Echo came
Speaker 1: to hate fascism slightly later in life, and he came
Speaker 1: to also love the partisans and rebels who fought back
Speaker 1: against Banita Mussolini's regime. As he grew older and began
Speaker 1: to analyze his world and the history behind the war
Speaker 1: that had torn apart his childhood, Echo found himself drawn
Speaker 1: again and again to a single question, what is a fascist? Now?
Speaker 1: That's not an easy question to answer. Most dictionary definitions
Speaker 1: you will find for the word fascism leave rather a
Speaker 1: lot to be desired. Here's Miriam Webster's definition. A political philosophy,
Speaker 1: movement or regime such as that of the FASCISTI that
Speaker 1: exalts nation and often race above the individual, and that
Speaker 1: stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader,
Speaker 1: severe economic and social regimentation, and an enforcible suppression of opposition. Now,
Speaker 1: like that works for the Nazis, but it does for
Speaker 1: like Mao too, like every dictary very frustrating definition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it requires like the end to be what is happening? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like I and kind of that's so frustratingly much
Speaker 1: on the internet, Like it's not they're not doing this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so well that's not how it works. Yeah. So does
Speaker 1: that mean that, like the Nazi brown Shirts weren't fascist
Speaker 1: because there wasn't a regime, but pinpoint the different stages, Yeah,
Speaker 1: where they're fashist and yeah, German and twenties or like not,
Speaker 1: what do you Yeah, Yeah, it's just it's like picking
Speaker 1: an endpoint. And it also it's just like you can
Speaker 1: apply that to Stalin and like if the same definition
Speaker 1: applies a fascism applies to Stalin and Hitler. I think
Speaker 1: it's a good definition of fascist. Also, people just generally
Speaker 1: just sort of they switched the word fascist with authoritarian
Speaker 1: and that's what they think it is. And no, it's
Speaker 1: it's fascism is authoritarian, but authoritarianism isn't fascism. And it's
Speaker 1: a square aramb us kind of deal. It's very frustrating, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think one of the reasons that that definition
Speaker 1: is so frustrating to me is that it equates fascism
Speaker 1: to like every other system that ends with like dictators
Speaker 1: and stuff, like you said, with authoritarianism. And I think
Speaker 1: one of the things that it leaves out that's most
Speaker 1: important about fascism is that fascism isn't just a system
Speaker 1: that involves dictators. It's a system that arises out of
Speaker 1: and murders democracies. Like that's where fascism tends to come from,
Speaker 1: because it kills republics. It's a frustration with democracy. It's
Speaker 1: frustrating a lot of things. It's action to a lot
Speaker 1: of things. It's a reaction to a lot of things,
Speaker 1: but specifically it um it like like most of their
Speaker 1: dictatorships come from another kind of dictatorship, Like you know,
Speaker 1: we got the U. S. S R. Out of the CSARS,
Speaker 1: and like neither government was good like as opposed to
Speaker 1: like we got the Nazis out of Uh, it's a
Speaker 1: republic by my republic. Yeah. That's why I like a
Speaker 1: lot of what Robert Paxson writes too, because he goes
Speaker 1: through the fascism scholar Robert Pattinson actually stages that you
Speaker 1: go through. It's like, well, no, it starts here, and
Speaker 1: then you go to this phase and then it's this
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and it's it's a it's an evolution
Speaker 1: of a movement less than it is, like here's what
Speaker 1: I want the government to be. Yeah, And what I
Speaker 1: like about Umberto Echo is that he understood that fascism
Speaker 1: was a singular and specific thing, accepted from the rest
Speaker 1: of authoritarianism, and deserved to be studied separately because of
Speaker 1: its ability to kill vibrant, healthy democratic societies. Um And
Speaker 1: I like that echo when he tried to define fascism
Speaker 1: and that or fascism essay, he wasn't just sort of
Speaker 1: looking back into the past. He was trying to analyze
Speaker 1: kind of the things that are timeless about the mental
Speaker 1: impulses behind fascism, so that he could provide a definition
Speaker 1: that would be useful to recognizing it again when it
Speaker 1: came about in the future, rather than just like being like,
Speaker 1: is this what the Germans were doing in nineteen twenty, No,
Speaker 1: then it's not fascism. Yeah, is like a good start
Speaker 1: to the conversation about what is fascism? Yeah? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a great start. Um. So in that essay he wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: I think it is possible to outline a list of
Speaker 1: features that are typical of what I would like to
Speaker 1: call er fascism or eternal fascism. These features cannot be
Speaker 1: organized into a system. Many of them contradict each other
Speaker 1: and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism.
Speaker 1: But it is enough that one of them be present
Speaker 1: to allow fascism to coagulate around it. Like that idea
Speaker 1: that it's like there's a couple of different things that
Speaker 1: fascism like it's magnetic that it pulls these things in
Speaker 1: and it becomes fascism. Um, But it's not guaranteed to
Speaker 1: do so, because each of these things can form other
Speaker 1: things too, Yeah, and they can fall apart. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it can start and then it just doesn't,
Speaker 1: like it did. We talked about Oswald Moseley together, like
Speaker 1: it started to in England but then fell apart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't always continue to that endpoint. Marion Webster was right,
Speaker 1: but it's still that was fascism. It's just not the Yeah,
Speaker 1: so echoes concept of eternal fascism start it with a
Speaker 1: cult of tradition, the belief that truth has been already
Speaker 1: spelled out once and for all, and we can only
Speaker 1: keep interpreting its obscure message. Um, whether you're looking at
Speaker 1: like the Nazis and their concept of like the the
Speaker 1: Aryan civilization, or you're looking at say modern American fascism
Speaker 1: and this idea that there was a point in which
Speaker 1: America was great and perfect that we need to get
Speaker 1: back to. Like that that that seems like a really Yeah,
Speaker 1: that seems like a key aspect of fascism. Um now
Speaker 1: it it You could kind of translate this to conservatism,
Speaker 1: which doesn't mean that conservatives are all fascists, but it
Speaker 1: does mean that fascism always just states inside a conservative movement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: usually like a reaction to like liberal movements. Liberal developments. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and if that's another frustrating thing where like you don't
Speaker 1: want to say, like you're all fascists, but it is
Speaker 1: there is no end of like a lot of these
Speaker 1: beliefs and a lot of these things you're holding onto
Speaker 1: can uh like it's coagulated around it. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: just the word coagulate. I love the word coagulated. I
Speaker 1: think a good way to look at fascism is like
Speaker 1: conservatives are the crew of the Nostromo in the first
Speaker 1: Alien movie, and fascism is the chest burster that comes
Speaker 1: out of that guy's chest dinner. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like
Speaker 1: he's not an alien, but he gives birth to one
Speaker 1: in the same way that conservatism can give birth to fascism.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, and then they help, and then they
Speaker 1: can many can slowly turn into them. Yeah, and some
Speaker 1: of them fight it with flamethrowers but fail because they
Speaker 1: wind up getting into the vincent stuff. And like, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't fight an alien in the events, nor should you
Speaker 1: fight fascism on its own terms. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: political lessons to be gleaned from Alien And that's your
Speaker 1: next audio book. What Ridley Scott's Alien has to teach
Speaker 1: us about the nature of fascism. So the next thing
Speaker 1: that Echo stated as sort of like a key to
Speaker 1: fascism or is like a piece of earth. Fascism is
Speaker 1: a rejection of modernism, particular, literally a rejection of modern
Speaker 1: depravity as traditionally marginalized in a press group stand up
Speaker 1: for human rights and modern societies. Fascists will inevitably seek
Speaker 1: to reverse these trends. The first books The Nazis Burned,
Speaker 1: where Magnus Hirschfeld's library of research on transgender individuals. Hatred
Speaker 1: of transmitted women is still a central unifying tenant of
Speaker 1: modern fascism. And then there's the cult of action for
Speaker 1: action's sake, expressed as a worship of the soldier, of
Speaker 1: the man with a gun in his hand, willing to
Speaker 1: do violence at a moment's notice. For fascists, according to Echo,
Speaker 1: thinking is a form of emasculation. Great line, Yeah, king
Speaker 1: is a form of emasculation. Yeah yeah. Thinking too long
Speaker 1: about something is like it's unmanly. You just got to
Speaker 1: take action now. Echo also recognized a rejection of criticism
Speaker 1: and disagreement as central to fascism. Quote, the critical spirit
Speaker 1: makes distinctions and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. Now.
Speaker 1: I find this interesting because in our modern era, eight
Speaker 1: Chance poll Board is one of the largest gathering places
Speaker 1: for neo Nazis on the Internet. It's the community that
Speaker 1: spawned both the christ Church massacre and the Pawey Synagogue shooting.
Speaker 1: It was formed as a direct result of gamer Gate,
Speaker 1: and gamer Gate was of course a reactionary movement inspired
Speaker 1: by rage at video game critics and reviewers, primarily female
Speaker 1: video game critics interviewers. We're talking about. Yeah, I find
Speaker 1: it interesting that back in the nineteen nineties, Echo looking
Speaker 1: back at the past determines that, like, it's a rejection
Speaker 1: of criticism. Um. And then where do we see this
Speaker 1: modern movement first really start to bubble up in a
Speaker 1: meaningful way. It's two thousand and fourteen in gamer Gate.
Speaker 1: That's the precursor to the Trump campaign in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. Definitely has a lot of the same shades. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: really interesting to me, and part of why I think
Speaker 1: echoes analysis is so good because you can look forward
Speaker 1: from the analysis and see that he really nailed something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: mostly everything he says in that it's like oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: fuck fuck yeah. So racism and hatred of diversity, exploitation
Speaker 1: of the natural, fear of differences. Uh, these are the
Speaker 1: other other characteristics of earth fascism. Echo recognized earth fascism
Speaker 1: as derived from social frustration, generally rising out of an
Speaker 1: appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from
Speaker 1: economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation and frightened by
Speaker 1: the pressure of lower social groups. You could translate that
Speaker 1: in America as fear of white people in the disappearing
Speaker 1: white middle class of you know what is reality just
Speaker 1: like growing a quality of lower other color and social groups,
Speaker 1: but looks like losing grounds if you sort of self victimization,
Speaker 1: kind of like viewing yourself as a victim when that's
Speaker 1: not actually not quite seems like everywhere all the time
Speaker 1: would be ripe for fascism because you know, hit complex
Speaker 1: society I think is yeah, there's diversity and democracy and
Speaker 1: things like that and just like um, you know, a
Speaker 1: manipulation of these innate human based years. Yeah, a complex
Speaker 1: free society is never more than about four years away
Speaker 1: from fascism, I think. Yeah. I think America is especially
Speaker 1: unique to just because of our our claimed to drive
Speaker 1: for like multiculturalism and and you know, or a country
Speaker 1: of immigrants, all that kind of talk. It's easy to exploit,
Speaker 1: yeah and blame. Yeah, and it's it's like part of
Speaker 1: the appeal of fascism is that in times of growing inequality,
Speaker 1: it promises all of its members a type of equality,
Speaker 1: which is, like, we're all members of this nation, right,
Speaker 1: But that's like great, even though like we may occupy
Speaker 1: very different places within this nation, Like we can all
Speaker 1: feel superior to everyone else because this is the best
Speaker 1: nation for these people. I'm a winner. I'm one of
Speaker 1: the winners in this world. Because you're here, you're a
Speaker 1: winner too. Yeah. It's more like class collaboration, yeah than
Speaker 1: class conflict. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's kind of key. Now. Fascism,
Speaker 1: of course, requires an absolute rejection of pacifism. Since life
Speaker 1: has lived for struggle, war is permanent under fascism. We
Speaker 1: see this translated in our modern fascist movements in an
Speaker 1: obsession with the tools and aesthetics of war, black and
Speaker 1: camo and tactical everything. Earlier in the day I wrote this,
Speaker 1: I was browsing Twitter and I came across a photo
Speaker 1: of someone's bugout bag. He wrote in the Twitter post,
Speaker 1: how's this for a bug out boogaloo set up. Now,
Speaker 1: if you aren't aware, Boogaloo is a far right term
Speaker 1: for the civil war that they believe is coming, as
Speaker 1: in Civil War two Electric Boogaloo. Now, this fellow's emergency
Speaker 1: preparedness kit for Boogaloo contained no food, no water, no
Speaker 1: medical supplies. His gas mask did not have actual filters
Speaker 1: with it, but he did have an a R fifteen rifle,
Speaker 1: a twelve gage shotgun, a glock side arm with a
Speaker 1: thirty round magazine, and a forty four magnum revolver, along
Speaker 1: with a tomahawk as a throwing knife, stylish green body
Speaker 1: armor the same shade as his tactical backpack and helmet. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thirty pounds of weapons and no food. He's like just
Speaker 1: like hyperma cheese, more like gamer dorks. Yeah, he's going
Speaker 1: to be able to shoot his food, you guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of veterans being like, so you
Speaker 1: brought four different calibers of weapons. Yeah, that's really Are
Speaker 1: you planning on losing a lot of them? You know?
Speaker 1: And are you planning on like carrying different AMMO for
Speaker 1: all those different guns? Yeah? Very dumb. Yeah, but seeing
Speaker 1: This post brought to mind what Echo wrote about the
Speaker 1: fascist armageddon complex quote. Since enemies have to be defeated,
Speaker 1: there must be a final battle, after which the movement
Speaker 1: will have control of the world. But such a final
Speaker 1: solution implies a further era of peace, a golden age,
Speaker 1: which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader
Speaker 1: has ever succeeded in solving this predicament, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they get murdered. It doesn't work over well, because
Speaker 1: it's a death call. Yeah. Interesting that it's the The
Speaker 1: constant warfare is interesting too to me, just because of
Speaker 1: the United like the United States being very unique to
Speaker 1: that and just like maybe two years of its entire existence,
Speaker 1: it's not been a war maybe, I mean, we had
Speaker 1: we had the we had the nineties. We didn't get
Speaker 1: involved in much war in the ninth much, but there
Speaker 1: are still war, yeah, police action. But it's like now
Speaker 1: this age where it's like, I mean there are people
Speaker 1: that uh, I don't maybe not yet, but within like
Speaker 1: a year or two, we'll be fighting in Afghanistan, but
Speaker 1: they will not have been born when we got that's
Speaker 1: i mean, you're you're born in you but at this
Speaker 1: point that Afghanistan is not a war, it's a tradition.
Speaker 1: Well exactly exactly. It it's weird how it starts to
Speaker 1: not I mean, it feels like a war, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like a war. It's just been this lingering
Speaker 1: thing that's going on. We've got troops over there. It's
Speaker 1: a state of we don't even see a lot of
Speaker 1: like what happens. We don't remove from it completely any who. Yeah,
Speaker 1: speaking of permanent war and after Anistan, it's time for
Speaker 1: an AD pivot. Yes, for the products and services creating
Speaker 1: a little pivot. Don't profit from the war in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: that you never know, you never you never know. Buy
Speaker 1: these products unless the product is the war in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: which would be a weird product to advertise on my podcast.
Speaker 1: Don't buy it. That sounds really expensive too. It's not
Speaker 1: a good deal. It's not. It's just all the money
Speaker 1: we would spend on healthcare Act we were a sane country.
Speaker 1: I don't buy that anyway. Ads, we're back. So if
Speaker 1: he was very proud of me for that ad transition,
Speaker 1: moving like pros clipping right along, So back to her fascism.
Speaker 1: Umberto Echo goes on to name contempt for the week,
Speaker 1: the cult of the hero, machines moo, and a sense
Speaker 1: of tempt for women and femininity, as other key aspects
Speaker 1: of incipient fascism. For a fascist movement to evolve, a
Speaker 1: number of these things must coalesce together, generally around the
Speaker 1: personality of a single charismatic man with dreams of power.
Speaker 1: This man will, of course, never admit to desiring power. Instead,
Speaker 1: he claims to speak for some broad mass of the population,
Speaker 1: a claim to majority that stands behind him at his movement.
Speaker 1: Echo called this qualitative populism and noted that in the
Speaker 1: modern era, quote, we no longer need the pas of
Speaker 1: an Easia in Rome or the Nuremberg stadium. There is
Speaker 1: in our future a TV or Internet populism in which
Speaker 1: the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can
Speaker 1: be presented and accepted as the voice of the people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not that some amount of years later. Yeah, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the selective. The qualitative populism is the one where I'm
Speaker 1: always it's just the most obvious thing. Yeah, And no
Speaker 1: one seems to, at least in the media, seem to
Speaker 1: care or like pointed out that, like he's not actually
Speaker 1: speaking for America. Yeah, he says he is. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just don't like it. I'm not a fan, not good,
Speaker 1: don't know who I'm talking about. Just yea hypothetically, hypothetically,
Speaker 1: if there were a fascist in America, to general, he
Speaker 1: could have been a her. So that's what I've got
Speaker 1: to say about umberto echoes or fascism. Um. I think
Speaker 1: it's a really good analysis. I think he gets a
Speaker 1: lot of things, but I also think he missed something. Uh.
Speaker 1: And since y'all are listening to my audio book, or
Speaker 1: in this case, helping me present my audio book, I
Speaker 1: hope you'll forgive my arrogance and adding one new element
Speaker 1: of fascism to echoes list comedy. Irony might be a
Speaker 1: better way to phrase it. Uh. Fascism often wraps itself
Speaker 1: in humor as a way to disguise it's true intentions
Speaker 1: as black comedy and test the waters for its most
Speaker 1: extreme goals. If you're someone who's paid attention to the
Speaker 1: rise of fascism on the Internet, if you followed my
Speaker 1: work on a Chan or read about the ault right,
Speaker 1: and you understand what I'm getting at, But you probably
Speaker 1: view this as a new wrinkle in the history of fascism.
Speaker 1: The truth is that it goes back all the way
Speaker 1: to the beginning. If you want a picture of the
Speaker 1: personality of the Fewer, what he was like on a
Speaker 1: day to day basis, to the people he liked and trusted.
Speaker 1: Hitler's table talk is about the best resource that exists.
Speaker 1: Starting in nineteen forty one, Martin Borman, Hitler's secretary, convinced
Speaker 1: his boss to allow a series of aids to transcribe
Speaker 1: his private conversations for posterity. Oh my god, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's quite a read, Katie, Oh my god, how did
Speaker 1: I not know about this? Oh? It's it's some hot fire.
Speaker 1: Also sounds really stupid of him to allow. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: but yeah. So some of these were the traditional hitlery
Speaker 1: ranting monologues you'd expect. Others were just, you know, chats
Speaker 1: between courses during dinners and the like. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of debate as to how truly off the cuff any
Speaker 1: of these were, but Hitler's table talk is generally regarded
Speaker 1: as an incredibly useful resource for understanding the minds of
Speaker 1: the top Nazis. In his nine book Explaining Hitler, journalist
Speaker 1: and historian Ron Rosenbaum turned to the Table Talk record
Speaker 1: several times in his attempt to understand in essence, how
Speaker 1: bouncing baby Adolph turned into the genocidal warlord we all
Speaker 1: know and hate. At one point, he focuses on a
Speaker 1: single passage, in particular quote the passage in which Hitler, Himler,
Speaker 1: and Hydrick Reinhard Hydric, one of the architects of the Holocaust,
Speaker 1: are ostensibly debunking the rumor, which they know to be true,
Speaker 1: that the Jews are being exterminated. It's silly that people
Speaker 1: should say such things, Hitler piously avers, when we're only
Speaker 1: parking the Jews in the marshy parts of Russia, although
Speaker 1: he adds that if it were true, it would be
Speaker 1: no less than the Jews deserved. It seems to me
Speaker 1: a transparent charade in which the three architects of the
Speaker 1: Final Solution were becoming the first Holocaust deniers, the first revisionists,
Speaker 1: so to speak, and doing so in a particularly repulsive,
Speaker 1: winking and nodding way. So Rosenbaum brought his theory to
Speaker 1: another scholar, a fellow named Lang, who agreed that this
Speaker 1: was probably evidence of Hitler and company concealing their crimes
Speaker 1: via humor. Both to keep explicit discussion out of the
Speaker 1: historic record, and so that those in the know could
Speaker 1: laughingly revel in their crapulence. Lange said, the invent fiveness
Speaker 1: seems to me in some ways to really come to
Speaker 1: the heart of the matter, even though it's subtler than
Speaker 1: the brutality. Primo Levi used the phrase needless violence, which
Speaker 1: is not quite what I'm saying. It's the element of gratuitousness,
Speaker 1: it's but it's more than the gratuitousness. There seems to
Speaker 1: be this imaginative protraction, elaboration that one finds best exemplified
Speaker 1: in art forms, in which in art we usually take
Speaker 1: to be indicative of a consciousness and artistic consciousness of
Speaker 1: an overall design. Now this is interesting to me because
Speaker 1: one of the things that you find when you really
Speaker 1: browse through a lot of eight chan conversations is a
Speaker 1: lot of talk, joking talk about how the CIA or
Speaker 1: the FBI carried out these false flag attacks, which if
Speaker 1: you just read it straight you could see as people
Speaker 1: like legitimately thinking that there was a conspiracy to slant
Speaker 1: to their website. But I think the more I read,
Speaker 1: none of these people really believe in that. It's just
Speaker 1: it's part of the joke. Like they're joking that, like
Speaker 1: these massacres were carried out by like a state agency
Speaker 1: to slander fascist website, like to people that they agree
Speaker 1: with and they're glad, yeah, and are happy that they're
Speaker 1: doing it. Yeah. Yeah, So for Nazis and their modern
Speaker 1: descendants descendants, shittiness is a form of art. It's never
Speaker 1: enough to gain power or even to hurt or kill
Speaker 1: your rivals. These people's ultimate goal is to shift the
Speaker 1: nature of reality itself to be further in line with
Speaker 1: their own narcissistic beliefs, and irony is a powerful tool
Speaker 1: for achieving that. Lane goes on. Brutality is straightforward, it's
Speaker 1: not imaginative. This isn't just brute strength. It seems to
Speaker 1: me that there is a sense of irony constantly. The
Speaker 1: sign over the entrance gate to Auschwitz, you know, are
Speaker 1: bite mocked, fry work will make you free. It's like
Speaker 1: a joke. It is a joke, the orchestra playing as
Speaker 1: these people go out to work. We're back now. Hitler's
Speaker 1: sense of humor is not something we talk about much,
Speaker 1: but perhaps we should. Ironic humor was used regularly by
Speaker 1: the Early Fewer during his rise to power. In August
Speaker 1: of during one of his first speeches, Hitler told an
Speaker 1: audience that he supported quote removal of the Jews from
Speaker 1: our nation, not because we would begrudge them their existence.
Speaker 1: We congratulate the rest of the whole world on their company.
Speaker 1: This line was met with widespread laughter. It's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. Lucy Dividowitz, the Holocaust scholar who brought that
Speaker 1: speech to Rosenbound's attention, believe that the joke and the
Speaker 1: thing Hitler's audience was laughing at, was not the line
Speaker 1: we congratulate the rest of the whole world on their company,
Speaker 1: but the earlier line, we do not begrudge them their existence.
Speaker 1: And when to quote again from explaining Hitler, this Divido
Speaker 1: which suggests is an inside joke for party members who
Speaker 1: know the secret meeting that in fact they do begrudge
Speaker 1: they are dedicated to eradicating the Jews existence. Now, reading
Speaker 1: that quote brings to mind a post I found on
Speaker 1: h n's poll board during one of my regular sessions
Speaker 1: browsing that image board, and between the mass shootings carried
Speaker 1: out by its members and one threat, I found a
Speaker 1: non's discussing the value of comedic memes about mass killing
Speaker 1: is a way to camouflage their very real efforts to
Speaker 1: inspire more massacres. One user typed, the best thing about
Speaker 1: this is that they, being the FBI and the CIA,
Speaker 1: will never be able to discern an ironic tongue in
Speaker 1: cheek frog poster from a man of action like Arrant
Speaker 1: or Bowers. We have all the plausible deniability in the world,
Speaker 1: and unless they're going to start locking people up for
Speaker 1: ship posting, we have nothing to fear. Yeah, it's okay,
Speaker 1: it's the okay sign Yeah. All the also an illustration
Speaker 1: of how bad their sense of humor is. Yeah, these
Speaker 1: aren't jokes. Yah, what are you doing? Just done? Sophie
Speaker 1: is signaling her membership and the far right delightedly, might
Speaker 1: I add delightedly. In the decades since Adolf Hitler shot
Speaker 1: himself in that bunker, ironic racist humor has been one
Speaker 1: through line connecting every Nazi and fascist movement that's arisen
Speaker 1: around the world. George Lincoln Rockwell, the founding father of
Speaker 1: American Nazism, had his minions dress up in racist guerrilla
Speaker 1: costumes to interrupt events and distract attention from civil rights activists.
Speaker 1: The main weakness of Rockwell's humor was that it was
Speaker 1: far too overt and hateful to be viewed as ironic
Speaker 1: by most Americans. But down through the years his descendants
Speaker 1: have gotten much better. It's straddling the fine line between
Speaker 1: dog whistling to people in the know and maintain plausible
Speaker 1: deniability one A good example would be Count Dankula, a
Speaker 1: failed UK political candidates. Like before, you said, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: on the same Yeah, they're vibing right, we are vibing hard.
Speaker 1: Count Dankula, a failed UK political candidate who first achieved
Speaker 1: notoriety for a video in which he trained his dog
Speaker 1: to sig hyle. When he was fined for this, he
Speaker 1: was able to frame himself as a free speech crusader
Speaker 1: and raised thousands of dollars while claiming to fight back
Speaker 1: against political correctness. There is tremendous power within humor. It's
Speaker 1: why satirists and comedians are some of the first people
Speaker 1: purged by any dictatorial regime. It's why nothing is more
Speaker 1: important to fascist than to look cool and serious and powerful.
Speaker 1: Getting hit by a milkshake is worse for a Nazi
Speaker 1: than getting hit by a brick. Blood looks cool, Milkshakes
Speaker 1: look like milkshakes. But humor also has an incredible ability
Speaker 1: to act as a sort of ideological trojan horse, allowing
Speaker 1: ideas to sneak into someone's mind cloaked as jokes. Actual
Speaker 1: fascists know this. It's why the Nazis on eight chance
Speaker 1: been so much timecrafting memes to bread their ideas. But
Speaker 1: this process can take place even within the head of
Speaker 1: an individual fascist. We're back. In two thousand and sixteen,
Speaker 1: Joe Cox, a member of Parliament for the Labor Party
Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom, was shot and stabbed to death
Speaker 1: by a fascist terrorist named Thomas Mayer. Mayor's chief stated
Speaker 1: influence was an earlier British fascist terrorist, David Copeland. Back
Speaker 1: in the year two thousand, Copeland killed three people and
Speaker 1: injured dozens more by setting off a series of nail bombs.
Speaker 1: He picked the locations he bombed because they had high
Speaker 1: Black and Asian populations. According to the Guardian quote, he
Speaker 1: came up with the idea when a bomb went off
Speaker 1: in Centennial Park during the Olympic Games in Atlanta four
Speaker 1: years ago. He told the police that the notting Hill
Speaker 1: Carnival was on at about the same time, said Mr Sweeney,
Speaker 1: He began to wish that someone would blow up the
Speaker 1: Notting Hill Carnival. To start off with, he treated the
Speaker 1: thought as a joke, but he could not get it
Speaker 1: out of his head. The thought became stronger. He woke
Speaker 1: up one day and decided he was going to do
Speaker 1: it now. Last year, I carried out a study for
Speaker 1: the journalistic collective Belling Cat. I come through hundreds of
Speaker 1: online conversations between the fascist activists who planned first Deadly
Speaker 1: Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. My goal was to
Speaker 1: find out how these men had been red pilled or
Speaker 1: converted to their extremist beliefs. Over and over again, these
Speaker 1: fascists mentioned the influence ironic jokes that had on their
Speaker 1: ideological evolution. One conversation stands out in particular to me.
Speaker 1: In it, one fascist recalled how his first red pill
Speaker 1: came during an argument over an anti Semitic joke Kisoft
Speaker 1: posted the Facebook. The jokes spawned an argument and quote.
Speaker 1: Then I saw people negging Jews, so I joined in
Speaker 1: as a meme first off, then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it's stopped being a meme. Much of the War on
Speaker 1: Everyone will discuss moments in the history of the American
Speaker 1: fascist movement that are much bloodier and a lot less
Speaker 1: silly than ship posters on the Internet. We will talk
Speaker 1: about a hard bitten militiamen, vicious acts of terror, and
Speaker 1: methodical and methodical plans of genocide that are anything but ironic.
Speaker 1: When we talk about the original Nazi Party, or George
Speaker 1: Lincoln Rockwell, the American militian movement that culminated in the
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City bombing, or today's meme spouting ironic fascists, It's
Speaker 1: easy to look at all these things as separate, discrete
Speaker 1: problems spouting up at different times and inspired by different causes.
Speaker 1: But I think that's as wrong as looking at men
Speaker 1: like Timothy McVeigh or Brenton Tarrant as lone wolves. Each
Speaker 1: Swellen surge of fascism across the world and across time
Speaker 1: is more like the eruption of a cold sore. The
Speaker 1: underlying causes a virus that is ever present. During World
Speaker 1: War Two, we bombed it into submission for a while,
Speaker 1: but like the herpes virus, it never quite goes away.
Speaker 1: It continued to learn underneath the surface, hiding an off
Speaker 1: color jokes at bars, handprinted magazines, and eventually Internet forms
Speaker 1: until our nation's immune system grew weak enough for it
Speaker 1: to flare up once more. It's anyone's guess what happens next.
Speaker 1: Man comparing fascism to herpes is very good. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that's really like the one that, like I've considered like
Speaker 1: cancer and like a virus, but like that you can
Speaker 1: suppress that. They're really there isn't a cure for like
Speaker 1: you can, but it's going to come back. Yeah. Cancer
Speaker 1: is closer to capitalism, just to keep growing and growing
Speaker 1: and going. Yeah. Yeah, so that's chapter one. I feel
Speaker 1: like I should sign off by throwing one of these
Speaker 1: cans as you wanna have a preference as to what
Speaker 1: I throw first. Mayonnaise. Mayonnaise, Yeah, he did. It almost
Speaker 1: hit Katy. Cody would have been bad. Well, it wasn't
Speaker 1: real bad. It didn't explode. Fine, it didn't explode. Cody
Speaker 1: says he hates mayonnaise, but he was secretly hoping that
Speaker 1: Devil's coming. He's lying. That would have been like Satan
Speaker 1: ejaculating on the back of his head. I was hoping
Speaker 1: that too, that it would just burst. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: I was really hoping. I guess that's like the best
Speaker 1: place for it to happen in my head. That's like
Speaker 1: acidic started burning my scalp and then I die. Cody,
Speaker 1: if you had a bunch of mayonnaise in the back
Speaker 1: of your head, you would be mad for days. I
Speaker 1: would be mad for days. I would leave, he would leave.
Speaker 1: He would never stop obsessing about it. He'd be asking,
Speaker 1: do I smell like mayonnaise? Is there? Still? It feels greasy?
Speaker 1: I just feel like it's greasy. I'm gonna go wash
Speaker 1: my hands again, even though it didn't touch my hands.
Speaker 1: We have a washing machine here. You could just do
Speaker 1: the next episode or two naked inside the washing machine.
Speaker 1: Well know, take back be in the washing machine. I
Speaker 1: feel like I would have to go in the washing
Speaker 1: machine to take care of it. My first cat died
Speaker 1: in the washing machine. WHOA just too real? Didn't I
Speaker 1: fu fascism? I thought I thought of that. When in
Speaker 1: the episode The Airs Tuesday, we do that cat segment
Speaker 1: and one of the cats survived in the washing machine.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, case cat didn't. Yeah, it's heartbreaking. Yeah, clothes, yeah,
Speaker 1: actually and misremembering it was the dryer still just as bad,
Speaker 1: way worse, way worse. Okay, Yeah, he thought it was
Speaker 1: cozy Sophie. Her name was Barbie. I wasn't creative. I
Speaker 1: was three or four. Anyway, I don't have damage. You're fine.
Speaker 1: Speaking of damage, you'll want to slug. Yeah, we're already there. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what. We got a Patreon some more News
Speaker 1: Patreon dot com slash more News. Didn't dot com slash
Speaker 1: some more News. I'm not a practice. Uh yeah. We
Speaker 1: got a podcast called even more News. We got a
Speaker 1: YouTube show called some more News. That's the name of
Speaker 1: a Twitter account. Also, yeah, and I'm Katie Stole on Twitter.
Speaker 1: I'm Dr mr Cody on Twitter. Can't change it now,
Speaker 1: can't d r M I s t r cr do.
Speaker 1: I basically just used his aim screen name. Didn't there
Speaker 1: was my uh my blogging name when I wrote for Cracked.
Speaker 1: What might column is Dr mr blogg with Dr mr Cody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that back in the day. Well, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to plug anything at the end of this, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to stare at Sophie while I talk about
Speaker 1: my refusal to plug anything, because I think it's going
Speaker 1: to get old if I plug everything. At the end
Speaker 1: of every one of these episodes, Sophie's walking over to me.
Speaker 1: Now she's furious. I can see the rage. Like she's
Speaker 1: shuffling like like the printing of a book. Oh nope,
Speaker 1: she's just here to depose it. So this episode is done.
Speaker 1: There's another fucking six ones to come. So strap end.
Speaker 1: What do I plug? Sophie T Shirts? Buy a T shirt?
Speaker 1: Anyone's T shirts store? So you guys want to plug
Speaker 1: your store? Uh something? It's a te public store. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you go to our on Twitter, I believe that
Speaker 1: Penn tweet has to like to our store. Great, excellent.
Speaker 1: We also have a T public store. You know, go
Speaker 1: to our website you're wanting the bastards dot com for footnotes,
Speaker 1: and also to go to our merch store. We have shirts.
Speaker 1: We have no comment. Wow, you're fired. Well this is
Speaker 1: the end of the podcast. But you know, follow at
Speaker 1: bastards plot on the tw Instagram. Yeah, it's ta public.
Speaker 1: It's too public. Was right, it's public. We've all, all
Speaker 1: of us have been traveling and gone and this is
Speaker 1: we're easing back into it. We're easing back into it.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a machine by the end, sleeping really
Speaker 1: yea