WEBVTT - Part Two: Gay Resistance to Nazis 0:00:01.280 --> 0:00:03.680 Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:06.800 I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy and this week I'm talking 0:00:06.920 --> 0:00:10.760 with Sharne Shrine. How are you doing good? Actually, I 0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:13.440 know the first time you told me, I just said 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:16.159 I was like basically doing bad. But after recording the 0:00:16.200 --> 0:00:19.160 first part. I don't know if people know that record 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:20.960 them back to back, but I feel much better than 0:00:21.000 --> 0:00:24.759 I did earlier. So I feel good after hearing about 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:29.000 all these cool fucking people. Yeah. Cool. And our producer 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:31.320 Sophie is on the line as well. Sophie, how are you? 0:00:31.520 --> 0:00:34.800 I'm great, drinking a cream soda Zevia, live in my 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:40.800 best life, you know, so speaking of aftertastes and Nazis, 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:42.760 and there's this I actually don't know how to do 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:46.120 this segway. Um, But you are listening to the part 0:00:46.159 --> 0:00:49.839 two of our two part series on gay resistance to Fascism, 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:52.239 and so you're probably a little bit confused if you 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:54.960 haven't heard the episode that came out Monday, So you 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:56.840 should go back and listen to it. If you haven't, 0:00:57.320 --> 0:00:59.960 you really should. It's a really good episode and people 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:01.960 learn about a lot of really cool people. And this 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:07.600 is coming from a very big cynic. So this is good. 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:09.600 It's like trying to impress the cynic is like an 0:01:09.600 --> 0:01:13.399 interesting not even about impressing. It's like, will I still 0:01:13.400 --> 0:01:14.680 be miserable by the end of this, you know what 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:17.080 I mean? Like it's like, yeah, you know what. Okay, 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:19.600 Well this one is going to be Oh, I don't 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:21.960 want to spoil it. Okay. So where we last left off, 0:01:22.680 --> 0:01:24.840 there was like a motley crew of queers, artists and 0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:26.920 medical students in Amsterdam who just pulled off a like 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:30.640 heist movie level antics to blow up a Nazi records storehouse. 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:33.480 And today we're going to bring things back to Germany. 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:39.440 So Germany, there's a country called Germany. Vimar Germany is 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:42.880 the period from nineteen nineteen, after Germany got its fucking 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:44.840 ass handed to it in the First World War to 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:47.640 nineteen thirty three, when Hitler came to power and did 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:50.040 the whole Hitler thing that I presume most people are 0:01:50.040 --> 0:01:53.760 familiar with on some level. And Vimar Germany had a 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:55.760 lot going for it, right. It was a republic, for 0:01:55.840 --> 0:01:58.520 one thing, which is a step up from dictatorships and such. 0:01:59.040 --> 0:02:01.639 People could like vote and ship, and there was free speech, 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:04.800 there was free assembly, there was no state religion, some 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:07.360 of the gay laws weren't being enforced, although they were 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:10.200 still there, and the government was based out of a 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:12.320 city called Weimar, which is how they got the name 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:17.880 Bimar Germany. But Germany was completely fucked economically. World War 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:20.919 One left their economy and shambles. Hyperinflation took over. Everyone 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:23.799 was hungry and you know, fucked, and then they had 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:26.679 the fucking worldwide Depression after all of that on top 0:02:26.680 --> 0:02:28.600 of it. I mean, I think that's the reason why 0:02:28.680 --> 0:02:30.639 the Nazis worked, you know what I mean. They had 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:33.320 to like kind of get the desperate, you know what 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:35.760 I mean, Like they had to really and like then 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:39.000 Hitler quotes like, oh he can save us kind of thing. 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:42.320 I think they had to have the previous shitty part 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:46.800 in order to even part, if that makes sense totally, 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:49.920 because people are so fucked they're like, I'll try anything 0:02:50.240 --> 0:02:55.000 exactly yeah. And then so so most of the stuff 0:02:55.040 --> 0:02:57.160 I had been exposed to about by our Germany, which 0:02:57.200 --> 0:02:59.280 focus on really cool stuff because by our Germany was 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:03.000 very in seeing artistic time period, and mostly I've heard 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:05.280 about the cabaret scene, all the sort of decadent queer 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:07.919 artists who try to live fancy, free lives while they're 0:03:07.919 --> 0:03:11.080 basically starving. And all that is like true and interesting 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:13.440 and beautiful, but it's only one part of Germany's culture 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:15.240 at the time, and actually only one part of it's 0:03:15.320 --> 0:03:18.840 it's queerness and it's queer culture. You've also got this 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:23.760 really messy assortment of different organizations that have different names 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:26.480 but get called like the vonder Vogel or the German 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:29.560 youth movement or the hiking clubs, and these go back decades. 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:31.560 They go back to the eighteen nineties and there's this 0:03:31.639 --> 0:03:34.160 movement that it kind of looks like boy Scouts. Boy 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:37.360 Scouts was like a funk off, huge thing that involved 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:40.280 millions of boys and girls both through various levels of 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:44.360 formal and informal organization, with weird paganism, vegetarianism, nudism, and 0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:47.840 queerness running out through the entire thing. So not actually 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:52.000 very much like boy Scouts. I would like to be 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:54.760 that kind of boy Scout. Okay, well then you're gonna 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:58.880 love our characters today. Um So, millions of German kids 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:01.680 formed these hiking clubs and uh spent their days like 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:03.960 camping and getting in touch with nature. It was an 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:06.360 anti modernist movement a lot of a lot of parts 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:08.160 of it, and whenever people are like, oh, it was this, 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:10.960 it's like it's all kinds of different things all happening 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:14.360 at the same time. Um, But it was kind of 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:16.400 a lot of it was about leaving civilization behind. A 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:19.279 lot of it was German nationalist, although it didn't have 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:22.800 necessarily an anti Semitic character as far as I can tell, um, 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:26.120 at least on any systemic level. Some of it was 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:28.560 really middle class and some of it was really working class, 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:30.719 and a lot of it was just fucking outright criminal 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:34.520 in kind of the best and worst ways. Um. There's 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:38.640 a French gay anarchist named Daniel Gurin who wrote about 0:04:38.640 --> 0:04:41.560 the movement in the nineteen thirties because he would go 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:44.239 visit nineteen thirties Germany because it was a fucking awesome 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:47.640 place to be a gay anarchist, and but he found it. 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:51.040 He found this movement increasingly politically polarized between the communists 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:54.800 and the fascists. And as the whole worldwide depression is hitting, 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:57.279 more and more youth are finding themselves homeless. They choose 0:04:57.279 --> 0:05:00.440 itinerant lifestyles over staying still in one place. So the 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:03.720 movement keeps growing, and it keeps polarizing and doing all 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:07.640 kinds of weird ship. In nineteen thirty three, huge chunks 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:10.080 of has come to an abrupt end when Hitler bands 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:14.279 all alternative youth organizations that aren't the Hitler Youth. A 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:16.480 lot of the more mainstreams of these groups just basically 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:20.520 become the Hitler Youth, and in nine he makes participation 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:24.039 in the Hitler Youth compulsory um. And but the youth 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:26.200 movement went a lot of different directions. Not all of 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:28.479 it went into Hitler Youth, as we'll get into, but 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:29.920 some of it did. And so we're going to talk 0:05:29.920 --> 0:05:32.280 about gay Nazis now, these are not the cool people 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:36.600 who did cool stuff. Well balance it out, I suppose. 0:05:36.839 --> 0:05:40.000 But also I'm fascinated where where this will go. My 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:43.520 own experience with boy Scouts. Um, I was a boy Scout, 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:46.840 and uh, my best friend and who was a boy Scout, 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:51.040 came out as trans like years before I did. Um, 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:53.039 And so I love that you know me and my 0:05:53.080 --> 0:05:55.240 best friend because people are like, oh, they're they're letting 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:57.440 girls into boy Scouts now, and then like me and 0:05:57.480 --> 0:05:59.200 a lot of other trans women are like, oh no, 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:07.800 they always did but so gay Nazis. Uh, that's that's 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:11.760 the thing. Yeah. So before Hitler took over completely and 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:13.719 the National Socialists were just like one of the parties 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:17.039 in Germany. They were actually the only political party in 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:21.160 Weimar Germany with unknown high ranking gay member. Ernst Rom 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:23.920 was the leader of Hitler's essay, which are usually called 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:26.159 the brown Shirts, which are basically the parties like street 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:29.640 thugs who operate outside the law, like you know when 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:33.520 Trump told his brown Shirts proud Boys to stand by 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:37.760 and stand back, similar sort of organization. And and ernst 0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:41.840 Rom was really into this hyper masculinity thing. He's so 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:44.520 anti you know, if you're so anti feminine that you 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:48.680 don't fuck women, right, Um. And he's really into authority 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:53.800 and discipline and obedience as are good manly things, unlike democracy, socialism, anarchism, 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:58.400 fucking girls, all that weird stocked Yeah. And this is 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:00.680 not to say that the Nazis were pro gay. They 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:04.520 were just kind of pro hypocrisy, I think. Um, even 0:07:04.560 --> 0:07:06.159 before they came to the power, they were the most 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:10.360 adamantly anti gay party in politics. But even the Social Democrats, 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:13.160 who were the ones who weren't enforcing paragraph on seventy 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:15.760 five and were part of trying to fight to get 0:07:15.880 --> 0:07:21.840 paragraph on SV repealed. When um they used they used 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:24.520 homophobic language to try and talk shot on the Nazis. 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:28.960 Basically they were like, oh, Rom's gay, and so they 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:32.000 like published his private letters in order to basically be like, 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:35.560 if you support the Nazis, you support uh pedophilia and gayness, 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:38.960 and the Nazis will corrupt our children, and so no 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:42.000 one's fucking good at this point. No no political party 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:44.720 is looking good. The Nazis are clearly looking the worst. 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:47.640 But it's just kind of interesting to me. And this 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:51.040 causes us split in the gay rights scene. Right, some 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:54.440 groups like the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which is, as Magnus 0:07:54.480 --> 0:07:56.800 Hirsh felt, the guy I was talking about a lot 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:01.600 last episode, he warns the gay Zis. He's like, you know, 0:08:01.680 --> 0:08:04.320 the fucking Nazis are going to come after you too, right. 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:06.720 But then the other big organization at the time, this 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:09.960 is really not something to be proud of. Uh, They're like, 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:12.880 what nah, They're not coming after all the gay people, 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:21.280 just those Jewish gay people. Um yeah, but but spoiler alert, 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:24.400 the Nazis are coming after all. The case m hmm. 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:28.960 So On June four, on what gets called the Night 0:08:29.000 --> 0:08:31.240 of Long Knives, Hitler has Rom and a whole bunch 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:34.360 of the other brown Shirt leaders just murdered, and in public, 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:36.679 Hitler was like, oh, I definitely did this because Rom 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:40.240 was going to betray me. But it was really transparently. 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:43.120 Hitler was tired of being made fun of for putting 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:46.360 up with gay people in the ranks. His pal Mussolini 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:48.480 like to make fun of him, and they were like, 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:50.720 ah ha, you harboring gays, you know whatever, you know 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:54.280 his pal Musolini, Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. That's like the 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:58.000 very first no homo with consequences or something. I don't yeah, totally. 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:00.439 And then it what's kind of interesting is that Hitler 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:04.000 probably didn't personally have a problem with Rome's homosexuality. He 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:05.920 just he was a fucking people pleaser and he wanted 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:09.600 people to like him. Um, which has definitely never happened again. 0:09:09.600 --> 0:09:11.959 There's never been a populist right wing leader any time 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:14.000 in history, certainly not in the past ten years in 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:17.720 the United States who has clearly not had any problem 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:21.280 personally with gay people. And then no, yeah, yeah, but 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:25.760 greatest country in the world, we're the ones who beat 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:29.880 these Nazis. Okay, so we're the heroes of this story. Yeah, 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:33.400 and then fire the conductor for being gay. Um. So 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:37.080 in private, Hitler would either defend or attack romes have homosexuality, 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:39.760 depending on the audience, right, Like, sometimes he was like, oh, 0:09:39.800 --> 0:09:42.240 that was in his misspent youth and he's learned better now. 0:09:42.640 --> 0:09:44.920 And other times he's like a US, worldly men, we 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:47.560 understand that such thing has happened, and are fine. That's 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:52.439 my Hitler accent. Um, I don't do accents. You should. Yeah. 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:56.319 I also don't do accents, but I think I when 0:09:56.360 --> 0:09:59.800 I tried, I've learned my lessons. So yeah, I'm reasonably 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:02.360 so that if someone put a gun to my head 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:04.000 and said that I had to speak like a British 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:06.720 person for two minutes or I would die. I would 0:10:06.720 --> 0:10:10.240 die because I genuinely believe that with a gun to 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:11.959 my head, I would not be able to talk with 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:15.120 a British accent. No, no, no, no no. I did 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:18.720 a live reading of Twilight Ones with backdel Cast, another 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:22.719 amazing podcast, and I had to voice one of the 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:26.760 characters who was French and for and like in the thing, 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:30.240 he has an accent, and so I tried before we recorded, 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:32.199 I was like, can I do this? And I tried 0:10:32.200 --> 0:10:35.040 to have a French accent and I sounded like Jamaican 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:39.559 every time it was so I was that was like cemented, 0:10:39.640 --> 0:10:42.840 like sharene. Accents are not for you. This is not so. 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:46.480 Accents are hard. So I understand and I don't want 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:50.719 to do that to the audience. Okay. So another one 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:53.240 of the people that another one of the gay brown 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:55.679 Shirts that Hitler has killed, was a guy named Edmund 0:10:55.720 --> 0:10:58.600 Hines who was actually Hitler's cell mate after the failed 0:10:58.600 --> 0:11:02.440 cove that Hall pusch Um and he was one of 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:05.640 the fucking original Nazis, Like literally, he was number seventy 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:08.840 eight in the enlisting in the National Socialists and he 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:11.840 was gay as hell um And when they came for 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:13.480 him during the Night of Long Knives, he was in 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:17.960 bed with a lover. By one Hitler starts suggesting the 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:20.880 death penalty for gay kids and the Hitler youth, and 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:24.120 then they passed the death penalty for gay s S members. 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:26.120 But what they do instead, I mean a lot of 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:29.120 them they kill, right, some of those sentences get commuted 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:31.640 to go be cannon fodder in the war against Russia, 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:35.080 which I think they actually did to a lot of um. Yeah, 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:38.000 a lot of people end up dying that way, get 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:40.960 taken out of prison and sent to go die on 0:11:40.960 --> 0:11:44.120 the Eastern Front um or they're sent to serve in. 0:11:44.160 --> 0:11:49.240 It's like all criminal Durley Vanger Brigade of the s S, 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:52.720 which is basically a brigade within the SS that's like 0:11:52.800 --> 0:11:55.199 all of the worst people and the criminals. And I 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:57.560 put worse people in quotes, but like you know where 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:00.079 they like go give criminals a chance to go. I 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:02.680 I bring all this stuff up. Okay, do you know 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:05.040 that meme the I never thought leopards would eat my face, 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:08.560 said the person who voted for the leopards eating people's faces. Party. No, 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:14.320 I don't know this is I just said, okay, okay, okay, okay, no, no, no, 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:16.480 I mean, it's just basically this It's like someone's like, 0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:18.600 but I never thought the leopards would eat my face, 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:21.760 the person who voted for the leopards eating people's faces party. 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:25.280 And that's how I feel about the gay Nazis. Yeah. Yeah. 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:28.800 And the reasons to bring this up in this like 0:12:28.920 --> 0:12:33.720 otherwise conversation about good gay people is that I feel like, okay, 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:35.360 when we talk about the bad people in history who 0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:37.320 are gay. We're usually playing into this trope that like 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:41.720 all of them were closeted, right, but these gay's Nazis weren't. 0:12:41.760 --> 0:12:44.120 They were not closeted. They were open about their interests. 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:46.320 It was part of their like storied tradition of right 0:12:46.320 --> 0:12:49.680 wing homosexuality that ran concurrently with left wing in a 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:56.160 political homosexuality. And it's just like internalized homophobia or like 0:12:56.240 --> 0:12:59.520 hatred that I tried to wrap my head around stuff 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:02.719 like that, like what they tell themselves to legitimize their 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:06.240 existence or like what they're doing. So it's like, I 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:08.720 don't know, just sucking racists, you know, and they're like, 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:11.000 I like the Racist Party and then they're like what 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:13.120 the Racist Party hates you for being gay? And you're like, well, 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:15.599 I don't care. I'm so racist that that's you know. 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:18.360 It's like we see that a lot. Yeah. Yeah, And 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:21.000 like the modern far right in the United States there 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:24.360 are like, you know, gay members of it, and you're 0:13:24.400 --> 0:13:27.120 just like, what are you fucking doing? They hate you 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:28.600 and will laugh at you and show you at the 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:32.560 first opportunity, and they're like, no, they like me. You know, 0:13:32.760 --> 0:13:36.120 you know, I just thought of it's probably power that 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:38.200 changes it, you know what I mean, Like if you 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:41.720 feel like you're a little bit not untouchable but like protected, 0:13:41.960 --> 0:13:48.800 you feel more able to be a hypocrite. I feel like, right, yeah, no, 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:52.640 that that actually makes sense, honestly, Like almost everything comes 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:58.480 down to power at the end. M wompomp Okay, ready okay. 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:00.760 And so the other is gonna bring all this up 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:03.920 is that, um, I think that we we forget that 0:14:03.960 --> 0:14:05.680 a lot of this ship has like really high stakes, 0:14:05.720 --> 0:14:07.920 the way that we talked about sex and sexuality and gender. 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:10.160 And I would argue that we should be on the 0:14:10.200 --> 0:14:12.320 lookout for when some segment of oh, I don't know, 0:14:12.400 --> 0:14:15.160 feminism or gay politics starts making common cause with the 0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:20.320 right wing, which obviously would never happen now, No feminists 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:22.560 would just start making common cause with the right wing 0:14:22.760 --> 0:14:30.520 at all. No, no, no white feminism here. Yeah exactly. 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:33.280 Oh god, I just thought I was I wanted to 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:35.760 make like a really subtle Harry Potter reference, but I 0:14:36.240 --> 0:14:38.520 went fast enough, and so I just went with that 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:41.840 the most obviously. But you should know a listener that 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:45.840 I was trying to uh talk about Jay, Yeah, me too, 0:14:46.360 --> 0:14:50.760 That's what I was thinking of. To Yeah. Okay, so 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:52.680 so you've got the gay Nazis. They don't last very long, 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:56.520 fuck them whatever. Um, But now I want to talk 0:14:56.560 --> 0:15:00.960 about gay pirates. Hell yeah, let's do Yeah. I want 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:03.040 to talk about the edl wise pirates, who are so 0:15:03.120 --> 0:15:05.560 much fucking cooler, and they're on the opposite side of 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:09.840 all this. So all the youth from the what I 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:12.040 was saying, when they're all itinerant doing all this crazy 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:13.920 ship they're running around in these like it gets a 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:17.000 million names buns or bands or clubs or clicks or whatever, 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:19.240 and they're coming out of the vonder Vogel and all 0:15:19.280 --> 0:15:22.400 these related movements and the whitewashed version of history that 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:25.680 I had run across primarily before doing this research honestly 0:15:26.320 --> 0:15:29.560 has them like wandering around the pristine German countryside, like 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:32.520 singing camp songs and thinking about like marrying their heterosexual 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:36.120 sweethearts monogamously and popping up pure arian babies and all 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:39.040 that ship. Right, But like this could not be further 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:42.520 from the truth. Uh, this, this growing culture of vagabond 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:46.640 is um and has a desire for change because they're 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:50.080 all fucking broken, hungry, and mainstream societies completely failed them. 0:15:50.120 --> 0:15:52.000 And more and more of them. We're living in camps 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:57.360 and again totally unfamiliar to people today's you know whatever. Um, 0:15:57.400 --> 0:15:59.400 A lot of the clubs are gangs. They were the 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:02.120 wild gangs, and they were in a war against civilization 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:05.760 and everything boring. Every winter they would like disband in 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:09.560 every easter, they would celebrate their click or their gang's rebirth. 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:13.160 Their their camp songs where parodies of the Hitler youth songs. 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:16.200 They told dirty jokes, They got into fist fights with 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:19.480 the Hitler youth. Um, basically with all the men off 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:22.320 to war, the Hitler youth were acting like the police 0:16:22.320 --> 0:16:24.960 and a lot of German cities and so they and 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:28.920 they lived criminal lives and they fucked and oh my god, 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:32.240 did they fuck. And it was anything but straight, anything 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:34.320 but monogamous. Like it's it's like queer enough to like 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:36.640 maybe even get me a little bit like, oh my 0:16:37.240 --> 0:16:39.400 may that's not the right way to go about these things, 0:16:39.480 --> 0:16:43.000 you know. Um, So these are not the assimilationist gays. 0:16:43.040 --> 0:16:46.840 These are street fighting, forest fucking, sex working, Nazi robbing 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:50.520 criminal queers. Yeah. It's like the anarchy of gay Yeah. 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:52.920 And and they're called the They have a lot of 0:16:52.920 --> 0:16:55.760 different names, and but the one I'm going to use 0:16:55.800 --> 0:16:58.960 now is the wild Fry, which means the wild free, 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:02.120 which was one of their mottoes. And they would have 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:05.359 like things emblazoned while I'll get to that, um. And 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:08.520 they they live up to the name. History mostly remembers 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:12.520 like a subsect of them called the Edelwise Pirates. And 0:17:12.520 --> 0:17:17.440 and I've got yeah it's a flower. Oh interesting, Okay, 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:22.560 I think I know, right. Yeah, So so I've got 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:25.640 information kind of about two generations of the Wild Fry, 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:28.800 and one chunk comes from about and one chunk comes 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:31.639 from the early forties. And so I'm kind of doing 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:34.639 my best to give an honest like the way that 0:17:34.680 --> 0:17:37.080 these two connect. But there isn't a lot of information 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:42.080 about that because all of the ship is so heterowashed um. 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:45.159 But so it's an important I'm gonna do an imperfect job, 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:46.720 but I'm gonna do the best I can and quote 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:49.040 original sources and all that ship. And because people when 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:51.159 they mentioned Edlwise Pirates, they present the sort of like 0:17:51.440 --> 0:17:54.880 generic working class youth subculture who ruled and we're bravest 0:17:54.920 --> 0:17:57.119 fuck and they like fought Nazis. There's a movie about 0:17:57.160 --> 0:18:01.639 them called I think it's called Edowise pirates um but 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:05.560 has taken out Yeah, totally, and it doesn't talk about 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:07.600 their origins and it definitely doesn't talking about gay fucking 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:13.240 and um. So so Daniel Garon, who's the French anarchists 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:15.399 who wants to go hang out with gay folks in Germany. 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:17.840 So does. He describes a run in with them in 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:20.600 his book called the Brown Plague, which is a doesn't 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:23.760 translate well now, but means that it's critical of the 0:18:23.880 --> 0:18:28.440 rising tide of fascism. Okay, one Sunday on the outskirts 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:30.840 of Berlin, we met by chance a strange troop on 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:34.080 the road. Needless to say, neither they're short pants, their 0:18:34.119 --> 0:18:37.159 bare calves which disappeared under their long wolf vests, the 0:18:37.240 --> 0:18:39.560 bulky and sundry loads swain on their backs, nor their 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:43.320 enormous hiking boots distinguished them from ordinary vagabonds. But they 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:46.800 were very much toughs. They had the depraved and troubled 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:49.720 faces of hoodlums, and the most bizarre coverings on their heads, 0:18:50.160 --> 0:18:53.840 black or gray chaplinesque bowlers, old women's hats with the 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:57.159 brims turned up in amazon fashion, adorned with ostrich plumes 0:18:57.160 --> 0:19:01.600 and metals, proletarian navigator caps created with enormous edel wise 0:19:02.160 --> 0:19:06.640 above the visor, handkerchiefs or scarves, and streaming colors tied 0:19:06.720 --> 0:19:10.000 any which way around the neck, bare chests bursting out 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:13.560 of open skin, vests with broad stripes, arms scored with 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:18.600 fantastic or lewd tattoos, ears hung with pendants or enormous rings, 0:19:19.160 --> 0:19:23.320 leather shorts surmounted by immense triangular belts, alsho of leather, 0:19:25.640 --> 0:19:29.480 both daubed with all the colors of the rainbow, esoteric numbers, 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:34.359 human profiles, and inscriptions such as wild fry or rude 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:39.040 ber bandits around their wrists. They wore enormous leather bracelets. 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:43.840 In short, they were a bizarre mixture of virility and feminacy. Wow, 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:47.359 that's a sentence, that is That is amazing, I know. 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:50.080 And uh, and you two can buy all of their 0:19:50.119 --> 0:19:54.840 costumes from our sponsor, the Pirates Store UM, which is 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:57.600 a nonprofit again because we're going full pure wholesome with 0:19:57.640 --> 0:20:02.000 the ads. Here is a nonprofit store. Uh yeah, what 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:03.919 you said in blazon. The first thing I was like 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:06.879 they have merch you know, like you know, this is 0:20:07.680 --> 0:20:11.920 that's one way to spread the word. Yeah, totally, Um 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:13.640 and we too. I actually don't think we have merged 0:20:13.680 --> 0:20:15.320 at the time of this recording, but we we do 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:18.760 have advertisers, and some of them are hopefully the Pirates Store. Yes, 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:28.600 we're manifesting. Yeah, here's some ads and we're back. So 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:32.760 the Wild Fry they're there. They're self organized, right, they 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:35.080 don't have this like overarching structure, but they do sometimes 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:38.960 form into these larger coalitions, sometimes not. There's thousands of 0:20:39.000 --> 0:20:42.720 these bands and they all have fucking weird, fantastic names. 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:47.280 Some of them are Black Love, Red Oath, Fear Not Death, 0:20:47.560 --> 0:20:54.000 Bloody Bones, Dirty Guys, Forest and Field Sleepers, Tortoises, Brandy Frush, 0:20:54.400 --> 0:21:00.040 Black Flag, Forest Pirates, or the Northern Lights. Well. I 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:04.200 love that it's like the Legends of the Hidden Temple, 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:09.800 like the team names. Yeah, it's like, well, I'll get 0:21:09.840 --> 0:21:11.600 to why it sounds like fantasy in a second. It's 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:13.879 one of the things I love about it. Um Okay. 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:16.840 They also they all had their own distinct styles of dress, 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:20.359 which um and they basically the basic idea was take 0:21:20.440 --> 0:21:23.680 some idea from fantasy literature and just fucking run with it. 0:21:23.720 --> 0:21:25.879 Just basically like, try to live like you're in a 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:29.879 fantasy novel um, they're like, what's the what's the cult? Uh, 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:35.000 what's the thing. When you're role playing, it's like LARPing. LARPing, 0:21:35.040 --> 0:21:38.000 it's like laping. It's like laping. Yeah, but but for 0:21:38.080 --> 0:21:41.960 really very creative and yeah. And so they and unlike 0:21:41.960 --> 0:21:43.840 a lot of the rest of the Vondervogel movement, which 0:21:43.920 --> 0:21:46.760 was fairly middle class, almost all of these are working 0:21:46.760 --> 0:21:49.160