Speaker 1: Also media what recording a video? Uh? And also audio?
Speaker 1: My Michael Swain, our guest for today's podcast, Welcome to
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards. Michael, how are you?
Speaker 2: How are you doing? Great? Buddy? No sinking, no clapping,
Speaker 2: the magic of just starting.
Speaker 1: Just starting right into it, you know, walls, walls and
Speaker 1: balls together.
Speaker 2: Last, Yeah, look at their asses because we're there, buddy.
Speaker 1: That's right. That's the only thing we are, is there? Michael?
Speaker 1: You use OBS to record video. OBS is a program
Speaker 1: that people who are using video for purposes like this use.
Speaker 1: And what I've been thinking about it because you just
Speaker 1: had a little issue with it and we're like, my
Speaker 1: obs isn't isn't you know? Is flaring up or something.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a disease, like an old person disease,
Speaker 1: like I got, I got my obs is fucked to
Speaker 1: hell and back, folks.
Speaker 2: I was thinking to sit down. Yeah, hey, when I'm.
Speaker 1: Oh right, Michael, we're talking about Nazis. Nazis the Holocaust
Speaker 1: bunch of a bunch of stuff that's less fun than
Speaker 1: the house a bunch.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The East India Company was awesome because it was
Speaker 2: like some Dan Carlin ship. This was horrible.
Speaker 1: Oh, it is it is going to be horrible anyway,
Speaker 1: cold open done, We're back, Michael. I technically like a
Speaker 1: little it's not I mean, it's about Nazis, but it's
Speaker 1: not just about Nazis. This episode is a script I
Speaker 1: originally wrote about a year and a half. Two years ago,
Speaker 1: I got asked to go speak at Oxford Student Union,
Speaker 1: which was great, lovely people. Grateful to the fellow who
Speaker 1: invited me and set it up. Grateful to the the
Speaker 1: Leftist club, the beleaguered Leftist club at Oxford who met
Speaker 1: with me, very nice people.
Speaker 2: Two questions, Sorry, did you wear shoes? I did? I?
Speaker 2: Did you bring a machete?
Speaker 1: No, you're not, Michael.
Speaker 2: You cannot bring them achetty to the UK.
Speaker 1: They do not take kindly to any They're making kitchen
Speaker 1: knives now that have blunt tips, so you can't stab
Speaker 1: someone with them.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I saw the safety kitchen knives.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, that would not have gone over well.
Speaker 2: But no.
Speaker 1: We tried to record it there and the between, like
Speaker 1: the moving around a bunch and the actual size. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the recording got fucked up, and then we recorded it again,
Speaker 1: and the recording got fucked up again. When we had
Speaker 1: another guest in, but it wound out being good because,
Speaker 1: as you might be aware, I mean good's the wrong word.
Speaker 1: But as you're aware, there have been a massive series
Speaker 1: of horrific war crimes that have been committed very recently.
Speaker 1: So I got to update this episode in a relevant
Speaker 1: way because what's happening in Gaza is deeply relevant to
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here, because these episodes are about
Speaker 1: how the media responded to the rise of the Nazis
Speaker 1: and the Holocaust in the nineteen thirties and forties, and
Speaker 1: it's overall kind of a story about how particularly the
Speaker 1: liberal media and multiple countries failed universally across the world
Speaker 1: in its attempt to deal with and stop the rise
Speaker 1: of fascism. And that's a worthwhile story because a lot
Speaker 1: of the same families here in the US, a lot
Speaker 1: of the same families who directed American media in particular
Speaker 1: and failing to report properly on the Nazis, are still
Speaker 1: running the most influential media outlets, and they're still failing
Speaker 1: in the same ways. And I think this is useful
Speaker 1: history for people to have. So, Michael, are you ready
Speaker 1: to learn about how the liberal media is essentially incapable
Speaker 1: of confronting fascism in a direct and meaningful.
Speaker 2: Way or something. You have to not already think that.
Speaker 2: But also I'm just reeling from the implication that I
Speaker 2: was a backup guest on this topic. That's all I
Speaker 2: can really focus on. So let's let's do the Nazis
Speaker 2: thne we tried.
Speaker 1: We recorded this last a year ago, but I I
Speaker 1: after October seventh and everything that's happened since then, I
Speaker 1: had to like rewrite.
Speaker 2: No statute of limitation on my.
Speaker 1: Feelings, Michael, this is one of my best strips, Roberts.
Speaker 1: I worked really hard on this, bro.
Speaker 2: This sounds amazing, It sounds fascinating. Don't let me stop.
Speaker 2: You were my top draft pick.
Speaker 1: I mean, we were originally going to do a different
Speaker 1: episode with you, but we had to wind up pushing
Speaker 1: it a week so sure we had someone else on
Speaker 1: the apartheid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm golden.
Speaker 1: Look, this is just that's just how it's going to happen, Okay.
Speaker 1: On February seventeenth, twenty seventeen, The Washington Post, one of
Speaker 1: the ussay's chief papers of record, changed their slogan to
Speaker 1: democracy dies in darkness. If you can remember that this
Speaker 1: was right at the start of the Trump era. Everybody
Speaker 1: was like real, you know, the whole resist thing was
Speaker 1: real gung ho, and I think they were playing into that, right,
Speaker 1: let's get the let's get the libs really fired up
Speaker 1: to enjoy and pay money for our content. By acting
Speaker 1: like we're we're the last bulwark against the rise of
Speaker 1: fascism in America.
Speaker 2: It sounds like some Emperor Palpatine is somehow backshit.
Speaker 1: It does. It's absolutely a George Lucas slide. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was updated in there. And also it's just not true.
Speaker 1: Democracy doesn't die in darkness. Democracy dies because you have
Speaker 1: like a million different multicolored lights all shooting into everyone's
Speaker 1: eyes at the same time. It's like a fucking club floor, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's how democracy dies. Everyone is too disorient to
Speaker 1: realize what's happening. Anyway, this new slogan was updated and
Speaker 1: their online mast had immediately and added to print copies
Speaker 1: of the paper a week later, and the reaction was mixed.
Speaker 1: A writer for Pro Publica called it awesome at south
Speaker 1: By Southwest. A few weeks later, New York Times executive
Speaker 1: editor Dean Baca compared it mockingly to an ad for
Speaker 1: the next Batman movie. And we're not mostly going to
Speaker 1: be nice to the Times in this episode, but I
Speaker 1: think back actually got that very correct. That does sound
Speaker 1: like a like a Nolan Batman line.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Fears that the US was lurching towards a new authoritarian
Speaker 1: crisis brought with them a surge of new paid subscribers
Speaker 1: to both The Post and The Times. Ag Solzberger, publisher
Speaker 1: of the New York Times, used some of that money
Speaker 1: to run a commercial at the twenty seventeen Academy Awards,
Speaker 1: wanting the nation's most connected celebrities. The truth is more
Speaker 1: important now than ever now. Both slogans depict a view
Speaker 1: of legacy media that news media executive is want to
Speaker 1: push of a battle of an embattled forth estate that's
Speaker 1: the bulwark against fascism and corruption. Very little evidence supports
Speaker 1: the claim that our media institutions have ever worked this way.
Speaker 1: The twenty first century has seen an unprecedented global expansion
Speaker 1: in news media, and yet Freedom House, a DC based
Speaker 1: nonprofit that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, calculates that
Speaker 1: over the last sixteen years, the number of people living
Speaker 1: in societies that are considered free has declined by more
Speaker 1: than twenty five percent, which is like a pretty startling number.
Speaker 1: I would say of unfree people, although you know what
Speaker 1: is freedom? I'm not free? You know. I think RFK
Speaker 1: Junior would agree with miss I'm not free. Road killed
Speaker 1: in every state, you know? So what use is liberty
Speaker 1: if I can't eat, if I can't scrape a deer
Speaker 1: carcass off the higher or Utah? What, Sophie?
Speaker 2: Look a car in every garage, a turkey in every pot,
Speaker 2: and a worm in every brain. And amserves that.
Speaker 1: Look, are you going to say that if we all
Speaker 1: had brain worms this country would vote worse? Because I
Speaker 1: don't know that.
Speaker 2: I think we're already rocking a sixty forty on that, brother.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I do think a significant portion in this
Speaker 1: country has parasites.
Speaker 2: Said they're prase toxoplasms.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So the decline in people living in free
Speaker 1: countries is initially sharpest in what they referred to as
Speaker 1: authoritarian states like Belarus in Syria, but in recent years
Speaker 1: it has increasingly impacted nations with long stable democratic traditions.
Speaker 1: These countries also happen to have the largest and most
Speaker 1: active news media sectors. Editors from prestigious publications like The Times.
Speaker 1: In the Post talk a lot about the importance of objectivity, right,
Speaker 1: in other words, not being a journalist like me, you know,
Speaker 1: who repeatedly is open about the fact that I think
Speaker 1: the Republican Party needs to be burnt to the ground.
Speaker 1: But Gallup continue used to register American trust in the
Speaker 1: media at or near record lows. Twenty twenty two was
Speaker 1: the first time that the percentage of Americans with no
Speaker 1: trust at all in the media was higher than the
Speaker 1: percentage with a great deal or fair amount of trust combined. So,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to say about the value of objectivity,
Speaker 1: I think the fact suggests that all of the focus
Speaker 1: our legacy media has on being quote unquote objective has
Speaker 1: led to a situation in which absolutely no one trusts them.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, Well, it seems like you're also
Speaker 1: doing a good job.
Speaker 2: Definitely coming from a filmmaking background, it's like an old
Speaker 2: saw that there is no objective way to make any
Speaker 2: kind of film, documentary or not, because you are a
Speaker 2: human filtering things through your perceptive process and making art
Speaker 2: is a sequence of decisions, so you can't not do that.
Speaker 2: So in a way, it's more effective and transparent to
Speaker 2: be alied. Yeah, I'm coming from this place. Here's what
Speaker 2: I've always Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with Werner Herzog on this. We're not
Speaker 1: flies on the wall. We should we should aspire to
Speaker 1: be the hornets that sting, you know, like that's the
Speaker 1: actual purpose.
Speaker 2: I just I broke with him ever since he refused
Speaker 2: to show us that bare footage show us.
Speaker 1: I want to watch that man die. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: a great reaction to Timothy Treadwell's life story, which we
Speaker 1: should have been able to see.
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So these facts, you know that this obsession with
Speaker 1: objectivity has at least coincided with a collapse in trust
Speaker 1: in the news media are not divorced from the actions
Speaker 1: of the editors and publishers of these great legacy companies.
Speaker 1: Roughly a year after The Post changed their slogan you know,
Speaker 1: democracy dies in darkness, they accepted an editorial from recip
Speaker 1: Type Airdwin, the authoritarian leader of Turkey who currently imprisons
Speaker 1: more journalists than any other world leader. This is relevant
Speaker 1: because his op ed bore the title Saudi Arabia still
Speaker 1: has many questions to answer about Jamal Koshovii's killing and
Speaker 1: yes they do, but you shouldn't be the one saying it.
Speaker 1: The guy, the guy who kills and imprisons more journalists
Speaker 1: than anyone, shouldn't be complaining about the murder of a journalist. Yeah, yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: what are we doing running this ad? Was there no
Speaker 1: one else who could write that story?
Speaker 2: Was there nobody else? Well, there were three spider men,
Speaker 2: but they were busy pointing at each other.
Speaker 1: The Times, obviously, during the same period, has continued to
Speaker 1: run a blistering series of irresponsibly sourced articles on transgender healthcare,
Speaker 1: which has helped to fuel a right wing eliminationist crusade
Speaker 1: against trans people. We're Both Glad, a queer advocacy organization,
Speaker 1: and several thousand New York Times contributors wrote letters complaining
Speaker 1: about this management dismissed their concerns they weren't being objective enough.
Speaker 1: Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger did make a personal statement
Speaker 1: when one of his reporters was allegedly spit on over
Speaker 1: this issue. The murder of Brionna Gay, a transgender sixteen
Speaker 1: year old in the UK, did not merit any direct
Speaker 1: comment from Sulzburger. You know, I think it's worth kind
Speaker 1: of looking at it like that none of these claims
Speaker 1: about like, well, we have to be objective, you know,
Speaker 1: it's people. It's important for us to remain trustworthy. They're
Speaker 1: never consistent about it. Right, There's certain things we can
Speaker 1: we'll try to be objective about. But you know, when
Speaker 1: there's an opinion that the people who own the paper have,
Speaker 1: that's going to be the paper's opinion, and we're just
Speaker 1: going to pretend like that's objectivity. And this is the
Speaker 1: reality that you find when you analyze the responses of
Speaker 1: the liberal press in Wymer Germany, in pre Mussolini Italy,
Speaker 1: and in the United States in the twenties and thirties.
Speaker 1: It's kind of sobering how direct the comparisons are, because
Speaker 1: rather than being opponents to fascism, these publications were at
Speaker 1: best ineffectual witnesses to disaster and at worst enablers of
Speaker 1: that disaster. We're going to talk about a lot of
Speaker 1: different newspapers and how they fucked up, but we're going
Speaker 1: to start in Italy in the period from World War
Speaker 1: one's end in nineteen eighteen to Mussolini's March on Rome
Speaker 1: near the end of nineteen twenty two. This is generally
Speaker 1: broken up by historians into two eras. You've got the
Speaker 1: Red Years, which saw powerful working class movements arise and
Speaker 1: try to do revolutionary activity, and then you've got the
Speaker 1: Black Years, which saw a fascist counter movement boil up
Speaker 1: in response and eventually seize power. Error At Goachman from
Speaker 1: Princeton has done the most accessible analysis of how liberal
Speaker 1: newspapers and pundits responded in both of these periods, and
Speaker 1: Goachman primarily analyzes Les Stampa, which was the most influential
Speaker 1: newspaper for like social democrat Italians right the kind of
Speaker 1: progressive left, and also Italian Illustration, which was a weekly
Speaker 1: paper that kind of was more geared towards the middle
Speaker 1: class center right. In modern US terms, Lestampa is something
Speaker 1: like the New Republic or maybe jacomin An Italian Illustration
Speaker 1: is like The Times or the Post. The Red Years
Speaker 1: were characterized by two large scale attempts at a general strike,
Speaker 1: the first of which occurred in nineteen nineteen and was
Speaker 1: centered around protesting the involvement of Allied governments in the
Speaker 1: Russian Civil War. Neither paper supported the strike, claiming a
Speaker 1: general solidarity with labor, but complaining that the strike would
Speaker 1: destroy Italy's collective wealth. And we're not talking about like
Speaker 1: an open ended like with the writer's strike right where
Speaker 1: it is scary because it's like we don't know when
Speaker 1: this is going to end. We don't know how long.
Speaker 1: You know, people are going to have to be out
Speaker 1: of work. You know it's necessary, but it's a frightening
Speaker 1: thing to contemplate. This was a two day strike meant
Speaker 1: to sort of a like we're trying to make a statement, right,
Speaker 1: but none of the papers were willing to endorse even
Speaker 1: something that limited. They Lestampa argued that it would have
Speaker 1: damaging effects on the national economy and quote would be
Speaker 1: a disaster for all bourgeoisie and proletarian alike. And again
Speaker 1: we're talking two days here, like you can't you can't
Speaker 1: go without this for two days.
Speaker 2: Did they have an argument for how the proletariat would
Speaker 2: suffer beyond will punish you.
Speaker 1: No, not at all, just that like this two day
Speaker 1: strike would be so devastating to the economy because proletariat Yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know Italy in the nineteen thirties, just the thing,
Speaker 1: or in nineteen twenties, things are moving so quickly economically,
Speaker 1: you know, it's the New York of the Mediterranean right.
Speaker 2: I can't throw brakes on this grave train. Things are
Speaker 2: moving too fast in there. You can't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got a lot of boss to to move.
Speaker 1: Care for a long.
Speaker 2: Tomato sauce, But that's a whole different thing.
Speaker 1: So Meanwhile, Italian illustrations coverage focused more on fears about
Speaker 1: communism in Russia and connections between like Italian socialists and
Speaker 1: their Russian and Hungarian counterparts. Lestampa, with its more working
Speaker 1: class readership, focused on the disruption of the strike, and
Speaker 1: Italian illustration attacked the strike movement for its purported ties
Speaker 1: to radicals who were, like oftentimes fighting in the East
Speaker 1: actively because the Russian Civil War is still going on.
Speaker 1: In September of nineteen twenty, the Federation of Metallurgical Workers
Speaker 1: or FIOM, ceased negotiations with factory management after being refused
Speaker 1: a new wage agreement. To avoid a strike and the
Speaker 1: economic consequences of a strike, workers occupied factories and defended
Speaker 1: them from their employers with armed red guards. This is
Speaker 1: a very cool chapter of Italian politics, right, Like these
Speaker 1: laborers take control of their places of business and put
Speaker 1: up armed guards in order to like fight it out
Speaker 1: with the cops and the fascists if they try to
Speaker 1: take them back. Now. Writers for Italian Illustration were immediately
Speaker 1: dismissive of this movement. They described the laborers who occupied
Speaker 1: the factories they worked in as little boys playing shopkeeper, grocer,
Speaker 1: salesman and sailor, which is like this is always what
Speaker 1: they did. Was like, well these these left Yeah, well
Speaker 1: they're they're taking over docs too. Okay, sure you get
Speaker 1: to day, like you look at the campus protests, you
Speaker 1: get a lot off. Like these little kids don't understand
Speaker 1: the world. You know, they're playing and being adults, they
Speaker 1: don't really get it. But in this case it's like, well,
Speaker 1: these guys are literally the ones who work in the factories,
Speaker 1: Like they're not little boys playing as like whatever. They
Speaker 1: do this job for a living. That's why they've taken
Speaker 1: the factories, the.
Speaker 2: Means of production. I believe I've heard somewhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's just it's wild. It's wild how consistent
Speaker 1: the attacks are, but also how utterly divorced from reality,
Speaker 1: especially in this period they were. Now, the occupations were
Speaker 1: portrayed as a fundamentally childish thing, evidence of the quote
Speaker 1: infancy of a naive new society that mimicked the toils
Speaker 1: of grown up society. And again, these are the grown
Speaker 1: ups who were toiling. I don't know how this is mimicry.
Speaker 1: These are the men working in those factories.
Speaker 2: By definition, you are a writer, which I do for
Speaker 2: a living, and it's sad in a factory.
Speaker 1: I can tell you what are you talking about? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 1: The occupations sparked a violent reaction from Italy's far right
Speaker 1: street movement. Fascist gang attacks on workers and occupied factories
Speaker 1: grew increasingly common, alongside police raids. This created a sense
Speaker 1: of constant paranoia within the Red Guards, as Mussolini's Squadristi's
Speaker 1: took to carrying out what they call putative expeditions against
Speaker 1: labor organizations. Historian Angelo Hasket describes them as treating the
Speaker 1: murder of workers as sport. Now, despite this hideous situation,
Speaker 1: Lestampa and Italian illustration were united in treating the fascist
Speaker 1: violence as secondary to the problem of organized labor. Red Guards,
Speaker 1: they argued, had provoked gunfights with the fascists by their
Speaker 1: very existence, right, you can't blame the fascists for wanting
Speaker 1: to attack them. The fact that they existed were trying
Speaker 1: to defend themselves, justifies them being attacked, right.
Speaker 2: Well, they're just taking it a priori of like, surely
Speaker 2: we all agree it's always right to enforce the status
Speaker 2: quo and return to normalcy, yes, or like yeah, that
Speaker 2: goes without saying. And you're like, well, we are actually
Speaker 2: trying to alter some of we wanted.
Speaker 1: We wanted to change things in a way that was possible.
Speaker 1: Well you're evil for that, right Zaly And it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it is really that direct. Liberal columnist Renato Simoni wrote
Speaker 1: a column in which he argued that the real victims
Speaker 1: in this situation in which communists and socialists were being
Speaker 1: murdered like lit on fire, shot to death in their
Speaker 1: own factories, wrote yes, yes, Renado, somebody is like, the
Speaker 1: real victims here are middle class liberals who have to
Speaker 1: deal with disruption.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're traffic, dude. They there were twenty five minutes
Speaker 2: late to work because of these kids. These kids are
Speaker 2: just doing this as a fan. You know, they just.
Speaker 1: Love getting shot to death by fascists, you know. For
Speaker 1: the one actual line from this column is oh, how
Speaker 1: tragic is the life of the poor bourgeoisie in Italy.
Speaker 1: You can't like, you couldn't you couldn't even make fun
Speaker 1: of it, while.
Speaker 2: The subtext is quite literally let the meat cake like, yeah,
Speaker 2: let's historical echo of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I hope, I hope when the war got on,
Speaker 1: his house got hit by a bomb. I'll say that much.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: While this was going on, liberal papers treated Mussolini's rise
Speaker 1: as concerning and the fascists is problematic, but also less
Speaker 1: of a direct threat than the excesses of the far left.
Speaker 1: A degree of fear may also have stopped larger publications
Speaker 1: from taking a more active role in the struggle for
Speaker 1: the reigns of Italy's government. During the first half of
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty one, fascists destroyed seventeen left wing newspapers and
Speaker 1: printing presses. Again, they are literally just killing journalists and
Speaker 1: destroying peace by piece. The free press in Italy, and
Speaker 1: the free press in Italy, the liberal free press in Italy,
Speaker 1: the press that has the largest circulation, is largely being like, well,
Speaker 1: you got to understand why they're doing it. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of economic you know, what's the disenfranchisement.
Speaker 1: You know among this population, they're anger. We have to
Speaker 1: understand their anger. Right, It's very familiar bullshit, but it's
Speaker 1: interesting to see it happen while the fascists are actively
Speaker 1: killing the media. In the summer of nineteen twenty one,
Speaker 1: various left wing armed groups and leftist war veterans formed
Speaker 1: a united militia to combat the fascists, the Rditi del Popolo.
Speaker 1: Now we noted day that these people were organizing a
Speaker 1: defense against Mussolini during basically the last moment in which
Speaker 1: any defense would have been possible. And I want to
Speaker 1: read a paragraph here from Goachman's piece. Lestampa's coverage of
Speaker 1: the Rdidi del Popolo's demonstration in Rome aimed to delegitimize
Speaker 1: the newly formed worker's self defense group, doing so in
Speaker 1: a manner reminiscent of the paper's condemnation of the Red
Speaker 1: Guards that were active during the factory occupations of September
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty. La Stampa emphasized the combativeness of some of
Speaker 1: the workers who were present. For example, the Royal Guards
Speaker 1: had no choice but to arrest the most quarrelsome and
Speaker 1: hot headed of the demonstrators. Additionally, while describing instances of
Speaker 1: violence involving a young man struck with a blow to
Speaker 1: the head falling to the ground, or a manual laborer
Speaker 1: struck with his hand on his bloody head. The newspaper
Speaker 1: employed the passive voice and thus obscured the direct agency
Speaker 1: of the policeman and the fascist SQUADRISTI in the events.
Speaker 1: You can't write that fascists hurt somebody, just like you
Speaker 1: can't write that cops hurt somebody. Someone simply got hurt,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, and we'll talk some more about this
Speaker 1: trend that absolutely doesn't persist to the present day. But
Speaker 1: you know what does persist the present day?
Speaker 2: Michael, I could guess, but I don't want to steal
Speaker 2: your thunder and revenue.
Speaker 1: So you take it capitalism, sweet lady, Capitalism, Michael still
Speaker 1: with us. You know, she's our nurse maid, She's our
Speaker 1: lover in a lot of ways, you know, our only friend.
Speaker 1: Some would argue, not me, but some. Anyway, here's ads Ah,
Speaker 1: we're back, Michael. Does your sole feel refreshed from hearing
Speaker 1: about Chumba Casino? The good news?
Speaker 2: It feels capitalized, and you take that as whatever emotional
Speaker 2: charge you want to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love gambling.
Speaker 2: I love capital Yeah, I love how you get things started.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Fascism is flooding into Italy in nineteen twenty one,
Speaker 1: right and yet you know, the media, as laborers try
Speaker 1: to organize to fight against it, can only kind of
Speaker 1: use the passive voice to describe the violence of Mussolini's
Speaker 1: Black Shirts as they slowly take power or pretty quickly
Speaker 1: take power. And it's interesting to me, like how consistent
Speaker 1: this denial of agency to some people and this apportioning
Speaker 1: of blame to others is still to this day And
Speaker 1: right as I finalized this article, which is like a
Speaker 1: year ago now, The Atlantic published a pretty reckless article
Speaker 1: about the dangerous new anarchist movement in the United States,
Speaker 1: and I think is a good example of this. Among
Speaker 1: other things, the article made lurid reference to the shooting
Speaker 1: of an armed fascist gang member, a Proud Boy, in
Speaker 1: Portland by an anarchist named Michael Reinol, and claimed that
Speaker 1: the police had later been forced to shoot Rhinel in
Speaker 1: self defense. Which is interesting to me because evidence, significant
Speaker 1: documentation of that shooting proved that Rainel never fired at
Speaker 1: officers when he was shot dozens of times, like he
Speaker 1: was not brandishing a weapon. They came in and they
Speaker 1: assassinated him. And part of how we know they assassinated
Speaker 1: him is that President Trump bragged about having his federal
Speaker 1: ass assassinate this guy. He got up on stage and said,
Speaker 1: I had them kill this man. But you don't have
Speaker 1: to report on that if you're the Atlantic, right, because
Speaker 1: like that's not going to sound objective, you know, if
Speaker 1: you talk about the fact that this guy was probably
Speaker 1: murdered before he could have his day in court. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's just it's good. It's good to see
Speaker 1: the same thing repeatedly happening.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, propaganda's equally what you omit, right, what's wild
Speaker 2: to me to see in the present is again capitalism.
Speaker 2: The twenty four hour news cycle that we know is
Speaker 2: now algorithm driven and hit driven, which I'm totally part of,
Speaker 2: but yeah, pop culture sense. But with news, it's gotten
Speaker 2: to the point where they don't report anymore that Trump
Speaker 2: says fucking insane stuff, no, because they're like everyone knows
Speaker 2: that already. That doesn't pull clicks because it's established and
Speaker 2: it's like yeah, but it bears repeating.
Speaker 1: It's like you be covering it, Well, what's the same thing?
Speaker 1: I you know, I I rarely say, like the libs
Speaker 1: have a point about you know, this this major thing,
Speaker 1: but they when they got angry that like there was
Speaker 1: all this focus on Biden being too old to be
Speaker 1: president and not any focus on how Trump is clearly
Speaker 1: also slipping right, he is not the man he was
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen. Like, that's a fair point. It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of fucked up that they just pretended he was
Speaker 1: not also sundowning.
Speaker 2: Right, And it's not even the agenda. I mean, in
Speaker 2: some cases it is, but I believe in most cases
Speaker 2: the reporters are not going, I'm a Trumper, so I'll
Speaker 2: omit this information as a propagandic syop. They're going, the
Speaker 2: Trump stuff's all. The Biden stuff's new. I'm trying to
Speaker 2: write stuff that hits. That's it.
Speaker 1: I also think I think they don't like Biden. Biden's
Speaker 1: administration is kind of famously strangling media access in a
Speaker 1: way that makes it harder to get out stories, whereas
Speaker 1: with Trump it's always really easy to get stories, right.
Speaker 1: So I do think there's a degree of like, we're
Speaker 1: just kind of pissed that this guy is hard or
Speaker 1: for us to monetize. I think that is the issue
Speaker 1: for us.
Speaker 2: But the Turkish guy was murdering them and they love it.
Speaker 1: They they love more than getting Oh my god, great
Speaker 1: stuff anyway. You know, Michael, one of the promises we
Speaker 1: make here at Cool Zone to all of our employees
Speaker 1: is that if you are murdered by the Saudi government,
Speaker 1: we're not going to then hire another dictator to make
Speaker 1: a podcast about how that was wrong.
Speaker 2: You know, I think I get the analogy there, and yeah,
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. Yeah, we do that in a blood oath.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, not our blood. You know, we found
Speaker 1: some of the Actually I was going to.
Speaker 2: Say, is that the class of blood over the palm. No,
Speaker 2: because that's not enough blood.
Speaker 1: It's it's more of a carry situation. Michael, we talk
Speaker 1: immens from blood. Then well, look a different scene, a
Speaker 1: different scene. I think. I think, honestly, as an American,
Speaker 1: it's my right to not tell our employees where the blood.
Speaker 2: Came from, gotcha.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think it's very important fact that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did email him the truth so you can keep
Speaker 1: a secret, right, Yes, Edward, you seem like E really
Speaker 1: the guy to do this. So the main thing that
Speaker 1: the Italian liberal press is guilty of in this period
Speaker 1: is treating radical left wing organizing as if it's outside
Speaker 1: of acceptable lines fundamentally right, while treating the fascists and
Speaker 1: their violence as understandable, as normal and maybe even inevitable.
Speaker 1: Lestampa wrote had a call published a column in which
Speaker 1: they blamed anarchists and communists for arming themselves, which had
Speaker 1: forced the black Shirts to arm themselves. This, they promised,
Speaker 1: the fascists would happily hand over their guns if the
Speaker 1: Rdidi del Popolo had not given quote fascism a motive
Speaker 1: to cry provocation. These fascists are just aching to give
Speaker 1: up their weapons. But you mean all leftists armed yourself,
Speaker 1: and now they can't like? What an insane thing to write.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenties Italy like by late nineteen twenty one,
Speaker 1: much of the liberal media class saw protests in organizing
Speaker 1: by workers as the primary cause of fascist violence. This
Speaker 1: resulted in what historian Angelo Taska called filo fascism on
Speaker 1: behalf of many middle class liberals. We can see this
Speaker 1: in the reaction of writers for Italian Illustration to the
Speaker 1: August nineteen twenty two general strike, and their eyes the
Speaker 1: economic disruption justified right wing violence, which provoked a broad
Speaker 1: and immediate consensus in public opinion for the fascists. The
Speaker 1: paper glowingly celebrated black shirts replaced workers on train platforms
Speaker 1: and public services. Renado Simoni wrote that the failed protests
Speaker 1: of nineteen twenty two enabled fascism to demons straight. It's merits. Wow,
Speaker 1: these fascists are killing reporters, but they sure caad work
Speaker 1: a train platform.
Speaker 2: But also there's scabs, but also they'll cross the picket line.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also it's such a it's such a direct
Speaker 1: it's imports so directly to like, well, of course people
Speaker 1: are murdering protesters who block roads. They have to get
Speaker 1: to work, right, Like, it doesn't nothing, none of this
Speaker 1: ever changes, you know, this attitude that like some things
Speaker 1: are worth killing people over, and it's not you know,
Speaker 1: self defense. Uh, it's stuff like I might be late
Speaker 1: to my job, right, that's worth But if if someone
Speaker 1: on the left were to kill a fascist and self defense,
Speaker 1: that's unjust. But somebody murdering a group of people for
Speaker 1: standing in a road, well that's understandable. You got to
Speaker 1: get where they're coming from here, you know.
Speaker 2: And we've seen time and again the human mind is
Speaker 2: so malleable for yeah, better and worse, you can. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's there's just Big Brother hits so often where it's
Speaker 2: like no, literally the opposite of that, what do you like? Insane?
Speaker 2: What's going on? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Good stuff. Historians like Adrian Lyttleton will argue that sympathy
Speaker 1: to fascist names was a common reaction for liberal papers
Speaker 1: reporting on the chaos of the early nineteen twenties. This
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that there weren't liberal papers that oppose the
Speaker 1: fascists as consistently as left wing papers, but it does
Speaker 1: mean that many of the more influential writers in the
Speaker 1: center left showed what you could call a bias towards normalcy,
Speaker 1: one that could accommodate fascist violence but could not accommodate
Speaker 1: organized labor, right. And it's you still get this today, right,
Speaker 1: not just for organized labor. There's a lot of folks
Speaker 1: in the liberal media who can accommodate Israeli violence, right,
Speaker 1: but cannot accommodate any sort of fair discussion about protests
Speaker 1: against that violence, for example. And there's a you know,
Speaker 1: when I think about that, I think about The New
Speaker 1: York Times recently published an op edd by Brett Stevens
Speaker 1: in May of twenty twenty four titled A thank You
Speaker 1: Note to the Campus protesters. In it, Brett argued, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of snarkily I get that many, if not most,
Speaker 1: of you see yourselves as dedicated idealists who want to
Speaker 1: end suffering for Palestinians, champion equality, and oppose all forms
Speaker 1: of bigotry. There are ways you could do that without
Speaker 1: making common cause with people who hate Jews, want to
Speaker 1: kill us and often do. Supporting a two state solution
Speaker 1: would be one such way. Insisting that Palestinians deserve better
Speaker 1: leaders than Hamas is another. Building bridges with Israelis is
Speaker 1: a third. And it's like, yeah, man, I agree, Palestinians
Speaker 1: deserve better leaders than Hamas, but that's not really the
Speaker 1: immediate issue. The immediate issue is all of the people
Speaker 1: being killed.
Speaker 2: Right, You very carefully said things where you're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's also technically true.
Speaker 1: How do you expect them to vote right now? Brett? Right, Like,
Speaker 1: who's gonna hold that election at the moment the polling places.
Speaker 2: We'll do this totally. It's totally the same mechanic as
Speaker 2: a guy who's like, well, you know, the thirteen percent
Speaker 2: of the people in America invested in the stock markets,
Speaker 2: line went up this month, and yeah, bitch, I can't
Speaker 2: afford ham sandwich, so I don't care about.
Speaker 1: That, And the whole thing about like, yeah, there's some
Speaker 1: college students and other protesters who've like waved ha Moss flags.
Speaker 1: Do I like that? I don't like any flags, right, argument,
Speaker 1: I'm not a flag guy. But again, that's not the issue.
Speaker 1: If the if the people, if you could point to
Speaker 1: a guy waving a flag and be like, and he
Speaker 1: also killed seven thousand children, I would say, then yes,
Speaker 1: this is a serious issue. Right.
Speaker 2: That's the thing is how do you not see it
Speaker 2: in the same bucket? Is Ultimately the argument against the
Speaker 2: protesters is always you're burning a flag, which to me
Speaker 2: is kind of violent. Y, it could escalate to violence,
Speaker 2: and you're like violence, I just saw a guy carrying
Speaker 2: his decap potato baby, Yeah, what is the what are
Speaker 2: you talking about? And it is?
Speaker 1: But that is you've hit upon it because like what
Speaker 1: Brett and a lot of the leadership cadre at the
Speaker 1: Times are doing, it's the same as what a lot
Speaker 1: of these Italian journalists did. They equated rudeness and disruption
Speaker 1: of like transit and stuff to the to slaughters to murder, right,
Speaker 1: like those things are equal. Right, Brett is saying a
Speaker 1: college student being rude is actually more dangerous than city
Speaker 1: with the children murder and a guy waving a Hamas
Speaker 1: flag and the slaughter of thirty thousand small children equally problematic.
Speaker 2: They both make me wildly uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: I would say that a dude being kind of a
Speaker 1: dick at a protest is less of a problem than
Speaker 1: burning thousands of children alive. We can get a little
Speaker 1: more context into the thoughts and decisions of the kind
Speaker 1: of newsmen who made these sort of decisions. Right, we
Speaker 1: can normalize the fascists, but not the left. By pivoting
Speaker 1: over to Weimar, Germany and the Olstein publishing house. Olstein
Speaker 1: pub was founded in eighteen seventy seven, which is seven
Speaker 1: years after the birth of the German state, by Leopold Olstein,
Speaker 1: the son of a paper merchant. By the time the
Speaker 1: Weimar years rolled around, Olstein was the biggest name in
Speaker 1: German print media. They put out newspapers, magazine and books,
Speaker 1: a dizzying array of what we now call content. The
Speaker 1: Olsteins were a politically progressive Jewish family, and as a result,
Speaker 1: much of what they published was reflexively liberal in its outlook.
Speaker 1: They were obviously an early target for the Nazis, who
Speaker 1: described them as when the Nazis talked about Jewish press.
Speaker 1: Like if you've ever seen a Hitler speech or read
Speaker 1: anything where the Nazis are talking about the Jewish press
Speaker 1: in Germany, they're talking about Olstein, right, That's not like
Speaker 1: a broad general just a broad general term. They are
Speaker 1: specifically referring to Olstein because it is the biggest publishing
Speaker 1: house in the country. The Nazi tracked the press as
Speaker 1: a Jewish instrument of power, published in nineteen twenty, focused
Speaker 1: an entire chapter just on Olstein. German communists hated Olstein's
Speaker 1: two for different reasons. Like most publishing empires, Olstein made
Speaker 1: its money from ads. Consumer culture was a new concept
Speaker 1: in post war Germany, and Olstein cheered it on with
Speaker 1: publications like Tempo, which devoted large illustrated sections to which
Speaker 1: products people should buy to make the most of their weekends,
Speaker 1: which were also a new concept. As a result, it's
Speaker 1: not surprising that most Olstein papers reflected a political allegiance
Speaker 1: broadly tied to the German Democratic Party or DDP, which
Speaker 1: had helped to write the Weimar Constitution. The one major
Speaker 1: break Olstein had with the DDP was over the value
Speaker 1: of unionizing corporate spokesman emphasized the positive relations between management
Speaker 1: and labor at Olstein, and one of Olstein's owners noted
Speaker 1: that we think that liked these good relations be ruined
Speaker 1: if you unionize, right, it'll separate us from each other.
Speaker 1: Anytime you hear that from your boss, you know you're
Speaker 1: about to get rat fucked. Great, great stuff.
Speaker 2: I was at a company that will not be named,
Speaker 2: but if you know my history, I've only been at
Speaker 2: two companies, so you could figure it out. But they
Speaker 2: were like, man, it's what a hard job. They hired
Speaker 2: an executive who didn't work at that company, So it's
Speaker 2: a guy you've never who's this guy? We don't know,
Speaker 2: this guy whose job was to do a little spiel
Speaker 2: and spin that like it would be in your best
Speaker 2: interest to not talk about unionizing, like we've been hearing
Speaker 2: a lot about it. Could you guys not use the
Speaker 2: word union or talk about union or forming a union?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so weird. He just does that, like hey, kids,
Speaker 1: sits down backwards on the shair job.
Speaker 2: And we found out wheater he goes from company to
Speaker 2: company doing that. There's enough demand for that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, of course, because they they don't understand that,
Speaker 1: Like why people want to unionize, like I do. Think
Speaker 1: there's a degree to which they're baffled that people would
Speaker 1: want more money than they have. It's it's it's I
Speaker 1: don't know, crazy rich people. Brainworms, right, which are worse
Speaker 1: than I think the RFK junior brainworms? Those are honest,
Speaker 1: god fearing brainworms, right, not the kind that money gives you.
Speaker 2: What? Speaking of god fearing brain worms, you know who.
Speaker 1: Doesn't have brain worms? The sponsors of our podcast.
Speaker 2: The eponymous Lisa of Mattress fame.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wait, who's that?
Speaker 2: Oh? That was the one all the pods pushed Lisa Mattresses?
Speaker 1: Is Lisa one of the Mattresses? I just I remember?
Speaker 1: Does two different mattress company ads at this point? I'll
Speaker 1: take another. We should in bed right? Yeah, ah, we're back.
Speaker 1: I just bought a bed, Michael, you bought a bed.
Speaker 1: You know, we're all we're all bedding it out. You know,
Speaker 1: why don't you buy a bed? Listener, then come back
Speaker 1: to the podcast, laying down on your bed, delivered to
Speaker 1: you in a suspiciously small package that then kind of
Speaker 1: inflates when you open it and you ask yourself, are
Speaker 1: there like weird chemicals in this that makes this possible.
Speaker 1: This doesn't seem like it should be a thing that
Speaker 1: a bed can do. But then you stop thinking about it,
Speaker 1: just like you stopped thinking about what all the plastics
Speaker 1: in your water bottle?
Speaker 2: Will you inevitably transition to, hey, remember those little dinosaur
Speaker 2: sponges and the pills that expanded and right, making those
Speaker 2: that a chemical thing the rabbit hole?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's just not worth thinking about what it
Speaker 1: is forgetting to.
Speaker 2: Use coupon code, old and Stalenstein whatever it.
Speaker 1: So. Ostein publications fell into a version of the same
Speaker 1: trap that befell La Stampa, claiming support for organized labor,
Speaker 1: except for when it actually organized. Meanwhile, it was hesitant
Speaker 1: initially to report on the Nazis, do in part to
Speaker 1: a fear of feeding in the Nazi myths of Jewish
Speaker 1: control of the media. Right because we are a Jewish
Speaker 1: owned publishing house. We can't report on Nazi violence against
Speaker 1: the Jews because people will think we're not being objective, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's how deep the brain worms go about this kind
Speaker 1: of thinking. And I will say, for the Ostein family,
Speaker 1: it's a little more understandable than it's going to be
Speaker 1: when the same thing happens in the US because they
Speaker 1: are also worried. Well, this could actually direct some real
Speaker 1: violence to me, right, although I think a more rational
Speaker 1: person would have said, well, but the Nazis are going
Speaker 1: to direct violence against you guys no matter what, so
Speaker 1: you might as well try to make people aware of it. Now,
Speaker 1: conservative mass media did not suffer from the same problem.
Speaker 1: The august Scherrel company, purchased by Alfred Hugenberg in nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: owned one of the largest papers in Berlin, as well
Speaker 1: as one of Germany's first newswire services. Hugenberg was also
Speaker 1: a far right political activist and politician. He is the
Speaker 1: Andrew Breitbart of his day, and he felt no compunction
Speaker 1: against using his papers to espouse an anti democratic agenda. Now,
Speaker 1: he was not anti Semitic in a way that rose
Speaker 1: above the background level of the era right unlikely, he
Speaker 1: was not motivated by it like the Nazis were, but
Speaker 1: he was willing to work with Adolf Hitler to further
Speaker 1: his own ends, so the two started collaborating after the
Speaker 1: death of Chancellor Gustav Stressmann in nineteen twenty nine. This
Speaker 1: was after an election in which the German National Party
Speaker 1: had lost a bunch of seats. He was willing to
Speaker 1: work with Hitler and use his papers to try and
Speaker 1: launder their reputation to more mainstream German conservatives. Meanwhile, Ostein,
Speaker 1: the largest liberal publishing house in the country, refused to
Speaker 1: embrace anything beyond tech support for us. You know, this
Speaker 1: kind of vague concept of democracy. Right. The Nazis were
Speaker 1: depicted in Olstein publications as something to be mocked and scorned,
Speaker 1: but not as a serious threat to the future of
Speaker 1: the system. Right, we'll make fun of him a little bit,
Speaker 1: but like he's a clown. There's no way, right, Franz Olstein,
Speaker 1: who yes, yeah, same same thing, right, that's how they
Speaker 1: fees you in Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: remarkable how directly it grafts onto what we've seen. Franz Olstein,
Speaker 1: who was one of the few mainstream journalists to spend
Speaker 1: real one on one time with Hitler in this period,
Speaker 1: described him as a poor fanatic, a pitiful man. It
Speaker 1: was impossible, in Olstein's eyes that such a man could
Speaker 1: actually threaten German democracy. Right, this guy's too much of
Speaker 1: a clown to be a real danger.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, doctor Seuss is dunking on him left
Speaker 2: and right. He's no threat to us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. This caused serious debate. Heinz Olstein actually yelled
Speaker 1: at the editorial department for mocking the NSDAP. He wanted
Speaker 1: them treated like a serious party. So did Karl Yodicki,
Speaker 1: an assistant to Olstein's GM, who wrote a white paper
Speaker 1: arguing the Nazis were quote quote a movement for political
Speaker 1: freedom and economic justice. So not only are like, on
Speaker 1: one hand, you've got the people who are like, well,
Speaker 1: these guys are just clowns, and then at the end
Speaker 1: you've got folks who are like, no, they're not clowns.
Speaker 1: There were real movement with real issues, and we should
Speaker 1: we should fairly discuss the issues that the Nazis are
Speaker 1: bringing up. As a liberal publisher, Olstein opposed the party's
Speaker 1: anti democratic politics, but Yodicki warned against them getting caught
Speaker 1: up in quote the politics of petty details. And what
Speaker 1: did Yodicky mean by petty details reporting on us quote
Speaker 1: assaults of evil Nazis on peaceful protesters. Right, we can't
Speaker 1: get caught up in the politics of who are the
Speaker 1: Nazis murdering? Who are they beating in the streets. How
Speaker 1: many folks are they assassedascinating? Right, That's that's got to
Speaker 1: get you know. You don't want to get bogged down
Speaker 1: on that stuff. We have to discuss the bigger issues,
Speaker 1: like what do they think about the economy? Sick?
Speaker 2: Always the economy, Always the economy.
Speaker 1: That's what really matters, Not the fact that they are
Speaker 1: murdering journalists, Like that's not really a big deal to us,
Speaker 1: you know. The assassination, the beatings of Jewish people in
Speaker 1: the street, not really a problem. You know. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about what they have to say about inflation now. The very,
Speaker 1: very best investigation I have found into this period of
Speaker 1: German media is the book Modern Modernity by Yoachen Hung.
Speaker 1: It focuses on the Olstein Company and one of its
Speaker 1: most popular papers, Tempo Hung Rights Quote. To be able
Speaker 1: to compete with Nazi propaganda, the Olstein papers had to
Speaker 1: change their tune, Yodicki claimed. Instead of touting lofty ideals
Speaker 1: of individual freedom and democracy, they had to follow a
Speaker 1: resurgent patriotism which strongly emphasized the welfare of the whole
Speaker 1: community instead of the individual, and worked with ations instead
Speaker 1: of reason and skepticism. As this was the only way
Speaker 1: to gain influence with the masses. The temporary curtailing of
Speaker 1: civic rights and democracy was inevitable in this time of crisis,
Speaker 1: he argued, shouldered with their daily struggle, the people did
Speaker 1: not care much for the luxury of freedom at the
Speaker 1: moment anyway. As he showed in a later memorandum, Yodocky
Speaker 1: was clearly fascinated by the Nazis. The core principle of
Speaker 1: the movement, he argued, was a return to universally accepted,
Speaker 1: non debatable, unchangeable forms of life instead of general relativity.
Speaker 1: So you've got this guy who is working for this
Speaker 1: paper owned by a Jewish family that is ostensibly liberal,
Speaker 1: who is one of the people making calls there, and
Speaker 1: he's kind of obsessed with the Nazis in a positive way,
Speaker 1: Like he has gotten enraptured by how different they seem
Speaker 1: and how exciting they are to report on, right, And
Speaker 1: he's focusing.
Speaker 2: Not a hate group, revitalizing Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he's interested so interested in reporting on what
Speaker 1: they claim to believe that he's like, we can't report
Speaker 1: on the violence they're doing. That's not fair, right, That's
Speaker 1: that's missing the point of the Nazis right, They're not
Speaker 1: about the violence, They're about the economics. Yodicki argued that
Speaker 1: the Nazi movement's simplicity was what gave it the ability
Speaker 1: to grab hold of and guide the masses. Their primitive
Speaker 1: slogans of hate and vengeance were more effective than the
Speaker 1: wonky policy arguments of the German State Party. Who Ostein
Speaker 1: had earlier backed the company's pivot away from directly criticizing
Speaker 1: Nazi violence called caused Gersam Schlolm, a Berlin born Jewish
Speaker 1: philosopher and writer, to call Ostein one of the most
Speaker 1: dishonest and misleading media companies in Germany. As Hitler neared
Speaker 1: power in thirty one and thirty two, Olstein pivoted to
Speaker 1: position itself as loyal to the political machine of Paul
Speaker 1: von Hindenberg. Their hope was that he would maintain a
Speaker 1: semblance of democratic civil society in the face of Hitler's rise. Right,
Speaker 1: that Hindenberg, this old man who's committed to the system,
Speaker 1: he'll protect us from Hitler. Right. This was a bad
Speaker 1: call in hindsight, and also an obviously bad call at
Speaker 1: the time. Now there were journalists and papers who published
Speaker 1: serious exposes on Nazi crimes. In the nineteen twenty eight
Speaker 1: election season, social democratic papers published stories claiming Hitler had
Speaker 1: been bribed by Mussolini in exchange for ending the German
Speaker 1: claim to South Tyrol when he took power. Hitler sued
Speaker 1: over the matter, and the libel case ground forward until
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two, the subject of heavy reporting all the while. Likewise,
Speaker 1: when Hans Litten subpoened Hitler over the stabbing of two
Speaker 1: workers by SA men and questioned him on the stand
Speaker 1: about incitements to violence in Nazi propaganda, reporters dutifully brought
Speaker 1: the trial to millions of German living rooms. It didn't matter.
Speaker 1: Kurt Trukolski, one of Weimar's most influential journalists, noted morosely
Speaker 1: the prestige of large democratic newspapers or artists, and of
Speaker 1: liberal associations, in fact, bears no relation to their actual power.
Speaker 1: Kurt saw them as functionally toothless, and the face of
Speaker 1: what he called the power of reaction always there and
Speaker 1: working more skillfully and above all less respectfully. And I again,
Speaker 1: that's exactly how it feels today, right, You know, things
Speaker 1: have changed in the last couple of weeks to some extent,
Speaker 1: but I think we've all felt that feeling of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: so everyone in any position of like cultural influence claims
Speaker 1: to be against the rise of fascism in this country,
Speaker 1: and that has done absolutely nothing to like make it
Speaker 1: less popular. It doesn't hurt them at all. It seems
Speaker 1: to be completely toothless. And these respectable people who are
Speaker 1: in traditional positions of cultural influence, they just have no
Speaker 1: ability to confront the fascists on their own turth because
Speaker 1: the fascists are willing to like they're not. They have
Speaker 1: no need to be respectful, right, they have no need
Speaker 1: to follow the rules.
Speaker 2: They also appeal to fear, which is such a primal
Speaker 2: nmvator for us, just as animals. I highly recommend a
Speaker 2: documentary called Century of the Self, which is about how
Speaker 2: Freud's brother, I believe y essentially cousin was. I mean, people,
Speaker 2: you just described someone who discovered this, so people independently
Speaker 2: discover it. But he's the godfather of modern advertising in
Speaker 2: a sense for discovering that, like, oh, emotion, don't explain
Speaker 2: why the product is good, Just make them feel like
Speaker 2: they're a piece of shit if they don't have this thing.
Speaker 2: It's so easy to control people this way, and it's
Speaker 2: like every time someone discovers that it's the beginning of
Speaker 2: the end. That's a big problem. Like that's not good.
Speaker 1: It's an atom bomb that keeps getting forgotten and rediscovered,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, exactly, it's great stuff. Now my opinion
Speaker 1: about this because I spent a lot of the last
Speaker 1: three or four years in particular, as like Biden's chances
Speaker 1: grew more dire and the far right kind of got
Speaker 1: more mask off about like you just had more of
Speaker 1: their influencers saying we're we're about to end democracy.
Speaker 2: Huzzah. Right, yeah, it's a rollback, Like sorry, you just
Speaker 2: briefly touched on trans rights, and it's like they're statistically speaker,
Speaker 2: so few trans people. It's so obviously a tip of
Speaker 2: a rollback. It's like we're testing whether we can say
Speaker 2: gay people are bad. Obviously we're doing that, like this we.
Speaker 1: Want to kill them too, but like, well, we got
Speaker 1: to start with the smaller group that has less power.
Speaker 1: It is easier to marginalize, right because gay people actually
Speaker 1: like have a lot of cultural power. But at this point, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: uh you know, and it's when it comes to like
Speaker 1: how ought the media report on stuff like this, right,
Speaker 1: because Tukoski, the point he's making is that, like well,
Speaker 1: the legacy media is bound by rules that hamstring them
Speaker 1: from fighting these people because they feel they have to
Speaker 1: treat them respectfully, and you can't get across the damage
Speaker 1: to danger of them if you do it that way. Right,
Speaker 1: My contention is that fascism is a mortal threat to journalism,
Speaker 1: right if you are a journalist, like any creature when
Speaker 1: it's life is threatened, has the right to defend itself.
Speaker 1: And if you are a journalist dealing with fascism rising
Speaker 1: in your country, I would argue it is not rational
Speaker 1: to be fair to them, right, Your job should be
Speaker 1: trying to destroy them, you know, And I think back
Speaker 1: when I think about this and how you want, like
Speaker 1: what kind of weapons work? Right? If traditional straight reporting
Speaker 1: and objectivity, like if literal facts do not beat these people,
Speaker 1: and they never do, it doesn't matter that the fascists lie,
Speaker 1: You are not going to fact check them away. It
Speaker 1: has never happened and it will never happen. Now, ask
Speaker 1: forward to today when a Twitter account with seventeen hundred
Speaker 1: followers made a post claiming that jd Vance, one of
Speaker 1: our country's most prominent fascists had written about fucking a
Speaker 1: couch in his book He'll Billy Elegy, because no.
Speaker 2: One actually it's in the book.
Speaker 1: No, look at, no one read that book, so nobody
Speaker 1: checked it, right, Like people pretended to read it, but
Speaker 1: it's it's dog shit right, So because of that, like
Speaker 1: people just weren't interested in checking it. The li went
Speaker 1: incredibly viral, with an even number of people believing that JD.
Speaker 1: Vance had literally fucked a couch, and also an even
Speaker 1: number just understanding the joke, which is that Vance is
Speaker 1: the Again, it gets to a truth about Vance, which
Speaker 1: is that he is the kind of weirdo who would
Speaker 1: fuck a couch. When VP candidate Tim Walls referenced the
Speaker 1: couch fucking in his own way during his inaugural speech
Speaker 1: on the campaign trail, the same media organs a number
Speaker 1: of them who have all failed to hinder the growth
Speaker 1: of authoritarian politics in the US erupted outrage. Right, you know,
Speaker 1: democrats shouldn't go low. It's bad to lie, you know
Speaker 1: in this way. Well this is also yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean it's not an AI episode, so I won't.
Speaker 2: But this also speaks to like, because I don't trust
Speaker 2: mainstream media, and I get all my news online. Online
Speaker 2: is also a wild West where you're like, maybe an
Speaker 2: Ai wrote that, so you kind of absorb your news
Speaker 2: that you think is factual a with a grain of
Speaker 2: salt and b through like a cloud of data points.
Speaker 2: So I still don't know. I understand the couch thing
Speaker 2: is false. Did he search for dolphin porn? Are you
Speaker 2: up on the definitive answer on that?
Speaker 1: I think he may have just been looking for He
Speaker 1: may have an explanation I saw that seems at least
Speaker 1: equally plausible. Is that because because folks, if you're not
Speaker 1: aware of this, he posted like a video of a
Speaker 1: dolphin molesting a woman, which is actually a thing that
Speaker 1: happens pretty frequently. Dolphins are do not uncommon. They're sexually
Speaker 1: assault human beings. Dolphins are capable of rape, like they
Speaker 1: know what they're doing. Uh. Anyway, whatever, it's enough of
Speaker 1: my anti dolphin dolphin aside, we have to take it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, so uh he posts this video of a
Speaker 1: woman getting like molested by a dolphin and is like, boy,
Speaker 1: the internet's sure a fucked up place or something like that, right,
Speaker 1: and Democrats, Yeah, searched for women plus dolphins basically, and
Speaker 1: folks like, was he just searching for dolphin porn? I
Speaker 1: think it's also plausible that like he was just scrolling
Speaker 1: through found this on his feed, you know, moved past
Speaker 1: it because sh it was happening, and then was trying
Speaker 1: to find it later and used to.
Speaker 2: Liked this of it all.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it's the same as the couch thing, right,
Speaker 1: and that like, well, it does kind of seem plausible
Speaker 1: that this guy would be looking for dolphin porn, right yea,
Speaker 1: And that's why this that's why, and it's hurt him.
Speaker 1: This is damaged. And you've seen like some of the
Speaker 1: fascists who are on his I'd try to like launch
Speaker 1: a campaign to argue that that Walls or to like
Speaker 1: try They've tried to do the same thing with Tim
Speaker 1: Walls by like spreading rumors that he drinks horsecom or something,
Speaker 1: but like Tim Walls doesn't seem like he drinks horsecom right.
Speaker 1: Jd Vance seems like a couch fucker who watches dolphin porn.
Speaker 1: So it's somebody that's just not gonna work.
Speaker 2: Like Trump. Trump knows this because he's fairly good at it.
Speaker 2: It doesn't always work, but there's something about vibe that
Speaker 2: makes an insulting nickname stick or not stick.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, And for the record, if you were
Speaker 1: to try the same thing with Trump, it wouldn't work
Speaker 1: because Trump doesn't seem like a guy who like even
Speaker 1: searches for a porn right, Like, he's just not that
Speaker 1: kind of You would need a different set of tactics
Speaker 1: with him. But this works on Vance.
Speaker 2: No, but you like he sexually assaulted a woman and
Speaker 2: paid her off, You're like, right, I'm.
Speaker 1: Definitely for sure that does seem like him. And when
Speaker 1: it comes to the folks who are concerned about the
Speaker 1: danger to our national political environment, if we if we
Speaker 1: accept things like what Walls did referencing this lie about Vance,
Speaker 1: I don't know, we can't get any lower at this point,
Speaker 1: Folks like, there's there's no bottom that we're going to
Speaker 1: sync to by actually using some of the weapons these
Speaker 1: people do and fighting on the same playing field. It's
Speaker 1: like someone it's like if a guy comes up to
Speaker 1: you in the street with a crowbar and start swinging
Speaker 1: and you pick up another crowbar, and then someone else
Speaker 1: is like, hey, man, you're being just as bad as
Speaker 1: him by picking up that crowbars. No, you want to
Speaker 1: you want a crowbar. If a guy is swinging a
Speaker 1: crowbar at you, you want to at least have the
Speaker 1: same grade of weapon that that.
Speaker 2: Motherfuckers got in a vacuum. The idea of beating someone
Speaker 2: with a crowbar is it's really nice. Yeah, there's we're
Speaker 2: not in a vacuum.
Speaker 1: Brother, he attacked you with the crowbar. First hit him
Speaker 1: in the face.
Speaker 2: But that doesn't I feel like whenever you say you
Speaker 2: got to bring up proportionality, because then people use that
Speaker 2: to go right, this guy set foot on my property,
Speaker 2: so I murdered his family. Or these people took hostages,
Speaker 2: so we're going to genocide them real quick. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the difference is if you're doing it to
Speaker 1: literally the people doing it to you, and JD. Vance
Speaker 1: is spreading lies about trans people. Jd. Vance has talked
Speaker 1: repeatedly that he doesn't think women should be able to
Speaker 1: hold elected office, right he is, like, when you're dealing
Speaker 1: with that guy, like we're not saying I think this
Speaker 1: random Trump supporter is a couch fucker, you know, like
Speaker 1: this is extremely targeted and there's I don't really see
Speaker 1: there being any splash damage here. That's that's to an
Speaker 1: unfair degree, and I don't know. I'm glad that there
Speaker 1: are people in the media and people within kind of
Speaker 1: the liberal political establishment who clearly finally understand this, because
Speaker 1: I had really identified with Tukolski's exhaustion and hopelessness right over,
Speaker 1: Like why doesn't anyone know how to fight these people?
Speaker 1: Right now? I will say some of you know, if
Speaker 1: you're looking, if you want to like fairly sort of
Speaker 1: discuss why to Kolski was writing the way he was.
Speaker 1: It's also because he had this belief, like a lot
Speaker 1: of media elites did, that every German outside of Berlin
Speaker 1: was a philistine, right, like all of these people, like
Speaker 1: the regular people are too dumb to understand what the
Speaker 1: Nazis are doing, which.
Speaker 2: I I knowzies are playing for d chest. Dude, I'm
Speaker 2: just saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think what I think Actually, what you saw
Speaker 1: with Walls is a lot better, Like it's a lot
Speaker 1: smarter than not just like what has been being been
Speaker 1: done before, but like what a guy like tou Kolski
Speaker 1: would have said, where you're you're not treating the audience
Speaker 1: as dumb, You're not trying to manipulate them. You're telling
Speaker 1: a joke and you're trusting that they will understand the
Speaker 1: joke right in a way, also.
Speaker 2: Going where the cultures going in the sense that way
Speaker 2: back when, right when they first tell the debates, we
Speaker 2: started getting the rhetoric of like I kind of want
Speaker 2: a president that i'd like to have a beer with
Speaker 2: or hang out with, and then people end up voting
Speaker 2: that way, and then presidents start going fuck high art
Speaker 2: or being a leader. I'm gonna be on between two
Speaker 2: ferns because that's where votes are. People think that's funny
Speaker 2: and endearing. So yeah, I think they're just going wherever
Speaker 2: they can to get the attention they so desperately crave.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which you know we all do to some extent.
Speaker 2: Michael, Oh, absolutely, I know them.
Speaker 1: I know that attention is my sunlight. You know I'm
Speaker 1: a wilted career without it. Yeah, really, yes, yes, Sophie obviously.
Speaker 2: Well dude, and you're one of this show is one
Speaker 2: of the premier voices pointing stuff out that you're unable
Speaker 2: to change.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I can't do anything about this, but somebody, but
Speaker 1: it sucks. Yeah. Now I want to say again, because
Speaker 1: we're coming down so hard on the German media. During
Speaker 1: this period, there were a lot of journalists who strove
Speaker 1: to activate people and who were trying to meet the
Speaker 1: Nazis on their level and fight them. One of them
Speaker 1: was one of my very favorite people in history, an
Speaker 1: American columnist named Dorothy Thompson. Thompson is one of the best,
Speaker 1: one of the great journalists of all time, one of
Speaker 1: the great anti fascist journalists of all time, and she
Speaker 1: wrote that Nazism was quote a repudiation of the history
Speaker 1: of Western man of reason, humanism, and a Christian ethic.
Speaker 1: Thompson joined members of the Foreign Press Corps like William Shier,
Speaker 1: who had began to see warning the world about Hitler
Speaker 1: as a moral imperative. And Shyer is you know, he's
Speaker 1: one of these guys if you read through, because he's
Speaker 1: the author of the Rise and Fall of the Third
Speaker 1: Reich Right. If you read him today, you will note
Speaker 1: that he is wildly homophobic, massively homophobic, like a real
Speaker 1: bigot in that regard. But he is also a committed
Speaker 1: anti fascist, and he would later report on the annexation
Speaker 1: of Austria submit at substantial personal risk. The men who
Speaker 1: ran Olstein took a different tactic to keep Hindenberg happy.
Speaker 1: They began to run articles supporting the military and rearmament.
Speaker 1: They stopped their support of liberal democratic parties, and they
Speaker 1: hired a man named Hans Schaeffer, the former State secretary,
Speaker 1: to reform their coverage of the Nazis. That a Schaeffer's credit.
Speaker 1: His stated goal managing the paper was to turn it
Speaker 1: into a weapon of resistance to the Nazis, which sounds good,
Speaker 1: but here's how he thought he was going to do that.
Speaker 1: So his idea was that like, well, if we just
Speaker 1: let Hitler get into power, then he's going to have
Speaker 1: to govern and the gridlock of the Viymar system is
Speaker 1: just going to wear him down to a nub. So
Speaker 1: Schaefer supported and made sure his column is supported the
Speaker 1: attempts of the von Poppen and von Schleicher governments to
Speaker 1: create a coalition with the Nazis, because he was like,
Speaker 1: once they have to govern, that'll destroy them, and we
Speaker 1: the Ostein papers will have a valuable role to play
Speaker 1: as the loyal, critical opposition. You know, we'll make it
Speaker 1: clear how incompetent they are, and that will gradually lead to.
Speaker 2: Their toward smartness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll just we're going to if people just see
Speaker 1: how bad they are at govern it. Surely we'll be
Speaker 1: able to vote them out, which is like, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: not going to let you vote again, brother.
Speaker 2: Surely, once the man, Surely, once they drive off the
Speaker 2: cliff and kill us all, it'll be like I told
Speaker 2: you so, don't do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll think that's how this is going to end.
Speaker 1: So yeah, real miscalculation. Now, Schaeffer did see himself as
Speaker 1: protecting democracy, even though he had to support an authoritarian
Speaker 1: government to do so. As a result, in nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: he directed Tempo Olstein's most popular publication to devote more
Speaker 1: and more page space to the street fighting between Nazis
Speaker 1: and their opponents. Both sides were presented as functional equals,
Speaker 1: since they both ignored the laws of the state. A
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve nineteen thirty two, Tempo published a political
Speaker 1: cartoon that embodied the fundamentally naive way it depicted German society.
Speaker 1: The tune showed a tired woman mother Germany, tucking her
Speaker 1: problem children into bed and hoping that they'd get along
Speaker 1: next year. And the problem children are there's like hanging
Speaker 1: on the posters of the bed. There's like a Nazi helmet,
Speaker 1: and there's like an iron front cap and a communist hat.
Speaker 1: So it's like all of these people are you know,
Speaker 1: there's quarreling in the streets, but they're just like little
Speaker 1: kids wrestling or whatever, you know, And soon the lollby
Speaker 1: countryman again and things will be okay. Yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: really got your fingers on the pulse there. In the
Speaker 1: decades since Hitler's rise to power, different historians have posited
Speaker 1: a variety of suspicions as to why the Viymar press
Speaker 1: failed so miserably as a guardian of democracy. Kurt Kozick,
Speaker 1: who published an exhaustive three volume study on the German
Speaker 1: press in nineteen seventy two, blamed a lack of internal
Speaker 1: freedom at news publications. The financial needs of owners who
Speaker 1: profited by selling ads always came before quality reporting. Modris Eckstein's,
Speaker 1: who authored a study on the German democratic press titled
Speaker 1: Limits of Reason, broadly agreed with this conclusion, and nothing
Speaker 1: illustrates this fact more clearly than the way the Olstein
Speaker 1: publications responded to the rise of the Nazis in the
Speaker 1: early thirties. This was the last time liberal resistance to
Speaker 1: Hitler might have won the day, and it was inarguably
Speaker 1: the last opportunity to try. But the popularity of the
Speaker 1: Nazis and the success with which they demonized their most
Speaker 1: firm and opposition communists and street fighting socialist meant fervent
Speaker 1: opposition had a cost too high for any capitalist entity
Speaker 1: to bear. So Olstein's papers lurched away from reporting on
Speaker 1: politics and plunged further into encouraging consumption. Their answer was,
Speaker 1: we've got to fix the economy to stop the Nazis,
Speaker 1: So we've got to get people buying stuff again, right,
Speaker 1: going on vacation again, And I'm going to read a
Speaker 1: quote from Moderate Modernity writing about the July nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: two issue of Tempo. The header of each issue of
Speaker 1: the promotional magazine usually carried short aphorisms or motivation sayings,
Speaker 1: and this issue declared that everybody has to buy as
Speaker 1: much as they can afford, an appeal that turned consumption
Speaker 1: into almost a national duty. When the von Poppen government
Speaker 1: announced an investment program to inject life into the stagnating
Speaker 1: economy in nineteen thirty two, Paul Elsberg, editor in chief
Speaker 1: of Olstein's Central Business Desk, lauded the move and prophesied
Speaker 1: a considerable strengthening of purchasing power in the near future.
Speaker 1: So in the last year before Hitler took power, the
Speaker 1: major liberal press organ of the country is being like,
Speaker 1: what y'all have to do to stop this is buy right, like,
Speaker 1: get in there and support the economy. That's goin to
Speaker 1: fix everything.
Speaker 2: Well, it allow incentivized people to vote right, right.
Speaker 1: Right, right, Well, they're saying you're voting by spending money.
Speaker 1: That's the voting that really matters. Right, Yeah, Now, this
Speaker 1: is the last year before Hitler takes power. And instead
Speaker 1: of reporting on what the Nazis are doing with Hindenberg
Speaker 1: and the conservative parties or even like suggest the building
Speaker 1: of a popular front between the left and the center
Speaker 1: and you know, social democratic parties, Tempo urged readers to
Speaker 1: build a front of all optimists fighting against the fear
Speaker 1: of consumption. Right, don't build a united you know, political
Speaker 1: front against fascism. Build a front of optimists to want
Speaker 1: to spend money.
Speaker 2: Let's get Kristinsky out here. Let's do some good news
Speaker 2: for Kidnea's sake.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is very much the Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: let's get the good news.
Speaker 2: My brain is ruined by the internet, so I can
Speaker 2: only think in terms of memes. But it's this is fine.
Speaker 2: It's the dog sitting in the flaming building.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, spend some money and you won't notice the flames.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now it's interesting. Tempo didn't just try to do ads
Speaker 1: speak here. They tried to assemble a street movement around
Speaker 1: capitalist consumption publishing tear out flyers for readers to send
Speaker 1: their clients at work. They were urged to set an
Speaker 1: example for their neighbors by spending more money themselves. This
Speaker 1: was the only thing that could say Germany from darkness.
Speaker 1: Spending creates jobs. Jobs create income which will be spent
Speaker 1: on your products. So fight with us for a healthy
Speaker 1: consumer optimism and start in your own interest with yourself. Now,
Speaker 1: nothing that happened, the fact that the economy fell apart,
Speaker 1: that like purchasing power did not increase. None of this
Speaker 1: stopped Tempo's management from pushing this vision of consumption. Instead,
Speaker 1: they added advice on weaponry to their technology. Everybody needs
Speaker 1: column advertising concealed truncheons for readers to fight off robbers with. Now,
Speaker 1: when I was a kid reading about the rise of
Speaker 1: the third Reichen School, every textbook that mentioned the subject
Speaker 1: featured nearly identical photos of these huge piles or reel
Speaker 1: barrows of Deutsche marks to emphasize how bad the inflation
Speaker 1: was and y our Germany. I was led to believe
Speaker 1: that pick people picked Hitler because he promised them away
Speaker 1: out And the reality, of course, is that most Germans
Speaker 1: never chose Hitler in an open election. His success was
Speaker 1: based as much on trickery and corruption as electoral victory.
Speaker 1: But the Great Depression did play a role, and I
Speaker 1: think mainstream histories of this period tend to underemphasize how
Speaker 1: much of what happened was the result of failure by
Speaker 1: liberal messaging rather than hit larry and brainwashing. The Nazis
Speaker 1: and the Communists both saw their popularity increase in this period,
Speaker 1: while the German liberal parties bled voters, and this is
Speaker 1: because both Nazis and Communists offered voters visions right different visions,
Speaker 1: but visions nonetheless of a way forward that was not
Speaker 1: simply let's keep doing the same thing that obviously doesn't work.
Speaker 1: Tempo as the most popular liberal magazine in the country,
Speaker 1: showcases this failure. It told readers there is but one
Speaker 1: way to fight the crisis. Buying. Women were depicted not
Speaker 1: as the noble wellsprings of the German race, or as
Speaker 1: equal beings, but as economic engines, praised for the money
Speaker 1: they spent. Just one day after the parliamentary elections in
Speaker 1: late nineteen thirty two, Tempo ran an ad that captioned
Speaker 1: a photo of a woman in line at the store
Speaker 1: with the words women must continue voting right. The vote
Speaker 1: that matters from women is where you spend your money.
Speaker 1: So the brief boone and boom and travel that Tempo
Speaker 1: had helped push in the late twenties had collapsed by
Speaker 1: this point, and the magazine just kind of responded by
Speaker 1: lying about the situation, predicting that late summer nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: two is going to be the sunny holiday season that
Speaker 1: Germans need to like get their minds off the domestic situation.
Speaker 1: One of their regular columns was written by a character
Speaker 1: named Hans Einfach, which means basically John everyman in German.
Speaker 1: A few days after the July election, with the Nazis
Speaker 1: working their way into the halls of power, Hans published
Speaker 1: a column on political violence. He described it as silly,
Speaker 1: a shame on both sides, and made a few lighthearted
Speaker 1: jokes at the expense of the Nazis. Then, as Yuchen
Speaker 1: Hung writes, he described the decision to spend money on
Speaker 1: a holiday despite not being able to afford it as
Speaker 1: the necessary defiance of the economic situation. Finally, at summer,
Speaker 1: many people are sitting at home at the moment, contemplated
Speaker 1: if they can afford a few days of holiday. I
Speaker 1: have come to the conclusion that I can't afford it,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly why I will go on a holiday.
Speaker 1: We just have to afford it. It's such a such
Speaker 1: like a baffling death drive. That's like, we're going to
Speaker 1: try to get people to buy vacations. As the economy
Speaker 1: falls apart and they, like Hitler comes into power, the
Speaker 1: most important thing we can do is get people to
Speaker 1: spend money they don't have.
Speaker 2: It's also interesting that it's not for self care. That
Speaker 2: it's explicitly like we do things where we go, oh,
Speaker 2: you're having a baby, that's wonderful. Give me ten thousand
Speaker 2: dollars for a bunch of bullshit please, Yeah, we cover
Speaker 2: it with something, you know. It's like the idea of
Speaker 2: pamper yourself. You deserve it. Like in this crazy life
Speaker 2: where we're all oppressed by capitalism, come spend more money
Speaker 2: because you deserve it. It's interesting to hear them be
Speaker 2: like spend money, to spend money, Like just give us money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all that these Oldstein papers are doing is
Speaker 1: telling people to spend money and putting their faith in
Speaker 1: Paul von Hindenberg, who like because he's you know, they've
Speaker 1: gone from we're like, we're progressive. You know, we're looking
Speaker 1: at the future too. Well, this old man will moderate
Speaker 1: the Nazis, right, be alive forever right in Tempo's every
Speaker 1: man columns, at the same time, tended to portray anyone
Speaker 1: who was like on the left as unhinged. Right, the
Speaker 1: ideal voter was level headed, slow and steady, like Hindenburg
Speaker 1: hung rights. Tempo's Voice of the common man often compared
Speaker 1: the hostile climate of Weimar's political sphere to everyday situations
Speaker 1: such as a squabbling family or life in a tenement house,
Speaker 1: with the extremists being portrayed as weward sons or annoying neighbors,
Speaker 1: but ultimately part of the community who could be tamed
Speaker 1: and integrated. Clearly, the aim of such articles was to
Speaker 1: create a sense of normality and uncertain times among Tempo's audience.
Speaker 1: And to give them a model to follow. In other
Speaker 1: parts of the paper, however, the value of rationality had
Speaker 1: lost its allure. The lax morals of the rational girls
Speaker 1: of the nineteen twenties, Frau Christine argued in one of
Speaker 1: her columns had given men a twisted idea of sexuality
Speaker 1: and had ultimately lowered their respect for women. It's it's
Speaker 1: remarkable just how consistent that is too, Like we're dealing
Speaker 1: the same, Like JD. Vance is a big part of this, Like, well,
Speaker 1: women leaders have been a disaster, you know, women who
Speaker 1: won't have kids, who just want to like live for
Speaker 1: their own you know, pleasure and enjoyment are evil. They're
Speaker 1: degenerate psychopaths, right, Like it's it's all the same shit,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, yeah, good stuff.
Speaker 2: I've heard that. I've encountered that argument of surprisingly off
Speaker 2: and the well, Like why would they have wombs if
Speaker 2: they weren't supposed to only function in that context? If
Speaker 2: that's all they are support for a right, they were happier,
Speaker 2: it's more natural for them to just care for kids.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And it's like, when's the last time you
Speaker 2: went into the woods and killed a fucking small road
Speaker 2: with your bare hands. Shut up. We do society now,
Speaker 2: we do what we want, like we make pizza and
Speaker 2: we have careers. Fu.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we filter our water instead of regularly ourselves today.
Speaker 2: Aren't supposed to do. If you're just like your body
Speaker 2: does this, shut up.
Speaker 1: I'm an advocate of doing more of that stuff. Every
Speaker 1: time I get on like the Conspiracy Internet, I further
Speaker 1: reinforced my belief that, like, we should put lithium back
Speaker 1: in the water, right, Like, sure, it could really help.
Speaker 2: That might be our way out of mercury. Mercury in
Speaker 2: my hat, brim Man, why not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, let's let's do it. So you know, Michael,
Speaker 1: we are all broadly familiar of what happened to German
Speaker 1: democracy after nineteen thirty three. Right, none of none of
Speaker 1: the none of this like buying stuff didn't work, This
Speaker 1: idea that like just vote for moderates didn't work. The
Speaker 1: Nazis took over right Ostein, and all publishers with Jewish
Speaker 1: owners were nationalized and arianized by the Nazi state. It
Speaker 1: is interesting to that the Nazis kept the name Ostein.
Speaker 1: They were pragmatic enough to see it as a good
Speaker 1: business decision, and uh, you know that is what we're
Speaker 1: covering today. We're going to on Thursday talk about the
Speaker 1: United States finally, but Michael, first, let's talk about you.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Let's talk about the Small Beans network.
Speaker 2: Sure. Oh boy, Oh I get a double plug. I
Speaker 2: didn't know i'd get to spiel both episodes all right.
Speaker 1: In German they would call that a doppel plugin. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's true.
Speaker 2: Who cares, He's just ends the episode. I'll try to
Speaker 2: be quick, but I really mean it this time. This
Speaker 2: is maybe the most important player in my life. So
Speaker 2: if you've liked me on Cracked, or even if you
Speaker 2: happen to have encountered any of my fiction before, I
Speaker 2: finally finished a novel that I've been working on since
Speaker 2: I was fourteen. It's an epic fantasy sci fi memoir.
Speaker 2: I'll just describe it as like Carlan Ellison meets Vonnegut
Speaker 2: meets Douglas Adams. Robert Brockway called it hilarious, heartbreaking shit
Speaker 2: like that. I think it's really really good. It has
Speaker 2: my whole heart and soul in it. And I just
Speaker 2: released the audiobook version so you can hear that on
Speaker 2: the Small Beans Free feed by just searching small Beans
Speaker 2: or the name of the novel, which is called The Climb,
Speaker 2: or if you're already sold, you can head to patreon
Speaker 2: dot com slash Smallbeans slash Shop where you can get
Speaker 2: the physical version or a PDF or the audiobook. Check
Speaker 2: it out.
Speaker 1: Michael, I gotta tell you, I deeply love the uh
Speaker 1: the image in my head of Vonnegut and Harlan Ellison
Speaker 1: and Douglas Adams meeting, because I imagine Vonnegut and Douglas
Speaker 1: Adams would have a great time and Harlan Ellison is
Speaker 1: just going to be the most.
Speaker 2: Miserable man still fucking hate each other.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a real Calvin COOLIDG Hubert Humphreys. Yeah, they
Speaker 2: might be like, sir, I respect your fiction, Please get
Speaker 2: the fuck out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do not want to talk to you to Hell.
Speaker 1: Good stuff anyway. Well that's going to do it for
Speaker 1: us at whatever podcast this is until next time, go
Speaker 1: to Hell. I love you.
Speaker 2: Do you want to plug on the audio version that
Speaker 2: we have YouTube now, Robert?
Speaker 1: No, of course not, Sophie. Why would I do that?
Speaker 2: Do you want to do your job now? Did you
Speaker 2: stop recording? No?
Speaker 1: Of course not, Sophie. You know, Sophie, I made a
Speaker 1: decision on my own to pivot to video recently. This
Speaker 1: is me telling you, actually, yeah, I decided unilaterally to
Speaker 1: do that, and I let you make a decision. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was a horrible mistake, Sophie. I don't know why
Speaker 1: you listen to me about these things. I'm always wrong anyway.
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