Speaker 1: M what esoteric my hitler ISM's ship that is two
Speaker 1: hitler starts in a row. Jesus Robert, Well it fits
Speaker 1: with this episode. This is Behind the Bastards podcast about
Speaker 1: the worst people in all of history. I'm Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: I'm the host, and my guest today is Jamie.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 1: I just go Jamie one name.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I'm the Beyonce of No Billy Wayne's, the Beyonce of
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you are the podcaster formerly known as the Beyonce
Speaker 1: of Behind the Bastards.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're the Beyonce of my heart. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there we go, Here we go. Oh Jamie, how
Speaker 1: are you doing today?
Speaker 3: I'm good. I'm good.
Speaker 2: I I think that that's true.
Speaker 3: I'm good.
Speaker 2: I have to add I have to add it probably good.
Speaker 2: I have to add a bag to my Spirit Airlines flight.
Speaker 2: But that's about as as challenging as it's getting to day.
Speaker 1: Speaking of monsters, that is the greatest monster of all
Speaker 1: online interface.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you had to like swipe your credit card if
Speaker 2: you sneeze on a Spirit our Lines.
Speaker 1: I have this friend, his name is Lenny, and he
Speaker 1: listens to the podcast, so he may hear this and
Speaker 1: Lenny is one of the one of the most experienced
Speaker 1: travelers I know, and at one point I was taking
Speaker 1: a flight with him in Eastern Europe to Ukraine through
Speaker 1: whizz Air, which is one of the worst airlines plane
Speaker 1: I've heard of.
Speaker 3: Whizz Air.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're terrible.
Speaker 3: Never had the pleasure.
Speaker 1: There was a moment where they started hassling us about
Speaker 1: our bags and it became clear that we weren't going
Speaker 1: to be able to like fit everything like that, we
Speaker 1: were going to have to take stuff out. And the
Speaker 1: line from him that I'll never forget was I guess, well,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm wearing all my pants today.
Speaker 2: I've bore multiple pairs of pants on how if you're
Speaker 2: not going onto his Spirit Airlines flight wearing five jackets?
Speaker 2: Like what you you're you're grabbing yourself, You're I've been
Speaker 2: on a Spirit Airlines red eye next to like an
Speaker 2: actively drunk person multiple times.
Speaker 1: Although that's just normal, I.
Speaker 3: Know, but I think, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1: If you haven't wept, if you haven't wept and thrown
Speaker 1: things away while waiting to get in line at Spirit Airlines,
Speaker 1: have you even flown? We've gotten off topic, very off topic, Jamie, Yes,
Speaker 1: have you ever heard of Savitri dev No? Oh good,
Speaker 1: oh boy, Jamie, you are in for a motherfucking treat. Ooh.
Speaker 3: I love when you don't tell me an advance.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, Yeah, this is one I'm gonna guess almost
Speaker 1: nobody listening to has heard of. But she's one of
Speaker 1: the most important people for understanding where we are right
Speaker 1: now in the year twenty twenty, Like the most the
Speaker 1: most recent headline that ties directly to you. Remember when
Speaker 1: the FBI arrested all those members of the base, that
Speaker 1: that neo Nazi group, there's plenty to start a second
Speaker 1: Civil War by randomly firing into a crowd in Virginia
Speaker 1: that was full of armed people. Yeah, that whole, the
Speaker 1: whole hulla balloo. Yes, yeah, Well she's kinda behind all that,
Speaker 1: although she died decades before it happened. So that's today's story.
Speaker 3: Nice, let's do it.
Speaker 1: So now, Jamie, we're gonna start like we start every
Speaker 1: good day by talking about our loll buddy. Shouldn't call
Speaker 1: him a buddy, Adolf Hitler. Oh, it's weird because I
Speaker 1: can call Stalin a buddy, but I feel like calling
Speaker 1: Hitler a Buddy's a bridge too far.
Speaker 3: I don't know on this show, I feel like there
Speaker 3: are just rules that are different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're they're old friends at this point. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: Hitler was at he was a secular ruler, Jamie. He
Speaker 1: was not a not a not a not a. I
Speaker 1: think I think there's a lot of misconceptions about kind
Speaker 1: of the nature of his power and like his regime
Speaker 1: because of all of these like History Channel documentary, in
Speaker 1: this industry of books on Nazi occult history and like
Speaker 1: Nazi magic and the hell Boy movies like to hear it, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're great movies, at least one of them is.
Speaker 1: But like this idea that like the Nazis were like
Speaker 1: full of full of magic, right, and that Hitler like
Speaker 1: believed all sorts of like weird kooky occult stuff about
Speaker 1: like raising the dead and aliens and shit, and it's
Speaker 1: just not true. There were some funky occult ties to
Speaker 1: national socialism, but they were phrase oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: cult ties, yeah baby yeah, But they weren't to Hitler.
Speaker 1: They were to like kind of like side figures, like
Speaker 1: the b List of the Nazis. A lot of those
Speaker 1: guys were kind of into the occult, but like your
Speaker 1: A listers really were pretty secular guys.
Speaker 2: Beyonces the Nazi Beyonce is as I'm trying to think of, like.
Speaker 1: Like the the Nazi Jeremy Renners.
Speaker 2: Oh, how dare you speak his name in this forum?
Speaker 3: I thought we made a pact to never speak of
Speaker 3: him again.
Speaker 1: We never signed that contract. We never did.
Speaker 3: It was under negotiation for a long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is still in arbitration now. The Toulliss Society
Speaker 1: spelled Thule Society like the top racks on people's jeeps?
Speaker 1: Was it? Well? Suberus people Suberus. The Tullas Society was
Speaker 1: a German ocult group in the early twentieth century in Germany,
Speaker 1: and it provided some of the early funding and leadership
Speaker 1: for the Nazi Party. Heinrich Himmler held bizarre quasi magical
Speaker 1: beliefs for his whole time in power, and he was
Speaker 1: kind of into some weird He thought he was like
Speaker 1: a reincarnated prince and some shit. Sure, but Hitler himself
Speaker 1: was not at all into occult stuff. And the only
Speaker 1: guy really close to him who was was Rudolph Hess,
Speaker 1: who was his deputy and for a long time his
Speaker 1: best friend. This is the guy he like co wrote
Speaker 1: minekompf with like Hess and Hitler are like fucking type
Speaker 1: before Hitler.
Speaker 3: His ghost his ghost writer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of like more like his his muse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also the guy who was a competent typist both.
Speaker 2: I mean, you got you gotta if your muse is
Speaker 2: also a competent typist.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Who says the perfect person doesn't exist?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Rudolph has That's what people say about Rudolph Has
Speaker 1: is he was the perfect person. So he was also
Speaker 1: the deputy fearer for a while oh six. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was a cool dude, but he wasn't really in the
Speaker 1: picture for very long. He got increasingly marginalized after Hitler
Speaker 1: came to power in thirty three, and in nineteen forty
Speaker 1: one he kind of went bug fuck and got on
Speaker 1: a plane and flew to Great Britain while the two
Speaker 1: countries were at war. Sorry sorry, sorry?
Speaker 3: How would you define bug fuck?
Speaker 1: I would define bug fluck is like independently hopping in
Speaker 1: your private plane and flying to a country that your
Speaker 1: country is actively bombing to try to parachute down and
Speaker 1: negotiate for peace between your two nations without anyone asking
Speaker 1: me to. I would describe that as pretty bug fuck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not This.
Speaker 2: Is like a new term for me, and now this
Speaker 2: is the only like reference point I have for it,
Speaker 2: So I'm not gonna know how to how to define
Speaker 2: bug fuck moving forward. Okay, So bug fuck is when
Speaker 2: like the world is falling apart and you're like fuck
Speaker 2: it and you go the fuck off and then you
Speaker 2: is that.
Speaker 1: It kind of yeah, like it was the kind of
Speaker 1: thing where like there was no chance of it ever working.
Speaker 1: He did not have the authority to sign a peace
Speaker 1: treaty for Germany, and Britain did not have any interest
Speaker 1: in talking with him or making peace with Germany at
Speaker 1: this point sick. So he basically just flew and crash
Speaker 1: landed in England and got arrested and spent the rest
Speaker 1: of his life in prison. Very much And it was
Speaker 1: a huge embarrassment for Hitler because this this is like
Speaker 1: his right hand man who in the middle of the
Speaker 1: war like flies to his enemies country to like try
Speaker 1: to negotiate without Hitler's approval. It was it was very weird.
Speaker 1: And because Hess was like this occult dude into astrology
Speaker 1: and all this shit and like this weird, he was
Speaker 1: actually kind of like a Buddhist, like he's a weird dude.
Speaker 1: But because he held all these weird beliefs and he
Speaker 1: pissed off Hitler so badly, Hitler bans like all of
Speaker 1: this weird occult shit that had cropped up around the
Speaker 1: Nazi party in nineteen forty one. Okay, so yeah, so
Speaker 1: after forty one, like really most of that stuff is illegal.
Speaker 1: Heinrich Himler gets up to a little bit of it
Speaker 1: with the SS because he's got a castle and he
Speaker 1: he's just a weird dude. We'll get into some of
Speaker 1: that in the later episode. The important thing to understand
Speaker 1: is that, like, yeah, Hitler was like a distinctly not
Speaker 1: wooy guy, Like he's not a new age sort of dude.
Speaker 3: He's like a dive.
Speaker 2: If you mentioned you're like if I He's like the
Speaker 2: guys on Reddit who like, if you mentioned you so
Speaker 2: much as mention your zodiac sign, they're like, she's not credible,
Speaker 2: she's fine, she's a she's lost.
Speaker 3: Yes, I love that type of person.
Speaker 1: And I feel confident saying that one hundred percent of
Speaker 1: Hitler's biographers agree he would have been extremely on Reddit.
Speaker 1: I oh, more on Reddit than anyone has ever been
Speaker 1: on red.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, he would be the most reddity guy of
Speaker 2: all of them. And we have to admit that that
Speaker 2: is very what's his sign? That's that's very his sign
Speaker 2: of him.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't you say, I don't know, he's such.
Speaker 3: A Taurus He's sure?
Speaker 1: Sure, Okay, continue, that's I assume you're referring to the
Speaker 1: maker of really shoddy handguns, uh, which is I think
Speaker 1: they're Brazilian terrible guns.
Speaker 3: To Okay, Now, I'm just trying to on the behind
Speaker 3: the bastards board.
Speaker 1: Now, either way, advocating the Taurus sign or the Taurus
Speaker 1: firearms brand is not going to go well for you.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so now Hitler, so he's not into the
Speaker 1: occult at all. He's not a big fan of Christianity either.
Speaker 1: He felt it was fundamentally Jewish because Jesus was Jewish,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, not an irrational point of view
Speaker 1: within the logic of being a Nazi, and he worried
Speaker 1: weaken the German people. But he also respected Christianity for
Speaker 1: its ability to inculcate good values in the German people,
Speaker 1: and the primary good value it inculcated was making lots
Speaker 1: of babies. Because most Germans were Catholic, and Catholics aren't
Speaker 1: big fans of condoms. I'm not sure if you're aware
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 3: Ummm no, I know. I wouldn't have MS if it
Speaker 3: weren't for this.
Speaker 1: Attitude, none of us would. Now. Hitler himself was a
Speaker 1: baptized Roman Catholic all his life. He probably didn't really
Speaker 1: believe much of anything other than that that Hitler would
Speaker 1: a cool dude, but he felt it was important to
Speaker 1: maintain this image.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: There were some among his followers thought it was Nazism's
Speaker 1: destiny to become the new Great German religion, but Hitler
Speaker 1: himself pushed back against this, insisting in mind kompt that
Speaker 1: national socialism quote is not a religious reform, but a
Speaker 1: political reorganization of the German people. He believed quote it
Speaker 1: is criminal to try to destroy the accepted faith of
Speaker 1: the people as long as there is nothing to replace it.
Speaker 1: And it is possible that given enough time, Hitler would
Speaker 1: have tried to replace Christianity with something else, but he
Speaker 1: never attempted to do so. And as far as we know,
Speaker 1: the supernatural as it's generally known, played very little role
Speaker 1: in the Nazi regime. But and here's where the real
Speaker 1: episode starts. In the decades since Hitler shot himself in
Speaker 1: that bunker in nineteen forty five, Nazism has changed quite
Speaker 1: a lot. The actual political and historic beliefs of the
Speaker 1: original Nazis and of Hitler himself have been twisted and
Speaker 1: shifted into something even weirder. It would be too much
Speaker 1: to say that this new form of Nazism is more
Speaker 1: dangerous than the original, given the tens of millions people
Speaker 1: who died from the original Nazism, but it's probably accurate
Speaker 1: to say that the fact that Nazism has mutated into
Speaker 1: what we call esoteric Hitlerism has made it better able
Speaker 1: to survive in the era of the Internet. Now, Esoteric
Speaker 1: Hitlerism is a term used to refer to a number
Speaker 1: of different strains of post war Nazi thought that put
Speaker 1: a bizarre religious and occult spin on Nazi racial theories
Speaker 1: and on Hitler himself, often seeing the man as essentially
Speaker 1: the avatar of a god. Four Chan and eight Chan
Speaker 1: are in the modern age, two of the most prolific
Speaker 1: vectors for the spread of this brand of nonsense. Sure,
Speaker 1: there are strains of it in Brenton Terrence Manifesto, and
Speaker 1: in Anders Brevik's manifesto. And today we're talking about the
Speaker 1: woman who invented all of this, the single person who
Speaker 1: became the living link between the Nazism that tried and
Speaker 1: failed to conquer Europe and the modern Nazi movement that
Speaker 1: spawns mass shootings and attempted mass shootings on a monthly basis. Today.
Speaker 1: Her name was Savitri Devi and she was a huge
Speaker 1: piece of shit.
Speaker 3: This is someone's feminism somewhere. Yeah, this is some piece
Speaker 3: of shit's feminism.
Speaker 1: She is a feminist icon.
Speaker 3: Feministic feminism is the law.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: This is a woman who spent her whole life living
Speaker 1: alone with a pile of cats and changing Nazism forever.
Speaker 2: Okay, well what if she just did the first half?
Speaker 2: You know that she was not willing to do just
Speaker 2: the first She was like, okay, so I'm in a
Speaker 2: pile of cats. That's great, what else could I do?
Speaker 3: And that was her second idea. That's embarrassed, that was.
Speaker 1: Her second idea. As she does start first focused on
Speaker 1: the cats and then moves straight to Nazism though, it's remarkable. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So she was born Maximiani Portas on September thirtieth, nineteen
Speaker 1: oh five in Lyon, France. Her mother, Julia, came from Cornwall,
Speaker 1: the town with the thirty sixth dumbest name in all
Speaker 1: of England. Her father's ancestry was a mi longe of
Speaker 1: various Mediterranean peoples without access to birth control. He was
Speaker 1: mostly at Italian in Greek. Although young Maximiani was born
Speaker 1: a French citizen, she latched onto her father's Greek ancestry
Speaker 1: from the very beginning. Some of this had to do
Speaker 1: with the fact that Leon had a large and active
Speaker 1: Greek expat community, and her dad was a prominent member
Speaker 1: of it. She also nursed an early fascination with Roman history.
Speaker 1: Her name Maximiani was actually just the female form of Maximian,
Speaker 1: the proper first name of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. So's
Speaker 1: a she's a big old nerd. I really have to
Speaker 1: emphasize what a nerd she is.
Speaker 2: I feel like I've met versions of this girl in
Speaker 2: like sophomore English classes and they're like, actually something something,
Speaker 2: and you're like stop at stop at plea is just
Speaker 2: like finish reading.
Speaker 3: Their eyes were watching God, Let's move on.
Speaker 1: I was the male version of this for a while.
Speaker 1: I mean, I took three years of Latin because I
Speaker 1: was such a Roman history nerd.
Speaker 3: Okay, Robert, some of us took five years of Latin.
Speaker 3: And do we remember a fucking thing?
Speaker 1: Of course, no, no, not a goddamn word.
Speaker 3: Like when I was in high school, like in junior high.
Speaker 2: In high school, if you were like in the quote
Speaker 2: unquote advanced classes, they would be like, let's teach them
Speaker 2: a language they can't use so stupid, god.
Speaker 1: Damn totally useless term. Did you have to use me?
Speaker 2: That's one of those did you have to use that
Speaker 2: textbook that was about the the Romani family?
Speaker 3: Did you do Eka Romani?
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, man, I was like fucking Kills and Quintus.
Speaker 1: I remember those names. They were like the fucking there.
Speaker 1: It was like a bunch of Pompeii people who all
Speaker 1: die at the end of the book. Everyone died at
Speaker 1: the end of our textbook.
Speaker 2: Was it like we we have the We had the
Speaker 2: Cornelia family. It was like Cornelia and her brother Marcus,
Speaker 2: and then they had a friend named Sextus.
Speaker 1: Who knows, they sound like fucking losers, they weren't they?
Speaker 2: For me, there, your your family sounds way better because
Speaker 2: our family there was like three books in total, and
Speaker 2: the whole second book, So like all of eighth and
Speaker 2: ninth grade, they're just stuck in a ditch. They're like
Speaker 2: in a ditch. Their characters in a ditch. They can't
Speaker 2: get out. They're staying at an inn. The innkeeper's yelling
Speaker 2: at them. They're stuck in a dick. They're stuck in
Speaker 2: a ditch for a whole month, and then they go
Speaker 2: to Rome and and everything is fine.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a nightmare. Second well, yeah, nightmare, so horrible.
Speaker 1: Maximiani would have gotten a lot. Well, no, she wouldn't have.
Speaker 1: She would have been the most annoying person in our
Speaker 1: Latin class. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't like when people are in the Latin class
Speaker 3: and they're also like into it. I'm like, we should learn.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to learn to pronounce anything, right, You
Speaker 1: never had to speak because there was a dead.
Speaker 3: Reason to speak it.
Speaker 1: Well, no one knows either, like you've got ecclesiastical Latin,
Speaker 1: but there's no way to know if it was exactly
Speaker 1: the same as what the Romans spoke. So we just
Speaker 1: didn't give a shit. It was great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Teacher ms Cook would come and she would what
Speaker 2: was the thing she would say, she was like, okay,
Speaker 2: dysipuarly at this dy skipuli. Like she'd be like, hello, students,
Speaker 2: let's learn Jewela Caesar, and then we would just talk
Speaker 2: about how the family was stuck in the ditch all day.
Speaker 1: All day horrible.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, Maximiani spent her young life stuck in that ditch,
Speaker 1: and that ditch was called being a huge nerd for
Speaker 1: Mediterranean classical civilizations. She was a strong willed child, which
Speaker 1: here is a synonym for unspeakably arrogant and a giant
Speaker 1: pain in the ass. She felt strongly about just about everything,
Speaker 1: children and everything. Yeah. Strong willed.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: She was known to be utterly immovable once she'd latched
Speaker 1: onto an idea. One strong opinion she developed early was
Speaker 1: that British people were terrible, which is not inaccurate. She
Speaker 1: hated her mother's English friends and the way they prattled
Speaker 1: on about illnesses and their dying families.
Speaker 3: Harsh.
Speaker 1: God, that's so harsh.
Speaker 3: I wish my family wasn't dying, and she's like.
Speaker 1: Shut up, Jesus Christ, Yeah, we get it. She didn't
Speaker 1: like French people very much much either, and the particular
Speaker 1: cause for her hatred of the French was the French Revolution.
Speaker 1: She read about it as a little girl in school
Speaker 1: and was instantly furious. The Republican ideals of equality, liberty,
Speaker 1: and fraternity disgusted her. She was punished at school for
Speaker 1: making an obscene gesture at a plaque of the Declaration
Speaker 1: of the Rights of Man. And again, she's like eight
Speaker 1: or nine. Yeah, she's like a fucking little kid at
Speaker 1: this point.
Speaker 3: That is that is so funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Declaration of the Rights of Man, which small child
Speaker 1: Savitri Devi flipped off, includes such controversial takes as people
Speaker 1: are innocent until proven guilty, people have the right to liberty, property, security,
Speaker 1: and resistance to oppression. And people should be able to
Speaker 1: speak and write with freedom. Wow.
Speaker 2: Some real hot sh run out there. Yeah, geez, Okay,
Speaker 2: so she was like born.
Speaker 1: To be harmful, she was born to be a fascist.
Speaker 1: As a small child, she's like, people aren't equal? What
Speaker 1: is this bullshit?
Speaker 2: That's so the little flipping off to human rights? You
Speaker 2: do you do feel like we should have known, we
Speaker 2: should have known.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love flipping off old documents too, But
Speaker 1: to me, it's the Magna carta and the Magna Carta
Speaker 1: knows why.
Speaker 3: The Magna Carta knows what she did.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the Magna Carta shakes in her boots whenever
Speaker 2: you come walk.
Speaker 1: The Magna Carta is a messy bitch, and I have
Speaker 1: no time for it.
Speaker 2: That okay, Robert, I can't believe you just called a
Speaker 2: female document a.
Speaker 1: Bitch a messy.
Speaker 3: You're setting a bad example, Robert.
Speaker 1: Feminism is document misogyny.
Speaker 3: She's she's literally shaking right now. She's here.
Speaker 1: Oh no, she's in the room with you. You didn't
Speaker 1: tell me the Magna Carta was in the room today.
Speaker 3: She's literally she drove me here.
Speaker 1: Horrible.
Speaker 3: She's, well, I don't want a driver's license. I don't
Speaker 3: know what you want.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much further to take this bit, Jamie,
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna Later in life, in nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: Savitri Devi told an interviewer a beautiful girl is not
Speaker 1: equal to an ugly girl. So she remained pretty consistent
Speaker 1: about her belief in the fundamental inequality of human beings
Speaker 1: like her whole life.
Speaker 3: And she's getting really granular about it too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, okay, she's granular about fucking everything. Her chief
Speaker 1: motivating factor in her childhood, I have to say was
Speaker 1: completely understandable. She felt a deep, powerful sense of rage
Speaker 1: at the abuse of animals by human beings. Okay, starting
Speaker 1: at age five. Yeah, starting at age five, she began
Speaker 1: expressing to her parents concern at the abuse of animals
Speaker 1: she witnessed in a daily basis. She was horrified by circuses,
Speaker 1: the fur trade, and the eating of meat. While still
Speaker 1: in elementary school, she became a committed vegetarian and eventually
Speaker 1: a vegan. Maximiani Portos was particularly disgusted by the abuse
Speaker 1: of cats by peasants on the French countryside. Her only
Speaker 1: real biographer, Nicholas Gudrich Clark, claims this quote disgusted her
Speaker 1: and turned her against mannedkind. And since most people listening
Speaker 1: probably don't know anything about the history of cat torture
Speaker 1: in Europe, I didn't know anything about the history of
Speaker 1: cat torture in Europe. I'm gonna have to talk about
Speaker 1: that now for a little while, Jamie.
Speaker 3: Like specific to this region, cat torture.
Speaker 1: All of Europe, really, but like, yeah, specifically to France.
Speaker 1: Like the French fucking hate cats. Okay, they are assholes
Speaker 1: about cats. Yeah, Today we rightly revere cats as our
Speaker 1: moral and intellectual superiors, and we've organized our society around
Speaker 1: pleasing them. This is right and good, But cats have
Speaker 1: not always been beloved in the West. Well, they are
Speaker 1: considered basically holy in Islam. They're like ritually clean, Like
Speaker 1: you can have them in mosques and stuff all over
Speaker 1: the place. You have to wash your hands after touching
Speaker 1: them if you're gonna go pray. There's a long Christian
Speaker 1: tradition of seeing cats as demonic entities, and to be fair,
Speaker 1: Islam is kind of shitty on the subject of dogs.
Speaker 1: So I guess whatever of the big religions you pick,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be terrible to one of the good animals.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. Yeah, it's weird now. In the
Speaker 1: fifteenth century, Edward, Duke of York, announced that if the
Speaker 1: devil inhabited any living animal, it was the cat, and
Speaker 1: for centuries all around Europe, good Christians tortured and murdered
Speaker 1: cats for almost no reason. In Yepra, Belgium, they held
Speaker 1: an event called Cat and Stoate the Festival of Cats,
Speaker 1: which sounds awesome but actually just involved drunken townsfolk throwing
Speaker 1: cats from the top of the church on the hard
Speaker 1: cobblestones and then lighting them on fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, I hate Okay, it's always really frustrating when
Speaker 2: you hear a story about the underclass and it's like
Speaker 2: you're playing to stereotypes about the underclass.
Speaker 1: Yeah on the pavement, Yeah yeah, I mean I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be honest. I bet the rich people got to go
Speaker 1: up first and throw the nicest.
Speaker 3: Cats just to set a good yeah.
Speaker 2: And then and then they would privately be throwing cats
Speaker 2: at hard marble floors as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my god, it's horrible. And cat and stoat still
Speaker 1: takes place in Yupra every May, but they use stuffed
Speaker 1: animals now, which just stop, just just stop. It's not
Speaker 1: a good tradition.
Speaker 3: It would be so easy to not do it. It
Speaker 3: would be so easy. Do they do Do they eat
Speaker 3: the cat?
Speaker 2: Like? Do they?
Speaker 3: Or is it just we're just killing the cats?
Speaker 1: Not that that makes a no, No, they're just murdering
Speaker 1: cats for no good reason. Okay, it's fun. That is
Speaker 1: worse and people are horrible, But Jamie, you know who
Speaker 1: doesn't randomly torture cats in Belgium? Your sponsors exactly right
Speaker 1: now that Sophie vets every sponsor to make sure they
Speaker 1: do not torture cats in Belgium.
Speaker 3: Yes, is that that's true? That's is a lie, Robert.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, it is a small country, so the vetting's
Speaker 1: pretty easy. Like you'll notice, I did not say, for example, Canada. No,
Speaker 1: you certainly did. No, I did not.
Speaker 2: Canada just got canceled before our very eyes product.
Speaker 1: We're back.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Those were good ads, good Jamie, good products. After all
Speaker 1: those good ads, are you ready to hear more about
Speaker 1: the systematic torture of cats by generations of Europeans.
Speaker 3: I just got a cat, Robert, This is not fair.
Speaker 1: I love cats. Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Shout out, Flee, shout out to flee my cat.
Speaker 1: He's got a big neck.
Speaker 3: He's got a big neck.
Speaker 1: Free shout out to Roach, one of the side characters
Speaker 1: in uh the first version of the movie with Keanu Reeves,
Speaker 1: where some of the people are bank robbers but they
Speaker 1: also surfers. Oh oh oh, oh, oh oh.
Speaker 2: You're talking about the Keanu Reeves surfing movie with with Yes,
Speaker 2: we've covered it on specle cast.
Speaker 1: Yes. Roach. Roach is the one who bleeds out in
Speaker 1: a plane point break. He's a good character.
Speaker 3: We're talking we're talking about point break.
Speaker 1: Yes, point break, that's the movie a classic. Yes. Now,
Speaker 1: in France there was a centuries old tradition of burning
Speaker 1: hundreds of cats to death and gigantic bonfires. Louis the
Speaker 1: sixteenth even famously lit Paris's catfire in sixteen forty eight.
Speaker 3: Uh, the king is such a catfire?
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, who else, Jamie, who else?
Speaker 3: This is just all news to me.
Speaker 1: Just I just yes, so news to me too. I Okay, I'm.
Speaker 2: Glad that this wasn't like common knowledge. I would be
Speaker 2: horrified if I just didn't. You know, it've been burning cats, Okay, I.
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't surprise like obviously, like you have to
Speaker 1: assume earlier times people are more callous to cats and
Speaker 1: dogs because them being like what they are now is
Speaker 1: kind of a more recent development because we have all
Speaker 1: these extra resources. But I didn't realize it was this
Speaker 1: like cruel.
Speaker 3: This is a lot. Yeah, king is sitting the catfire.
Speaker 3: That's like bad writing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the king would Yeah. So brulais lechats, which
Speaker 1: I am not going to pronounce more correctly than that,
Speaker 1: because it's a horrible thing. And fuck fuck France, as
Speaker 1: it was called varied in a number of different ways.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was just massive bonfires where living cats were
Speaker 1: tied together in like huge pires. Sometimes living cats were
Speaker 1: tied above small fires on like a spit and then
Speaker 1: roasted to death. Sometimes cats were set in wooden cages
Speaker 1: and burnt to death. In some towns, people known as
Speaker 1: quremauds cat chasers would soak cats and fuel light them
Speaker 1: on fire and chase them through town to the amusement
Speaker 1: of citizens.
Speaker 3: Peoples are so upset all the time.
Speaker 2: I know, right, damn they're an oppressed species.
Speaker 1: Yes they are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would be pissed.
Speaker 1: We you should be. I'm pissed, I am. The charred
Speaker 1: remains of these tortured cats were taken home as good
Speaker 1: luck charms by people. In seventeen thirty, as revolutionary sentiment
Speaker 1: simmered and bubbled throughout French society, two Parisian apprentice printers
Speaker 1: got fed up with the masters and abducted their cats.
Speaker 1: They staged a massive public trial, the Great Cat Massacre,
Speaker 1: as it's become known to history. Now, this was tied
Speaker 1: more towards issues of class hatred than hatred of cats.
Speaker 1: But the cats wound up actually like.
Speaker 2: Escape cats for the whole situation exactly, and that's also
Speaker 2: the worst way to die as as a symbol for
Speaker 2: something that has nothing to do with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those cats have no understanding of class theory.
Speaker 2: It's took at someone and then they're like, well, this
Speaker 2: has something to do with Like my opinion on the
Speaker 2: new Taylor Swift record has nothing to do with Jamie.
Speaker 3: But I killed her as to send a message.
Speaker 1: It would be like if one group of aliens came
Speaker 1: to Earth and murdered you for something they knew human
Speaker 1: beings were going to do one hundred years in the future,
Speaker 1: something you're completely incapable of understanding or knowing about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like just yeah, this, like it's just wild. But these
Speaker 1: apprentices felt their masters treated the family cats better than
Speaker 1: their workers, and because they couldn't quite you know, murder
Speaker 1: their bosses, they got a crowd together and they captured
Speaker 1: a bunch of rich people's cats, and then they put
Speaker 1: them on trial and sentenced them to be hung until dead.
Speaker 1: And they hung just a fuckload of cats to death.
Speaker 1: That is, they made like the owners of the cat's watch.
Speaker 1: It was super fucked up.
Speaker 3: I don't know what to do right now.
Speaker 1: Well, Eva, what you can do right now is you
Speaker 1: can get a little bit into the head of a
Speaker 1: sensitive young soul like Maximiani Portas, because a lot of
Speaker 1: this stuff was still going on in France. It wasn't
Speaker 1: at its worst, but like cat torture and burning was
Speaker 1: still happening in the countryside. And she sees this as
Speaker 1: a little girl and is like, this is part of
Speaker 1: why she hates those like, you know, French revolutionary and
Speaker 1: I'll use a freedom and equality is She's like, well,
Speaker 1: clearly this is all bullshit. Look at what they're doing
Speaker 1: to these animals, Like where's their you know, equality and
Speaker 1: freedom and like like she that's kind of like where
Speaker 1: she comes at this from, right, Yeah. Yeah, So she's
Speaker 1: deep sympathetic to animals and particularly cats, and basically incapable
Speaker 1: of being sympathetic to human beings. And yeah, an interesting story.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be interested in how she galaxy brains
Speaker 2: being sympathetic towards the plight of brutally murdered cats to
Speaker 2: becoming a fascist.
Speaker 1: But you know fascist common thing for fascists to be
Speaker 1: honestism well, you know, not committing cat murders, but like
Speaker 1: hating people because of how garbage they are, and thinking
Speaker 1: fascism is the only way to fix it, because people
Speaker 1: just can't be allowed to live on their own.
Speaker 2: Okay, I need to I thought you were saying cat
Speaker 2: specific reasons. I'm like, well, this is a true education.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, Maximiani was very good in school. She was
Speaker 1: a bright student. She read and wrote constantly, and her
Speaker 1: very favorite writer was a nineteenth century French poet named
Speaker 1: Charles Leconte Delile. And here's how Savitri's biographer describes Lacante
Speaker 1: Delile's work in the book Hitler's Priestess, which is really
Speaker 1: the only decent biography of Savitri. Devi quote le Comte
Speaker 1: Delile's own tragic view of the universe. His romantic colors
Speaker 1: were always tinged with somber pessimism, strongly appealed to Maximiane.
Speaker 1: He regarded all religious symbols as fragments of a divine truth,
Speaker 1: but the profusion of faiths over time convinced him of
Speaker 1: the relative value and ultimate vanity of every doctrine. Beset
Speaker 1: by a sense of cosmic futility, Lecante Delile rejected Christianity
Speaker 1: and evoked the stoical heroism of barbarian and exotic peoples.
Speaker 1: In his famous poem Psycho poems Barbaras. He was also
Speaker 1: powerfully attracted to Hinduism following the translation of its sacred
Speaker 1: texts in the eighteen forties. Maximiani felt a profound sympathy
Speaker 1: with La Comte Delile's view of life's fragility, the vanity
Speaker 1: of existence, and the illusion of the world. His romantic
Speaker 1: poems about the ancient Egyptians, the Scandinavians, the Celts and Hindus,
Speaker 1: their proud paganism and heroic action yet final resignation in
Speaker 1: the face of death and oblivion confirmed her own version
Speaker 1: to Christianity and helped her form her own fatalistic worldview.
Speaker 1: So Goths didn't exist in the early twentieth century, but
Speaker 1: Maximiani's clearly that.
Speaker 2: She is a proto goth It's again, it's just like,
Speaker 2: if there had been a hot topic for her to,
Speaker 2: you know, be a lot, a lot could have been avoided.
Speaker 2: Imagine how many hot topic employees were saved by that.
Speaker 1: Business, Yeah, a lot of them. Imagine how many fascists
Speaker 1: we avoided by, for example, the existence of Kylo Rin
Speaker 1: fan fiction there.
Speaker 3: Honestly, honestly, it's wow, that actually hit for me.
Speaker 1: Wow, that hit that people. People need an outlet, you know,
Speaker 1: and if you don't, this is what happens.
Speaker 2: Right, You're just like, if you can make it horny
Speaker 2: and palatable, you're going to.
Speaker 1: Prevent something bad. This was a a young girl who
Speaker 1: desperately needed to be distracted, and nothing distracted her. And that, right,
Speaker 1: it was a problem.
Speaker 2: Laye out a pretty clear track for you to really,
Speaker 2: I mean, I just, yeah, send me back in time
Speaker 2: with a Jack Skellington hoodie for this woman.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that would have solved so many problems.
Speaker 1: I want to create some others.
Speaker 2: I mean, she still would have been a deeply annoying person,
Speaker 2: but like I had a Jack Skellington hoodie.
Speaker 3: But also I had never seen the movie. I was
Speaker 3: a total poser.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, that's going to get you canceled harder than
Speaker 1: anything else today.
Speaker 3: And then I saw the movie and guess what, I
Speaker 3: didn't like it very much.
Speaker 1: I watched it.
Speaker 3: It's fine, it's fine, Well, actually I don't. I think
Speaker 3: it's maybe not so good. Beautiful animation though anyways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you get to judge it for
Speaker 1: its time, do I. Anyways, it was no For example,
Speaker 1: the Little Toaster, I don't know aprils, Yeah, yeah, it's up. No, no,
Speaker 1: it didn't fuck kids up.
Speaker 3: I loved the pray.
Speaker 1: Little Toaster damaged me forever.
Speaker 3: Really, that's why he But he was so brave, Robert,
Speaker 3: he was so brave.
Speaker 1: Movie fucked me.
Speaker 3: That's why you throw bagels, right, Robert, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's why I'm scared of fucking radiators.
Speaker 3: You've got to do some exposure therapy for you with
Speaker 3: a brave little toaster. That's why he doesn't toast his bagels.
Speaker 3: He only throws them. That's embarrassing. I mean, that's like
Speaker 3: the thing. Tragic, tragic. Imagine the path we could have avoided.
Speaker 1: I know. Maximiani Portis was very political as a young girl.
Speaker 1: When World War One started in nineteen fourteen, she at
Speaker 1: nine years old, knew very clearly that she did not
Speaker 1: trust the Entente powers, so like England, France, you know, Russia.
Speaker 1: Some of this likely came from the fact that Greece's
Speaker 1: King Constantine was very pro German and refused to get
Speaker 1: into the war on the side of either the entent
Speaker 1: or the Central Powers. But the King of Greece's Prime minister,
Speaker 1: a guy named Venizelos, which I'm probably mispronouncing disagreed with
Speaker 1: the king. He was very pro British and supported Greece
Speaker 1: getting into the war. The two fought over this for
Speaker 1: years until in nineteen sixteen a group of pro Venizelos
Speaker 1: army officers staged a coup against the king. There were
Speaker 1: rumors that the Untaunted back this, and those rumors seemed
Speaker 1: credible in light of the fact that French and British
Speaker 1: troops landed in Salonica and Athens in nineteen fifteen and
Speaker 1: sixteen to force Greek compliance in their demands from military
Speaker 1: access to the Macedonian Front so they could better fight
Speaker 1: Austria Hungary. That's a lot a history there, but basically,
Speaker 1: she's very pro Greece and wants Grecee to stay out
Speaker 1: of the war because she also likes Germany, hates the English,
Speaker 1: hates the French, and she's pissed off because England and
Speaker 1: France back this prime minister who wants Greece to get
Speaker 1: into the war, and they also fuck with Greek sovereignty
Speaker 1: and stuff. She gets really angry over all.
Speaker 3: And how old is she at this point?
Speaker 1: Where are we nine, ten eleven years old? The end
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixteen, when.
Speaker 3: They imagine, did you know what was going on in
Speaker 3: the world when you were nine or ten years old? Like,
Speaker 3: how aware were you?
Speaker 1: I was pretty I mean nine eleven happened when I
Speaker 1: was like twelve, and that was definitely like the start
Speaker 1: of me getting political. I guess, yeah, I was in
Speaker 1: World War One. Yeah, you know. World War One's that
Speaker 1: level of thing, right where like even a little kid
Speaker 1: is kind of like, you're going to pay attention to
Speaker 1: that shit. It's kind of a big deal.
Speaker 3: You don't have a fully formed opinion, but you'll know
Speaker 3: what's going on.
Speaker 1: You'll know what's going I guess.
Speaker 2: I'm just like, it would be so bizarre to me
Speaker 2: if someone was like Jamie's beliefs at eight years old,
Speaker 2: was nine to eleven?
Speaker 3: Was school got out early that day?
Speaker 1: And this is where I should note that this is
Speaker 1: going to be an imperfect episode in terms of that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, because our main source on this is
Speaker 1: Hitler's Priestess, which is a biography that's fairly decent but
Speaker 1: also flawed because it's mainly based on Savitri Devi's own
Speaker 1: biographical writings of her recollections of her own life. Like
Speaker 1: there's just not a lot of information there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of weren't a lot of people to go back
Speaker 1: to and like talk to about her and as a
Speaker 1: child and stuff who were still alive when she became relevant. Oh,
Speaker 1: if I think it was written in ninety.
Speaker 2: Eight, if I could write about like what I thought
Speaker 2: I thought at eight years old, I'd be like, Jamie
Speaker 2: was a brilliant genius who had opinions on foreign policy.
Speaker 1: Okay, got it well. But that said, given the I
Speaker 1: don't think we shouldn't discard all of this because if
Speaker 1: you look at the thrust of her life, she does
Speaker 1: live the life of someone who's always been very political.
Speaker 1: I mean, she's sure, yeah, exactly, that's a vibe. So yeah,
Speaker 1: Venizelos and his men took over part of Greece with
Speaker 1: the backing of Britain and France, and those two countries
Speaker 1: were happy to recognize his government.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: They carried out a brutal ten month blockade of the
Speaker 1: Greek provinces that stayed loyal to the king, and young
Speaker 1: Maximiani watched all this as she grew into an adolescent girl.
Speaker 1: Some of her earliest memories were news reports of protests
Speaker 1: from Athens of Whyalist crowds railing against the entent and
Speaker 1: Maximiani sided with them and can say the Aton's treatment
Speaker 1: of Greece to be basically criminal. Her disgust was reinforced
Speaker 1: after the war. In the wake of the Central powers defeat,
Speaker 1: the Ottoman Empire was broken up and Greece was given
Speaker 1: control in the Versailles Treaty of a city called Smyrna
Speaker 1: now Smyrna is a city on the Aegean coast of Anatolia,
Speaker 1: which is modern day Turkey. It was the center of
Speaker 1: a nearly three thousand year old Greek community that lived
Speaker 1: on the coasts of Anatolia. Greece, with some justification, thought
Speaker 1: that a lot of Anatolia ought to be part of
Speaker 1: Greece because it was culturally and historically Greece and the
Speaker 1: newly created nation of Turkey did not agree. So, with
Speaker 1: the backing of the Versailles Treaty, Greece invaded Smyrna in
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen to make good on the promises that had
Speaker 1: been made to them by the Entente, and the fighting
Speaker 1: was a disaster from the beginning. The Ottoman Empire had
Speaker 1: been defeated in the war technically, but on the ground
Speaker 1: and actual battles. Their soldiers had performed pretty well. They'd
Speaker 1: fought off a big invasion at Gallipoli. The birth of
Speaker 1: the Turkish nation after the fall of the Ottoman Empire
Speaker 1: was met with a swelling of nationalist fervor and Anatolia,
Speaker 1: and this helped to spawn a powerful insurgent Turkish movement
Speaker 1: dedicated to defeating the Greek invasion. So a truce was
Speaker 1: reached in nineteen twenty, but like many recent truces in
Speaker 1: Turkish military history, it was not a real truce, and
Speaker 1: around the same time King Constantine was restored to the
Speaker 1: Greek throne. This turn the remaining great powers of Europe
Speaker 1: against Greece, and even though they promised Greece Smyrna and
Speaker 1: the Versailles Treaty in nineteen twenty one, they basically like
Speaker 1: were like fuck that shit and their support.
Speaker 3: Do we know where the Greeks at this time stood
Speaker 3: on cats?
Speaker 1: Uh, you know, they're closer to the Middle East. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess more pro cat.
Speaker 3: More pro cat, Okay, Okay, So okay, yeah, I think that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the further in that direction, you get more pro cat,
Speaker 1: less pro dog. You know, I think that's generally fair
Speaker 1: so western. They've got a lot of dogs, Yeah.
Speaker 3: The dog.
Speaker 1: Maybe they just lit cats and on fire. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I did not do that research.
Speaker 3: Okay, these are the questions I have Robert, take em
Speaker 3: or leave them.
Speaker 1: So the French and Italian governments like betray Greece first,
Speaker 1: and they sign agreements with the Turkish leader Mustafa Camal
Speaker 1: and to ignore the promises they'd made in the Verse
Speaker 1: I Treaty to Greece. Britain held out the longest, but
Speaker 1: when Greece launched an offensive in Anatolia and March of
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty one, all of the allies suddenly adopted a
Speaker 1: policy of neutrality. Britain banned for their arm sales to Greece, well,
Speaker 1: France was happy to allow its weapons makers to sell
Speaker 1: straight to Turkey. The whole effort to incorporate the Greek
Speaker 1: regions of Anatolia into the Greek nation ended in disaster
Speaker 1: and military defeat. In nineteen twenty two, Greek forces fled
Speaker 1: Asia Minor, and the Turkish army conducted a campaign of
Speaker 1: extermination and ethnic cleansing on their Aegean coast. They massacred
Speaker 1: some thirty thousand Christians, a mix of Greeks, Armenians and
Speaker 1: Franks in order to ensure no Greek independence movement would
Speaker 1: ever crop up on their coast. Again. Awesome, the Smyrna debacle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is why there's no real Greek community in Anatota anymore,
Speaker 1: not like there was for three thousand years prior. This
Speaker 1: is like what wipes out that community. Okay, yeah, so
Speaker 1: you can see why a Greek nationalist like Maximiani Portas,
Speaker 1: who is like fifteen sixteen years old then and like
Speaker 1: really actually starting to like understand the world, is furious
Speaker 1: about all this, and it breeds in her a powerful
Speaker 1: hatred of the Entente powers, particularly of France and of England.
Speaker 1: And she basically felt that like all these fancy words
Speaker 1: they had about liberty and democracy were bullshit when they
Speaker 1: couldn't even hold the basic promises and protect the lives
Speaker 1: of tens of thousands of innocent Greek civilians, which is
Speaker 1: a fair point, very valid. Yes, yeah, yeah, Now I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to like ignore the Turkish point of view
Speaker 1: in this too, like Greece is not in the right
Speaker 1: here as a country either, like everybody's in the wrong.
Speaker 1: Although Turkey massacres thirty thousand people. So I'm gonna say,
Speaker 1: maybe they're more in the wrong. But this is complicated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this this is sort of how Maximiani is very
Speaker 1: much on the side of Greece is fucked over. And
Speaker 1: this is an entirely like a crime committed by the
Speaker 1: Entente powers against Greece. Simply it sets up the rest
Speaker 1: of her life in a lot of ways. Okay, So
Speaker 1: other influences on her developing mind were the sight of
Speaker 1: French crowds and Lyon cheering uproariously at the brutal terms
Speaker 1: of the Treaty of Versailles when they were announced. She
Speaker 1: was horrified when the French government stationed black Synegalese troops
Speaker 1: to occupy the Rure, Germany's industrial heartland. Now, this is
Speaker 1: one of those moves by France that engendered a whole
Speaker 1: shitload of racism in Central Europe. It was a big
Speaker 1: influence on a lot of early Nazi thinkers too. And
Speaker 1: obviously black soldiers aren't he worse than white ones. But
Speaker 1: as civilians living under military occupation, you're going to hate
Speaker 1: whatever foreign soldiers occupy your country. And if those soldiers
Speaker 1: are the only black people we've ever met, it wasn't
Speaker 1: a great move on France's behalf Jesus Christ. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I'm trying to set up all of like this is
Speaker 1: like the shit that like is forming. She's twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
Speaker 1: is all this is going on like formative fucking years.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So she hates France, she hates England, she hates
Speaker 1: black people, she hates Turkish people. She's she loves a
Speaker 1: lot more hate. She loves cats. This is the consistence one. Yeah, yeah, Jesus.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty three, a freshly graduated Maximiani Portos left
Speaker 1: France to attend college in Greece. She was just on
Speaker 1: the edge of eighteen and furious with the status quo
Speaker 1: in Europe, without any real clear idea of how she
Speaker 1: thought things ought to be. Instead, she did, however, know
Speaker 1: that she was obsessed with Hellenism, which is like ancient
Speaker 1: Greek culture.
Speaker 3: She's a dork.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's a big fucking joy.
Speaker 3: She's like wait, Helen of Troy Abstin.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. She would not shut up about the elliot.
Speaker 3: She was a fucking you know, I've read multiple translations
Speaker 3: and you're like, can you not? OK?
Speaker 1: She has strong and profoundly thirsty opinions on Achilles.
Speaker 3: She's like ranked gods and goddesses hot to that.
Speaker 1: If she'd seen the actual movie Troy that came out
Speaker 1: like a decade ago, she would have been furious, because
Speaker 1: there's no way Brad Pitt was as hot as the
Speaker 1: Achilles in her mind.
Speaker 3: Beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she believed the old Greeks had been quote a
Speaker 1: civilization of iron, rooted in truth, a civilization with all
Speaker 1: the virtues of the ancient world, none of its weaknesses,
Speaker 1: and all the technical achievements of the modern age, with
Speaker 1: that modern hypocrisy, pettiness, and moral squalor. Now this is,
Speaker 1: of course, wildly inaccurate. The ancient Greeks were like, unbelievably
Speaker 1: fucked up. They also did a lot of cool shit, obviously,
Speaker 1: like every other ancient bee. That's all ancient people do,
Speaker 1: a lot of cool shit. All Aztec's amazing shit, horribly
Speaker 1: fucked up, ancient Romans amazing shit, Han Chinese ancient amazing shit,
Speaker 1: horribly for everybody. Yeah, in the Greek specific case, they
Speaker 1: fucked a bunch of little kids. They repeatedly put narcissistic
Speaker 1: idiots in charge of their city states. They made numerous
Speaker 1: blunders that ensured their period of military and economic might
Speaker 1: was short lived, and they also created some of the
Speaker 1: most influential philosophy in fiction and art that has ever
Speaker 1: been made in the history of the human race. Complicated people,
Speaker 1: Maximiani does not get a complex picture of ancient Greece.
Speaker 1: It's just the good shit. Yeah, yeah, good lord, you
Speaker 1: might say, like, I don't know, I want to say,
Speaker 1: her understanding of Greek history was not deep. It was
Speaker 1: certainly incomplete. That said pretty much only like, the only
Speaker 1: thing Europeans would write about the ancient Greeks in that
Speaker 1: period was wildly positive. You weren't going to get like
Speaker 1: critical like commentary on, for example, Pederasti and ancient Greece
Speaker 1: in fucking nineteen twenty, Like, you're just not going to
Speaker 1: read that. Yeah, So, her love of Greece was mostly
Speaker 1: focused on obsessing over their incredible art and fantasizing about
Speaker 1: the idealized culture that she eve it existed.
Speaker 3: There, right.
Speaker 2: I mean this, I mean we as children all read
Speaker 2: revisionist history about horrifying cultures.
Speaker 1: I was obsessed with ancient Rome for a lot of
Speaker 1: the same reasons.
Speaker 2: Of course, because you were just like, oh, it seems
Speaker 2: like they only to dope stuff and more cool outfits.
Speaker 1: Well, I will say I was kind of a fucked
Speaker 1: up kid, so when I learned about like all of
Speaker 1: the fucking crucifixions and shit, I was kind of like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're so metal. I mean it is pretty fucking metal.
Speaker 3: You're so fucking metal.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about what they did to Spartacus and his
Speaker 1: friends one of these days, but it's fucking one of
Speaker 1: like the biggest mic drop moments in the history of
Speaker 1: torturing people to death with wood. I think that's fair
Speaker 1: to say.
Speaker 3: Thrilled to have such a hyper specific.
Speaker 1: So she moves to Greece. She's super happy for a while.
Speaker 1: Obviously best place in the world for this girl is
Speaker 1: fucking Grece at this point in time, and the time
Speaker 1: she spent discovering the wonders of Athens, which rules coincided
Speaker 1: with some very important goings on in Germany. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to quote again from the book Hitler's Priestess. Well
Speaker 1: years later she would recall that she spent such a
Speaker 1: sunlit afternoon upon the Acropolis on ninth October nineteen twenty three,
Speaker 1: the fateful day of Hitler's push when he and his
Speaker 1: followers had attempted a coup against the Bavarian government and
Speaker 1: staged a march to the Feldehernhall in the center of Munich.
Speaker 1: The police successfully broke up the march, and sixteen martyrs
Speaker 1: of the early Nazi movement fell beneath the hail of bullets.
Speaker 1: When details of the incident were published in the world
Speaker 1: press the following day, there was some discussion over lunch
Speaker 1: at the International Home Hostel, which is where she was
Speaker 1: crashing at the time. Maximiani admits that she did not
Speaker 1: yet connect Hitler with her own dream of a new
Speaker 1: racial order based on her view of classical Greek antiquity. However,
Speaker 1: she strongly sympathized with him as an enemy of the
Speaker 1: Allies on account of his contempt for the Versailles Treaty,
Speaker 1: and saw a parallel between his nationalist idea of one
Speaker 1: state for all Germans and the Megali idea among the Greeks,
Speaker 1: which is the idea that Greece should recoup its ancient
Speaker 1: power and takeo for the places that had controlled back
Speaker 1: in the day. Argument Yeah, she engaged in a heated
Speaker 1: argument in defensive Hitler with the French managers of the hostel,
Speaker 1: So arguing about Hitler with a hostel, No, we lost her,
Speaker 1: she's been gone for a while. Yeah, but you know
Speaker 1: who won't argue in support of Hitler with the French
Speaker 1: hostel owner in Athens, Robert the products and services support
Speaker 1: this podcasts.
Speaker 2: And services would never ever heard us or do something wrong.
Speaker 2: I've been saying it for years.
Speaker 1: I have agreed for years.
Speaker 3: Fingers crossed for a dig pill ad right after a Yeah,
Speaker 3: what a great transition, both of you. Just wonderful work.
Speaker 1: We're back. So it was during this first visit to
Speaker 1: Greece that Maximiani Portos would have seen the symbol for
Speaker 1: the first time that would come to define her life
Speaker 1: and legacy. I am talking, of course, about the swastika.
Speaker 1: Odds are good she would have encountered it for the
Speaker 1: first time in the National Museum of Athens, which hosted
Speaker 1: a huge amount of what were believed to be Trojan artifacts,
Speaker 1: which had been uncovered by the pioneering and controversial archaeologist
Speaker 1: Heinrich Schleimann. Now, Schleimann was not a professional archaeologist, which
Speaker 1: is not weird for the time. Most of like the
Speaker 1: archaeologists of this period are like gentlemen adventurers who I
Speaker 1: mean get our nerds.
Speaker 2: Basically the people in the people in like the Mummy
Speaker 2: movies who are just wearing chakeys exact money, and people
Speaker 2: in Tarzan.
Speaker 1: That was the most accurate thing about the Mummy movie
Speaker 1: other than the way mummies react to shotguns.
Speaker 3: They're all named Clayton. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Shleimann Yeah. Throughout the mid eighteen hundreds had
Speaker 1: been a very successful German arms merchant, trading raw materials
Speaker 1: for the ingredients to make ammunition, and he'd nursed a
Speaker 1: deep obsession with the iliat his entire life. In his
Speaker 1: late middle age, he decided to take his fortune to
Speaker 1: the Aegean and try to uncover the true locate of
Speaker 1: the ancient city of Troy. Unlike pretty much any like
Speaker 1: traditional archaeologist, Shlemann used the Iliad as a guide. He
Speaker 1: thought this book was like basically essentially accurate, and he
Speaker 1: followed the poem as if it had been a work
Speaker 1: of serious historical scholarship, and shockingly enough, this kind of worked.
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy one, after three years of searching, Shlemann
Speaker 1: found what was very likely to have been the site
Speaker 1: of ancient Troy. His methods of digging it up were brutal.
Speaker 1: He used crowbars and battering rams and destroyed countless thousands
Speaker 1: of artifacts, including ironically, what a lot of archaeologists now
Speaker 1: believe was the actual physical evidence of Troy. He dug
Speaker 1: too far down, basically because he fucked up and probably
Speaker 1: destroyed what actual Trojan relics there were. But he does
Speaker 1: find what a lot of people think was the site
Speaker 1: of Troy. It's just other shit was built there, and
Speaker 1: he dug up the wrong shit anyway, fucked up, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: So his research or his digging, despite all the shit
Speaker 1: it destroyed, produced hundreds upon hundreds upon hun of artifacts
Speaker 1: which people at the time believed to be Trojan and
Speaker 1: many of those artifacts, more than eighteen hundred of them,
Speaker 1: were emblazoned with various types of swastika. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote next from Scientific American. He would go on
Speaker 1: to see the swastika everywhere from Tibet to Paraguay to
Speaker 1: the Gold Coast of Africa, and as Schleiman's exploits grew
Speaker 1: more famous and archaeological discoveries became a way of creating
Speaker 1: a narrative of national identity, the swastika grew more prominent.
Speaker 1: It exploded in popularity as a symbol of good fortune,
Speaker 1: appearing on Coca Cola products, boy Scouts and Girls club materials,
Speaker 1: and even American military uniforms. The Antiquities on Earths by
Speaker 1: doctor Schleiman at Troy Acquire for us a double interest,
Speaker 1: wrote British linguist Archibald Sais in eighteen ninety six. They
Speaker 1: carry us back to the later stone ages of the
Speaker 1: Aryan race.
Speaker 2: Oh dear on Coca Cola products, Robert, what if that
Speaker 2: was just a product or serviced advertised?
Speaker 1: But it wasn't a naz It's like I I spent
Speaker 1: some time living in Indias and it's fucking their's swastikas
Speaker 1: all over the dam and it is weird. It takes
Speaker 1: you never really get used to it because of like
Speaker 1: what it means to the West. It's always like there's
Speaker 1: so many swastikas around here.
Speaker 2: That is I mean, even that is fascinating to like
Speaker 2: track the history of a symbol and like how it
Speaker 2: affects different areas of the world differently.
Speaker 3: That sounds extremely jarring.
Speaker 1: I actually I have some like tapestries that I picked
Speaker 1: up in India that have little swastikas on them in parts,
Speaker 1: and it's one of those things where it's like every
Speaker 1: now and then, like they're not the same as the
Speaker 1: Nazi swastikas, but they're close enough that people will be like,
Speaker 1: what's up.
Speaker 3: No, I need to leave your home right now?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, yeah, you're like most people.
Speaker 3: Swasticas are pretty small. Most people aren'tetting enough the.
Speaker 1: Blanket Nazi Nazi swastikas.
Speaker 2: See if I was over your house and you said that,
Speaker 2: I would be like, I actually, my uber is here,
Speaker 2: you know, like if you're like, they're not nasty swas
Speaker 2: Nazi swastikas, so calm down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like that.
Speaker 3: Uh, and they offer me a Miller lt. They're not Nazis.
Speaker 3: Would you like a Miller light?
Speaker 1: No, exactly, No, my standard greeting people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's how you greet all your guests.
Speaker 1: That's specifically how I say to hello to the officers
Speaker 1: who pull me over for speeding.
Speaker 3: No, no, I would be interestedd I.
Speaker 2: I know I've gone down that Wikipedia hole at one
Speaker 2: point of just like tracking the symbology, the symbology of
Speaker 2: the it's it goes back.
Speaker 1: So Shleman. There's criticism of Sleman honestly for his methods.
Speaker 1: But he's not in any way a Nazi, Like, he's
Speaker 1: just a guy who finds a bunch of swastika is
Speaker 1: buried underground, and he's just an.
Speaker 2: Unqualified archaeologist using his money in a weird way.
Speaker 1: He's he's very controversial. Still, there are aspects of what
Speaker 1: he did that a lot of people praise because he
Speaker 1: he got a lot of shit right, but he also
Speaker 1: destroyed a huge amount of cultural antiquities. He's an interesting person.
Speaker 1: You should read about Shlemans in archaeology. Okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it.
Speaker 2: Seems like a lot of those gentlemen explorers really delighted
Speaker 2: and you know, like destroying and selling off pieces of
Speaker 2: ancient history that had nothing to do with them.
Speaker 1: All of them are problematic. Yeah, I will say Schleiman
Speaker 1: is one who comes from like a purer place of
Speaker 1: just being really into this history. But yeah, you know
Speaker 1: they're all problematic, so hashtig problem. Yeah. Now, the swastikas
Speaker 1: he found increasingly all over the world played directly into
Speaker 1: a shared delusion that was spreading like a disease among
Speaker 1: many of the eras white people. The myth of the
Speaker 1: ancient Aryan. Now, in actual historical terms, Aryan is a
Speaker 1: term used to refer to the Indo Aryan language group.
Speaker 1: It was never a racial classification. The term started being
Speaker 1: used because early linguists noticed strange similarities between languages like German, Romani, Punjabi, Hindu,
Speaker 1: Urdu in Sanskrit. Well, the term Aryan was initially applied
Speaker 1: to speakers of various Indo Iranian languages. The understanding of
Speaker 1: the word became corrupted in the late eighteen hundreds. This
Speaker 1: occurred along the same time that colonialism started to reach
Speaker 1: its absolute zenith, and there were a lot of white
Speaker 1: folks looking for reasons to justify the fact that they
Speaker 1: were basically plundering and enslaving the entire world. There were
Speaker 1: also a lot of white folks looking at their increasingly
Speaker 1: multi racial societies, which at that point, like meant Italians
Speaker 1: and Slavs breed with Germans and British people, and were
Speaker 1: getting concerned about this fact. And I'm going to refer
Speaker 1: back to Smithsonian Magazine again quote. The rising interest in
Speaker 1: eugenics and rachel hygiene, however, led to some to corrupt
Speaker 1: Aryan into a descriptor for an ancient master racial identity
Speaker 1: with a clear through line to contemporary Germany. As The
Speaker 1: Washington Post reported in a story about the rise of
Speaker 1: Nazism several years before the start of World War two,
Speaker 1: Arianism was an intellectual dispute between bewhiskered scholars as to
Speaker 1: the existence of a pure and undefiled Aryan race at
Speaker 1: one time stage of Earth's history. In the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: French aristocrat Arthur de Gobinho and others made the connection
Speaker 1: between the mythical Aryans and the Germans, who are the
Speaker 1: superior descendants of the early people, now destined to lead
Speaker 1: the world to greater advancement by conquering their neighbors. The
Speaker 1: findings of Schleiman's dig in Turkey then suddenly had a
Speaker 1: deeper ideological meaning. For the nationalists. The purely Aryan symbol
Speaker 1: Shleiman uncovered was no longer an archaeological mystery. It was
Speaker 1: a stand in for their superiority. German nationalist groups like
Speaker 1: the reich Schammerbund, a nineteen twelve anti Semitic group, and
Speaker 1: the Bavarian Freikorp paramilitary basically the proud Boys of the era,
Speaker 1: used the swastika to reflect their newly discovered identity. As
Speaker 1: the master race. Now, the reality is that swastikas appeared
Speaker 1: damn near everywhere in human history. It's a common design
Speaker 1: and a striking one, and a bunch of different groups
Speaker 1: of people have independently figured it out over time.
Speaker 2: And people should stop talking to you about your blanket
Speaker 2: and actually just relax.
Speaker 3: They're pretty small.
Speaker 1: Nowadays. The swastika is the swastika, like it's the Nazi
Speaker 1: thing unless you're in India, because the world's big. But
Speaker 1: back in these days, like if you're looking at like
Speaker 1: ancient history, it's best to kind of look at the
Speaker 1: swastika the humor that weird s doodle we all put
Speaker 1: on our trapper keepers back in the nineties, Like no
Speaker 1: one invented that. It just showed up everywhere. That's the
Speaker 1: fucking swastika in prehistory. It's just all over the damn place.
Speaker 1: But of course, yeah, uh oh, I have that blanket.
Speaker 1: It was not seen as this though by a lot
Speaker 1: of people, and anthropologist Gwendoline Lake notes quote when Heinrich
Speaker 1: Schlimann discovered swastikaike decorations on pottery, flagments and all archaeological
Speaker 1: levels at Troy, it was seen as evidence for a
Speaker 1: racial continuity and proof that the inhabitants of the site
Speaker 1: had been Aryan all along. The link between the swastika
Speaker 1: and Indo European origin, once forged, was impossible to discard.
Speaker 1: It allowed the projection of nationalist feelings and associations onto
Speaker 1: a universal symbol, which hint served as a distinguishing boundary
Speaker 1: marker between non Aryan, or rather not German and German identity.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating that, I mean, because you can understand the logic,
Speaker 2: but it also is kind of absurd to assume that, like, oh,
Speaker 2: this symbol is always surely must mean the exact same
Speaker 2: thing thousands of years ago as it does to me
Speaker 2: today now.
Speaker 1: The people then were as dumb as the people who
Speaker 1: planted the Iowa Caucuses. Wow, that's why all this happened.
Speaker 3: Robert, my dog worked on the Shadow app so really
Speaker 3: wash your mouth.
Speaker 1: That is sunny.
Speaker 3: Sony invested in the Shadow app.
Speaker 1: I have to say it this all this math adds up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, of course he kept he was talking
Speaker 2: about shadow app for and I'm like, that can't be real,
Speaker 2: and then probably thought.
Speaker 1: It was the dog from uh uh, what was that
Speaker 1: movie with the dogs and cat that talk and they
Speaker 1: find their family terrible. I don't know a good movie
Speaker 1: Homeward Bound, Homeward.
Speaker 2: Oh, I haven't seen Home found Sonny definitely just wanted
Speaker 2: to harm people, and he wanted to harm the discourse,
Speaker 2: and that's why he invested in shadow app That's fair.
Speaker 1: That's fair. You could call him the Hitler of the
Speaker 1: Iowa caucases, which a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Many have, but it makes me uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Sitting in Athens, reading the news of Hitler's movement in
Speaker 1: Germany and staring at ancient swastikas on beloved Greek artifacts,
Speaker 1: things started to come together in Maximiani Portos's mind. She
Speaker 1: moved to Greece permanently in nineteen twenty eight, after finishing
Speaker 1: college and renouncing her French citizenship. The very next year,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty nine, she went with her mother and aunt
Speaker 1: on a trip to the Holy Land that wound up
Speaker 1: having just as deep an impact on her developing mind
Speaker 1: as the swastika. Now, Maximiani had never been very religious.
Speaker 1: Her mother and aunt were, though, and while they failed
Speaker 1: to inculcate a love of Christ in Maximiani, they did
Speaker 1: succeed in making her hate Jewish people, which is not
Speaker 1: the part of Christianity to transfer if you're gonna pick
Speaker 1: one all.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's so.
Speaker 2: Many different horrible things to take away from Christianity, and
Speaker 2: that is.
Speaker 3: That is the worst of all.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she got none of the good stuff, just the
Speaker 1: anti Semitism. Uh okay, yeah, yeah, it's not great.
Speaker 3: It's not great. I'm starting to think this lady maybe
Speaker 3: not so nice.
Speaker 1: Not heading in a great direction. Yeah. Now, a lot
Speaker 1: of this was tied to the fact that Maximiani was
Speaker 1: so in love with Greek culture and she was really
Speaker 1: pissed off because she was like particularly in love with
Speaker 1: like ancient Greek pagan culture, like the old Greek gods
Speaker 1: and their myths and stuff, and none of that stuff
Speaker 1: was very relevant other than it's like an academic thing
Speaker 1: by this point in history, and Christianity and Judaism were
Speaker 1: obviously hugely relevant in Europe, and she hated this, and
Speaker 1: she blamed the Jews for the fact that nobody other
Speaker 1: people weren't as into Greek history as she was, Like
Speaker 1: this is like the core of it for her. It
Speaker 1: was like she's in love with like Zeus and shit,
Speaker 1: and she's like, why don't people like this as much
Speaker 1: I do. It's the Jews.
Speaker 3: She's become a chaos nerd.
Speaker 1: No, it's not great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really bad.
Speaker 1: So her trip to the Holy Land with her mom
Speaker 1: and aunt was a bit of a weird one. No, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah. She was revolted by the obeisance they
Speaker 1: played to Judeo Christian holy sites, and as she touristed
Speaker 1: her way through old Jerusalem, she felt, in her biographer's words,
Speaker 1: overwhelmed and repelled by the exotic nature of the Jews.
Speaker 1: They're attired, they're customs, observances and festivals. The strange dark
Speaker 1: men in broad brimmed hats and blong black coats hastening
Speaker 1: to prayers at the Wailing Wall. Okay, it's interesting that
Speaker 1: Goodwin Clark Portis's biographer mentions this specifically, seeing these Jewish
Speaker 1: people and being like horrified by the way they look
Speaker 1: in their coats and hair locks and long black coats.
Speaker 1: It's possible that precise moment never happened, but it's worth
Speaker 1: noting that this moment bears a striking resemblance to a
Speaker 1: tale Adolf Hitler told regularly about the supposed moment that
Speaker 1: he specifically gained his hatred of Jewish people. And here's
Speaker 1: how he wrote about that moment in Mine comp. This
Speaker 1: takes place in Lintz, No, sorry, in Austria, maybe his
Speaker 1: boy Vienna. Once, as I was strolling through the inner city,
Speaker 1: I suddenly encountered an apparition in a black caftan and
Speaker 1: black hair locks. Is this a jew was my first thought,
Speaker 1: for to be sure they had not looked like that
Speaker 1: in Linz, where he grew up. I observed the man
Speaker 1: furtively and cautiously. But the longer I stared at this
Speaker 1: foreign face, scrutinizing feature for feature, the more my first
Speaker 1: question assumed a new form. Is this a German? So
Speaker 1: this is like a huge moment in like Hitler lore.
Speaker 1: It's possible that the reason that Portis writes her own thing,
Speaker 1: like her own story this way is that she's hearkening
Speaker 1: to mine comp, because again she writes about this later.
Speaker 1: It's also possible they just were similar people and had
Speaker 1: a similar Momentpholks.
Speaker 2: If she's the primary resource for herself and seems to
Speaker 2: have like a fair grasp on storytelling, it makes sense that.
Speaker 1: She would pull It doesn't make sense she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is.
Speaker 2: The end of act one, where's my inciting she needs
Speaker 2: she wrote her own inciting incident.
Speaker 1: If it didn't, yeah, I'll take a leaf out of
Speaker 1: you know. It's like, uh, you know, George Lucas stole
Speaker 1: from from great Japanese cinema to make Star Wars, and
Speaker 1: in a very similar fashion, Savitri DEVII stole from Adolf
Speaker 1: Hitler the causawa of.
Speaker 3: Not tr true artists Steel Robert. It's what they it's
Speaker 3: what they open saying for generations. Yeah, that is funny.
Speaker 2: I mean I feel like that same logic of like
Speaker 2: you have to have a story to go with your hatred.
Speaker 2: They have that same logic on like Iron Chef, you know,
Speaker 2: like they be like, there has to be a story
Speaker 2: that goes with this dish.
Speaker 3: And sometimes you're like, sometimes it just is.
Speaker 1: She just cooked some fucking food, asshole. Sometimes you just
Speaker 1: make some food and it's bad and it's terrible.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Maximiani would go on to claim that after this
Speaker 1: visit to the Holy Land, she decided that Hitler's campaign
Speaker 1: of hate against Jewish people was not just a matter
Speaker 1: of German concern, it was an international crusade. She came
Speaker 1: to believe that all of the formerly pagan nations of
Speaker 1: Europe had to throw off their Judaeo Christian heritage and
Speaker 1: like reconnect with their pagan roots. And this is the
Speaker 1: first time she realizes that she's a national socialist, and
Speaker 1: she the way she described that, she realizes she's always
Speaker 1: been a national socialist. And so she falls fully in
Speaker 1: love with Hitler at this point. And she's not a
Speaker 1: German Nazi though, And initially the way she decides to
Speaker 1: act on this newfound Nazism is to basically try to
Speaker 1: revive Greek nationalism and pagan beliefs, kind of with the
Speaker 1: structure of national socialism over them. And so she returns
Speaker 1: to Athens and she sets to work trying to cobble
Speaker 1: together her own Greek version of Nazism, but focused around
Speaker 1: a religious component that involved a return to worshiping the
Speaker 1: ancient Greek pantheon.
Speaker 3: I mean always with this woman.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, by this point, the ancient Greeks had become
Speaker 1: sort of the Uberminsch in her own mind, and this
Speaker 1: conception was nursed by the bits of Hitler speeches that
Speaker 1: made their way over into the press in her part
Speaker 1: of the world. By nineteen thirty, she finally read mind
Speaker 1: Camp for the very first time, which introduced Maximiani to
Speaker 1: Hitler's theories about the Aryan race. His ideas about the
Speaker 1: superior race consistently undermined by the evil Jews jailed remarkably
Speaker 1: well with Maximiani's own beliefs about the ancient Greeks and
Speaker 1: the Jews. She became increasingly obsessed with the Arians, and
Speaker 1: in part the idea of seeking out the remaining evidence
Speaker 1: of their existence. And at the time, it was generally
Speaker 1: understood that India had been conquered and ruled by the Aryans.
Speaker 1: Many among the weirder Nazi sets saw Hinduism as an
Speaker 1: example of a pure Ariyan pagan tradition uncorrupted by Judaism.
Speaker 1: They found the Hindu cast system deeply intriguing as well,
Speaker 1: for reasons that should be obvious, and enshrining a small
Speaker 1: number of superior beings and power over a vast number
Speaker 1: of less valuable individuals. In nineteen thirty two, Maximiani's father
Speaker 1: died and she decided to take this as an opportunity
Speaker 1: to travel to India to seek out the truth of
Speaker 1: the ancient Arians. It's like a Nazi version of Eat, Pray, Love.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is in another world. This is a very
Speaker 2: cute movie, and she just took every the same from it.
Speaker 2: It's you remember that horrible Cameron Crow movie Elizabethtown or
Speaker 2: Orlando Blue Drivers as the Country with.
Speaker 3: His Dad's ashes, and is like, I'm glad we had
Speaker 3: this talk. And You're like, what the fuck are you?
Speaker 1: It sounds like forty different movies, Jamie, It's no, it's
Speaker 1: the same.
Speaker 3: It's the same. Oh my elizabeth townheads Well, no, it's
Speaker 3: the same. Paula Deane's in that movie.
Speaker 1: Cursed, Oh God, speaking of Nazis. Now. So Savitri decides
Speaker 1: she's gonna go to fucking India, and she's not the
Speaker 1: only person this idea of going to India to seek
Speaker 1: out the Arians. In fact, in nineteen thirty five, Heinrich
Speaker 1: Himmler's SS founded the annan Nerby, a scientific think tank
Speaker 1: dedicated to finding evidence of the ancient Arians, and they
Speaker 1: actually sent multiple expeditions into India and Tibet. Maximiani went
Speaker 1: to India to find evidence of the Arians too, but
Speaker 1: she also went there to see firsthand evidence of a
Speaker 1: civilization founded upon what she believed was a natural racial hierarchy.
Speaker 1: She felt that Indian society looked how the world would
Speaker 1: appear in the year eight thousand, after six thousand years
Speaker 1: of Nazi rule, very specifically then eight thousand.
Speaker 3: The Jonahs Brothers didn't even think that far, you know.
Speaker 1: But they're huge, The Nazi Jokers brothers are.
Speaker 3: Huge in the year never shut up enjoying this moment that.
Speaker 1: I do not get that joke.
Speaker 2: The Jonahs brothers first single in two thousand and six
Speaker 2: or maybe seven was a song called year three thousand.
Speaker 2: They said, not much has changed, but we live underwater.
Speaker 2: That's all they knew about.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of change, Jamie.
Speaker 3: Well, they say.
Speaker 1: That not much has changed a thousand, not much has changed.
Speaker 3: I've been.
Speaker 1: Also live under water.
Speaker 3: It's a weird it makes no sense. Okay, sorry, Robert
Speaker 3: continued your podcast.
Speaker 2: But she's thinking that a year eight thousand, eight thousand,
Speaker 2: think even Kevin John she already has.
Speaker 1: You have to give her credit. She is eight times
Speaker 1: as ambitious as Hitler.
Speaker 3: God.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So upon her arrival in the country, her beliefs were
Speaker 1: seemingly confirmed when she watched a parade celebrating Rama, a
Speaker 1: deified Aryan hero. The parade featured huge numbers of dark
Speaker 1: skinned Indians bowing and worshiping a lighter skinned statue of Rama,
Speaker 1: and Rama is most assuredly not white, although he is
Speaker 1: often depicted as lighter skinned, but he is definitely Indian.
Speaker 1: But it was not uncommon for Europeans who were attracted
Speaker 1: to India in this period to decide that a number
Speaker 1: of ancient Hindu heroes and gods were in fact white.
Speaker 1: This was like a common thing, and in fact, Maximiani's
Speaker 1: favorite poet who we talked about earlier, Lecante Delisle, had
Speaker 1: actually written a poem about Rama that referred to him
Speaker 1: as Thou whose blood is pure, Thou whose body is white,
Speaker 1: and a subduer of all the profane races. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone's a little bit of a Nazi in colonialism. That's
Speaker 1: kind of the deal.
Speaker 3: That's kind of their thing. It's kind of I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: not shocking.
Speaker 1: And if you're interested in the story of Rama. One
Speaker 1: thing I would recommend that's super accessible. There's a movie
Speaker 1: online by Nina Paley, who's a female graphic artist who's amazing,
Speaker 1: called Sida Sings the Blues. If you just google that,
Speaker 1: it's the whole movie's free. It's one of those beautiful
Speaker 1: pieces of animation. It's why I went to Indian in
Speaker 1: the first places. An incredible movie.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that does really well is
Speaker 1: it has all these scenes where like individual like myths
Speaker 1: from like Hindu mythology are explained by like groups of
Speaker 1: people arguing about them, which if you actually go to India,
Speaker 1: is how you learn about myths. Like if you talk
Speaker 1: about the myth of Sida and Rama to like a family,
Speaker 1: everyone in the family, you like get like multiple different
Speaker 1: versions of the story, and people will argue with each other.
Speaker 1: Like it's not like Christian orthodoxy or whatever. Like it's
Speaker 1: very very complicated stuff, but fascinating. So yeah. Maximiani is
Speaker 1: convinced that this guy's white, though, and she falls in
Speaker 1: love with India and eventually finds her way to an
Speaker 1: ashram in Bengal, where she's able to live cheap and
Speaker 1: learn Hindu and study Hindu religious traditions. She gets a
Speaker 1: job outside of Delhi teaching English and Indian history, and
Speaker 1: she grew more and more taken with Hinduism, until in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six, she adopted a Hindu name, Savitri Devi,
Speaker 1: taken from a Hindu solar goddess. This woman is obsessed
Speaker 1: with some gods and goddess.
Speaker 3: Loves gods and goddess is so much. She's such a dork.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's specifically sun gods and goddess is. She's fucking
Speaker 1: obsessed with Aknaton too. It's weird.
Speaker 2: There was a girl in my middle school who was like,
Speaker 2: call me Artemis and we're like, no, okay, no, no,
Speaker 2: we did, we did, and our and if. I was
Speaker 2: also a dork, but not that kind of dork god, No, no, no,
Speaker 2: I was just a normal, white, bright eyes loving dork.
Speaker 1: I'm a big believer in calling people by whatever name
Speaker 1: they prefer to be referred to, unless it's the name
Speaker 1: of a god or goddess. Then I just start I
Speaker 1: just get furious. Yeah, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: push that behavior.
Speaker 2: Well, she was. She was Artemis for all of eighth grade,
Speaker 2: and then she went back to uh, just just Alex
Speaker 2: for the rest of as far as I know her life.
Speaker 1: That's fine. Yeah, yeah, any other name really now. Early
Speaker 1: on in her time in India, Savitri had hiked to
Speaker 1: the top of a hill and seen a beautiful Indian fortress,
Speaker 1: one of many such colossal ancient relics that dot the country.
Speaker 1: She was taken by its beauty and equally horrified by
Speaker 1: a more modern Jesuit hospital that had been constructed nearby.
Speaker 1: This was powerfully symbolic to her, and she claimed that
Speaker 1: it cemented in her a deep need to protect Hindu
Speaker 1: India from being infected by Judeo Christian taint. Starting in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven, she began working as an anti Christian
Speaker 1: preacher for Swami Satyananda's Hindu Mission in Calcutta. For two years,
Speaker 1: she criss crossed the country, meeting with various tribal elders
Speaker 1: and arranging public debates with Christian missionaries. And I'd like
Speaker 1: to quote now from an article by Conrad Elst, an
Speaker 1: indiologist who's analyzed this history. Quote. Thoroughly familiar with the
Speaker 1: mentality and methods of her adversary, she could destroy the
Speaker 1: credit of the imported religion in the minds of the
Speaker 1: villagers and prevent or undo many conversions. There was a
Speaker 1: sharp contradiction between her own racist and anti egalitarian convictions
Speaker 1: and the reformist in a galitarian program of the Hindu Mission.
Speaker 1: To the Hindu Mission, Hinduism was a value in itself
Speaker 1: to Savitri Devi. It was but an instrument of her
Speaker 1: imagined Aryan race. In her years as a preacher, she
Speaker 1: kept her non Hindu preoccupations to herself, but in her
Speaker 1: memoirs she declared that she conceived of her reconversion mission
Speaker 1: as an exercise and deception from the racist Aryan viewpoint,
Speaker 1: it was necessary to give the most backward and degenerate
Speaker 1: aborigines a false Hindu consciousness, she wrote. This is one
Speaker 1: of the major areas where you'll run into disputes about
Speaker 1: Savitri Devi. The common view on her legacy is spoiler
Speaker 1: that she proposed a synthesis between Hinduism and Nazism, and
Speaker 1: aspects of this are true, but it would be more
Speaker 1: accurate to say that she found Hinduism a useful tool
Speaker 1: for advancing Nazism. And I'm going to quote again from
Speaker 1: Else's essay. In contrast with the Hindu nationalists, but in
Speaker 1: tune with Indian Marxists and Castists, she believed that the
Speaker 1: concept nation and a program of nationalism could not apply
Speaker 1: to India. In nineteen thirty eight, she used the slogan
Speaker 1: make every Hindu and Indian nationalist, and every Indian nationalist
Speaker 1: to Hindu. Now this seems to be something not legitimately, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she didn't really believe it. In her autobiography years later,
Speaker 1: she expressed the belief that nationalism could only exist within
Speaker 1: members of the same race, thought that all the different
Speaker 1: casts in India were different races. And we're getting into
Speaker 1: the weeds here too much. But it's important to understand
Speaker 1: for what comes next that Saviitri Devi advocated for Hindu nationalism,
Speaker 1: but not because she believed strongly in it. Because she
Speaker 1: saw it as a useful tool for harming the British
Speaker 1: Empire and advancing Nazism. Okay, it's her main goal.
Speaker 3: So she's merely co opting it for her own sinister purposes.
Speaker 1: It's a little more complicated than that because she also
Speaker 1: loves it, like she's She's takes on a lot of
Speaker 1: Hindu beliefs. It's this is a weird story and there's
Speaker 1: no like super simple answer to it. But it's not
Speaker 1: as simple as she just becomes Hindu and also Nazi.
Speaker 1: Like it's weirder than that too.
Speaker 3: No one edited this out. I need people to know
Speaker 3: what what I've been forced to endure. You just like
Speaker 3: literally did that into the microphone.
Speaker 1: Literally it was hard.
Speaker 3: I had to I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: I can see Robert right now, and he wiped his
Speaker 2: nose on the mic and he was like, linked it
Speaker 2: and then licked it.
Speaker 3: You licked Robert Evan, You licked it.
Speaker 1: All of this gets edited out now. Many Hindu nationalists
Speaker 1: were very bullish about the Nazis because Great Britain owned
Speaker 1: India and ruled it as a brutal colonial oppressor, and
Speaker 1: they figured, you know, the enemy of my enemy, right.
Speaker 1: Not all of them felt this way. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of Hindu nationalists who were against the Nazis because
Speaker 1: they were like, well, but they're Nazis, so again, I
Speaker 1: can't paint everybody with the same brush. Yeah, but Savitri
Speaker 1: got along very well with the set of Hindu nationalists
Speaker 1: who are like, yeah, the Nazi seemed good. And she's
Speaker 1: particularly taken with doctor Asit Krishna Mukshi, one of India's
Speaker 1: few actual committed Nazis. In nineteen thirty seven and thirty eight,
Speaker 1: Mukarshi started to publish a bi monthly pro Nazi magazine,
Speaker 1: The New Mercury. Savitri met him in early nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: eight and they didn't instantly fall in love, but she
Speaker 1: fell in love with like his mind. She was probably bisexual,
Speaker 1: but certainly wasn't interested in Mukershi in any way. But
Speaker 1: she falls in love with like this guy's Nazism. Basically,
Speaker 1: they're that kind of so they're an god. That's so,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's not great.
Speaker 2: That's bleak because it's like, yeah, I mean, if you're
Speaker 2: gonna marry a Nanzi and you're not even attracted to them,
Speaker 2: no excuse, no excuse way, but you know what I mean, she.
Speaker 1: Has a little bit of an excuse. But we're getting
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 3: So you are cutting this lady all kinds of slack, Robert.
Speaker 1: I'm just explaining her, Do you have a crime?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: So she doesn't. They don't get together right away. She
Speaker 1: loves his understanding of Nazi ideology, and particularly his emphasis
Speaker 1: on the myths of the Old Arians, and Mukershi was
Speaker 1: like obsessed with the Fule society the tool of society,
Speaker 1: and it acquired a lot of their occult writing. So
Speaker 1: he's like that kind of nerdy, and Mukershi seems to
Speaker 1: like genuinely appreciate Savitri's ideas and the fact that she
Speaker 1: was just as much of a nerd for Nazism. As
Speaker 1: he was, but he was baffled by her insistence on
Speaker 1: staying in India while Nazi Germany like rose to the
Speaker 1: heights of its power in early nineteen thirty nine, He
Speaker 1: asked her, what have you been doing in India all
Speaker 1: these years, with your ideas and your potentialities, wasting your
Speaker 1: time and energy. Go back to Europe where duty calls you.
Speaker 1: Go and help the rebirth of Aryan Heathendom, where there
Speaker 1: are still Rians strong and wide awake. Go to him
Speaker 1: who is truly life and resurrection, the leader of the
Speaker 1: Third Reich. Go at once. Next year will be too late.
Speaker 1: And he was kind of right about that. But sat
Speaker 1: who was convinced that she could do yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm like, well historically okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: Savitri, though, was convinced that she could do more for
Speaker 1: the cause of Nazism in India than in Germany. She'd
Speaker 1: become close with members of the Rashtriya Swaamsavik Song or
Speaker 1: rss AD, a Hindu nationalist movement that were very similar
Speaker 1: to the Nazis. The founder or one of the founders,
Speaker 1: ab Hedjwar, formed the group to defend Hindu society from
Speaker 1: daily onslaughts by outsiders and he included Muslim Indians as
Speaker 1: members of that group. Like all fascist organizations, the RSS
Speaker 1: had a uniform khaki shorts, a white shirt, and a
Speaker 1: black cap. RSS members met daily to train with bamboo
Speaker 1: beat sticks called lafi's and to learn about Hindutva Hindu nationalism.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty nine, Savitri wrote a warning to the Hindus.
Speaker 1: The book's forward was written by G. D. Savarkar, brother
Speaker 1: to one of the co founders of the RSS, and
Speaker 1: according to an article by South Asian affairs analyst Peter Friedrich,
Speaker 1: quote Devi advanced V. D. Savarkar's thesis of Hindutfa that
Speaker 1: India is a Hindu nation of Hindu people and only
Speaker 1: for Hindu people. She claimed that Hindu society is India itself,
Speaker 1: called Hinduism the national religion of India and suggested that
Speaker 1: Hindu should tell non Hindus, we represent India, not you.
Speaker 1: Therefore India is ours not yours. Shears urged Hindus to recover,
Speaker 1: along with their national consciousness, their military virtues of old
Speaker 1: to rebecome a military race. The method, she said, should
Speaker 1: be the organization of the young men in pledge bound
Speaker 1: military like batches with Hindu nationalism as their only ideal.
Speaker 1: And here's where I pause to note that the current
Speaker 1: Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, is a member of
Speaker 1: the RSS. A warning to Hindus is still considered to
Speaker 1: be a deeply influential text within the Hindu nationalist movement
Speaker 1: and the RSS. Mody probably read it as a child
Speaker 1: and a list of his crimes in the thousands of
Speaker 1: murders and moss bombings and beatings carried out by Hindu
Speaker 1: nationalists against Indian Muslims would go beyond the scope of
Speaker 1: this episode, but it is worth noting that the current
Speaker 1: authoritarian lurch by India, the world's largest democracy, owes at
Speaker 1: least a decent amount to the work of Savitri Devi.
Speaker 1: So that's cool, you're in love with her?
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: I mean it is a sign of where this is
Speaker 1: going that I kind of glossed over the fact that
Speaker 1: she played a role in the establishment of what's starting
Speaker 1: to become a fascist dictatorship in India.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: We just have so much to cover, We have so
Speaker 1: much to cover.
Speaker 2: We don't have time for the fascist dictatorship today. We
Speaker 2: have some time, but we have Okay, Okay, well, we'll
Speaker 2: make time. We'll make time for the fascist.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty Britain and Germany went to war. Savitri's
Speaker 1: extremist beliefs were well known at this point, and she
Speaker 1: was forced to marry Mukershi in order to stay in
Speaker 1: the country. So that's why they get married. It's basically
Speaker 1: a green card thing. Yeah, got it. She described it
Speaker 1: as a secless marriage, primarily to allow her to stay
Speaker 1: in the country, and she did what she could for
Speaker 1: Nazism while in India, spying on British military positions for
Speaker 1: the Axis and facilitating communication between Subhas Chandra Bose, leader
Speaker 1: of the National Indian Army, a pro Axis group, and
Speaker 1: the Japanese government. In a different world, these contributions might
Speaker 1: have played a role in a Japanese invasion of India,
Speaker 1: but World War Two went the way it did, and
Speaker 1: Hitler eventually shot himself in a bunker to avoid capture.
Speaker 3: I'm familiar.
Speaker 1: Vitry learned of his death through an overheard conversation from
Speaker 1: two Muslim men on the Marabar coast. She was inconsolable
Speaker 1: for days over the death of her hero and the
Speaker 1: end of the belief system. She had dedicated her life
Speaker 1: to championing but mcare. She told her not to worry.
Speaker 1: This was merely part of the cycle of ages, and
Speaker 1: the dark age brought on by Hitler's defeat would someday end,
Speaker 1: and likewise, Jamie, one of this episode must now end. Okay,
Speaker 1: but this dark age we'll continue on Thursday with part
Speaker 1: two of the story of Savitri Devin. No, Okay, how
Speaker 1: you doing, Jamie.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm just unclenching.
Speaker 1: That's important for the next two minutes.
Speaker 3: And then we got to talk about it again.
Speaker 2: I got it.
Speaker 1: Abka always be clenching. Yeah, go plug your pluggables first.
Speaker 3: Oh right, Uh, leave that in. I want people to
Speaker 3: know that. Yeah, overshare had to pee, and also leave
Speaker 3: in Robert blowing his nose on the mic.
Speaker 1: Then Chris, you can edit out horrible.
Speaker 3: Chris, you can edit out the part where Robert is.
Speaker 2: Like young Delicious after licking his own it's not off
Speaker 2: the mic, but everything else should probably stay in.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is legally abused.
Speaker 3: You could probably report me to HR. Could be fun,
Speaker 3: could be fun.
Speaker 2: My Twitter is Jamie Loftus help man on my Instagram
Speaker 2: is at Jamie christ Superstar and I'm touring for the
Speaker 2: better part of February. You can go to my website,
Speaker 2: Jamie loftus is Innocent dot com to find out where
Speaker 2: yay yeah.
Speaker 1: And you can find Sophie on Twitter yeh, finding her
Speaker 1: at Why Underscore Sophie Underscore Why. And that's it. That's
Speaker 1: all you can find of us online, which are on
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards dot com, including the full free text
Speaker 1: of Hitler's Priestess If you want to read this book.
Speaker 1: The episode's over. Go stop the French from murdering cats. Yes, great,