WEBVTT - Part Two: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

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<v Speaker 1>Also media.

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<v Speaker 2>Welcome back to Behind the Bastards podcast hosted by who

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<v Speaker 2>I assume is the new Pope based on reading the

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<v Speaker 2>first two thirds of an article title that showed up

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<v Speaker 2>in my phone the other day.

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<v Speaker 1>Welcome gonna go on? Is my question?

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<v Speaker 2>Exactly? One more episode? Sophie, Okay, I have slightly I

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<v Speaker 2>have slightly more bit to do here, slightly right? Well, yeah,

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<v Speaker 2>that is that is how it tends well now that

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<v Speaker 2>one guy got to quit the Nazi Nazis famous quitters.

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<v Speaker 2>Uh So we are joined once again by Sophie, Ray Lichterman,

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<v Speaker 2>and Blake Westler, our guest for today. Blake, how you doing?

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<v Speaker 3>I'm doing great. I can't wait to hear more about

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<v Speaker 3>this guy.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well, I can't wait to figure out my pope name.

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<v Speaker 2>You know I've been I've been thinking about it. Right,

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<v Speaker 2>What am I gonna do? You know what am I gonna?

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<v Speaker 2>What is? Who am I going to be as pope?

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<v Speaker 2>Because every pope gets to pick a name?

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<v Speaker 1>You're going to be Pope, Sophie.

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<v Speaker 2>No, no, no, I think I figured it out, Sophie.

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<v Speaker 2>I think I'm gonna have a lot more fun if

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<v Speaker 2>if my pope name is just the whole script to

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<v Speaker 2>B movie. I just gotta really content take that bit

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<v Speaker 2>to its ultimate extint. Just destroy the computing systems that

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<v Speaker 2>the Vatican, the entire Catholic Church is like online infrastructure

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<v Speaker 2>falls apart, freests with chromebooks, just lighting on fire and rectories.

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<v Speaker 2>It's going to be beautiful.

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<v Speaker 3>Improvised though, so I don't know how long the script is.

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<v Speaker 3>Steinfeld did a lot of improv in that.

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<v Speaker 2>I do know how long the script is because it's

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<v Speaker 2>been printed on a number of T shirts at this point.

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<v Speaker 3>Oh my god, it's amazing.

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<v Speaker 2>It's an older meme, but it checks out. We're back

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<v Speaker 2>and we're talking about the life of Karl Schmidt, arch

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<v Speaker 2>theoretician of Nazism, well of fascism in general too. We

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<v Speaker 2>left things off on the eve of World War One.

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<v Speaker 2>Our boy Karl is in love with a con artist,

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<v Speaker 2>but his academic career is slowly starting to pick up steam.

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<v Speaker 2>The way academic life works at this point is that

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<v Speaker 2>he's basically locked in a series of unpaid internships and

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<v Speaker 2>thus constantly begging his uncle and his rich friends, like

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<v Speaker 2>the parents of his rich friends, for money. The Eisler

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<v Speaker 2>family is his most reliable source of support. His whole goal.

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<v Speaker 2>He says this often in his diary and when talking

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<v Speaker 2>to Karrie. He wants to get rich, right, he wants

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<v Speaker 2>to be wealthy. And the way to do that then,

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<v Speaker 2>as a public intellectual, just like it is now, is

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<v Speaker 2>to write a book. Right now today you have to

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<v Speaker 2>write the worst book ever, which gets harder every year

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<v Speaker 2>because so many, so many terrible, terrible books are written

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<v Speaker 2>by public intellectuals every year. Back at this period of time,

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<v Speaker 2>your book had to be have a little more depth

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<v Speaker 2>to it. And the first his first stab at this

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<v Speaker 2>is a work called Word of the State. And this

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<v Speaker 2>is that's the English translation. The German phrase that means

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<v Speaker 2>word of the state is a reference to a concept

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<v Speaker 2>in like German law of the state, in which the

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<v Speaker 2>government and its rulers are constrained in what they can

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<v Speaker 2>do to people by the law.

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<v Speaker 4>Right.

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<v Speaker 2>That's the title of his book, and the purpose of

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<v Speaker 2>this book is to try to figure out what makes

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<v Speaker 2>a state legitimate right and its laws legitimate. Carl comes

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<v Speaker 2>to define a legitimate state as a state with a constitution,

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<v Speaker 2>not a state that does this or that, or that

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<v Speaker 2>treats people a certain way, but a state that has

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<v Speaker 2>like a set of listed rules that institutionalizes the relationship

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<v Speaker 2>between power and right. Right, So how individuals are treated,

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<v Speaker 2>whether they have rights, that doesn't matter. What matters is

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<v Speaker 2>that the state spells out what it can and will

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<v Speaker 2>do when and where somewhere, right, That's the important thing.

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<v Speaker 2>He includes a line in this work that I find

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<v Speaker 2>fundamentally chilling. Quote, whatever it is that makes a person

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<v Speaker 2>is determined by the legal system itself. And that's that's

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<v Speaker 2>a that's bad. It's going to lead you some dark places, Carl.

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<v Speaker 2>You're gonna lead us all some very dark places. Right.

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<v Speaker 2>But it makes sense if you're coming to this idea

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<v Speaker 2>that like, yeah, the law determines ethics and reality, and

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<v Speaker 2>thus the law determines what is a person right and

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<v Speaker 2>can unperson people, which is sort of the He's not

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<v Speaker 2>writing about that at this point, but it's kind of

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<v Speaker 2>the inevitable conclusion. It's like, well, if the law makes

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<v Speaker 2>a person, the law can stop you from being a person.

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<v Speaker 2>And when I say that, I think he's there's a

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<v Speaker 2>degree of brilliance here. It's not that this is a

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<v Speaker 2>good way to think about things, but this is accurate

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<v Speaker 2>to the way states work already. As soon as as

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<v Speaker 2>long as there have been states. This is how states

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<v Speaker 2>have functioned, whether you like it or not, even our state, Right,

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<v Speaker 2>all this bullshit that we have about natural rights and

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<v Speaker 2>that there's inherent rights, No, you should know right now

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<v Speaker 2>by watching the news, none of that means anything. The

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<v Speaker 2>state and the people with guns within it determine what

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<v Speaker 2>is treated as a person by the state. Right, That's

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<v Speaker 2>what Carl's recognizing, Right, And that's what Carl is laying out,

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<v Speaker 2>and that is accurate, whether or not you like it. Right, individuals,

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<v Speaker 2>he argues, only gains significance by working for and supporting

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<v Speaker 2>the state. So again, while he's sort of there's a

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<v Speaker 2>degree to which, even as an anarchist, you could be like, oh,

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<v Speaker 2>this guy's right in a lot of ways. But where

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<v Speaker 2>he differs is he's like, and that's great, it's good

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<v Speaker 2>that it works this way. It's cool. It's cool that

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<v Speaker 2>the state arbitrarily decides what makes a person right. And

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<v Speaker 2>he argues that this is good because individuals only gain

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<v Speaker 2>significance when working for and supporting the state. In other words,

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<v Speaker 2>you mean nothing outside of your place within the state

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<v Speaker 2>and its power structure. He also argues the law is

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<v Speaker 2>not based on power. Power is based on law, and

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<v Speaker 2>he seems to believe. Again there's this almost spiritual knack

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<v Speaker 2>order that the law naturally moves to better represent right,

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<v Speaker 2>which is weird. Now, not long after this Schmidt gets married,

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<v Speaker 2>or at least he thinks he does. They they have

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<v Speaker 2>like a wedding, but Kyrie loses her passport and so

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<v Speaker 2>they can't get it certified.

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<v Speaker 3>And it's the documents, these damn pieces of paper.

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<v Speaker 2>And again it is weirdly like this like proof that

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<v Speaker 2>he's there's there's something fundamentally accurate about his conception of

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<v Speaker 2>the state because like much as he he's like, no,

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<v Speaker 2>Kyrie is my wife, the State's like, no, she's not.

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<v Speaker 2>That's that's on us to decide, And we've decided no

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<v Speaker 2>because she doesn't have a passport, so she has to

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<v Speaker 2>They're like heading back to their house to finally be

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<v Speaker 2>together in like their marital home, and she has to

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<v Speaker 2>suddenly when like this clerk comes out and I was

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<v Speaker 2>like wait, wait, wait, the passport's both like she doesn't

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<v Speaker 2>have a passport. I can't do this. They have to

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<v Speaker 2>bundle her off to live with his mom so that

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<v Speaker 2>they don't live in sin like unlike what's supposed to

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<v Speaker 2>be their wedding, and Carl starts having panic attacks about

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<v Speaker 2>the fact that Kari is now living with his family. Quote,

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<v Speaker 2>she is in the company of my hateful, mean and

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<v Speaker 2>vicious mother and my spoiled little sister Anna. Only father

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<v Speaker 2>makes life easy for her. I don't know what will

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<v Speaker 2>become of me. She's like, she's gonna leave me because

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<v Speaker 2>my family sucks and she has to live with him now.

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<v Speaker 3>I don't know what will become of it. It all

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<v Speaker 3>comes back to him too, Yeah, where it's always about

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<v Speaker 3>He wasn't talking about what was going to become of me?

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, what's going to become of my wife? Right?

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah?

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<v Speaker 2>I also do love that, like, yeah, it's good, Like

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<v Speaker 2>the state determines what a person is, and like this

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<v Speaker 2>is good and our only value comes from the role

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<v Speaker 2>that we play within the state. And also, oh, the

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<v Speaker 2>thing that I want more than anything isn't possible because

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<v Speaker 2>the state has decided my wife isn't a real person.

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<v Speaker 3>I obviously don't know exactly how I mean. I have

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<v Speaker 3>an idea of how the story ends, obviously, like that's

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<v Speaker 3>been established. But it is interesting that it seems like

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<v Speaker 3>he turns on the people close to him, where yeah,

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<v Speaker 3>obviously because of how his ideologies was adopted by Nazis

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<v Speaker 3>his best friend who is a Jew. That doesn't end well,

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<v Speaker 3>and then also a lot of this stuff, No, no,

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<v Speaker 3>it doesn't, and that a lot of his friends were

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<v Speaker 3>these artists, and artists do not work for the state.

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<v Speaker 3>It's the complete opposite, so they don't matter essentially. So

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<v Speaker 3>it's interesting that he keeps doing this.

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<v Speaker 2>Yes, yes, and it really is like, yeah, so through

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<v Speaker 2>the end of nineteen thirteen, he's having constant panic attacks,

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<v Speaker 2>and we can surmise his parents this is like a

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<v Speaker 2>family trait, right, because when he describes them in his

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<v Speaker 2>diary in a way that, like a modern reader is like,

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<v Speaker 2>the motherfucker's having a panic attack, right, But he calls

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<v Speaker 2>them Schmidt effects, right, as in like this is like

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<v Speaker 2>a Schmidt family characteristic that we have these freak outs.

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<v Speaker 2>And it's like, oh, yeah, okay, so your parents are

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<v Speaker 2>like also have this problem, right, and they passed it

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<v Speaker 2>on to you, and you'd think it's just you and

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<v Speaker 2>your family that you're the only people who have ever thought.

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<v Speaker 2>Of course you do this period, it's nineteen thirteen. Where

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<v Speaker 2>would you have read about panic attacks?

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<v Speaker 3>No, we just have heart attacks all the time. Yeah,

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<v Speaker 3>when we get nervous, we all have heart attacks. It's

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<v Speaker 3>a schmid thing.

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<v Speaker 2>It's yeah, we're the only ones who do this. So

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<v Speaker 2>he writes about this in his diaries, and Marrying notes

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<v Speaker 2>that in the wake of these he expresses the bulk

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<v Speaker 2>of his anti Semitic opinions, right that while he's kind

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<v Speaker 2>of like dealing with this this really stressful period. If

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<v Speaker 2>I can't marry this woman that I love, the state

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<v Speaker 2>doesn't consider her legitimate. Marrying notes that in the wake

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<v Speaker 2>of these he writes, quote, saw the two Jews Jacobson

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<v Speaker 2>and Lessing bickering and was glad I no longer have

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<v Speaker 2>anything to do with Rosenbaum, who's another Jewish friend of his.

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<v Speaker 2>I don't want contact with Eisler anymore either, So he

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<v Speaker 2>like sees these two Jewish guys he knows arguing and

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<v Speaker 2>he's like, Ah, it's just like it's just what those

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<v Speaker 2>kind of people do. I'm never going to have any

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<v Speaker 2>contact with them again. Now, this is not going to

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<v Speaker 2>be a permanent state. So it shows that bigotry is

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<v Speaker 2>this thing that he comes back to and discards and

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<v Speaker 2>comes back to. But it's not a stable state for him.

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<v Speaker 2>At this point because he and Eisler are going to

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<v Speaker 2>be dear friends again and for a considerable like he

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<v Speaker 2>will continue to talk about him well, and others have

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<v Speaker 2>other Jewish friends after this period. The point is that

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<v Speaker 2>his racism is a erratic, and it's correlated both with

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<v Speaker 2>stressful times in his life and also these flights of fantasy.

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<v Speaker 2>Right well, he'll write out this anti Semitic screed and

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<v Speaker 2>then he'll declare to his diary, I'm going to get

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<v Speaker 2>into politics and become a powerful man. And then the

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<v Speaker 2>next day he'll write about how he and Kari are

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<v Speaker 2>going to have a son named Johan and he's going

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<v Speaker 2>to grow up to be a cardinal. And then like

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<v Speaker 2>a couple of days later, he's going to be like,

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<v Speaker 2>I'm still too broke. I can't marry my wife. This

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<v Speaker 2>is never We're never going to have our kid. And

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<v Speaker 2>he's so fucking Catholic that when he becomes convinced he's

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<v Speaker 2>not going to be able to have a kid with

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<v Speaker 2>this woman for financial reasons and because of her legal issues,

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<v Speaker 2>he writes in his diary, I am a murderer. I

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<v Speaker 2>am destroyed, have turned into nothing and have murdered the

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<v Speaker 2>soul of a child. Where should I seek refuge in

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<v Speaker 2>the Catholic Church? But I can't, I might as well

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<v Speaker 2>go to the great Dalai Lama of Tibet or some

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<v Speaker 2>Mexican god. And first off, bro like, even in this period,

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<v Speaker 2>most Mexicans are Catholic too, Like just as a heads up,

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<v Speaker 2>like it's the same most of them. It's the same

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<v Speaker 2>god you're worshiping, right, Like, maybe you haven't read those books.

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<v Speaker 3>This guy is so conservative, yeah, that he believes that

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<v Speaker 3>life begins before you have sex with the person, life begins, documentation,

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<v Speaker 3>just anything.

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<v Speaker 1>But going to therapy. And I know it's a sign

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<v Speaker 1>of the time.

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<v Speaker 2>When you and your con artist wife are declare that

0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:45.920
<v Speaker 2>you're gonna have a son who becomes a rid y. Yeah,

0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:52.560
<v Speaker 2>we killed this boy. This boy literally Ohan's dead. Now

0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:57.040
<v Speaker 2>this is essentially an abortion. I guess. I am kind

0:11:57.080 --> 0:11:59.000
<v Speaker 2>of impressed that he knows who the Dalai Lama is

0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:00.880
<v Speaker 2>in this period of time. So I don't know, you know,

0:12:01.160 --> 0:12:04.520
<v Speaker 2>it's ax. We contains well on some things. Again, he

0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:08.360
<v Speaker 2>also thinks Mexican people don't aren't Catholic in a large

0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:10.840
<v Speaker 2>part obviously, Like there's religions in that part of the

0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:13.920
<v Speaker 2>world that have existed before Catholicism, but at this period

0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:19.360
<v Speaker 2>of time that's the dominant religion is the same as his. Anyway,

0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:22.839
<v Speaker 2>he comes to see himself as a gnostic after this point,

0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:25.400
<v Speaker 2>in other words, someone who believes that there's this like

0:12:25.559 --> 0:12:28.920
<v Speaker 2>malicious God that created the world. Right. I think it's

0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:31.800
<v Speaker 2>he's basically believes like the demiurge is what other people

0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:35.240
<v Speaker 2>worship as God, and like what these other folks would

0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:36.880
<v Speaker 2>I always raised to believe is God is actually this

0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:40.520
<v Speaker 2>evil being that just wants to fuck with us right now,

0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:43.160
<v Speaker 2>the fact that he comes around to this beliefs heretical

0:12:43.200 --> 0:12:47.720
<v Speaker 2>belief is entirely centered upon his own financial and career frustrations.

0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:51.520
<v Speaker 2>Right before the war breaks out, his wife gets caught shoplifting. Again.

0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:55.520
<v Speaker 2>This lady, she's always stealing stuff. She's the best, she's

0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:58.320
<v Speaker 2>the best. She gets caught stealing shit, and it causes

0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:00.240
<v Speaker 2>like a year worth of problems for him. Is he

0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:02.240
<v Speaker 2>can't afford to pay the cost, and like he's just

0:13:02.280 --> 0:13:04.520
<v Speaker 2>trying to keep her out of jail. So it's this

0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:07.440
<v Speaker 2>whole constant, like stressful issue on him. The fact that

0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:11.160
<v Speaker 2>his wife got caught shoplifting, his con artist wife.

0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:13.280
<v Speaker 3>What was that horrible for his tingle tangle.

0:13:13.240 --> 0:13:16.280
<v Speaker 2>Tingle tangle girl. Yes, right right, yes, his wife, the

0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:20.120
<v Speaker 2>burlesque dancing con artist, has caught shoplifting and it just

0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:24.319
<v Speaker 2>fucks him up. And then while he's trying to deal

0:13:24.400 --> 0:13:27.600
<v Speaker 2>with all of this, Archduke Franz Ferdinand gets shot in

0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:32.280
<v Speaker 2>Sarajevo and World War One starts winding up. Carl is

0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:34.920
<v Speaker 2>twenty six at the time that it becomes inevitable that

0:13:34.960 --> 0:13:38.560
<v Speaker 2>Germany's going to, you know, make some really bad decisions

0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:42.080
<v Speaker 2>along with everyone else. To be fair, Germany's bad decisions

0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:46.160
<v Speaker 2>aren't unique in this period. Now, this is another massive

0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:49.440
<v Speaker 2>moment for most future German fascists, but not for Carl.

0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:53.200
<v Speaker 2>Karl is not a German patriot. Hitler is like Hitler

0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:55.600
<v Speaker 2>is he strong. He's there when the Kaiser announces the

0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:57.800
<v Speaker 2>start of the war in Berlin. He's part of there's

0:13:57.840 --> 0:13:59.560
<v Speaker 2>pictures of it, you can find him in the crowd.

0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:04.040
<v Speaker 2>He's like enraptured. He describes this like religious experience. He's

0:14:04.040 --> 0:14:06.760
<v Speaker 2>so overjoyed to be going to war on behalf of

0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:11.120
<v Speaker 2>the fatherland. And Carl's like, fuck this illegal war, this

0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:15.600
<v Speaker 2>is Prussian bullshit. The Prussians orchestrated all of this. The

0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:17.560
<v Speaker 2>rest of us Germans want nothing to do with this.

0:14:17.679 --> 0:14:19.880
<v Speaker 2>I certainly go to war with the French. My families

0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:22.120
<v Speaker 2>have French. Fuck these people, fuck all of this. This

0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:25.280
<v Speaker 2>is illegal as hell, right, So he is not at all,

0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:27.840
<v Speaker 2>And in fact, he writes in his diary, I hope

0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:30.880
<v Speaker 2>the French win, and he'll be doing that throughout the war,

0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:33.840
<v Speaker 2>like I just hope the I just want the enemy

0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:36.520
<v Speaker 2>to win. So this is done. This is not a

0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:41.280
<v Speaker 2>patriot right, absolutely not at all. So it's interesting because

0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:44.120
<v Speaker 2>he's going to be so influential to the fascist movement.

0:14:44.440 --> 0:14:47.200
<v Speaker 2>He has the opposite reaction of basically all of these

0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:50.840
<v Speaker 2>other guys. Now that said, he knows the war is

0:14:50.880 --> 0:14:54.040
<v Speaker 2>wrong and dumb, but he doesn't protest it, and he's

0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:57.800
<v Speaker 2>not a conscientious objector. He just doesn't really care about it.

0:14:57.840 --> 0:14:59.720
<v Speaker 2>One gets the feeling he fought. He thinks that, like

0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:03.640
<v Speaker 2>the whole conflict, is something that less intelligent people should

0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:06.120
<v Speaker 2>care about, like not him. He has a lot of

0:15:06.160 --> 0:15:10.280
<v Speaker 2>thinking about what law is to do, right. He doesn't

0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:13.120
<v Speaker 2>volunteer immediately like a lot of people do, like a

0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:15.120
<v Speaker 2>lot of his friends do, and he seems to be

0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:17.400
<v Speaker 2>hoping like, maybe the war will end quickly and I

0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:20.320
<v Speaker 2>just will get to miss out on this. Right now,

0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:23.720
<v Speaker 2>you can contrast this to his best friend Eisler, right again.

0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:28.040
<v Speaker 2>Iisler is a Hungarian national who desperately wants to be German.

0:15:28.240 --> 0:15:31.280
<v Speaker 2>He's othered both because he's Hungarian and because he's Jewish.

0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:33.960
<v Speaker 2>And he had tried repeatedly before the war to become

0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:36.400
<v Speaker 2>a naturalized German citizen, and every time he does it,

0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:39.920
<v Speaker 2>the authorities are like, nah, we don't need you. And

0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:43.280
<v Speaker 2>he wants this in part because he's getting his doctorate

0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:46.600
<v Speaker 2>and he can't actually get confirmed as a PhD or

0:15:46.680 --> 0:15:49.640
<v Speaker 2>work in law unless he's a naturalized German citizen. He

0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:52.720
<v Speaker 2>wants to work in the German government, right he wants

0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:54.320
<v Speaker 2>to be a part of the court system, and he

0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:56.680
<v Speaker 2>has to be a citizen. And the chief of police.

0:15:56.720 --> 0:15:59.280
<v Speaker 2>Before the war, the chief of police in Hamburg denies

0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:03.280
<v Speaker 2>Eisler's citizenship petition by writing, quote, due to the Hungarian

0:16:03.360 --> 0:16:06.920
<v Speaker 2>Jewish descent of the applicant and his father's criminal record,

0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:09.560
<v Speaker 2>that he couldn't approve the application. His dad had done

0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:13.080
<v Speaker 2>some petty crimes as a younger man. So when the

0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:17.040
<v Speaker 2>war breaks out, Eisler applies again, and this time the

0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:20.600
<v Speaker 2>German government is number one. The authorities who had been

0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:23.880
<v Speaker 2>like turning him down are in the military now. So

0:16:23.960 --> 0:16:26.120
<v Speaker 2>it's like people who are younger and maybe a little

0:16:26.160 --> 0:16:29.600
<v Speaker 2>less bigoted, who are you making that call? And they're like,

0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:32.560
<v Speaker 2>all right, you want to join the army, we'll let

0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:34.520
<v Speaker 2>you do that, and we'll make you a citizen. But

0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:37.480
<v Speaker 2>you have to sign a paper promising you'll never work

0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:40.800
<v Speaker 2>for the government. Right, You'll never go after a government career,

0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:43.320
<v Speaker 2>or try to take the state exam to be like

0:16:43.600 --> 0:16:47.040
<v Speaker 2>considered a doctor in Germany. Right, if you do those

0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:48.920
<v Speaker 2>things will make you a citizen and you can join

0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:52.840
<v Speaker 2>the army. And Eisler agrees. That's how badly this kid

0:16:52.880 --> 0:16:57.120
<v Speaker 2>wants to be a German patriot, which is such a bummer,

0:16:57.200 --> 0:17:00.600
<v Speaker 2>given not only what Germany's going to do to Jewish

0:17:00.600 --> 0:17:02.840
<v Speaker 2>people not all that far from now, but given what's

0:17:02.880 --> 0:17:05.240
<v Speaker 2>going to happen to him, Because all this kid wants

0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:08.200
<v Speaker 2>is to be accepted as German, and he feels like, ah,

0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:11.280
<v Speaker 2>the military, they can't they can't utter me if I'm

0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:14.920
<v Speaker 2>in the military, right, they have to respect me as

0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:19.080
<v Speaker 2>a as a patriotic German citizen if I serve in combat.

0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:24.480
<v Speaker 2>So despite the fact that Schmidt had pretty recently written

0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:26.960
<v Speaker 2>a lot of racist about Eisler, he writes at the

0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:29.520
<v Speaker 2>time of having great worry for his friend when Isisler

0:17:29.560 --> 0:17:31.840
<v Speaker 2>joins the army and notes, if only he is not

0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:36.840
<v Speaker 2>killed in action, the dear old fellow. Unfortunately, Fritz Eisler

0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:39.840
<v Speaker 2>joins a field artillery unit and he is deployed immediately

0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:42.919
<v Speaker 2>after the outbreak of hostilities. He is killed by shrapnel

0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:47.320
<v Speaker 2>almost immediately, you know his battery is firing. Allied counter

0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:50.280
<v Speaker 2>battery fire hits nearby and he gets like gutted by

0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:53.680
<v Speaker 2>a piece of metal. Merroring writes Schmidt was moved by

0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:56.320
<v Speaker 2>his untimely death. As a last favorite to his friend,

0:17:56.359 --> 0:18:00.399
<v Speaker 2>he edited one of Eisler's posthumous papers, and he like

0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:03.520
<v Speaker 2>goes to Isisler's family to express his concerns to help

0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:07.120
<v Speaker 2>them deal with his dead friends, like you know, stuff

0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:11.399
<v Speaker 2>and get He becomes almost immediately very good friends with

0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:15.040
<v Speaker 2>Fritz's brother George, and the two will remain friends until

0:18:15.119 --> 0:18:18.520
<v Speaker 2>nineteen thirty two. Like he kind of switches his best

0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:21.520
<v Speaker 2>friendship to George Eisler and it will stay that way

0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:25.159
<v Speaker 2>almost until Hitler rises to power, and he gets actually

0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:29.000
<v Speaker 2>much closer with the Isslers. After Fritz dies, he stays

0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:32.240
<v Speaker 2>over at their house and he writes that he's like surprised, Wow,

0:18:32.280 --> 0:18:35.240
<v Speaker 2>these Jews are like a normal German family. I didn't

0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:38.000
<v Speaker 2>think that that was the case with Jewish people. And

0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:40.520
<v Speaker 2>at the end of this, George's father is like, hey man,

0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:43.920
<v Speaker 2>how much money do you need to continue until you're

0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:45.800
<v Speaker 2>able to get to the money making part of your

0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:49.359
<v Speaker 2>career and writes him a check. So again, even up

0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:51.800
<v Speaker 2>to this point, this family is treating him like a son,

0:18:52.600 --> 0:18:56.040
<v Speaker 2>like Karl Schmidt probably doesn't have an academic career without

0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:59.200
<v Speaker 2>the Isislers backing him up, like they really do take

0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:03.840
<v Speaker 2>him in. Now he has to join the military not

0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:06.800
<v Speaker 2>long after this, because he's a young German Man and

0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:09.560
<v Speaker 2>they don't have enough of those very quickly. Germany has

0:19:09.600 --> 0:19:12.440
<v Speaker 2>a lot of young German men ineen late nineteen fourteen,

0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:15.120
<v Speaker 2>and then a couple months after August a lot less

0:19:15.119 --> 0:19:15.920
<v Speaker 2>German young men.

0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:19.840
<v Speaker 3>So there we're really going, where are these German men?

0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:23.119
<v Speaker 2>They're just kind of feeding them into French machine guns.

0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:27.680
<v Speaker 2>You're doing the same thing, right. Everybody's how fast can

0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:30.600
<v Speaker 2>we get rid of our young men turns out very

0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:35.280
<v Speaker 2>so he joins a reserve infantry unit right which the

0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:37.760
<v Speaker 2>fact that he does this suggests he's trying to keep

0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:40.040
<v Speaker 2>himself out of combat again and the hope that the

0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:43.399
<v Speaker 2>war might end quickly. Now most of the reserve units

0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:46.320
<v Speaker 2>in nineteen fourteen wind up on the front line because

0:19:46.680 --> 0:19:49.440
<v Speaker 2>it's just that kind of war. But he's going to

0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:52.199
<v Speaker 2>try in other ways to delay his service. Bala Chrishnan

0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:54.439
<v Speaker 2>writes while he was in basic training, he claimed to

0:19:54.440 --> 0:19:57.760
<v Speaker 2>have sustained a back injury, and the way Balachristian writes

0:19:57.760 --> 0:19:59.600
<v Speaker 2>it suggests that he doesn't really think this is a

0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:02.960
<v Speaker 2>real injury, or that, like Schmidt, plays it up to

0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:06.480
<v Speaker 2>delay things. But once again luck is on his side.

0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:12.840
<v Speaker 2>Schmidt's first mentor Van Kalker, because he's like a respected gentleman.

0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:15.520
<v Speaker 2>He joins the army and they're like, well, you're a major.

0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:18.040
<v Speaker 2>And obviously he had spent time in the military before,

0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:21.000
<v Speaker 2>because everyone does. Basically he had done like his period

0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:25.080
<v Speaker 2>of national service. So when he joins the full time army,

0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:27.240
<v Speaker 2>he's made a major by virtue of the fact that

0:20:27.240 --> 0:20:31.760
<v Speaker 2>he is a very very respected professor, and because he's

0:20:31.760 --> 0:20:34.800
<v Speaker 2>got this position he's able to get Schmidt a place

0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:39.000
<v Speaker 2>in the Prince's personal regiment. Now, this is not safe. Actually,

0:20:39.000 --> 0:20:41.680
<v Speaker 2>if you're in like the Prince's regiment in the German Army,

0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:43.840
<v Speaker 2>you're going to see heavy combat because the Prince wants

0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:45.959
<v Speaker 2>glory and he's going to send boys today to do it.

0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:50.400
<v Speaker 2>A lot of his colleagues get killed. But Van Kalker

0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:52.800
<v Speaker 2>is like na, na, No, Karl Schmidt is not someone

0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:55.040
<v Speaker 2>we want to feed to machine guns. This guy is smart,

0:20:55.040 --> 0:20:57.639
<v Speaker 2>He's going to be somebody, and he gets him a

0:20:57.720 --> 0:21:01.160
<v Speaker 2>job in the headquarters section, basically shuff fulling paperwork around,

0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:05.200
<v Speaker 2>helping to like handle organizational tasks. And as a result,

0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:07.800
<v Speaker 2>for the entirety of the war, Schmidt is never particularly

0:21:07.880 --> 0:21:10.440
<v Speaker 2>close to like direct fire. I don't even think he's

0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:13.720
<v Speaker 2>very close to indirect But he's never in serious danger, right,

0:21:14.280 --> 0:21:16.679
<v Speaker 2>you know, like elevated from his civilian life. But he

0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:20.000
<v Speaker 2>is not fighting, right, And he's not fighting because this

0:21:20.160 --> 0:21:23.120
<v Speaker 2>mentor again comes in and probably saves his life. Right

0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:24.879
<v Speaker 2>to be like, Nanna, this guy, we don't want this

0:21:24.920 --> 0:21:26.680
<v Speaker 2>guy up at the front. It's just a waste.

0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:29.200
<v Speaker 3>A mentor he turns on yeah, right.

0:21:29.119 --> 0:21:31.879
<v Speaker 2>Well doesn't he just stopped. He just kind of abandons

0:21:31.920 --> 0:21:36.199
<v Speaker 2>him at a certain point. Yeah. Now, after training, but

0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:39.440
<v Speaker 2>before he deploys, Karl takes one last stab at Mary

0:21:39.480 --> 0:21:42.280
<v Speaker 2>and Karrie, and this time the whole system works differently

0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:44.960
<v Speaker 2>because there's a war on. The officials who'd held up

0:21:45.000 --> 0:21:48.840
<v Speaker 2>on naturalizing her were either deployed or had decided like, look,

0:21:48.880 --> 0:21:52.120
<v Speaker 2>this boy is probably going to die, like everybody, give

0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:54.320
<v Speaker 2>him a chance to get this girl pregnant and continue

0:21:54.400 --> 0:21:57.520
<v Speaker 2>the family line, right, Like, that's that's the idea. They're

0:21:57.560 --> 0:22:01.159
<v Speaker 2>really they're rubber stamping a lot of marriage at this stage.

0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:04.680
<v Speaker 3>We're gonna send these babies in the front line, the younger.

0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:09.680
<v Speaker 2>Yeah right, we're gonna need more German boys very soon. Now,

0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:14.120
<v Speaker 2>her birth certificate's obviously fake and she's got pending shoplifting charges,

0:22:14.160 --> 0:22:16.439
<v Speaker 2>but they managed to like brute force this through and

0:22:16.520 --> 0:22:21.200
<v Speaker 2>the two finally get married legally. Karl is immediately deployed,

0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:25.600
<v Speaker 2>and he fucking hates it. He hates the army for

0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:28.600
<v Speaker 2>the first time and only time in his life. Because

0:22:28.640 --> 0:22:30.439
<v Speaker 2>of how much he hates being in the army, he

0:22:30.600 --> 0:22:34.520
<v Speaker 2>radically revises his entire legal and philosophical theory about how

0:22:34.560 --> 0:22:37.639
<v Speaker 2>the world works. He describes life in barracks as a

0:22:37.760 --> 0:22:40.199
<v Speaker 2>hell where he was forced to endure the stink of

0:22:40.359 --> 0:22:43.520
<v Speaker 2>plebes because he had and you know he had previously

0:22:43.720 --> 0:22:46.680
<v Speaker 2>he had been like, well, human value depends upon how

0:22:46.720 --> 0:22:49.320
<v Speaker 2>you are serving the state, And now that he is

0:22:49.440 --> 0:22:52.800
<v Speaker 2>serving the state as effectively its property, he's like, oh,

0:22:52.960 --> 0:22:55.600
<v Speaker 2>but that's awful. That sucks. Ass. No, this can't be

0:22:55.680 --> 0:22:58.960
<v Speaker 2>how things work. Fuck, this is what's serving the states,

0:22:59.080 --> 0:23:01.720
<v Speaker 2>Like this is invaluable at all. I hate the state.

0:23:03.240 --> 0:23:05.359
<v Speaker 2>But no, he writes that he hated quote the god

0:23:05.400 --> 0:23:11.840
<v Speaker 2>of this world, the law for its destruction of the individual. Interesting. Interesting,

0:23:12.000 --> 0:23:15.320
<v Speaker 2>this is he's not gonna stay consistent to this, But

0:23:15.359 --> 0:23:17.520
<v Speaker 2>it is very funny to me that like the moment

0:23:17.640 --> 0:23:20.280
<v Speaker 2>he's made to live with his beliefs, he's like, oh, well,

0:23:20.320 --> 0:23:22.400
<v Speaker 2>obviously this is a terrible idea.

0:23:23.160 --> 0:23:23.360
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.

0:23:25.200 --> 0:23:28.719
<v Speaker 2>Now he began even to dislike his mentor Van Kalker

0:23:28.840 --> 0:23:30.240
<v Speaker 2>in this time. This is kind of when the break

0:23:30.240 --> 0:23:33.480
<v Speaker 2>with him begins, because Van Kolker is a smart man.

0:23:33.760 --> 0:23:37.000
<v Speaker 2>He was not an advocate for war, but he serves,

0:23:37.080 --> 0:23:41.480
<v Speaker 2>and he serves enthusiastically and without great disgust, and even

0:23:41.480 --> 0:23:43.080
<v Speaker 2>till they have an argument at one point and van

0:23:43.160 --> 0:23:45.600
<v Speaker 2>Kalker is like, look, if the state has to break

0:23:45.880 --> 0:23:48.800
<v Speaker 2>commits some minor illegality in order to win the war,

0:23:48.960 --> 0:23:52.199
<v Speaker 2>that's okay. And Carl's like, what the fuck. That's not

0:23:52.240 --> 0:23:54.280
<v Speaker 2>what you taught me at all, Like this isn't how

0:23:54.280 --> 0:23:57.000
<v Speaker 2>it's supposed to work, and he writes he has become

0:23:57.160 --> 0:24:02.320
<v Speaker 2>unfaithful to himself. It interesting. Schmid's private musings during this

0:24:02.359 --> 0:24:07.120
<v Speaker 2>period read almost like protest literature quote. I was mad

0:24:07.160 --> 0:24:10.240
<v Speaker 2>with anger about the Prussians, about militarism. I felt like

0:24:10.280 --> 0:24:14.200
<v Speaker 2>committing the most ostentatious insubordinations. So he's like, I really

0:24:14.320 --> 0:24:18.440
<v Speaker 2>wanted to rebel, but he doesn't. Obviously he's not that guy.

0:24:19.760 --> 0:24:22.200
<v Speaker 2>As part of his early service, he goes to Dacau,

0:24:22.280 --> 0:24:24.320
<v Speaker 2>which at that point we know what Daca is going

0:24:24.400 --> 0:24:26.560
<v Speaker 2>to be later it's a munition's plant at this stage.

0:24:27.000 --> 0:24:29.280
<v Speaker 2>And he writes and he's talking about like looking at

0:24:29.600 --> 0:24:32.600
<v Speaker 2>the conditions in these arms factories, and he says, how

0:24:32.600 --> 0:24:35.359
<v Speaker 2>ghastly for an individual to be sitting in such a prison.

0:24:36.119 --> 0:24:37.960
<v Speaker 2>And it's interesting to be that, like that's his attitude

0:24:38.000 --> 0:24:41.040
<v Speaker 2>about Dacau when it's like an arms facility. But he

0:24:41.160 --> 0:24:43.320
<v Speaker 2>is going to be one of the early. You know

0:24:43.480 --> 0:24:48.080
<v Speaker 2>people who helps to fill up concentration camps. Yeah.

0:24:48.760 --> 0:24:51.720
<v Speaker 3>Interesting, and that means that he had the skill set

0:24:51.840 --> 0:24:55.679
<v Speaker 3>to do that, yes, and the yeah, the personality to

0:24:55.720 --> 0:24:57.360
<v Speaker 3>do it, yes, wild.

0:24:57.119 --> 0:24:59.920
<v Speaker 2>But also the ability to understand that something considerably less

0:25:00.080 --> 0:25:03.200
<v Speaker 2>awful than dock out the concentration camp is still bad.

0:25:04.000 --> 0:25:06.919
<v Speaker 2>So theoretically the ability to understand, like what he was

0:25:06.960 --> 0:25:10.960
<v Speaker 2>doing and putting helping to put people in dockout was wrong. Anyway,

0:25:11.680 --> 0:25:14.320
<v Speaker 2>speaking of Nope.

0:25:14.240 --> 0:25:17.560
<v Speaker 1>No ads, Jesus Christ, we're.

0:25:17.359 --> 0:25:19.439
<v Speaker 2>Not doing good with the ad transition today. People.

0:25:20.040 --> 0:25:22.480
<v Speaker 1>It's kind of hard on a subject like this.

0:25:22.840 --> 0:25:26.400
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, this is my favorite producer on air host Dynamic

0:25:26.440 --> 0:25:27.600
<v Speaker 3>by the way I've ever seen.

0:25:30.760 --> 0:25:31.800
<v Speaker 2>It's just bummed.

0:25:32.960 --> 0:25:34.359
<v Speaker 1>This is just us in real life.

0:25:35.320 --> 0:25:38.719
<v Speaker 3>Anyway, Enough about concentration camps. Here's the word from the Gap?

0:25:39.200 --> 0:25:42.000
<v Speaker 3>Are you worry from baby Gap?

0:25:43.080 --> 0:25:43.679
<v Speaker 2>The Gap?

0:25:43.840 --> 0:25:45.320
<v Speaker 1>I do wish it was the gap?

0:25:46.760 --> 0:25:48.240
<v Speaker 5>You wish it was the gap, But it's going to

0:25:48.320 --> 0:25:51.560
<v Speaker 5>be something so much worse that we're not even aware of.

0:25:51.960 --> 0:25:54.520
<v Speaker 2>I don't know. Is there anything worse than the gap? Yes,

0:25:54.560 --> 0:26:01.800
<v Speaker 2>probably all the things we're about to talk about. So

0:26:02.160 --> 0:26:05.679
<v Speaker 2>the war ends in nineteen eighteen and Schmid's relief is

0:26:05.760 --> 0:26:08.399
<v Speaker 2>tempered by what appeared to be like the dissolution of

0:26:08.440 --> 0:26:11.720
<v Speaker 2>the German state. Germany is falling apart as soon as

0:26:11.920 --> 0:26:16.240
<v Speaker 2>there's like a peace happens, and this whole order, the

0:26:16.320 --> 0:26:18.600
<v Speaker 2>legal order that his whole life been based on, looks

0:26:18.600 --> 0:26:21.200
<v Speaker 2>like it's just going to crumble, Like the legal code

0:26:21.240 --> 0:26:24.240
<v Speaker 2>is going to be gone, the government, the Kaiser's already gone.

0:26:24.359 --> 0:26:27.000
<v Speaker 2>What the fuck's going to be left? And part of

0:26:27.040 --> 0:26:30.360
<v Speaker 2>what's happening is that there is a socialist revolution right

0:26:30.440 --> 0:26:34.600
<v Speaker 2>after peace that like comes pretty close to succeeding in

0:26:34.640 --> 0:26:38.439
<v Speaker 2>some areas. Units of demobilized soldiers the Frei Corps cracked

0:26:38.480 --> 0:26:41.920
<v Speaker 2>down and start massacring leftist intellectuals with the direct endorsement

0:26:41.960 --> 0:26:44.720
<v Speaker 2>of the right and the tacit support of social democratic

0:26:44.760 --> 0:26:47.560
<v Speaker 2>politicians who are like, yeah, it's ugly, but we otherwise

0:26:47.600 --> 0:26:50.239
<v Speaker 2>we won't get to have our democratic state if we

0:26:50.280 --> 0:26:52.120
<v Speaker 2>don't let you know, if we don't let the right

0:26:52.280 --> 0:26:55.480
<v Speaker 2>murder all of these leftists. Schmidt is lecturing at a

0:26:55.560 --> 0:26:58.000
<v Speaker 2>university by this point, and during the late war years

0:26:58.040 --> 0:27:00.440
<v Speaker 2>he'd begun to receive pay for his work as an actademic.

0:27:01.040 --> 0:27:04.439
<v Speaker 2>His office was broken into by what Balakrishnan describes as

0:27:04.480 --> 0:27:07.760
<v Speaker 2>a band of revolutionaries who are just like, yeah, a

0:27:07.760 --> 0:27:10.879
<v Speaker 2>bunch of young people who are trying to like overthrow

0:27:10.960 --> 0:27:13.600
<v Speaker 2>the local government. And while he's at a cafe, an

0:27:13.640 --> 0:27:16.520
<v Speaker 2>officer sitting next to him at a table gets assassinated,

0:27:17.040 --> 0:27:20.560
<v Speaker 2>and he reacts by growing terrified of disorder. It's not

0:27:20.640 --> 0:27:23.879
<v Speaker 2>just that he's like horrified by these revolutionary moments that

0:27:23.880 --> 0:27:27.760
<v Speaker 2>are so chaotic and scary. He also recognizes, oh, when

0:27:27.800 --> 0:27:33.040
<v Speaker 2>things fall apart, you have the chance to dramatically remake society,

0:27:33.200 --> 0:27:36.600
<v Speaker 2>including the chance to remake the law and the concept

0:27:36.600 --> 0:27:38.959
<v Speaker 2>of order, maybe in a way that makes more sense.

0:27:39.960 --> 0:27:41.879
<v Speaker 2>And that's what he's thinking at the time. And so

0:27:42.320 --> 0:27:46.639
<v Speaker 2>it's also noteworthy that even though he doesn't like the leftist,

0:27:46.960 --> 0:27:49.640
<v Speaker 2>you know, kind of uprisings that are happening, they scare him.

0:27:50.040 --> 0:27:53.280
<v Speaker 2>He's not an obsessive anti Marxist at this point either,

0:27:53.400 --> 0:27:56.640
<v Speaker 2>And in fact, Balachristian notes that it's there's not really

0:27:56.680 --> 0:27:59.320
<v Speaker 2>any anti Marxism in his writings from this period, which

0:27:59.320 --> 0:28:03.159
<v Speaker 2>he describes as quite simply puzzling. It's like, really weird that,

0:28:03.200 --> 0:28:05.639
<v Speaker 2>given how he felt about this, he didn't go on

0:28:05.680 --> 0:28:08.560
<v Speaker 2>any rants about Marxism. It's just kind of an odd

0:28:08.720 --> 0:28:11.199
<v Speaker 2>fact here, and it may have something to do with

0:28:11.240 --> 0:28:13.320
<v Speaker 2>the fact that he sees this as more a structural

0:28:13.359 --> 0:28:15.359
<v Speaker 2>thing of like, well, yeah, it's the left doing it

0:28:15.440 --> 0:28:19.120
<v Speaker 2>right now, but when things collapse, opportunity is made for

0:28:19.440 --> 0:28:22.919
<v Speaker 2>people of radical beliefs, and so it's the factor. The

0:28:22.960 --> 0:28:25.640
<v Speaker 2>reality of collapse is more to blame for than anything,

0:28:25.960 --> 0:28:29.359
<v Speaker 2>and he's more interested than like ranting about the left.

0:28:29.400 --> 0:28:32.640
<v Speaker 2>He's more interested in figuring out how to take advantage

0:28:32.760 --> 0:28:37.200
<v Speaker 2>of those moments right now. This period of chaos would

0:28:37.200 --> 0:28:42.040
<v Speaker 2>inspire his first great and truly influential book, Political Romanticism,

0:28:42.120 --> 0:28:46.120
<v Speaker 2>published in nineteen nineteen. This is a pre fascist work,

0:28:46.200 --> 0:28:49.480
<v Speaker 2>because again, fascism isn't really off the ground all the

0:28:49.480 --> 0:28:52.280
<v Speaker 2>way yet. Of what we would call fascist polemics, he's

0:28:52.320 --> 0:28:55.600
<v Speaker 2>basically listing all of the ideologies that exist in the

0:28:55.600 --> 0:28:59.280
<v Speaker 2>world at the time, from socialism and monarchism to liberalism,

0:28:59.640 --> 0:29:04.760
<v Speaker 2>as flawed. He calls them dead romanticism right like these are,

0:29:04.800 --> 0:29:08.360
<v Speaker 2>and he calls conservatism that right. Conservatism is just this

0:29:08.520 --> 0:29:13.960
<v Speaker 2>dead romantic idea right in fact, expresses nothing but contempt

0:29:13.960 --> 0:29:17.520
<v Speaker 2>for conservative reactionaries who in that period sought the Kaiser's return,

0:29:17.600 --> 0:29:20.160
<v Speaker 2>So he's like, you're just looking back on a period

0:29:20.160 --> 0:29:23.440
<v Speaker 2>that was never very good and you're not serious thinkers, right.

0:29:23.920 --> 0:29:26.320
<v Speaker 2>But he's also looking at the liberals in Weimar and

0:29:26.360 --> 0:29:30.440
<v Speaker 2>being like, well, you're idolizing this democracy that number one

0:29:30.640 --> 0:29:33.440
<v Speaker 2>was birthed in blood, and number two isn't going to

0:29:33.480 --> 0:29:38.440
<v Speaker 2>succeed in fixing anything. Now. The core of Schmid's rage

0:29:38.560 --> 0:29:41.160
<v Speaker 2>is reserved not for the political class, but for the

0:29:41.240 --> 0:29:43.960
<v Speaker 2>kind of bohemian artists and creatives who'd made up his

0:29:44.040 --> 0:29:46.960
<v Speaker 2>pre war friend and social circle. We might see this

0:29:47.040 --> 0:29:49.360
<v Speaker 2>as an early attack on the same sort of like

0:29:49.560 --> 0:29:52.800
<v Speaker 2>shallow Hollywood liberal elites that would become such a hallmark

0:29:52.840 --> 0:29:55.480
<v Speaker 2>of conservative politics in our era. And I want to

0:29:55.520 --> 0:29:57.760
<v Speaker 2>quote from an article on the power of Karl Schmidt

0:29:57.760 --> 0:30:02.000
<v Speaker 2>by Richard Cohen. Schmidt reduced and attacked all contemporary political

0:30:02.080 --> 0:30:05.840
<v Speaker 2>art alternatives to fascism, especially liberalism, but also socialism as

0:30:05.920 --> 0:30:09.480
<v Speaker 2>mere romanticism because of their attachment to free speech, discussion,

0:30:09.520 --> 0:30:13.760
<v Speaker 2>and hence parliamentarianism, which smidt owing to his decisionism, dismissed

0:30:13.760 --> 0:30:17.200
<v Speaker 2>his empty chatter, asking a deeper inability to decide. He

0:30:17.280 --> 0:30:20.280
<v Speaker 2>labels such politics romantic for the same reason, because the

0:30:20.360 --> 0:30:24.920
<v Speaker 2>romantics are essentially indecisive esteats, fluttering from one fashion to another,

0:30:25.080 --> 0:30:29.400
<v Speaker 2>always stimulated and excited, but never committed and engaged. So

0:30:30.320 --> 0:30:33.280
<v Speaker 2>that's kind of interesting to me that he is he's

0:30:33.360 --> 0:30:37.960
<v Speaker 2>rejecting all of these different belief systems as based in

0:30:38.200 --> 0:30:41.000
<v Speaker 2>sorts of fantasies about how things should be and not

0:30:41.440 --> 0:30:44.840
<v Speaker 2>a real understanding of how people are right. That's the

0:30:44.920 --> 0:30:46.680
<v Speaker 2>conclusion he's come to at this point.

0:30:48.080 --> 0:30:52.680
<v Speaker 3>He is a fantasizer himself. It's so interesting, like how prone.

0:30:52.480 --> 0:30:57.520
<v Speaker 3>He's not the first fascist who's prone to fantasy and no, no,

0:30:57.640 --> 0:31:00.880
<v Speaker 3>it is interesting the contradictions with him. Yeah, oh, like

0:31:01.240 --> 0:31:03.480
<v Speaker 3>everything has to be rule of law, you know, like

0:31:03.600 --> 0:31:06.200
<v Speaker 3>you are not a productive member of society unless you're

0:31:06.240 --> 0:31:10.239
<v Speaker 3>serving the state. Also, you know, like my wife is

0:31:10.560 --> 0:31:14.040
<v Speaker 3>a you know, like she's not she's but she's yeah,

0:31:14.040 --> 0:31:16.520
<v Speaker 3>she's a countess. She's a countess. Countess is Yeah.

0:31:16.600 --> 0:31:18.920
<v Speaker 2>It's also interesting he has this experience of like, ah,

0:31:18.960 --> 0:31:20.840
<v Speaker 2>all that matters is what you do as part of

0:31:20.880 --> 0:31:24.320
<v Speaker 2>the state, and then it's like, oh wait, that sucks ass,

0:31:24.320 --> 0:31:26.320
<v Speaker 2>And it's like yeah, because you had a romantic view

0:31:26.360 --> 0:31:28.600
<v Speaker 2>of what that meant, that was proven wrong, and he's

0:31:28.640 --> 0:31:31.520
<v Speaker 2>started attacking his enemies for being like romantics but unable

0:31:31.520 --> 0:31:33.080
<v Speaker 2>to see that strain in himself.

0:31:33.520 --> 0:31:36.200
<v Speaker 3>And he's like a professor, like that's not Yeah, he's

0:31:36.200 --> 0:31:39.000
<v Speaker 3>not serving the state either, you know, Like so, yeah,

0:31:39.040 --> 0:31:40.040
<v Speaker 3>it's interesting now.

0:31:40.040 --> 0:31:42.560
<v Speaker 2>But again he is always looking at people. He always

0:31:42.600 --> 0:31:45.440
<v Speaker 2>he's always seeing real problems, Like among this class of

0:31:45.520 --> 0:31:50.000
<v Speaker 2>like artists and celebrities in Berlin, he sees how kind

0:31:50.000 --> 0:31:53.960
<v Speaker 2>of hollow they're they're signaling at these democratic values are

0:31:54.040 --> 0:31:57.640
<v Speaker 2>and concludes the most important source of political vitality is

0:31:57.680 --> 0:32:02.160
<v Speaker 2>the belief in justice and an indignation of injustice. He

0:32:02.360 --> 0:32:05.560
<v Speaker 2>notes that what's important is not like how either of

0:32:05.600 --> 0:32:08.719
<v Speaker 2>them are defined, but that they have a definition and

0:32:08.800 --> 0:32:11.440
<v Speaker 2>stick to it. Like Schmidt, he's kind of got this

0:32:11.520 --> 0:32:14.040
<v Speaker 2>Walter subcheck from the big Lebowski attitude of like you

0:32:14.080 --> 0:32:15.880
<v Speaker 2>gotta have an ethos. It doesn't matter what it is,

0:32:15.920 --> 0:32:17.400
<v Speaker 2>as long as you spell it out right.

0:32:17.520 --> 0:32:20.360
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, yeah, just write it down. As long as

0:32:20.360 --> 0:32:22.200
<v Speaker 3>it's written down. It can be whatever the hell you want.

0:32:22.080 --> 0:32:23.600
<v Speaker 2>As long as it's written down right.

0:32:23.800 --> 0:32:24.240
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.

0:32:24.560 --> 0:32:26.720
<v Speaker 2>This book marks the last time in his career that

0:32:26.760 --> 0:32:29.480
<v Speaker 2>Schmidt centered ethics in any way For the remainder of

0:32:29.480 --> 0:32:31.960
<v Speaker 2>his decades as a jurist and legal philosopher. He is

0:32:32.000 --> 0:32:35.480
<v Speaker 2>interested only in power, and as the postwar years become

0:32:35.520 --> 0:32:38.800
<v Speaker 2>the twenties, Mussolini marches on Rome and fascism becomes the

0:32:38.880 --> 0:32:42.120
<v Speaker 2>name on every tongue. Europe begins at slow drive to

0:32:42.160 --> 0:32:45.160
<v Speaker 2>the brink, and Schmidt is initially distracted by the collapse

0:32:45.200 --> 0:32:48.520
<v Speaker 2>of his marriage to an extremely obvious KHN woman, and

0:32:48.960 --> 0:32:51.760
<v Speaker 2>you know, things sour and Carl kind of finds out

0:32:51.800 --> 0:32:54.120
<v Speaker 2>that car Carrie's been lying to him the whole time.

0:32:55.000 --> 0:32:57.200
<v Speaker 2>It takes ten years, but in nineteen twenty two he

0:32:57.280 --> 0:32:59.880
<v Speaker 2>files for an annulment on the grounds of wilful descent.

0:33:00.120 --> 0:33:02.840
<v Speaker 1>It took ten years, ten years.

0:33:02.560 --> 0:33:04.640
<v Speaker 2>And ten years to realize that he's been had.

0:33:05.560 --> 0:33:07.320
<v Speaker 3>She's the hero of this, by the way.

0:33:07.440 --> 0:33:08.080
<v Speaker 2>She is good.

0:33:08.320 --> 0:33:10.280
<v Speaker 3>She's amazing. Yeah, she's the best.

0:33:10.560 --> 0:33:13.320
<v Speaker 2>I hope she has a good life after this too.

0:33:13.520 --> 0:33:16.520
<v Speaker 1>Carl ten years, my guy, ten years.

0:33:16.680 --> 0:33:17.960
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, Carl's sweetheart.

0:33:18.240 --> 0:33:20.880
<v Speaker 1>Oh boy, heab what's good?

0:33:21.800 --> 0:33:22.680
<v Speaker 3>I love Carl?

0:33:23.040 --> 0:33:25.720
<v Speaker 2>Ten years of like, sorry, I left my real passport

0:33:25.760 --> 0:33:29.800
<v Speaker 2>and my other skirt or whatever. The Catholic Church is

0:33:29.800 --> 0:33:33.800
<v Speaker 2>not thrilled with his annulment and Carl proves his fundamental

0:33:33.920 --> 0:33:38.280
<v Speaker 2>messiness when sure, while while he's getting annulled, while they're

0:33:38.280 --> 0:33:42.600
<v Speaker 2>doing having like divorce proceedings in court, he meets this

0:33:42.760 --> 0:33:46.080
<v Speaker 2>nineteen year old Serbian girl named Dushka who's like the

0:33:46.200 --> 0:33:50.560
<v Speaker 2>translator who's like translating for his wife in court. He

0:33:51.480 --> 0:33:52.640
<v Speaker 2>starts dating her.

0:33:54.880 --> 0:33:56.600
<v Speaker 1>Is this an episode of Sex and the City?

0:33:56.640 --> 0:34:01.560
<v Speaker 2>Come on, I've heard this before. Yeah, describes Karl as

0:34:01.600 --> 0:34:04.840
<v Speaker 2>living in a quote erotic state of exception, during which

0:34:04.880 --> 0:34:07.920
<v Speaker 2>he continued to cheat with his second wife on multiple

0:34:07.920 --> 0:34:11.160
<v Speaker 2>women right, Like he's he's writing about the law. He's

0:34:11.160 --> 0:34:14.719
<v Speaker 2>writing about like the importance of you know, spelling out

0:34:14.800 --> 0:34:16.960
<v Speaker 2>who you are and what you do and not deviating

0:34:16.960 --> 0:34:19.320
<v Speaker 2>from it. And he is cheating on his second wife.

0:34:19.640 --> 0:34:22.000
<v Speaker 2>And he keeps a diary. Again, this is another thing

0:34:22.040 --> 0:34:24.759
<v Speaker 2>that fascist today, I'll do. He keeps a diary of

0:34:24.800 --> 0:34:31.640
<v Speaker 2>every time he comes, like he's like he's charting his ejaculations.

0:34:31.960 --> 0:34:34.600
<v Speaker 2>His motherfucker would have been no fap so fucking hard

0:34:34.880 --> 0:34:36.360
<v Speaker 2>or like, I don't know what is their speaker of

0:34:36.360 --> 0:34:38.840
<v Speaker 2>the house who like talks about when he comes and

0:34:38.880 --> 0:34:41.760
<v Speaker 2>doesn't with his son, like he's they're all this.

0:34:41.760 --> 0:34:44.799
<v Speaker 1>Guy, don't do that. Don't do that.

0:34:45.480 --> 0:34:46.760
<v Speaker 2>You don't need that data.

0:34:47.680 --> 0:34:50.920
<v Speaker 5>No, maybe maybe if you were busy or paying attention.

0:34:50.960 --> 0:34:53.760
<v Speaker 5>What was going on, Carla when I've taken you ten years?

0:34:55.040 --> 0:34:58.680
<v Speaker 5>God stop, just I'm gonna stop.

0:34:58.960 --> 0:34:59.640
<v Speaker 2>Just stop.

0:35:00.600 --> 0:35:02.040
<v Speaker 1>I was gonna go on a longer ramp, but I

0:35:02.040 --> 0:35:03.800
<v Speaker 1>remember it. Stop as a couplet epits.

0:35:03.960 --> 0:35:05.560
<v Speaker 3>You can stop. Stop.

0:35:06.160 --> 0:35:09.239
<v Speaker 2>So he's gotten his marriage and old to the con artist.

0:35:09.320 --> 0:35:11.839
<v Speaker 2>He's dating a teenager. He's writing in a journal every

0:35:11.880 --> 0:35:14.440
<v Speaker 2>time he comes. He's just living his best life.

0:35:14.560 --> 0:35:15.600
<v Speaker 1>Jesus Christ.

0:35:16.040 --> 0:35:19.480
<v Speaker 3>That journal may have sold better than that satire magazine.

0:35:20.680 --> 0:35:22.960
<v Speaker 2>It's gotta be in his letters. I mean, because it

0:35:22.960 --> 0:35:25.560
<v Speaker 2>gets referenced by marrying I am. I really wish he

0:35:25.680 --> 0:35:29.120
<v Speaker 2>just included an extensive like quotation from it.

0:35:29.520 --> 0:35:30.279
<v Speaker 3>Here's an ex serp.

0:35:30.560 --> 0:35:33.200
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, as someone who washes their hands a lot.

0:35:33.280 --> 0:35:34.600
<v Speaker 1>I hope he did, because.

0:35:35.520 --> 0:35:36.680
<v Speaker 2>They didn't believe in that back then.

0:35:36.680 --> 0:35:39.800
<v Speaker 3>I have terrible news, ie you he did it. Journal?

0:35:39.920 --> 0:35:43.040
<v Speaker 2>That journal is yeah, sticky pages.

0:35:43.960 --> 0:35:46.520
<v Speaker 1>That was unfortunately, that was my first thought.

0:35:46.600 --> 0:35:50.279
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. No, So Schmidt, while this is all happening after

0:35:50.320 --> 0:35:52.600
<v Speaker 2>he gets divorced, he's watching the early days of the

0:35:52.680 --> 0:35:55.760
<v Speaker 2>Nazi Party right twenty two is when he gets divorced.

0:35:55.760 --> 0:35:59.000
<v Speaker 2>Twenty three is the beer hall puts yeah, which fails,

0:35:59.080 --> 0:36:00.560
<v Speaker 2>and a lot of people think, well, that's it for

0:36:00.600 --> 0:36:04.960
<v Speaker 2>them Nazis, and Karl is not initially interested in joining

0:36:05.000 --> 0:36:07.759
<v Speaker 2>or supporting the movement. He's like, these people seem like Yahoo's.

0:36:08.360 --> 0:36:11.400
<v Speaker 2>What he does do is increasingly analyze and start to

0:36:11.400 --> 0:36:14.600
<v Speaker 2>pick out the obvious flaws in the democratic system of Weimar,

0:36:14.960 --> 0:36:16.640
<v Speaker 2>and he begins to lay out in a book a

0:36:16.680 --> 0:36:21.480
<v Speaker 2>theory for exactly why liberal democracy is doomed and how

0:36:21.520 --> 0:36:24.840
<v Speaker 2>the right can take advantage of these fundamental holes in

0:36:24.920 --> 0:36:30.319
<v Speaker 2>liberal democracy to smash liberalism, gain power and destroy democracy.

0:36:30.840 --> 0:36:34.320
<v Speaker 2>In nineteen twenty three, the year that putsch Schmidt writes

0:36:34.400 --> 0:36:37.840
<v Speaker 2>this about the post war Wilsonian order imposed on Europe,

0:36:38.400 --> 0:36:40.720
<v Speaker 2>the history of political and state theory in the nineteenth

0:36:40.719 --> 0:36:43.440
<v Speaker 2>century could be summarized with a single phrase, the triumphal

0:36:43.440 --> 0:36:46.920
<v Speaker 2>march of democracy. No state in the Western European cultural

0:36:46.920 --> 0:36:50.799
<v Speaker 2>world withstood the extension of democratic ideals and institutions. And

0:36:50.840 --> 0:36:53.160
<v Speaker 2>he writes this in like a mournful way, right that

0:36:53.400 --> 0:36:56.000
<v Speaker 2>it's almost like you can't stop it, and you know

0:36:56.080 --> 0:36:59.160
<v Speaker 2>you've got Mussolini by this point in Italy, but Hitler

0:36:59.239 --> 0:37:02.759
<v Speaker 2>is seen as like an upstart, weirdo discontent, and there

0:37:02.800 --> 0:37:06.080
<v Speaker 2>is this attitude that like democracy is obviously on the march,

0:37:06.760 --> 0:37:09.799
<v Speaker 2>and Schmidt he picks out, he's like, looking at this

0:37:09.880 --> 0:37:12.080
<v Speaker 2>the way fucking the rebels are looking at the death

0:37:12.120 --> 0:37:15.560
<v Speaker 2>Star plans. And he finds a vulnerability in liberal democracy

0:37:15.560 --> 0:37:18.480
<v Speaker 2>that's easy to exploit, and he writes his next book

0:37:18.520 --> 0:37:21.719
<v Speaker 2>about it. That book is called The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy,

0:37:22.239 --> 0:37:26.000
<v Speaker 2>and it comes out alongside economic and social chaos that's

0:37:26.160 --> 0:37:30.080
<v Speaker 2>gripping Weimar right. And I'm going to quote from Richard

0:37:30.080 --> 0:37:33.040
<v Speaker 2>Cohen here. The new crisis of democracy, he argued, stem

0:37:33.200 --> 0:37:36.880
<v Speaker 2>precisely from its victory over monarchy. During that struggle, democracy

0:37:36.920 --> 0:37:40.040
<v Speaker 2>and liberalism were basically co extensive. To believe in popular

0:37:40.120 --> 0:37:42.600
<v Speaker 2>sovereignty was to believe in the necessity of the replacement

0:37:42.640 --> 0:37:46.960
<v Speaker 2>of absolute monarchy with regime characterized by elections, free public debate,

0:37:47.040 --> 0:37:50.120
<v Speaker 2>and legal rights. But in Schmid's mind, this connection is

0:37:50.200 --> 0:37:54.359
<v Speaker 2>far more historical happenstance than conceptual necessity, and that democracy

0:37:54.400 --> 0:37:57.439
<v Speaker 2>properly construed cannot be seen as requiring rights and even

0:37:57.600 --> 0:38:01.040
<v Speaker 2>universal suffrage in the way that liberals understand them. A

0:38:01.080 --> 0:38:04.680
<v Speaker 2>government is democratic, Schmidt argues, if it bases its legitimacy

0:38:04.680 --> 0:38:07.360
<v Speaker 2>on support from the people's will. But this depends on

0:38:07.400 --> 0:38:10.000
<v Speaker 2>how you define the people and choose to assess their will.

0:38:10.400 --> 0:38:15.480
<v Speaker 2>Every democracy depends on excluding some people, most notably foreigners,

0:38:15.640 --> 0:38:18.680
<v Speaker 2>from participating in the selection of its leaders. That means,

0:38:18.719 --> 0:38:23.480
<v Speaker 2>by definition, no democracy rests on universal human equality before

0:38:23.520 --> 0:38:27.920
<v Speaker 2>the law. Instead, the idea of equality and democracy really

0:38:27.960 --> 0:38:31.400
<v Speaker 2>means equality amongst the people in a political community that

0:38:31.520 --> 0:38:35.480
<v Speaker 2>shares a certain identity and core agreements. There has never

0:38:35.520 --> 0:38:38.400
<v Speaker 2>been a democracy that did not recognize the concept foreign

0:38:38.520 --> 0:38:40.799
<v Speaker 2>and that could have realized the equality of all men,

0:38:40.920 --> 0:38:43.000
<v Speaker 2>he wrote in a nineteen twenty six preface to the

0:38:43.040 --> 0:38:46.640
<v Speaker 2>second edition of his book, Every actual democracy rests on

0:38:46.640 --> 0:38:50.040
<v Speaker 2>the principle that not only are equals equal, but unequals

0:38:50.120 --> 0:38:55.720
<v Speaker 2>will not be treated equally. Democracy requires, therefore, first homogeneity, and, second,

0:38:55.760 --> 0:39:01.640
<v Speaker 2>if the need arises, elimination and eradication of heterogenea. Do

0:39:01.719 --> 0:39:03.279
<v Speaker 2>you see what he's saying here.

0:39:03.320 --> 0:39:07.239
<v Speaker 3>Son of a bitch, right? It's son of a bitch right?

0:39:08.280 --> 0:39:10.920
<v Speaker 2>A couple things are fascinating to me. Number one, with

0:39:11.000 --> 0:39:13.560
<v Speaker 2>the exception to the fact that he endorses this This

0:39:13.719 --> 0:39:18.520
<v Speaker 2>is essentially how anarchists talk about borders, right. The maintenance

0:39:18.520 --> 0:39:21.640
<v Speaker 2>of every border implies violence. And this is both physical

0:39:21.680 --> 0:39:24.640
<v Speaker 2>borders like the border between us in Mexico, and like

0:39:24.680 --> 0:39:27.000
<v Speaker 2>what you're seeing right now with the attempt to legislate

0:39:27.080 --> 0:39:29.720
<v Speaker 2>like what counts as a woman with all these anti

0:39:29.719 --> 0:39:32.919
<v Speaker 2>trans things. Both of those borders are maintained by men

0:39:32.920 --> 0:39:36.040
<v Speaker 2>with guns, with violence. There's the threat of violence behind

0:39:36.040 --> 0:39:39.040
<v Speaker 2>building every one of those borders. If you cross this border,

0:39:39.320 --> 0:39:41.920
<v Speaker 2>or at least cross it in the wrong way, force

0:39:41.960 --> 0:39:45.840
<v Speaker 2>will be used against you. Every democracy does this, and

0:39:45.920 --> 0:39:47.560
<v Speaker 2>it does this not just in terms of who can

0:39:47.680 --> 0:39:50.080
<v Speaker 2>enter the country, but who gets to vote. And so

0:39:50.600 --> 0:39:52.560
<v Speaker 2>even if you have you're saying nice things in your

0:39:52.560 --> 0:39:54.880
<v Speaker 2>constitution about these are universal rights of men. These are

0:39:54.960 --> 0:39:57.000
<v Speaker 2>rights that extend to everyone. These aren't just rights that

0:39:57.040 --> 0:39:59.200
<v Speaker 2>extend to people who are citizens in the country. These

0:39:59.239 --> 0:40:03.480
<v Speaker 2>are universal rights that our society universally recognizes. That doesn't

0:40:03.520 --> 0:40:08.240
<v Speaker 2>necessarily mean squat because what you do is the reactionary

0:40:08.640 --> 0:40:12.279
<v Speaker 2>is you find that border wherever it exists, and you

0:40:12.320 --> 0:40:16.239
<v Speaker 2>start pushing inward. And as you start pushing inward from

0:40:16.239 --> 0:40:22.080
<v Speaker 2>that border, you will start fracturing the democratic consensus that

0:40:22.200 --> 0:40:26.359
<v Speaker 2>exists until you can destroy democracy. And that's how you

0:40:26.400 --> 0:40:30.200
<v Speaker 2>gain power as a reactionary movement within a liberal That's

0:40:30.200 --> 0:40:33.399
<v Speaker 2>how you destroy liberalism. You find the border that they

0:40:33.520 --> 0:40:38.239
<v Speaker 2>placed and you start pushing inwards. Right, that's what Carl realizes,

0:40:38.440 --> 0:40:41.080
<v Speaker 2>and that's what he lays out, and it works today

0:40:41.160 --> 0:40:42.520
<v Speaker 2>as well as it did back then.

0:40:43.600 --> 0:40:49.560
<v Speaker 3>She's got the chills, Jesus. Yeah, oh boy, oh boy,

0:40:50.440 --> 0:40:54.560
<v Speaker 3>it's great. Yeah, it's wonderous. That's right.

0:40:56.520 --> 0:41:00.480
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, No, he's he has accurately identified a flaw

0:41:00.600 --> 0:41:04.120
<v Speaker 2>in the system and how to exploit it. He writes,

0:41:04.239 --> 0:41:07.160
<v Speaker 2>quote democracy and liberalism could be allied to each other

0:41:07.239 --> 0:41:09.280
<v Speaker 2>for a time, but as soon as it achieves power,

0:41:09.320 --> 0:41:12.480
<v Speaker 2>liberal democracy must decide between its elements. The crisis of

0:41:12.520 --> 0:41:14.800
<v Speaker 2>the modern state arises from the fact that no state

0:41:14.840 --> 0:41:19.280
<v Speaker 2>can realize a mass democracy and democracy of mankind. Maybe

0:41:19.280 --> 0:41:21.560
<v Speaker 2>he'll prove right about that in the future. Maybe he won't.

0:41:21.560 --> 0:41:27.000
<v Speaker 2>But we've never tried right. Ultimately, we haven't. The most

0:41:27.040 --> 0:41:31.000
<v Speaker 2>potent part of Cohen's essay, he described Schmidt's academic work

0:41:31.040 --> 0:41:34.160
<v Speaker 2>in the late nineteen twenties as creating a blueprint quote

0:41:34.200 --> 0:41:38.560
<v Speaker 2>adaptable virtually anywhere for using reactionary politics to gain control

0:41:38.600 --> 0:41:41.319
<v Speaker 2>of a destroyed democracy from the inside while pretending to

0:41:41.360 --> 0:41:45.120
<v Speaker 2>be in service of that democracy. Now, elements of this

0:41:45.200 --> 0:41:48.280
<v Speaker 2>had been discussed by several thinkers, particularly in the context

0:41:48.320 --> 0:41:51.320
<v Speaker 2>of the US during the era of slavery, but Schmid's

0:41:51.360 --> 0:41:54.000
<v Speaker 2>big one of his big contributions is that he recognizes

0:41:54.400 --> 0:41:58.160
<v Speaker 2>race and religion can be used to push that border in.

0:41:58.600 --> 0:42:00.759
<v Speaker 2>But they don't matter. That's not the only way to

0:42:00.800 --> 0:42:05.040
<v Speaker 2>delineate the enemy. All the matters that you are delineating

0:42:05.080 --> 0:42:08.040
<v Speaker 2>an enemy, right and pulling them out of being considered

0:42:08.080 --> 0:42:11.560
<v Speaker 2>part of the body politic. They can be Jews, they

0:42:11.600 --> 0:42:13.720
<v Speaker 2>can be black, they could be trans they can be whoever.

0:42:14.200 --> 0:42:17.240
<v Speaker 2>But what matters ultimately is that you're picking an enemy,

0:42:17.560 --> 0:42:21.560
<v Speaker 2>and you are identifying them as not a part of us, right,

0:42:22.320 --> 0:42:26.960
<v Speaker 2>And that's that's the ballgame, right, and less than or

0:42:27.480 --> 0:42:31.000
<v Speaker 2>and less than you know, and a danger to us.

0:42:31.239 --> 0:42:34.239
<v Speaker 3>Right. Yes, right, So.

0:42:34.600 --> 0:42:37.160
<v Speaker 2>Schmidt argued, you know, not only that this is how

0:42:37.200 --> 0:42:40.719
<v Speaker 2>you manipulate democracy, because, unlike what liberals say, exclusion is

0:42:40.719 --> 0:42:43.600
<v Speaker 2>at the core of democratic politics. He writes this in

0:42:43.680 --> 0:42:46.480
<v Speaker 2>nineteen thirty two, in a book considered to be perhaps

0:42:46.520 --> 0:42:50.080
<v Speaker 2>the most important intellectual work of fascism's birth era, the

0:42:50.200 --> 0:42:55.040
<v Speaker 2>concept of the political quote. Every religious, moral, economic, ethical,

0:42:55.120 --> 0:42:58.319
<v Speaker 2>or other antithesis transforms into a political one if it

0:42:58.360 --> 0:43:02.680
<v Speaker 2>is sufficiently strong to human beings effectively according to friend

0:43:02.719 --> 0:43:05.560
<v Speaker 2>and enemy. So he has first this recognition of that,

0:43:05.680 --> 0:43:09.440
<v Speaker 2>like liberalism, inherently liberal democracy always draws a border, you

0:43:09.480 --> 0:43:11.600
<v Speaker 2>start pushing in him from that border, and then he

0:43:11.960 --> 0:43:14.560
<v Speaker 2>refines us to the idea that, like all politics is

0:43:14.600 --> 0:43:18.520
<v Speaker 2>about defining friend and enemy right, And that's how you

0:43:18.600 --> 0:43:21.759
<v Speaker 2>gain power, and that's how you enshrine your power right.

0:43:22.239 --> 0:43:25.640
<v Speaker 2>And once you have, once you have identified a group

0:43:25.640 --> 0:43:29.600
<v Speaker 2>of citizens as the enemy and you gain power, you

0:43:29.680 --> 0:43:32.640
<v Speaker 2>exclude them from the franchise. You turn them into a

0:43:32.640 --> 0:43:35.839
<v Speaker 2>domestic enemy, which you can then purge and destroy. And

0:43:35.880 --> 0:43:38.759
<v Speaker 2>that's how you maintain power. Per an article in The

0:43:38.800 --> 0:43:42.480
<v Speaker 2>New Statesman by Samuel Earle, that a specific distinction to

0:43:42.520 --> 0:43:45.120
<v Speaker 2>which political actions and motives can be reduced is that

0:43:45.200 --> 0:43:49.000
<v Speaker 2>between friend and enemy. Schmidt declared his fellow, anti democratic

0:43:49.040 --> 0:43:52.400
<v Speaker 2>and decorated soldier Ernst Junger described what followed as a

0:43:52.520 --> 0:43:57.439
<v Speaker 2>mind that silently explodes. For Schmidt, the friend enemy antithesis

0:43:57.480 --> 0:44:00.760
<v Speaker 2>was integral for politics in three senses. The enemy needed

0:44:00.760 --> 0:44:04.200
<v Speaker 2>to be something different in alien. Opposing such an enemy

0:44:04.280 --> 0:44:07.440
<v Speaker 2>was the essence of identity, and the implicit combat that

0:44:07.560 --> 0:44:11.600
<v Speaker 2>followed these enemies posed an existential threat. The friend, enemy

0:44:11.640 --> 0:44:14.799
<v Speaker 2>and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they

0:44:14.840 --> 0:44:18.320
<v Speaker 2>refer to the real possibility of physical killing. Schmid wrote,

0:44:18.520 --> 0:44:23.560
<v Speaker 2>war was therefore an ever present possibility. And again, the

0:44:23.640 --> 0:44:26.600
<v Speaker 2>Nazis are doing a lot of this before he writes

0:44:26.680 --> 0:44:30.560
<v Speaker 2>about it. But number one, his initial work on sort

0:44:30.560 --> 0:44:32.160
<v Speaker 2>of this strategy of how to push it on the

0:44:32.200 --> 0:44:36.680
<v Speaker 2>border influences how the Nazis proceed. But also he is

0:44:36.960 --> 0:44:41.800
<v Speaker 2>explaining what they're doing in an intellectual way that is accurate,

0:44:42.000 --> 0:44:44.840
<v Speaker 2>and doing so in a way that's also not ideological,

0:44:44.920 --> 0:44:48.080
<v Speaker 2>in that he's explaining and describing an ideology, but he's

0:44:48.080 --> 0:44:50.480
<v Speaker 2>not doing it as a Nazi propagandist. He's doing it

0:44:50.480 --> 0:44:53.319
<v Speaker 2>as an academic right, and he's doing it in a

0:44:53.320 --> 0:44:56.000
<v Speaker 2>way that provides a blueprint for other people.

0:44:56.920 --> 0:45:00.160
<v Speaker 3>That's such an interesting distinction between Game and Gerbels or

0:45:00.200 --> 0:45:01.839
<v Speaker 3>I feel like that would be you know, like kind

0:45:01.840 --> 0:45:03.640
<v Speaker 3>of the I don't want to say lazy, because this

0:45:03.719 --> 0:45:06.960
<v Speaker 3>is my Yeah, I'm making the comparison, but like my

0:45:07.120 --> 0:45:11.080
<v Speaker 3>lazy comparison where it's like Gerbels obviously, all right, let's

0:45:11.320 --> 0:45:14.520
<v Speaker 3>it's propaganda, you know, like there's more quote unquote spice

0:45:14.960 --> 0:45:17.440
<v Speaker 3>on it, where this with Schmid, it's just this is

0:45:17.440 --> 0:45:19.759
<v Speaker 3>how it works, This is why it works. Yeah, and

0:45:19.800 --> 0:45:20.719
<v Speaker 3>this is why it will work.

0:45:21.239 --> 0:45:22.920
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. And you do get kind of at the end

0:45:22.960 --> 0:45:24.960
<v Speaker 2>of this book, he does give you get a hint

0:45:25.040 --> 0:45:27.880
<v Speaker 2>of his developing ideology, and part of it why he

0:45:27.920 --> 0:45:32.000
<v Speaker 2>hates liberalism is that liberalism is an onslaught against the

0:45:32.040 --> 0:45:36.120
<v Speaker 2>political It seeks to replace conflict, which he views as natural,

0:45:36.719 --> 0:45:40.960
<v Speaker 2>with economic competition and quote perpetual discussion, and that this

0:45:41.040 --> 0:45:44.200
<v Speaker 2>doesn't end in a better society, but like kind of

0:45:44.200 --> 0:45:47.719
<v Speaker 2>a destruction of something important at the soul of humanity, right,

0:45:47.760 --> 0:45:50.600
<v Speaker 2>which is this crusade against an enemy. Right that we

0:45:50.640 --> 0:45:54.280
<v Speaker 2>almost we need this as people. We need to have enemies,

0:45:54.480 --> 0:45:57.479
<v Speaker 2>which is a fundamental part of fascism. Right, we need

0:45:57.680 --> 0:46:00.840
<v Speaker 2>enemies in order to be fully human, like an enemy

0:46:00.880 --> 0:46:04.960
<v Speaker 2>to fight, to destroy, to rally against. Now, Schmidt was

0:46:05.000 --> 0:46:08.040
<v Speaker 2>not an early Nazi. He was not a particular admirer

0:46:08.040 --> 0:46:10.840
<v Speaker 2>of Hitler. In the early nineteen twenties, he described Hitler

0:46:10.880 --> 0:46:13.879
<v Speaker 2>as a hysteric In nineteen thirty two, the same year

0:46:13.920 --> 0:46:16.680
<v Speaker 2>he published the Concept of the Political He argued that

0:46:16.719 --> 0:46:19.480
<v Speaker 2>the Weimar government could and should use the military to

0:46:19.520 --> 0:46:23.520
<v Speaker 2>destroy Nazism, but as the Nazis began taking power, he

0:46:23.640 --> 0:46:26.040
<v Speaker 2>changed his tune quickly from a mix of you know,

0:46:26.080 --> 0:46:29.560
<v Speaker 2>he wants to protect himself, but most importantly because high

0:46:29.680 --> 0:46:32.760
<v Speaker 2>ranking Nazis start to take him seriously as a thinker.

0:46:33.120 --> 0:46:35.120
<v Speaker 2>And he had been doing okay, his books had been

0:46:35.120 --> 0:46:38.600
<v Speaker 2>doing better. But he really starts to become famous because

0:46:38.880 --> 0:46:41.319
<v Speaker 2>there's some high up Nazis who like what he has

0:46:41.440 --> 0:46:44.680
<v Speaker 2>to say. And his particular backer, the guy who's going

0:46:44.719 --> 0:46:46.759
<v Speaker 2>to make him give him the opportunity to be the

0:46:46.880 --> 0:46:49.759
<v Speaker 2>rich intellectual he's always wanted to be. Right, who's going

0:46:49.800 --> 0:46:53.759
<v Speaker 2>to make his life possible is Hermann Gering. Right now,

0:46:53.840 --> 0:46:57.440
<v Speaker 2>Gering is about to be He's this World War One pilot,

0:46:57.480 --> 0:47:00.520
<v Speaker 2>like a fighter pilot hero. He literally takes over the

0:47:00.560 --> 0:47:02.960
<v Speaker 2>red Baron squadron after he gets like shot down. That's

0:47:03.000 --> 0:47:05.279
<v Speaker 2>what Garing does in the war. He gets fucked up

0:47:05.280 --> 0:47:07.880
<v Speaker 2>and horribly injured during the Munich Beer Hall push and

0:47:07.920 --> 0:47:12.440
<v Speaker 2>addicted to painkillers. Relatable there it is, But when Hitler

0:47:12.480 --> 0:47:14.920
<v Speaker 2>takes power. He's the Reich's marshal. Right, He's going to

0:47:14.960 --> 0:47:17.319
<v Speaker 2>lose favor throughout the Third Reich, but he is on

0:47:17.480 --> 0:47:20.160
<v Speaker 2>paper the guy who, if Hitler dies is supposed to

0:47:20.239 --> 0:47:22.120
<v Speaker 2>take over. Right. So that's the degree to which like

0:47:22.200 --> 0:47:25.200
<v Speaker 2>Garring is held in esteem at the start of the Reich,

0:47:26.440 --> 0:47:29.239
<v Speaker 2>and he takes a liking to Schmid's work. He's like,

0:47:29.320 --> 0:47:33.120
<v Speaker 2>this guy, this guy gets it. This guy, and we

0:47:33.160 --> 0:47:35.000
<v Speaker 2>need to bring this guy in and have him be

0:47:35.120 --> 0:47:39.440
<v Speaker 2>like our court philosopher. Right, He's kind of become because

0:47:39.600 --> 0:47:42.560
<v Speaker 2>Nazi intelligencia had been following him for a while. He's

0:47:42.600 --> 0:47:45.160
<v Speaker 2>a little bit of like a Curtis Jarvin figure, right,

0:47:45.200 --> 0:47:47.360
<v Speaker 2>where he doesn't really have as clear a goal as

0:47:47.480 --> 0:47:49.720
<v Speaker 2>Jarvin does. But there are a lot of these guys

0:47:49.719 --> 0:47:52.600
<v Speaker 2>who become Nazi intelligencia who are following him for a

0:47:52.640 --> 0:47:56.919
<v Speaker 2>while and respect him for a while. For his part,

0:47:57.040 --> 0:47:59.359
<v Speaker 2>Carl's part, once it becomes clear that the Nazis are

0:47:59.360 --> 0:48:01.759
<v Speaker 2>going to win, and he's like, well, if some of

0:48:01.760 --> 0:48:03.640
<v Speaker 2>these guys like me, I can get rich and powerful,

0:48:03.640 --> 0:48:06.440
<v Speaker 2>That's what I've always wanted. So he starts sucking up

0:48:06.480 --> 0:48:08.759
<v Speaker 2>and he writes that Gering was the right type for

0:48:08.840 --> 0:48:12.399
<v Speaker 2>these times. As he becomes a darling for the far right,

0:48:12.520 --> 0:48:15.400
<v Speaker 2>Schmidt continues to live a life well out of line

0:48:15.480 --> 0:48:17.600
<v Speaker 2>with the stated morals of the movement for which he

0:48:17.640 --> 0:48:21.520
<v Speaker 2>is becoming the chief intellectual theoretician. Per the Claremont Review

0:48:21.520 --> 0:48:25.000
<v Speaker 2>of books, Guilt and eros combined for Schmidt in Carl

0:48:25.080 --> 0:48:27.960
<v Speaker 2>Theodore Dreer's silent movie The Passion of Joan of Arc

0:48:28.280 --> 0:48:30.880
<v Speaker 2>with an almost sadistic use of close ups, Dreyer depicts

0:48:30.880 --> 0:48:33.439
<v Speaker 2>the doomed heroine a daughter of God, charged with being

0:48:33.480 --> 0:48:35.400
<v Speaker 2>a child of the devil as she pleads that she

0:48:35.440 --> 0:48:38.359
<v Speaker 2>has only fought for God and country. In nineteen twenty eight,

0:48:38.360 --> 0:48:41.360
<v Speaker 2>Schmidt watched the film a dozen times. Marring reports that

0:48:41.440 --> 0:48:43.839
<v Speaker 2>on several occasions in both Berlin and Rome, he picked

0:48:43.880 --> 0:48:46.360
<v Speaker 2>up a prostitute to watch it with him. It seems

0:48:46.360 --> 0:48:48.840
<v Speaker 2>that his longing for redemption from his own psychic turmoil

0:48:48.880 --> 0:48:51.960
<v Speaker 2>fueled a need for a higher absolute obligation, which could

0:48:52.000 --> 0:48:54.719
<v Speaker 2>only come from a commitment to the law promulgated by

0:48:54.719 --> 0:48:58.520
<v Speaker 2>God or by the state. So there's this attitude. Maybe

0:48:58.520 --> 0:49:02.200
<v Speaker 2>it's because he's got this kind of compulsive sexuality that

0:49:02.239 --> 0:49:05.080
<v Speaker 2>he can't just be like eh, people just fuck you know.

0:49:05.560 --> 0:49:08.319
<v Speaker 2>He has to he has to like condemn himself and

0:49:08.400 --> 0:49:11.960
<v Speaker 2>find absolution in this idea of law or the state

0:49:12.080 --> 0:49:16.160
<v Speaker 2>as God as representing some higher natural truth in order

0:49:16.200 --> 0:49:19.360
<v Speaker 2>to gain absolution. It's also just funny that he's constantly

0:49:19.400 --> 0:49:22.000
<v Speaker 2>watching this Joan of Arc movie while picking up prostitutes,

0:49:22.400 --> 0:49:29.520
<v Speaker 2>Like you want to go watch jodah Arc. Speaking of

0:49:30.239 --> 0:49:36.640
<v Speaker 2>watching silent films, here's and I got nothing. I got nothing.

0:49:36.680 --> 0:49:38.400
<v Speaker 2>I don't know how to do a fucking ad transition

0:49:38.480 --> 0:49:42.680
<v Speaker 2>in these episodes. Look, go to Rome, meet somebody nice,

0:49:42.800 --> 0:49:45.360
<v Speaker 2>watch a movie about a French lady getting tortured, you know,

0:49:45.680 --> 0:49:46.160
<v Speaker 2>have fun.

0:49:46.800 --> 0:49:49.440
<v Speaker 5>You become fake pope once and you no longer know

0:49:49.440 --> 0:49:50.520
<v Speaker 5>how to do an ad transition.

0:49:50.840 --> 0:49:54.120
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Yeah, Well popes don't need ads because they have

0:49:54.200 --> 0:49:57.960
<v Speaker 2>all that gold buried under the Vatican, Sophie. That's right,

0:50:04.560 --> 0:50:07.319
<v Speaker 2>we're back, man. I wonder they got to have a

0:50:07.320 --> 0:50:09.920
<v Speaker 2>lot of gold buried under there, right, like a crazy amount,

0:50:10.239 --> 0:50:13.640
<v Speaker 2>like yeah, like enough to ruin the like the price

0:50:13.680 --> 0:50:16.680
<v Speaker 2>of gold worldwide if they ever put it onto the market. Yeah.

0:50:16.800 --> 0:50:18.720
<v Speaker 5>I don't think so, because there were so many different

0:50:18.760 --> 0:50:20.560
<v Speaker 5>things where like things were getting stolen.

0:50:20.680 --> 0:50:23.800
<v Speaker 1>I think they would have. There's probably secret goal, but

0:50:23.840 --> 0:50:25.920
<v Speaker 1>I don't I don't think there's got to be as

0:50:25.960 --> 0:50:27.320
<v Speaker 1>obvious as there.

0:50:27.960 --> 0:50:30.359
<v Speaker 3>Well, what are they used for all the lawsuits like that?

0:50:30.440 --> 0:50:33.520
<v Speaker 2>It has to be Oh, yeah, they had a lot

0:50:33.600 --> 0:50:37.520
<v Speaker 2>lying around for that. What if we all know Rudo

0:50:37.680 --> 0:50:40.120
<v Speaker 2>run into the Vatican archives and just try to, like

0:50:40.200 --> 0:50:41.120
<v Speaker 2>see what we can get.

0:50:42.400 --> 0:50:45.799
<v Speaker 1>I would have so much fun going through the Vatican archives.

0:50:45.520 --> 0:50:49.360
<v Speaker 2>Find the secret sequel to the New Testament where Palpatine returns.

0:50:49.920 --> 0:50:51.839
<v Speaker 2>I'm excited. I think we can. I think we can

0:50:51.880 --> 0:50:52.560
<v Speaker 2>make this happen.

0:50:54.360 --> 0:50:56.160
<v Speaker 1>So I use your new power as FA.

0:50:56.960 --> 0:50:59.280
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's right, that's right. I'll tell the Swiss Guard

0:50:59.320 --> 0:51:04.360
<v Speaker 2>to stand down. Goofy outfits, the stupid ass outfits.

0:51:04.640 --> 0:51:06.880
<v Speaker 1>Call me right behind you as you do that.

0:51:09.480 --> 0:51:12.880
<v Speaker 2>In April of nineteen thirty three, Schmidt joined the Nazi

0:51:12.880 --> 0:51:16.000
<v Speaker 2>Party officially. In May, he published an article that is

0:51:16.080 --> 0:51:19.279
<v Speaker 2>generally considered to be the blueprint for the legal expulsion

0:51:19.360 --> 0:51:24.240
<v Speaker 2>of German intellectuals who had unacceptable political or racial characteristics. Quote.

0:51:24.440 --> 0:51:27.320
<v Speaker 2>Germany has spat them out for all time, he said,

0:51:27.719 --> 0:51:32.480
<v Speaker 2>and he's talking specifically about Albert Einstein. Right. Schmidt authors

0:51:32.560 --> 0:51:35.960
<v Speaker 2>the blueprint for kicking Einstein and other thinkers permanently out

0:51:35.960 --> 0:51:39.040
<v Speaker 2>of the reich Right and describing them as enemies. Right,

0:51:39.120 --> 0:51:41.400
<v Speaker 2>And for him, this is a political term, and this

0:51:41.520 --> 0:51:43.600
<v Speaker 2>is about this one year after he breaks off his

0:51:43.600 --> 0:51:47.080
<v Speaker 2>friendship with Eisler. But he does write, you as an

0:51:47.080 --> 0:51:50.840
<v Speaker 2>individual can be friends with someone who is a political enemy,

0:51:50.880 --> 0:51:53.920
<v Speaker 2>because again that's a political state. You have to treat

0:51:53.920 --> 0:51:56.680
<v Speaker 2>them as an enemy when doing politics. But it doesn't

0:51:56.680 --> 0:52:00.720
<v Speaker 2>mean you can't like them personally. Like we're also accepting

0:52:00.719 --> 0:52:03.040
<v Speaker 2>that it means killing them at a stage, So maybe

0:52:03.080 --> 0:52:03.920
<v Speaker 2>you can't, i.

0:52:04.280 --> 0:52:08.960
<v Speaker 3>Know, killing them politically. Yeah, nuts, yeah his friends.

0:52:08.600 --> 0:52:11.480
<v Speaker 2>Yeah yeah, yeah.

0:52:10.480 --> 0:52:12.120
<v Speaker 3>So was that logic I check out?

0:52:12.360 --> 0:52:14.480
<v Speaker 2>Yeah yeah, yeah, sure. I mean as much as anything

0:52:14.480 --> 0:52:17.680
<v Speaker 2>as fucker says does so. Through most of the twenties,

0:52:17.719 --> 0:52:20.240
<v Speaker 2>liberals and liberalism were the center of most of Schmid's

0:52:20.280 --> 0:52:23.799
<v Speaker 2>rhetorical ire, but Jews grew more central as time went on.

0:52:24.120 --> 0:52:26.840
<v Speaker 2>Now we've already covered that he certainly imbibed the racial

0:52:26.880 --> 0:52:29.760
<v Speaker 2>anti semitism of the era, and he had occasional flings

0:52:29.760 --> 0:52:32.640
<v Speaker 2>of bigotry during times of stress and depression, but he

0:52:32.680 --> 0:52:36.400
<v Speaker 2>also spoke glowingly of several Jews in his life. Most crucially,

0:52:36.680 --> 0:52:40.440
<v Speaker 2>he was completely dependent economically upon the kindness of a

0:52:40.520 --> 0:52:43.640
<v Speaker 2>Jewish family who treated him as a second son. Right,

0:52:44.000 --> 0:52:46.439
<v Speaker 2>Like that's a big deal in this period of time,

0:52:46.560 --> 0:52:49.400
<v Speaker 2>is that, like there's these this family that keeps him alive.

0:52:49.960 --> 0:52:52.879
<v Speaker 2>But now that he was a prominent Nazi academic whose

0:52:52.920 --> 0:52:55.359
<v Speaker 2>writings were not just cited but were being used to

0:52:55.360 --> 0:52:59.200
<v Speaker 2>make law under the Third Reich, he starts being critiqued

0:52:59.239 --> 0:53:02.240
<v Speaker 2>by like Jewish academics. I mean, but this happens before

0:53:02.440 --> 0:53:04.480
<v Speaker 2>the Third Reich is established, And this is part of

0:53:04.600 --> 0:53:07.000
<v Speaker 2>what radicalizes him. Is that in the late twenties, when

0:53:07.040 --> 0:53:09.719
<v Speaker 2>it becomes clear that he's like writing in favor of

0:53:09.960 --> 0:53:15.279
<v Speaker 2>elements of fascism, there's several different Jewish academics critique his book,

0:53:15.360 --> 0:53:18.400
<v Speaker 2>The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, and he goes on a

0:53:18.480 --> 0:53:22.040
<v Speaker 2>rant and complains for Jews against one Christian. They attack

0:53:22.160 --> 0:53:24.399
<v Speaker 2>me and all the journals and no one notices what's

0:53:24.440 --> 0:53:27.760
<v Speaker 2>going on. So that's a big part. If you're wondering

0:53:27.960 --> 0:53:30.440
<v Speaker 2>what's the missing piece here between him like dumping his

0:53:30.520 --> 0:53:33.440
<v Speaker 2>Jewish friends and going full Nazi, Well, it's because some

0:53:33.520 --> 0:53:36.400
<v Speaker 2>Jewish professors say mean things about this book. He writes

0:53:37.800 --> 0:53:41.000
<v Speaker 2>later that year, a Jewish professor was being considered for

0:53:41.080 --> 0:53:43.839
<v Speaker 2>hiring by his university, and Schmid wrote in to call

0:53:43.880 --> 0:53:48.120
<v Speaker 2>his would be colleague a disgusting, craven diletant Jew. So

0:53:48.200 --> 0:53:51.480
<v Speaker 2>by the mid twenties he's very consistently racist, but he's

0:53:51.520 --> 0:53:54.640
<v Speaker 2>still friends with Eisler right up until the thirties, and

0:53:54.680 --> 0:53:58.320
<v Speaker 2>he's still able to make exceptions in his head. Unlike

0:53:58.360 --> 0:54:02.480
<v Speaker 2>most Nazis. The justification he gives for his animus is

0:54:02.520 --> 0:54:05.560
<v Speaker 2>not racial, right. He is someone who was like, if

0:54:05.840 --> 0:54:08.239
<v Speaker 2>I think his belief initially at least is that like, well,

0:54:08.280 --> 0:54:10.360
<v Speaker 2>Jews can convert in stuff, and then I don't have

0:54:10.440 --> 0:54:13.000
<v Speaker 2>to treat them that way. But his issue with them

0:54:13.080 --> 0:54:16.279
<v Speaker 2>is that they tend to be liberal, right, and so

0:54:16.440 --> 0:54:19.080
<v Speaker 2>he interprets the battle that is, he's laying out the

0:54:19.760 --> 0:54:23.040
<v Speaker 2>lions how you win a battle against liberal democracy, and

0:54:23.080 --> 0:54:26.080
<v Speaker 2>he describes it as a battle against the Jewish spirit.

0:54:26.520 --> 0:54:29.000
<v Speaker 2>Per an article by Benjamin Ballant for the Claremont Review

0:54:29.000 --> 0:54:32.239
<v Speaker 2>of Books, his friend enemy distinction now fed into the

0:54:32.239 --> 0:54:35.040
<v Speaker 2>contrast he drew between the homogeneous German Vulk and the

0:54:35.120 --> 0:54:39.200
<v Speaker 2>alien Jew. He hastily severed his friendships and associations with Jews,

0:54:39.239 --> 0:54:43.000
<v Speaker 2>including his longtime publisher Ludwig Fuchtwanger, and the young scholar

0:54:43.000 --> 0:54:46.040
<v Speaker 2>of Hobbs and Spinoza Leo Strauss, whom he had recommended

0:54:46.080 --> 0:54:49.040
<v Speaker 2>to the Rockefeller Foundation for a fellowship that allowed Strauss

0:54:49.040 --> 0:54:51.840
<v Speaker 2>to leave Germany a year before. By the early thirties,

0:54:51.840 --> 0:54:54.560
<v Speaker 2>as he moved from scholarship to polemics, Schmidt no longer

0:54:54.600 --> 0:54:59.760
<v Speaker 2>directed his counter revolutionary fervor against Weimar anarchism, and by anarchism,

0:55:00.160 --> 0:55:02.480
<v Speaker 2>the fact that the state doesn't work very well. So

0:55:02.960 --> 0:55:06.560
<v Speaker 2>he cuts off all of these academic friends, including have

0:55:06.640 --> 0:55:07.880
<v Speaker 2>you heard of Leo Strauss?

0:55:08.760 --> 0:55:10.600
<v Speaker 3>I know the name, Yeah, I've heard the name.

0:55:10.719 --> 0:55:14.120
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, very influential. All of the people behind George W.

0:55:14.200 --> 0:55:16.160
<v Speaker 2>Bush were Straussians. And when I say it, I'm talking

0:55:16.160 --> 0:55:18.840
<v Speaker 2>about guys like Bill Krystel, who's now like anti Trump.

0:55:19.040 --> 0:55:22.280
<v Speaker 2>Bill Krystal is a Straussian. The Straussians are the neo

0:55:22.400 --> 0:55:27.200
<v Speaker 2>cons Strauss is initially very close with Schmidt, and Schmidt

0:55:27.200 --> 0:55:31.080
<v Speaker 2>influences Strauss and Strauss influences Schmitt. Schmidt is basically his

0:55:31.200 --> 0:55:33.600
<v Speaker 2>mentor for a while, right, he helps him get this

0:55:33.719 --> 0:55:36.920
<v Speaker 2>scholarship right. And then Strauss comes to the United States

0:55:36.960 --> 0:55:40.560
<v Speaker 2>and he becomes a core intellectual mind behind neo conservatism. Right.

0:55:41.120 --> 0:55:43.799
<v Speaker 2>So again the way in which this guy, even though

0:55:43.880 --> 0:55:47.280
<v Speaker 2>like obviously there's no love lost between them, once Schmidt

0:55:47.360 --> 0:55:52.680
<v Speaker 2>goes full Nazi because Strauss is Jewish. Right. So, once

0:55:52.719 --> 0:55:55.360
<v Speaker 2>the Third Reich gets into power and Schmidt has the

0:55:55.480 --> 0:55:59.400
<v Speaker 2>chance to actually be making laws, he warps his personal

0:55:59.440 --> 0:56:04.280
<v Speaker 2>politics in order to fit the regime that's now in place.

0:56:04.719 --> 0:56:07.200
<v Speaker 2>No longer does he talk about the state working towards

0:56:07.200 --> 0:56:10.600
<v Speaker 2>some sort of natural law. Instead, he begins to argue

0:56:10.640 --> 0:56:14.040
<v Speaker 2>that political sovereignty is constituted in the will of the

0:56:14.120 --> 0:56:17.400
<v Speaker 2>leader or dictator, who was sovereign and who had no

0:56:17.640 --> 0:56:20.120
<v Speaker 2>kind of check and could abide no kind of check

0:56:20.120 --> 0:56:22.680
<v Speaker 2>on his power. Per an article on the power of

0:56:22.760 --> 0:56:26.600
<v Speaker 2>Karl Schmidt by Richard Cohen, the dictator's will is arbitrary

0:56:26.719 --> 0:56:29.759
<v Speaker 2>and must be arbitrary. This is not a fault for

0:56:29.800 --> 0:56:32.719
<v Speaker 2>the fascist, but the highest virtue. The dictator's will is

0:56:32.760 --> 0:56:37.160
<v Speaker 2>a pure will, unchecked and unregulated by any exterior consideration

0:56:37.280 --> 0:56:41.120
<v Speaker 2>beyond itself, like a god. Like the God. Only as

0:56:41.200 --> 0:56:44.560
<v Speaker 2>such is it a truly sovereign will. The dictator can

0:56:44.600 --> 0:56:47.319
<v Speaker 2>never be challenged. In other words, because there are no

0:56:47.480 --> 0:56:51.239
<v Speaker 2>grounds upon which to challenge him. Thus, any challenge, any criticism,

0:56:51.239 --> 0:56:54.839
<v Speaker 2>no matter how rational, realistic, or goodwilled, is by definition

0:56:55.040 --> 0:57:03.640
<v Speaker 2>betrayal from the standpoint of all allegedly legitimizing authorities, whether populist, hereditary, religious, esthetic, utilitarian, economic,

0:57:03.719 --> 0:57:07.279
<v Speaker 2>or what have you. The dictator's decision is beyond reproach. Force,

0:57:07.400 --> 0:57:10.040
<v Speaker 2>power and might are the dictator's first and final resort,

0:57:10.280 --> 0:57:13.640
<v Speaker 2>and submission is the only appropriate response. Rule, call it

0:57:13.719 --> 0:57:17.040
<v Speaker 2>law or not, is to dictate order and command. Thus

0:57:17.080 --> 0:57:21.360
<v Speaker 2>the ubiquitous military trappings of fascism, however ludicrous, the dictator

0:57:21.400 --> 0:57:24.400
<v Speaker 2>wearing battle fatigues or dressed uniforms adorned with metals, the

0:57:24.440 --> 0:57:27.600
<v Speaker 2>pomp and ceremony, the military parades, and the displays of

0:57:27.640 --> 0:57:30.320
<v Speaker 2>weapons in times of quiet, as well as war. Without

0:57:30.360 --> 0:57:34.040
<v Speaker 2>criteria or standards, the dictator is sovereignty itself, no matter

0:57:34.120 --> 0:57:36.920
<v Speaker 2>what he says or does, or the reverse, precisely in

0:57:36.960 --> 0:57:38.840
<v Speaker 2>what he says and does, as he says and does

0:57:38.880 --> 0:57:41.880
<v Speaker 2>it always at the moment of his willing, so he's

0:57:41.920 --> 0:57:45.960
<v Speaker 2>gone from the only legitimate states have a constitution that

0:57:46.360 --> 0:57:49.160
<v Speaker 2>lays out what the rules are, and they follow that

0:57:49.240 --> 0:57:53.160
<v Speaker 2>constitution and law is always working towards some sort of

0:57:53.280 --> 0:57:57.760
<v Speaker 2>natural law to the law is whatever the leader says

0:57:57.760 --> 0:58:01.720
<v Speaker 2>it is. Right, human will creates law. Right, that the

0:58:01.760 --> 0:58:05.080
<v Speaker 2>will of a specific human and put in charge of

0:58:05.200 --> 0:58:09.320
<v Speaker 2>a people creates law. Right. That's where Schmidt has ended.

0:58:09.560 --> 0:58:12.400
<v Speaker 2>You know, now that democracy has been destroyed, now that

0:58:12.480 --> 0:58:15.680
<v Speaker 2>Hitler's in power, and he's working backwards to a degree

0:58:15.760 --> 0:58:18.959
<v Speaker 2>at this point from the fact that Hitler has taken power. Right.

0:58:19.600 --> 0:58:23.920
<v Speaker 2>But this is again like he's he's kind of describing

0:58:23.960 --> 0:58:26.360
<v Speaker 2>what's happening to some extent after the fact. But he's

0:58:26.360 --> 0:58:30.400
<v Speaker 2>also he comes to understand and justifies sovereignty as a

0:58:30.440 --> 0:58:34.240
<v Speaker 2>permanent state of emergency or a state of exception. Right,

0:58:34.880 --> 0:58:40.760
<v Speaker 2>Fascism is like the normalization legalization of arbitrary power. So

0:58:40.800 --> 0:58:43.080
<v Speaker 2>we even do see some of like his early thinking

0:58:43.120 --> 0:58:45.960
<v Speaker 2>on like how judges work and the kind of arbitrariness

0:58:45.960 --> 0:58:48.640
<v Speaker 2>at the center of the legal system. Like this is

0:58:48.680 --> 0:58:52.080
<v Speaker 2>where he winds up right that this is kind of

0:58:52.120 --> 0:58:55.240
<v Speaker 2>the ultimate political system. It's great.

0:58:55.480 --> 0:58:57.919
<v Speaker 3>It is interesting too where he would talk about how

0:58:58.000 --> 0:59:01.960
<v Speaker 3>like democracy was, you know, it's it only works because

0:59:02.000 --> 0:59:04.520
<v Speaker 3>of the eventual force that can be applied. You know,

0:59:04.640 --> 0:59:10.560
<v Speaker 3>where there it's eventual with a dictator just wearing fatigues,

0:59:11.000 --> 0:59:14.720
<v Speaker 3>dressed like a general. You know, with the military parades.

0:59:14.920 --> 0:59:18.600
<v Speaker 3>It's not implied, it's not eventual, it's immediate, you know. Yes,

0:59:18.800 --> 0:59:22.000
<v Speaker 3>it's a very Yeah, the imagery really drives it home. Yes,

0:59:22.360 --> 0:59:23.360
<v Speaker 3>more so, right.

0:59:23.280 --> 0:59:26.760
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And thanks to Gerring's influence, he gets made president

0:59:26.800 --> 0:59:31.160
<v Speaker 2>of the Union of National Socialist Jurists. In nineteen thirty four,

0:59:31.200 --> 0:59:34.160
<v Speaker 2>after the Night of Long Knives, Schmidt plays a role

0:59:34.240 --> 0:59:38.040
<v Speaker 2>in justifying and legitimating what had happened. You know, this

0:59:38.160 --> 0:59:43.640
<v Speaker 2>looks like and is an illegal series of murders committed,

0:59:43.800 --> 0:59:47.120
<v Speaker 2>you know, to settle political scores. But Schmidt argues this

0:59:47.200 --> 0:59:51.120
<v Speaker 2>is actually perfectly legal. Right. He publishes an article called

0:59:51.160 --> 0:59:54.560
<v Speaker 2>the Feuror protects the Law, which argues that what Hitler

0:59:54.600 --> 0:59:58.480
<v Speaker 2>had done was the highest justice available right quote the

0:59:58.480 --> 1:00:01.200
<v Speaker 2>fewer protects the law against the forms of abuse when

1:00:01.200 --> 1:00:03.800
<v Speaker 2>in the moment of danger he immediately creates law by

1:00:03.880 --> 1:00:07.160
<v Speaker 2>force of his character, as fewer as the supreme legal authority.

1:00:07.800 --> 1:00:10.040
<v Speaker 2>And again, I think we have to look at maybe

1:00:10.080 --> 1:00:13.760
<v Speaker 2>where we're headed with some of these courts questioning the

1:00:13.840 --> 1:00:17.480
<v Speaker 2>decisions being made by Trump. By Dick tot this is

1:00:17.560 --> 1:00:22.400
<v Speaker 2>already what Trump's people believe Trump creates law by force

1:00:22.440 --> 1:00:26.640
<v Speaker 2>of his character. Right, And you know, Schmidt has provided

1:00:26.680 --> 1:00:32.160
<v Speaker 2>a justification for purging people in situations like this, right,

1:00:32.480 --> 1:00:36.280
<v Speaker 2>because the fewer has to protect the law by carrying

1:00:36.280 --> 1:00:39.200
<v Speaker 2>out a legal acts of violence. Because he then creates

1:00:39.680 --> 1:00:43.120
<v Speaker 2>a new law. And so the concept of law fundamentally

1:00:44.000 --> 1:00:46.360
<v Speaker 2>is protected by the fewer doing this.

1:00:47.440 --> 1:00:50.520
<v Speaker 3>So there is no lawlessness, there's no laws never, there's

1:00:50.560 --> 1:00:53.600
<v Speaker 3>never a gap. It's the new dictator's law.

1:00:53.920 --> 1:00:57.480
<v Speaker 2>There's lawlessness. If there's a conflict right, right, between the

1:00:57.520 --> 1:01:00.760
<v Speaker 2>fear and power, that's lawlessness, right, And that's what Hitler

1:01:00.840 --> 1:01:04.200
<v Speaker 2>was fighting against. Right, That's why he was protecting the

1:01:04.280 --> 1:01:08.680
<v Speaker 2>law by doing what he did. He celebrates like when

1:01:08.720 --> 1:01:12.440
<v Speaker 2>the Nuremberg laws come in, he describes it as proof

1:01:12.440 --> 1:01:15.800
<v Speaker 2>that the National Socialist state is a just state. And

1:01:15.840 --> 1:01:20.160
<v Speaker 2>then in nineteen thirty six he helps convene a conference on

1:01:20.320 --> 1:01:23.280
<v Speaker 2>how to get rid of Jewish influence in German law.

1:01:23.640 --> 1:01:25.880
<v Speaker 2>He gives a speech where he blames the Jews for

1:01:26.000 --> 1:01:29.280
<v Speaker 2>hollowing out the German, healthy, Volcish German way of thinking

1:01:29.320 --> 1:01:32.440
<v Speaker 2>of the state, and he calls for a purification of

1:01:32.560 --> 1:01:36.840
<v Speaker 2>libraries that includes a separate system of citations for Jewish authors, right,

1:01:36.920 --> 1:01:40.200
<v Speaker 2>so he is explicitly endorsing book bannings, the purging of

1:01:40.200 --> 1:01:42.920
<v Speaker 2>books written by friends and colleagues of his, a separate

1:01:42.960 --> 1:01:46.680
<v Speaker 2>way of classifying them because obviously Jewish law is a

1:01:46.800 --> 1:01:48.720
<v Speaker 2>danger to good Germans. Right.

1:01:49.200 --> 1:01:51.560
<v Speaker 3>Well, and they made fun of him, they hurt his feelings.

1:01:51.640 --> 1:01:53.560
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and they made fun of him. They talked about

1:01:53.560 --> 1:01:57.720
<v Speaker 2>his books all right, writing, So he is deeply complicit

1:01:57.880 --> 1:01:59.840
<v Speaker 2>in the early Third Reich and in the purging of

1:01:59.880 --> 1:02:03.160
<v Speaker 2>it intellectuals and people getting put He's incredibly complicit in

1:02:03.240 --> 1:02:07.040
<v Speaker 2>all of this. Now, unfortunately for Schmidt, this in nineteen

1:02:07.080 --> 1:02:10.000
<v Speaker 2>thirty six, this this speech he gives is going to

1:02:10.000 --> 1:02:12.080
<v Speaker 2>be like the high watermark of his power in the

1:02:12.120 --> 1:02:15.400
<v Speaker 2>Third Reich, because once the Nazis are running everything, they're like,

1:02:16.000 --> 1:02:18.000
<v Speaker 2>we don't really need an academic with a mind of

1:02:18.040 --> 1:02:20.600
<v Speaker 2>his own, right, we got it, We've got it. Now,

1:02:20.680 --> 1:02:24.080
<v Speaker 2>we're done thinking. You know, and this guy, he's not

1:02:24.120 --> 1:02:28.959
<v Speaker 2>really loyal to Hitler, right, So in December of thirty six,

1:02:29.080 --> 1:02:32.920
<v Speaker 2>the SS newspaper publishes a hit piece on him, accusing

1:02:33.000 --> 1:02:36.160
<v Speaker 2>him of being a Hegelian, which is basically true and

1:02:36.200 --> 1:02:39.600
<v Speaker 2>a false anti semi which really isn't he talked to

1:02:39.640 --> 1:02:42.080
<v Speaker 2>friends about like fleeing Germany. He was like, maybe I

1:02:42.120 --> 1:02:44.840
<v Speaker 2>need to leave, Maybe this is dangerous, but it's not

1:02:44.960 --> 1:02:47.320
<v Speaker 2>something he ever seriously considered. And he does have some

1:02:47.360 --> 1:02:49.760
<v Speaker 2>defenders who will be like, well, look he thought about leaving,

1:02:49.880 --> 1:02:51.640
<v Speaker 2>and like, I don't know if that counts to me.

1:02:54.080 --> 1:02:57.800
<v Speaker 2>Hannah Hannah Arnt would later write about schmidz Ouster from

1:02:57.800 --> 1:03:01.440
<v Speaker 2>the Nazi Party as a fairly standard move the replacing

1:03:01.440 --> 1:03:05.160
<v Speaker 2>of sympathetic but skilled people with toadies who are utterly

1:03:05.240 --> 1:03:07.480
<v Speaker 2>loyal to the system, even if they're not very good

1:03:07.560 --> 1:03:09.920
<v Speaker 2>at anything. Quote from a rent And this is I

1:03:09.920 --> 1:03:13.720
<v Speaker 2>think an important one, especially for right now. Totalitarianism and

1:03:13.760 --> 1:03:18.200
<v Speaker 2>power invariably replaces all first rate talents, regardless of their sympathies,

1:03:18.400 --> 1:03:21.360
<v Speaker 2>with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and

1:03:21.400 --> 1:03:25.920
<v Speaker 2>creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty. Nothing

1:03:25.920 --> 1:03:26.680
<v Speaker 2>familiar there.

1:03:27.200 --> 1:03:28.640
<v Speaker 3>Yeh, I'm not picking up on you.

1:03:28.880 --> 1:03:32.640
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, what an old common themes? Yes, what an ancient idea?

1:03:32.720 --> 1:03:36.240
<v Speaker 2>Hat ahead, Yeah, that's so dated now. He was never

1:03:36.400 --> 1:03:39.120
<v Speaker 2>Schmidt is never hounded by the regime or punished. He's

1:03:39.160 --> 1:03:42.080
<v Speaker 2>never in serious danger. He's out of any kind of

1:03:42.080 --> 1:03:45.280
<v Speaker 2>inner circle. Here he's on the kind of the outskirts

1:03:45.320 --> 1:03:48.400
<v Speaker 2>looking in again, but he maintains his position. He keeps

1:03:48.440 --> 1:03:52.520
<v Speaker 2>being employed at the university. He's a prominent academic, and

1:03:52.600 --> 1:03:55.880
<v Speaker 2>he lives well up and through most of the war years.

1:03:56.360 --> 1:03:58.280
<v Speaker 2>But by the time the war ends and the Allies

1:03:58.280 --> 1:04:00.960
<v Speaker 2>begin to occupy the ruins of the Third Reich, his

1:04:01.120 --> 1:04:04.760
<v Speaker 2>last public identity had been as a Nazi intellectual who

1:04:04.800 --> 1:04:08.880
<v Speaker 2>was participating in the purging of intellectuals. And so he

1:04:08.920 --> 1:04:12.520
<v Speaker 2>gets arrested by the Americans in September of nineteen forty five.

1:04:13.040 --> 1:04:15.680
<v Speaker 2>He's locked up for like a month or so, and

1:04:15.960 --> 1:04:18.880
<v Speaker 2>you know, he's trying to put a brave face on it.

1:04:18.920 --> 1:04:21.080
<v Speaker 2>He tells his wife, like, I'm not going to collapse

1:04:21.120 --> 1:04:23.560
<v Speaker 2>like some of these other guys who killed themselves or whatever,

1:04:23.720 --> 1:04:26.480
<v Speaker 2>Like I'm going to hold up. You know, they'll realize

1:04:26.520 --> 1:04:29.800
<v Speaker 2>I'm not guilty of anything. And unfortunately he's kind of right,

1:04:30.000 --> 1:04:32.920
<v Speaker 2>you know, he gets released. He gets arrested again in

1:04:32.960 --> 1:04:35.520
<v Speaker 2>March and April of nineteen forty seven, and he's brought

1:04:35.560 --> 1:04:39.040
<v Speaker 2>to Nuremberg, where he gets interrogated by the US Chief

1:04:39.080 --> 1:04:42.680
<v Speaker 2>Council at Nuremberg Robert Kempner four times over the course

1:04:42.760 --> 1:04:46.440
<v Speaker 2>of about a month or so, five weeks, and you know,

1:04:46.480 --> 1:04:50.120
<v Speaker 2>he's basically Kempner's trying to figure out is there anything

1:04:50.200 --> 1:04:52.640
<v Speaker 2>we can go after this guy for? Like how much

1:04:52.720 --> 1:04:55.880
<v Speaker 2>is he responsible for? How many crimes did he directly commit?

1:04:56.560 --> 1:05:00.480
<v Speaker 2>And Schmidt is like, look, I wasn't trying to support

1:05:00.600 --> 1:05:03.360
<v Speaker 2>all the horrible things the Nazis, do you know, I'm

1:05:03.360 --> 1:05:06.880
<v Speaker 2>not a Nazi ever? Really, I'm an intellectual adventurer. That's

1:05:06.880 --> 1:05:09.240
<v Speaker 2>how he describes himself as, like, look, I was just

1:05:09.280 --> 1:05:12.520
<v Speaker 2>asking questions. Yeah, he's such a piece of shit. We

1:05:12.520 --> 1:05:14.760
<v Speaker 2>should have shot this guy in the fucking face.

1:05:15.120 --> 1:05:15.440
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.

1:05:15.560 --> 1:05:18.400
<v Speaker 2>Immediately I want to read a little transcript of his

1:05:18.440 --> 1:05:21.600
<v Speaker 2>interview with Kempner. That makes for fascinating reading because this

1:05:21.640 --> 1:05:23.160
<v Speaker 2>is Kimpner being like, what the fuck do you mean

1:05:23.160 --> 1:05:26.600
<v Speaker 2>by intellectual adventurer? I wanted to give the term national

1:05:26.640 --> 1:05:30.480
<v Speaker 2>socialism my own meeting, Schmidt said, Kimpner, Hitler had a

1:05:30.560 --> 1:05:34.640
<v Speaker 2>national socialism and you had a national socialism. Schmidt, I

1:05:34.680 --> 1:05:39.560
<v Speaker 2>felt superior, Kimpner, you felt superior to Adolf Hitler. Schmidt Intellectually,

1:05:39.600 --> 1:05:42.000
<v Speaker 2>of course, he was to me so uninteresting that I

1:05:42.000 --> 1:05:44.200
<v Speaker 2>do not want to talk about that at all. When

1:05:44.240 --> 1:05:47.680
<v Speaker 2>did you renounce the devil? Kimpner asked nineteen thirty six.

1:05:48.480 --> 1:05:53.080
<v Speaker 2>And I believe that he didn't like Hitler? Right, because

1:05:53.080 --> 1:05:57.480
<v Speaker 2>he doesn't. He's never an intellectual respector of Hitler particularly.

1:05:57.880 --> 1:06:01.840
<v Speaker 2>But this is bullshit, right, Like you participated in purging

1:06:01.880 --> 1:06:05.200
<v Speaker 2>your colleagues. You were so psyched that people were listening

1:06:05.240 --> 1:06:07.640
<v Speaker 2>to you. That's all that matters. You only renounce the

1:06:07.680 --> 1:06:11.040
<v Speaker 2>devil because the SS got angry at you and you

1:06:11.120 --> 1:06:14.200
<v Speaker 2>lost your influence, right, Like this man never had a

1:06:14.280 --> 1:06:14.920
<v Speaker 2>change of heart.

1:06:16.160 --> 1:06:18.560
<v Speaker 3>I'm thinking of who Schmidt I might be getting ahead

1:06:18.560 --> 1:06:22.480
<v Speaker 3>of herself, of who he would favor out of a Hitler,

1:06:22.920 --> 1:06:25.480
<v Speaker 3>And then you have a trump like who was the

1:06:25.520 --> 1:06:27.760
<v Speaker 3>ideal I think it might be Putin might be the

1:06:27.840 --> 1:06:29.720
<v Speaker 3>ideal one for him.

1:06:29.760 --> 1:06:34.720
<v Speaker 2>Fascinating that you bring that up. This brief after war

1:06:34.800 --> 1:06:37.160
<v Speaker 2>period mark the last time Schmid would discuss his support

1:06:37.160 --> 1:06:39.840
<v Speaker 2>of the Nazis directly. He returned to Plettenberg and continued

1:06:39.840 --> 1:06:42.560
<v Speaker 2>to write, although he was fired from his professorship. He

1:06:42.600 --> 1:06:45.760
<v Speaker 2>found no trouble getting published, though, and once around twenty

1:06:45.840 --> 1:06:48.880
<v Speaker 2>years had passed, his name starts getting tossed around by

1:06:48.880 --> 1:06:53.120
<v Speaker 2>conservative intellectuals around the world, first in whispered tones, but

1:06:53.160 --> 1:06:57.000
<v Speaker 2>then in an increasingly brazen manner. Schmidt dies in nineteen

1:06:57.040 --> 1:06:59.760
<v Speaker 2>eighty five, and he lives to see the beginning of

1:07:00.040 --> 1:07:03.160
<v Speaker 2>his second rise to prominence. And one of them, you've

1:07:03.160 --> 1:07:06.640
<v Speaker 2>heard of Marine Lapinn over in France. The she just

1:07:06.680 --> 1:07:10.560
<v Speaker 2>got incarcerated for a bunch of shit, but she's like

1:07:10.600 --> 1:07:13.280
<v Speaker 2>the leader of their fascist party. Her father founded the party,

1:07:13.960 --> 1:07:17.320
<v Speaker 2>her father is a Schmidt acolyte. Her father the whole

1:07:17.360 --> 1:07:20.400
<v Speaker 2>blueprint of the French far right is directly taken from Schmidt.

1:07:20.440 --> 1:07:23.600
<v Speaker 2>That's why it's so centered on immigrants and immigration right,

1:07:24.120 --> 1:07:28.000
<v Speaker 2>Like they are very consciously the French nation, the national

1:07:28.040 --> 1:07:32.280
<v Speaker 2>party that Lapin leads is their whole blueprint is Schmidt.

1:07:32.320 --> 1:07:35.880
<v Speaker 2>Schmidt is the guy. Like they are openly citing and

1:07:36.000 --> 1:07:40.560
<v Speaker 2>quoting his writings at the very start of that party. Now,

1:07:40.680 --> 1:07:44.760
<v Speaker 2>more to the point, there's another fella who becomes one

1:07:44.800 --> 1:07:49.200
<v Speaker 2>of his acolytes, who finds Schmidt's writing and is like, oh,

1:07:49.360 --> 1:07:51.440
<v Speaker 2>this is a really good blueprint for how to get

1:07:51.480 --> 1:07:54.440
<v Speaker 2>in power as a reactionary movement and destroy a nascent

1:07:54.480 --> 1:07:58.960
<v Speaker 2>liberal democracy. And that guy is named Alexander Dugan. Now

1:07:59.080 --> 1:08:01.560
<v Speaker 2>Dugan is an old nationalist who is seen as the

1:08:01.600 --> 1:08:04.840
<v Speaker 2>primary political philosopher of the Russian New Right, and he's

1:08:04.880 --> 1:08:09.280
<v Speaker 2>often called Putin's court philosopher right. These ideas are also

1:08:09.320 --> 1:08:12.600
<v Speaker 2>a major backbone of how Putin gets into power, of

1:08:12.760 --> 1:08:15.400
<v Speaker 2>the strategy he uses, and how a lot of his

1:08:15.480 --> 1:08:18.639
<v Speaker 2>adherents and the new Russian New Rights see what they're doing.

1:08:19.720 --> 1:08:22.479
<v Speaker 2>He's in the French far right, he's in the Russian

1:08:22.560 --> 1:08:25.840
<v Speaker 2>far right. That kind of coalesces around Putin and in

1:08:25.880 --> 1:08:28.599
<v Speaker 2>the US. The main vehicle for Schmid's ideas getting into

1:08:28.640 --> 1:08:30.400
<v Speaker 2>the halls of power is through the work of a

1:08:30.439 --> 1:08:34.320
<v Speaker 2>thinker who had once been his colleague, Leo Strauss. Strauss,

1:08:34.360 --> 1:08:37.280
<v Speaker 2>a Jewish scientist, fled to France when Hitler took power

1:08:37.520 --> 1:08:40.639
<v Speaker 2>on a Rockefeller scholarship, and Karl Schmidt had been his adviser.

1:08:40.960 --> 1:08:43.559
<v Speaker 2>Here's a very good piece in the website libmd that

1:08:43.600 --> 1:08:46.559
<v Speaker 2>traces out the connections here. There are very close ties

1:08:46.600 --> 1:08:50.720
<v Speaker 2>between the conservative political scientist Patrick denan Catholic University of

1:08:50.720 --> 1:08:53.439
<v Speaker 2>Notre Dame, Indiana, Strauss adept and winner of the Leo

1:08:53.520 --> 1:08:56.680
<v Speaker 2>Strauss Award for Best Dissertation, and Vice President J. D.

1:08:56.920 --> 1:08:59.519
<v Speaker 2>Vance and he provides a couple of quotes from Schmidt

1:08:59.560 --> 1:09:02.280
<v Speaker 2>and from Vests. One is, this is a Schmidt quot

1:09:02.320 --> 1:09:05.080
<v Speaker 2>from nineteen twenty two, authority proves that it does not

1:09:05.240 --> 1:09:08.080
<v Speaker 2>need to be right in order to be right. And JD.

1:09:08.200 --> 1:09:11.800
<v Speaker 2>Vance saying judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.

1:09:11.840 --> 1:09:13.639
<v Speaker 2>And you might even add in some of those statements

1:09:13.640 --> 1:09:17.360
<v Speaker 2>that Vance made about like Haitian like literal lies about

1:09:17.360 --> 1:09:20.080
<v Speaker 2>Haitian refugees, where it's like it doesn't matter what's true,

1:09:20.120 --> 1:09:24.599
<v Speaker 2>you make it true by having power. Right. There's another

1:09:24.800 --> 1:09:27.800
<v Speaker 2>quote here from Schmidt in thirty two, the rule of

1:09:27.920 --> 1:09:31.439
<v Speaker 2>law means nothing other than the legitimization of a certain status. Quote.

1:09:31.840 --> 1:09:35.479
<v Speaker 2>These are all very idea. You could hear basically, these

1:09:35.520 --> 1:09:39.760
<v Speaker 2>fucking quotes being trumpeted, you know, among trumpets among these

1:09:39.800 --> 1:09:43.599
<v Speaker 2>like unitary executive theory guys. And that's kind of it's

1:09:43.640 --> 1:09:48.040
<v Speaker 2>both Schmidt's thinking first starts to influence the American right

1:09:48.120 --> 1:09:50.559
<v Speaker 2>in a major way, with like the neocons who are

1:09:50.640 --> 1:09:54.760
<v Speaker 2>kind of influenced by him, partly through Strauss guys like

1:09:54.800 --> 1:09:58.280
<v Speaker 2>Bill Crystal Right and David Brooks Right, these guys who

1:09:58.320 --> 1:10:01.080
<v Speaker 2>are very influenced by Strauss, but by the time Trump

1:10:01.120 --> 1:10:03.680
<v Speaker 2>comes around and things have gotten too extreme for them.

1:10:04.000 --> 1:10:08.400
<v Speaker 2>The like people like Curtis Jarvitt will just quote Carl Schmidt.

1:10:08.520 --> 1:10:11.120
<v Speaker 2>He's a huge fan of Schmidt, Like, he brings him

1:10:11.160 --> 1:10:11.759
<v Speaker 2>up constantly.

1:10:12.280 --> 1:10:12.519
<v Speaker 4>JD.

1:10:12.680 --> 1:10:16.559
<v Speaker 2>Vance is fans of a Strauss scholar who himself is

1:10:16.560 --> 1:10:17.759
<v Speaker 2>influenced by Schmidt.

1:10:17.880 --> 1:10:17.960
<v Speaker 3>Like.

1:10:18.040 --> 1:10:23.120
<v Speaker 2>Schmidt's thinking is all throughout the entire right wing project worldwide.

1:10:23.200 --> 1:10:25.320
<v Speaker 2>You know, from France to Russia to the United States.

1:10:25.479 --> 1:10:28.200
<v Speaker 2>There's pieces of him everywhere, even though most people are

1:10:28.200 --> 1:10:31.879
<v Speaker 2>not taking his work directly, but they're influenced by thinkers

1:10:32.240 --> 1:10:35.680
<v Speaker 2>who were influenced by Schmidt and who adopted some of

1:10:35.720 --> 1:10:38.839
<v Speaker 2>his ideas for their own. And most importantly, the basic

1:10:38.920 --> 1:10:42.679
<v Speaker 2>strategy that Schmidt laid out I mean, unfortunately still works

1:10:42.760 --> 1:10:52.200
<v Speaker 2>quite well. Yeah. Crazy, yeah crazy, Yeah great anyway.

1:10:52.439 --> 1:10:55.800
<v Speaker 3>Anyway, yeah, anyway, I'm sure that'll go away soon. Sure,

1:10:56.280 --> 1:10:57.240
<v Speaker 3>nothing to worry about.

1:10:58.240 --> 1:10:59.920
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I think we've got it. I think we'll not

1:11:00.080 --> 1:11:01.640
<v Speaker 2>it out. You know.

1:11:02.200 --> 1:11:04.120
<v Speaker 3>So this JD. Vans guy, he's not high up in

1:11:04.160 --> 1:11:05.480
<v Speaker 3>the government or anything.

1:11:05.200 --> 1:11:07.599
<v Speaker 2>Right like, he's I haven't heard of him in years.

1:11:08.720 --> 1:11:09.680
<v Speaker 2>I haven't heard of him in the years.

1:11:10.240 --> 1:11:11.519
<v Speaker 3>You should read his jiz book.

1:11:11.600 --> 1:11:18.000
<v Speaker 2>It's ye, his cum diary. It's fantastic, man. Yeah, the JD.

1:11:18.120 --> 1:11:21.240
<v Speaker 2>Vans Cum Diary is a real quite a publication. Yeah

1:11:21.280 --> 1:11:21.599
<v Speaker 2>it is.

1:11:21.840 --> 1:11:22.160
<v Speaker 3>It is.

1:11:22.280 --> 1:11:26.280
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Well, I don't know, how are you feeling at

1:11:26.280 --> 1:11:27.040
<v Speaker 2>the end of this Blake?

1:11:28.400 --> 1:11:32.479
<v Speaker 3>Well, I mean bad, but I do also feel like

1:11:32.520 --> 1:11:35.679
<v Speaker 3>I learned a lot. It does explain. It is very

1:11:35.720 --> 1:11:38.839
<v Speaker 3>interesting to learn how we got to where we are today.

1:11:39.439 --> 1:11:44.760
<v Speaker 3>And the scaryst part is, or one of the many

1:11:44.800 --> 1:11:49.720
<v Speaker 3>scary parts, is that people it's not hidden anymore, you know,

1:11:50.520 --> 1:11:53.640
<v Speaker 3>And even with JD. Vance, you don't have to go

1:11:53.720 --> 1:11:57.160
<v Speaker 3>on a long sleuthing trip to figure out that he

1:11:57.400 --> 1:12:02.679
<v Speaker 3>is a Schmidt guy. It's to one degree of separation. Yeah,

1:12:02.800 --> 1:12:06.800
<v Speaker 3>maybe a Strauss degree. And some people are, like you said,

1:12:06.840 --> 1:12:07.880
<v Speaker 3>just outright.

1:12:07.760 --> 1:12:11.040
<v Speaker 2>Quoting Schmidt, like Javen who's also connected to Vance. And yeah,

1:12:11.120 --> 1:12:13.920
<v Speaker 2>it is interesting that, like in an earlier era, these

1:12:14.000 --> 1:12:16.479
<v Speaker 2>neo cons who now in a lot of cases have

1:12:16.479 --> 1:12:19.760
<v Speaker 2>alligned themselves with anti Trump stuff, are still they're the

1:12:19.800 --> 1:12:23.000
<v Speaker 2>guys who are first pushing unitary executive theory, which is

1:12:23.080 --> 1:12:25.960
<v Speaker 2>like what leads to the presidents basically a king, right,

1:12:26.040 --> 1:12:28.920
<v Speaker 2>Like that's the end result, and there Strauss is a

1:12:28.920 --> 1:12:31.760
<v Speaker 2>big influence on them there, right, And then we get

1:12:31.800 --> 1:12:33.720
<v Speaker 2>to this point where you can you don't have to

1:12:33.760 --> 1:12:36.040
<v Speaker 2>just quote Strauss, you don't have to water it down

1:12:36.160 --> 1:12:39.439
<v Speaker 2>at all. You can just go pere Schmidt. Baby, yeah, yeah,

1:12:39.479 --> 1:12:40.679
<v Speaker 2>that's right, right to the source.

1:12:41.560 --> 1:12:44.360
<v Speaker 3>I wonder, I guess my question for you is, I

1:12:44.400 --> 1:12:50.760
<v Speaker 3>wonder how much Schmidt would value an outwardly intelligent dictator

1:12:51.200 --> 1:12:54.280
<v Speaker 3>and if he would even necessarily see value in that

1:12:54.439 --> 1:12:58.800
<v Speaker 3>where you know, Hitler was like incredibly charismatic. Obviously, no

1:12:58.840 --> 1:13:01.200
<v Speaker 3>one would say that he was a fucking genius. Schmid

1:13:01.200 --> 1:13:04.720
<v Speaker 3>wouldn't say that he was a genius. Trump is obviously

1:13:04.800 --> 1:13:10.080
<v Speaker 3>not is outwardly stupid, but very charismatic obviously and can

1:13:10.200 --> 1:13:11.080
<v Speaker 3>speak very well.

1:13:11.280 --> 1:13:13.559
<v Speaker 2>He's got a kind of cunning that's very effective for

1:13:13.640 --> 1:13:14.439
<v Speaker 2>what he needs to do.

1:13:14.640 --> 1:13:18.200
<v Speaker 3>Ye, yes, I wonder, you know, like you have Saddam

1:13:18.520 --> 1:13:21.519
<v Speaker 3>who is his Like he had the dress, you know,

1:13:21.640 --> 1:13:24.960
<v Speaker 3>like he looked the part like I do wonder if

1:13:25.080 --> 1:13:28.960
<v Speaker 3>putin do you know of any like outwardly you know,

1:13:29.200 --> 1:13:31.840
<v Speaker 3>even like faux intellectual you know, like oh, actually, I

1:13:31.880 --> 1:13:34.479
<v Speaker 3>mean we were talking about earlier. Schmidt is a very

1:13:34.520 --> 1:13:38.160
<v Speaker 3>smart guy. He's just horrendously evil. So can you think

1:13:38.200 --> 1:13:43.440
<v Speaker 3>of any dictators who were like learned dictators?

1:13:43.760 --> 1:13:48.120
<v Speaker 2>It depends on what you mean by learned, right, because like, yes,

1:13:48.560 --> 1:13:52.840
<v Speaker 2>Stalin makes a lot of hideous mistakes that cost a

1:13:52.840 --> 1:13:55.160
<v Speaker 2>lot of people their lives, particularly in the other stages

1:13:55.160 --> 1:13:57.400
<v Speaker 2>of the fighting with the Nazis. But like is an

1:13:57.640 --> 1:14:02.400
<v Speaker 2>educated man who liked read extensively, and you know, like

1:14:03.080 --> 1:14:06.439
<v Speaker 2>he's not like a He's not like a rube, right,

1:14:07.760 --> 1:14:10.880
<v Speaker 2>you know, Tito was, I don't, I know, don't know

1:14:10.920 --> 1:14:13.080
<v Speaker 2>nearly as much about his actual education. Was clearly an

1:14:13.120 --> 1:14:17.479
<v Speaker 2>incredibly intelligent person, right, Just the degree of success he

1:14:17.560 --> 1:14:20.439
<v Speaker 2>had both as a dictator and as an insurgent leader,

1:14:20.439 --> 1:14:23.479
<v Speaker 2>presumably like Fidel Castro. Right, that's a smart man, right, Yeah,

1:14:23.680 --> 1:14:26.719
<v Speaker 2>It's a man who was a great degree of cunning,

1:14:26.880 --> 1:14:30.320
<v Speaker 2>you know, and understanding. And I do think there are

1:14:30.479 --> 1:14:34.519
<v Speaker 2>very smart people around. I don't think Peter Thiel's dumb.

1:14:34.640 --> 1:14:37.360
<v Speaker 2>I think he's nuts, and I think he has some

1:14:37.439 --> 1:14:40.599
<v Speaker 2>blind spots and a freak, but he understands how to

1:14:40.600 --> 1:14:43.360
<v Speaker 2>do certain things very well. There's kinds of intelligence that

1:14:43.439 --> 1:14:47.680
<v Speaker 2>he has. I think Trump has kinds of intelligence. He's

1:14:47.680 --> 1:14:50.080
<v Speaker 2>been working at this for twenty something years. So I

1:14:50.840 --> 1:14:53.280
<v Speaker 2>don't know, like learned I think they I think I

1:14:53.320 --> 1:14:55.320
<v Speaker 2>guess the answer is they tend to learn the things

1:14:55.360 --> 1:14:57.720
<v Speaker 2>they need to learn to get where they want to go. Right,

1:14:58.479 --> 1:15:01.160
<v Speaker 2>They've expertise, right does Donald Trump?

1:15:01.240 --> 1:15:01.320
<v Speaker 3>Is?

1:15:01.320 --> 1:15:01.479
<v Speaker 5>He?

1:15:01.720 --> 1:15:04.320
<v Speaker 2>Does he have like a great knowledge of all of

1:15:04.360 --> 1:15:06.599
<v Speaker 2>the things that you know, you and I might respect

1:15:06.680 --> 1:15:09.120
<v Speaker 2>being informed of. No, but he knew enough to figure

1:15:09.120 --> 1:15:12.960
<v Speaker 2>out how to dismantle democracy and how to get people

1:15:13.000 --> 1:15:15.200
<v Speaker 2>around him who knew more about it, right, And so

1:15:15.840 --> 1:15:18.080
<v Speaker 2>I guess i'd say dictators tend to be learned in

1:15:18.120 --> 1:15:21.000
<v Speaker 2>the things they need to be learned and to become dictators.

1:15:21.400 --> 1:15:23.800
<v Speaker 3>Right. No, I think that's perfectly put. Yeah, yeah, I

1:15:23.840 --> 1:15:24.320
<v Speaker 3>agree with that.

1:15:24.680 --> 1:15:31.560
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Anyway, Wow, is this how all these episodes.

1:15:32.360 --> 1:15:38.280
<v Speaker 3>Jesus just us mubbling to ourselves? I don't know what? Yeah, Like,

1:15:38.320 --> 1:15:39.280
<v Speaker 3>where do I even move?

1:15:40.240 --> 1:15:40.439
<v Speaker 1>Yeah?

1:15:40.920 --> 1:15:41.400
<v Speaker 3>Canada is?

1:15:42.520 --> 1:15:42.760
<v Speaker 2>Yeah?

1:15:42.960 --> 1:15:45.240
<v Speaker 3>Is it? Portugal? Do I become a Portuguese wind bag?

1:15:45.320 --> 1:15:48.719
<v Speaker 2>Is that? Yeah? Become yours? You become a Portuguese wind bag?

1:15:48.840 --> 1:15:52.040
<v Speaker 1>You guys, it's fine. Robert will let us into the Vatican.

1:15:52.800 --> 1:15:56.000
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, the Vatican, that's what we're all going to hide.

1:15:56.200 --> 1:16:01.000
<v Speaker 2>Well with all the gold, Uh, okay, So I don't know.

1:16:01.120 --> 1:16:10.840
<v Speaker 2>I tend to think what you should do is right. Yeah,

1:16:10.880 --> 1:16:12.559
<v Speaker 2>and you can find a lot of the blueprints you'll

1:16:12.600 --> 1:16:16.519
<v Speaker 2>need on the internet. Anyway, episode is over, Blake, you

1:16:16.560 --> 1:16:18.040
<v Speaker 2>want to plug anything before we go.

1:16:18.840 --> 1:16:22.120
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I would I have a jizz book of my own. No,

1:16:22.400 --> 1:16:25.880
<v Speaker 3>I would like to promote August first. I'm going to

1:16:25.920 --> 1:16:29.280
<v Speaker 3>be doing stand up in Philadelphia also at Blake Wexler

1:16:29.360 --> 1:16:31.840
<v Speaker 3>on all social media. If you could follow me there,

1:16:31.880 --> 1:16:35.080
<v Speaker 3>I would love that. And I'm doing a bike ride

1:16:35.080 --> 1:16:39.519
<v Speaker 3>to raise money for autism research, autism awareness and that

1:16:39.920 --> 1:16:42.320
<v Speaker 3>if you can spare anything, It's times are tough right now,

1:16:42.360 --> 1:16:44.759
<v Speaker 3>but any donation, if you can do it, would be great.

1:16:44.880 --> 1:16:47.439
<v Speaker 3>It's that link is in my bio. And I have

1:16:47.479 --> 1:16:51.280
<v Speaker 3>a stand up comedy special called Daddy Long Legs, which

1:16:51.400 --> 1:16:54.639
<v Speaker 3>is available for free on YouTube. And this was a blast.

1:16:54.680 --> 1:16:57.080
<v Speaker 3>I have so much respect for both of you. This

1:16:57.160 --> 1:16:58.760
<v Speaker 3>is this is I don't I don't know if I've

1:16:58.760 --> 1:17:01.519
<v Speaker 3>ever said this sentence. Is a great podcast, This is

1:17:01.520 --> 1:17:04.360
<v Speaker 3>a great show. This is a fantastic show. I know

1:17:04.800 --> 1:17:07.519
<v Speaker 3>no one, no one does what you do, so I

1:17:07.600 --> 1:17:08.240
<v Speaker 3>appreciate a.

1:17:08.680 --> 1:17:10.960
<v Speaker 2>Company will do. We have the thank you. We have

1:17:11.120 --> 1:17:12.040
<v Speaker 2>the we have the pope.

1:17:12.080 --> 1:17:13.840
<v Speaker 3>You do have the new Pope, and that's how you

1:17:13.920 --> 1:17:16.400
<v Speaker 3>got elected by your fellow colleagues cardinals.

1:17:16.479 --> 1:17:18.120
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, if you are.

1:17:18.240 --> 1:17:21.360
<v Speaker 1>Ah my god, there needs to be a podcast conclave.

1:17:21.479 --> 1:17:22.920
<v Speaker 1>Oh my god, oh my god.

1:17:23.960 --> 1:17:26.439
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, to see who the podcasting pope is.

1:17:26.680 --> 1:17:29.120
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, just like the podcast.

1:17:29.200 --> 1:17:30.840
<v Speaker 2>It better not be one of the pods, save guys,

1:17:30.920 --> 1:17:31.839
<v Speaker 2>or I'm doing a schism.

1:17:32.160 --> 1:17:34.519
<v Speaker 5>I mean it would it's thinking about it would have

1:17:34.600 --> 1:17:36.800
<v Speaker 5>to be in that that guy, Sean Sean Malin who

1:17:36.920 --> 1:17:39.519
<v Speaker 5>just who has the podcast Pantheon book coming.

1:17:39.360 --> 1:17:42.559
<v Speaker 1>Out later this year. That we're we're in that book.

1:17:42.640 --> 1:17:44.559
<v Speaker 1>So we get to be in the conflict if.

1:17:44.880 --> 1:17:47.320
<v Speaker 2>There's a if it doesn't go my way, I'm moving

1:17:47.360 --> 1:17:50.599
<v Speaker 2>to Avignon and I'm going to create like a counter

1:17:50.800 --> 1:17:54.000
<v Speaker 2>conclave and we're going to have us an anti Fast group.

1:17:54.800 --> 1:17:58.280
<v Speaker 1>The fuckery we can get. Oh my god, Robert, we have.

1:17:58.400 --> 1:18:00.719
<v Speaker 1>It has to happen. It has has to happen.

1:18:01.040 --> 1:18:02.280
<v Speaker 3>Ye hope, save America.

1:18:04.160 --> 1:18:08.639
<v Speaker 1>So much fuckery. Oh I'm plotting. I'm plotting. Okay. Anyways, Blake, Blake,

1:18:08.680 --> 1:18:11.880
<v Speaker 1>thank you so much for being Herevis was so lovely, Robert, Robert,

1:18:11.960 --> 1:18:12.639
<v Speaker 1>that was horrifying.

1:18:12.760 --> 1:18:13.200
<v Speaker 3>Did we do it?

1:18:13.240 --> 1:18:14.040
<v Speaker 1>To the podcast?

1:18:14.280 --> 1:18:16.439
<v Speaker 2>We did? The podcast Let's Go Away Okay.

1:18:19.840 --> 1:18:22.519
<v Speaker 4>Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1:18:22.880 --> 1:18:25.479
<v Speaker 4>For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

1:18:25.560 --> 1:18:29.519
<v Speaker 4>Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1:18:29.600 --> 1:18:31.960
<v Speaker 4>Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:18:32.360 --> 1:18:35.720
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1:18:36.080 --> 1:18:39.639
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1:18:39.720 --> 1:18:42.240
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