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Speaker 1: Welcome to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the worst

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Speaker 1: people in all of history and also at the same

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Speaker 1: time a podcast where I explore my Boston accent and

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Speaker 1: see how much better I can make it, and and

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Speaker 1: and to help me, today we have professional Boston coach

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Speaker 1: Jeff May. Jeff, welcome to the program. Hey, their kid,

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Speaker 1: what's going on? Wow? Incredible? Of course? Yeah, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: I prefer I prefer to do my accent a little

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Speaker 1: bit more authentic. Let me let me run this one

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Speaker 1: by a Jeff boy croiy Aim from Boston. That's more

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Speaker 1: of a North Shore accent, like yeah, yeah, no, that

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Speaker 1: that's that's very much. If you were to go up

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Speaker 1: to like, you know, like Malden or something like, really

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Speaker 1: get up there, Um, that's where you have so regional

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Speaker 1: dialect is wild out there? Critical question, Brock part of

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Speaker 1: Boston or not? Yeah? Of course, I mean, all right,

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Speaker 1: that's great. So that you're on Jamie. You're on Jamie's

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Speaker 1: side of this. How much is she paying you? But

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Speaker 1: let me Jamie. But here's the thing is that I

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Speaker 1: lived three thousand miles away from my hometown, right, so

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Speaker 1: if where I am now when people ask where I'm

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Speaker 1: from I tell them Boston. In reality, I'm from a

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Speaker 1: small farming hamlet in central Massachusetts called Charlton, regionally related

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Speaker 1: to Worcester, Massachusetts. So it's hard for me when people

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Speaker 1: are like, Jeff's from Boston and I'm like yeah, And

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Speaker 1: then when someone presses me a little bit, I'm like, Okay,

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Speaker 1: not really though, um, but I've always counted. I mean

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Speaker 1: because Brockton. Brockton is like the sort of heart of

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Speaker 1: fighting in Boston, which is something that I did. Makes sense,

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Speaker 1: that makes sense, So I relate that and often once

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Speaker 1: and I did want to fight somebody. Everyone would have

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Speaker 1: fought you there, jeffs a Boston accent was so much

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Speaker 1: better than yours. Robert, I'm sorry. His was really strong.

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Speaker 1: It was strong. It wasn't regionalized well, but it was strong.

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Speaker 1: Yours was very marky Mark MACKI Mack freaking Walberg. You

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Speaker 1: should do an episode on him. The only people that

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Speaker 1: like the Walberg with the people that are related to

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Speaker 1: the Walburg. Have you ever eaten at a wall Burgers?

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Speaker 1: I would rather fucking die. Is that a real place?

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Speaker 1: I don't want to be mean, but it is the

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Speaker 1: worst burger I've ever had in my life. Well, so

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Speaker 1: you know, I think Mark Wahlberg getting a burger chain

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Speaker 1: is evidence of one of the many crimes of capitalism.

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Speaker 1: And you know who hated capitalism, Donnie Wallburg. That might

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Speaker 1: be true, but also the subject of today's episode, Nikolai

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Speaker 1: Chauchco Dictator of Romania. We just start doing an entire

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Speaker 1: thing about the wall Berg family and never get to

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Speaker 1: the actual topic. That wouldn't put that could do it,

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Speaker 1: I could do, I could do an hour I related bastards.

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Speaker 1: I mean, we are talking about one corrupt family and

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Speaker 1: another corrupt family. So the chow Chesscus and the Wallbergs.

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Speaker 1: Who's who has caused more death and destruction? So Robert,

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Speaker 1: I need you to say, welcome to and you're ready

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Speaker 1: for go behind the Bastards. Welcome to Behind the Bastards. No,

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Speaker 1: that's not it. That was you nailed it. Thank you,

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Speaker 1: Thank you. Jeff. I gotta be like I thought that

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Speaker 1: you had just replayed what I said back to me. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I've been practicing my mimicry, like whatever kind of bird

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Speaker 1: mimics things. You're like, yeah, yeah, something like that. Jeff,

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Speaker 1: what do you know about nikolaicha chessco I try to

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Speaker 1: not know as much as I can about Romanian people.

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Speaker 1: I know that he was a lot of Nylon sweatsuits. Uh,

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Speaker 1: he had a lot of cologne on. Yeah. I mean,

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Speaker 1: look if you want, because Romania is kind of like

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Speaker 1: edge of the Balkans, right, sometimes it's considered part of

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Speaker 1: the Balkans. Some people be like, na, Eastern Europe is

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Speaker 1: not really in the whatever, This is not the place

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Speaker 1: to litigate that. But what you can say, what I

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Speaker 1: can say about Romanians, which I can also say about

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Speaker 1: Serbians and Bosnians and um Um a number of other

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Speaker 1: people in that area, is that their track suit game

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Speaker 1: is incredibly strong, unbelievable. It's like they're like, yeah, it's amazing.

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Speaker 1: If you want to if you've gotten a good Adida's

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Speaker 1: track suit in that part of the world, you're basically

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Speaker 1: a king. Um just squatting and smoking cigarettes. It rules.

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Speaker 1: Romania is an interesting country, um and Nikolai Chauchesco is

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Speaker 1: interesting because you know, we've got all these like communist

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Speaker 1: dictators like Stalin Um who There are a lot of

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Speaker 1: folks today, particularly on the Internet, who will defend these guys.

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Speaker 1: A lot of like weird authoritarian communists who who have

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Speaker 1: never met a dictator they don't like. And one of

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Speaker 1: the things that's interesting about our subject today, Cchessco, is

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Speaker 1: that he is the one that no one will defend.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure you can find a couple of

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Speaker 1: Cichessco stands out there, but they're almost nobody will back

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Speaker 1: this guy up because he sucked so comprehensively. It's funny.

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Speaker 1: It's funny when, yeah, when you look at the old

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Speaker 1: Soviet Block and you look at like some of the

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Speaker 1: dictators they had, and you look at the old the

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Speaker 1: like the older people that lived through it, and like, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, sometimes you have to make hard decisions and

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Speaker 1: it's like hard got killed like a hundred thousand people,

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Speaker 1: and like, well, you know, the ruling is difficult. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It is very interesting to see the apologists of like

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Speaker 1: the really terrible people in in Russia. They're just like

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Speaker 1: sometimes you set I like. What I do like is

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Speaker 1: that he his fate was sealed on I believe if

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Speaker 1: I recall correctly, yes, Christmas, Yeah, he was. Him being

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Speaker 1: murdered was a Christmas present for the whole Romanian and

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Speaker 1: really the world. But we're getting ahead of ourselves a

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Speaker 1: little bit. So we're gonna talk about Nikolai Cichescu, but

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Speaker 1: we're also going to have to talk about Romania and

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Speaker 1: give some history because I don't think most Americans know

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Speaker 1: a lot about Romania. Um it's a part of the

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Speaker 1: world that you know. It's interesting because, like, there was

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Speaker 1: a period of time where Cichesco was kind of like

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Speaker 1: the good communist. He was very close friends with Richard Nixon. Um.

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Speaker 1: He was spoken up positively by by Ronald Reagan. It's amazing.

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Speaker 1: He's like a scholarist who Nixon loved, and Reagan was like,

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Speaker 1: he's a good guy. It's wild stuff. Those are two

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Speaker 1: people whose endorsements I could go without. Yeah yeah, um so,

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Speaker 1: But before we get into how he came to power

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Speaker 1: and what he did, we're gonna have to talk a

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Speaker 1: little bit of history because there's some there's some context

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Speaker 1: that is important if you're going to understand how would

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Speaker 1: guy like what do you know that he was when

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Speaker 1: he was younger? He was extremely hot that we can discuss. Sophie. Um.

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Speaker 1: I I definitely don't see that because he looks like

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Speaker 1: a muppet as he gets older, like up, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's the land of the muppets. UM. Well, it was

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Speaker 1: known as Dacia uh d A c I A back

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Speaker 1: in the day and like the classical period um. If

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Speaker 1: you've ever seen, like read a book about the Roman

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Speaker 1: Empire and it talks about them fighting the Dacians and

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Speaker 1: conquering the Dactions. That's Romania prior to Roman contact. Um.

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Speaker 1: Dacia is like one of the last provinces that gets

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Speaker 1: conquered by the Roman Empire, and it's one of the

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Speaker 1: first they abandoned, so they're only only hang around there

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Speaker 1: for a little bit less than three hundred years and

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Speaker 1: then they leave into b C. This energy that they

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Speaker 1: bring to living in Romania, it's too dark, too many

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Speaker 1: mountains because like vampires, they're gonna be a thing here. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're like, we conquered a lemon, We're gonna get the

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Speaker 1: hell out of here. Yeah. Well they kind of get

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Speaker 1: out of here obviously, like we talk about, oh, the

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Speaker 1: Roman Empire conquers this place, who leaves this place to

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Speaker 1: b C. When the Roman Empire leaves, most people living

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Speaker 1: in the region probably would not have noticed much of

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Speaker 1: a change, because, for one thing, they're still trading with

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Speaker 1: the Romans. There's still a lot of Roman soldiers in

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Speaker 1: the region, and in fact, the reason that we call

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Speaker 1: it Romania now is because the like Roman soldiers who

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Speaker 1: were stationed there like bread with the local population, and

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Speaker 1: this is something they're they're pretty proud of, like the Romania.

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Speaker 1: Like the name Romania is kind of hearkening back to

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Speaker 1: the fact that there is a lot of Roman ancestry

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Speaker 1: in the area. Now, this ties back to for everyone

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Speaker 1: that took like seventh and eighth grade languages. Remember when

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Speaker 1: you would take like an introduction to like Spanish or

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Speaker 1: French or Latin or whatever, and they would say, you know,

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Speaker 1: whatever language you're learning, Spanish or French, they're like, they're

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Speaker 1: one of the five Romance language is that's my That's

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Speaker 1: where I'm from in Massachusetts. That's the accent. And it's

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Speaker 1: like you hear Spana, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian and

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Speaker 1: when they say Romanian, you're like what, like why, like

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Speaker 1: why why them? That doesn't make sense on a map

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Speaker 1: that that would be the language. Yeah, yeah, it is weird,

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Speaker 1: especially since again if you're in that region and further

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Speaker 1: into the Balkans, the language they're speaking is very different, right,

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Speaker 1: But but in Romania it is this kind of like

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Speaker 1: latinized tongue. Um, so that's cool. Um, Roman romance. Uh,

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Speaker 1: there's nothing as sexy as a as a man making

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Speaker 1: a pizza and doing violent hand gestures. I mean you're

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Speaker 1: not wrong about that. Yeah. Um, the center of Roman

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Speaker 1: Asia is a place that is known today as Transylvania.

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Speaker 1: That's actually like the province that the Romans conquered. So again,

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Speaker 1: when I say they left because of Dracula, that's that

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Speaker 1: is historically true. Um, although Dracula dude didn't exist yet. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about him for just a little bit.

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Speaker 1: Did you do have you done for yet? No? No? No,

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Speaker 1: Well we are kind of doing a little bit of

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Speaker 1: Lad Tepis right now. Um let me tell you real quick.

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Speaker 1: I know you're about to do that. But as somebody

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Speaker 1: who taught about the Middle Ages and I used to

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Speaker 1: do for my literacy classes, I would have them write

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Speaker 1: a research paper, and I'm like, you can pick anybody.

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Speaker 1: I'm so I got so burnt out reading term papers

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Speaker 1: from eighth graders about Vlad Tepis. And it's not that

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Speaker 1: he's not interesting, it's just that it's boring when you

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Speaker 1: read the same paper thirty times a year. Well, Well, Jeff,

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to give you a little bit different

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Speaker 1: of a paper because we're gonna be focusing on a

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Speaker 1: slightly an aspect of lads time running Romania, um that

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Speaker 1: people don't tend to talk about as much. Obviously, the

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Speaker 1: thing everyone knows about Vlad Tepez flat the Impaler, is

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Speaker 1: that he impaled a bunch of people, specifically a bunch

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Speaker 1: of Ottoman soldiers. And if you like hang out and

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Speaker 1: read sort of the weird right wing kind of retellings

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Speaker 1: of of medieval history, a lot of them will focus

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Speaker 1: on him as like the Shield of the West, and

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Speaker 1: this is something that like within the Romanian right wing,

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Speaker 1: it gets talked about a lot that like Romania was

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Speaker 1: the what protected you know, Christendom from the Ottoman Empire,

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Speaker 1: and and Vlad Tepez, you know, was this was this

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Speaker 1: heroic figure who was hard enough in order to like

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Speaker 1: keep the Muslims out. Yeah, this is not accurate to

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Speaker 1: the actual history. Pieces of it are accurate, but the

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Speaker 1: broad picture is wrong. Um. So, first off, his name

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Speaker 1: was legitimately Vlad Dracula because his his dad was Dracule,

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Speaker 1: which was a name he got when he got given

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Speaker 1: an award by the holy Roman Empire emperor. I think

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Speaker 1: it was sigismund um and Dracula means son of the dragon,

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Speaker 1: because Dracule means the dragon um. But it also at

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Speaker 1: the same time means son of the devil, which is

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Speaker 1: why the guy who wrote the Dracula book thought he

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Speaker 1: was he was a good pick for a horrible monster character.

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Speaker 1: Name like the guy like he like his name isn't

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Speaker 1: yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that dude, what's his name? Bram

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Speaker 1: the Dracula guy, but not Dracula. Sharon Lewis the the

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Speaker 1: guy who yeah, yeah, yeah, shitty vampire book the first Twilight,

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Speaker 1: we could say, the the yeah, the the prelude to

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Speaker 1: Twilight before we we really figured out what we wanted

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Speaker 1: from our vampires. Um sparkles and chizzled abs. M m,

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Speaker 1: that's right, that's right. No cum gutters on the original Dracula,

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Speaker 1: probably because he was he was riddled with various diseases.

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Speaker 1: So Gary oldman have like a huge six pack in

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Speaker 1: that movie with that stupid little hair do. But he's

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Speaker 1: just like the check out my rippling abs. This is

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Speaker 1: the thing we should be using that AI shipped to

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Speaker 1: do is go back and go back to like movies

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Speaker 1: that were made decades ago and give the male leads

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Speaker 1: back then who didn't have access to modern fitness technology,

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Speaker 1: just unbelievably shredded cum gutters, like go back to to

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Speaker 1: uh gone with the wind and and throw some cum

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Speaker 1: gutters in uh in uh in in red and throw

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Speaker 1: some throw some cum gutters on that guy who dies

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Speaker 1: to you know, the Confederate boy soldier. I would like

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Speaker 1: to come gutters all of them. The rock in to

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Speaker 1: kill a mocking bird, like the rock to kill a

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Speaker 1: rocking bird. Yeah, where he actually just kills everybody in

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Speaker 1: town in order to stop that guy from getting the

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Speaker 1: rock bottom as they're trying to out. M hm m hmm.

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Speaker 1: I think that's a good idea. Also, put stone Cold

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Speaker 1: Steve Austin in uh in that that that uh the

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Speaker 1: oh ship now I've you've gone rails, Citizen Kane. We

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Speaker 1: could do that. No, no, no, the movie in the

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Speaker 1: movie where that guy goes to Washington, DC. Mr Smith

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Speaker 1: goes to Washington, goes to Washington, throw stone Cold Steve

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Speaker 1: Austin and Mr Smith goes to Washington and have them

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Speaker 1: do a stone cold stunner and all those old Congress

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Speaker 1: fools Stone Cold Smith goes to, uh, what does this

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Speaker 1: have to do with our script? Very very very little.

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Speaker 1: So the actual historical Dracula, who is kind of your

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Speaker 1: first like he's often seen as like one of kind

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Speaker 1: of the founding figures of Romania in like Romanian nationalist

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Speaker 1: discourse because he's kind of this this first figure on

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Speaker 1: the scene. And this is back when Romania is called Wallachia.

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Speaker 1: Who becomes super famous. Um and he becomes famous yeah

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Speaker 1: for the impaling people. Um lad Tepez is the ruler

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Speaker 1: of Wallachia on three non consecutive occasions, which happens a

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Speaker 1: lot actually in in their history. At this point, they've

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Speaker 1: got this weird system that by which they pick who

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Speaker 1: their ruler is going to be, where you have these

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Speaker 1: basically this group of nobles who gets to vote on

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Speaker 1: who's going to run things, and it leads to a

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Speaker 1: shipload to turnover. From fourteen eighteen to fourteen seventy six,

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Speaker 1: Wallachia has eleven princes who are in power for about

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Speaker 1: five years each. So he gets into power, gets thrown

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Speaker 1: out of power, comes back into power several times. Um

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Speaker 1: and yeah. Common in Europe um, but in Romania it

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Speaker 1: is a particularly like violence system and This makes sense

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Speaker 1: when you look at just kind of where Romania is located, right,

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Speaker 1: Not only are they right next to the Ottoman Empire,

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Speaker 1: but they're right next to Hungary UH and the Holy

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Speaker 1: Roman Empire, and there's just they are just constantly dealing

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Speaker 1: with different groups coming in and trying to basically run things. Um.

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Speaker 1: So it's not only the the Ottomans that they're fighting,

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Speaker 1: And repeatedly Romanian leaders will side with the Ottomans in

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Speaker 1: order to protect themselves against the Hungarians or whatever. Like

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Speaker 1: this is a common thing. So so Dracula, like actual

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Speaker 1: Lad Dracula, spends a decent chunk of his career fighting

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Speaker 1: alongside the Ottomans. He also, for a point of it,

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Speaker 1: when he's technically a vassal to the Ottomans, is leading

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Speaker 1: like an illegal underground war against them. All this stuff

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Speaker 1: is going on. But I think what's more to the

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Speaker 1: point is that rather than kind of being a shield

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Speaker 1: against like the Muslim world who was defending Christendom, Vlad

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Speaker 1: is more concerned with maintaining his relative independence from an

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Speaker 1: ocean of surrounding threats. Who covet Transylvania UM and the

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Speaker 1: rest of Romania um Transylvania, specifically the area that the

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Speaker 1: Romanians fight with the Hungarians over a lot, and it

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Speaker 1: changes hands all the time. And he is a pretty

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Speaker 1: brutal vlad Draculus a pretty brutal ruler to his own people.

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Speaker 1: And this is the thing that gets discussed less we

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Speaker 1: talk about the impaling of all of these uh, these

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Speaker 1: Ottoman soldiers as he's trying to like throw back this

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Speaker 1: invasion from the Sultan. And I want to quote now

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Speaker 1: from the wonderful book Children of the Night by Paul Kenyon,

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Speaker 1: because this was a little piece of dracula history that

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Speaker 1: I hadn't heard. It was around this time, during the

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Speaker 1: first couple of years of Dracula's rule, that he organized

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Speaker 1: a notorious feast for all the beggars of targo Viste.

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Speaker 1: The event appeared to be a great humanitarian gesture. The

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Speaker 1: hall was hired and tables were filled with food and wine.

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Speaker 1: Invitations were put out around the city to the cripples,

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Speaker 1: the blind, that diseased in the destitute. They all concreated

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Speaker 1: in a large wooden hall toasting Dracula's generosity. But towards

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Speaker 1: the end of the meal, someone noticed smoke coming from

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Speaker 1: the walls. They ran to the door, only to find

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Speaker 1: Draculus troops had locked it from the outside and set

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Speaker 1: the place ablaze. Many hundreds were trapped, and a bonfire

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Speaker 1: of souls was left burning into the dark Wallachian sky.

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Speaker 1: The Bonfire of the Beggars, as it became known, was

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Speaker 1: a warning becking would not be tolerated. It was a

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Speaker 1: drain on the finances of the most decent and generous

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Speaker 1: and society, said Dracula, a crime as evil as theft.

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Speaker 1: While Achians were an easy It was one thing killing

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Speaker 1: the rich, but to massacre the poor in such violent circumstances.

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Speaker 1: On the other hand, draculus tactics did seem to be working,

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Speaker 1: and crime fell. It was said that Draculus guards would

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Speaker 1: test the townsfolk by leaving a purse full of gold

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Speaker 1: coins in a busy marketplace. When the guards came to

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Speaker 1: collect it in the evening, the purse was always left untouched.

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Speaker 1: The admiration for authoritarian solutions would also resonate down the centuries.

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Speaker 1: So that is this is kind of like, yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: gonna be effective because you know of the murder. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: when you murder enough people, um, you you can decrease

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Speaker 1: the crime rate. Um, that that is, that is and

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Speaker 1: this is a lesson that no Romanian leader is ever

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Speaker 1: going to forget. And it kind of like he Vlad

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Speaker 1: is sort of setting the tone here for an awful

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Speaker 1: lot of their history, right down to the fact that

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Speaker 1: you've got this kind of peasant population that is getting

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Speaker 1: mistreated by its leaves enough that many people are starving

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Speaker 1: in the streets, and so the solution of the ruler is, well,

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Speaker 1: what if we just light those people on fire? This

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Speaker 1: would be this is like a Facebook comments section gone

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Speaker 1: to life, like this is this is what a lot

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Speaker 1: of people from my hometown would like to do. Oh,

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Speaker 1: Matt Walsh is totally down for this. Yeah. Yeah. The

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Speaker 1: Daily Wire is already writing a think piece on how

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Speaker 1: Vlad Dracula had the right how literal Dracula had the

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Speaker 1: right idea on improving our our civic spaces. The New

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Speaker 1: York Times is going to post an editorial that says,

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Speaker 1: are there too many poor people? Yeah? What if we

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Speaker 1: just light them on fire? You know? Um? And I

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Speaker 1: think you know, this is one of those areas where

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Speaker 1: my my moral sort of uh compass is at odds

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Speaker 1: with the intellectual side of me, because on a moral level.

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Speaker 1: I think it's always okay to set fires, but clearly

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Speaker 1: sometimes fires can be bad, and this is something I'm

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Speaker 1: still grappling with. Jeff. Yeah, I mean, well, fires can

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Speaker 1: have disastrous results, but fire itself is awesome. Like I

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Speaker 1: keep I keep fire with me when I'm recording. At

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Speaker 1: all times, I have to have an open flame near

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Speaker 1: me or else. What's the point. What if wolves came

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Speaker 1: in while I was recording. You're not gonna keep the

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Speaker 1: wolves away if you don't have a fire. Like I'm

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Speaker 1: in San Francisco right now as we record this, and

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Speaker 1: I have a fire on me at all times, because famously,

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Speaker 1: San Francisco is a city with a wonderful history of

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Speaker 1: fires that I want to celebrate. You know, all of

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Speaker 1: the good fires, San Francisco. It's called knowing your history.

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Speaker 1: That's right, That's right. Um. So Romania in the years

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Speaker 1: after Dracula, who gets who gets murdered? Uh before he's

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Speaker 1: very old again, none of these Romanian princes last all

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Speaker 1: that long. So Romania spends a lot of most of

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Speaker 1: the medieval period as a vassal of the Ottoman Empire um.

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Speaker 1: And this actually, this state of affairs last until pretty recently. Um,

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Speaker 1: the country does not get its independence until the Russo

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Speaker 1: Turkish War of eighteen seventy seven to eighteen seventy eight. Um,

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Speaker 1: it becomes an independent kingdom with a hohensall learned regent.

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Speaker 1: So you know whenever they have these because this happens

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Speaker 1: a lot where you're you're having these chunks of Europe

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Speaker 1: become independent from either their former masters or from the

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Speaker 1: Ottomans or whatever, and they all need kings, right because

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Speaker 1: it's still the attitude in the eighteen hundreds that every

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Speaker 1: new country ought to have some sort of kings. So

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Speaker 1: there there's this kind of like constant It causes a

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Speaker 1: lot of conflict. This is a lot of what sets

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Speaker 1: up World War One. But um, Romania, because of how

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Speaker 1: close it is to Germany, winds up with a hawns

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Speaker 1: all learned region, which which, like theoretic lee should mean

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Speaker 1: that they're going to side with the Germans on everything. Um,

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Speaker 1: that's actually not what happens in practice, but that's certainly

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Speaker 1: what the Germans think when when they make sure Romania

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Speaker 1: gets this uh this guy who's related to the Kaiser. Um. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: I mean it's also the mess that by the time

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Speaker 1: World War one rules around, like the country has this

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Speaker 1: hahns all learned king, but it also has a queen

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Speaker 1: who's one of Queen Victoria's grandchildren, which is also super common, Right,

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Speaker 1: everybody's got one of Victoria's kids or grandkids somewhere in

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Speaker 1: their fucking royal family. They're collecting pokemon, yeah, exactly, um,

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Speaker 1: and the hohans all learns have caught at least one.

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Speaker 1: And she's actually, she's actually kind of rad um. They

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Speaker 1: have this horrible war um in like nineteen twelve nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirteen where Romania tries because when Romania becomes independent, they

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Speaker 1: don't have Transylvania, right, Transylvania is still property of the Hungarians.

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Speaker 1: So at one point they invade aid Hungary right before

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Speaker 1: World War One, and it goes just absolutely terribly. But

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Speaker 1: Queen Mary, who's this um victorious grandkid, winds up like

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Speaker 1: working as a combat nurse in this front line position

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Speaker 1: and it it really she becomes very beloved by the

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Speaker 1: Romanian people, and she seems to be legitimately the only

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Speaker 1: royal in Europe during this period of time who doesn't

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Speaker 1: completely suck because while the rest of them are starting

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Speaker 1: a series of of wars that will kill ten civilians.

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Speaker 1: She's just sort of like working as a trauma nurse

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Speaker 1: the entire time's like trying to do good. Yeah, she

400
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Speaker 1: seems dope. Actually, the Hungarians, I don't know if you've

401
00:22:37,840 --> 00:22:39,600
Speaker 1: ever covered this on the thing, but what do you

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Speaker 1: know about like their nomenclature, right, like the history of

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Speaker 1: that name that they were just so it was yeah,

404
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Speaker 1: so they're Magyars and then when people saw them, they

405
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Speaker 1: were like, ah, they fight like the Huns. It's sort

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Speaker 1: of like how we called Native Americans. They do whole

407
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Speaker 1: like you guys are Hungarians, You're like the Huns and

408
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Speaker 1: there like, no, we are our own people. That's that

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Speaker 1: reminds me of like where the word barbarian came from,

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Speaker 1: which is that the Greeks just thought everyone who wasn't

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Speaker 1: Greek sounded like they were going by bar bar bar

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Speaker 1: bar bar all the time. Yeah. It's like, uh yeah,

413
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Speaker 1: racism before racism, it's it's it's that deep racism. Um,

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Speaker 1: it's true pure races. Yeah, it's absolutely uncut by the

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Speaker 1: later you know, the corruption that would enter racism later. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it before racism got so commercial, you know. M Yeah,

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Speaker 1: just a bunch of guys looking at people who live

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Speaker 1: over the hill near them and saying it sounds they

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Speaker 1: all talk weird. Yeah yeah, they did it for the

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Speaker 1: love of the game. Yeah yeah, it's the the Honus

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Speaker 1: Wagner of racism. That's the that's Europeans in this well,

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Speaker 1: at least in ancient history. So um. Yeah. So you've

423
00:23:55,560 --> 00:23:59,040
Speaker 1: got Romania. They have this disastrous war where they try

424
00:23:59,080 --> 00:24:00,960
Speaker 1: to take and the reason why they lose the war

425
00:24:01,240 --> 00:24:03,439
Speaker 1: because it goes well for like a day and then

426
00:24:03,480 --> 00:24:07,720
Speaker 1: everybody gets sick from mosquitoes and starts dying, which is

427
00:24:07,760 --> 00:24:14,600
Speaker 1: not an uncommon story. And yeah, um, but outside of that,

428
00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:16,760
Speaker 1: when kind of World War one starts to break out,

429
00:24:17,680 --> 00:24:21,040
Speaker 1: Romania is kind of in in a decent position because

430
00:24:21,080 --> 00:24:25,119
Speaker 1: they've got this king, their first king, Carol, uh, the

431
00:24:25,200 --> 00:24:27,919
Speaker 1: first who's in charge right up until nineteen fourteen, and

432
00:24:27,960 --> 00:24:31,320
Speaker 1: he drops kind of right before the war drums starts sounding,

433
00:24:31,600 --> 00:24:34,439
Speaker 1: and the king who follows, Ferdinand, is as a pretty

434
00:24:34,480 --> 00:24:36,840
Speaker 1: smart guy, and it's like, I don't think World War

435
00:24:36,840 --> 00:24:38,680
Speaker 1: one's gonna go well for anybody. I don't want to

436
00:24:38,680 --> 00:24:40,800
Speaker 1: get involved in this ship. I just would like to

437
00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:43,280
Speaker 1: I can sell food and fuel because Romani has got

438
00:24:43,280 --> 00:24:44,920
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot of oil. I'll just sell

439
00:24:44,960 --> 00:24:47,720
Speaker 1: that shipped to the Germans and we won't send all

440
00:24:47,720 --> 00:24:49,760
Speaker 1: of our guys off to die, which is a good

441
00:24:49,840 --> 00:24:52,639
Speaker 1: strategy um and and would have been a winner if

442
00:24:52,720 --> 00:24:56,000
Speaker 1: they had stuck with it um. But they are not

443
00:24:56,200 --> 00:24:58,879
Speaker 1: going to stick with it um now. Part of the

444
00:24:58,920 --> 00:25:01,760
Speaker 1: reason why the new king is kind of hesitant to

445
00:25:01,760 --> 00:25:03,879
Speaker 1: get involved in World War One and doesn't want to

446
00:25:03,920 --> 00:25:07,160
Speaker 1: like is because he doesn't want to risk upsetting the peasants. Um.

447
00:25:07,400 --> 00:25:10,920
Speaker 1: Romanian political history in this period up to pretty much

448
00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:13,920
Speaker 1: the modern day, a huge amount of it is kind

449
00:25:13,920 --> 00:25:18,640
Speaker 1: of based around the struggle between these urbanized populations which

450
00:25:18,640 --> 00:25:21,680
Speaker 1: are are still a very small chunk of the country

451
00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:25,199
Speaker 1: in the late eighteen hundreds UM and the majority of

452
00:25:25,200 --> 00:25:27,720
Speaker 1: the country, which is the peasantry and the peasants, especially

453
00:25:27,720 --> 00:25:30,359
Speaker 1: in the late uh in the early nineteen hundreds, late

454
00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:33,800
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds are they're not quite surfs, but they also

455
00:25:33,840 --> 00:25:39,560
Speaker 1: are basically renting land from the whatever noble owns it

456
00:25:39,760 --> 00:25:42,520
Speaker 1: um and paying them kind of ruinous taxes in order

457
00:25:42,560 --> 00:25:45,159
Speaker 1: to get to farm it. So it's kind of a

458
00:25:45,200 --> 00:25:48,520
Speaker 1: worse situation than being a serf because they're actually like

459
00:25:48,560 --> 00:25:52,840
Speaker 1: they're technically free, but they have to pay their boss being,

460
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:55,159
Speaker 1: you know whatever nobles in charge of the area for

461
00:25:55,200 --> 00:25:57,520
Speaker 1: the privilege of getting to work the land enough to

462
00:25:57,720 --> 00:26:00,480
Speaker 1: produce enough food to not starve to death, which is

463
00:26:00,520 --> 00:26:03,560
Speaker 1: a bad Like one of the most common foods that

464
00:26:03,680 --> 00:26:05,879
Speaker 1: Romanian peasants live on in this period of time is

465
00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:09,520
Speaker 1: like cheese that's infested with maggots. Um that and like

466
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:13,439
Speaker 1: pickled vegetables is a lot of their their their diet

467
00:26:14,119 --> 00:26:18,760
Speaker 1: um magot cheese. Still it's like illegal, but it's like

468
00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:21,560
Speaker 1: a super delicacy from there, right they still do that.

469
00:26:22,520 --> 00:26:24,200
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's from Roman. I know there's

470
00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:26,520
Speaker 1: a cheese in Sicily that's all maggoty, like. I think

471
00:26:26,520 --> 00:26:29,080
Speaker 1: there's probably a few different versions of it. But back

472
00:26:29,080 --> 00:26:31,480
Speaker 1: in the day it is not a nice food, right

473
00:26:31,520 --> 00:26:35,000
Speaker 1: it's I think maybe now it's become a delicacy. But

474
00:26:35,080 --> 00:26:37,520
Speaker 1: then it's like, well, we're not gonna not eat this

475
00:26:37,640 --> 00:26:40,480
Speaker 1: cheese just because it's filled with maggots, because otherwise we'll die,

476
00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:48,119
Speaker 1: so speat. The products and services that support this podcast

477
00:26:48,160 --> 00:26:51,439
Speaker 1: will add maggots to any order you make. Hit us up.

478
00:26:57,520 --> 00:27:01,560
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, we're back and I just had a HOGI

479
00:27:01,800 --> 00:27:07,639
Speaker 1: made entirely out of maggots delicious. Oh yeah, yeah. Maggot

480
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:12,320
Speaker 1: proteins the cleanest burning protein out there. Um, you can't

481
00:27:12,320 --> 00:27:15,080
Speaker 1: do better than maggot's. That's that's that's the motto of

482
00:27:15,080 --> 00:27:20,800
Speaker 1: this podcast behind the Bastards. You can't do better than maggots. No, No,

483
00:27:21,119 --> 00:27:24,679
Speaker 1: that's it. It's the true super feud. If you just

484
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:27,520
Speaker 1: all you actually need in your diet, just a fifty

485
00:27:27,560 --> 00:27:30,720
Speaker 1: fifty mix of maggots and a sai berries and and

486
00:27:30,880 --> 00:27:36,320
Speaker 1: you'll never die. H Yeah. I looked up Cassu Marzoo

487
00:27:36,440 --> 00:27:38,520
Speaker 1: just to see that's the cheese, and boy that was

488
00:27:38,840 --> 00:27:41,919
Speaker 1: the Romanian one. Yeahah, it's it's like a pecorino from

489
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 1: sheep's milk. Yeah, yeah, it is. It is not a

490
00:27:45,040 --> 00:27:48,879
Speaker 1: delicacy at the time. Yeah. Um. So one of the

491
00:27:48,920 --> 00:27:53,080
Speaker 1: big like reasons that that King fred Frederick doesn't want

492
00:27:53,080 --> 00:27:55,439
Speaker 1: to go to war, doesn't want to get involved in

493
00:27:55,480 --> 00:27:57,720
Speaker 1: World War One, is because he doesn't feel like he

494
00:27:57,800 --> 00:28:00,480
Speaker 1: has a good handle on the peasantry kind of as

495
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:02,199
Speaker 1: they go into this period. And a big part of

496
00:28:02,200 --> 00:28:06,080
Speaker 1: why is that there's an uprising and like nineteen oh seven, right,

497
00:28:06,119 --> 00:28:09,360
Speaker 1: which is you know, pretty recent still in nineteen fourteen,

498
00:28:09,600 --> 00:28:12,480
Speaker 1: and this uprising, this peasants uprising starts because this guy

499
00:28:12,640 --> 00:28:16,680
Speaker 1: named I think, I think it's basically pronounced John Dohesku

500
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:20,600
Speaker 1: traveled to a protest outside of the mayor's house in

501
00:28:20,600 --> 00:28:24,840
Speaker 1: a town called Flamazi, and Dohescu and his fellow peasants, again,

502
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:28,920
Speaker 1: they're basically starving. This feudal system that that governs their

503
00:28:28,920 --> 00:28:31,440
Speaker 1: lives is super corrupt, and the way that it works

504
00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:34,560
Speaker 1: is you've got these these royals who own the land,

505
00:28:34,880 --> 00:28:38,240
Speaker 1: and these royals basically higher a group of middlemen to

506
00:28:38,440 --> 00:28:41,160
Speaker 1: manage it for them. And so the middlemen get their

507
00:28:41,160 --> 00:28:43,720
Speaker 1: money off of skimming what they can off the top,

508
00:28:43,760 --> 00:28:46,720
Speaker 1: and anything they're skimming is extra ship that the peasants

509
00:28:46,760 --> 00:28:49,280
Speaker 1: are paying for, right in addition to the pretty ruinously

510
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:52,920
Speaker 1: high taxes that the royals are imposing. Um Kenyan in

511
00:28:52,960 --> 00:28:55,560
Speaker 1: his book notes that the peasantry in Romania is quote

512
00:28:55,600 --> 00:28:59,600
Speaker 1: so comprehensively exploited that they were effectively paying their landlords

513
00:28:59,600 --> 00:29:02,560
Speaker 1: for the priv ledge of working. So there's this protest

514
00:29:02,600 --> 00:29:06,560
Speaker 1: outside of the mayor's house and these peasants, including John Dohesku,

515
00:29:06,720 --> 00:29:10,000
Speaker 1: wind up outside yelling at this estate manager who's again

516
00:29:10,080 --> 00:29:12,560
Speaker 1: kind of like this middle manager type guy and he

517
00:29:12,640 --> 00:29:14,440
Speaker 1: throws a rock at one of them and it hits

518
00:29:14,440 --> 00:29:18,920
Speaker 1: Dohescu in the eye. Um. This, for whatever reason startship

519
00:29:18,960 --> 00:29:21,640
Speaker 1: you know sometimes like oh, yeah, that's gonna star ship.

520
00:29:21,680 --> 00:29:24,320
Speaker 1: You ever been hit in the eye of the rock? Yeah, yeah,

521
00:29:24,680 --> 00:29:28,200
Speaker 1: You're not not gonna throw a punch after that, no, sure, sure,

522
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:31,000
Speaker 1: But this also starts on a bigger scale, like everyone

523
00:29:31,040 --> 00:29:34,680
Speaker 1: gets outraged on the behalf of this guy. Um, which

524
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:37,360
Speaker 1: should like this, you know, it happens here too, Like

525
00:29:37,760 --> 00:29:40,280
Speaker 1: you'll have the same kind of horrible violence being done

526
00:29:40,280 --> 00:29:42,640
Speaker 1: by the same people every day, and then one day

527
00:29:43,040 --> 00:29:46,600
Speaker 1: suddenly thousands of people take to the streets, right, um,

528
00:29:46,640 --> 00:29:49,840
Speaker 1: and and this is this is that version of that

529
00:29:49,880 --> 00:29:53,280
Speaker 1: thing happening in Romania. So the peasants around Dohescu form

530
00:29:53,320 --> 00:29:56,240
Speaker 1: a mob and they start going through town and attacking

531
00:29:56,320 --> 00:29:59,239
Speaker 1: all of the middlemen that these local aristocrats have been

532
00:29:59,320 --> 00:30:02,520
Speaker 1: using to manage their land. And for a variety of reasons,

533
00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:05,400
Speaker 1: most of these middlemen are Jewish, right, that's just who

534
00:30:05,400 --> 00:30:08,040
Speaker 1: the aristocracy is, like, yeah, we'll have these guys. It's

535
00:30:08,040 --> 00:30:11,280
Speaker 1: actually kind of a conscious decision by the aristocracy because

536
00:30:11,320 --> 00:30:14,920
Speaker 1: like if you have if like, you have this group

537
00:30:14,920 --> 00:30:17,400
Speaker 1: of people managing your stuff and they're all Jewish. When

538
00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:20,400
Speaker 1: the peasants get angry, you can just use racism to

539
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:23,240
Speaker 1: deflect from the fact that you're really the one responsible

540
00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:27,320
Speaker 1: for their suffering. Um so that that works very well

541
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:30,800
Speaker 1: in this case. And so the peasants revolt that follows

542
00:30:30,920 --> 00:30:34,080
Speaker 1: is both an act of protest against economic exploitation that

543
00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:37,960
Speaker 1: is very justified and a vicious, a vicious racist program

544
00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:41,000
Speaker 1: that is not justified. You know what's funny is every

545
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:45,720
Speaker 1: time I do the show that phrase vicious racist program

546
00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:49,160
Speaker 1: shows up, I'm just like, oh yeah, let's bring it on.

547
00:30:49,240 --> 00:30:52,160
Speaker 1: Let's see, let's see who's doing terrible things to to

548
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:56,000
Speaker 1: decent people. To be fair, we keep bringing you on

549
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:59,200
Speaker 1: for episodes that are about Europe from like eighteen hundred

550
00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:01,720
Speaker 1: to nineteen five D So you're gonna have to talk

551
00:31:01,760 --> 00:31:05,440
Speaker 1: about it's gonna nowhere that doesn't have them a little

552
00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:08,840
Speaker 1: playfully violent anti semitism to get us through the day

553
00:31:08,840 --> 00:31:13,080
Speaker 1: every time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, good stuff, good stuff. So

554
00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:16,840
Speaker 1: the Peasants Revolt starts with these peasant mobs marching through towns,

555
00:31:16,920 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 1: dragging Jews out of their homes and then lighting the

556
00:31:19,480 --> 00:31:22,640
Speaker 1: homes on fire. Um. But as the revolt wears on,

557
00:31:23,280 --> 00:31:26,000
Speaker 1: because it's nineteen o seven, nineteen o five, Russia has

558
00:31:26,040 --> 00:31:29,240
Speaker 1: just had an unsuccessful socialist revolution, and a lot of

559
00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:31,360
Speaker 1: these revolutionaries who are kind of like on the on

560
00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:33,960
Speaker 1: the run from the Czar, wind up heading over to

561
00:31:34,080 --> 00:31:37,080
Speaker 1: Romania and they start preaching to the masses that like, hey, guys,

562
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:39,960
Speaker 1: the Jews as a group are not responsible for your

563
00:31:39,960 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 1: suffer ng. It's the property holding class who's exploiting you. Um.

564
00:31:43,840 --> 00:31:48,720
Speaker 1: And this actually has a positive impact. There's there's less programs.

565
00:31:48,800 --> 00:31:51,280
Speaker 1: Kind of later in the Peasants uprising, they were just

566
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:54,960
Speaker 1: attacking rich people. So that's good. Yeah, they relaxed a

567
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah. Um. The whole thing comes to a

568
00:31:57,920 --> 00:32:00,360
Speaker 1: head in April of nineteen o seven when six thousand

569
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:04,440
Speaker 1: peasants gather with axes to protest for redistribution of land right.

570
00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:06,920
Speaker 1: And what they're protesting for is like, we we want

571
00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:08,960
Speaker 1: to own the land that we live on and work

572
00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:11,400
Speaker 1: our entire lives, rather than it being owned by some

573
00:32:11,440 --> 00:32:13,960
Speaker 1: guy who can just like jack up the rent and

574
00:32:14,080 --> 00:32:17,600
Speaker 1: starve us effectively. So the government of Romania is like,

575
00:32:17,880 --> 00:32:21,480
Speaker 1: absolutely not, because the people who have control of the

576
00:32:21,600 --> 00:32:24,960
Speaker 1: artillery are the people who own the land. So those

577
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:28,560
Speaker 1: people just have the military fire artillery directly into the crowd,

578
00:32:28,640 --> 00:32:32,239
Speaker 1: killing sex six people in a matter of minutes. By

579
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:35,520
Speaker 1: the yeah, I know, it's pretty well. Actually, by the end,

580
00:32:35,560 --> 00:32:38,160
Speaker 1: I mean the whole revolt, they kill about eleven thousand people.

581
00:32:38,680 --> 00:32:41,200
Speaker 1: Um so if they do they killed, that's a good

582
00:32:41,320 --> 00:32:43,800
Speaker 1: number of people killed. That's pretty good. That's pretty good

583
00:32:44,560 --> 00:32:47,240
Speaker 1: solid for a few minutes, if I'm being honest, like

584
00:32:47,360 --> 00:32:51,320
Speaker 1: it's it takes man hotten project level ship to get

585
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:55,600
Speaker 1: numbers like that, uh so quickly. Yeah, yeah, you know,

586
00:32:56,560 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 1: this goes on for a few months, but like eleven

587
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:02,120
Speaker 1: thousand people, it's pretty blood So King Ferdinand, who takes

588
00:33:02,160 --> 00:33:06,760
Speaker 1: over seven years after this, is like, we just tested

589
00:33:06,800 --> 00:33:09,960
Speaker 1: the peasantry a little bit and it we got closer

590
00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:11,840
Speaker 1: to losing control than we want to admit. So I

591
00:33:11,880 --> 00:33:14,200
Speaker 1: really don't want to, like have to conscript a bunch

592
00:33:14,240 --> 00:33:16,760
Speaker 1: of people and deal with the problems that that might cause.

593
00:33:17,080 --> 00:33:19,080
Speaker 1: We dipped the toes in a little bit and found

594
00:33:19,080 --> 00:33:23,320
Speaker 1: out that we get butchered. So yeah, and staying out

595
00:33:23,320 --> 00:33:25,600
Speaker 1: of World War One absolutely would have been the right

596
00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:30,440
Speaker 1: call for Romania. But here's the problem. Jeff, British people exist,

597
00:33:31,080 --> 00:33:34,760
Speaker 1: and British people keep whispering in the Romanian King's ear.

598
00:33:35,520 --> 00:33:39,080
Speaker 1: Oh god, not you want that Transylvania. Do you What

599
00:33:40,160 --> 00:33:46,440
Speaker 1: are you doing? My English? Oxen? What I'm doing, I'm

600
00:33:46,440 --> 00:33:52,440
Speaker 1: doing an English accent, Sophie. He was like, night, Jesus,

601
00:33:53,400 --> 00:33:57,480
Speaker 1: we got a little comm in. So so that's what

602
00:33:57,560 --> 00:34:01,120
Speaker 1: the British Empire is whispering into the ears of King Frederick. Um.

603
00:34:01,400 --> 00:34:03,800
Speaker 1: And you know, basically the promise they're making him is

604
00:34:03,800 --> 00:34:09,280
Speaker 1: again like hey, you, you guys are like Transylvania's majority

605
00:34:09,440 --> 00:34:13,320
Speaker 1: Romanian population, it's controlled by Hungary. We agree that's unjust.

606
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:15,520
Speaker 1: If you come into the war on our side and

607
00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:18,360
Speaker 1: like help us throw us a wrench in the fucking

608
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:21,560
Speaker 1: German war effort, will make sure that you wind up

609
00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:24,840
Speaker 1: with this greater Romania thing that all the nationalists in

610
00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:28,799
Speaker 1: Romania are are super gung ho about when the war

611
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:33,400
Speaker 1: finally ends. Um, and eventually, this this kind of thought

612
00:34:33,480 --> 00:34:36,880
Speaker 1: of getting Transylvania back and all of these others a

613
00:34:36,880 --> 00:34:40,360
Speaker 1: couple of other provinces too, is too enticing for the

614
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:44,080
Speaker 1: king and sort of the nationalists in the Romanian government

615
00:34:44,400 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 1: to not try to do so. In nineteen sixteen, Romania

616
00:34:47,760 --> 00:34:51,040
Speaker 1: enters World War One on the side of the the

617
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:55,399
Speaker 1: unentant and they attack the Central Powers. This briefly goes

618
00:34:55,480 --> 00:34:58,239
Speaker 1: well for about six weeks. Romania takes back like a

619
00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:01,479
Speaker 1: bunch of Transylvania, they take a couple other areas from

620
00:35:01,520 --> 00:35:04,160
Speaker 1: from Hungary. They're like they're having a real good time

621
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:08,600
Speaker 1: for for like six weeks um. But then then then

622
00:35:08,640 --> 00:35:12,560
Speaker 1: the Germans show up. Now, the Imperial German Army is

623
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:16,520
Speaker 1: an army so competent that it took the entire world

624
00:35:16,560 --> 00:35:19,440
Speaker 1: to beat them in this war, like literally everyone else.

625
00:35:19,880 --> 00:35:23,840
Speaker 1: It's reminded. It's a good reminder that the German military

626
00:35:23,840 --> 00:35:25,759
Speaker 1: and obviously, you know when you trace back to Otto

627
00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:30,280
Speaker 1: von Bismarck and basically his description of creating a country

628
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:32,880
Speaker 1: based on the world's greatest army, like that was his

629
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:36,720
Speaker 1: whole thing. Yeah, and like so like yeah, like that's

630
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:39,560
Speaker 1: gonna be that's gonna be a big deal because they're

631
00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:42,640
Speaker 1: so they're just so good at war. That's been like

632
00:35:42,719 --> 00:35:45,719
Speaker 1: their whole thing. They've been training for this, and they

633
00:35:45,719 --> 00:35:48,319
Speaker 1: are the Germans at this point are obviously they are

634
00:35:48,360 --> 00:35:50,919
Speaker 1: tied up two years into the war on the Western Front,

635
00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:53,960
Speaker 1: which has killed more men more quickly than probably any

636
00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:56,600
Speaker 1: other war in history prior to this point. They're also

637
00:35:56,680 --> 00:35:58,880
Speaker 1: fighting all of Russia, which is a fifth of the

638
00:35:58,920 --> 00:36:02,600
Speaker 1: planet's land mass, not that far from Romania. And then

639
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:05,880
Speaker 1: Romania enters and so the Germans take like a tiny

640
00:36:05,920 --> 00:36:08,960
Speaker 1: little chunk of their forces and they send it towards

641
00:36:09,080 --> 00:36:15,520
Speaker 1: Romania and they just curb stomp them like yeah. Within days,

642
00:36:15,640 --> 00:36:18,000
Speaker 1: it becomes clear that like, oh, they are going to

643
00:36:18,040 --> 00:36:21,200
Speaker 1: occupy the entire country, Romania will no longer be in it,

644
00:36:21,480 --> 00:36:24,759
Speaker 1: Like they're coming for the capital. The Royals start fleeing, right,

645
00:36:24,960 --> 00:36:27,560
Speaker 1: they are fucking getting the hell out of town. Um.

646
00:36:27,640 --> 00:36:33,040
Speaker 1: And so the British decide, well, first off, this didn't work. Um.

647
00:36:33,040 --> 00:36:35,719
Speaker 1: Clearly Romania did not have what it took to take

648
00:36:35,719 --> 00:36:41,040
Speaker 1: the Germans out of the fight. So fu around they

649
00:36:41,080 --> 00:36:44,280
Speaker 1: found out, um, which you know, as the British Empire

650
00:36:44,400 --> 00:36:46,799
Speaker 1: is always our preference someone other than us find out.

651
00:36:46,840 --> 00:36:50,759
Speaker 1: But now we have this problem. Romania has like basically

652
00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:54,120
Speaker 1: the largest oil reserves in Europe is certainly at this point,

653
00:36:54,520 --> 00:36:58,000
Speaker 1: and Germany does not have any oil right on its

654
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:01,160
Speaker 1: own pretty much. So the Germans are about to gain

655
00:37:01,200 --> 00:37:04,359
Speaker 1: access to these oil fields that would effectively allow them

656
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:08,880
Speaker 1: to gain an enormous material advantage in this war. That

657
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:12,759
Speaker 1: is kind of a squeaker. So the Germans send over

658
00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:15,440
Speaker 1: or the British send over a guy, this lieutenant colonel

659
00:37:15,520 --> 00:37:19,040
Speaker 1: named John Norton Griffiths, who sounds like a war crimes

660
00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:21,200
Speaker 1: guy and is about to do him a war crime

661
00:37:21,440 --> 00:37:25,919
Speaker 1: because he lights every oil field in Romania on fire. Um,

662
00:37:26,040 --> 00:37:29,120
Speaker 1: it's just like set it all on fire. Fuck this

663
00:37:29,160 --> 00:37:34,080
Speaker 1: ship he does like a Saddam Iraq. Yeah. Yeah, it

664
00:37:34,200 --> 00:37:38,560
Speaker 1: like blots out the sun. It's obviously it's an ecological disaster, um,

665
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:41,480
Speaker 1: but it's a military success. He does stop the Germans

666
00:37:41,520 --> 00:37:45,279
Speaker 1: from gaining access to Romania's fuel reserves um, which you

667
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:48,759
Speaker 1: know is the smart play on a millie. It's just awful. Um.

668
00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:54,520
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's what of of the natural resources. Yeah. Yeah,

669
00:37:54,800 --> 00:37:58,520
Speaker 1: So Romania does not do well in in World War One.

670
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:02,080
Speaker 1: They get occupied the Germans, but a couple of years later,

671
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:04,960
Speaker 1: the Germans eventually do lose the war. And when they

672
00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:08,160
Speaker 1: lose the war, Romania actually kind of winds up in

673
00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:10,600
Speaker 1: a really good position and we're not going to get

674
00:38:10,600 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 1: into like all of the wheeling and dealing that occurs

675
00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:14,719
Speaker 1: but you know, a lot of folks feel like they

676
00:38:14,800 --> 00:38:16,279
Speaker 1: kind of a lot of folks who side with the

677
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:18,319
Speaker 1: central powers kind of feel like they get fucked over.

678
00:38:18,400 --> 00:38:21,239
Speaker 1: This is particularly an issue with the Italians right where

679
00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:24,000
Speaker 1: italyast like we did all this fucking dying fighting Austria

680
00:38:24,280 --> 00:38:26,799
Speaker 1: and we got basically nothing at the end of the war. Like,

681
00:38:26,840 --> 00:38:29,680
Speaker 1: what the fund is wrong with you people? Um, Romania

682
00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:34,040
Speaker 1: does really well, they get Transylvania. Um. Like the British,

683
00:38:34,160 --> 00:38:36,719
Speaker 1: to their credit, actually do give them what they had

684
00:38:36,719 --> 00:38:40,560
Speaker 1: promised here. And so after World War One, Romania is

685
00:38:40,600 --> 00:38:44,839
Speaker 1: like thirty or forty larger, and as a substantially larger population,

686
00:38:44,960 --> 00:38:49,080
Speaker 1: a whole lot of resources and really productive land. Um.

687
00:38:49,120 --> 00:38:53,000
Speaker 1: That's called buying low and sell high. That's right. They're

688
00:38:53,040 --> 00:38:55,400
Speaker 1: they're like, we're not gonna do much to help you

689
00:38:55,440 --> 00:38:58,200
Speaker 1: win this war, but we will reap the benefits they

690
00:38:58,239 --> 00:39:05,400
Speaker 1: bought the dip, Yeah, European civilization, the moon. Yeah. So

691
00:39:05,480 --> 00:39:08,480
Speaker 1: after World War One, romanias in this really interesting position.

692
00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:10,640
Speaker 1: They are subject to a lot of the same forces

693
00:39:10,680 --> 00:39:13,040
Speaker 1: that are you know, going wild in Russia. This is

694
00:39:13,080 --> 00:39:15,839
Speaker 1: the height height of the Russian Civil War. Um. So

695
00:39:15,880 --> 00:39:19,680
Speaker 1: the left has this huge surge in popularity. But Romania

696
00:39:19,760 --> 00:39:23,040
Speaker 1: also has a pretty stable constitutional monarchy with this like

697
00:39:23,120 --> 00:39:29,480
Speaker 1: parliamentary system right um and so because and you know,

698
00:39:30,120 --> 00:39:32,560
Speaker 1: it's interesting that it works this way. But rather than

699
00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:36,560
Speaker 1: kind of all of the the energy on the left

700
00:39:36,600 --> 00:39:38,759
Speaker 1: that is obviously like plays a huge role in what

701
00:39:38,800 --> 00:39:41,560
Speaker 1: happens in Russia, rather than that leading to the establishment

702
00:39:41,920 --> 00:39:45,959
Speaker 1: of a super radical political part left wing political party

703
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:48,239
Speaker 1: in Romania that wants to get rid of the monarchy,

704
00:39:48,400 --> 00:39:51,759
Speaker 1: changed the nature of the state entirely institute a socialist state,

705
00:39:52,160 --> 00:39:55,040
Speaker 1: they get a left wing political party called the National

706
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:58,680
Speaker 1: Peasants Party UM, which is is very large. I think

707
00:39:58,680 --> 00:40:00,600
Speaker 1: it wins like seventy eight per end of the vote

708
00:40:00,640 --> 00:40:04,319
Speaker 1: and it's it's most successful election UM. And it's advocating

709
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:06,000
Speaker 1: for like a lot. Well it's because they're saying, like,

710
00:40:06,000 --> 00:40:08,120
Speaker 1: we want land reform, right, this thing that they had

711
00:40:08,160 --> 00:40:11,840
Speaker 1: just had an uprising about. But they don't ever get

712
00:40:12,040 --> 00:40:16,400
Speaker 1: like an organized large communist movement. And in fact, for

713
00:40:16,560 --> 00:40:20,120
Speaker 1: most of the twenties and thirties, there's maybe a thousand

714
00:40:20,520 --> 00:40:24,000
Speaker 1: like organized communists in all of Romania, which is not

715
00:40:24,120 --> 00:40:26,560
Speaker 1: a ton, like there's several million people in the country.

716
00:40:26,560 --> 00:40:30,480
Speaker 1: So it's it's a very small population. Now, the organized

717
00:40:30,520 --> 00:40:35,040
Speaker 1: far right is a lot larger than the communist left. Obviously,

718
00:40:35,080 --> 00:40:38,160
Speaker 1: it's still a smaller chunk of the country because Romania,

719
00:40:38,560 --> 00:40:41,560
Speaker 1: Romanian people tend to vote sort of progressive left in

720
00:40:41,600 --> 00:40:44,880
Speaker 1: this period. Um, but the organized far right in Romania

721
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:47,920
Speaker 1: is very aggressive and very organized, and they start carrying

722
00:40:47,920 --> 00:40:50,440
Speaker 1: a lot out, a lot of violent fascist marches and

723
00:40:50,800 --> 00:40:54,280
Speaker 1: particularly attacks against the Jewish population of towns and cities,

724
00:40:54,280 --> 00:40:55,960
Speaker 1: and it becomes more and more common in the twenties

725
00:40:56,000 --> 00:41:01,319
Speaker 1: and thirties. Um. So yeah, uh uh. This is the

726
00:41:01,400 --> 00:41:04,959
Speaker 1: country and the political situation that our hero for this week,

727
00:41:05,080 --> 00:41:10,280
Speaker 1: Nikolai Chowchesco, is born into on January twenty three, nineteen eighteen.

728
00:41:10,440 --> 00:41:13,839
Speaker 1: So he like comes into being right as this, you know,

729
00:41:14,040 --> 00:41:16,640
Speaker 1: post World War One, Romania starts to be a thing.

730
00:41:17,200 --> 00:41:20,120
Speaker 1: His father, whose name is Andrew Toa, owned a small

731
00:41:20,200 --> 00:41:23,839
Speaker 1: farm in a village called scournish Cesti. And I'm I'm

732
00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:26,760
Speaker 1: gonna try on the names here. I listened to pronunciations.

733
00:41:26,760 --> 00:41:28,120
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get all of these right, guys.

734
00:41:28,160 --> 00:41:30,600
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, there's a lot of Romanian names and I

735
00:41:30,600 --> 00:41:35,400
Speaker 1: I look, I scored a sesty's probably close enough. His

736
00:41:35,520 --> 00:41:37,880
Speaker 1: dad raised cheap and worked part time as a tailor.

737
00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:40,360
Speaker 1: The family was about as poor as it as possible

738
00:41:40,400 --> 00:41:42,839
Speaker 1: to be, uh, and any money that did come into

739
00:41:42,880 --> 00:41:45,719
Speaker 1: them went swiftly to Andrewda's drinking habit. So he is

740
00:41:46,160 --> 00:41:50,759
Speaker 1: a religious extremist and an alcoholic. Um And for mysterious,

741
00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:54,120
Speaker 1: mysterious reasons, Nikolai Chesko is going to decide he does

742
00:41:54,200 --> 00:41:57,480
Speaker 1: not want to live around this guy for much longer. Um.

743
00:41:57,600 --> 00:42:01,840
Speaker 1: Very shocking. Uh. So there's this journalist, Romanian journalist Catalan

744
00:42:01,880 --> 00:42:05,840
Speaker 1: Gruia who interviewed people in Curchescu's hometown after his demise.

745
00:42:06,200 --> 00:42:09,719
Speaker 1: Here's what he writes about Andrew dub. He didn't take

746
00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:11,880
Speaker 1: care of his kids. He stole, he drank, he was

747
00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:14,400
Speaker 1: quick to fight, and he swore, said the old priest

748
00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:17,600
Speaker 1: from scorn Sesti. His mother was a submissive, hard working woman.

749
00:42:17,680 --> 00:42:19,800
Speaker 1: The families slept on benches along the walls of a

750
00:42:19,840 --> 00:42:23,360
Speaker 1: two room house. Corn mush was their staple food. Nikolai

751
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:25,799
Speaker 1: went to the village school for years. The teacher taught

752
00:42:25,800 --> 00:42:28,840
Speaker 1: simultaneous classes for different years in a one room schoolhouse.

753
00:42:29,040 --> 00:42:31,279
Speaker 1: The young Cechescu did not have books, and he often

754
00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:34,080
Speaker 1: went to school barefoot, an outsider from early on, he

755
00:42:34,120 --> 00:42:37,360
Speaker 1: did not have friends. He was anxious and unpredictable. You

756
00:42:37,440 --> 00:42:40,319
Speaker 1: brought a lot of Boston energy to the beginning there. Oh,

757
00:42:40,320 --> 00:42:45,480
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. Quick to fight all the time,

758
00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:48,960
Speaker 1: always down at the chowder house. That's right, Yeah, that's right,

759
00:42:49,040 --> 00:42:53,120
Speaker 1: very good, getting into fights at the duncan um Yeah,

760
00:42:53,160 --> 00:42:55,960
Speaker 1: and curchesco. He doesn't ever fit in, right, He's not.

761
00:42:56,120 --> 00:42:59,439
Speaker 1: He certainly doesn't fit in in this small rural village. Um.

762
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:03,080
Speaker 1: He's an anxious kid. He's got a stutter. Um. He

763
00:43:03,200 --> 00:43:06,480
Speaker 1: seems to be pretty smart. Surviving records indicate he did

764
00:43:06,520 --> 00:43:08,880
Speaker 1: well in primary school. He had like the third highest

765
00:43:08,920 --> 00:43:11,799
Speaker 1: grade in his class. But education was never going to

766
00:43:11,840 --> 00:43:14,480
Speaker 1: be like a focus on his early life. Uh. And

767
00:43:14,560 --> 00:43:17,480
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty nine, at age eleven, he leaves home.

768
00:43:17,560 --> 00:43:20,719
Speaker 1: He just is like fuck fuck living with an abusive

769
00:43:20,760 --> 00:43:23,640
Speaker 1: religious fundamentalist. I'm going to go to buch Arest and

770
00:43:23,680 --> 00:43:26,640
Speaker 1: live with my sister. Um so he ever and he

771
00:43:27,120 --> 00:43:32,920
Speaker 1: yeah at eleven when hard back then, Yeah, eleven is

772
00:43:32,960 --> 00:43:37,080
Speaker 1: like a hard twenty eight like nowadays. Yeah, eleven is

773
00:43:37,120 --> 00:43:40,680
Speaker 1: like eleven is like twenty eight from like the grizzledest

774
00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:44,200
Speaker 1: guy that you knew in your twenties, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,

775
00:43:44,520 --> 00:43:48,520
Speaker 1: the toughest nails. This is like lift for ultimate fighting. Yeah,

776
00:43:48,520 --> 00:43:50,880
Speaker 1: he has as many stories of woe, is like a

777
00:43:51,000 --> 00:43:54,080
Speaker 1: seventy five year old Irish farmer by this point, Like

778
00:43:54,080 --> 00:43:56,359
Speaker 1: when you see those like pictures of like twenty five

779
00:43:56,440 --> 00:44:01,560
Speaker 1: year olds coming back from war, You're just like, oh no, yeah.

780
00:44:01,560 --> 00:44:03,680
Speaker 1: So he he gets to buk arreest he moves in

781
00:44:03,719 --> 00:44:06,239
Speaker 1: with his sister. He's he's working as a shoemaker, and

782
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:09,080
Speaker 1: this is what first brings him into contact with Romania's

783
00:44:09,160 --> 00:44:12,600
Speaker 1: fairly small communist movement, because the guy he apprenticed for

784
00:44:12,760 --> 00:44:15,719
Speaker 1: was a member of the Romanian Communist Party and he

785
00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:18,600
Speaker 1: takes Nikolai under his wing. This is an act of

786
00:44:18,680 --> 00:44:22,279
Speaker 1: pure happenstance. Again, the National Peasants Party is pretty left wing,

787
00:44:22,800 --> 00:44:25,400
Speaker 1: uh and a lot more popular. Um So, there's just

788
00:44:25,480 --> 00:44:27,520
Speaker 1: not a whole lot of people who do fall in

789
00:44:27,560 --> 00:44:29,840
Speaker 1: with the Communists in this period, and the fact that

790
00:44:29,960 --> 00:44:32,279
Speaker 1: Nikolai wound up under the influence of one of the

791
00:44:32,320 --> 00:44:35,480
Speaker 1: fairly few active Communists in buch Arest is a wild

792
00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:38,680
Speaker 1: stroke of faith that would prove pretty bad for everyone involved,

793
00:44:38,680 --> 00:44:42,440
Speaker 1: including the Communists. At first, though Chachko just did odd

794
00:44:42,520 --> 00:44:45,759
Speaker 1: jobs for his boss. The Romanian Communist Party had been

795
00:44:45,800 --> 00:44:50,040
Speaker 1: made illegal by the king um because royals don't tend

796
00:44:50,120 --> 00:44:54,280
Speaker 1: to like communists, um and vice versa. So even basic

797
00:44:54,360 --> 00:44:57,520
Speaker 1: things like sending letters and distributing newspapers had to be

798
00:44:57,560 --> 00:45:01,120
Speaker 1: done underground. It was illegal to advocate for the Communist Party.

799
00:45:01,160 --> 00:45:04,040
Speaker 1: So Nikolai is kind of a low level errand boy

800
00:45:04,080 --> 00:45:06,680
Speaker 1: helping them do this, helping them keep up communication between

801
00:45:06,719 --> 00:45:09,920
Speaker 1: different cells, helping them distribute newsletters and all that stuff

802
00:45:09,960 --> 00:45:12,440
Speaker 1: in this communist underground. That's kind of growing up in

803
00:45:12,480 --> 00:45:16,280
Speaker 1: buch Arest. Um. He did not occupy a privileged position,

804
00:45:16,400 --> 00:45:18,759
Speaker 1: and and to his credit, he seems to be the

805
00:45:18,880 --> 00:45:21,400
Speaker 1: kind of kid who had no problem throwing down in

806
00:45:21,440 --> 00:45:24,560
Speaker 1: the street for his beliefs. He is not like um,

807
00:45:24,560 --> 00:45:28,319
Speaker 1: he's not like taking a taken a the easy jobs right,

808
00:45:28,840 --> 00:45:31,880
Speaker 1: not arrest. He's not a Twitter pundit here, No, he

809
00:45:32,320 --> 00:45:34,120
Speaker 1: is not a Twitter pundit. One thing you have to

810
00:45:34,120 --> 00:45:35,799
Speaker 1: give the kid is that he is putting his skin

811
00:45:35,840 --> 00:45:38,800
Speaker 1: in the game. His first arrest is at age fifteen,

812
00:45:39,080 --> 00:45:41,359
Speaker 1: when he gets picked up in this massive street fight

813
00:45:41,400 --> 00:45:44,319
Speaker 1: outside of a strike. Basically, he's like siding with a

814
00:45:44,320 --> 00:45:47,719
Speaker 1: bunch of striking workers and the police show up and

815
00:45:47,760 --> 00:45:49,840
Speaker 1: he winds up brawling in the street with the fucking

816
00:45:49,880 --> 00:45:53,719
Speaker 1: cops and such. Next year, if you're if somebody's ever

817
00:45:53,760 --> 00:45:56,120
Speaker 1: like they were caught brawling in the street with the cops,

818
00:45:56,160 --> 00:46:00,520
Speaker 1: you're like, all right, Yeah, at this point, he's a

819
00:46:00,520 --> 00:46:04,000
Speaker 1: fifteen year old boy who's been arrested for throwing hands

820
00:46:04,120 --> 00:46:08,879
Speaker 1: in order to him striking workers. Yeah. The next year

821
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:12,040
Speaker 1: he gets busted for circulating a petition protesting the treatment

822
00:46:12,040 --> 00:46:15,160
Speaker 1: of rail workers who had unionized illegally. Right, so the

823
00:46:15,200 --> 00:46:17,759
Speaker 1: state is punishing these workers because they're not allowed to

824
00:46:17,840 --> 00:46:20,480
Speaker 1: unionize and they try to, and he circulates a petition

825
00:46:20,520 --> 00:46:23,959
Speaker 1: being like that's fucked up, and he goes to jail again. Um,

826
00:46:24,040 --> 00:46:27,200
Speaker 1: so it's it's some historians. There's a debate here between

827
00:46:27,200 --> 00:46:28,960
Speaker 1: at least the people that I've encountered, as to whether

828
00:46:29,080 --> 00:46:33,440
Speaker 1: or not is Certescu a a committed, ideologically committed communist

829
00:46:33,960 --> 00:46:36,360
Speaker 1: or is this kind of just something he falls into

830
00:46:36,440 --> 00:46:39,720
Speaker 1: and winds up committing to because of other reasons. Um

831
00:46:39,840 --> 00:46:42,759
Speaker 1: Kittlin Gria puts it this way. The switch from a

832
00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:44,919
Speaker 1: world in which he couldn't find his place, his own

833
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:47,440
Speaker 1: village to another in which he still couldn't find his place.

834
00:46:47,480 --> 00:46:51,480
Speaker 1: The intimidating city marked him. His initiation into the marginalized

835
00:46:51,520 --> 00:46:54,560
Speaker 1: movement of the communist was his alternative solution for integrating

836
00:46:54,560 --> 00:46:58,400
Speaker 1: into social life, says sociologist Pavel Campingu, author of the

837
00:46:58,440 --> 00:47:01,919
Speaker 1: book Chochesco the count Own. So it's one angle that

838
00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:04,640
Speaker 1: that that that camping you and and it certainly seems

839
00:47:04,680 --> 00:47:07,319
Speaker 1: Gruya are pushing, which is that like, he doesn't really

840
00:47:07,360 --> 00:47:10,560
Speaker 1: fit in anywhere, and the communist movement, even though it

841
00:47:10,640 --> 00:47:13,120
Speaker 1: is a very fringe and dangerous to be involved with,

842
00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:15,799
Speaker 1: it offers him like this sense of belonging that he

843
00:47:15,840 --> 00:47:17,960
Speaker 1: hasn't found anywhere else. So this is kind of his

844
00:47:18,040 --> 00:47:23,040
Speaker 1: way of having a social life. Um, there's a different argument,

845
00:47:23,120 --> 00:47:26,120
Speaker 1: and Paul Kenyon makes it in his book. Uh that

846
00:47:26,239 --> 00:47:28,239
Speaker 1: is also kind of adjacent to that one. It's just

847
00:47:28,320 --> 00:47:31,880
Speaker 1: it's interesting. Uh. Quote contemporary said he had little genuine

848
00:47:31,880 --> 00:47:34,960
Speaker 1: interest in politics and might easily have chosen the Green

849
00:47:35,000 --> 00:47:38,399
Speaker 1: Shirts or the Green Shirts of Qadriano's Iron Guard, which

850
00:47:38,440 --> 00:47:41,560
Speaker 1: is like the fascist movement. But Nikolai Chowchesku wanted to

851
00:47:41,600 --> 00:47:43,560
Speaker 1: meet girls, and some of his friends had told him

852
00:47:43,560 --> 00:47:47,319
Speaker 1: the prettiest were in the Communist Party. So I don't know,

853
00:47:47,600 --> 00:47:49,680
Speaker 1: maybe both of those things are true. That he falls

854
00:47:49,680 --> 00:47:53,040
Speaker 1: in with the Communists because it's the kind of the

855
00:47:53,080 --> 00:47:55,560
Speaker 1: only place he fits in socially, and also part of

856
00:47:55,600 --> 00:47:57,719
Speaker 1: why he thinks he'll fit in socially there is someone

857
00:47:57,760 --> 00:48:00,480
Speaker 1: tells him the prettiest girls are Communists. Seems like he

858
00:48:00,600 --> 00:48:04,000
Speaker 1: might be just going with the flow, that his ideologies

859
00:48:04,160 --> 00:48:08,799
Speaker 1: are not ironclad, that he's just like, yeah, alright, I'm

860
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:11,480
Speaker 1: going to go to there. I think that seems realistic,

861
00:48:11,560 --> 00:48:13,880
Speaker 1: that like he's looking for friends and he's looking to

862
00:48:14,080 --> 00:48:17,480
Speaker 1: hit on chicks, and the Communists offer him that opportunity.

863
00:48:17,480 --> 00:48:20,160
Speaker 1: And also over time, is he like fights with them

864
00:48:20,160 --> 00:48:22,279
Speaker 1: in the street and does time, he just kind of

865
00:48:22,320 --> 00:48:25,440
Speaker 1: gets more committed because when you when you do prison

866
00:48:25,480 --> 00:48:28,759
Speaker 1: time for a cause, maybe you wind up reading about it,

867
00:48:29,160 --> 00:48:31,640
Speaker 1: which I think is kind of the way his his

868
00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:34,080
Speaker 1: his story goes, Also, you don't want to double you

869
00:48:34,120 --> 00:48:36,600
Speaker 1: want to double down if you've done damn, If like

870
00:48:36,680 --> 00:48:39,840
Speaker 1: you've damaged yourself because of your commitment to a belief.

871
00:48:40,280 --> 00:48:42,680
Speaker 1: It's so much harder to reject that belief than it

872
00:48:42,760 --> 00:48:44,000
Speaker 1: is to be like, let me tell you why I

873
00:48:44,040 --> 00:48:46,239
Speaker 1: was right. I still defend my choice to get a

874
00:48:46,280 --> 00:48:49,839
Speaker 1: Sega Genesis over a Supernintendo, even though I know I

875
00:48:49,920 --> 00:48:53,640
Speaker 1: was wrong. Well, and as I always say, being a

876
00:48:53,680 --> 00:48:57,120
Speaker 1: Second Genesis kid in the nineties is the being a

877
00:48:57,160 --> 00:49:02,640
Speaker 1: communist underground activist of of nineteen twenties Romania. You know, same,

878
00:49:03,560 --> 00:49:07,800
Speaker 1: essentially identical experiences, right down to the fact that Jeff

879
00:49:07,920 --> 00:49:12,120
Speaker 1: you in the nineteen seventies wound up in charge of

880
00:49:12,160 --> 00:49:15,439
Speaker 1: a small Eastern European nation that you then led into

881
00:49:15,560 --> 00:49:19,359
Speaker 1: tremendous calamity. How did I do it? You know, things

882
00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:23,920
Speaker 1: have happened. You should at least you didn't get a Dreamcast.

883
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:25,759
Speaker 1: Then then we'd be dealing with a death toll in

884
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:28,560
Speaker 1: the millions. Let me tell you, I had a friend

885
00:49:28,680 --> 00:49:32,760
Speaker 1: you could just bootleg games on Dreamcast. What a time

886
00:49:32,800 --> 00:49:36,600
Speaker 1: that was. You could just these days Eugen's ears, don't know,

887
00:49:36,760 --> 00:49:41,399
Speaker 1: with your with your steams and your whatever Nintendo's you got. Now,

888
00:49:41,719 --> 00:49:44,680
Speaker 1: we we used to have real variety in gaming. There

889
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:48,719
Speaker 1: was that game with the Dolphin. There was taxi game

890
00:49:48,800 --> 00:49:51,160
Speaker 1: that was kind of like Grand Theft Auto. Was that

891
00:49:51,360 --> 00:49:53,960
Speaker 1: Simpson's game that was a rip off of that taxi game? Oh?

892
00:49:54,040 --> 00:49:57,839
Speaker 1: It was a glorious age. Uh huh, what a time

893
00:49:57,880 --> 00:50:00,759
Speaker 1: to be alive. That was I worked video game I

894
00:50:00,760 --> 00:50:02,920
Speaker 1: worked at the Toys Arrests video game section then, so

895
00:50:02,960 --> 00:50:04,640
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I can name all of these things.

896
00:50:05,760 --> 00:50:09,919
Speaker 1: So Nikolai Chochcu is uh, you know, he's the he's

897
00:50:09,960 --> 00:50:15,719
Speaker 1: the he's the second dreamcast, uh, owner of the of

898
00:50:15,760 --> 00:50:19,399
Speaker 1: the Romanian political spectrum. I guess um by which I mean.

899
00:50:19,960 --> 00:50:23,160
Speaker 1: He was very, very vocal about his beliefs and very

900
00:50:23,200 --> 00:50:25,680
Speaker 1: committed at a certain point, at least to them. But

901
00:50:25,719 --> 00:50:28,320
Speaker 1: he was also not the most competent activist, and a

902
00:50:28,360 --> 00:50:30,799
Speaker 1: number of his fellow communists would later argue that, like

903
00:50:31,400 --> 00:50:33,600
Speaker 1: the fact that he kept getting arrested for the cause

904
00:50:33,960 --> 00:50:36,839
Speaker 1: was not evidence that he was like a very good

905
00:50:36,840 --> 00:50:38,759
Speaker 1: at what he was doing. More than just that like

906
00:50:39,320 --> 00:50:41,959
Speaker 1: he was he had like a short fuse and would

907
00:50:41,960 --> 00:50:44,279
Speaker 1: get into fights, and he kept getting arrested, and he

908
00:50:44,360 --> 00:50:46,400
Speaker 1: was bad at hiding from the cops and and not

909
00:50:46,480 --> 00:50:49,000
Speaker 1: getting scooped up. It was like, let's put him in

910
00:50:49,040 --> 00:50:53,200
Speaker 1: charge of everything. Yeah, yeah, just fighting everybody in the streets.

911
00:50:54,000 --> 00:50:56,399
Speaker 1: One of the fun things about Esco is no one

912
00:50:56,440 --> 00:50:58,840
Speaker 1: ever says that, and he winds up in charge anyway,

913
00:50:59,600 --> 00:51:05,759
Speaker 1: he's you know, it's very Andrew Jackson energy. Yeah. Um, yes,

914
00:51:05,920 --> 00:51:08,480
Speaker 1: he is here. He'll have one or two things in

915
00:51:08,600 --> 00:51:12,200
Speaker 1: common with Jackson. Um although I guess his big wheel

916
00:51:12,239 --> 00:51:14,400
Speaker 1: of cheese would have been filled with maggots. Although I

917
00:51:14,440 --> 00:51:16,799
Speaker 1: think Jackson's big wheel of cheese was probably filled with

918
00:51:16,880 --> 00:51:21,880
Speaker 1: maggots too. Um. So. Regardless the fact that he keeps

919
00:51:21,920 --> 00:51:23,960
Speaker 1: doing time, and he keeps getting the funk beaten out

920
00:51:23,960 --> 00:51:26,000
Speaker 1: of him by the cops and tortured and all that stuff,

921
00:51:26,520 --> 00:51:29,200
Speaker 1: obviously this earns some respect even from the people who

922
00:51:29,200 --> 00:51:33,040
Speaker 1: are like Jesus, dude, like try running, you know, like

923
00:51:33,400 --> 00:51:36,160
Speaker 1: trying getting arrested every time you go out into the street.

924
00:51:36,520 --> 00:51:38,480
Speaker 1: That's a New England thing too, where it's like I

925
00:51:38,520 --> 00:51:40,080
Speaker 1: know I'm gonna die, but I'm going to fight you

926
00:51:40,120 --> 00:51:45,080
Speaker 1: in this public restroom, yeah doing like Yeah, the entire

927
00:51:45,160 --> 00:51:49,640
Speaker 1: world is his waffle house in South Carolina. Um and yeah,

928
00:51:49,680 --> 00:51:54,719
Speaker 1: he he gets busted repeatedly. His biggest prison sentence so

929
00:51:54,760 --> 00:51:57,120
Speaker 1: far comes when he gets sentenced to two years in

930
00:51:57,200 --> 00:52:00,880
Speaker 1: ninety eight. Um. And and by that time he is

931
00:52:01,120 --> 00:52:04,040
Speaker 1: a pretty notable figure in the Romanian Communist Party, even

932
00:52:04,040 --> 00:52:07,360
Speaker 1: though he's not universally respected now. Nineteen thirty eight is

933
00:52:07,400 --> 00:52:10,360
Speaker 1: an important year in Romanian politics. After the death of

934
00:52:10,440 --> 00:52:14,120
Speaker 1: King Ferdinand, his young son Michael was technically regent, but

935
00:52:14,160 --> 00:52:17,080
Speaker 1: a council of guys governed in his stead. They were

936
00:52:17,120 --> 00:52:20,040
Speaker 1: sympathetic to the main conservative party in Romania, and when

937
00:52:20,080 --> 00:52:23,360
Speaker 1: the National Peasants Party wins a resounding victory in the elections,

938
00:52:23,680 --> 00:52:26,439
Speaker 1: the head of the National Peasants Party decides to try

939
00:52:26,480 --> 00:52:29,439
Speaker 1: and reduce his enemies power by bringing in a new king. Right.

940
00:52:29,760 --> 00:52:33,080
Speaker 1: So you've got this child king who has like this

941
00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:37,520
Speaker 1: guy basically governing for him as a as regent um,

942
00:52:37,560 --> 00:52:40,520
Speaker 1: and that guy is sympathetic to the Conservatives. So when

943
00:52:40,560 --> 00:52:43,800
Speaker 1: this kind of liberal left party takes power, they decide,

944
00:52:43,840 --> 00:52:45,520
Speaker 1: well to bring in a new king who wants to

945
00:52:45,520 --> 00:52:47,719
Speaker 1: work with us. Then we can sideline this guy and

946
00:52:47,760 --> 00:52:50,960
Speaker 1: that'll be good for the Peasants Party. Unfortunately, the new

947
00:52:51,080 --> 00:52:54,440
Speaker 1: king they pick is Prince Carol the Second. Now Carol

948
00:52:54,480 --> 00:52:56,319
Speaker 1: the Second up to this point has been like a

949
00:52:56,360 --> 00:52:59,080
Speaker 1: playboy royal. He spent actually a lot of his life

950
00:52:59,080 --> 00:53:01,680
Speaker 1: outside Romania because he falls in love with this chick,

951
00:53:02,040 --> 00:53:04,160
Speaker 1: but he's not allowed to marry her because she's not

952
00:53:04,280 --> 00:53:08,319
Speaker 1: royal enough. So he's like fucking move man, Yeah, yeah,

953
00:53:08,320 --> 00:53:11,880
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go live somewhere else with this broad um.

954
00:53:11,920 --> 00:53:13,160
Speaker 1: And he had been, as far as I can tell,

955
00:53:13,239 --> 00:53:15,560
Speaker 1: kind of a political most of his life. Again, he's

956
00:53:15,600 --> 00:53:18,600
Speaker 1: mostly interested in like fucking and partying um, and was

957
00:53:18,640 --> 00:53:22,160
Speaker 1: probably most famous in when at the outbreak of World

958
00:53:22,160 --> 00:53:24,239
Speaker 1: War One, he's in a military unit like a lot

959
00:53:24,280 --> 00:53:27,400
Speaker 1: of royals are, and he immediately deserts. He's just like

960
00:53:27,520 --> 00:53:30,719
Speaker 1: absolutely not. Oh yeah, man, i am not doing a

961
00:53:30,760 --> 00:53:35,080
Speaker 1: World War One. So again, unproblematic so far, but once

962
00:53:35,120 --> 00:53:37,239
Speaker 1: he gets brought in as king, he well, I mean,

963
00:53:37,320 --> 00:53:40,320
Speaker 1: he immediately proves to be problematic. Actually, so, Carol the

964
00:53:40,400 --> 00:53:44,759
Speaker 1: Second effectively derails the progressive, land justice oriented policies of

965
00:53:44,760 --> 00:53:47,719
Speaker 1: the National Peasants Party while playing the conservative and the

966
00:53:47,760 --> 00:53:50,520
Speaker 1: growing far right parties off of each other. And this

967
00:53:50,600 --> 00:53:53,360
Speaker 1: is a pretty impressive balancing act at the time that

968
00:53:53,400 --> 00:53:55,560
Speaker 1: he's able to kind of like weaponize all these groups

969
00:53:55,600 --> 00:53:59,840
Speaker 1: against each other to solidify his own power. Throughout this period,

970
00:53:59,840 --> 00:54:03,279
Speaker 1: the Great Depression hits and Romania is obviously suffering as

971
00:54:03,360 --> 00:54:05,600
Speaker 1: much as at least as much as everywhere else is.

972
00:54:05,640 --> 00:54:08,279
Speaker 1: And the fact that Carol the Second is kind of

973
00:54:08,320 --> 00:54:12,400
Speaker 1: derailing the Peasants Party's ability to push for real reform

974
00:54:12,560 --> 00:54:15,840
Speaker 1: leads leaves a lot of voters to abandon them and

975
00:54:15,880 --> 00:54:19,480
Speaker 1: abandon kind of the progressive left and start sighting with

976
00:54:19,560 --> 00:54:23,520
Speaker 1: these weird domestic fascists that have started to become very

977
00:54:23,560 --> 00:54:29,480
Speaker 1: popular in Romania called the Iron Guard. Never happen here, no, no, no,

978
00:54:29,640 --> 00:54:32,680
Speaker 1: It's only happens in the Romania this one time. So

979
00:54:33,520 --> 00:54:35,759
Speaker 1: the Iron Guard are also called the Legionaries or the

980
00:54:35,840 --> 00:54:39,400
Speaker 1: Legionary Movement. Again, like Romania, there's a big heart on

981
00:54:39,520 --> 00:54:41,800
Speaker 1: especially in kind of like the nationalist side of things,

982
00:54:41,840 --> 00:54:44,759
Speaker 1: for for Roman history, so they are kind of consciously

983
00:54:44,880 --> 00:54:47,600
Speaker 1: like talking back to their Roman heritage and calling these

984
00:54:47,600 --> 00:54:50,600
Speaker 1: guys the legion Eary Movement. UM. The Iron Guard are

985
00:54:50,640 --> 00:54:53,760
Speaker 1: founded by a fascist Death Squad member and a medieval

986
00:54:53,800 --> 00:55:00,160
Speaker 1: myst mystic named Cornelio Quadriano UM and Kadriano will an

987
00:55:00,160 --> 00:55:02,640
Speaker 1: episode on him at some point. He's a fascinating fascist

988
00:55:02,640 --> 00:55:05,320
Speaker 1: and one that we don't talk about enough. He's fascinating,

989
00:55:06,080 --> 00:55:09,880
Speaker 1: he is fascinating. UM. He is kind of a mix

990
00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:14,440
Speaker 1: between like there's an element of him that's like the

991
00:55:14,440 --> 00:55:16,960
Speaker 1: Gavin McGinnis proud boy type where he forms this street

992
00:55:17,000 --> 00:55:20,560
Speaker 1: fighting organization. But he also like he becomes famous because

993
00:55:20,560 --> 00:55:23,040
Speaker 1: he assassinates a dude like he. One of the things

994
00:55:23,080 --> 00:55:26,239
Speaker 1: he's he tells his young followers is you need to

995
00:55:26,280 --> 00:55:29,280
Speaker 1: be forming death squads and murdering people, and it's okay

996
00:55:29,360 --> 00:55:32,360
Speaker 1: if we get executed, like that's actually dope. If we

997
00:55:32,440 --> 00:55:35,759
Speaker 1: get killed for assassinating leftists, like, that's the thing that

998
00:55:35,760 --> 00:55:39,400
Speaker 1: we should seek to do. Um So he definitely sucks.

999
00:55:39,440 --> 00:55:42,200
Speaker 1: Another one of his beliefs is that he needs to

1000
00:55:42,239 --> 00:55:44,600
Speaker 1: father thousands of children with women at all levels of

1001
00:55:44,680 --> 00:55:47,840
Speaker 1: Romanian society because the saint that he liked, he believes

1002
00:55:47,880 --> 00:55:50,640
Speaker 1: did that too. Um So it's a good way to

1003
00:55:50,680 --> 00:55:54,000
Speaker 1: find a saint man, which saint is all about straight

1004
00:55:54,080 --> 00:56:00,760
Speaker 1: fucking this horny fascist, uh fucking mystic who yeah, dresses

1005
00:56:00,800 --> 00:56:03,840
Speaker 1: like himidieval like basically dresses in rin fair gear, marching

1006
00:56:03,880 --> 00:56:07,280
Speaker 1: from town to town and inciting pagrams. Right, that's Kadrian,

1007
00:56:07,360 --> 00:56:14,160
Speaker 1: who's like primary method of tour. He's an anti smack tour. Yeah. Now,

1008
00:56:14,200 --> 00:56:17,520
Speaker 1: obviously Hitler loves this guy. Hitler is a big Kadrian

1009
00:56:17,600 --> 00:56:21,240
Speaker 1: new fan. Um and as his means power, the Nazis

1010
00:56:21,280 --> 00:56:24,200
Speaker 1: starts shipping guns over to the Iron Guard, right, kind

1011
00:56:24,239 --> 00:56:27,120
Speaker 1: of like underground, here have some guns. We'll be over

1012
00:56:27,200 --> 00:56:31,600
Speaker 1: there pretty soon, guys, so get ready. Um. King Carol

1013
00:56:31,680 --> 00:56:34,600
Speaker 1: the Second he finds the Iron Guard useful in some ways,

1014
00:56:34,719 --> 00:56:37,719
Speaker 1: and he's, you know, perfectly willing to overlook a few pagrams,

1015
00:56:37,760 --> 00:56:40,920
Speaker 1: even though his mistress is Jewish, um, because he's like, hey,

1016
00:56:41,320 --> 00:56:43,640
Speaker 1: you know, whatever helps me, whatever helps me stop these

1017
00:56:43,719 --> 00:56:46,440
Speaker 1: peasant people from reducing the power of of the royals.

1018
00:56:46,920 --> 00:56:50,600
Speaker 1: Political anti semites were selective in their choice of enforcement.

1019
00:56:50,719 --> 00:56:54,200
Speaker 1: That's shocking. Another thing that only occurred once in Romania.

1020
00:56:54,960 --> 00:56:59,200
Speaker 1: So King Carol the Second generally considers the fascist useful,

1021
00:56:59,520 --> 00:57:02,000
Speaker 1: whereas the socialists and the Peasants Party people they want

1022
00:57:02,040 --> 00:57:05,200
Speaker 1: to reduce his power, so he he sides with them

1023
00:57:05,280 --> 00:57:09,200
Speaker 1: a lot throughout the twenties, um, in early thirties. But

1024
00:57:09,600 --> 00:57:13,440
Speaker 1: then in like nineteen thirty seven, the Iron Guard starts

1025
00:57:13,480 --> 00:57:15,759
Speaker 1: to win larger and larger shares of the vote. I

1026
00:57:15,800 --> 00:57:18,800
Speaker 1: think they top out at of the vote in the

1027
00:57:18,880 --> 00:57:22,400
Speaker 1: thirty seven election. Um, and he's like, oh shit, well,

1028
00:57:22,480 --> 00:57:26,080
Speaker 1: I can't really control these guys necessarily right like the

1029
00:57:26,360 --> 00:57:28,840
Speaker 1: they were it was a good bet to back them earlier,

1030
00:57:28,920 --> 00:57:31,720
Speaker 1: but now Quadrian who's like getting within spitting distance of

1031
00:57:31,800 --> 00:57:34,480
Speaker 1: real power and he doesn't owe me anything, right, Like

1032
00:57:34,640 --> 00:57:37,400
Speaker 1: he's not I can't actually trust this guy. He could

1033
00:57:37,440 --> 00:57:40,320
Speaker 1: fuck me up even worse than these Peasants party people would.

1034
00:57:40,720 --> 00:57:43,280
Speaker 1: So Carol the second starts to panic. So hard for

1035
00:57:43,360 --> 00:57:46,360
Speaker 1: me not to hear you go party people whenever you

1036
00:57:46,400 --> 00:57:48,720
Speaker 1: say party people. By the way, yeah, I mean most

1037
00:57:48,800 --> 00:57:51,640
Speaker 1: of these parties would have would have sucked, asked. I

1038
00:57:51,680 --> 00:57:54,760
Speaker 1: mean I assumed the National Peasants Party parties would have

1039
00:57:54,800 --> 00:57:56,960
Speaker 1: been Okay, not a lot of there it is happening

1040
00:57:57,040 --> 00:57:59,640
Speaker 1: and apparently, hey, all the all the hot people are

1041
00:57:59,640 --> 00:58:01,800
Speaker 1: at the mean this party, so that sounds that sounds

1042
00:58:01,840 --> 00:58:04,400
Speaker 1: like it could be good. Um, although you might wind

1043
00:58:04,480 --> 00:58:07,280
Speaker 1: up fucking Nikolai Chauchesco, which is a mixed bag, although

1044
00:58:07,280 --> 00:58:11,160
Speaker 1: Sophie says he's hot, so you know, Sophie is down.

1045
00:58:11,720 --> 00:58:16,200
Speaker 1: Only one photo. I take it back, only one photo. Oh,

1046
00:58:16,280 --> 00:58:17,720
Speaker 1: he was just one of those guys that got caught

1047
00:58:17,760 --> 00:58:21,760
Speaker 1: at a good angle once. It looked almost like a

1048
00:58:21,880 --> 00:58:24,080
Speaker 1: mug shot. I don't know if it actually is or not,

1049
00:58:24,320 --> 00:58:26,240
Speaker 1: but there was like one photo and then you like

1050
00:58:26,360 --> 00:58:30,880
Speaker 1: look at the rest of your like, oh no, sharing

1051
00:58:31,080 --> 00:58:35,240
Speaker 1: the hot Stalin photo. Yeah yeah, which is not not

1052
00:58:35,440 --> 00:58:40,760
Speaker 1: act shockingly, you can't rely on on pictures of Joseph

1053
00:58:40,840 --> 00:58:43,800
Speaker 1: Stalin to know how he actually looked. Um, But you

1054
00:58:43,880 --> 00:58:47,880
Speaker 1: know what, you can rely on Robert Us and no

1055
00:58:47,960 --> 00:58:51,360
Speaker 1: one else and the products and services that support the show.

1056
00:58:52,040 --> 00:58:54,480
Speaker 1: Well sure, I just don't separate between us and the

1057
00:58:54,560 --> 00:58:57,000
Speaker 1: product and services that support our show. You know, we're

1058
00:58:57,080 --> 00:59:00,560
Speaker 1: one beautiful amalgam that you should just I have into

1059
00:59:00,800 --> 00:59:04,120
Speaker 1: and let it. Let it, let it subsume you swim

1060
00:59:04,240 --> 00:59:10,360
Speaker 1: in us, swimming us, stop or it in here. You

1061
00:59:10,440 --> 00:59:12,600
Speaker 1: know what, I love goods and services that are provided

1062
00:59:12,640 --> 00:59:15,400
Speaker 1: by the sponsors of this podcast. As a matter of fact,

1063
00:59:15,680 --> 00:59:18,800
Speaker 1: it should be known that I am a subscriber slash

1064
00:59:18,880 --> 00:59:21,920
Speaker 1: purchaser slash user of all of these things. Yet Jeff's

1065
00:59:21,960 --> 00:59:25,760
Speaker 1: buying gold, He's joined the Washington State Highway Patrol um,

1066
00:59:25,920 --> 00:59:28,120
Speaker 1: He's he's doing all of the things our sponsors are

1067
00:59:28,160 --> 00:59:31,560
Speaker 1: just to do. He's engaging in sports betting. Yep, yep.

1068
00:59:31,640 --> 00:59:41,000
Speaker 1: I'm doing all those things, just really doing them. And

1069
00:59:41,440 --> 00:59:45,600
Speaker 1: we're back. So in the seven elections, the Iron Guard,

1070
00:59:45,680 --> 00:59:49,520
Speaker 1: when the vote and the Peasants Party has like a

1071
00:59:49,600 --> 00:59:51,840
Speaker 1: collapse of their power. You know, they they've gotten something

1072
00:59:51,920 --> 00:59:54,720
Speaker 1: north of like a few years ago, and they get

1073
00:59:55,680 --> 00:59:57,680
Speaker 1: the vote in that election, which is short of the

1074
00:59:58,080 --> 01:00:00,800
Speaker 1: I mean that means that they have they do technically

1075
01:00:00,880 --> 01:00:03,360
Speaker 1: the best, but they need forty of the vote to

1076
01:00:03,480 --> 01:00:07,480
Speaker 1: form a government. Right, so since they don't meet that threshold,

1077
01:00:07,840 --> 01:00:10,040
Speaker 1: the King's going to get to help form the government.

1078
01:00:10,080 --> 01:00:12,040
Speaker 1: And that's that's that's not going to end well. And

1079
01:00:12,040 --> 01:00:14,000
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from the book Children of the Night

1080
01:00:14,080 --> 01:00:17,320
Speaker 1: here and now it was for the King to decide

1081
01:00:17,360 --> 01:00:19,800
Speaker 1: who had become prime minister. He knew the public wanted

1082
01:00:19,840 --> 01:00:22,120
Speaker 1: to change, and began looking down the table of results.

1083
01:00:22,240 --> 01:00:26,400
Speaker 1: In fourth place, behind Quadriano's legionaries was the moderately fascist

1084
01:00:26,600 --> 01:00:30,600
Speaker 1: National Christian Party led via Octavian Goga. The anti semitic

1085
01:00:30,680 --> 01:00:32,520
Speaker 1: poet was a great friend and supporter of the King

1086
01:00:32,600 --> 01:00:35,560
Speaker 1: and Quadriano's most bitter rifle. He had scored just nine

1087
01:00:35,600 --> 01:00:37,800
Speaker 1: percent of the vote. As far as Carol was concerned,

1088
01:00:37,960 --> 01:00:42,240
Speaker 1: he was perfect for the job, and anti semitic poet

1089
01:00:42,560 --> 01:00:47,480
Speaker 1: is the most fascinating combination of two words in history. Yeah,

1090
01:00:47,680 --> 01:00:50,880
Speaker 1: just just just a racist pope. But a moderate fascist

1091
01:00:51,040 --> 01:00:54,880
Speaker 1: would be like Nazi Ballerina, Like, there's just there's certain

1092
01:00:55,000 --> 01:00:59,919
Speaker 1: words that you don't necessarily conflate the two things together. Yeah,

1093
01:01:00,400 --> 01:01:01,880
Speaker 1: and you don't. Also, you don't hear a lot of

1094
01:01:01,960 --> 01:01:06,120
Speaker 1: moderate fascists uh these days, but I guess it is.

1095
01:01:06,200 --> 01:01:08,280
Speaker 1: I mean it is actually a thing in this period,

1096
01:01:08,360 --> 01:01:10,800
Speaker 1: Like it's a it's reasonable to draw a line between

1097
01:01:10,800 --> 01:01:13,480
Speaker 1: the two of them because the Iron Guard UM and

1098
01:01:13,680 --> 01:01:16,760
Speaker 1: the National Christian Party are pretty pretty bitter rivals and

1099
01:01:16,840 --> 01:01:18,880
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time fighting each other. I would

1100
01:01:18,880 --> 01:01:21,479
Speaker 1: add this. I would add that we have that here

1101
01:01:21,640 --> 01:01:24,960
Speaker 1: with the quote law and order. Uh, people that that

1102
01:01:25,120 --> 01:01:27,120
Speaker 1: really they're like, well, you know, I don't believe in

1103
01:01:27,160 --> 01:01:29,160
Speaker 1: all of these things, but you know, we should make

1104
01:01:29,240 --> 01:01:31,120
Speaker 1: sure that anybody that commits a crime is shot in

1105
01:01:31,160 --> 01:01:34,040
Speaker 1: the face. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's those weirdos who are like,

1106
01:01:34,560 --> 01:01:38,120
Speaker 1: I think we should execute people for spraying graffiti during protests,

1107
01:01:38,480 --> 01:01:42,480
Speaker 1: but also funck the January six folks, where it's like, yeah,

1108
01:01:42,560 --> 01:01:49,840
Speaker 1: you're a moderate fascist. Yeah yeah, yeah, so that's who. Uh,

1109
01:01:50,760 --> 01:01:55,760
Speaker 1: that's who. Uh. This moderate fascist poet uh anti Semite

1110
01:01:55,800 --> 01:01:58,720
Speaker 1: Googa gets made Prime Minister by the King and within

1111
01:01:58,920 --> 01:02:02,600
Speaker 1: two days of his appointment, um, he has shut down

1112
01:02:03,040 --> 01:02:06,800
Speaker 1: both of the large Jewish owned newspapers in Romania. UM.

1113
01:02:07,000 --> 01:02:10,080
Speaker 1: He has the Bucharest Bar suspend the licenses of every

1114
01:02:10,160 --> 01:02:13,560
Speaker 1: Jewish lawyer that they can find. Uh. He resends the

1115
01:02:13,640 --> 01:02:17,120
Speaker 1: right to sell liquor and tobacco by Jewish shopkeepers. UM.

1116
01:02:17,400 --> 01:02:20,640
Speaker 1: And he withdraws citizenship from all two hundred and twenty

1117
01:02:20,960 --> 01:02:24,520
Speaker 1: thousand naturalized Romanian Jews. Now, so I'm going to go

1118
01:02:24,600 --> 01:02:28,080
Speaker 1: out on a limb here. Not not cool, not cool,

1119
01:02:28,240 --> 01:02:31,760
Speaker 1: not cool. Sorry if I'm sorry if I'm courting controversy here.

1120
01:02:31,880 --> 01:02:34,280
Speaker 1: But that is an uncool move, kind of a dick move,

1121
01:02:34,400 --> 01:02:37,440
Speaker 1: some would say. And this podcast is brought to you

1122
01:02:37,560 --> 01:02:40,800
Speaker 1: by the letter P for programs, because that's what that's

1123
01:02:40,840 --> 01:02:44,320
Speaker 1: what comes next is there's a bunch of programs because

1124
01:02:44,360 --> 01:02:47,840
Speaker 1: I don't support that that specific one. I do not do.

1125
01:02:48,040 --> 01:02:50,080
Speaker 1: I do not I do not consume that. Yeah, that

1126
01:02:50,200 --> 01:02:53,040
Speaker 1: I mean, we never know who's going to sponsor the

1127
01:02:53,080 --> 01:02:55,840
Speaker 1: show in the programmatic ads, so it's not impossible. But

1128
01:02:55,960 --> 01:02:57,960
Speaker 1: we we we do, we do. We do have a

1129
01:02:58,080 --> 01:03:01,520
Speaker 1: hard no program line our in our ad sheet and

1130
01:03:01,960 --> 01:03:08,000
Speaker 1: back to our regularly scheduled program. Um. So there's a

1131
01:03:08,000 --> 01:03:11,480
Speaker 1: bunch of programs. There's also fighting in the streets between

1132
01:03:12,000 --> 01:03:16,000
Speaker 1: and his green Shirts, uh and between these moderate fascists,

1133
01:03:16,160 --> 01:03:19,040
Speaker 1: right because they're the Green Shirts are angry that they

1134
01:03:19,080 --> 01:03:22,040
Speaker 1: don't get the full fascism. They get some programs, but

1135
01:03:22,120 --> 01:03:25,040
Speaker 1: not all of the prams that they wanted. The idea

1136
01:03:25,080 --> 01:03:27,520
Speaker 1: of a moderate anything getting into a fist fight is

1137
01:03:27,600 --> 01:03:32,960
Speaker 1: just very h I want racism, I want slightly less racism.

1138
01:03:33,160 --> 01:03:41,560
Speaker 1: And so this is all basically a con by King Carol,

1139
01:03:41,680 --> 01:03:44,200
Speaker 1: like he knows that well, if I put you know,

1140
01:03:44,400 --> 01:03:47,240
Speaker 1: this fucking yoga guy in power, he's going to do

1141
01:03:47,320 --> 01:03:50,040
Speaker 1: a bunch of horrible ships and also the legionaries are

1142
01:03:50,080 --> 01:03:52,400
Speaker 1: going to try to do them in uprising and it's

1143
01:03:52,400 --> 01:03:55,080
Speaker 1: going to be this big, gnarly mess. And it is

1144
01:03:55,160 --> 01:03:58,000
Speaker 1: this big, gnarly mess. And he uses that to be like, hey, guys,

1145
01:03:58,320 --> 01:04:01,760
Speaker 1: parliamentary democracy just can't work for some reason. So you

1146
01:04:01,840 --> 01:04:04,200
Speaker 1: know what we're putting an into that. I'm suspending the

1147
01:04:04,280 --> 01:04:07,920
Speaker 1: constitution and now I'm the dictator king. Uh. So he

1148
01:04:08,000 --> 01:04:10,440
Speaker 1: does that in the tenth of February ninety eight, he

1149
01:04:10,480 --> 01:04:17,000
Speaker 1: becomes the dictator king of Romania. Um So that's cool, good,

1150
01:04:17,440 --> 01:04:19,480
Speaker 1: good for him. Uh. And he's not going to be

1151
01:04:19,560 --> 01:04:22,320
Speaker 1: good at this, right, Carol. The second is kind of

1152
01:04:22,400 --> 01:04:25,600
Speaker 1: shitty and everything. Um. The good thing that he does,

1153
01:04:25,640 --> 01:04:27,200
Speaker 1: I will give him credit for one thing, which is

1154
01:04:27,240 --> 01:04:30,120
Speaker 1: that he has Quadrianna murdered. Um. They arrest him in

1155
01:04:30,160 --> 01:04:32,400
Speaker 1: a bunch of his supporters and just execute them at

1156
01:04:32,440 --> 01:04:35,840
Speaker 1: a black site basically, um. And that's okay, I'm i'm

1157
01:04:35,920 --> 01:04:39,360
Speaker 1: I'm not against that. Um. But he mainly executes Quadrianna

1158
01:04:39,720 --> 01:04:43,000
Speaker 1: because he's creating his own fascist movement that is very

1159
01:04:43,080 --> 01:04:46,680
Speaker 1: deliberately ripping off the legionaries. He basically like does the

1160
01:04:47,120 --> 01:04:52,160
Speaker 1: does the fucking Kirkland brand Iron Guard movement. Um. And

1161
01:04:52,240 --> 01:04:55,040
Speaker 1: in fact, like Hitler and the Nazis will like make

1162
01:04:55,120 --> 01:04:57,200
Speaker 1: fun of him for being a fake fascist. They're like,

1163
01:04:57,240 --> 01:04:59,440
Speaker 1: look at this guy, He's not even like a real fascist.

1164
01:04:59,520 --> 01:05:01,920
Speaker 1: He's just being this dude he murdered. It's like when

1165
01:05:01,960 --> 01:05:05,600
Speaker 1: Transformers came out and sci Fi had trans morphers. Yeah, yeah,

1166
01:05:05,640 --> 01:05:09,600
Speaker 1: he has the trans morphers of Romanian fascism. Um. He

1167
01:05:09,760 --> 01:05:12,760
Speaker 1: also steals a huge percentage of the national budget to

1168
01:05:12,880 --> 01:05:15,440
Speaker 1: siphon into his private bank account for when he inevitably

1169
01:05:15,520 --> 01:05:17,680
Speaker 1: gets forced out of the country and has to abdicate.

1170
01:05:17,920 --> 01:05:21,160
Speaker 1: We couldn't have this happening soon. Yeah, we we would

1171
01:05:21,200 --> 01:05:24,320
Speaker 1: not have this happening anytime soon in America. No, No,

1172
01:05:24,640 --> 01:05:26,520
Speaker 1: of course not, of course not because we don't call

1173
01:05:26,560 --> 01:05:31,680
Speaker 1: them kings. So it's fine. Um. Yeah. So the you know,

1174
01:05:31,920 --> 01:05:35,120
Speaker 1: he's he's not a very successful royal dictator. He is

1175
01:05:35,200 --> 01:05:38,000
Speaker 1: not going to last long. Um. And while he is

1176
01:05:38,240 --> 01:05:41,280
Speaker 1: kind of trying to solidify his hold on power, the

1177
01:05:41,440 --> 01:05:46,200
Speaker 1: USSR and Nazi Germany are deciding that, you know, why

1178
01:05:46,280 --> 01:05:48,960
Speaker 1: can't we be friends, which is what that song is about. Actually,

1179
01:05:48,960 --> 01:05:52,200
Speaker 1: it's about the Molotov ribbon trop packed. Um. So the

1180
01:05:52,360 --> 01:05:55,000
Speaker 1: USSR and the Nazis have them a packed and they're like,

1181
01:05:55,480 --> 01:05:57,920
Speaker 1: what if we what if we met in Poland and

1182
01:05:58,160 --> 01:06:02,320
Speaker 1: and kissed at the lie we draw in and enforced

1183
01:06:02,400 --> 01:06:06,600
Speaker 1: with an unbelievable quantity of human blood. Fair By the way,

1184
01:06:06,680 --> 01:06:09,960
Speaker 1: that song is by the band War mm hmm. So

1185
01:06:10,080 --> 01:06:13,040
Speaker 1: it really it really does fit it does It's actually

1186
01:06:13,120 --> 01:06:17,440
Speaker 1: kind of perfect. Um. So, yeah, the USSR and Nazi

1187
01:06:17,520 --> 01:06:21,720
Speaker 1: Germany are like briefly BFFs in in taking Poland and

1188
01:06:21,800 --> 01:06:23,800
Speaker 1: the Molotov ribbon trup packed. A lot of people don't

1189
01:06:23,800 --> 01:06:26,640
Speaker 1: know this, but it contains some secret provisions, and one

1190
01:06:26,680 --> 01:06:29,920
Speaker 1: of those secret provisions is the Nazi saying Stalin, you

1191
01:06:30,000 --> 01:06:33,440
Speaker 1: can take best Arabia from Romania, which is best Arabia

1192
01:06:33,600 --> 01:06:37,080
Speaker 1: is like one of the wealthiest parts of Romania. It's

1193
01:06:37,080 --> 01:06:39,280
Speaker 1: like literally a third of like the population and the

1194
01:06:39,360 --> 01:06:42,720
Speaker 1: economy of Romania is in best Arabia. So when the

1195
01:06:42,800 --> 01:06:47,320
Speaker 1: Soviets moving and take it, Romania is like Hitler, come on, guy,

1196
01:06:47,760 --> 01:06:50,760
Speaker 1: we're kind of fascists. What you want to have our back?

1197
01:06:50,840 --> 01:06:53,440
Speaker 1: And Hitler's like, no, man, you killed my boy Coadrian,

1198
01:06:53,520 --> 01:06:56,920
Speaker 1: Who fuck you guys? So this doesn't work great for anybody.

1199
01:06:57,000 --> 01:06:59,920
Speaker 1: It does certainly does not increase Carol the seconds popular

1200
01:07:00,000 --> 01:07:03,160
Speaker 1: already back home. Um, so that's gonna be one of

1201
01:07:03,200 --> 01:07:05,200
Speaker 1: the reasons why he doesn't last very long. And while

1202
01:07:05,200 --> 01:07:07,440
Speaker 1: all this is going on, right in the late thirties,

1203
01:07:07,520 --> 01:07:11,320
Speaker 1: you've got this fascist movement becoming ascendant. Um, You've got

1204
01:07:11,480 --> 01:07:15,080
Speaker 1: increasing crackdowns on the communist there's maybe seven hundred of them,

1205
01:07:15,360 --> 01:07:17,320
Speaker 1: many of whom are not free in the country at

1206
01:07:17,360 --> 01:07:21,480
Speaker 1: this point in time. Um. But Chochesco, you know, manages

1207
01:07:21,600 --> 01:07:25,600
Speaker 1: to stay alive. Uh he in part because the fascists

1208
01:07:25,680 --> 01:07:29,000
Speaker 1: are not obviously like the Romanian fascist, like all fascists,

1209
01:07:29,040 --> 01:07:31,880
Speaker 1: have a lot of anti communist rhetoric, but the Communists

1210
01:07:31,920 --> 01:07:35,440
Speaker 1: are not the Iron Guards focus because there's just not

1211
01:07:35,600 --> 01:07:37,560
Speaker 1: that many of them, right, It's not like they're They're

1212
01:07:37,600 --> 01:07:40,720
Speaker 1: actually have bigger threats from the state, um, and so

1213
01:07:40,840 --> 01:07:43,240
Speaker 1: that's who they focus on. And so, you know, while

1214
01:07:43,320 --> 01:07:47,440
Speaker 1: Chowchesco is continuing his his string of getting arrested for

1215
01:07:47,480 --> 01:07:50,240
Speaker 1: a bunch of bullshit, he doesn't, you know, get murdered

1216
01:07:50,280 --> 01:07:52,120
Speaker 1: by the Nazis. And he doesn't, I don't think spends

1217
01:07:52,120 --> 01:07:54,280
Speaker 1: a particularly large amount of time fighting with them in

1218
01:07:54,360 --> 01:07:56,760
Speaker 1: the street. What he does do is spend a lot

1219
01:07:56,840 --> 01:07:59,760
Speaker 1: of time hitting on the women of the Romanian Communist Party.

1220
01:08:00,320 --> 01:08:02,800
Speaker 1: This is how in nineteen thirty nine he meets his

1221
01:08:02,920 --> 01:08:06,480
Speaker 1: future wife, Lena Petrescu. She had grown up in a

1222
01:08:06,600 --> 01:08:09,680
Speaker 1: tiny rural village like Nikolai and become a Communist after

1223
01:08:09,760 --> 01:08:12,680
Speaker 1: moving to the city. Elena did not do well in school.

1224
01:08:12,800 --> 01:08:15,200
Speaker 1: Unlike Nikolai, she does not appear to be a good

1225
01:08:15,640 --> 01:08:19,320
Speaker 1: book learner. Um she failed basically every class. But in

1226
01:08:19,400 --> 01:08:21,559
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties she gets a job at a black

1227
01:08:21,600 --> 01:08:24,679
Speaker 1: market pill mill and decides that this means that she's

1228
01:08:24,680 --> 01:08:26,960
Speaker 1: a chemist, So her lifelong ambition is going to be

1229
01:08:27,120 --> 01:08:29,400
Speaker 1: to become a chemist because she works at a pill

1230
01:08:29,439 --> 01:08:33,200
Speaker 1: mill that's basically reverse engineering diet pills and and then

1231
01:08:33,280 --> 01:08:37,439
Speaker 1: pressing them. Um, if you were in a place that's

1232
01:08:37,479 --> 01:08:40,599
Speaker 1: going to war a lot, having what is essentially speed

1233
01:08:41,479 --> 01:08:46,400
Speaker 1: on demand, that's great. Give me some of that bootleg idea.

1234
01:08:47,080 --> 01:08:49,719
Speaker 1: So in the summer of nineteen thirty nine, the Romanian

1235
01:08:49,800 --> 01:08:53,320
Speaker 1: Communist Party holds a picnic uh and a small fare

1236
01:08:53,439 --> 01:08:57,000
Speaker 1: that like includes a fundraising competition. And the way they

1237
01:08:57,040 --> 01:08:59,960
Speaker 1: do this competition is that, like, all of the girl

1238
01:09:00,040 --> 01:09:03,080
Speaker 1: roles get together and they give each of them a number, um,

1239
01:09:03,280 --> 01:09:05,200
Speaker 1: and the girl who is able to basically sell the

1240
01:09:05,280 --> 01:09:08,040
Speaker 1: most tickets to raise funds at this party is named

1241
01:09:08,120 --> 01:09:12,840
Speaker 1: Queen of the ball. Now, Elena is not a charismatic person. Um.

1242
01:09:13,400 --> 01:09:15,599
Speaker 1: She is not good at talking to people, She does

1243
01:09:15,640 --> 01:09:18,800
Speaker 1: not like crowds, she is not social. She is not

1244
01:09:19,000 --> 01:09:21,000
Speaker 1: someone who is going to be very good at selling

1245
01:09:21,040 --> 01:09:23,960
Speaker 1: tickets on her own. But Nikolai seems that pretty much

1246
01:09:24,000 --> 01:09:26,960
Speaker 1: falls in love with her at first sight. Um. He

1247
01:09:27,080 --> 01:09:29,799
Speaker 1: has just gotten out of prison for distributing communist propaganda

1248
01:09:29,800 --> 01:09:33,800
Speaker 1: at this point, and he is like. She obviously likes

1249
01:09:33,880 --> 01:09:36,400
Speaker 1: him too, because he's this like hard son of a bit.

1250
01:09:36,520 --> 01:09:38,360
Speaker 1: She's just gotten out of prison, he's like a fighter

1251
01:09:38,479 --> 01:09:41,320
Speaker 1: for the party, and so they make eyes and kind

1252
01:09:41,400 --> 01:09:43,920
Speaker 1: of as his first gesture to win her favor, he

1253
01:09:44,040 --> 01:09:46,040
Speaker 1: threatens to beat up all of his friends if they

1254
01:09:46,080 --> 01:09:49,240
Speaker 1: don't buy tickets from Elena Uh in order to so

1255
01:09:49,400 --> 01:09:52,560
Speaker 1: that she can win Queen of the Ball, which is

1256
01:09:53,280 --> 01:09:55,880
Speaker 1: both will show because in the future he is going

1257
01:09:56,000 --> 01:09:58,920
Speaker 1: to do like the nationwide version of this, like sending

1258
01:09:58,960 --> 01:10:00,840
Speaker 1: out squads to beat the ship out of people who

1259
01:10:00,880 --> 01:10:04,320
Speaker 1: don't vote for the Communist Party. Also, she looks like

1260
01:10:05,080 --> 01:10:10,920
Speaker 1: the kid from Dick Tracy, Yeah, does like the nerd

1261
01:10:11,160 --> 01:10:14,640
Speaker 1: from Can't Hardly Wait? If you remember, she looks exactly

1262
01:10:14,760 --> 01:10:17,960
Speaker 1: like that dude. Yeah she is that that's a good

1263
01:10:18,000 --> 01:10:20,160
Speaker 1: way of looking at her, and and a handsome woman.

1264
01:10:20,640 --> 01:10:25,200
Speaker 1: Nikolai Chochesco looks like a muppet version of a communist um.

1265
01:10:25,600 --> 01:10:27,439
Speaker 1: Like he's got that big head that you could if

1266
01:10:27,439 --> 01:10:30,400
Speaker 1: you look at a picture of adult Chesco, you can't

1267
01:10:30,439 --> 01:10:32,920
Speaker 1: imagine him talking normally. You can only imagine the entire

1268
01:10:33,320 --> 01:10:37,320
Speaker 1: of his head flapping backwards. He looks like Sam Eagle. Yeah,

1269
01:10:37,400 --> 01:10:41,640
Speaker 1: he has, he has strong Sam Eagle characteristics. So, um,

1270
01:10:42,680 --> 01:10:44,360
Speaker 1: this is I don't know, it's kind of sweet. It's

1271
01:10:44,600 --> 01:10:46,560
Speaker 1: there's a darker tone to it because he's going to

1272
01:10:46,680 --> 01:10:49,960
Speaker 1: like violently fake an election later in his life. Um,

1273
01:10:50,280 --> 01:10:53,160
Speaker 1: but it's kind of sweet now that he's doing that

1274
01:10:53,400 --> 01:10:56,759
Speaker 1: to to, you know, make this girl he likes feel pretty.

1275
01:10:56,840 --> 01:11:02,240
Speaker 1: So that's that's kind of nice. Um in the future. Yeah,

1276
01:11:02,720 --> 01:11:05,439
Speaker 1: if she if the thing is this, like look not

1277
01:11:05,640 --> 01:11:08,120
Speaker 1: for nothing, but seeing her win a beauty contest, I'd

1278
01:11:08,160 --> 01:11:09,760
Speaker 1: be like, all right, well this is clearly a fix.

1279
01:11:09,920 --> 01:11:18,280
Speaker 1: Right Well yeahologies to her family, no, no, I mean

1280
01:11:18,320 --> 01:11:22,960
Speaker 1: her family is terrible. Um anyway, so yeah, that that

1281
01:11:23,080 --> 01:11:26,439
Speaker 1: goes great for him, and the two of them hook

1282
01:11:26,520 --> 01:11:28,200
Speaker 1: up and they get married, and he's going to spend

1283
01:11:28,200 --> 01:11:29,840
Speaker 1: a lot more time in prison. But they seem to

1284
01:11:29,960 --> 01:11:33,519
Speaker 1: have legitimately been a love match. Now normally that's sweeter

1285
01:11:33,640 --> 01:11:35,120
Speaker 1: than it turns out to be, because they are both

1286
01:11:35,200 --> 01:11:36,960
Speaker 1: some of the worst people who have ever lived. But

1287
01:11:37,720 --> 01:11:40,160
Speaker 1: I'll give him one thing. They seem to have been

1288
01:11:40,240 --> 01:11:44,680
Speaker 1: legitimately in love. So that's yea monsters can be in love,

1289
01:11:44,760 --> 01:11:48,160
Speaker 1: that's the thing. Yeah, Yeah, there you go. Um. In

1290
01:11:48,320 --> 01:11:52,160
Speaker 1: nineteen forty Carol, the seconds dictatorship collapses with some help

1291
01:11:52,320 --> 01:11:55,040
Speaker 1: from the Nazis, and the new cat in town is

1292
01:11:55,080 --> 01:11:59,000
Speaker 1: a military man named Marshall Antonescu who basically runs a

1293
01:11:59,080 --> 01:12:03,720
Speaker 1: military dictator ship with fascist trappings. Um. He uses the

1294
01:12:03,840 --> 01:12:07,120
Speaker 1: Iron Guard UM he like puts them adjacent to power.

1295
01:12:07,520 --> 01:12:11,519
Speaker 1: But Antonescu he's a monster, but he's not ideologically a

1296
01:12:11,680 --> 01:12:15,120
Speaker 1: fascist like you can like. Again, this is where we

1297
01:12:15,200 --> 01:12:17,040
Speaker 1: get into the terms, because he like is a major

1298
01:12:17,160 --> 01:12:19,600
Speaker 1: player in the Holocaust. He's a terrible, terrible person. Not

1299
01:12:19,680 --> 01:12:21,240
Speaker 1: saying that to be like, he's not as bad as

1300
01:12:21,280 --> 01:12:24,880
Speaker 1: he's fascists. He just he is a military dictator. He

1301
01:12:25,040 --> 01:12:27,960
Speaker 1: is not a fascist dictator. And he doesn't really like

1302
01:12:28,439 --> 01:12:30,840
Speaker 1: the Iron Guard all that much. He's willing to use

1303
01:12:30,920 --> 01:12:34,600
Speaker 1: them because he has he's a strong nationalist UM, but

1304
01:12:34,680 --> 01:12:37,559
Speaker 1: he considers them way too radical to actually run things.

1305
01:12:38,080 --> 01:12:40,320
Speaker 1: And while all this is going on, all of Romania's

1306
01:12:40,400 --> 01:12:44,080
Speaker 1: Communists are either in prison or hiding out in the USSR.

1307
01:12:44,360 --> 01:12:46,400
Speaker 1: And again there's maybe six or seven hundred of them

1308
01:12:46,439 --> 01:12:48,960
Speaker 1: in the country. Still. The leaders of the movement in

1309
01:12:49,120 --> 01:12:52,120
Speaker 1: Romania are Anna Poker, a Jewish woman and a veteran

1310
01:12:52,200 --> 01:12:57,479
Speaker 1: revolutionary Stalinist and Georgie Georgiou Day. He's an electrician who

1311
01:12:57,680 --> 01:13:01,240
Speaker 1: became an illegal train union organized her and spends some

1312
01:13:01,360 --> 01:13:06,080
Speaker 1: of Chauchesco's first arrests are like supporting his uh Jorjiu

1313
01:13:06,200 --> 01:13:10,520
Speaker 1: Day's um um illegal train strikes. And he's also a Stalinist.

1314
01:13:10,560 --> 01:13:15,280
Speaker 1: Everybody's a Stalinist, right um So, Georgie was a poor

1315
01:13:15,360 --> 01:13:20,839
Speaker 1: peasant with what Marxist considered unimpeachable proletarian pedigrees. He's basically

1316
01:13:20,960 --> 01:13:23,879
Speaker 1: like the the archetype of the kind of guy Stalin

1317
01:13:23,960 --> 01:13:26,720
Speaker 1: pushed as the ideal new Soviet man. He's this like

1318
01:13:27,520 --> 01:13:31,679
Speaker 1: born poor, working his entire life organizing unions and fighting

1319
01:13:31,720 --> 01:13:34,080
Speaker 1: in the streets to support the rights of workers to

1320
01:13:34,280 --> 01:13:37,960
Speaker 1: organize poker. Meanwhile, she's also does a lot of time

1321
01:13:38,040 --> 01:13:40,080
Speaker 1: for the cause. She is a tough lady. In fact,

1322
01:13:40,160 --> 01:13:42,240
Speaker 1: she gets the nickname the Iron Woman of the Iron

1323
01:13:42,320 --> 01:13:45,479
Speaker 1: Lady of Romania. But she's also an intellectual, right, She's

1324
01:13:45,520 --> 01:13:48,599
Speaker 1: one of these people who comes to communism like through

1325
01:13:48,720 --> 01:13:52,720
Speaker 1: reading about it and and is a is a like

1326
01:13:53,439 --> 01:13:56,479
Speaker 1: as opposed to like Georgiu Day does not read books, right,

1327
01:13:56,560 --> 01:13:59,120
Speaker 1: does not does not talk a lot about reading. He's not,

1328
01:13:59,280 --> 01:14:02,720
Speaker 1: citing a lot of like passages from Marxist tracks, which

1329
01:14:02,760 --> 01:14:07,800
Speaker 1: Parker is um. She is fiercely devoted to the cause, um. Which,

1330
01:14:07,960 --> 01:14:09,960
Speaker 1: But the fact that she's also on kind of this

1331
01:14:10,360 --> 01:14:13,560
Speaker 1: creative ideological side of things means that she's going to

1332
01:14:13,680 --> 01:14:15,960
Speaker 1: run into conflict. During the messy early years of the

1333
01:14:16,080 --> 01:14:17,800
Speaker 1: u s s R. And and for a little while

1334
01:14:17,920 --> 01:14:21,240
Speaker 1: Parker is in Stalin's good books. She she flees to

1335
01:14:21,280 --> 01:14:24,200
Speaker 1: the USSR for a period. She goes to this Soviet

1336
01:14:24,280 --> 01:14:27,360
Speaker 1: school for revolutionaries where she studies tactics to help her

1337
01:14:27,400 --> 01:14:30,960
Speaker 1: build the covert communist movement in Romania. But she also

1338
01:14:31,080 --> 01:14:34,400
Speaker 1: encounters a lot of difficulties because number one, she's Jewish

1339
01:14:34,920 --> 01:14:37,840
Speaker 1: and number two she's a woman, and so those things

1340
01:14:38,040 --> 01:14:40,680
Speaker 1: are not good at the time, not not great at

1341
01:14:40,720 --> 01:14:44,000
Speaker 1: the time. It's perfect for all of those people, especially

1342
01:14:44,040 --> 01:14:47,680
Speaker 1: in America. Yeah, yeah, everything's everything's fine now, um, But

1343
01:14:47,880 --> 01:14:50,960
Speaker 1: but back at the time, back back in the day, difficult. Uh.

1344
01:14:51,080 --> 01:14:53,639
Speaker 1: And she also runs into problems because she she runs

1345
01:14:53,680 --> 01:14:56,519
Speaker 1: a foul of Stalin and she gets executed for being

1346
01:14:56,640 --> 01:15:01,120
Speaker 1: or and and her husband gets executed for being a Romanians. Right, Um,

1347
01:15:01,280 --> 01:15:03,719
Speaker 1: I don't believe he is. I've never seen any evidence

1348
01:15:03,760 --> 01:15:06,320
Speaker 1: that Poker's husband was spying for anyone who seems to

1349
01:15:06,360 --> 01:15:09,720
Speaker 1: have been a really committed communist. But he gets executed

1350
01:15:09,800 --> 01:15:12,560
Speaker 1: over in the USSR and Anna finds out about it.

1351
01:15:12,640 --> 01:15:15,200
Speaker 1: While she's four years into a ten year prison sentence

1352
01:15:15,280 --> 01:15:18,479
Speaker 1: in Romania. She had formed a group of prisoners called

1353
01:15:18,520 --> 01:15:21,439
Speaker 1: the Women's Collective of Anti Fascist Prisoners, and when the

1354
01:15:21,520 --> 01:15:24,519
Speaker 1: news reaches them that Anna's husband has been executed, she

1355
01:15:24,640 --> 01:15:27,160
Speaker 1: doesn't even get time to mourn him before the other

1356
01:15:27,240 --> 01:15:30,080
Speaker 1: women demand that she explained why she'd married a traitor.

1357
01:15:30,520 --> 01:15:33,280
Speaker 1: A criticism session is held in prison, in which Anna

1358
01:15:33,439 --> 01:15:36,000
Speaker 1: is blamed for not warning the party that her husband

1359
01:15:36,040 --> 01:15:39,680
Speaker 1: was an agent provocateur, and eventually Anna tells them, I

1360
01:15:39,760 --> 01:15:42,240
Speaker 1: am now racking my brain to find something, a sign

1361
01:15:42,280 --> 01:15:43,920
Speaker 1: of any kind that would have led me to believe

1362
01:15:43,960 --> 01:15:46,080
Speaker 1: he was an enemy of the people. I'm not placing

1363
01:15:46,120 --> 01:15:48,439
Speaker 1: any doubt on the party's decision. The party knows better

1364
01:15:48,479 --> 01:15:50,640
Speaker 1: than I. But I did not see anything. And as

1365
01:15:50,720 --> 01:15:53,400
Speaker 1: much as I searched my soul, my recollections, my memory,

1366
01:15:53,479 --> 01:15:55,519
Speaker 1: I don't find anything that could prove such a thing,

1367
01:15:56,040 --> 01:15:59,880
Speaker 1: which is like almost certainly true and kind of a

1368
01:16:00,040 --> 01:16:02,599
Speaker 1: devastating thing to imagine this woman who's stuck in prison

1369
01:16:02,640 --> 01:16:04,120
Speaker 1: has just found out the love of her life has

1370
01:16:04,160 --> 01:16:07,280
Speaker 1: been killed by the state and is now like, well,

1371
01:16:07,640 --> 01:16:09,880
Speaker 1: the party must have been right in killing him, but

1372
01:16:09,960 --> 01:16:12,720
Speaker 1: I just didn't see a sign of it. Um, it's

1373
01:16:12,760 --> 01:16:15,280
Speaker 1: super fucked up. And the rest of the best way

1374
01:16:15,360 --> 01:16:17,760
Speaker 1: to handle that is to just be like, well, look,

1375
01:16:17,760 --> 01:16:20,120
Speaker 1: I'm sure the people that are still alive with the guns,

1376
01:16:20,240 --> 01:16:23,000
Speaker 1: they had great reason to do that. I'm just saying

1377
01:16:23,080 --> 01:16:25,639
Speaker 1: I personally didn't see it, but they probably nailed that ship.

1378
01:16:26,080 --> 01:16:29,680
Speaker 1: I just maybe he was tricking me. It doesn't go

1379
01:16:29,840 --> 01:16:32,960
Speaker 1: well for her because she doesn't she does not like

1380
01:16:33,479 --> 01:16:37,280
Speaker 1: repudiate him fully. And so these these ladies that she's

1381
01:16:37,320 --> 01:16:39,720
Speaker 1: formed into a group in prison like sind backward to

1382
01:16:39,800 --> 01:16:43,080
Speaker 1: Stalin saying Anna won't denounce her dead husband. Um, And

1383
01:16:43,160 --> 01:16:45,679
Speaker 1: this winds up being one of the justifications Stalin would

1384
01:16:45,760 --> 01:16:48,840
Speaker 1: later use for backing Georgie over Anna, because she she

1385
01:16:48,920 --> 01:16:51,280
Speaker 1: winds up. Yeah, it would be funny if it was

1386
01:16:51,320 --> 01:16:53,479
Speaker 1: like a real true lies scenario where he was like

1387
01:16:53,600 --> 01:17:02,640
Speaker 1: this huge, checked like Austrian sounding guys like computers. Yeah, no,

1388
01:17:03,000 --> 01:17:06,720
Speaker 1: it doesn't. It doesn't work out that way, unfortunately. Um,

1389
01:17:07,160 --> 01:17:12,320
Speaker 1: but yeah, Um, anyway, in any case, Georgie Georgiu Day

1390
01:17:12,479 --> 01:17:15,839
Speaker 1: also spends his war years locked away in a fascist

1391
01:17:15,920 --> 01:17:19,280
Speaker 1: prison because the Antonesque regime is not quite as Nazi

1392
01:17:19,400 --> 01:17:21,800
Speaker 1: as the straight up Nazis wanted it to be. Um,

1393
01:17:22,120 --> 01:17:24,880
Speaker 1: communists and concentration camps there did have a higher rate

1394
01:17:24,920 --> 01:17:27,720
Speaker 1: of survival than they did in like Germany. So what

1395
01:17:27,880 --> 01:17:30,639
Speaker 1: actually happens is once all these people get thrown into

1396
01:17:30,680 --> 01:17:34,280
Speaker 1: these prisons, they kind of settle out what the communist

1397
01:17:34,360 --> 01:17:36,400
Speaker 1: government of the future Romania is going to be in

1398
01:17:36,479 --> 01:17:38,960
Speaker 1: these prison cells. Which is a thing that happens every

1399
01:17:39,040 --> 01:17:41,719
Speaker 1: time you throw a bunch of radical revolutionaries into prison

1400
01:17:41,800 --> 01:17:44,679
Speaker 1: cells together, is they wind up sorting out the future

1401
01:17:44,720 --> 01:17:48,360
Speaker 1: regime that they're going to bring into power at I mean,

1402
01:17:48,400 --> 01:17:51,559
Speaker 1: they got they got time, Yeah, exactly, They've got time

1403
01:17:51,600 --> 01:17:54,840
Speaker 1: to like read books about communism and figure out who's

1404
01:17:54,840 --> 01:17:56,720
Speaker 1: going to do what when they eventually wind up in

1405
01:17:56,800 --> 01:17:59,960
Speaker 1: power comes up, we're going to have to go ahead

1406
01:18:00,240 --> 01:18:04,080
Speaker 1: make a perfect communist government. Yeah, and that's exactly what's

1407
01:18:04,120 --> 01:18:07,520
Speaker 1: going to happen. Um. So George you Day is obviously

1408
01:18:07,720 --> 01:18:10,040
Speaker 1: I think everyone kind of is aware, just because he's

1409
01:18:10,320 --> 01:18:12,840
Speaker 1: such a powerful person that he's going to wind up

1410
01:18:12,880 --> 01:18:15,720
Speaker 1: being like the top man if they ever do wind

1411
01:18:15,800 --> 01:18:18,680
Speaker 1: up in power and show. Cescu sees this and he

1412
01:18:18,840 --> 01:18:21,360
Speaker 1: is again. He's he's got gets thrown into prison again

1413
01:18:21,479 --> 01:18:23,960
Speaker 1: during the World War two years for conspiring against the

1414
01:18:24,000 --> 01:18:27,120
Speaker 1: social order, and he kind of turns himself into a

1415
01:18:27,280 --> 01:18:30,720
Speaker 1: gopher for George you Day. He makes himself available for

1416
01:18:30,840 --> 01:18:34,320
Speaker 1: like whatever sort of side jobs they need done. He

1417
01:18:34,439 --> 01:18:36,519
Speaker 1: does everything that will keep it like he doesn't care

1418
01:18:36,600 --> 01:18:38,400
Speaker 1: what he has to do, no no matter how like

1419
01:18:38,479 --> 01:18:40,840
Speaker 1: Banel or Low, the task is as long as it's

1420
01:18:40,840 --> 01:18:43,120
Speaker 1: going to keep him on the lips of his betters. Right.

1421
01:18:43,360 --> 01:18:46,080
Speaker 1: I just want to stay around George you Day, you know,

1422
01:18:46,160 --> 01:18:48,600
Speaker 1: as long as he keeps seeing me and knows me

1423
01:18:48,760 --> 01:18:51,080
Speaker 1: is like this guy who can handle anything he wants. Like,

1424
01:18:51,240 --> 01:18:53,920
Speaker 1: that's That's what I'm gonna do. Um. Just jazz to

1425
01:18:54,000 --> 01:18:56,320
Speaker 1: be on the show man. Yeah, just happy to be here, man,

1426
01:18:56,400 --> 01:18:59,080
Speaker 1: Just happy to be here. Um. And this strategy works

1427
01:18:59,439 --> 01:19:02,760
Speaker 1: works ended ly. As Paul Kenyon writes, they had a

1428
01:19:02,840 --> 01:19:05,320
Speaker 1: lackey in prison, a young hooligan who brought them food

1429
01:19:05,320 --> 01:19:08,680
Speaker 1: packages and ran messages. His name was Nikolai Chowchescu. A

1430
01:19:08,720 --> 01:19:11,519
Speaker 1: twenty two year old trainee cobbler who was regularly in

1431
01:19:11,600 --> 01:19:14,640
Speaker 1: trouble for fighting and delivering communist leaflets. Some of his

1432
01:19:14,720 --> 01:19:17,120
Speaker 1: fellow inmates thought him weird and said that they avoided

1433
01:19:17,200 --> 01:19:19,479
Speaker 1: him because he was such a bore with absolutely no

1434
01:19:19,640 --> 01:19:21,880
Speaker 1: sense of humor. In the presence of big men like

1435
01:19:22,000 --> 01:19:25,960
Speaker 1: George you Day, Chesko remained largely silent and deferential. He

1436
01:19:26,040 --> 01:19:28,920
Speaker 1: avoided speaking whenever possible because of the stutter so severe

1437
01:19:28,960 --> 01:19:31,080
Speaker 1: it made his leg shake. But he also possessed a

1438
01:19:31,120 --> 01:19:34,040
Speaker 1: powerful memory and an instinctive intelligence and sat among the

1439
01:19:34,080 --> 01:19:37,360
Speaker 1: future leaders, listening to everything they said and slowly learning.

1440
01:19:37,880 --> 01:19:40,400
Speaker 1: And this actually works out well for him because since

1441
01:19:40,479 --> 01:19:43,160
Speaker 1: he's too kind of scared and nervous to speak up

1442
01:19:43,320 --> 01:19:46,280
Speaker 1: or say anything, he never winds up running a foul

1443
01:19:46,400 --> 01:19:48,760
Speaker 1: of George you Day, Right, he doesn't. He's never He

1444
01:19:48,800 --> 01:19:51,320
Speaker 1: puts himself in positions to help with stuff, but he's

1445
01:19:51,360 --> 01:19:54,280
Speaker 1: never running anything that can like go badly and reflect

1446
01:19:54,360 --> 01:19:58,519
Speaker 1: poorly on him. Um. And he he pays attention to

1447
01:19:58,600 --> 01:20:01,360
Speaker 1: the social relationships and kind of worms his way closer

1448
01:20:01,400 --> 01:20:04,840
Speaker 1: and closer to Georgiu Day over time, um, which which

1449
01:20:04,960 --> 01:20:08,000
Speaker 1: is the I mean this Stalin does a virgin of this,

1450
01:20:08,120 --> 01:20:10,160
Speaker 1: that's how he rises to power. To this. This is

1451
01:20:10,200 --> 01:20:13,479
Speaker 1: a pretty effective tactic. So if you are ever in

1452
01:20:13,560 --> 01:20:17,360
Speaker 1: a revolutionary underground movement that's seeking to overthrow the state

1453
01:20:17,439 --> 01:20:20,360
Speaker 1: and institute a new form of government, keep an eye

1454
01:20:20,400 --> 01:20:22,760
Speaker 1: out for like the weird quiet kid who just hangs

1455
01:20:22,800 --> 01:20:27,160
Speaker 1: around doing chores. Shoot that guy pretty quick. Okay, that's

1456
01:20:27,920 --> 01:20:30,200
Speaker 1: I do need to have in my in my Uh.

1457
01:20:30,880 --> 01:20:35,080
Speaker 1: I need to have that written down. Yeah. Just drop

1458
01:20:35,200 --> 01:20:39,559
Speaker 1: that kid before he gets too far. Yeah, can again

1459
01:20:39,600 --> 01:20:43,040
Speaker 1: him a moves ready, you know legally. And Aubert does

1460
01:20:43,120 --> 01:20:46,360
Speaker 1: not mean that literally. I do mean that literally. I

1461
01:20:46,439 --> 01:20:49,560
Speaker 1: know he does. Before you overthrow the government, kill the

1462
01:20:49,720 --> 01:20:54,240
Speaker 1: quiet kid in your movement, just drop them all. What

1463
01:20:57,479 --> 01:20:59,640
Speaker 1: a Draculus book, Burn him in a thing, put him

1464
01:20:59,680 --> 01:21:02,759
Speaker 1: all in a building and light it on fire. Only

1465
01:21:02,880 --> 01:21:06,240
Speaker 1: let the loud assholes inherit power because that will never

1466
01:21:06,400 --> 01:21:14,680
Speaker 1: go badly. No, we've as we just mostly just get podcasts. Yeah, exactly. Uh,

1467
01:21:14,880 --> 01:21:16,599
Speaker 1: and I think that's gonna do it for our part

1468
01:21:16,680 --> 01:21:20,680
Speaker 1: one of Chowchescu and uh boy, howdy have you had

1469
01:21:20,720 --> 01:21:24,840
Speaker 1: a good time here? Jeffrey, It's all I could ask for. Jefftoberfest,

1470
01:21:25,280 --> 01:21:27,360
Speaker 1: that's me. That's that's who I am. I'm glad that

1471
01:21:27,400 --> 01:21:29,840
Speaker 1: you got my name per correct. That's right, That's right,

1472
01:21:29,960 --> 01:21:32,800
Speaker 1: That's that's you and the festival dedicated to celebrating your

1473
01:21:32,840 --> 01:21:36,720
Speaker 1: many accomplishments every October. I gotta say I love being here.

1474
01:21:36,760 --> 01:21:38,920
Speaker 1: I love spending time with you guys. It's a real blast.

1475
01:21:39,240 --> 01:21:42,400
Speaker 1: I love relearning. Sometimes I'm like that degree I got

1476
01:21:42,479 --> 01:21:45,479
Speaker 1: wasn't worth anything, And I do this show every once

1477
01:21:45,520 --> 01:21:50,719
Speaker 1: in a while, and I'm like, that's good enough, Jeff.

1478
01:21:50,800 --> 01:21:53,120
Speaker 1: You gotta plug anything here before we roll out. Are

1479
01:21:53,160 --> 01:21:54,840
Speaker 1: people still listening at this point in time when we

1480
01:21:54,920 --> 01:21:58,759
Speaker 1: do plugs? Let's do it, man um. I So, depending

1481
01:21:58,800 --> 01:22:01,240
Speaker 1: on when this goes up, I run a stand up show,

1482
01:22:01,280 --> 01:22:03,160
Speaker 1: a live stand up show at a toy store in Burbank,

1483
01:22:03,240 --> 01:22:06,479
Speaker 1: California called Mint on Card at a store called Blast

1484
01:22:06,520 --> 01:22:09,200
Speaker 1: from the Past on Magnolia in Burbank, California. You can

1485
01:22:09,280 --> 01:22:11,000
Speaker 1: check that out the second Friday every month. I have

1486
01:22:11,080 --> 01:22:13,320
Speaker 1: a great podcast called Jeff Has Cool Friends, where I

1487
01:22:13,400 --> 01:22:15,920
Speaker 1: interview my friends that I think have really cool jobs

1488
01:22:15,960 --> 01:22:18,080
Speaker 1: and I think you should pay attention to them. You

1489
01:22:18,120 --> 01:22:19,880
Speaker 1: can get that for free, or you can get early

1490
01:22:19,920 --> 01:22:23,160
Speaker 1: access to uncentered episodes with bonus content at patreon dot

1491
01:22:23,200 --> 01:22:26,200
Speaker 1: com slash Jeff meg It's just my name. I also

1492
01:22:26,240 --> 01:22:29,960
Speaker 1: have shows like Fine, Isn't that easy? It's so easy?

1493
01:22:30,600 --> 01:22:32,920
Speaker 1: Uh Fine, my monthly show with Kim Crawl. And I

1494
01:22:32,960 --> 01:22:35,840
Speaker 1: also have a great show called nerd with Drey Alvarez

1495
01:22:35,920 --> 01:22:38,040
Speaker 1: that we do, um we do on the Patreon and

1496
01:22:38,160 --> 01:22:40,680
Speaker 1: for free. Um, and that is we just do deep

1497
01:22:40,720 --> 01:22:43,040
Speaker 1: dives on Nerdy Ship. I also do Tom and Jeff

1498
01:22:43,080 --> 01:22:45,600
Speaker 1: watch Batman on the game Fully Unemployee Network, which we

1499
01:22:46,360 --> 01:22:48,400
Speaker 1: keep needing to bring you onto. I know you like

1500
01:22:49,000 --> 01:22:51,320
Speaker 1: you want to do Batman stuff. I do want to

1501
01:22:51,360 --> 01:22:53,439
Speaker 1: do Batman stuff, by which I mean I want to

1502
01:22:53,560 --> 01:22:56,000
Speaker 1: I want to beat up bore people in the street

1503
01:22:56,040 --> 01:23:00,280
Speaker 1: while wearing ten thousand dollars in body armor. In armor, yeah, yeah,

1504
01:23:00,280 --> 01:23:03,639
Speaker 1: of course, as as an Olympic level athlete, yes yeah,

1505
01:23:05,080 --> 01:23:07,519
Speaker 1: dr martial artists, beating the ship out of a heroin

1506
01:23:07,600 --> 01:23:10,960
Speaker 1: addict in an alley, perfect. Yeah, just breaking someone's back

1507
01:23:11,040 --> 01:23:14,960
Speaker 1: for stealing a magnavox. Um. And you can also hear

1508
01:23:15,040 --> 01:23:17,840
Speaker 1: me on Unpopular Opinion and you don't even like sports,

1509
01:23:17,960 --> 01:23:21,000
Speaker 1: both on the un Popps network. UM. Other than that,

1510
01:23:21,600 --> 01:23:24,800
Speaker 1: you know, thank you. This is fun. We have fun. Yes,

1511
01:23:25,680 --> 01:23:31,240
Speaker 1: I had fun here. Yeah, yeah, I wish I still

1512
01:23:31,320 --> 01:23:36,320
Speaker 1: have health insurance after this. That's what I'm saying. So look,

1513
01:23:36,640 --> 01:23:38,759
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things said at the end there, Buddy,

1514
01:23:39,560 --> 01:23:42,639
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not going to give our followers bad advice

1515
01:23:43,240 --> 01:23:47,200
Speaker 1: about how to form their underground anti government terrorists cell.

1516
01:23:48,320 --> 01:23:50,800
Speaker 1: The question is, why aren't you giving that advice, so Fie,

1517
01:23:50,840 --> 01:23:54,519
Speaker 1: because it really like having health insurance. Well, I like

1518
01:23:54,800 --> 01:23:58,599
Speaker 1: making sure that some weird quiet kid doesn't wind up

1519
01:23:59,320 --> 01:24:04,120
Speaker 1: in charge up to the revolution and murders gone. I thought,

1520
01:24:04,160 --> 01:24:10,040
Speaker 1: I thought, there's a lot of really like, I've encouraged

1521
01:24:10,160 --> 01:24:13,600
Speaker 1: violence against so many. I hear what you're saying, and

1522
01:24:13,680 --> 01:24:17,120
Speaker 1: I know that you're like, well, I know worse and

1523
01:24:17,320 --> 01:24:24,800
Speaker 1: like you have. But I particularly hate Sophie. Sophie. This

1524
01:24:24,960 --> 01:24:31,759
Speaker 1: is unfortunately, this was Sophie's choice to hate that Sophie's

1525
01:24:31,840 --> 01:24:34,840
Speaker 1: choice joke. We did it, get it, We did the

1526
01:24:34,880 --> 01:24:40,320
Speaker 1: whole thing. And she has a Boston accent in that movie. Yep,

1527
01:24:40,960 --> 01:24:43,879
Speaker 1: so do I. Anyway, that's going to be the episode.

1528
01:24:44,040 --> 01:24:48,760
Speaker 1: Come back tomorrow, while not tomorrow, but soon Thursday, and

1529
01:24:49,160 --> 01:24:54,719
Speaker 1: there will be more more Choo, less Romanian uh history,

1530
01:24:54,960 --> 01:24:58,040
Speaker 1: more more getting into the weeds of chow cho, So

1531
01:24:58,960 --> 01:25:04,320
Speaker 1: stick around for that oaks. It ends in tens of

1532
01:25:04,360 --> 01:25:09,560
Speaker 1: thousands of starving orphans, as it always does. Behind the

1533
01:25:09,640 --> 01:25:12,599
Speaker 1: Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more

1534
01:25:12,640 --> 01:25:15,519
Speaker 1: from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media

1535
01:25:15,760 --> 01:25:18,400
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the I Heart

1536
01:25:18,439 --> 01:25:21,400
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.