1 00:00:01,800 --> 00:00:02,880 Speaker 1: Also media. 2 00:00:04,519 --> 00:00:08,320 Speaker 2: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards podcast hosted by who 3 00:00:08,440 --> 00:00:11,400 Speaker 2: I assume is the new Pope based on reading the 4 00:00:11,440 --> 00:00:14,600 Speaker 2: first two thirds of an article title that showed up 5 00:00:14,640 --> 00:00:16,840 Speaker 2: in my phone the other day. 6 00:00:18,320 --> 00:00:20,439 Speaker 1: Welcome gonna go on? Is my question? 7 00:00:21,239 --> 00:00:23,759 Speaker 2: Exactly? One more episode? Sophie, Okay, I have slightly I 8 00:00:23,760 --> 00:00:27,840 Speaker 2: have slightly more bit to do here, slightly right? Well, yeah, 9 00:00:27,840 --> 00:00:29,560 Speaker 2: that is that is how it tends well now that 10 00:00:29,600 --> 00:00:35,559 Speaker 2: one guy got to quit the Nazi Nazis famous quitters. 11 00:00:38,560 --> 00:00:43,960 Speaker 2: Uh So we are joined once again by Sophie, Ray Lichterman, 12 00:00:44,120 --> 00:00:49,080 Speaker 2: and Blake Westler, our guest for today. Blake, how you doing? 13 00:00:49,560 --> 00:00:51,520 Speaker 3: I'm doing great. I can't wait to hear more about 14 00:00:51,560 --> 00:00:51,960 Speaker 3: this guy. 15 00:00:53,080 --> 00:00:56,200 Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I can't wait to figure out my pope name. 16 00:00:56,320 --> 00:00:58,080 Speaker 2: You know I've been I've been thinking about it. Right, 17 00:00:58,160 --> 00:00:59,920 Speaker 2: What am I gonna do? You know what am I gonna? 18 00:01:00,480 --> 00:01:03,240 Speaker 2: What is? Who am I going to be as pope? 19 00:01:03,280 --> 00:01:04,640 Speaker 2: Because every pope gets to pick a name? 20 00:01:05,440 --> 00:01:07,400 Speaker 1: You're going to be Pope, Sophie. 21 00:01:07,360 --> 00:01:09,440 Speaker 2: No, no, no, I think I figured it out, Sophie. 22 00:01:09,440 --> 00:01:11,040 Speaker 2: I think I'm gonna have a lot more fun if 23 00:01:11,440 --> 00:01:13,880 Speaker 2: if my pope name is just the whole script to 24 00:01:13,959 --> 00:01:17,160 Speaker 2: B movie. I just gotta really content take that bit 25 00:01:17,240 --> 00:01:21,760 Speaker 2: to its ultimate extint. Just destroy the computing systems that 26 00:01:21,840 --> 00:01:26,160 Speaker 2: the Vatican, the entire Catholic Church is like online infrastructure 27 00:01:26,280 --> 00:01:31,920 Speaker 2: falls apart, freests with chromebooks, just lighting on fire and rectories. 28 00:01:31,920 --> 00:01:32,959 Speaker 2: It's going to be beautiful. 29 00:01:35,240 --> 00:01:38,560 Speaker 3: Improvised though, so I don't know how long the script is. 30 00:01:38,959 --> 00:01:40,560 Speaker 3: Steinfeld did a lot of improv in that. 31 00:01:41,040 --> 00:01:43,200 Speaker 2: I do know how long the script is because it's 32 00:01:43,240 --> 00:01:45,400 Speaker 2: been printed on a number of T shirts at this point. 33 00:01:45,640 --> 00:01:46,959 Speaker 3: Oh my god, it's amazing. 34 00:01:47,040 --> 00:01:55,800 Speaker 2: It's an older meme, but it checks out. We're back 35 00:01:55,840 --> 00:01:58,920 Speaker 2: and we're talking about the life of Karl Schmidt, arch 36 00:01:59,280 --> 00:02:03,600 Speaker 2: theoretician of Nazism, well of fascism in general too. We 37 00:02:03,720 --> 00:02:06,680 Speaker 2: left things off on the eve of World War One. 38 00:02:07,120 --> 00:02:09,560 Speaker 2: Our boy Karl is in love with a con artist, 39 00:02:09,680 --> 00:02:12,720 Speaker 2: but his academic career is slowly starting to pick up steam. 40 00:02:13,240 --> 00:02:15,200 Speaker 2: The way academic life works at this point is that 41 00:02:15,240 --> 00:02:18,360 Speaker 2: he's basically locked in a series of unpaid internships and 42 00:02:18,360 --> 00:02:21,880 Speaker 2: thus constantly begging his uncle and his rich friends, like 43 00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:25,120 Speaker 2: the parents of his rich friends, for money. The Eisler 44 00:02:25,200 --> 00:02:28,920 Speaker 2: family is his most reliable source of support. His whole goal. 45 00:02:29,320 --> 00:02:31,720 Speaker 2: He says this often in his diary and when talking 46 00:02:31,720 --> 00:02:34,919 Speaker 2: to Karrie. He wants to get rich, right, he wants 47 00:02:34,960 --> 00:02:37,880 Speaker 2: to be wealthy. And the way to do that then, 48 00:02:38,040 --> 00:02:41,280 Speaker 2: as a public intellectual, just like it is now, is 49 00:02:41,320 --> 00:02:44,160 Speaker 2: to write a book. Right now today you have to 50 00:02:44,160 --> 00:02:46,840 Speaker 2: write the worst book ever, which gets harder every year 51 00:02:46,880 --> 00:02:49,640 Speaker 2: because so many, so many terrible, terrible books are written 52 00:02:49,680 --> 00:02:52,919 Speaker 2: by public intellectuals every year. Back at this period of time, 53 00:02:53,160 --> 00:02:55,440 Speaker 2: your book had to be have a little more depth 54 00:02:55,520 --> 00:02:58,040 Speaker 2: to it. And the first his first stab at this 55 00:02:58,600 --> 00:03:01,800 Speaker 2: is a work called Word of the State. And this 56 00:03:01,919 --> 00:03:05,200 Speaker 2: is that's the English translation. The German phrase that means 57 00:03:05,240 --> 00:03:08,239 Speaker 2: word of the state is a reference to a concept 58 00:03:08,840 --> 00:03:12,160 Speaker 2: in like German law of the state, in which the 59 00:03:12,200 --> 00:03:15,000 Speaker 2: government and its rulers are constrained in what they can 60 00:03:15,040 --> 00:03:16,160 Speaker 2: do to people by the law. 61 00:03:16,320 --> 00:03:16,519 Speaker 4: Right. 62 00:03:17,080 --> 00:03:20,600 Speaker 2: That's the title of his book, and the purpose of 63 00:03:20,600 --> 00:03:22,320 Speaker 2: this book is to try to figure out what makes 64 00:03:22,320 --> 00:03:26,440 Speaker 2: a state legitimate right and its laws legitimate. Carl comes 65 00:03:26,480 --> 00:03:29,400 Speaker 2: to define a legitimate state as a state with a constitution, 66 00:03:30,040 --> 00:03:32,360 Speaker 2: not a state that does this or that, or that 67 00:03:32,400 --> 00:03:34,920 Speaker 2: treats people a certain way, but a state that has 68 00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:39,360 Speaker 2: like a set of listed rules that institutionalizes the relationship 69 00:03:39,400 --> 00:03:43,160 Speaker 2: between power and right. Right, So how individuals are treated, 70 00:03:43,440 --> 00:03:46,560 Speaker 2: whether they have rights, that doesn't matter. What matters is 71 00:03:46,600 --> 00:03:49,440 Speaker 2: that the state spells out what it can and will 72 00:03:49,480 --> 00:03:53,840 Speaker 2: do when and where somewhere, right, That's the important thing. 73 00:03:54,320 --> 00:03:56,520 Speaker 2: He includes a line in this work that I find 74 00:03:56,640 --> 00:04:00,840 Speaker 2: fundamentally chilling. Quote, whatever it is that makes a person 75 00:04:01,080 --> 00:04:07,240 Speaker 2: is determined by the legal system itself. And that's that's 76 00:04:07,280 --> 00:04:11,120 Speaker 2: a that's bad. It's going to lead you some dark places, Carl. 77 00:04:11,320 --> 00:04:13,960 Speaker 2: You're gonna lead us all some very dark places. Right. 78 00:04:15,120 --> 00:04:17,400 Speaker 2: But it makes sense if you're coming to this idea 79 00:04:17,440 --> 00:04:22,800 Speaker 2: that like, yeah, the law determines ethics and reality, and 80 00:04:22,880 --> 00:04:25,800 Speaker 2: thus the law determines what is a person right and 81 00:04:25,839 --> 00:04:28,960 Speaker 2: can unperson people, which is sort of the He's not 82 00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:30,720 Speaker 2: writing about that at this point, but it's kind of 83 00:04:30,720 --> 00:04:32,800 Speaker 2: the inevitable conclusion. It's like, well, if the law makes 84 00:04:32,800 --> 00:04:35,280 Speaker 2: a person, the law can stop you from being a person. 85 00:04:36,200 --> 00:04:38,599 Speaker 2: And when I say that, I think he's there's a 86 00:04:38,600 --> 00:04:40,960 Speaker 2: degree of brilliance here. It's not that this is a 87 00:04:40,960 --> 00:04:44,280 Speaker 2: good way to think about things, but this is accurate 88 00:04:44,320 --> 00:04:47,640 Speaker 2: to the way states work already. As soon as as 89 00:04:47,640 --> 00:04:49,960 Speaker 2: long as there have been states. This is how states 90 00:04:49,960 --> 00:04:53,080 Speaker 2: have functioned, whether you like it or not, even our state, Right, 91 00:04:53,320 --> 00:04:56,320 Speaker 2: all this bullshit that we have about natural rights and 92 00:04:56,320 --> 00:04:59,240 Speaker 2: that there's inherent rights, No, you should know right now 93 00:04:59,240 --> 00:05:02,520 Speaker 2: by watching the news, none of that means anything. The 94 00:05:02,560 --> 00:05:05,440 Speaker 2: state and the people with guns within it determine what 95 00:05:05,600 --> 00:05:08,960 Speaker 2: is treated as a person by the state. Right, That's 96 00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:12,240 Speaker 2: what Carl's recognizing, Right, And that's what Carl is laying out, 97 00:05:12,400 --> 00:05:17,240 Speaker 2: and that is accurate, whether or not you like it. Right, individuals, 98 00:05:17,279 --> 00:05:20,680 Speaker 2: he argues, only gains significance by working for and supporting 99 00:05:20,720 --> 00:05:23,719 Speaker 2: the state. So again, while he's sort of there's a 100 00:05:23,760 --> 00:05:26,160 Speaker 2: degree to which, even as an anarchist, you could be like, oh, 101 00:05:26,200 --> 00:05:28,640 Speaker 2: this guy's right in a lot of ways. But where 102 00:05:28,640 --> 00:05:31,120 Speaker 2: he differs is he's like, and that's great, it's good 103 00:05:31,160 --> 00:05:34,920 Speaker 2: that it works this way. It's cool. It's cool that 104 00:05:34,960 --> 00:05:40,200 Speaker 2: the state arbitrarily decides what makes a person right. And 105 00:05:40,240 --> 00:05:43,120 Speaker 2: he argues that this is good because individuals only gain 106 00:05:43,279 --> 00:05:47,240 Speaker 2: significance when working for and supporting the state. In other words, 107 00:05:47,360 --> 00:05:50,640 Speaker 2: you mean nothing outside of your place within the state 108 00:05:50,760 --> 00:05:54,039 Speaker 2: and its power structure. He also argues the law is 109 00:05:54,080 --> 00:05:57,359 Speaker 2: not based on power. Power is based on law, and 110 00:05:57,400 --> 00:05:59,960 Speaker 2: he seems to believe. Again there's this almost spiritual knack 111 00:06:00,520 --> 00:06:04,599 Speaker 2: order that the law naturally moves to better represent right, 112 00:06:05,040 --> 00:06:09,320 Speaker 2: which is weird. Now, not long after this Schmidt gets married, 113 00:06:09,440 --> 00:06:12,039 Speaker 2: or at least he thinks he does. They they have 114 00:06:12,200 --> 00:06:14,920 Speaker 2: like a wedding, but Kyrie loses her passport and so 115 00:06:14,960 --> 00:06:16,240 Speaker 2: they can't get it certified. 116 00:06:16,600 --> 00:06:21,240 Speaker 3: And it's the documents, these damn pieces of paper. 117 00:06:21,240 --> 00:06:24,480 Speaker 2: And again it is weirdly like this like proof that 118 00:06:24,520 --> 00:06:27,800 Speaker 2: he's there's there's something fundamentally accurate about his conception of 119 00:06:27,839 --> 00:06:29,960 Speaker 2: the state because like much as he he's like, no, 120 00:06:30,160 --> 00:06:32,240 Speaker 2: Kyrie is my wife, the State's like, no, she's not. 121 00:06:34,160 --> 00:06:36,560 Speaker 2: That's that's on us to decide, And we've decided no 122 00:06:36,680 --> 00:06:40,159 Speaker 2: because she doesn't have a passport, so she has to 123 00:06:40,480 --> 00:06:43,279 Speaker 2: They're like heading back to their house to finally be 124 00:06:43,400 --> 00:06:45,760 Speaker 2: together in like their marital home, and she has to 125 00:06:45,800 --> 00:06:47,599 Speaker 2: suddenly when like this clerk comes out and I was 126 00:06:47,600 --> 00:06:50,920 Speaker 2: like wait, wait, wait, the passport's both like she doesn't 127 00:06:50,920 --> 00:06:53,000 Speaker 2: have a passport. I can't do this. They have to 128 00:06:53,040 --> 00:06:55,360 Speaker 2: bundle her off to live with his mom so that 129 00:06:55,400 --> 00:06:59,280 Speaker 2: they don't live in sin like unlike what's supposed to 130 00:06:59,320 --> 00:07:03,239 Speaker 2: be their wedding, and Carl starts having panic attacks about 131 00:07:03,279 --> 00:07:07,520 Speaker 2: the fact that Kari is now living with his family. Quote, 132 00:07:07,720 --> 00:07:09,800 Speaker 2: she is in the company of my hateful, mean and 133 00:07:09,880 --> 00:07:13,440 Speaker 2: vicious mother and my spoiled little sister Anna. Only father 134 00:07:13,560 --> 00:07:16,000 Speaker 2: makes life easy for her. I don't know what will 135 00:07:16,040 --> 00:07:19,800 Speaker 2: become of me. She's like, she's gonna leave me because 136 00:07:19,800 --> 00:07:22,360 Speaker 2: my family sucks and she has to live with him now. 137 00:07:24,680 --> 00:07:26,520 Speaker 3: I don't know what will become of it. It all 138 00:07:26,560 --> 00:07:29,040 Speaker 3: comes back to him too, Yeah, where it's always about 139 00:07:29,120 --> 00:07:30,960 Speaker 3: He wasn't talking about what was going to become of me? 140 00:07:31,280 --> 00:07:33,520 Speaker 2: Yeah, what's going to become of my wife? Right? 141 00:07:33,640 --> 00:07:34,120 Speaker 3: Yeah? 142 00:07:34,280 --> 00:07:36,760 Speaker 2: I also do love that, like, yeah, it's good, Like 143 00:07:36,800 --> 00:07:39,400 Speaker 2: the state determines what a person is, and like this 144 00:07:39,560 --> 00:07:41,720 Speaker 2: is good and our only value comes from the role 145 00:07:41,760 --> 00:07:44,440 Speaker 2: that we play within the state. And also, oh, the 146 00:07:44,520 --> 00:07:47,040 Speaker 2: thing that I want more than anything isn't possible because 147 00:07:47,080 --> 00:07:49,720 Speaker 2: the state has decided my wife isn't a real person. 148 00:07:50,600 --> 00:07:52,880 Speaker 3: I obviously don't know exactly how I mean. I have 149 00:07:52,920 --> 00:07:55,520 Speaker 3: an idea of how the story ends, obviously, like that's 150 00:07:55,560 --> 00:07:58,120 Speaker 3: been established. But it is interesting that it seems like 151 00:07:58,160 --> 00:08:00,960 Speaker 3: he turns on the people close to him, where yeah, 152 00:08:01,000 --> 00:08:04,040 Speaker 3: obviously because of how his ideologies was adopted by Nazis 153 00:08:04,040 --> 00:08:06,560 Speaker 3: his best friend who is a Jew. That doesn't end well, 154 00:08:06,800 --> 00:08:09,760 Speaker 3: and then also a lot of this stuff, No, no, 155 00:08:09,840 --> 00:08:11,840 Speaker 3: it doesn't, and that a lot of his friends were 156 00:08:11,880 --> 00:08:15,720 Speaker 3: these artists, and artists do not work for the state. 157 00:08:15,760 --> 00:08:19,080 Speaker 3: It's the complete opposite, so they don't matter essentially. So 158 00:08:19,280 --> 00:08:20,680 Speaker 3: it's interesting that he keeps doing this. 159 00:08:21,000 --> 00:08:24,720 Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and it really is like, yeah, so through 160 00:08:24,760 --> 00:08:27,680 Speaker 2: the end of nineteen thirteen, he's having constant panic attacks, 161 00:08:28,080 --> 00:08:31,120 Speaker 2: and we can surmise his parents this is like a 162 00:08:31,200 --> 00:08:35,080 Speaker 2: family trait, right, because when he describes them in his 163 00:08:35,200 --> 00:08:37,280 Speaker 2: diary in a way that, like a modern reader is like, 164 00:08:37,760 --> 00:08:40,760 Speaker 2: the motherfucker's having a panic attack, right, But he calls 165 00:08:40,800 --> 00:08:43,800 Speaker 2: them Schmidt effects, right, as in like this is like 166 00:08:43,840 --> 00:08:46,800 Speaker 2: a Schmidt family characteristic that we have these freak outs. 167 00:08:47,240 --> 00:08:50,439 Speaker 2: And it's like, oh, yeah, okay, so your parents are 168 00:08:50,600 --> 00:08:53,600 Speaker 2: like also have this problem, right, and they passed it 169 00:08:53,640 --> 00:08:55,880 Speaker 2: on to you, and you'd think it's just you and 170 00:08:55,920 --> 00:08:58,400 Speaker 2: your family that you're the only people who have ever thought. 171 00:08:58,600 --> 00:09:02,560 Speaker 2: Of course you do this period, it's nineteen thirteen. Where 172 00:09:02,559 --> 00:09:04,520 Speaker 2: would you have read about panic attacks? 173 00:09:06,120 --> 00:09:08,120 Speaker 3: No, we just have heart attacks all the time. Yeah, 174 00:09:08,160 --> 00:09:10,400 Speaker 3: when we get nervous, we all have heart attacks. It's 175 00:09:10,440 --> 00:09:11,000 Speaker 3: a schmid thing. 176 00:09:11,080 --> 00:09:15,240 Speaker 2: It's yeah, we're the only ones who do this. So 177 00:09:15,720 --> 00:09:18,880 Speaker 2: he writes about this in his diaries, and Marrying notes 178 00:09:18,920 --> 00:09:21,720 Speaker 2: that in the wake of these he expresses the bulk 179 00:09:21,800 --> 00:09:24,920 Speaker 2: of his anti Semitic opinions, right that while he's kind 180 00:09:24,960 --> 00:09:28,880 Speaker 2: of like dealing with this this really stressful period. If 181 00:09:28,880 --> 00:09:31,280 Speaker 2: I can't marry this woman that I love, the state 182 00:09:31,320 --> 00:09:34,120 Speaker 2: doesn't consider her legitimate. Marrying notes that in the wake 183 00:09:34,160 --> 00:09:37,599 Speaker 2: of these he writes, quote, saw the two Jews Jacobson 184 00:09:37,720 --> 00:09:40,240 Speaker 2: and Lessing bickering and was glad I no longer have 185 00:09:40,400 --> 00:09:43,080 Speaker 2: anything to do with Rosenbaum, who's another Jewish friend of his. 186 00:09:43,440 --> 00:09:46,600 Speaker 2: I don't want contact with Eisler anymore either, So he 187 00:09:46,720 --> 00:09:48,840 Speaker 2: like sees these two Jewish guys he knows arguing and 188 00:09:48,840 --> 00:09:51,240 Speaker 2: he's like, Ah, it's just like it's just what those 189 00:09:51,320 --> 00:09:52,960 Speaker 2: kind of people do. I'm never going to have any 190 00:09:53,000 --> 00:09:56,040 Speaker 2: contact with them again. Now, this is not going to 191 00:09:56,040 --> 00:09:59,439 Speaker 2: be a permanent state. So it shows that bigotry is 192 00:09:59,480 --> 00:10:02,240 Speaker 2: this thing that he comes back to and discards and 193 00:10:02,280 --> 00:10:05,160 Speaker 2: comes back to. But it's not a stable state for him. 194 00:10:05,200 --> 00:10:07,160 Speaker 2: At this point because he and Eisler are going to 195 00:10:07,200 --> 00:10:11,000 Speaker 2: be dear friends again and for a considerable like he 196 00:10:11,080 --> 00:10:13,400 Speaker 2: will continue to talk about him well, and others have 197 00:10:13,440 --> 00:10:16,320 Speaker 2: other Jewish friends after this period. The point is that 198 00:10:16,360 --> 00:10:19,520 Speaker 2: his racism is a erratic, and it's correlated both with 199 00:10:19,640 --> 00:10:23,680 Speaker 2: stressful times in his life and also these flights of fantasy. 200 00:10:23,760 --> 00:10:26,560 Speaker 2: Right well, he'll write out this anti Semitic screed and 201 00:10:26,559 --> 00:10:28,560 Speaker 2: then he'll declare to his diary, I'm going to get 202 00:10:28,559 --> 00:10:31,280 Speaker 2: into politics and become a powerful man. And then the 203 00:10:31,280 --> 00:10:33,199 Speaker 2: next day he'll write about how he and Kari are 204 00:10:33,200 --> 00:10:35,040 Speaker 2: going to have a son named Johan and he's going 205 00:10:35,080 --> 00:10:37,160 Speaker 2: to grow up to be a cardinal. And then like 206 00:10:37,559 --> 00:10:40,200 Speaker 2: a couple of days later, he's going to be like, 207 00:10:40,400 --> 00:10:42,720 Speaker 2: I'm still too broke. I can't marry my wife. This 208 00:10:42,840 --> 00:10:45,240 Speaker 2: is never We're never going to have our kid. And 209 00:10:45,960 --> 00:10:50,080 Speaker 2: he's so fucking Catholic that when he becomes convinced he's 210 00:10:50,080 --> 00:10:51,360 Speaker 2: not going to be able to have a kid with 211 00:10:51,400 --> 00:10:54,920 Speaker 2: this woman for financial reasons and because of her legal issues, 212 00:10:55,240 --> 00:10:58,080 Speaker 2: he writes in his diary, I am a murderer. I 213 00:10:58,120 --> 00:11:01,120 Speaker 2: am destroyed, have turned into nothing and have murdered the 214 00:11:01,200 --> 00:11:04,000 Speaker 2: soul of a child. Where should I seek refuge in 215 00:11:04,040 --> 00:11:06,480 Speaker 2: the Catholic Church? But I can't, I might as well 216 00:11:06,520 --> 00:11:08,560 Speaker 2: go to the great Dalai Lama of Tibet or some 217 00:11:08,760 --> 00:11:12,680 Speaker 2: Mexican god. And first off, bro like, even in this period, 218 00:11:12,679 --> 00:11:15,320 Speaker 2: most Mexicans are Catholic too, Like just as a heads up, 219 00:11:15,440 --> 00:11:17,840 Speaker 2: like it's the same most of them. It's the same 220 00:11:17,880 --> 00:11:22,120 Speaker 2: god you're worshiping, right, Like, maybe you haven't read those books. 221 00:11:22,160 --> 00:11:26,040 Speaker 3: This guy is so conservative, yeah, that he believes that 222 00:11:26,320 --> 00:11:31,920 Speaker 3: life begins before you have sex with the person, life begins, documentation, 223 00:11:32,280 --> 00:11:33,640 Speaker 3: just anything. 224 00:11:33,200 --> 00:11:35,280 Speaker 1: But going to therapy. And I know it's a sign 225 00:11:35,320 --> 00:11:35,880 Speaker 1: of the time. 226 00:11:38,840 --> 00:11:41,439 Speaker 2: When you and your con artist wife are declare that 227 00:11:41,520 --> 00:11:45,920 Speaker 2: you're gonna have a son who becomes a rid y. Yeah, 228 00:11:46,120 --> 00:11:52,560 Speaker 2: we killed this boy. This boy literally Ohan's dead. Now 229 00:11:53,600 --> 00:11:57,040 Speaker 2: this is essentially an abortion. I guess. I am kind 230 00:11:57,080 --> 00:11:59,000 Speaker 2: of impressed that he knows who the Dalai Lama is 231 00:11:59,040 --> 00:12:00,880 Speaker 2: in this period of time. So I don't know, you know, 232 00:12:01,160 --> 00:12:04,520 Speaker 2: it's ax. We contains well on some things. Again, he 233 00:12:04,559 --> 00:12:08,360 Speaker 2: also thinks Mexican people don't aren't Catholic in a large 234 00:12:08,360 --> 00:12:10,840 Speaker 2: part obviously, Like there's religions in that part of the 235 00:12:10,840 --> 00:12:13,920 Speaker 2: world that have existed before Catholicism, but at this period 236 00:12:13,960 --> 00:12:19,360 Speaker 2: of time that's the dominant religion is the same as his. Anyway, 237 00:12:19,600 --> 00:12:22,839 Speaker 2: he comes to see himself as a gnostic after this point, 238 00:12:22,920 --> 00:12:25,400 Speaker 2: in other words, someone who believes that there's this like 239 00:12:25,559 --> 00:12:28,920 Speaker 2: malicious God that created the world. Right. I think it's 240 00:12:29,000 --> 00:12:31,800 Speaker 2: he's basically believes like the demiurge is what other people 241 00:12:31,800 --> 00:12:35,240 Speaker 2: worship as God, and like what these other folks would 242 00:12:35,240 --> 00:12:36,880 Speaker 2: I always raised to believe is God is actually this 243 00:12:37,040 --> 00:12:40,520 Speaker 2: evil being that just wants to fuck with us right now, 244 00:12:40,640 --> 00:12:43,160 Speaker 2: the fact that he comes around to this beliefs heretical 245 00:12:43,200 --> 00:12:47,720 Speaker 2: belief is entirely centered upon his own financial and career frustrations. 246 00:12:48,120 --> 00:12:51,520 Speaker 2: Right before the war breaks out, his wife gets caught shoplifting. Again. 247 00:12:51,600 --> 00:12:55,520 Speaker 2: This lady, she's always stealing stuff. She's the best, she's 248 00:12:55,559 --> 00:12:58,320 Speaker 2: the best. She gets caught stealing shit, and it causes 249 00:12:58,320 --> 00:13:00,240 Speaker 2: like a year worth of problems for him. Is he 250 00:13:00,280 --> 00:13:02,240 Speaker 2: can't afford to pay the cost, and like he's just 251 00:13:02,280 --> 00:13:04,520 Speaker 2: trying to keep her out of jail. So it's this 252 00:13:04,600 --> 00:13:07,440 Speaker 2: whole constant, like stressful issue on him. The fact that 253 00:13:07,480 --> 00:13:11,160 Speaker 2: his wife got caught shoplifting, his con artist wife. 254 00:13:11,040 --> 00:13:13,280 Speaker 3: What was that horrible for his tingle tangle. 255 00:13:13,240 --> 00:13:16,280 Speaker 2: Tingle tangle girl. Yes, right right, yes, his wife, the 256 00:13:16,320 --> 00:13:20,120 Speaker 2: burlesque dancing con artist, has caught shoplifting and it just 257 00:13:20,240 --> 00:13:24,319 Speaker 2: fucks him up. And then while he's trying to deal 258 00:13:24,400 --> 00:13:27,600 Speaker 2: with all of this, Archduke Franz Ferdinand gets shot in 259 00:13:27,679 --> 00:13:32,280 Speaker 2: Sarajevo and World War One starts winding up. Carl is 260 00:13:32,320 --> 00:13:34,920 Speaker 2: twenty six at the time that it becomes inevitable that 261 00:13:34,960 --> 00:13:38,560 Speaker 2: Germany's going to, you know, make some really bad decisions 262 00:13:38,600 --> 00:13:42,080 Speaker 2: along with everyone else. To be fair, Germany's bad decisions 263 00:13:42,080 --> 00:13:46,160 Speaker 2: aren't unique in this period. Now, this is another massive 264 00:13:46,160 --> 00:13:49,440 Speaker 2: moment for most future German fascists, but not for Carl. 265 00:13:49,880 --> 00:13:53,200 Speaker 2: Karl is not a German patriot. Hitler is like Hitler 266 00:13:53,240 --> 00:13:55,600 Speaker 2: is he strong. He's there when the Kaiser announces the 267 00:13:55,640 --> 00:13:57,800 Speaker 2: start of the war in Berlin. He's part of there's 268 00:13:57,840 --> 00:13:59,560 Speaker 2: pictures of it, you can find him in the crowd. 269 00:14:00,040 --> 00:14:04,040 Speaker 2: He's like enraptured. He describes this like religious experience. He's 270 00:14:04,040 --> 00:14:06,760 Speaker 2: so overjoyed to be going to war on behalf of 271 00:14:06,800 --> 00:14:11,120 Speaker 2: the fatherland. And Carl's like, fuck this illegal war, this 272 00:14:11,200 --> 00:14:15,600 Speaker 2: is Prussian bullshit. The Prussians orchestrated all of this. The 273 00:14:15,640 --> 00:14:17,560 Speaker 2: rest of us Germans want nothing to do with this. 274 00:14:17,679 --> 00:14:19,880 Speaker 2: I certainly go to war with the French. My families 275 00:14:19,880 --> 00:14:22,120 Speaker 2: have French. Fuck these people, fuck all of this. This 276 00:14:22,200 --> 00:14:25,280 Speaker 2: is illegal as hell, right, So he is not at all, 277 00:14:25,320 --> 00:14:27,840 Speaker 2: And in fact, he writes in his diary, I hope 278 00:14:27,880 --> 00:14:30,880 Speaker 2: the French win, and he'll be doing that throughout the war, 279 00:14:31,240 --> 00:14:33,840 Speaker 2: like I just hope the I just want the enemy 280 00:14:33,880 --> 00:14:36,520 Speaker 2: to win. So this is done. This is not a 281 00:14:36,560 --> 00:14:41,280 Speaker 2: patriot right, absolutely not at all. So it's interesting because 282 00:14:41,320 --> 00:14:44,120 Speaker 2: he's going to be so influential to the fascist movement. 283 00:14:44,440 --> 00:14:47,200 Speaker 2: He has the opposite reaction of basically all of these 284 00:14:47,240 --> 00:14:50,840 Speaker 2: other guys. Now that said, he knows the war is 285 00:14:50,880 --> 00:14:54,040 Speaker 2: wrong and dumb, but he doesn't protest it, and he's 286 00:14:54,080 --> 00:14:57,800 Speaker 2: not a conscientious objector. He just doesn't really care about it. 287 00:14:57,840 --> 00:14:59,720 Speaker 2: One gets the feeling he fought. He thinks that, like 288 00:14:59,760 --> 00:15:03,640 Speaker 2: the whole conflict, is something that less intelligent people should 289 00:15:03,680 --> 00:15:06,120 Speaker 2: care about, like not him. He has a lot of 290 00:15:06,160 --> 00:15:10,280 Speaker 2: thinking about what law is to do, right. He doesn't 291 00:15:10,360 --> 00:15:13,120 Speaker 2: volunteer immediately like a lot of people do, like a 292 00:15:13,120 --> 00:15:15,120 Speaker 2: lot of his friends do, and he seems to be 293 00:15:15,200 --> 00:15:17,400 Speaker 2: hoping like, maybe the war will end quickly and I 294 00:15:17,560 --> 00:15:20,320 Speaker 2: just will get to miss out on this. Right now, 295 00:15:20,320 --> 00:15:23,720 Speaker 2: you can contrast this to his best friend Eisler, right again. 296 00:15:24,040 --> 00:15:28,040 Speaker 2: Iisler is a Hungarian national who desperately wants to be German. 297 00:15:28,240 --> 00:15:31,280 Speaker 2: He's othered both because he's Hungarian and because he's Jewish. 298 00:15:31,520 --> 00:15:33,960 Speaker 2: And he had tried repeatedly before the war to become 299 00:15:34,000 --> 00:15:36,400 Speaker 2: a naturalized German citizen, and every time he does it, 300 00:15:36,880 --> 00:15:39,920 Speaker 2: the authorities are like, nah, we don't need you. And 301 00:15:39,960 --> 00:15:43,280 Speaker 2: he wants this in part because he's getting his doctorate 302 00:15:43,400 --> 00:15:46,600 Speaker 2: and he can't actually get confirmed as a PhD or 303 00:15:46,680 --> 00:15:49,640 Speaker 2: work in law unless he's a naturalized German citizen. He 304 00:15:50,480 --> 00:15:52,720 Speaker 2: wants to work in the German government, right he wants 305 00:15:52,720 --> 00:15:54,320 Speaker 2: to be a part of the court system, and he 306 00:15:54,360 --> 00:15:56,680 Speaker 2: has to be a citizen. And the chief of police. 307 00:15:56,720 --> 00:15:59,280 Speaker 2: Before the war, the chief of police in Hamburg denies 308 00:15:59,400 --> 00:16:03,280 Speaker 2: Eisler's citizenship petition by writing, quote, due to the Hungarian 309 00:16:03,360 --> 00:16:06,920 Speaker 2: Jewish descent of the applicant and his father's criminal record, 310 00:16:06,960 --> 00:16:09,560 Speaker 2: that he couldn't approve the application. His dad had done 311 00:16:09,560 --> 00:16:13,080 Speaker 2: some petty crimes as a younger man. So when the 312 00:16:13,080 --> 00:16:17,040 Speaker 2: war breaks out, Eisler applies again, and this time the 313 00:16:17,120 --> 00:16:20,600 Speaker 2: German government is number one. The authorities who had been 314 00:16:20,680 --> 00:16:23,880 Speaker 2: like turning him down are in the military now. So 315 00:16:23,960 --> 00:16:26,120 Speaker 2: it's like people who are younger and maybe a little 316 00:16:26,160 --> 00:16:29,600 Speaker 2: less bigoted, who are you making that call? And they're like, 317 00:16:29,640 --> 00:16:32,560 Speaker 2: all right, you want to join the army, we'll let 318 00:16:32,600 --> 00:16:34,520 Speaker 2: you do that, and we'll make you a citizen. But 319 00:16:34,560 --> 00:16:37,480 Speaker 2: you have to sign a paper promising you'll never work 320 00:16:37,640 --> 00:16:40,800 Speaker 2: for the government. Right, You'll never go after a government career, 321 00:16:40,960 --> 00:16:43,320 Speaker 2: or try to take the state exam to be like 322 00:16:43,600 --> 00:16:47,040 Speaker 2: considered a doctor in Germany. Right, if you do those 323 00:16:47,040 --> 00:16:48,920 Speaker 2: things will make you a citizen and you can join 324 00:16:48,960 --> 00:16:52,840 Speaker 2: the army. And Eisler agrees. That's how badly this kid 325 00:16:52,880 --> 00:16:57,120 Speaker 2: wants to be a German patriot, which is such a bummer, 326 00:16:57,200 --> 00:17:00,600 Speaker 2: given not only what Germany's going to do to Jewish 327 00:17:00,600 --> 00:17:02,840 Speaker 2: people not all that far from now, but given what's 328 00:17:02,880 --> 00:17:05,240 Speaker 2: going to happen to him, Because all this kid wants 329 00:17:05,320 --> 00:17:08,200 Speaker 2: is to be accepted as German, and he feels like, ah, 330 00:17:08,240 --> 00:17:11,280 Speaker 2: the military, they can't they can't utter me if I'm 331 00:17:11,320 --> 00:17:14,920 Speaker 2: in the military, right, they have to respect me as 332 00:17:15,000 --> 00:17:19,080 Speaker 2: a as a patriotic German citizen if I serve in combat. 333 00:17:20,760 --> 00:17:24,480 Speaker 2: So despite the fact that Schmidt had pretty recently written 334 00:17:24,520 --> 00:17:26,960 Speaker 2: a lot of racist about Eisler, he writes at the 335 00:17:26,960 --> 00:17:29,520 Speaker 2: time of having great worry for his friend when Isisler 336 00:17:29,560 --> 00:17:31,840 Speaker 2: joins the army and notes, if only he is not 337 00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:36,840 Speaker 2: killed in action, the dear old fellow. Unfortunately, Fritz Eisler 338 00:17:36,920 --> 00:17:39,840 Speaker 2: joins a field artillery unit and he is deployed immediately 339 00:17:39,880 --> 00:17:42,919 Speaker 2: after the outbreak of hostilities. He is killed by shrapnel 340 00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:47,320 Speaker 2: almost immediately, you know his battery is firing. Allied counter 341 00:17:47,400 --> 00:17:50,280 Speaker 2: battery fire hits nearby and he gets like gutted by 342 00:17:50,320 --> 00:17:53,680 Speaker 2: a piece of metal. Merroring writes Schmidt was moved by 343 00:17:53,680 --> 00:17:56,320 Speaker 2: his untimely death. As a last favorite to his friend, 344 00:17:56,359 --> 00:18:00,399 Speaker 2: he edited one of Eisler's posthumous papers, and he like 345 00:18:00,480 --> 00:18:03,520 Speaker 2: goes to Isisler's family to express his concerns to help 346 00:18:03,560 --> 00:18:07,120 Speaker 2: them deal with his dead friends, like you know, stuff 347 00:18:08,280 --> 00:18:11,399 Speaker 2: and get He becomes almost immediately very good friends with 348 00:18:11,440 --> 00:18:15,040 Speaker 2: Fritz's brother George, and the two will remain friends until 349 00:18:15,119 --> 00:18:18,520 Speaker 2: nineteen thirty two. Like he kind of switches his best 350 00:18:18,560 --> 00:18:21,520 Speaker 2: friendship to George Eisler and it will stay that way 351 00:18:21,800 --> 00:18:25,159 Speaker 2: almost until Hitler rises to power, and he gets actually 352 00:18:25,240 --> 00:18:29,000 Speaker 2: much closer with the Isslers. After Fritz dies, he stays 353 00:18:29,040 --> 00:18:32,240 Speaker 2: over at their house and he writes that he's like surprised, Wow, 354 00:18:32,280 --> 00:18:35,240 Speaker 2: these Jews are like a normal German family. I didn't 355 00:18:35,240 --> 00:18:38,000 Speaker 2: think that that was the case with Jewish people. And 356 00:18:38,440 --> 00:18:40,520 Speaker 2: at the end of this, George's father is like, hey man, 357 00:18:40,800 --> 00:18:43,920 Speaker 2: how much money do you need to continue until you're 358 00:18:44,000 --> 00:18:45,800 Speaker 2: able to get to the money making part of your 359 00:18:45,840 --> 00:18:49,359 Speaker 2: career and writes him a check. So again, even up 360 00:18:49,400 --> 00:18:51,800 Speaker 2: to this point, this family is treating him like a son, 361 00:18:52,600 --> 00:18:56,040 Speaker 2: like Karl Schmidt probably doesn't have an academic career without 362 00:18:56,080 --> 00:18:59,200 Speaker 2: the Isislers backing him up, like they really do take 363 00:18:59,320 --> 00:19:03,840 Speaker 2: him in. Now he has to join the military not 364 00:19:03,960 --> 00:19:06,800 Speaker 2: long after this, because he's a young German Man and 365 00:19:06,840 --> 00:19:09,560 Speaker 2: they don't have enough of those very quickly. Germany has 366 00:19:09,600 --> 00:19:12,440 Speaker 2: a lot of young German men ineen late nineteen fourteen, 367 00:19:12,800 --> 00:19:15,120 Speaker 2: and then a couple months after August a lot less 368 00:19:15,119 --> 00:19:15,920 Speaker 2: German young men. 369 00:19:16,600 --> 00:19:19,840 Speaker 3: So there we're really going, where are these German men? 370 00:19:20,200 --> 00:19:23,119 Speaker 2: They're just kind of feeding them into French machine guns. 371 00:19:23,720 --> 00:19:27,680 Speaker 2: You're doing the same thing, right. Everybody's how fast can 372 00:19:27,720 --> 00:19:30,600 Speaker 2: we get rid of our young men turns out very 373 00:19:32,119 --> 00:19:35,280 Speaker 2: so he joins a reserve infantry unit right which the 374 00:19:35,320 --> 00:19:37,760 Speaker 2: fact that he does this suggests he's trying to keep 375 00:19:37,840 --> 00:19:40,040 Speaker 2: himself out of combat again and the hope that the 376 00:19:40,040 --> 00:19:43,399 Speaker 2: war might end quickly. Now most of the reserve units 377 00:19:43,400 --> 00:19:46,320 Speaker 2: in nineteen fourteen wind up on the front line because 378 00:19:46,680 --> 00:19:49,440 Speaker 2: it's just that kind of war. But he's going to 379 00:19:49,520 --> 00:19:52,199 Speaker 2: try in other ways to delay his service. Bala Chrishnan 380 00:19:52,280 --> 00:19:54,439 Speaker 2: writes while he was in basic training, he claimed to 381 00:19:54,440 --> 00:19:57,760 Speaker 2: have sustained a back injury, and the way Balachristian writes 382 00:19:57,760 --> 00:19:59,600 Speaker 2: it suggests that he doesn't really think this is a 383 00:19:59,640 --> 00:20:02,960 Speaker 2: real injury, or that, like Schmidt, plays it up to 384 00:20:03,040 --> 00:20:06,480 Speaker 2: delay things. But once again luck is on his side. 385 00:20:06,600 --> 00:20:12,840 Speaker 2: Schmidt's first mentor Van Kalker, because he's like a respected gentleman. 386 00:20:13,320 --> 00:20:15,520 Speaker 2: He joins the army and they're like, well, you're a major. 387 00:20:15,760 --> 00:20:18,040 Speaker 2: And obviously he had spent time in the military before, 388 00:20:18,160 --> 00:20:21,000 Speaker 2: because everyone does. Basically he had done like his period 389 00:20:21,000 --> 00:20:25,080 Speaker 2: of national service. So when he joins the full time army, 390 00:20:25,119 --> 00:20:27,240 Speaker 2: he's made a major by virtue of the fact that 391 00:20:27,240 --> 00:20:31,760 Speaker 2: he is a very very respected professor, and because he's 392 00:20:31,760 --> 00:20:34,800 Speaker 2: got this position he's able to get Schmidt a place 393 00:20:34,880 --> 00:20:39,000 Speaker 2: in the Prince's personal regiment. Now, this is not safe. Actually, 394 00:20:39,000 --> 00:20:41,680 Speaker 2: if you're in like the Prince's regiment in the German Army, 395 00:20:41,680 --> 00:20:43,840 Speaker 2: you're going to see heavy combat because the Prince wants 396 00:20:43,920 --> 00:20:45,959 Speaker 2: glory and he's going to send boys today to do it. 397 00:20:46,240 --> 00:20:50,400 Speaker 2: A lot of his colleagues get killed. But Van Kalker 398 00:20:50,600 --> 00:20:52,800 Speaker 2: is like na, na, No, Karl Schmidt is not someone 399 00:20:52,840 --> 00:20:55,040 Speaker 2: we want to feed to machine guns. This guy is smart, 400 00:20:55,040 --> 00:20:57,639 Speaker 2: He's going to be somebody, and he gets him a 401 00:20:57,720 --> 00:21:01,160 Speaker 2: job in the headquarters section, basically shuff fulling paperwork around, 402 00:21:01,280 --> 00:21:05,200 Speaker 2: helping to like handle organizational tasks. And as a result, 403 00:21:05,240 --> 00:21:07,800 Speaker 2: for the entirety of the war, Schmidt is never particularly 404 00:21:07,880 --> 00:21:10,440 Speaker 2: close to like direct fire. I don't even think he's 405 00:21:10,520 --> 00:21:13,720 Speaker 2: very close to indirect But he's never in serious danger, right, 406 00:21:14,280 --> 00:21:16,679 Speaker 2: you know, like elevated from his civilian life. But he 407 00:21:16,760 --> 00:21:20,000 Speaker 2: is not fighting, right, And he's not fighting because this 408 00:21:20,160 --> 00:21:23,120 Speaker 2: mentor again comes in and probably saves his life. Right 409 00:21:23,200 --> 00:21:24,879 Speaker 2: to be like, Nanna, this guy, we don't want this 410 00:21:24,920 --> 00:21:26,680 Speaker 2: guy up at the front. It's just a waste. 411 00:21:26,920 --> 00:21:29,200 Speaker 3: A mentor he turns on yeah, right. 412 00:21:29,119 --> 00:21:31,879 Speaker 2: Well doesn't he just stopped. He just kind of abandons 413 00:21:31,920 --> 00:21:36,199 Speaker 2: him at a certain point. Yeah. Now, after training, but 414 00:21:36,280 --> 00:21:39,440 Speaker 2: before he deploys, Karl takes one last stab at Mary 415 00:21:39,480 --> 00:21:42,280 Speaker 2: and Karrie, and this time the whole system works differently 416 00:21:42,320 --> 00:21:44,960 Speaker 2: because there's a war on. The officials who'd held up 417 00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:48,840 Speaker 2: on naturalizing her were either deployed or had decided like, look, 418 00:21:48,880 --> 00:21:52,120 Speaker 2: this boy is probably going to die, like everybody, give 419 00:21:52,160 --> 00:21:54,320 Speaker 2: him a chance to get this girl pregnant and continue 420 00:21:54,400 --> 00:21:57,520 Speaker 2: the family line, right, Like, that's that's the idea. They're 421 00:21:57,560 --> 00:22:01,159 Speaker 2: really they're rubber stamping a lot of marriage at this stage. 422 00:22:01,320 --> 00:22:04,680 Speaker 3: We're gonna send these babies in the front line, the younger. 423 00:22:04,800 --> 00:22:09,680 Speaker 2: Yeah right, we're gonna need more German boys very soon. Now, 424 00:22:09,720 --> 00:22:14,120 Speaker 2: her birth certificate's obviously fake and she's got pending shoplifting charges, 425 00:22:14,160 --> 00:22:16,439 Speaker 2: but they managed to like brute force this through and 426 00:22:16,520 --> 00:22:21,200 Speaker 2: the two finally get married legally. Karl is immediately deployed, 427 00:22:21,640 --> 00:22:25,600 Speaker 2: and he fucking hates it. He hates the army for 428 00:22:25,680 --> 00:22:28,600 Speaker 2: the first time and only time in his life. Because 429 00:22:28,640 --> 00:22:30,439 Speaker 2: of how much he hates being in the army, he 430 00:22:30,600 --> 00:22:34,520 Speaker 2: radically revises his entire legal and philosophical theory about how 431 00:22:34,560 --> 00:22:37,639 Speaker 2: the world works. He describes life in barracks as a 432 00:22:37,760 --> 00:22:40,199 Speaker 2: hell where he was forced to endure the stink of 433 00:22:40,359 --> 00:22:43,520 Speaker 2: plebes because he had and you know he had previously 434 00:22:43,720 --> 00:22:46,680 Speaker 2: he had been like, well, human value depends upon how 435 00:22:46,720 --> 00:22:49,320 Speaker 2: you are serving the state, And now that he is 436 00:22:49,440 --> 00:22:52,800 Speaker 2: serving the state as effectively its property, he's like, oh, 437 00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:55,600 Speaker 2: but that's awful. That sucks. Ass. No, this can't be 438 00:22:55,680 --> 00:22:58,960 Speaker 2: how things work. Fuck, this is what's serving the states, 439 00:22:59,080 --> 00:23:01,720 Speaker 2: Like this is invaluable at all. I hate the state. 440 00:23:03,240 --> 00:23:05,359 Speaker 2: But no, he writes that he hated quote the god 441 00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:11,840 Speaker 2: of this world, the law for its destruction of the individual. Interesting. Interesting, 442 00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:15,320 Speaker 2: this is he's not gonna stay consistent to this, But 443 00:23:15,359 --> 00:23:17,520 Speaker 2: it is very funny to me that like the moment 444 00:23:17,640 --> 00:23:20,280 Speaker 2: he's made to live with his beliefs, he's like, oh, well, 445 00:23:20,320 --> 00:23:22,400 Speaker 2: obviously this is a terrible idea. 446 00:23:23,160 --> 00:23:23,360 Speaker 4: Yeah. 447 00:23:25,200 --> 00:23:28,719 Speaker 2: Now he began even to dislike his mentor Van Kalker 448 00:23:28,840 --> 00:23:30,240 Speaker 2: in this time. This is kind of when the break 449 00:23:30,240 --> 00:23:33,480 Speaker 2: with him begins, because Van Kolker is a smart man. 450 00:23:33,760 --> 00:23:37,000 Speaker 2: He was not an advocate for war, but he serves, 451 00:23:37,080 --> 00:23:41,480 Speaker 2: and he serves enthusiastically and without great disgust, and even 452 00:23:41,480 --> 00:23:43,080 Speaker 2: till they have an argument at one point and van 453 00:23:43,160 --> 00:23:45,600 Speaker 2: Kalker is like, look, if the state has to break 454 00:23:45,880 --> 00:23:48,800 Speaker 2: commits some minor illegality in order to win the war, 455 00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:52,199 Speaker 2: that's okay. And Carl's like, what the fuck. That's not 456 00:23:52,240 --> 00:23:54,280 Speaker 2: what you taught me at all, Like this isn't how 457 00:23:54,280 --> 00:23:57,000 Speaker 2: it's supposed to work, and he writes he has become 458 00:23:57,160 --> 00:24:02,320 Speaker 2: unfaithful to himself. It interesting. Schmid's private musings during this 459 00:24:02,359 --> 00:24:07,120 Speaker 2: period read almost like protest literature quote. I was mad 460 00:24:07,160 --> 00:24:10,240 Speaker 2: with anger about the Prussians, about militarism. I felt like 461 00:24:10,280 --> 00:24:14,200 Speaker 2: committing the most ostentatious insubordinations. So he's like, I really 462 00:24:14,320 --> 00:24:18,440 Speaker 2: wanted to rebel, but he doesn't. Obviously he's not that guy. 463 00:24:19,760 --> 00:24:22,200 Speaker 2: As part of his early service, he goes to Dacau, 464 00:24:22,280 --> 00:24:24,320 Speaker 2: which at that point we know what Daca is going 465 00:24:24,400 --> 00:24:26,560 Speaker 2: to be later it's a munition's plant at this stage. 466 00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:29,280 Speaker 2: And he writes and he's talking about like looking at 467 00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:32,600 Speaker 2: the conditions in these arms factories, and he says, how 468 00:24:32,600 --> 00:24:35,359 Speaker 2: ghastly for an individual to be sitting in such a prison. 469 00:24:36,119 --> 00:24:37,960 Speaker 2: And it's interesting to be that, like that's his attitude 470 00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:41,040 Speaker 2: about Dacau when it's like an arms facility. But he 471 00:24:41,160 --> 00:24:43,320 Speaker 2: is going to be one of the early. You know 472 00:24:43,480 --> 00:24:48,080 Speaker 2: people who helps to fill up concentration camps. Yeah. 473 00:24:48,760 --> 00:24:51,720 Speaker 3: Interesting, and that means that he had the skill set 474 00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:55,679 Speaker 3: to do that, yes, and the yeah, the personality to 475 00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:57,360 Speaker 3: do it, yes, wild. 476 00:24:57,119 --> 00:24:59,920 Speaker 2: But also the ability to understand that something considerably less 477 00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:03,200 Speaker 2: awful than dock out the concentration camp is still bad. 478 00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:06,919 Speaker 2: So theoretically the ability to understand, like what he was 479 00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:10,960 Speaker 2: doing and putting helping to put people in dockout was wrong. Anyway, 480 00:25:11,680 --> 00:25:14,320 Speaker 2: speaking of Nope. 481 00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:17,560 Speaker 1: No ads, Jesus Christ, we're. 482 00:25:17,359 --> 00:25:19,439 Speaker 2: Not doing good with the ad transition today. People. 483 00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:22,480 Speaker 1: It's kind of hard on a subject like this. 484 00:25:22,840 --> 00:25:26,400 Speaker 3: Yeah, this is my favorite producer on air host Dynamic 485 00:25:26,440 --> 00:25:27,600 Speaker 3: by the way I've ever seen. 486 00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:31,800 Speaker 2: It's just bummed. 487 00:25:32,960 --> 00:25:34,359 Speaker 1: This is just us in real life. 488 00:25:35,320 --> 00:25:38,719 Speaker 3: Anyway, Enough about concentration camps. Here's the word from the Gap? 489 00:25:39,200 --> 00:25:42,000 Speaker 3: Are you worry from baby Gap? 490 00:25:43,080 --> 00:25:43,679 Speaker 2: The Gap? 491 00:25:43,840 --> 00:25:45,320 Speaker 1: I do wish it was the gap? 492 00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:48,240 Speaker 5: You wish it was the gap, But it's going to 493 00:25:48,320 --> 00:25:51,560 Speaker 5: be something so much worse that we're not even aware of. 494 00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:54,520 Speaker 2: I don't know. Is there anything worse than the gap? Yes, 495 00:25:54,560 --> 00:26:01,800 Speaker 2: probably all the things we're about to talk about. So 496 00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:05,679 Speaker 2: the war ends in nineteen eighteen and Schmid's relief is 497 00:26:05,760 --> 00:26:08,399 Speaker 2: tempered by what appeared to be like the dissolution of 498 00:26:08,440 --> 00:26:11,720 Speaker 2: the German state. Germany is falling apart as soon as 499 00:26:11,920 --> 00:26:16,240 Speaker 2: there's like a peace happens, and this whole order, the 500 00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:18,600 Speaker 2: legal order that his whole life been based on, looks 501 00:26:18,600 --> 00:26:21,200 Speaker 2: like it's just going to crumble, Like the legal code 502 00:26:21,240 --> 00:26:24,240 Speaker 2: is going to be gone, the government, the Kaiser's already gone. 503 00:26:24,359 --> 00:26:27,000 Speaker 2: What the fuck's going to be left? And part of 504 00:26:27,040 --> 00:26:30,360 Speaker 2: what's happening is that there is a socialist revolution right 505 00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:34,600 Speaker 2: after peace that like comes pretty close to succeeding in 506 00:26:34,640 --> 00:26:38,439 Speaker 2: some areas. Units of demobilized soldiers the Frei Corps cracked 507 00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:41,920 Speaker 2: down and start massacring leftist intellectuals with the direct endorsement 508 00:26:41,960 --> 00:26:44,720 Speaker 2: of the right and the tacit support of social democratic 509 00:26:44,760 --> 00:26:47,560 Speaker 2: politicians who are like, yeah, it's ugly, but we otherwise 510 00:26:47,600 --> 00:26:50,239 Speaker 2: we won't get to have our democratic state if we 511 00:26:50,280 --> 00:26:52,120 Speaker 2: don't let you know, if we don't let the right 512 00:26:52,280 --> 00:26:55,480 Speaker 2: murder all of these leftists. Schmidt is lecturing at a 513 00:26:55,560 --> 00:26:58,000 Speaker 2: university by this point, and during the late war years 514 00:26:58,040 --> 00:27:00,440 Speaker 2: he'd begun to receive pay for his work as an actademic. 515 00:27:01,040 --> 00:27:04,439 Speaker 2: His office was broken into by what Balakrishnan describes as 516 00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:07,760 Speaker 2: a band of revolutionaries who are just like, yeah, a 517 00:27:07,760 --> 00:27:10,879 Speaker 2: bunch of young people who are trying to like overthrow 518 00:27:10,960 --> 00:27:13,600 Speaker 2: the local government. And while he's at a cafe, an 519 00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:16,520 Speaker 2: officer sitting next to him at a table gets assassinated, 520 00:27:17,040 --> 00:27:20,560 Speaker 2: and he reacts by growing terrified of disorder. It's not 521 00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:23,879 Speaker 2: just that he's like horrified by these revolutionary moments that 522 00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:27,760 Speaker 2: are so chaotic and scary. He also recognizes, oh, when 523 00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:33,040 Speaker 2: things fall apart, you have the chance to dramatically remake society, 524 00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:36,600 Speaker 2: including the chance to remake the law and the concept 525 00:27:36,600 --> 00:27:38,959 Speaker 2: of order, maybe in a way that makes more sense. 526 00:27:39,960 --> 00:27:41,879 Speaker 2: And that's what he's thinking at the time. And so 527 00:27:42,320 --> 00:27:46,639 Speaker 2: it's also noteworthy that even though he doesn't like the leftist, 528 00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:49,640 Speaker 2: you know, kind of uprisings that are happening, they scare him. 529 00:27:50,040 --> 00:27:53,280 Speaker 2: He's not an obsessive anti Marxist at this point either, 530 00:27:53,400 --> 00:27:56,640 Speaker 2: And in fact, Balachristian notes that it's there's not really 531 00:27:56,680 --> 00:27:59,320 Speaker 2: any anti Marxism in his writings from this period, which 532 00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:03,159 Speaker 2: he describes as quite simply puzzling. It's like, really weird that, 533 00:28:03,200 --> 00:28:05,639 Speaker 2: given how he felt about this, he didn't go on 534 00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:08,560 Speaker 2: any rants about Marxism. It's just kind of an odd 535 00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:11,199 Speaker 2: fact here, and it may have something to do with 536 00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:13,320 Speaker 2: the fact that he sees this as more a structural 537 00:28:13,359 --> 00:28:15,359 Speaker 2: thing of like, well, yeah, it's the left doing it 538 00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:19,120 Speaker 2: right now, but when things collapse, opportunity is made for 539 00:28:19,440 --> 00:28:22,919 Speaker 2: people of radical beliefs, and so it's the factor. The 540 00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:25,640 Speaker 2: reality of collapse is more to blame for than anything, 541 00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:29,359 Speaker 2: and he's more interested than like ranting about the left. 542 00:28:29,400 --> 00:28:32,640 Speaker 2: He's more interested in figuring out how to take advantage 543 00:28:32,760 --> 00:28:37,200 Speaker 2: of those moments right now. This period of chaos would 544 00:28:37,200 --> 00:28:42,040 Speaker 2: inspire his first great and truly influential book, Political Romanticism, 545 00:28:42,120 --> 00:28:46,120 Speaker 2: published in nineteen nineteen. This is a pre fascist work, 546 00:28:46,200 --> 00:28:49,480 Speaker 2: because again, fascism isn't really off the ground all the 547 00:28:49,480 --> 00:28:52,280 Speaker 2: way yet. Of what we would call fascist polemics, he's 548 00:28:52,320 --> 00:28:55,600 Speaker 2: basically listing all of the ideologies that exist in the 549 00:28:55,600 --> 00:28:59,280 Speaker 2: world at the time, from socialism and monarchism to liberalism, 550 00:28:59,640 --> 00:29:04,760 Speaker 2: as flawed. He calls them dead romanticism right like these are, 551 00:29:04,800 --> 00:29:08,360 Speaker 2: and he calls conservatism that right. Conservatism is just this 552 00:29:08,520 --> 00:29:13,960 Speaker 2: dead romantic idea right in fact, expresses nothing but contempt 553 00:29:13,960 --> 00:29:17,520 Speaker 2: for conservative reactionaries who in that period sought the Kaiser's return, 554 00:29:17,600 --> 00:29:20,160 Speaker 2: So he's like, you're just looking back on a period 555 00:29:20,160 --> 00:29:23,440 Speaker 2: that was never very good and you're not serious thinkers, right. 556 00:29:23,920 --> 00:29:26,320 Speaker 2: But he's also looking at the liberals in Weimar and 557 00:29:26,360 --> 00:29:30,440 Speaker 2: being like, well, you're idolizing this democracy that number one 558 00:29:30,640 --> 00:29:33,440 Speaker 2: was birthed in blood, and number two isn't going to 559 00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:38,440 Speaker 2: succeed in fixing anything. Now. The core of Schmid's rage 560 00:29:38,560 --> 00:29:41,160 Speaker 2: is reserved not for the political class, but for the 561 00:29:41,240 --> 00:29:43,960 Speaker 2: kind of bohemian artists and creatives who'd made up his 562 00:29:44,040 --> 00:29:46,960 Speaker 2: pre war friend and social circle. We might see this 563 00:29:47,040 --> 00:29:49,360 Speaker 2: as an early attack on the same sort of like 564 00:29:49,560 --> 00:29:52,800 Speaker 2: shallow Hollywood liberal elites that would become such a hallmark 565 00:29:52,840 --> 00:29:55,480 Speaker 2: of conservative politics in our era. And I want to 566 00:29:55,520 --> 00:29:57,760 Speaker 2: quote from an article on the power of Karl Schmidt 567 00:29:57,760 --> 00:30:02,000 Speaker 2: by Richard Cohen. Schmidt reduced and attacked all contemporary political 568 00:30:02,080 --> 00:30:05,840 Speaker 2: art alternatives to fascism, especially liberalism, but also socialism as 569 00:30:05,920 --> 00:30:09,480 Speaker 2: mere romanticism because of their attachment to free speech, discussion, 570 00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:13,760 Speaker 2: and hence parliamentarianism, which smidt owing to his decisionism, dismissed 571 00:30:13,760 --> 00:30:17,200 Speaker 2: his empty chatter, asking a deeper inability to decide. He 572 00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:20,280 Speaker 2: labels such politics romantic for the same reason, because the 573 00:30:20,360 --> 00:30:24,920 Speaker 2: romantics are essentially indecisive esteats, fluttering from one fashion to another, 574 00:30:25,080 --> 00:30:29,400 Speaker 2: always stimulated and excited, but never committed and engaged. So 575 00:30:30,320 --> 00:30:33,280 Speaker 2: that's kind of interesting to me that he is he's 576 00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:37,960 Speaker 2: rejecting all of these different belief systems as based in 577 00:30:38,200 --> 00:30:41,000 Speaker 2: sorts of fantasies about how things should be and not 578 00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:44,840 Speaker 2: a real understanding of how people are right. That's the 579 00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:46,680 Speaker 2: conclusion he's come to at this point. 580 00:30:48,080 --> 00:30:52,680 Speaker 3: He is a fantasizer himself. It's so interesting, like how prone. 581 00:30:52,480 --> 00:30:57,520 Speaker 3: He's not the first fascist who's prone to fantasy and no, no, 582 00:30:57,640 --> 00:31:00,880 Speaker 3: it is interesting the contradictions with him. Yeah, oh, like 583 00:31:01,240 --> 00:31:03,480 Speaker 3: everything has to be rule of law, you know, like 584 00:31:03,600 --> 00:31:06,200 Speaker 3: you are not a productive member of society unless you're 585 00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:10,239 Speaker 3: serving the state. Also, you know, like my wife is 586 00:31:10,560 --> 00:31:14,040 Speaker 3: a you know, like she's not she's but she's yeah, 587 00:31:14,040 --> 00:31:16,520 Speaker 3: she's a countess. She's a countess. Countess is Yeah. 588 00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:18,920 Speaker 2: It's also interesting he has this experience of like, ah, 589 00:31:18,960 --> 00:31:20,840 Speaker 2: all that matters is what you do as part of 590 00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:24,320 Speaker 2: the state, and then it's like, oh wait, that sucks ass, 591 00:31:24,320 --> 00:31:26,320 Speaker 2: And it's like yeah, because you had a romantic view 592 00:31:26,360 --> 00:31:28,600 Speaker 2: of what that meant, that was proven wrong, and he's 593 00:31:28,640 --> 00:31:31,520 Speaker 2: started attacking his enemies for being like romantics but unable 594 00:31:31,520 --> 00:31:33,080 Speaker 2: to see that strain in himself. 595 00:31:33,520 --> 00:31:36,200 Speaker 3: And he's like a professor, like that's not Yeah, he's 596 00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:39,000 Speaker 3: not serving the state either, you know, Like so, yeah, 597 00:31:39,040 --> 00:31:40,040 Speaker 3: it's interesting now. 598 00:31:40,040 --> 00:31:42,560 Speaker 2: But again he is always looking at people. He always 599 00:31:42,600 --> 00:31:45,440 Speaker 2: he's always seeing real problems, Like among this class of 600 00:31:45,520 --> 00:31:50,000 Speaker 2: like artists and celebrities in Berlin, he sees how kind 601 00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:53,960 Speaker 2: of hollow they're they're signaling at these democratic values are 602 00:31:54,040 --> 00:31:57,640 Speaker 2: and concludes the most important source of political vitality is 603 00:31:57,680 --> 00:32:02,160 Speaker 2: the belief in justice and an indignation of injustice. He 604 00:32:02,360 --> 00:32:05,560 Speaker 2: notes that what's important is not like how either of 605 00:32:05,600 --> 00:32:08,719 Speaker 2: them are defined, but that they have a definition and 606 00:32:08,800 --> 00:32:11,440 Speaker 2: stick to it. Like Schmidt, he's kind of got this 607 00:32:11,520 --> 00:32:14,040 Speaker 2: Walter subcheck from the big Lebowski attitude of like you 608 00:32:14,080 --> 00:32:15,880 Speaker 2: gotta have an ethos. It doesn't matter what it is, 609 00:32:15,920 --> 00:32:17,400 Speaker 2: as long as you spell it out right. 610 00:32:17,520 --> 00:32:20,360 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, just write it down. As long as 611 00:32:20,360 --> 00:32:22,200 Speaker 3: it's written down. It can be whatever the hell you want. 612 00:32:22,080 --> 00:32:23,600 Speaker 2: As long as it's written down right. 613 00:32:23,800 --> 00:32:24,240 Speaker 3: Yeah. 614 00:32:24,560 --> 00:32:26,720 Speaker 2: This book marks the last time in his career that 615 00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:29,480 Speaker 2: Schmidt centered ethics in any way For the remainder of 616 00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:31,960 Speaker 2: his decades as a jurist and legal philosopher. He is 617 00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:35,480 Speaker 2: interested only in power, and as the postwar years become 618 00:32:35,520 --> 00:32:38,800 Speaker 2: the twenties, Mussolini marches on Rome and fascism becomes the 619 00:32:38,880 --> 00:32:42,120 Speaker 2: name on every tongue. Europe begins at slow drive to 620 00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:45,160 Speaker 2: the brink, and Schmidt is initially distracted by the collapse 621 00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:48,520 Speaker 2: of his marriage to an extremely obvious KHN woman, and 622 00:32:48,960 --> 00:32:51,760 Speaker 2: you know, things sour and Carl kind of finds out 623 00:32:51,800 --> 00:32:54,120 Speaker 2: that car Carrie's been lying to him the whole time. 624 00:32:55,000 --> 00:32:57,200 Speaker 2: It takes ten years, but in nineteen twenty two he 625 00:32:57,280 --> 00:32:59,880 Speaker 2: files for an annulment on the grounds of wilful descent. 626 00:33:00,120 --> 00:33:02,840 Speaker 1: It took ten years, ten years. 627 00:33:02,560 --> 00:33:04,640 Speaker 2: And ten years to realize that he's been had. 628 00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:07,320 Speaker 3: She's the hero of this, by the way. 629 00:33:07,440 --> 00:33:08,080 Speaker 2: She is good. 630 00:33:08,320 --> 00:33:10,280 Speaker 3: She's amazing. Yeah, she's the best. 631 00:33:10,560 --> 00:33:13,320 Speaker 2: I hope she has a good life after this too. 632 00:33:13,520 --> 00:33:16,520 Speaker 1: Carl ten years, my guy, ten years. 633 00:33:16,680 --> 00:33:17,960 Speaker 3: Yeah, Carl's sweetheart. 634 00:33:18,240 --> 00:33:20,880 Speaker 1: Oh boy, heab what's good? 635 00:33:21,800 --> 00:33:22,680 Speaker 3: I love Carl? 636 00:33:23,040 --> 00:33:25,720 Speaker 2: Ten years of like, sorry, I left my real passport 637 00:33:25,760 --> 00:33:29,800 Speaker 2: and my other skirt or whatever. The Catholic Church is 638 00:33:29,800 --> 00:33:33,800 Speaker 2: not thrilled with his annulment and Carl proves his fundamental 639 00:33:33,920 --> 00:33:38,280 Speaker 2: messiness when sure, while while he's getting annulled, while they're 640 00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:42,600 Speaker 2: doing having like divorce proceedings in court, he meets this 641 00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:46,080 Speaker 2: nineteen year old Serbian girl named Dushka who's like the 642 00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:50,560 Speaker 2: translator who's like translating for his wife in court. He 643 00:33:51,480 --> 00:33:52,640 Speaker 2: starts dating her. 644 00:33:54,880 --> 00:33:56,600 Speaker 1: Is this an episode of Sex and the City? 645 00:33:56,640 --> 00:34:01,560 Speaker 2: Come on, I've heard this before. Yeah, describes Karl as 646 00:34:01,600 --> 00:34:04,840 Speaker 2: living in a quote erotic state of exception, during which 647 00:34:04,880 --> 00:34:07,920 Speaker 2: he continued to cheat with his second wife on multiple 648 00:34:07,920 --> 00:34:11,160 Speaker 2: women right, Like he's he's writing about the law. He's 649 00:34:11,160 --> 00:34:14,719 Speaker 2: writing about like the importance of you know, spelling out 650 00:34:14,800 --> 00:34:16,960 Speaker 2: who you are and what you do and not deviating 651 00:34:16,960 --> 00:34:19,320 Speaker 2: from it. And he is cheating on his second wife. 652 00:34:19,640 --> 00:34:22,000 Speaker 2: And he keeps a diary. Again, this is another thing 653 00:34:22,040 --> 00:34:24,759 Speaker 2: that fascist today, I'll do. He keeps a diary of 654 00:34:24,800 --> 00:34:31,640 Speaker 2: every time he comes, like he's like he's charting his ejaculations. 655 00:34:31,960 --> 00:34:34,600 Speaker 2: His motherfucker would have been no fap so fucking hard 656 00:34:34,880 --> 00:34:36,360 Speaker 2: or like, I don't know what is their speaker of 657 00:34:36,360 --> 00:34:38,840 Speaker 2: the house who like talks about when he comes and 658 00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:41,760 Speaker 2: doesn't with his son, like he's they're all this. 659 00:34:41,760 --> 00:34:44,799 Speaker 1: Guy, don't do that. Don't do that. 660 00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:46,760 Speaker 2: You don't need that data. 661 00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:50,920 Speaker 5: No, maybe maybe if you were busy or paying attention. 662 00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:53,760 Speaker 5: What was going on, Carla when I've taken you ten years? 663 00:34:55,040 --> 00:34:58,680 Speaker 5: God stop, just I'm gonna stop. 664 00:34:58,960 --> 00:34:59,640 Speaker 2: Just stop. 665 00:35:00,600 --> 00:35:02,040 Speaker 1: I was gonna go on a longer ramp, but I 666 00:35:02,040 --> 00:35:03,800 Speaker 1: remember it. Stop as a couplet epits. 667 00:35:03,960 --> 00:35:05,560 Speaker 3: You can stop. Stop. 668 00:35:06,160 --> 00:35:09,239 Speaker 2: So he's gotten his marriage and old to the con artist. 669 00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:11,839 Speaker 2: He's dating a teenager. He's writing in a journal every 670 00:35:11,880 --> 00:35:14,440 Speaker 2: time he comes. He's just living his best life. 671 00:35:14,560 --> 00:35:15,600 Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. 672 00:35:16,040 --> 00:35:19,480 Speaker 3: That journal may have sold better than that satire magazine. 673 00:35:20,680 --> 00:35:22,960 Speaker 2: It's gotta be in his letters. I mean, because it 674 00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:25,560 Speaker 2: gets referenced by marrying I am. I really wish he 675 00:35:25,680 --> 00:35:29,120 Speaker 2: just included an extensive like quotation from it. 676 00:35:29,520 --> 00:35:30,279 Speaker 3: Here's an ex serp. 677 00:35:30,560 --> 00:35:33,200 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, as someone who washes their hands a lot. 678 00:35:33,280 --> 00:35:34,600 Speaker 1: I hope he did, because. 679 00:35:35,520 --> 00:35:36,680 Speaker 2: They didn't believe in that back then. 680 00:35:36,680 --> 00:35:39,800 Speaker 3: I have terrible news, ie you he did it. Journal? 681 00:35:39,920 --> 00:35:43,040 Speaker 2: That journal is yeah, sticky pages. 682 00:35:43,960 --> 00:35:46,520 Speaker 1: That was unfortunately, that was my first thought. 683 00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:50,279 Speaker 2: Yeah. No, So Schmidt, while this is all happening after 684 00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:52,600 Speaker 2: he gets divorced, he's watching the early days of the 685 00:35:52,680 --> 00:35:55,760 Speaker 2: Nazi Party right twenty two is when he gets divorced. 686 00:35:55,760 --> 00:35:59,000 Speaker 2: Twenty three is the beer hall puts yeah, which fails, 687 00:35:59,080 --> 00:36:00,560 Speaker 2: and a lot of people think, well, that's it for 688 00:36:00,600 --> 00:36:04,960 Speaker 2: them Nazis, and Karl is not initially interested in joining 689 00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:07,759 Speaker 2: or supporting the movement. He's like, these people seem like Yahoo's. 690 00:36:08,360 --> 00:36:11,400 Speaker 2: What he does do is increasingly analyze and start to 691 00:36:11,400 --> 00:36:14,600 Speaker 2: pick out the obvious flaws in the democratic system of Weimar, 692 00:36:14,960 --> 00:36:16,640 Speaker 2: and he begins to lay out in a book a 693 00:36:16,680 --> 00:36:21,480 Speaker 2: theory for exactly why liberal democracy is doomed and how 694 00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:24,840 Speaker 2: the right can take advantage of these fundamental holes in 695 00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:30,319 Speaker 2: liberal democracy to smash liberalism, gain power and destroy democracy. 696 00:36:30,840 --> 00:36:34,320 Speaker 2: In nineteen twenty three, the year that putsch Schmidt writes 697 00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:37,840 Speaker 2: this about the post war Wilsonian order imposed on Europe, 698 00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:40,720 Speaker 2: the history of political and state theory in the nineteenth 699 00:36:40,719 --> 00:36:43,440 Speaker 2: century could be summarized with a single phrase, the triumphal 700 00:36:43,440 --> 00:36:46,920 Speaker 2: march of democracy. No state in the Western European cultural 701 00:36:46,920 --> 00:36:50,799 Speaker 2: world withstood the extension of democratic ideals and institutions. And 702 00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:53,160 Speaker 2: he writes this in like a mournful way, right that 703 00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:56,000 Speaker 2: it's almost like you can't stop it, and you know 704 00:36:56,080 --> 00:36:59,160 Speaker 2: you've got Mussolini by this point in Italy, but Hitler 705 00:36:59,239 --> 00:37:02,759 Speaker 2: is seen as like an upstart, weirdo discontent, and there 706 00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:06,080 Speaker 2: is this attitude that like democracy is obviously on the march, 707 00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:09,799 Speaker 2: and Schmidt he picks out, he's like, looking at this 708 00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:12,080 Speaker 2: the way fucking the rebels are looking at the death 709 00:37:12,120 --> 00:37:15,560 Speaker 2: Star plans. And he finds a vulnerability in liberal democracy 710 00:37:15,560 --> 00:37:18,480 Speaker 2: that's easy to exploit, and he writes his next book 711 00:37:18,520 --> 00:37:21,719 Speaker 2: about it. That book is called The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 712 00:37:22,239 --> 00:37:26,000 Speaker 2: and it comes out alongside economic and social chaos that's 713 00:37:26,160 --> 00:37:30,080 Speaker 2: gripping Weimar right. And I'm going to quote from Richard 714 00:37:30,080 --> 00:37:33,040 Speaker 2: Cohen here. The new crisis of democracy, he argued, stem 715 00:37:33,200 --> 00:37:36,880 Speaker 2: precisely from its victory over monarchy. During that struggle, democracy 716 00:37:36,920 --> 00:37:40,040 Speaker 2: and liberalism were basically co extensive. To believe in popular 717 00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:42,600 Speaker 2: sovereignty was to believe in the necessity of the replacement 718 00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:46,960 Speaker 2: of absolute monarchy with regime characterized by elections, free public debate, 719 00:37:47,040 --> 00:37:50,120 Speaker 2: and legal rights. But in Schmid's mind, this connection is 720 00:37:50,200 --> 00:37:54,359 Speaker 2: far more historical happenstance than conceptual necessity, and that democracy 721 00:37:54,400 --> 00:37:57,439 Speaker 2: properly construed cannot be seen as requiring rights and even 722 00:37:57,600 --> 00:38:01,040 Speaker 2: universal suffrage in the way that liberals understand them. A 723 00:38:01,080 --> 00:38:04,680 Speaker 2: government is democratic, Schmidt argues, if it bases its legitimacy 724 00:38:04,680 --> 00:38:07,360 Speaker 2: on support from the people's will. But this depends on 725 00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:10,000 Speaker 2: how you define the people and choose to assess their will. 726 00:38:10,400 --> 00:38:15,480 Speaker 2: Every democracy depends on excluding some people, most notably foreigners, 727 00:38:15,640 --> 00:38:18,680 Speaker 2: from participating in the selection of its leaders. That means, 728 00:38:18,719 --> 00:38:23,480 Speaker 2: by definition, no democracy rests on universal human equality before 729 00:38:23,520 --> 00:38:27,920 Speaker 2: the law. Instead, the idea of equality and democracy really 730 00:38:27,960 --> 00:38:31,400 Speaker 2: means equality amongst the people in a political community that 731 00:38:31,520 --> 00:38:35,480 Speaker 2: shares a certain identity and core agreements. There has never 732 00:38:35,520 --> 00:38:38,400 Speaker 2: been a democracy that did not recognize the concept foreign 733 00:38:38,520 --> 00:38:40,799 Speaker 2: and that could have realized the equality of all men, 734 00:38:40,920 --> 00:38:43,000 Speaker 2: he wrote in a nineteen twenty six preface to the 735 00:38:43,040 --> 00:38:46,640 Speaker 2: second edition of his book, Every actual democracy rests on 736 00:38:46,640 --> 00:38:50,040 Speaker 2: the principle that not only are equals equal, but unequals 737 00:38:50,120 --> 00:38:55,720 Speaker 2: will not be treated equally. Democracy requires, therefore, first homogeneity, and, second, 738 00:38:55,760 --> 00:39:01,640 Speaker 2: if the need arises, elimination and eradication of heterogenea. Do 739 00:39:01,719 --> 00:39:03,279 Speaker 2: you see what he's saying here. 740 00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:07,239 Speaker 3: Son of a bitch, right? It's son of a bitch right? 741 00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:10,920 Speaker 2: A couple things are fascinating to me. Number one, with 742 00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:13,560 Speaker 2: the exception to the fact that he endorses this This 743 00:39:13,719 --> 00:39:18,520 Speaker 2: is essentially how anarchists talk about borders, right. The maintenance 744 00:39:18,520 --> 00:39:21,640 Speaker 2: of every border implies violence. And this is both physical 745 00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:24,640 Speaker 2: borders like the border between us in Mexico, and like 746 00:39:24,680 --> 00:39:27,000 Speaker 2: what you're seeing right now with the attempt to legislate 747 00:39:27,080 --> 00:39:29,720 Speaker 2: like what counts as a woman with all these anti 748 00:39:29,719 --> 00:39:32,919 Speaker 2: trans things. Both of those borders are maintained by men 749 00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:36,040 Speaker 2: with guns, with violence. There's the threat of violence behind 750 00:39:36,040 --> 00:39:39,040 Speaker 2: building every one of those borders. If you cross this border, 751 00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:41,920 Speaker 2: or at least cross it in the wrong way, force 752 00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:45,840 Speaker 2: will be used against you. Every democracy does this, and 753 00:39:45,920 --> 00:39:47,560 Speaker 2: it does this not just in terms of who can 754 00:39:47,680 --> 00:39:50,080 Speaker 2: enter the country, but who gets to vote. And so 755 00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:52,560 Speaker 2: even if you have you're saying nice things in your 756 00:39:52,560 --> 00:39:54,880 Speaker 2: constitution about these are universal rights of men. These are 757 00:39:54,960 --> 00:39:57,000 Speaker 2: rights that extend to everyone. These aren't just rights that 758 00:39:57,040 --> 00:39:59,200 Speaker 2: extend to people who are citizens in the country. These 759 00:39:59,239 --> 00:40:03,480 Speaker 2: are universal rights that our society universally recognizes. That doesn't 760 00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:08,240 Speaker 2: necessarily mean squat because what you do is the reactionary 761 00:40:08,640 --> 00:40:12,279 Speaker 2: is you find that border wherever it exists, and you 762 00:40:12,320 --> 00:40:16,239 Speaker 2: start pushing inward. And as you start pushing inward from 763 00:40:16,239 --> 00:40:22,080 Speaker 2: that border, you will start fracturing the democratic consensus that 764 00:40:22,200 --> 00:40:26,359 Speaker 2: exists until you can destroy democracy. And that's how you 765 00:40:26,400 --> 00:40:30,200 Speaker 2: gain power as a reactionary movement within a liberal That's 766 00:40:30,200 --> 00:40:33,399 Speaker 2: how you destroy liberalism. You find the border that they 767 00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:38,239 Speaker 2: placed and you start pushing inwards. Right, that's what Carl realizes, 768 00:40:38,440 --> 00:40:41,080 Speaker 2: and that's what he lays out, and it works today 769 00:40:41,160 --> 00:40:42,520 Speaker 2: as well as it did back then. 770 00:40:43,600 --> 00:40:49,560 Speaker 3: She's got the chills, Jesus. Yeah, oh boy, oh boy, 771 00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:54,560 Speaker 3: it's great. Yeah, it's wonderous. That's right. 772 00:40:56,520 --> 00:41:00,480 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, No, he's he has accurately identified a flaw 773 00:41:00,600 --> 00:41:04,120 Speaker 2: in the system and how to exploit it. He writes, 774 00:41:04,239 --> 00:41:07,160 Speaker 2: quote democracy and liberalism could be allied to each other 775 00:41:07,239 --> 00:41:09,280 Speaker 2: for a time, but as soon as it achieves power, 776 00:41:09,320 --> 00:41:12,480 Speaker 2: liberal democracy must decide between its elements. The crisis of 777 00:41:12,520 --> 00:41:14,800 Speaker 2: the modern state arises from the fact that no state 778 00:41:14,840 --> 00:41:19,280 Speaker 2: can realize a mass democracy and democracy of mankind. Maybe 779 00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:21,560 Speaker 2: he'll prove right about that in the future. Maybe he won't. 780 00:41:21,560 --> 00:41:27,000 Speaker 2: But we've never tried right. Ultimately, we haven't. The most 781 00:41:27,040 --> 00:41:31,000 Speaker 2: potent part of Cohen's essay, he described Schmidt's academic work 782 00:41:31,040 --> 00:41:34,160 Speaker 2: in the late nineteen twenties as creating a blueprint quote 783 00:41:34,200 --> 00:41:38,560 Speaker 2: adaptable virtually anywhere for using reactionary politics to gain control 784 00:41:38,600 --> 00:41:41,319 Speaker 2: of a destroyed democracy from the inside while pretending to 785 00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:45,120 Speaker 2: be in service of that democracy. Now, elements of this 786 00:41:45,200 --> 00:41:48,280 Speaker 2: had been discussed by several thinkers, particularly in the context 787 00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:51,320 Speaker 2: of the US during the era of slavery, but Schmid's 788 00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:54,000 Speaker 2: big one of his big contributions is that he recognizes 789 00:41:54,400 --> 00:41:58,160 Speaker 2: race and religion can be used to push that border in. 790 00:41:58,600 --> 00:42:00,759 Speaker 2: But they don't matter. That's not the only way to 791 00:42:00,800 --> 00:42:05,040 Speaker 2: delineate the enemy. All the matters that you are delineating 792 00:42:05,080 --> 00:42:08,040 Speaker 2: an enemy, right and pulling them out of being considered 793 00:42:08,080 --> 00:42:11,560 Speaker 2: part of the body politic. They can be Jews, they 794 00:42:11,600 --> 00:42:13,720 Speaker 2: can be black, they could be trans they can be whoever. 795 00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:17,240 Speaker 2: But what matters ultimately is that you're picking an enemy, 796 00:42:17,560 --> 00:42:21,560 Speaker 2: and you are identifying them as not a part of us, right, 797 00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:26,960 Speaker 2: And that's that's the ballgame, right, and less than or 798 00:42:27,480 --> 00:42:31,000 Speaker 2: and less than you know, and a danger to us. 799 00:42:31,239 --> 00:42:34,239 Speaker 3: Right. Yes, right, So. 800 00:42:34,600 --> 00:42:37,160 Speaker 2: Schmidt argued, you know, not only that this is how 801 00:42:37,200 --> 00:42:40,719 Speaker 2: you manipulate democracy, because, unlike what liberals say, exclusion is 802 00:42:40,719 --> 00:42:43,600 Speaker 2: at the core of democratic politics. He writes this in 803 00:42:43,680 --> 00:42:46,480 Speaker 2: nineteen thirty two, in a book considered to be perhaps 804 00:42:46,520 --> 00:42:50,080 Speaker 2: the most important intellectual work of fascism's birth era, the 805 00:42:50,200 --> 00:42:55,040 Speaker 2: concept of the political quote. Every religious, moral, economic, ethical, 806 00:42:55,120 --> 00:42:58,319 Speaker 2: or other antithesis transforms into a political one if it 807 00:42:58,360 --> 00:43:02,680 Speaker 2: is sufficiently strong to human beings effectively according to friend 808 00:43:02,719 --> 00:43:05,560 Speaker 2: and enemy. So he has first this recognition of that, 809 00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:09,440 Speaker 2: like liberalism, inherently liberal democracy always draws a border, you 810 00:43:09,480 --> 00:43:11,600 Speaker 2: start pushing in him from that border, and then he 811 00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:14,560 Speaker 2: refines us to the idea that, like all politics is 812 00:43:14,600 --> 00:43:18,520 Speaker 2: about defining friend and enemy right, And that's how you 813 00:43:18,600 --> 00:43:21,759 Speaker 2: gain power, and that's how you enshrine your power right. 814 00:43:22,239 --> 00:43:25,640 Speaker 2: And once you have, once you have identified a group 815 00:43:25,640 --> 00:43:29,600 Speaker 2: of citizens as the enemy and you gain power, you 816 00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:32,640 Speaker 2: exclude them from the franchise. You turn them into a 817 00:43:32,640 --> 00:43:35,839 Speaker 2: domestic enemy, which you can then purge and destroy. And 818 00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:38,759 Speaker 2: that's how you maintain power. Per an article in The 819 00:43:38,800 --> 00:43:42,480 Speaker 2: New Statesman by Samuel Earle, that a specific distinction to 820 00:43:42,520 --> 00:43:45,120 Speaker 2: which political actions and motives can be reduced is that 821 00:43:45,200 --> 00:43:49,000 Speaker 2: between friend and enemy. Schmidt declared his fellow, anti democratic 822 00:43:49,040 --> 00:43:52,400 Speaker 2: and decorated soldier Ernst Junger described what followed as a 823 00:43:52,520 --> 00:43:57,439 Speaker 2: mind that silently explodes. For Schmidt, the friend enemy antithesis 824 00:43:57,480 --> 00:44:00,760 Speaker 2: was integral for politics in three senses. The enemy needed 825 00:44:00,760 --> 00:44:04,200 Speaker 2: to be something different in alien. Opposing such an enemy 826 00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:07,440 Speaker 2: was the essence of identity, and the implicit combat that 827 00:44:07,560 --> 00:44:11,600 Speaker 2: followed these enemies posed an existential threat. The friend, enemy 828 00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:14,799 Speaker 2: and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they 829 00:44:14,840 --> 00:44:18,320 Speaker 2: refer to the real possibility of physical killing. Schmid wrote, 830 00:44:18,520 --> 00:44:23,560 Speaker 2: war was therefore an ever present possibility. And again, the 831 00:44:23,640 --> 00:44:26,600 Speaker 2: Nazis are doing a lot of this before he writes 832 00:44:26,680 --> 00:44:30,560 Speaker 2: about it. But number one, his initial work on sort 833 00:44:30,560 --> 00:44:32,160 Speaker 2: of this strategy of how to push it on the 834 00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:36,680 Speaker 2: border influences how the Nazis proceed. But also he is 835 00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:41,800 Speaker 2: explaining what they're doing in an intellectual way that is accurate, 836 00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:44,840 Speaker 2: and doing so in a way that's also not ideological, 837 00:44:44,920 --> 00:44:48,080 Speaker 2: in that he's explaining and describing an ideology, but he's 838 00:44:48,080 --> 00:44:50,480 Speaker 2: not doing it as a Nazi propagandist. He's doing it 839 00:44:50,480 --> 00:44:53,319 Speaker 2: as an academic right, and he's doing it in a 840 00:44:53,320 --> 00:44:56,000 Speaker 2: way that provides a blueprint for other people. 841 00:44:56,920 --> 00:45:00,160 Speaker 3: That's such an interesting distinction between Game and Gerbels or 842 00:45:00,200 --> 00:45:01,839 Speaker 3: I feel like that would be you know, like kind 843 00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:03,640 Speaker 3: of the I don't want to say lazy, because this 844 00:45:03,719 --> 00:45:06,960 Speaker 3: is my Yeah, I'm making the comparison, but like my 845 00:45:07,120 --> 00:45:11,080 Speaker 3: lazy comparison where it's like Gerbels obviously, all right, let's 846 00:45:11,320 --> 00:45:14,520 Speaker 3: it's propaganda, you know, like there's more quote unquote spice 847 00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:17,440 Speaker 3: on it, where this with Schmid, it's just this is 848 00:45:17,440 --> 00:45:19,759 Speaker 3: how it works, This is why it works. Yeah, and 849 00:45:19,800 --> 00:45:20,719 Speaker 3: this is why it will work. 850 00:45:21,239 --> 00:45:22,920 Speaker 2: Yeah. And you do get kind of at the end 851 00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:24,960 Speaker 2: of this book, he does give you get a hint 852 00:45:25,040 --> 00:45:27,880 Speaker 2: of his developing ideology, and part of it why he 853 00:45:27,920 --> 00:45:32,000 Speaker 2: hates liberalism is that liberalism is an onslaught against the 854 00:45:32,040 --> 00:45:36,120 Speaker 2: political It seeks to replace conflict, which he views as natural, 855 00:45:36,719 --> 00:45:40,960 Speaker 2: with economic competition and quote perpetual discussion, and that this 856 00:45:41,040 --> 00:45:44,200 Speaker 2: doesn't end in a better society, but like kind of 857 00:45:44,200 --> 00:45:47,719 Speaker 2: a destruction of something important at the soul of humanity, right, 858 00:45:47,760 --> 00:45:50,600 Speaker 2: which is this crusade against an enemy. Right that we 859 00:45:50,640 --> 00:45:54,280 Speaker 2: almost we need this as people. We need to have enemies, 860 00:45:54,480 --> 00:45:57,479 Speaker 2: which is a fundamental part of fascism. Right, we need 861 00:45:57,680 --> 00:46:00,840 Speaker 2: enemies in order to be fully human, like an enemy 862 00:46:00,880 --> 00:46:04,960 Speaker 2: to fight, to destroy, to rally against. Now, Schmidt was 863 00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:08,040 Speaker 2: not an early Nazi. He was not a particular admirer 864 00:46:08,040 --> 00:46:10,840 Speaker 2: of Hitler. In the early nineteen twenties, he described Hitler 865 00:46:10,880 --> 00:46:13,879 Speaker 2: as a hysteric In nineteen thirty two, the same year 866 00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:16,680 Speaker 2: he published the Concept of the Political He argued that 867 00:46:16,719 --> 00:46:19,480 Speaker 2: the Weimar government could and should use the military to 868 00:46:19,520 --> 00:46:23,520 Speaker 2: destroy Nazism, but as the Nazis began taking power, he 869 00:46:23,640 --> 00:46:26,040 Speaker 2: changed his tune quickly from a mix of you know, 870 00:46:26,080 --> 00:46:29,560 Speaker 2: he wants to protect himself, but most importantly because high 871 00:46:29,680 --> 00:46:32,760 Speaker 2: ranking Nazis start to take him seriously as a thinker. 872 00:46:33,120 --> 00:46:35,120 Speaker 2: And he had been doing okay, his books had been 873 00:46:35,120 --> 00:46:38,600 Speaker 2: doing better. But he really starts to become famous because 874 00:46:38,880 --> 00:46:41,319 Speaker 2: there's some high up Nazis who like what he has 875 00:46:41,440 --> 00:46:44,680 Speaker 2: to say. And his particular backer, the guy who's going 876 00:46:44,719 --> 00:46:46,759 Speaker 2: to make him give him the opportunity to be the 877 00:46:46,880 --> 00:46:49,759 Speaker 2: rich intellectual he's always wanted to be. Right, who's going 878 00:46:49,800 --> 00:46:53,759 Speaker 2: to make his life possible is Hermann Gering. Right now, 879 00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:57,440 Speaker 2: Gering is about to be He's this World War One pilot, 880 00:46:57,480 --> 00:47:00,520 Speaker 2: like a fighter pilot hero. He literally takes over the 881 00:47:00,560 --> 00:47:02,960 Speaker 2: red Baron squadron after he gets like shot down. That's 882 00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:05,279 Speaker 2: what Garing does in the war. He gets fucked up 883 00:47:05,280 --> 00:47:07,880 Speaker 2: and horribly injured during the Munich Beer Hall push and 884 00:47:07,920 --> 00:47:12,440 Speaker 2: addicted to painkillers. Relatable there it is, But when Hitler 885 00:47:12,480 --> 00:47:14,920 Speaker 2: takes power. He's the Reich's marshal. Right, He's going to 886 00:47:14,960 --> 00:47:17,319 Speaker 2: lose favor throughout the Third Reich, but he is on 887 00:47:17,480 --> 00:47:20,160 Speaker 2: paper the guy who, if Hitler dies is supposed to 888 00:47:20,239 --> 00:47:22,120 Speaker 2: take over. Right. So that's the degree to which like 889 00:47:22,200 --> 00:47:25,200 Speaker 2: Garring is held in esteem at the start of the Reich, 890 00:47:26,440 --> 00:47:29,239 Speaker 2: and he takes a liking to Schmid's work. He's like, 891 00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:33,120 Speaker 2: this guy, this guy gets it. This guy, and we 892 00:47:33,160 --> 00:47:35,000 Speaker 2: need to bring this guy in and have him be 893 00:47:35,120 --> 00:47:39,440 Speaker 2: like our court philosopher. Right, He's kind of become because 894 00:47:39,600 --> 00:47:42,560 Speaker 2: Nazi intelligencia had been following him for a while. He's 895 00:47:42,600 --> 00:47:45,160 Speaker 2: a little bit of like a Curtis Jarvin figure, right, 896 00:47:45,200 --> 00:47:47,360 Speaker 2: where he doesn't really have as clear a goal as 897 00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:49,720 Speaker 2: Jarvin does. But there are a lot of these guys 898 00:47:49,719 --> 00:47:52,600 Speaker 2: who become Nazi intelligencia who are following him for a 899 00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:56,919 Speaker 2: while and respect him for a while. For his part, 900 00:47:57,040 --> 00:47:59,359 Speaker 2: Carl's part, once it becomes clear that the Nazis are 901 00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:01,759 Speaker 2: going to win, and he's like, well, if some of 902 00:48:01,760 --> 00:48:03,640 Speaker 2: these guys like me, I can get rich and powerful, 903 00:48:03,640 --> 00:48:06,440 Speaker 2: That's what I've always wanted. So he starts sucking up 904 00:48:06,480 --> 00:48:08,759 Speaker 2: and he writes that Gering was the right type for 905 00:48:08,840 --> 00:48:12,399 Speaker 2: these times. As he becomes a darling for the far right, 906 00:48:12,520 --> 00:48:15,400 Speaker 2: Schmidt continues to live a life well out of line 907 00:48:15,480 --> 00:48:17,600 Speaker 2: with the stated morals of the movement for which he 908 00:48:17,640 --> 00:48:21,520 Speaker 2: is becoming the chief intellectual theoretician. Per the Claremont Review 909 00:48:21,520 --> 00:48:25,000 Speaker 2: of books, Guilt and eros combined for Schmidt in Carl 910 00:48:25,080 --> 00:48:27,960 Speaker 2: Theodore Dreer's silent movie The Passion of Joan of Arc 911 00:48:28,280 --> 00:48:30,880 Speaker 2: with an almost sadistic use of close ups, Dreyer depicts 912 00:48:30,880 --> 00:48:33,439 Speaker 2: the doomed heroine a daughter of God, charged with being 913 00:48:33,480 --> 00:48:35,400 Speaker 2: a child of the devil as she pleads that she 914 00:48:35,440 --> 00:48:38,359 Speaker 2: has only fought for God and country. In nineteen twenty eight, 915 00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:41,360 Speaker 2: Schmidt watched the film a dozen times. Marring reports that 916 00:48:41,440 --> 00:48:43,839 Speaker 2: on several occasions in both Berlin and Rome, he picked 917 00:48:43,880 --> 00:48:46,360 Speaker 2: up a prostitute to watch it with him. It seems 918 00:48:46,360 --> 00:48:48,840 Speaker 2: that his longing for redemption from his own psychic turmoil 919 00:48:48,880 --> 00:48:51,960 Speaker 2: fueled a need for a higher absolute obligation, which could 920 00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:54,719 Speaker 2: only come from a commitment to the law promulgated by 921 00:48:54,719 --> 00:48:58,520 Speaker 2: God or by the state. So there's this attitude. Maybe 922 00:48:58,520 --> 00:49:02,200 Speaker 2: it's because he's got this kind of compulsive sexuality that 923 00:49:02,239 --> 00:49:05,080 Speaker 2: he can't just be like eh, people just fuck you know. 924 00:49:05,560 --> 00:49:08,319 Speaker 2: He has to he has to like condemn himself and 925 00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:11,960 Speaker 2: find absolution in this idea of law or the state 926 00:49:12,080 --> 00:49:16,160 Speaker 2: as God as representing some higher natural truth in order 927 00:49:16,200 --> 00:49:19,360 Speaker 2: to gain absolution. It's also just funny that he's constantly 928 00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:22,000 Speaker 2: watching this Joan of Arc movie while picking up prostitutes, 929 00:49:22,400 --> 00:49:29,520 Speaker 2: Like you want to go watch jodah Arc. Speaking of 930 00:49:30,239 --> 00:49:36,640 Speaker 2: watching silent films, here's and I got nothing. I got nothing. 931 00:49:36,680 --> 00:49:38,400 Speaker 2: I don't know how to do a fucking ad transition 932 00:49:38,480 --> 00:49:42,680 Speaker 2: in these episodes. Look, go to Rome, meet somebody nice, 933 00:49:42,800 --> 00:49:45,360 Speaker 2: watch a movie about a French lady getting tortured, you know, 934 00:49:45,680 --> 00:49:46,160 Speaker 2: have fun. 935 00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:49,440 Speaker 5: You become fake pope once and you no longer know 936 00:49:49,440 --> 00:49:50,520 Speaker 5: how to do an ad transition. 937 00:49:50,840 --> 00:49:54,120 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Well popes don't need ads because they have 938 00:49:54,200 --> 00:49:57,960 Speaker 2: all that gold buried under the Vatican, Sophie. That's right, 939 00:50:04,560 --> 00:50:07,319 Speaker 2: we're back, man. I wonder they got to have a 940 00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:09,920 Speaker 2: lot of gold buried under there, right, like a crazy amount, 941 00:50:10,239 --> 00:50:13,640 Speaker 2: like yeah, like enough to ruin the like the price 942 00:50:13,680 --> 00:50:16,680 Speaker 2: of gold worldwide if they ever put it onto the market. Yeah. 943 00:50:16,800 --> 00:50:18,720 Speaker 5: I don't think so, because there were so many different 944 00:50:18,760 --> 00:50:20,560 Speaker 5: things where like things were getting stolen. 945 00:50:20,680 --> 00:50:23,800 Speaker 1: I think they would have. There's probably secret goal, but 946 00:50:23,840 --> 00:50:25,920 Speaker 1: I don't I don't think there's got to be as 947 00:50:25,960 --> 00:50:27,320 Speaker 1: obvious as there. 948 00:50:27,960 --> 00:50:30,359 Speaker 3: Well, what are they used for all the lawsuits like that? 949 00:50:30,440 --> 00:50:33,520 Speaker 2: It has to be Oh, yeah, they had a lot 950 00:50:33,600 --> 00:50:37,520 Speaker 2: lying around for that. What if we all know Rudo 951 00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:40,120 Speaker 2: run into the Vatican archives and just try to, like 952 00:50:40,200 --> 00:50:41,120 Speaker 2: see what we can get. 953 00:50:42,400 --> 00:50:45,799 Speaker 1: I would have so much fun going through the Vatican archives. 954 00:50:45,520 --> 00:50:49,360 Speaker 2: Find the secret sequel to the New Testament where Palpatine returns. 955 00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:51,839 Speaker 2: I'm excited. I think we can. I think we can 956 00:50:51,880 --> 00:50:52,560 Speaker 2: make this happen. 957 00:50:54,360 --> 00:50:56,160 Speaker 1: So I use your new power as FA. 958 00:50:56,960 --> 00:50:59,280 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, that's right. I'll tell the Swiss Guard 959 00:50:59,320 --> 00:51:04,360 Speaker 2: to stand down. Goofy outfits, the stupid ass outfits. 960 00:51:04,640 --> 00:51:06,880 Speaker 1: Call me right behind you as you do that. 961 00:51:09,480 --> 00:51:12,880 Speaker 2: In April of nineteen thirty three, Schmidt joined the Nazi 962 00:51:12,880 --> 00:51:16,000 Speaker 2: Party officially. In May, he published an article that is 963 00:51:16,080 --> 00:51:19,279 Speaker 2: generally considered to be the blueprint for the legal expulsion 964 00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:24,240 Speaker 2: of German intellectuals who had unacceptable political or racial characteristics. Quote. 965 00:51:24,440 --> 00:51:27,320 Speaker 2: Germany has spat them out for all time, he said, 966 00:51:27,719 --> 00:51:32,480 Speaker 2: and he's talking specifically about Albert Einstein. Right. Schmidt authors 967 00:51:32,560 --> 00:51:35,960 Speaker 2: the blueprint for kicking Einstein and other thinkers permanently out 968 00:51:35,960 --> 00:51:39,040 Speaker 2: of the reich Right and describing them as enemies. Right, 969 00:51:39,120 --> 00:51:41,400 Speaker 2: And for him, this is a political term, and this 970 00:51:41,520 --> 00:51:43,600 Speaker 2: is about this one year after he breaks off his 971 00:51:43,600 --> 00:51:47,080 Speaker 2: friendship with Eisler. But he does write, you as an 972 00:51:47,080 --> 00:51:50,840 Speaker 2: individual can be friends with someone who is a political enemy, 973 00:51:50,880 --> 00:51:53,920 Speaker 2: because again that's a political state. You have to treat 974 00:51:53,920 --> 00:51:56,680 Speaker 2: them as an enemy when doing politics. But it doesn't 975 00:51:56,680 --> 00:52:00,720 Speaker 2: mean you can't like them personally. Like we're also accepting 976 00:52:00,719 --> 00:52:03,040 Speaker 2: that it means killing them at a stage, So maybe 977 00:52:03,080 --> 00:52:03,920 Speaker 2: you can't, i. 978 00:52:04,280 --> 00:52:08,960 Speaker 3: Know, killing them politically. Yeah, nuts, yeah his friends. 979 00:52:08,600 --> 00:52:11,480 Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah. 980 00:52:10,480 --> 00:52:12,120 Speaker 3: So was that logic I check out? 981 00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:14,480 Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, sure. I mean as much as anything 982 00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:17,680 Speaker 2: as fucker says does so. Through most of the twenties, 983 00:52:17,719 --> 00:52:20,240 Speaker 2: liberals and liberalism were the center of most of Schmid's 984 00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:23,799 Speaker 2: rhetorical ire, but Jews grew more central as time went on. 985 00:52:24,120 --> 00:52:26,840 Speaker 2: Now we've already covered that he certainly imbibed the racial 986 00:52:26,880 --> 00:52:29,760 Speaker 2: anti semitism of the era, and he had occasional flings 987 00:52:29,760 --> 00:52:32,640 Speaker 2: of bigotry during times of stress and depression, but he 988 00:52:32,680 --> 00:52:36,400 Speaker 2: also spoke glowingly of several Jews in his life. Most crucially, 989 00:52:36,680 --> 00:52:40,440 Speaker 2: he was completely dependent economically upon the kindness of a 990 00:52:40,520 --> 00:52:43,640 Speaker 2: Jewish family who treated him as a second son. Right, 991 00:52:44,000 --> 00:52:46,439 Speaker 2: Like that's a big deal in this period of time, 992 00:52:46,560 --> 00:52:49,400 Speaker 2: is that, like there's these this family that keeps him alive. 993 00:52:49,960 --> 00:52:52,879 Speaker 2: But now that he was a prominent Nazi academic whose 994 00:52:52,920 --> 00:52:55,359 Speaker 2: writings were not just cited but were being used to 995 00:52:55,360 --> 00:52:59,200 Speaker 2: make law under the Third Reich, he starts being critiqued 996 00:52:59,239 --> 00:53:02,240 Speaker 2: by like Jewish academics. I mean, but this happens before 997 00:53:02,440 --> 00:53:04,480 Speaker 2: the Third Reich is established, And this is part of 998 00:53:04,600 --> 00:53:07,000 Speaker 2: what radicalizes him. Is that in the late twenties, when 999 00:53:07,040 --> 00:53:09,719 Speaker 2: it becomes clear that he's like writing in favor of 1000 00:53:09,960 --> 00:53:15,279 Speaker 2: elements of fascism, there's several different Jewish academics critique his book, 1001 00:53:15,360 --> 00:53:18,400 Speaker 2: The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, and he goes on a 1002 00:53:18,480 --> 00:53:22,040 Speaker 2: rant and complains for Jews against one Christian. They attack 1003 00:53:22,160 --> 00:53:24,399 Speaker 2: me and all the journals and no one notices what's 1004 00:53:24,440 --> 00:53:27,760 Speaker 2: going on. So that's a big part. If you're wondering 1005 00:53:27,960 --> 00:53:30,440 Speaker 2: what's the missing piece here between him like dumping his 1006 00:53:30,520 --> 00:53:33,440 Speaker 2: Jewish friends and going full Nazi, Well, it's because some 1007 00:53:33,520 --> 00:53:36,400 Speaker 2: Jewish professors say mean things about this book. He writes 1008 00:53:37,800 --> 00:53:41,000 Speaker 2: later that year, a Jewish professor was being considered for 1009 00:53:41,080 --> 00:53:43,839 Speaker 2: hiring by his university, and Schmid wrote in to call 1010 00:53:43,880 --> 00:53:48,120 Speaker 2: his would be colleague a disgusting, craven diletant Jew. So 1011 00:53:48,200 --> 00:53:51,480 Speaker 2: by the mid twenties he's very consistently racist, but he's 1012 00:53:51,520 --> 00:53:54,640 Speaker 2: still friends with Eisler right up until the thirties, and 1013 00:53:54,680 --> 00:53:58,320 Speaker 2: he's still able to make exceptions in his head. Unlike 1014 00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:02,480 Speaker 2: most Nazis. The justification he gives for his animus is 1015 00:54:02,520 --> 00:54:05,560 Speaker 2: not racial, right. He is someone who was like, if 1016 00:54:05,840 --> 00:54:08,239 Speaker 2: I think his belief initially at least is that like, well, 1017 00:54:08,280 --> 00:54:10,360 Speaker 2: Jews can convert in stuff, and then I don't have 1018 00:54:10,440 --> 00:54:13,000 Speaker 2: to treat them that way. But his issue with them 1019 00:54:13,080 --> 00:54:16,279 Speaker 2: is that they tend to be liberal, right, and so 1020 00:54:16,440 --> 00:54:19,080 Speaker 2: he interprets the battle that is, he's laying out the 1021 00:54:19,760 --> 00:54:23,040 Speaker 2: lions how you win a battle against liberal democracy, and 1022 00:54:23,080 --> 00:54:26,080 Speaker 2: he describes it as a battle against the Jewish spirit. 1023 00:54:26,520 --> 00:54:29,000 Speaker 2: Per an article by Benjamin Ballant for the Claremont Review 1024 00:54:29,000 --> 00:54:32,239 Speaker 2: of Books, his friend enemy distinction now fed into the 1025 00:54:32,239 --> 00:54:35,040 Speaker 2: contrast he drew between the homogeneous German Vulk and the 1026 00:54:35,120 --> 00:54:39,200 Speaker 2: alien Jew. He hastily severed his friendships and associations with Jews, 1027 00:54:39,239 --> 00:54:43,000 Speaker 2: including his longtime publisher Ludwig Fuchtwanger, and the young scholar 1028 00:54:43,000 --> 00:54:46,040 Speaker 2: of Hobbs and Spinoza Leo Strauss, whom he had recommended 1029 00:54:46,080 --> 00:54:49,040 Speaker 2: to the Rockefeller Foundation for a fellowship that allowed Strauss 1030 00:54:49,040 --> 00:54:51,840 Speaker 2: to leave Germany a year before. By the early thirties, 1031 00:54:51,840 --> 00:54:54,560 Speaker 2: as he moved from scholarship to polemics, Schmidt no longer 1032 00:54:54,600 --> 00:54:59,760 Speaker 2: directed his counter revolutionary fervor against Weimar anarchism, and by anarchism, 1033 00:55:00,160 --> 00:55:02,480 Speaker 2: the fact that the state doesn't work very well. So 1034 00:55:02,960 --> 00:55:06,560 Speaker 2: he cuts off all of these academic friends, including have 1035 00:55:06,640 --> 00:55:07,880 Speaker 2: you heard of Leo Strauss? 1036 00:55:08,760 --> 00:55:10,600 Speaker 3: I know the name, Yeah, I've heard the name. 1037 00:55:10,719 --> 00:55:14,120 Speaker 2: Yeah, very influential. All of the people behind George W. 1038 00:55:14,200 --> 00:55:16,160 Speaker 2: Bush were Straussians. And when I say it, I'm talking 1039 00:55:16,160 --> 00:55:18,840 Speaker 2: about guys like Bill Krystel, who's now like anti Trump. 1040 00:55:19,040 --> 00:55:22,280 Speaker 2: Bill Krystal is a Straussian. The Straussians are the neo 1041 00:55:22,400 --> 00:55:27,200 Speaker 2: cons Strauss is initially very close with Schmidt, and Schmidt 1042 00:55:27,200 --> 00:55:31,080 Speaker 2: influences Strauss and Strauss influences Schmitt. Schmidt is basically his 1043 00:55:31,200 --> 00:55:33,600 Speaker 2: mentor for a while, right, he helps him get this 1044 00:55:33,719 --> 00:55:36,920 Speaker 2: scholarship right. And then Strauss comes to the United States 1045 00:55:36,960 --> 00:55:40,560 Speaker 2: and he becomes a core intellectual mind behind neo conservatism. Right. 1046 00:55:41,120 --> 00:55:43,799 Speaker 2: So again the way in which this guy, even though 1047 00:55:43,880 --> 00:55:47,280 Speaker 2: like obviously there's no love lost between them, once Schmidt 1048 00:55:47,360 --> 00:55:52,680 Speaker 2: goes full Nazi because Strauss is Jewish. Right. So, once 1049 00:55:52,719 --> 00:55:55,360 Speaker 2: the Third Reich gets into power and Schmidt has the 1050 00:55:55,480 --> 00:55:59,400 Speaker 2: chance to actually be making laws, he warps his personal 1051 00:55:59,440 --> 00:56:04,280 Speaker 2: politics in order to fit the regime that's now in place. 1052 00:56:04,719 --> 00:56:07,200 Speaker 2: No longer does he talk about the state working towards 1053 00:56:07,200 --> 00:56:10,600 Speaker 2: some sort of natural law. Instead, he begins to argue 1054 00:56:10,640 --> 00:56:14,040 Speaker 2: that political sovereignty is constituted in the will of the 1055 00:56:14,120 --> 00:56:17,400 Speaker 2: leader or dictator, who was sovereign and who had no 1056 00:56:17,640 --> 00:56:20,120 Speaker 2: kind of check and could abide no kind of check 1057 00:56:20,120 --> 00:56:22,680 Speaker 2: on his power. Per an article on the power of 1058 00:56:22,760 --> 00:56:26,600 Speaker 2: Karl Schmidt by Richard Cohen, the dictator's will is arbitrary 1059 00:56:26,719 --> 00:56:29,759 Speaker 2: and must be arbitrary. This is not a fault for 1060 00:56:29,800 --> 00:56:32,719 Speaker 2: the fascist, but the highest virtue. The dictator's will is 1061 00:56:32,760 --> 00:56:37,160 Speaker 2: a pure will, unchecked and unregulated by any exterior consideration 1062 00:56:37,280 --> 00:56:41,120 Speaker 2: beyond itself, like a god. Like the God. Only as 1063 00:56:41,200 --> 00:56:44,560 Speaker 2: such is it a truly sovereign will. The dictator can 1064 00:56:44,600 --> 00:56:47,319 Speaker 2: never be challenged. In other words, because there are no 1065 00:56:47,480 --> 00:56:51,239 Speaker 2: grounds upon which to challenge him. Thus, any challenge, any criticism, 1066 00:56:51,239 --> 00:56:54,839 Speaker 2: no matter how rational, realistic, or goodwilled, is by definition 1067 00:56:55,040 --> 00:57:03,640 Speaker 2: betrayal from the standpoint of all allegedly legitimizing authorities, whether populist, hereditary, religious, esthetic, utilitarian, economic, 1068 00:57:03,719 --> 00:57:07,279 Speaker 2: or what have you. The dictator's decision is beyond reproach. Force, 1069 00:57:07,400 --> 00:57:10,040 Speaker 2: power and might are the dictator's first and final resort, 1070 00:57:10,280 --> 00:57:13,640 Speaker 2: and submission is the only appropriate response. Rule, call it 1071 00:57:13,719 --> 00:57:17,040 Speaker 2: law or not, is to dictate order and command. Thus 1072 00:57:17,080 --> 00:57:21,360 Speaker 2: the ubiquitous military trappings of fascism, however ludicrous, the dictator 1073 00:57:21,400 --> 00:57:24,400 Speaker 2: wearing battle fatigues or dressed uniforms adorned with metals, the 1074 00:57:24,440 --> 00:57:27,600 Speaker 2: pomp and ceremony, the military parades, and the displays of 1075 00:57:27,640 --> 00:57:30,320 Speaker 2: weapons in times of quiet, as well as war. Without 1076 00:57:30,360 --> 00:57:34,040 Speaker 2: criteria or standards, the dictator is sovereignty itself, no matter 1077 00:57:34,120 --> 00:57:36,920 Speaker 2: what he says or does, or the reverse, precisely in 1078 00:57:36,960 --> 00:57:38,840 Speaker 2: what he says and does, as he says and does 1079 00:57:38,880 --> 00:57:41,880 Speaker 2: it always at the moment of his willing, so he's 1080 00:57:41,920 --> 00:57:45,960 Speaker 2: gone from the only legitimate states have a constitution that 1081 00:57:46,360 --> 00:57:49,160 Speaker 2: lays out what the rules are, and they follow that 1082 00:57:49,240 --> 00:57:53,160 Speaker 2: constitution and law is always working towards some sort of 1083 00:57:53,280 --> 00:57:57,760 Speaker 2: natural law to the law is whatever the leader says 1084 00:57:57,760 --> 00:58:01,720 Speaker 2: it is. Right, human will creates law. Right, that the 1085 00:58:01,760 --> 00:58:05,080 Speaker 2: will of a specific human and put in charge of 1086 00:58:05,200 --> 00:58:09,320 Speaker 2: a people creates law. Right. That's where Schmidt has ended. 1087 00:58:09,560 --> 00:58:12,400 Speaker 2: You know, now that democracy has been destroyed, now that 1088 00:58:12,480 --> 00:58:15,680 Speaker 2: Hitler's in power, and he's working backwards to a degree 1089 00:58:15,760 --> 00:58:18,959 Speaker 2: at this point from the fact that Hitler has taken power. Right. 1090 00:58:19,600 --> 00:58:23,920 Speaker 2: But this is again like he's he's kind of describing 1091 00:58:23,960 --> 00:58:26,360 Speaker 2: what's happening to some extent after the fact. But he's 1092 00:58:26,360 --> 00:58:30,400 Speaker 2: also he comes to understand and justifies sovereignty as a 1093 00:58:30,440 --> 00:58:34,240 Speaker 2: permanent state of emergency or a state of exception. Right, 1094 00:58:34,880 --> 00:58:40,760 Speaker 2: Fascism is like the normalization legalization of arbitrary power. So 1095 00:58:40,800 --> 00:58:43,080 Speaker 2: we even do see some of like his early thinking 1096 00:58:43,120 --> 00:58:45,960 Speaker 2: on like how judges work and the kind of arbitrariness 1097 00:58:45,960 --> 00:58:48,640 Speaker 2: at the center of the legal system. Like this is 1098 00:58:48,680 --> 00:58:52,080 Speaker 2: where he winds up right that this is kind of 1099 00:58:52,120 --> 00:58:55,240 Speaker 2: the ultimate political system. It's great. 1100 00:58:55,480 --> 00:58:57,919 Speaker 3: It is interesting too where he would talk about how 1101 00:58:58,000 --> 00:59:01,960 Speaker 3: like democracy was, you know, it's it only works because 1102 00:59:02,000 --> 00:59:04,520 Speaker 3: of the eventual force that can be applied. You know, 1103 00:59:04,640 --> 00:59:10,560 Speaker 3: where there it's eventual with a dictator just wearing fatigues, 1104 00:59:11,000 --> 00:59:14,720 Speaker 3: dressed like a general. You know, with the military parades. 1105 00:59:14,920 --> 00:59:18,600 Speaker 3: It's not implied, it's not eventual, it's immediate, you know. Yes, 1106 00:59:18,800 --> 00:59:22,000 Speaker 3: it's a very Yeah, the imagery really drives it home. Yes, 1107 00:59:22,360 --> 00:59:23,360 Speaker 3: more so, right. 1108 00:59:23,280 --> 00:59:26,760 Speaker 2: Yeah, And thanks to Gerring's influence, he gets made president 1109 00:59:26,800 --> 00:59:31,160 Speaker 2: of the Union of National Socialist Jurists. In nineteen thirty four, 1110 00:59:31,200 --> 00:59:34,160 Speaker 2: after the Night of Long Knives, Schmidt plays a role 1111 00:59:34,240 --> 00:59:38,040 Speaker 2: in justifying and legitimating what had happened. You know, this 1112 00:59:38,160 --> 00:59:43,640 Speaker 2: looks like and is an illegal series of murders committed, 1113 00:59:43,800 --> 00:59:47,120 Speaker 2: you know, to settle political scores. But Schmidt argues this 1114 00:59:47,200 --> 00:59:51,120 Speaker 2: is actually perfectly legal. Right. He publishes an article called 1115 00:59:51,160 --> 00:59:54,560 Speaker 2: the Feuror protects the Law, which argues that what Hitler 1116 00:59:54,600 --> 00:59:58,480 Speaker 2: had done was the highest justice available right quote the 1117 00:59:58,480 --> 01:00:01,200 Speaker 2: fewer protects the law against the forms of abuse when 1118 01:00:01,200 --> 01:00:03,800 Speaker 2: in the moment of danger he immediately creates law by 1119 01:00:03,880 --> 01:00:07,160 Speaker 2: force of his character, as fewer as the supreme legal authority. 1120 01:00:07,800 --> 01:00:10,040 Speaker 2: And again, I think we have to look at maybe 1121 01:00:10,080 --> 01:00:13,760 Speaker 2: where we're headed with some of these courts questioning the 1122 01:00:13,840 --> 01:00:17,480 Speaker 2: decisions being made by Trump. By Dick tot this is 1123 01:00:17,560 --> 01:00:22,400 Speaker 2: already what Trump's people believe Trump creates law by force 1124 01:00:22,440 --> 01:00:26,640 Speaker 2: of his character. Right, And you know, Schmidt has provided 1125 01:00:26,680 --> 01:00:32,160 Speaker 2: a justification for purging people in situations like this, right, 1126 01:00:32,480 --> 01:00:36,280 Speaker 2: because the fewer has to protect the law by carrying 1127 01:00:36,280 --> 01:00:39,200 Speaker 2: out a legal acts of violence. Because he then creates 1128 01:00:39,680 --> 01:00:43,120 Speaker 2: a new law. And so the concept of law fundamentally 1129 01:00:44,000 --> 01:00:46,360 Speaker 2: is protected by the fewer doing this. 1130 01:00:47,440 --> 01:00:50,520 Speaker 3: So there is no lawlessness, there's no laws never, there's 1131 01:00:50,560 --> 01:00:53,600 Speaker 3: never a gap. It's the new dictator's law. 1132 01:00:53,920 --> 01:00:57,480 Speaker 2: There's lawlessness. If there's a conflict right, right, between the 1133 01:00:57,520 --> 01:01:00,760 Speaker 2: fear and power, that's lawlessness, right, And that's what Hitler 1134 01:01:00,840 --> 01:01:04,200 Speaker 2: was fighting against. Right, That's why he was protecting the 1135 01:01:04,280 --> 01:01:08,680 Speaker 2: law by doing what he did. He celebrates like when 1136 01:01:08,720 --> 01:01:12,440 Speaker 2: the Nuremberg laws come in, he describes it as proof 1137 01:01:12,440 --> 01:01:15,800 Speaker 2: that the National Socialist state is a just state. And 1138 01:01:15,840 --> 01:01:20,160 Speaker 2: then in nineteen thirty six he helps convene a conference on 1139 01:01:20,320 --> 01:01:23,280 Speaker 2: how to get rid of Jewish influence in German law. 1140 01:01:23,640 --> 01:01:25,880 Speaker 2: He gives a speech where he blames the Jews for 1141 01:01:26,000 --> 01:01:29,280 Speaker 2: hollowing out the German, healthy, Volcish German way of thinking 1142 01:01:29,320 --> 01:01:32,440 Speaker 2: of the state, and he calls for a purification of 1143 01:01:32,560 --> 01:01:36,840 Speaker 2: libraries that includes a separate system of citations for Jewish authors, right, 1144 01:01:36,920 --> 01:01:40,200 Speaker 2: so he is explicitly endorsing book bannings, the purging of 1145 01:01:40,200 --> 01:01:42,920 Speaker 2: books written by friends and colleagues of his, a separate 1146 01:01:42,960 --> 01:01:46,680 Speaker 2: way of classifying them because obviously Jewish law is a 1147 01:01:46,800 --> 01:01:48,720 Speaker 2: danger to good Germans. Right. 1148 01:01:49,200 --> 01:01:51,560 Speaker 3: Well, and they made fun of him, they hurt his feelings. 1149 01:01:51,640 --> 01:01:53,560 Speaker 2: Yeah, and they made fun of him. They talked about 1150 01:01:53,560 --> 01:01:57,720 Speaker 2: his books all right, writing, So he is deeply complicit 1151 01:01:57,880 --> 01:01:59,840 Speaker 2: in the early Third Reich and in the purging of 1152 01:01:59,880 --> 01:02:03,160 Speaker 2: it intellectuals and people getting put He's incredibly complicit in 1153 01:02:03,240 --> 01:02:07,040 Speaker 2: all of this. Now, unfortunately for Schmidt, this in nineteen 1154 01:02:07,080 --> 01:02:10,000 Speaker 2: thirty six, this this speech he gives is going to 1155 01:02:10,000 --> 01:02:12,080 Speaker 2: be like the high watermark of his power in the 1156 01:02:12,120 --> 01:02:15,400 Speaker 2: Third Reich, because once the Nazis are running everything, they're like, 1157 01:02:16,000 --> 01:02:18,000 Speaker 2: we don't really need an academic with a mind of 1158 01:02:18,040 --> 01:02:20,600 Speaker 2: his own, right, we got it, We've got it. Now, 1159 01:02:20,680 --> 01:02:24,080 Speaker 2: we're done thinking. You know, and this guy, he's not 1160 01:02:24,120 --> 01:02:28,959 Speaker 2: really loyal to Hitler, right, So in December of thirty six, 1161 01:02:29,080 --> 01:02:32,920 Speaker 2: the SS newspaper publishes a hit piece on him, accusing 1162 01:02:33,000 --> 01:02:36,160 Speaker 2: him of being a Hegelian, which is basically true and 1163 01:02:36,200 --> 01:02:39,600 Speaker 2: a false anti semi which really isn't he talked to 1164 01:02:39,640 --> 01:02:42,080 Speaker 2: friends about like fleeing Germany. He was like, maybe I 1165 01:02:42,120 --> 01:02:44,840 Speaker 2: need to leave, Maybe this is dangerous, but it's not 1166 01:02:44,960 --> 01:02:47,320 Speaker 2: something he ever seriously considered. And he does have some 1167 01:02:47,360 --> 01:02:49,760 Speaker 2: defenders who will be like, well, look he thought about leaving, 1168 01:02:49,880 --> 01:02:51,640 Speaker 2: and like, I don't know if that counts to me. 1169 01:02:54,080 --> 01:02:57,800 Speaker 2: Hannah Hannah Arnt would later write about schmidz Ouster from 1170 01:02:57,800 --> 01:03:01,440 Speaker 2: the Nazi Party as a fairly standard move the replacing 1171 01:03:01,440 --> 01:03:05,160 Speaker 2: of sympathetic but skilled people with toadies who are utterly 1172 01:03:05,240 --> 01:03:07,480 Speaker 2: loyal to the system, even if they're not very good 1173 01:03:07,560 --> 01:03:09,920 Speaker 2: at anything. Quote from a rent And this is I 1174 01:03:09,920 --> 01:03:13,720 Speaker 2: think an important one, especially for right now. Totalitarianism and 1175 01:03:13,760 --> 01:03:18,200 Speaker 2: power invariably replaces all first rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, 1176 01:03:18,400 --> 01:03:21,360 Speaker 2: with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and 1177 01:03:21,400 --> 01:03:25,920 Speaker 2: creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty. Nothing 1178 01:03:25,920 --> 01:03:26,680 Speaker 2: familiar there. 1179 01:03:27,200 --> 01:03:28,640 Speaker 3: Yeh, I'm not picking up on you. 1180 01:03:28,880 --> 01:03:32,640 Speaker 2: Yeah, what an old common themes? Yes, what an ancient idea? 1181 01:03:32,720 --> 01:03:36,240 Speaker 2: Hat ahead, Yeah, that's so dated now. He was never 1182 01:03:36,400 --> 01:03:39,120 Speaker 2: Schmidt is never hounded by the regime or punished. He's 1183 01:03:39,160 --> 01:03:42,080 Speaker 2: never in serious danger. He's out of any kind of 1184 01:03:42,080 --> 01:03:45,280 Speaker 2: inner circle. Here he's on the kind of the outskirts 1185 01:03:45,320 --> 01:03:48,400 Speaker 2: looking in again, but he maintains his position. He keeps 1186 01:03:48,440 --> 01:03:52,520 Speaker 2: being employed at the university. He's a prominent academic, and 1187 01:03:52,600 --> 01:03:55,880 Speaker 2: he lives well up and through most of the war years. 1188 01:03:56,360 --> 01:03:58,280 Speaker 2: But by the time the war ends and the Allies 1189 01:03:58,280 --> 01:04:00,960 Speaker 2: begin to occupy the ruins of the Third Reich, his 1190 01:04:01,120 --> 01:04:04,760 Speaker 2: last public identity had been as a Nazi intellectual who 1191 01:04:04,800 --> 01:04:08,880 Speaker 2: was participating in the purging of intellectuals. And so he 1192 01:04:08,920 --> 01:04:12,520 Speaker 2: gets arrested by the Americans in September of nineteen forty five. 1193 01:04:13,040 --> 01:04:15,680 Speaker 2: He's locked up for like a month or so, and 1194 01:04:15,960 --> 01:04:18,880 Speaker 2: you know, he's trying to put a brave face on it. 1195 01:04:18,920 --> 01:04:21,080 Speaker 2: He tells his wife, like, I'm not going to collapse 1196 01:04:21,120 --> 01:04:23,560 Speaker 2: like some of these other guys who killed themselves or whatever, 1197 01:04:23,720 --> 01:04:26,480 Speaker 2: Like I'm going to hold up. You know, they'll realize 1198 01:04:26,520 --> 01:04:29,800 Speaker 2: I'm not guilty of anything. And unfortunately he's kind of right, 1199 01:04:30,000 --> 01:04:32,920 Speaker 2: you know, he gets released. He gets arrested again in 1200 01:04:32,960 --> 01:04:35,520 Speaker 2: March and April of nineteen forty seven, and he's brought 1201 01:04:35,560 --> 01:04:39,040 Speaker 2: to Nuremberg, where he gets interrogated by the US Chief 1202 01:04:39,080 --> 01:04:42,680 Speaker 2: Council at Nuremberg Robert Kempner four times over the course 1203 01:04:42,760 --> 01:04:46,440 Speaker 2: of about a month or so, five weeks, and you know, 1204 01:04:46,480 --> 01:04:50,120 Speaker 2: he's basically Kempner's trying to figure out is there anything 1205 01:04:50,200 --> 01:04:52,640 Speaker 2: we can go after this guy for? Like how much 1206 01:04:52,720 --> 01:04:55,880 Speaker 2: is he responsible for? How many crimes did he directly commit? 1207 01:04:56,560 --> 01:05:00,480 Speaker 2: And Schmidt is like, look, I wasn't trying to support 1208 01:05:00,600 --> 01:05:03,360 Speaker 2: all the horrible things the Nazis, do you know, I'm 1209 01:05:03,360 --> 01:05:06,880 Speaker 2: not a Nazi ever? Really, I'm an intellectual adventurer. That's 1210 01:05:06,880 --> 01:05:09,240 Speaker 2: how he describes himself as, like, look, I was just 1211 01:05:09,280 --> 01:05:12,520 Speaker 2: asking questions. Yeah, he's such a piece of shit. We 1212 01:05:12,520 --> 01:05:14,760 Speaker 2: should have shot this guy in the fucking face. 1213 01:05:15,120 --> 01:05:15,440 Speaker 3: Yeah. 1214 01:05:15,560 --> 01:05:18,400 Speaker 2: Immediately I want to read a little transcript of his 1215 01:05:18,440 --> 01:05:21,600 Speaker 2: interview with Kempner. That makes for fascinating reading because this 1216 01:05:21,640 --> 01:05:23,160 Speaker 2: is Kimpner being like, what the fuck do you mean 1217 01:05:23,160 --> 01:05:26,600 Speaker 2: by intellectual adventurer? I wanted to give the term national 1218 01:05:26,640 --> 01:05:30,480 Speaker 2: socialism my own meeting, Schmidt said, Kimpner, Hitler had a 1219 01:05:30,560 --> 01:05:34,640 Speaker 2: national socialism and you had a national socialism. Schmidt, I 1220 01:05:34,680 --> 01:05:39,560 Speaker 2: felt superior, Kimpner, you felt superior to Adolf Hitler. Schmidt Intellectually, 1221 01:05:39,600 --> 01:05:42,000 Speaker 2: of course, he was to me so uninteresting that I 1222 01:05:42,000 --> 01:05:44,200 Speaker 2: do not want to talk about that at all. When 1223 01:05:44,240 --> 01:05:47,680 Speaker 2: did you renounce the devil? Kimpner asked nineteen thirty six. 1224 01:05:48,480 --> 01:05:53,080 Speaker 2: And I believe that he didn't like Hitler? Right, because 1225 01:05:53,080 --> 01:05:57,480 Speaker 2: he doesn't. He's never an intellectual respector of Hitler particularly. 1226 01:05:57,880 --> 01:06:01,840 Speaker 2: But this is bullshit, right, Like you participated in purging 1227 01:06:01,880 --> 01:06:05,200 Speaker 2: your colleagues. You were so psyched that people were listening 1228 01:06:05,240 --> 01:06:07,640 Speaker 2: to you. That's all that matters. You only renounce the 1229 01:06:07,680 --> 01:06:11,040 Speaker 2: devil because the SS got angry at you and you 1230 01:06:11,120 --> 01:06:14,200 Speaker 2: lost your influence, right, Like this man never had a 1231 01:06:14,280 --> 01:06:14,920 Speaker 2: change of heart. 1232 01:06:16,160 --> 01:06:18,560 Speaker 3: I'm thinking of who Schmidt I might be getting ahead 1233 01:06:18,560 --> 01:06:22,480 Speaker 3: of herself, of who he would favor out of a Hitler, 1234 01:06:22,920 --> 01:06:25,480 Speaker 3: And then you have a trump like who was the 1235 01:06:25,520 --> 01:06:27,760 Speaker 3: ideal I think it might be Putin might be the 1236 01:06:27,840 --> 01:06:29,720 Speaker 3: ideal one for him. 1237 01:06:29,760 --> 01:06:34,720 Speaker 2: Fascinating that you bring that up. This brief after war 1238 01:06:34,800 --> 01:06:37,160 Speaker 2: period mark the last time Schmid would discuss his support 1239 01:06:37,160 --> 01:06:39,840 Speaker 2: of the Nazis directly. He returned to Plettenberg and continued 1240 01:06:39,840 --> 01:06:42,560 Speaker 2: to write, although he was fired from his professorship. He 1241 01:06:42,600 --> 01:06:45,760 Speaker 2: found no trouble getting published, though, and once around twenty 1242 01:06:45,840 --> 01:06:48,880 Speaker 2: years had passed, his name starts getting tossed around by 1243 01:06:48,880 --> 01:06:53,120 Speaker 2: conservative intellectuals around the world, first in whispered tones, but 1244 01:06:53,160 --> 01:06:57,000 Speaker 2: then in an increasingly brazen manner. Schmidt dies in nineteen 1245 01:06:57,040 --> 01:06:59,760 Speaker 2: eighty five, and he lives to see the beginning of 1246 01:07:00,040 --> 01:07:03,160 Speaker 2: his second rise to prominence. And one of them, you've 1247 01:07:03,160 --> 01:07:06,640 Speaker 2: heard of Marine Lapinn over in France. The she just 1248 01:07:06,680 --> 01:07:10,560 Speaker 2: got incarcerated for a bunch of shit, but she's like 1249 01:07:10,600 --> 01:07:13,280 Speaker 2: the leader of their fascist party. Her father founded the party, 1250 01:07:13,960 --> 01:07:17,320 Speaker 2: her father is a Schmidt acolyte. Her father the whole 1251 01:07:17,360 --> 01:07:20,400 Speaker 2: blueprint of the French far right is directly taken from Schmidt. 1252 01:07:20,440 --> 01:07:23,600 Speaker 2: That's why it's so centered on immigrants and immigration right, 1253 01:07:24,120 --> 01:07:28,000 Speaker 2: Like they are very consciously the French nation, the national 1254 01:07:28,040 --> 01:07:32,280 Speaker 2: party that Lapin leads is their whole blueprint is Schmidt. 1255 01:07:32,320 --> 01:07:35,880 Speaker 2: Schmidt is the guy. Like they are openly citing and 1256 01:07:36,000 --> 01:07:40,560 Speaker 2: quoting his writings at the very start of that party. Now, 1257 01:07:40,680 --> 01:07:44,760 Speaker 2: more to the point, there's another fella who becomes one 1258 01:07:44,800 --> 01:07:49,200 Speaker 2: of his acolytes, who finds Schmidt's writing and is like, oh, 1259 01:07:49,360 --> 01:07:51,440 Speaker 2: this is a really good blueprint for how to get 1260 01:07:51,480 --> 01:07:54,440 Speaker 2: in power as a reactionary movement and destroy a nascent 1261 01:07:54,480 --> 01:07:58,960 Speaker 2: liberal democracy. And that guy is named Alexander Dugan. Now 1262 01:07:59,080 --> 01:08:01,560 Speaker 2: Dugan is an old nationalist who is seen as the 1263 01:08:01,600 --> 01:08:04,840 Speaker 2: primary political philosopher of the Russian New Right, and he's 1264 01:08:04,880 --> 01:08:09,280 Speaker 2: often called Putin's court philosopher right. These ideas are also 1265 01:08:09,320 --> 01:08:12,600 Speaker 2: a major backbone of how Putin gets into power, of 1266 01:08:12,760 --> 01:08:15,400 Speaker 2: the strategy he uses, and how a lot of his 1267 01:08:15,480 --> 01:08:18,639 Speaker 2: adherents and the new Russian New Rights see what they're doing. 1268 01:08:19,720 --> 01:08:22,479 Speaker 2: He's in the French far right, he's in the Russian 1269 01:08:22,560 --> 01:08:25,840 Speaker 2: far right. That kind of coalesces around Putin and in 1270 01:08:25,880 --> 01:08:28,599 Speaker 2: the US. The main vehicle for Schmid's ideas getting into 1271 01:08:28,640 --> 01:08:30,400 Speaker 2: the halls of power is through the work of a 1272 01:08:30,439 --> 01:08:34,320 Speaker 2: thinker who had once been his colleague, Leo Strauss. Strauss, 1273 01:08:34,360 --> 01:08:37,280 Speaker 2: a Jewish scientist, fled to France when Hitler took power 1274 01:08:37,520 --> 01:08:40,639 Speaker 2: on a Rockefeller scholarship, and Karl Schmidt had been his adviser. 1275 01:08:40,960 --> 01:08:43,559 Speaker 2: Here's a very good piece in the website libmd that 1276 01:08:43,600 --> 01:08:46,559 Speaker 2: traces out the connections here. There are very close ties 1277 01:08:46,600 --> 01:08:50,720 Speaker 2: between the conservative political scientist Patrick denan Catholic University of 1278 01:08:50,720 --> 01:08:53,439 Speaker 2: Notre Dame, Indiana, Strauss adept and winner of the Leo 1279 01:08:53,520 --> 01:08:56,680 Speaker 2: Strauss Award for Best Dissertation, and Vice President J. D. 1280 01:08:56,920 --> 01:08:59,519 Speaker 2: Vance and he provides a couple of quotes from Schmidt 1281 01:08:59,560 --> 01:09:02,280 Speaker 2: and from Vests. One is, this is a Schmidt quot 1282 01:09:02,320 --> 01:09:05,080 Speaker 2: from nineteen twenty two, authority proves that it does not 1283 01:09:05,240 --> 01:09:08,080 Speaker 2: need to be right in order to be right. And JD. 1284 01:09:08,200 --> 01:09:11,800 Speaker 2: Vance saying judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. 1285 01:09:11,840 --> 01:09:13,639 Speaker 2: And you might even add in some of those statements 1286 01:09:13,640 --> 01:09:17,360 Speaker 2: that Vance made about like Haitian like literal lies about 1287 01:09:17,360 --> 01:09:20,080 Speaker 2: Haitian refugees, where it's like it doesn't matter what's true, 1288 01:09:20,120 --> 01:09:24,599 Speaker 2: you make it true by having power. Right. There's another 1289 01:09:24,800 --> 01:09:27,800 Speaker 2: quote here from Schmidt in thirty two, the rule of 1290 01:09:27,920 --> 01:09:31,439 Speaker 2: law means nothing other than the legitimization of a certain status. Quote. 1291 01:09:31,840 --> 01:09:35,479 Speaker 2: These are all very idea. You could hear basically, these 1292 01:09:35,520 --> 01:09:39,760 Speaker 2: fucking quotes being trumpeted, you know, among trumpets among these 1293 01:09:39,800 --> 01:09:43,599 Speaker 2: like unitary executive theory guys. And that's kind of it's 1294 01:09:43,640 --> 01:09:48,040 Speaker 2: both Schmidt's thinking first starts to influence the American right 1295 01:09:48,120 --> 01:09:50,559 Speaker 2: in a major way, with like the neocons who are 1296 01:09:50,640 --> 01:09:54,760 Speaker 2: kind of influenced by him, partly through Strauss guys like 1297 01:09:54,800 --> 01:09:58,280 Speaker 2: Bill Crystal Right and David Brooks Right, these guys who 1298 01:09:58,320 --> 01:10:01,080 Speaker 2: are very influenced by Strauss, but by the time Trump 1299 01:10:01,120 --> 01:10:03,680 Speaker 2: comes around and things have gotten too extreme for them. 1300 01:10:04,000 --> 01:10:08,400 Speaker 2: The like people like Curtis Jarvitt will just quote Carl Schmidt. 1301 01:10:08,520 --> 01:10:11,120 Speaker 2: He's a huge fan of Schmidt, Like, he brings him 1302 01:10:11,160 --> 01:10:11,759 Speaker 2: up constantly. 1303 01:10:12,280 --> 01:10:12,519 Speaker 4: JD. 1304 01:10:12,680 --> 01:10:16,559 Speaker 2: Vance is fans of a Strauss scholar who himself is 1305 01:10:16,560 --> 01:10:17,759 Speaker 2: influenced by Schmidt. 1306 01:10:17,880 --> 01:10:17,960 Speaker 3: Like. 1307 01:10:18,040 --> 01:10:23,120 Speaker 2: Schmidt's thinking is all throughout the entire right wing project worldwide. 1308 01:10:23,200 --> 01:10:25,320 Speaker 2: You know, from France to Russia to the United States. 1309 01:10:25,479 --> 01:10:28,200 Speaker 2: There's pieces of him everywhere, even though most people are 1310 01:10:28,200 --> 01:10:31,879 Speaker 2: not taking his work directly, but they're influenced by thinkers 1311 01:10:32,240 --> 01:10:35,680 Speaker 2: who were influenced by Schmidt and who adopted some of 1312 01:10:35,720 --> 01:10:38,839 Speaker 2: his ideas for their own. And most importantly, the basic 1313 01:10:38,920 --> 01:10:42,679 Speaker 2: strategy that Schmidt laid out I mean, unfortunately still works 1314 01:10:42,760 --> 01:10:52,200 Speaker 2: quite well. Yeah. Crazy, yeah crazy, Yeah great anyway. 1315 01:10:52,439 --> 01:10:55,800 Speaker 3: Anyway, yeah, anyway, I'm sure that'll go away soon. Sure, 1316 01:10:56,280 --> 01:10:57,240 Speaker 3: nothing to worry about. 1317 01:10:58,240 --> 01:10:59,920 Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we've got it. I think we'll not 1318 01:11:00,080 --> 01:11:01,640 Speaker 2: it out. You know. 1319 01:11:02,200 --> 01:11:04,120 Speaker 3: So this JD. Vans guy, he's not high up in 1320 01:11:04,160 --> 01:11:05,480 Speaker 3: the government or anything. 1321 01:11:05,200 --> 01:11:07,599 Speaker 2: Right like, he's I haven't heard of him in years. 1322 01:11:08,720 --> 01:11:09,680 Speaker 2: I haven't heard of him in the years. 1323 01:11:10,240 --> 01:11:11,519 Speaker 3: You should read his jiz book. 1324 01:11:11,600 --> 01:11:18,000 Speaker 2: It's ye, his cum diary. It's fantastic, man. Yeah, the JD. 1325 01:11:18,120 --> 01:11:21,240 Speaker 2: Vans Cum Diary is a real quite a publication. Yeah 1326 01:11:21,280 --> 01:11:21,599 Speaker 2: it is. 1327 01:11:21,840 --> 01:11:22,160 Speaker 3: It is. 1328 01:11:22,280 --> 01:11:26,280 Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I don't know, how are you feeling at 1329 01:11:26,280 --> 01:11:27,040 Speaker 2: the end of this Blake? 1330 01:11:28,400 --> 01:11:32,479 Speaker 3: Well, I mean bad, but I do also feel like 1331 01:11:32,520 --> 01:11:35,679 Speaker 3: I learned a lot. It does explain. It is very 1332 01:11:35,720 --> 01:11:38,839 Speaker 3: interesting to learn how we got to where we are today. 1333 01:11:39,439 --> 01:11:44,760 Speaker 3: And the scaryst part is, or one of the many 1334 01:11:44,800 --> 01:11:49,720 Speaker 3: scary parts, is that people it's not hidden anymore, you know, 1335 01:11:50,520 --> 01:11:53,640 Speaker 3: And even with JD. Vance, you don't have to go 1336 01:11:53,720 --> 01:11:57,160 Speaker 3: on a long sleuthing trip to figure out that he 1337 01:11:57,400 --> 01:12:02,679 Speaker 3: is a Schmidt guy. It's to one degree of separation. Yeah, 1338 01:12:02,800 --> 01:12:06,800 Speaker 3: maybe a Strauss degree. And some people are, like you said, 1339 01:12:06,840 --> 01:12:07,880 Speaker 3: just outright. 1340 01:12:07,760 --> 01:12:11,040 Speaker 2: Quoting Schmidt, like Javen who's also connected to Vance. And yeah, 1341 01:12:11,120 --> 01:12:13,920 Speaker 2: it is interesting that, like in an earlier era, these 1342 01:12:14,000 --> 01:12:16,479 Speaker 2: neo cons who now in a lot of cases have 1343 01:12:16,479 --> 01:12:19,760 Speaker 2: alligned themselves with anti Trump stuff, are still they're the 1344 01:12:19,800 --> 01:12:23,000 Speaker 2: guys who are first pushing unitary executive theory, which is 1345 01:12:23,080 --> 01:12:25,960 Speaker 2: like what leads to the presidents basically a king, right, 1346 01:12:26,040 --> 01:12:28,920 Speaker 2: Like that's the end result, and there Strauss is a 1347 01:12:28,920 --> 01:12:31,760 Speaker 2: big influence on them there, right, And then we get 1348 01:12:31,800 --> 01:12:33,720 Speaker 2: to this point where you can you don't have to 1349 01:12:33,760 --> 01:12:36,040 Speaker 2: just quote Strauss, you don't have to water it down 1350 01:12:36,160 --> 01:12:39,439 Speaker 2: at all. You can just go pere Schmidt. Baby, yeah, yeah, 1351 01:12:39,479 --> 01:12:40,679 Speaker 2: that's right, right to the source. 1352 01:12:41,560 --> 01:12:44,360 Speaker 3: I wonder, I guess my question for you is, I 1353 01:12:44,400 --> 01:12:50,760 Speaker 3: wonder how much Schmidt would value an outwardly intelligent dictator 1354 01:12:51,200 --> 01:12:54,280 Speaker 3: and if he would even necessarily see value in that 1355 01:12:54,439 --> 01:12:58,800 Speaker 3: where you know, Hitler was like incredibly charismatic. Obviously, no 1356 01:12:58,840 --> 01:13:01,200 Speaker 3: one would say that he was a fucking genius. Schmid 1357 01:13:01,200 --> 01:13:04,720 Speaker 3: wouldn't say that he was a genius. Trump is obviously 1358 01:13:04,800 --> 01:13:10,080 Speaker 3: not is outwardly stupid, but very charismatic obviously and can 1359 01:13:10,200 --> 01:13:11,080 Speaker 3: speak very well. 1360 01:13:11,280 --> 01:13:13,559 Speaker 2: He's got a kind of cunning that's very effective for 1361 01:13:13,640 --> 01:13:14,439 Speaker 2: what he needs to do. 1362 01:13:14,640 --> 01:13:18,200 Speaker 3: Ye, yes, I wonder, you know, like you have Saddam 1363 01:13:18,520 --> 01:13:21,519 Speaker 3: who is his Like he had the dress, you know, 1364 01:13:21,640 --> 01:13:24,960 Speaker 3: like he looked the part like I do wonder if 1365 01:13:25,080 --> 01:13:28,960 Speaker 3: putin do you know of any like outwardly you know, 1366 01:13:29,200 --> 01:13:31,840 Speaker 3: even like faux intellectual you know, like oh, actually, I 1367 01:13:31,880 --> 01:13:34,479 Speaker 3: mean we were talking about earlier. Schmidt is a very 1368 01:13:34,520 --> 01:13:38,160 Speaker 3: smart guy. He's just horrendously evil. So can you think 1369 01:13:38,200 --> 01:13:43,440 Speaker 3: of any dictators who were like learned dictators? 1370 01:13:43,760 --> 01:13:48,120 Speaker 2: It depends on what you mean by learned, right, because like, yes, 1371 01:13:48,560 --> 01:13:52,840 Speaker 2: Stalin makes a lot of hideous mistakes that cost a 1372 01:13:52,840 --> 01:13:55,160 Speaker 2: lot of people their lives, particularly in the other stages 1373 01:13:55,160 --> 01:13:57,400 Speaker 2: of the fighting with the Nazis. But like is an 1374 01:13:57,640 --> 01:14:02,400 Speaker 2: educated man who liked read extensively, and you know, like 1375 01:14:03,080 --> 01:14:06,439 Speaker 2: he's not like a He's not like a rube, right, 1376 01:14:07,760 --> 01:14:10,880 Speaker 2: you know, Tito was, I don't, I know, don't know 1377 01:14:10,920 --> 01:14:13,080 Speaker 2: nearly as much about his actual education. Was clearly an 1378 01:14:13,120 --> 01:14:17,479 Speaker 2: incredibly intelligent person, right, Just the degree of success he 1379 01:14:17,560 --> 01:14:20,439 Speaker 2: had both as a dictator and as an insurgent leader, 1380 01:14:20,439 --> 01:14:23,479 Speaker 2: presumably like Fidel Castro. Right, that's a smart man, right, Yeah, 1381 01:14:23,680 --> 01:14:26,719 Speaker 2: It's a man who was a great degree of cunning, 1382 01:14:26,880 --> 01:14:30,320 Speaker 2: you know, and understanding. And I do think there are 1383 01:14:30,479 --> 01:14:34,519 Speaker 2: very smart people around. I don't think Peter Thiel's dumb. 1384 01:14:34,640 --> 01:14:37,360 Speaker 2: I think he's nuts, and I think he has some 1385 01:14:37,439 --> 01:14:40,599 Speaker 2: blind spots and a freak, but he understands how to 1386 01:14:40,600 --> 01:14:43,360 Speaker 2: do certain things very well. There's kinds of intelligence that 1387 01:14:43,439 --> 01:14:47,680 Speaker 2: he has. I think Trump has kinds of intelligence. He's 1388 01:14:47,680 --> 01:14:50,080 Speaker 2: been working at this for twenty something years. So I 1389 01:14:50,840 --> 01:14:53,280 Speaker 2: don't know, like learned I think they I think I 1390 01:14:53,320 --> 01:14:55,320 Speaker 2: guess the answer is they tend to learn the things 1391 01:14:55,360 --> 01:14:57,720 Speaker 2: they need to learn to get where they want to go. Right, 1392 01:14:58,479 --> 01:15:01,160 Speaker 2: They've expertise, right does Donald Trump? 1393 01:15:01,240 --> 01:15:01,320 Speaker 3: Is? 1394 01:15:01,320 --> 01:15:01,479 Speaker 5: He? 1395 01:15:01,720 --> 01:15:04,320 Speaker 2: Does he have like a great knowledge of all of 1396 01:15:04,360 --> 01:15:06,599 Speaker 2: the things that you know, you and I might respect 1397 01:15:06,680 --> 01:15:09,120 Speaker 2: being informed of. No, but he knew enough to figure 1398 01:15:09,120 --> 01:15:12,960 Speaker 2: out how to dismantle democracy and how to get people 1399 01:15:13,000 --> 01:15:15,200 Speaker 2: around him who knew more about it, right, And so 1400 01:15:15,840 --> 01:15:18,080 Speaker 2: I guess i'd say dictators tend to be learned in 1401 01:15:18,120 --> 01:15:21,000 Speaker 2: the things they need to be learned and to become dictators. 1402 01:15:21,400 --> 01:15:23,800 Speaker 3: Right. No, I think that's perfectly put. Yeah, yeah, I 1403 01:15:23,840 --> 01:15:24,320 Speaker 3: agree with that. 1404 01:15:24,680 --> 01:15:31,560 Speaker 2: Yeah. Anyway, Wow, is this how all these episodes. 1405 01:15:32,360 --> 01:15:38,280 Speaker 3: Jesus just us mubbling to ourselves? I don't know what? Yeah, Like, 1406 01:15:38,320 --> 01:15:39,280 Speaker 3: where do I even move? 1407 01:15:40,240 --> 01:15:40,439 Speaker 1: Yeah? 1408 01:15:40,920 --> 01:15:41,400 Speaker 3: Canada is? 1409 01:15:42,520 --> 01:15:42,760 Speaker 2: Yeah? 1410 01:15:42,960 --> 01:15:45,240 Speaker 3: Is it? Portugal? Do I become a Portuguese wind bag? 1411 01:15:45,320 --> 01:15:48,719 Speaker 2: Is that? Yeah? Become yours? You become a Portuguese wind bag? 1412 01:15:48,840 --> 01:15:52,040 Speaker 1: You guys, it's fine. Robert will let us into the Vatican. 1413 01:15:52,800 --> 01:15:56,000 Speaker 2: Yeah, the Vatican, that's what we're all going to hide. 1414 01:15:56,200 --> 01:16:01,000 Speaker 2: Well with all the gold, Uh, okay, So I don't know. 1415 01:16:01,120 --> 01:16:10,840 Speaker 2: I tend to think what you should do is right. Yeah, 1416 01:16:10,880 --> 01:16:12,559 Speaker 2: and you can find a lot of the blueprints you'll 1417 01:16:12,600 --> 01:16:16,519 Speaker 2: need on the internet. Anyway, episode is over, Blake, you 1418 01:16:16,560 --> 01:16:18,040 Speaker 2: want to plug anything before we go. 1419 01:16:18,840 --> 01:16:22,120 Speaker 3: Yeah, I would I have a jizz book of my own. No, 1420 01:16:22,400 --> 01:16:25,880 Speaker 3: I would like to promote August first. I'm going to 1421 01:16:25,920 --> 01:16:29,280 Speaker 3: be doing stand up in Philadelphia also at Blake Wexler 1422 01:16:29,360 --> 01:16:31,840 Speaker 3: on all social media. If you could follow me there, 1423 01:16:31,880 --> 01:16:35,080 Speaker 3: I would love that. And I'm doing a bike ride 1424 01:16:35,080 --> 01:16:39,519 Speaker 3: to raise money for autism research, autism awareness and that 1425 01:16:39,920 --> 01:16:42,320 Speaker 3: if you can spare anything, It's times are tough right now, 1426 01:16:42,360 --> 01:16:44,759 Speaker 3: but any donation, if you can do it, would be great. 1427 01:16:44,880 --> 01:16:47,439 Speaker 3: It's that link is in my bio. And I have 1428 01:16:47,479 --> 01:16:51,280 Speaker 3: a stand up comedy special called Daddy Long Legs, which 1429 01:16:51,400 --> 01:16:54,639 Speaker 3: is available for free on YouTube. And this was a blast. 1430 01:16:54,680 --> 01:16:57,080 Speaker 3: I have so much respect for both of you. This 1431 01:16:57,160 --> 01:16:58,760 Speaker 3: is this is I don't I don't know if I've 1432 01:16:58,760 --> 01:17:01,519 Speaker 3: ever said this sentence. Is a great podcast, This is 1433 01:17:01,520 --> 01:17:04,360 Speaker 3: a great show. This is a fantastic show. I know 1434 01:17:04,800 --> 01:17:07,519 Speaker 3: no one, no one does what you do, so I 1435 01:17:07,600 --> 01:17:08,240 Speaker 3: appreciate a. 1436 01:17:08,680 --> 01:17:10,960 Speaker 2: Company will do. We have the thank you. We have 1437 01:17:11,120 --> 01:17:12,040 Speaker 2: the we have the pope. 1438 01:17:12,080 --> 01:17:13,840 Speaker 3: You do have the new Pope, and that's how you 1439 01:17:13,920 --> 01:17:16,400 Speaker 3: got elected by your fellow colleagues cardinals. 1440 01:17:16,479 --> 01:17:18,120 Speaker 2: Yeah, if you are. 1441 01:17:18,240 --> 01:17:21,360 Speaker 1: Ah my god, there needs to be a podcast conclave. 1442 01:17:21,479 --> 01:17:22,920 Speaker 1: Oh my god, oh my god. 1443 01:17:23,960 --> 01:17:26,439 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, to see who the podcasting pope is. 1444 01:17:26,680 --> 01:17:29,120 Speaker 3: Yeah, just like the podcast. 1445 01:17:29,200 --> 01:17:30,840 Speaker 2: It better not be one of the pods, save guys, 1446 01:17:30,920 --> 01:17:31,839 Speaker 2: or I'm doing a schism. 1447 01:17:32,160 --> 01:17:34,519 Speaker 5: I mean it would it's thinking about it would have 1448 01:17:34,600 --> 01:17:36,800 Speaker 5: to be in that that guy, Sean Sean Malin who 1449 01:17:36,920 --> 01:17:39,519 Speaker 5: just who has the podcast Pantheon book coming. 1450 01:17:39,360 --> 01:17:42,559 Speaker 1: Out later this year. That we're we're in that book. 1451 01:17:42,640 --> 01:17:44,559 Speaker 1: So we get to be in the conflict if. 1452 01:17:44,880 --> 01:17:47,320 Speaker 2: There's a if it doesn't go my way, I'm moving 1453 01:17:47,360 --> 01:17:50,599 Speaker 2: to Avignon and I'm going to create like a counter 1454 01:17:50,800 --> 01:17:54,000 Speaker 2: conclave and we're going to have us an anti Fast group. 1455 01:17:54,800 --> 01:17:58,280 Speaker 1: The fuckery we can get. Oh my god, Robert, we have. 1456 01:17:58,400 --> 01:18:00,719 Speaker 1: It has to happen. It has has to happen. 1457 01:18:01,040 --> 01:18:02,280 Speaker 3: Ye hope, save America. 1458 01:18:04,160 --> 01:18:08,639 Speaker 1: So much fuckery. Oh I'm plotting. I'm plotting. Okay. Anyways, Blake, Blake, 1459 01:18:08,680 --> 01:18:11,880 Speaker 1: thank you so much for being Herevis was so lovely, Robert, Robert, 1460 01:18:11,960 --> 01:18:12,639 Speaker 1: that was horrifying. 1461 01:18:12,760 --> 01:18:13,200 Speaker 3: Did we do it? 1462 01:18:13,240 --> 01:18:14,040 Speaker 1: To the podcast? 1463 01:18:14,280 --> 01:18:16,439 Speaker 2: We did? The podcast Let's Go Away Okay. 1464 01:18:19,840 --> 01:18:22,519 Speaker 4: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. 1465 01:18:22,880 --> 01:18:25,479 Speaker 4: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool 1466 01:18:25,560 --> 01:18:29,519 Speaker 4: Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, 1467 01:18:29,600 --> 01:18:31,960 Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1468 01:18:32,360 --> 01:18:35,720 Speaker 5: Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes 1469 01:18:36,080 --> 01:18:39,639 Speaker 5: every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot 1470 01:18:39,720 --> 01:18:42,240 Speaker 5: com slash at Behind the Bastards