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Speaker 1: What's esoteric my Hitler isms ship that is two Hitler

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Speaker 1: starts in a row. Jesus, well it fits with this episode.

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Speaker 1: This is Behind the Bastards podcast about the worst people

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Speaker 1: in all of history. I'm Robert Evans, I'm the host

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Speaker 1: and my guest today is Jamie him one name. Now,

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Speaker 1: I'm the Beyonce of No Billy Wayne's the Beyonce behind

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Speaker 1: the Bastards. Yeah, you are the podcaster formerly known as

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Speaker 1: the Beyonce behind the Bastards. Yeah, they're the Beyonce of

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Speaker 1: my heart. Thank you. Yeah, there we go, Here we go. Jamie,

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Speaker 1: how are you doing today? I'm good. I'm good. I uh,

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Speaker 1: I think that that's true. I'm good. I have to

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Speaker 1: add I have to add it probably good. I have

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Speaker 1: to add a bag to my Spirit Airlines flight. But

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Speaker 1: that's about as as challenging as it's getting to day.

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Speaker 1: Speaking of monsters, that is the greatest monster of all

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Speaker 1: online interface. You had to like swipe your credit card

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Speaker 1: if you sneeze on a Spirit our Lines. I have

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Speaker 1: this friend, his name is Lenny, and he listens to

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Speaker 1: the podcast so he may hear this. And Lenny is

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Speaker 1: uh one of the one of the most experienced travelers

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Speaker 1: I know, and at one point I was taking a

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Speaker 1: flight with him in Eastern Europe to Ukraine through whizz Air,

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Speaker 1: which is one of the worst airlines I've heard. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're terrible. Never had the pleasure. There was a moment

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Speaker 1: where they started hassling us about our bags, and it

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Speaker 1: became clear that we weren't going to be able to

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Speaker 1: like fit everything like that, we were going to have

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Speaker 1: to take stuff out. And the line from him that

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Speaker 1: I'll never forget was I guess, well, I guess I'm

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Speaker 1: wearing all my pants today. I've heard multiple pairs of

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Speaker 1: fans on how if you're not going on to a

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Speaker 1: Spirit Airlines flight wearing five jackets? Like, what are you

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Speaker 1: even you yourself? I've been on a Spirit Airlines right

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Speaker 1: eye next to like an actively drunk person multiple times.

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Speaker 1: That's just normal, I know. But yeah, you're right, you

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Speaker 1: haven't wept. If you haven't wept and thrown things away,

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Speaker 1: well waiting to get in line at Spirit Airlines, have

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Speaker 1: you even have flown? We've gotten off topic, Um, very

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Speaker 1: off topic, Jamie. Yes, have you ever heard of Savitri Devi?

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Speaker 1: Oh good, oh boy, Jamie, you are in for a

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Speaker 1: motherfucking treat. I love when you don't tell me in advance. Okay, Okay, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is one I'm going to guess almost nobody listening

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Speaker 1: to has heard of. But she's one of the most

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Speaker 1: important people for understanding where we are right now in

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Speaker 1: the year um like the most the most recent headline

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Speaker 1: that ties directly to is you remember when the FBI

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Speaker 1: arrested all those members of the base, that that neo

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Speaker 1: Nazi group that's plenty to start a second Civil War

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Speaker 1: by randomly firing into a crowd in Virginia that was

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Speaker 1: full of armed people, that whole, that whole hullabaloo. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: well she's kind of behind all that, although she died

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Speaker 1: decades before it happened. So that's today's story. Let's do it.

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Speaker 1: So now, Jamie, we're gonna start like we start every

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Speaker 1: good day by talking about our old buddy. Shouldn't call

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Speaker 1: him a buddy, Adolf Hitler. It's weird because I can

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Speaker 1: call Stalin a buddy, but I feel like calling Hitler

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Speaker 1: a buddies a bridge too far. I don't know. On

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Speaker 1: this show. I feel like they are just rules that

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Speaker 1: are different. Yeah, they're they're old friends. At this point,

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Speaker 1: so Hitler was he was a secular ruler, Jamie. Um,

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Speaker 1: he was not a not a not a not a

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Speaker 1: like I think, I think there's a lot of misconceptions

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Speaker 1: about kind of the nature of his power and like

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Speaker 1: his regime because of all of these like History Channel

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Speaker 1: documentary is in this industry of books on Nazi occult

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Speaker 1: history and like Nazi magic and the hell Boy movies.

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Speaker 1: But like to hear it, yeah yeah, I mean they're

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Speaker 1: great movies, at least one of them is. But um,

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Speaker 1: like this idea that like, you know, the Nazis were

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Speaker 1: like full full of magic, right, and that Hitler like

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Speaker 1: believed all sorts of like weird cookie occult stuff about

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Speaker 1: like raising the dead and aliens and ship and it's

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Speaker 1: just not true. Um, there were some funky occult ties

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Speaker 1: to national socialism, but they were phrase oh yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: oh yeah, cult ties, yeah baby yeah, But they weren't

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Speaker 1: to Hitler. They were too like kind of like side figures.

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Speaker 1: Like the B List of the Nazis. A lot of

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Speaker 1: those guys were kind of into the occult. But like

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Speaker 1: your A listers, really we're we're pretty secular. Guy Beyonce

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Speaker 1: is the Nazi. Beyonce is I'm trying to think of

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Speaker 1: like like the Nazi Jeremy Renners, the halls. Oh, how

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Speaker 1: dare you speak is name in this forum? I thought

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Speaker 1: we was. We made a pact to never speak of

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Speaker 1: him again. We we never signed that contract. We never did.

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Speaker 1: It was under negotiation for a long time. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: is still in arbitration now. The Tulist Society UH spelled

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Speaker 1: Thule Society like the top racks on people's jeeps? Was it? Well,

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Speaker 1: subers people suberus um. The Tolist Society was a German

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Speaker 1: occult group in the early twentieth century UH in Germany UM,

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Speaker 1: and it provided some of the early funding and leadership

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Speaker 1: for the Nazi Party. Heinrich Hitler held bizarre quasi magical

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Speaker 1: beliefs for his whole time in power, and he was

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Speaker 1: kind of into some weird He thought he was like

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Speaker 1: a reincarnated prince and some ship. But Hitler himself was

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Speaker 1: not at all into a cult stuff um. And the

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Speaker 1: only guy really close to him who was was Rudolf Hess,

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Speaker 1: who was his deputy and for a long time his

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Speaker 1: best friend. This is the guy he like co wrote

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Speaker 1: mind comp with like Hess and Hitler like fucking type

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Speaker 1: before Hitler ghost his his like his ghostwriter, yeah, kind

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Speaker 1: of like more like his his muse. Yeah. And also

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Speaker 1: the guy who was a competent typist both. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you got you gotta if your muse is also a

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Speaker 1: competent typist who says the perfect person doesn't exist, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Rudolf hess That's what people say about Rudolph Hess is

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Speaker 1: he was the perfect person. So he was also the

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Speaker 1: deputy fearer for a while. Oh six six six six six. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he was a cool dude, um, but he wasn't really

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Speaker 1: in the picture for very long. He got increasingly marginalized

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Speaker 1: after Hitler came to power in thirty three. Um, and

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Speaker 1: in nineteen forty one he kind of went bug fuck

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Speaker 1: uh and got on a plane and flew to Great

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Speaker 1: Britain while the two countries were at war. Sorry, how

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Speaker 1: would you define bug fuck? I would have defined bug

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Speaker 1: fuck is like independently hopping in your private plane and

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Speaker 1: fing to a country that your country is actively bombing

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Speaker 1: to try to parachute down and negotiate for peace between

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Speaker 1: your two nations without anyone asking. I would describe that

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Speaker 1: as pretty bug fuck. Yeah, that's that's not This is

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Speaker 1: like a new term for me, and now this is

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Speaker 1: the only like reference point I have for it, So

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to know how to how to define

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Speaker 1: bug funk moving forward. Okay, So bug funk is when

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Speaker 1: like the world is falling apart and you're like fuck

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Speaker 1: it and you and you go the funk off and

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Speaker 1: then you is that it kind of yeah, like it

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Speaker 1: was a kind of thing where like there was no

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Speaker 1: chance of it ever working. He did not have the

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Speaker 1: authority to to to sign a peace treaty for Germany,

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Speaker 1: uh and Britain did not have any interest in talking

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Speaker 1: with him or making peace with Germany at this point. Um.

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Speaker 1: So he basically just flew and crash landed in England

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Speaker 1: and got arrested and spent the rest of his life

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Speaker 1: in prison. And it was he huge embarrassment for Hitler

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Speaker 1: because this this is like his right hand man who

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Speaker 1: in the middle of the war like flies to his

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Speaker 1: enemies country to like try to negotiate without Hitler's approval.

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Speaker 1: It was it was very weird. Um And because hess

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Speaker 1: was like this occult dude into astrology and all this

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Speaker 1: ship and like this weird he was actually kind of

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Speaker 1: like a Buddhist, Like he's a weird dude. Um, but

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Speaker 1: because he held all these weird beliefs and he piste

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Speaker 1: off Hitler so badly. Hitler bands like all of this

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Speaker 1: weird occult ship that had cropped up around the Nazi

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Speaker 1: Party in ninety one. So yeah, so after forty one,

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Speaker 1: like really most of that stuff is illegal, Heinrich Hitler

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Speaker 1: gets up to a little bit of it with the

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Speaker 1: s S because he's got a castle and he he's

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Speaker 1: just a weird dude. We'll get into some of that

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Speaker 1: in a later episode. The important thing to understand is that, like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: Hitler was like a distinctly not wooy guy, Like he's

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Speaker 1: not a new age sort of dude. He's like if

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Speaker 1: you mentioned You're like if he's like the guys on Reddit,

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Speaker 1: who like if you mentioned you so much as nine

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Speaker 1: your zodiac sign, They're like, she's not credible, she's fun,

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Speaker 1: she's a she's lost. Yes, I love that type of person,

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Speaker 1: and I I feel confident saying that. A hundred percent

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Speaker 1: of Hitler's biographers agree he would have been extremely on Reddit.

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Speaker 1: I owe more on Reddit than anyone has ever been

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Speaker 1: on Red. Sure. Yeah, no, he would be the most

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Speaker 1: reddity guy of of all of them. And we have

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Speaker 1: to admit that that is very what's his signs? That's

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Speaker 1: very his sign of him. Wouldn't you say, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: he's such a Taurus, he's s Taurus. Sure, okay, continue,

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Speaker 1: that's I assume you're referring to the maker of really

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Speaker 1: shoddy handguns, which is I think they're Brazilian terrible guns. Okay. No,

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Speaker 1: I'm just trying to the behind the bastard's board. Not

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Speaker 1: either way of advocating the Taurust sign or the Taurist

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Speaker 1: firearms brand is not going to go well for you.

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Speaker 1: Um um. Yeah. So now Hitler, so he's not into

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Speaker 1: the occult at all. He's not a big fan of

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Speaker 1: Christianity either. Um. He felt it was fundamentally Jewish because

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Speaker 1: Jesus was Jewish, which is, you know, not an irrational

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Speaker 1: point of view within the logic of being a Nazi. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And he worried a weakened the German people. But he

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Speaker 1: also respected Christianity for its ability to inculcate good values

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Speaker 1: in the German people. Uh. And the primary good value

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Speaker 1: it inculcated was making lots of babies because most Germans

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Speaker 1: were Catholic, and Catholics aren't big fans of condoms. I'm

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Speaker 1: not not sure if you're aware of that. Um No,

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Speaker 1: I know I wouldn't have aunts if it weren't for

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Speaker 1: this attitude, none of us would. Now. Hitler himself was

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Speaker 1: a baptized Roman Catholic all his life, he probably didn't

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Speaker 1: really believe much of anything other than that that Hitler

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Speaker 1: was a cool dude. Um, but he felt it was

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Speaker 1: important to maintain this image. Um. Now. There were some

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Speaker 1: among his followers that it was Nazism's destiny to become

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Speaker 1: the new Great German religion, but Hitler himself pushed back

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Speaker 1: against this, insisting in mind comp that national socialism quote

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Speaker 1: is not a religious reform, but a political reorganization of

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Speaker 1: the German people. He believed, quote, it is criminal to

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Speaker 1: try to destroy the accepted faith of the people as

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Speaker 1: long as there is nothing to replace it. And it

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Speaker 1: is possible that given enough time, Hitler would have tried

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Speaker 1: to replace Christianity with something else, but he never attempted

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Speaker 1: to do so. And as far as we know, the

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Speaker 1: supernatural as it's generally known, played very little role in

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Speaker 1: the Nazi regime. But and here's where the real episode starts.

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Speaker 1: In the decades since Hitler shot himself in that bunker

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Speaker 1: in ve Nazism has changed quite a lot the actual

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Speaker 1: political and historic beliefs of the original Nazis, and if

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Speaker 1: Hitler himself have been twisted and shifted into something even weirder.

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Speaker 1: It would be too much to say that this new

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Speaker 1: form of Nazism is more dangerous than the original, given

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Speaker 1: the tens of millions of people who died from the

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Speaker 1: original Nazism, But it's probably accurate to say that the

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Speaker 1: fact that Nazism has mutated into what we call esoteric

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Speaker 1: hitlersm um has made it better able to survive in

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Speaker 1: the era of the Internet. Now. Esoteric hitler Ism is

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Speaker 1: a term used to refer to a number of different

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Speaker 1: strains of postwar Nazi thought that put a bizarre religious

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Speaker 1: and occult spin on Nazi racial theories and on Hitler himself,

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Speaker 1: often seeing the man as essentially the avatar of a god.

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Speaker 1: Uh four Chan and eight Chan are in the modern age,

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Speaker 1: two of the most prolific vectors for this the spread

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Speaker 1: of this brand of nonsense. There are strains of it

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Speaker 1: in Brenton Terrence Manifesto and Honor's Brevick's Manifesto. And today

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Speaker 1: we're talking about the woman who invented all of this,

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Speaker 1: the single person who became the living link between the

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Speaker 1: Nazism that tried and failed to conquer Europe and the

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Speaker 1: modern Nazi movement that spawns mass shootings and attempted mass

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Speaker 1: shootings on a monthly basis today. Her name was Savitri

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Speaker 1: Devi and she was a huge piece of ship. This

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Speaker 1: is someone's feminism somewhere. This is some piece of ships feminism.

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Speaker 1: She is a feminist icon. Feminism is the law. Now.

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Speaker 1: This is a woman who spent her whole life living

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Speaker 1: alone with a pile of cats and changing Nazism forever. Okay,

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Speaker 1: well what if she just did the first half? You know,

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Speaker 1: that was not she was not willing to do just

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Speaker 1: the first She's like, okay, so I'm in a pile

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Speaker 1: of cats, that's great, what else could I do? And

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Speaker 1: that was her second idea. That's embarrassed, that was her

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Speaker 1: second idea. It does she does start first focused on

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Speaker 1: the cats and then moved straight to Nazism though. It's remarkable. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So she was born Maximiani Portas on September nine five

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Speaker 1: in Lyon, France. Her mother, Julia, came from Cornwall, the

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Speaker 1: town with the thirty six dumbest name in all of England.

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Speaker 1: Her father's ancestry was a milange of various Mediterranean peoples

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Speaker 1: without access to birth control. He was mostly at Allian

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Speaker 1: in Greek. Although young Maximiani was born a French citizen,

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Speaker 1: she latched onto her father's Greek ancestry from the very beginning.

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Speaker 1: Some of this had to do with the fact that

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Speaker 1: Leon had a large and active Greek expat community, and

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Speaker 1: her dad was a prominent member of it. She also

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Speaker 1: nursed an early fascination with Roman history. Her name Maximiani

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Speaker 1: was actually just the female form of Maximian, the proper

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Speaker 1: first name of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. So she's up.

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Speaker 1: She's a big old nerd. I really have to emphasize

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Speaker 1: what a nerd she is. I feel like I've met

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Speaker 1: versions of this girl in like sophomore English classes and

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Speaker 1: they're like, actually something something, and you're like stop at

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Speaker 1: stop that, please, just like finish reading. Their eyes were

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Speaker 1: watching God, let's move on. I was the male version

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Speaker 1: of this for a while. I mean I took three

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Speaker 1: years of Latin because I was such a Roman history nerd. Okay, Robert.

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Speaker 1: Some of us took five years of Latin, and do

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Speaker 1: we remember a fucking thing? Of course? Not? No, no,

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Speaker 1: I not not a goddamn word. I like when I

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Speaker 1: was in high school, in junior high, in high school,

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Speaker 1: if you were like in the quote unquote advanced classes,

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Speaker 1: they would be like, let's teach them a language that

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Speaker 1: they can't use. Goddamn totally useless term. Did you have

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Speaker 1: to me? That's one of those. But did you have

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Speaker 1: to use that textbook that was about the Romani family?

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Speaker 1: Did you do a Romanti? Oh no, no man. I

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Speaker 1: was like fucking Killius and Quintus. I remember those names.

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Speaker 1: They were like the fucking It was like a bunch

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Speaker 1: of Pompeii people who all died at the end of

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Speaker 1: the book. Are everyone died at the end of our textbook? Wait?

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Speaker 1: Was it like we had? We had the Cornelia family.

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Speaker 1: It was like Cornelia and her brother Marcus, and then

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Speaker 1: they had a friend named Sextus who they sound like

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Speaker 1: fucking losers. They weren't. It was there. Your your family

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Speaker 1: sounds way better because our family There was like three

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Speaker 1: books in total, and the whole second book, So like

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Speaker 1: all of eighth and ninth grade they're just stuck in

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Speaker 1: a ditch. They're like in a it. Their carriage isn't

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Speaker 1: a ditch. They can't get out. They're staying at an inn.

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Speaker 1: The innkeepers yelling at them. They're stuck in a ditch.

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Speaker 1: They're stuck in a did for a whole month. And

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Speaker 1: then they go to Rome and and everything is fine.

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Speaker 1: It sounds like a nightmare. Second, well, yeah, nightmare, so horrible.

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Speaker 1: Maximiani would have gotten a lot. Well, no, she wouldn't have.

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Speaker 1: She would have been the most annoying person in our

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Speaker 1: Latin class. Yeah. I don't like when people are in

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Speaker 1: the Latin class and they're also like into it, and

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Speaker 1: I'm like, m, we should be learning. We didn't have

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Speaker 1: to learn to pronounce anything right. You never had to

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Speaker 1: speak because there was a crassical reason to speak it. Well,

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Speaker 1: no one knows either, like you've got ecclesiastical Latin, but

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Speaker 1: there's no way to know if it was exactly the

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Speaker 1: same as with the Roman spoke. So we just didn't

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Speaker 1: give a ship. It was great. Yeah, my teacher Ms.

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Speaker 1: Cook would come and she would what was the thing?

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Speaker 1: She would say. She was like, um, okay, discipuli at

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Speaker 1: this descipula like She's like, hello, students, let's learn Julie

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Speaker 1: is Caesar, and then we would just talk about how

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Speaker 1: the family was stuck in the ditch all day. Well,

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Speaker 1: Maximiani spent her young life stuck in that ditch, and

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Speaker 1: that ditch was called being a huge nerd for Mediterranean

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Speaker 1: classical civilizations. She was a strong willed child, which here

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Speaker 1: is a synonym for unspeakably arrogant and a giant pain

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Speaker 1: in the ass. She felt strongly about just about everything. Everything. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: strong willed. She was known to be utterly immovable once

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Speaker 1: she latched onto an idea. One strong opinion she developed

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Speaker 1: early was that British people were terrible, which is not inaccurate.

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Speaker 1: She hated her mother's English friends and the way they

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Speaker 1: prattled on about illnesses and their dying families. Harsh. That's

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Speaker 1: so harsh, Like I wish my family wasn't. She's like,

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Speaker 1: shut Jesus Christ, Yeah, we get it. She didn't like

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Speaker 1: French people very much much either, and the particular cause

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Speaker 1: for her hatred of the French was the French Revolution.

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Speaker 1: She read about it as a little girl in school

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Speaker 1: and was instantly furious. The Republican ideals of equality, liberty,

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Speaker 1: and fraternity disgusted her. She was punished at school for

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Speaker 1: making an obscene gesture at a plaque of the Declaration

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Speaker 1: of the Rights of Man. And again, how she's like

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Speaker 1: eight or nine. Yeah, she's like a fucking little kid

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Speaker 1: at this point. Yeah. The Declaration of the Rights of Man,

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Speaker 1: which small child Savitri Devi flipped off, includes such controversial

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Speaker 1: takes as people are innocent until proven guilty, people have

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Speaker 1: the right to liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression,

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Speaker 1: and people should be able to speak and write with freedom.

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Speaker 1: Some real hot She's okay, So she was like born

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Speaker 1: to be harmful, she was born to be a fascist.

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Speaker 1: Like she as a small child, She's like, people aren't equal?

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Speaker 1: What is this bullshit? That's so the little flipping off

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Speaker 1: to human rights? You do you do feel like we

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Speaker 1: should have known? We should have known. I mean, I

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Speaker 1: love flipping off old documents too, But to me, it's

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Speaker 1: the magna carta, and the magna carta knows why. The

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Speaker 1: magna carta knows what she did. Oh yeah, the Manacarta

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Speaker 1: shakes in her boots whenever you come walk. The Magna

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Speaker 1: Carta is a messy bitch, and I have no time

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Speaker 1: for it. Okay, Robert, g I can't believe you just

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Speaker 1: called a female document of bitch a messy. You're setting

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Speaker 1: a bad example, Robert. Feminism is document misogyny. She's she's

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Speaker 1: literally shaking right now. She's here. You didn't tell me

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Speaker 1: the magna carta was in the room to She's literally

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Speaker 1: she drove me here. Horrible. She's, well, I don't have

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Speaker 1: driver's license. I don't know what you want. I don't

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Speaker 1: know how much further to take this bit. So I'm

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Speaker 1: just kinda Later in life, in nineteen Savitri Devi told

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Speaker 1: an interviewer a beautiful girl is not equal to an

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Speaker 1: ugly girl. So she remained pretty consistent about her belief

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Speaker 1: in the fundamental inequality of human beings, like her whole life.

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Speaker 1: And she's getting really granular about it too. Yeah, she's

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Speaker 1: granular about sucking everything now. Chief motivating factor in her childhood,

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Speaker 1: I have to say, was completely understandable. She felt a deep,

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Speaker 1: powerful sense of rage at the abuse of animals by

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Speaker 1: human beings, starting at age five. Yeah, starting at age five,

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Speaker 1: she began expressing to her parents concern at the abuse

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Speaker 1: of animals she witnessed in a daily basis. She was

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Speaker 1: horrified by circuses, the fur trade, and the eating of meat.

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Speaker 1: While still in elementary school, she became a committed vegetarian

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Speaker 1: and eventually a vegan. Maximiani Portas was particularly disgusted by

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Speaker 1: the abuse of cats by peasants on the French countryside.

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Speaker 1: Her only real biographer, Nicolas Goodrick Clark, claims this quote

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Speaker 1: disgusted her and turned her against manned kind. And since

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Speaker 1: most people listening probably don't know anything about the history

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Speaker 1: of cat torture in Europe, I didn't know anything about

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Speaker 1: the history of cat torture in Europe. I'm gonna have

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Speaker 1: to talk about that now for a little while. Like

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Speaker 1: specific to this region, cat torture all of Europe, really,

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Speaker 1: but like, yeah, specifically to France. Like the French hate cats, Okay, listen,

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Speaker 1: they are assholes about cats. Yeah. Uh. Today we rightly

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Speaker 1: revere cats as our moral and intellectual superiors, and we

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Speaker 1: have organized or society around pleasing them. This is right

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Speaker 1: and good. But cats have not always been beloved in

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Speaker 1: the West. While they are considered basically wholly in Islam,

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Speaker 1: they're like ritually clean, like you can have them in

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Speaker 1: in mosques and stuff all over the place. You have

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Speaker 1: to wash your hands after touching them if you're gonna

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Speaker 1: go pray. There's a long Christian tradition of seeing cats

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Speaker 1: as demonic entities. Uh. And to be fair, Islam is

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Speaker 1: kind of shitty on the subject of dogs. So I

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Speaker 1: guess whatever of the big religions you pick, you're gonna

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Speaker 1: be terrible to one of the good animals. I don't

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Speaker 1: know why. Yeah, it's weird. Now. In the fifteenth century, Edward,

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Speaker 1: Duke of York, announced that if the devil inhabited any

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Speaker 1: living animal, it was the cat, and for centuries all

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Speaker 1: around Europe, good Christians tortured and murdered cats for almost

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Speaker 1: no reason. In Belgium, they held an event called caton Stote,

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Speaker 1: the Festival of Cats, which sounds awesome but actually just

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Speaker 1: involved drunken townsfolk throwing cats from the top of the

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00:22:23,760 --> 00:22:29,400
Speaker 1: church onto hard cobble stones and then lighting them on fire. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I hey, okay. It's always really frustrating when you hear

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Speaker 1: a story about the underclass and it's like you're playing

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Speaker 1: to stereotypes about the underclass. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna be honest. I bet the rich people got to

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Speaker 1: go up first and throw the nicest cats just to set. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and then and then they would privately be throwing cats

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Speaker 1: at hard marble floors as well. My god, it's horrible.

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Speaker 1: And Catton Stot still still takes place in Epra every May,

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Speaker 1: but they use stuffed animals now, which just stop, just

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Speaker 1: just stop. It's not a good tradition. It would be

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Speaker 1: so easy to not do it. It would be so

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Speaker 1: easy they do. Do they eat the cat? Like? Do

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Speaker 1: they or is it just we're just killing the cats?

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Speaker 1: Not that that makes no, they're just murdering cats for

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00:23:17,359 --> 00:23:20,119
Speaker 1: no good reason. Okay, it's fun, that is, and people

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Speaker 1: are horrible, But Jamie, you know who doesn't randomly torture

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00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:30,680
Speaker 1: cats in Belgium? Your sponsors? That is exactly right. Sophie

404
00:23:30,760 --> 00:23:33,479
Speaker 1: vets every sponsor to make sure they do not torture

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Speaker 1: cats in Belgium. Yes, is that that's true? That's a lie, Robert, Okay, okay,

406
00:23:39,880 --> 00:23:42,520
Speaker 1: it is a small country, so the vetting is pretty easy.

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Speaker 1: Like you'll notice I did not say, for example, Canada. No,

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00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:58,760
Speaker 1: you certainly just got canceled before our very eyes products.

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Speaker 1: We're back. Yeah, those were good ads, Jamie, good products,

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00:24:12,640 --> 00:24:14,680
Speaker 1: after all those good ads. Are you ready to hear

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Speaker 1: more about the systematic torture of cats by generations of Europeans.

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Speaker 1: I just got a cat, Robert, this is not fair.

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Speaker 1: I love cats. Shoutout, Flee. Shout out to flee my cat.

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Speaker 1: He's got a big Neck's got a big neck. Shout

415
00:24:31,560 --> 00:24:36,359
Speaker 1: out to Roach, one of the side characters in the

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Speaker 1: first version of the movie with Keanu Reeves, where some

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00:24:42,160 --> 00:24:44,800
Speaker 1: of the people are bank robbers but they also surfers.

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Speaker 1: Oh oh, oh, you're talking about the Kiana Reeves surfing

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Speaker 1: movie with um we've covered on. Yes, Roach. Roach is

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Speaker 1: the one who bleeds out in a plane point break.

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00:24:57,160 --> 00:24:59,600
Speaker 1: He's a good character. We're talking about We're talking about

422
00:24:59,600 --> 00:25:04,400
Speaker 1: point Break, Yes, point Break, that's the movie classic. Yes. Now,

423
00:25:04,920 --> 00:25:07,320
Speaker 1: in France, there was a centuries old tradition of burning

424
00:25:07,400 --> 00:25:10,960
Speaker 1: hundreds of cats to death and gigantic bonfires. Louis sixteenth

425
00:25:11,119 --> 00:25:17,879
Speaker 1: even famously lit Paris's cat fire in Brutes such a

426
00:25:17,920 --> 00:25:22,080
Speaker 1: cat fire. Yeah, of course, who else, Jamie, who else?

427
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:27,600
Speaker 1: This is just all news to me, Just just okay.

428
00:25:27,640 --> 00:25:30,119
Speaker 1: I'm I'm glad that this wasn't like common knowledge. I

429
00:25:30,119 --> 00:25:32,359
Speaker 1: would be horrified if I just didn't, you know, even

430
00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:37,320
Speaker 1: burning cats Okay, Like it doesn't surprise obviously, like you

431
00:25:37,320 --> 00:25:41,320
Speaker 1: have to assume earlier times people are more callous to

432
00:25:41,400 --> 00:25:44,320
Speaker 1: cats and dogs because them being like what they are

433
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:46,879
Speaker 1: now is kind of a more recent development because we

434
00:25:46,960 --> 00:25:49,679
Speaker 1: have all these extra resources. But I didn't realize it

435
00:25:49,760 --> 00:25:55,480
Speaker 1: was this like cruel, This is a lot is in

436
00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:58,640
Speaker 1: the cat fire. That's like bad writing. M m yeah,

437
00:25:58,760 --> 00:26:02,400
Speaker 1: so the king would would. Yeah, so brule lichettes, which

438
00:26:02,440 --> 00:26:04,600
Speaker 1: I am not going to pronounce more correctly than that

439
00:26:04,640 --> 00:26:08,440
Speaker 1: because it's a horrible thing. And fuck funk. France, as

440
00:26:08,480 --> 00:26:11,320
Speaker 1: it was called um varied in a number of different ways.

441
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:14,800
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was just massive bonfires where living cats were

442
00:26:14,800 --> 00:26:19,000
Speaker 1: tied uh together in like huge pires. Sometimes living cats

443
00:26:19,040 --> 00:26:21,560
Speaker 1: were tied above small fires on like a spit and

444
00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:24,439
Speaker 1: then roasted to death. Sometimes cats were set in wooden

445
00:26:24,440 --> 00:26:27,720
Speaker 1: cages and burnt to death. Uh. In some towns, people

446
00:26:27,760 --> 00:26:31,439
Speaker 1: known as Coramant's cat chasers would soak cats and fuel

447
00:26:31,520 --> 00:26:33,399
Speaker 1: light them on fire and chase them through town to

448
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:37,600
Speaker 1: the amusement of citizens. People are so upset all the time.

449
00:26:37,840 --> 00:26:44,040
Speaker 1: I know, right, they're an oppressed species. Yes they are. Yeah,

450
00:26:44,119 --> 00:26:47,680
Speaker 1: I would be piste. We you should be. I'm pissed.

451
00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:51,040
Speaker 1: The charred remains of these tortured cats were taken home

452
00:26:51,080 --> 00:26:54,399
Speaker 1: as good luck charms by people. In seventeen thirty, as

453
00:26:54,440 --> 00:26:58,200
Speaker 1: revolutionary sentiments simmered and bubbled throughout French society, to Parisian

454
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:01,040
Speaker 1: apprentice printers got fed up with their masters and abducted

455
00:27:01,080 --> 00:27:04,560
Speaker 1: their cats. They staged a massive public trial, the Great

456
00:27:04,600 --> 00:27:07,760
Speaker 1: Cat Massacre, as it's become known to history. Now, this

457
00:27:07,840 --> 00:27:10,800
Speaker 1: was tied more towards issues of class hatred than hatred

458
00:27:10,800 --> 00:27:13,840
Speaker 1: of cats. Um. But the cats wound up actually like,

459
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:16,359
Speaker 1: but they end up being the escaped cats for the

460
00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:20,439
Speaker 1: whole situation exactly. And that's also the worst way to

461
00:27:20,520 --> 00:27:23,840
Speaker 1: die as as a symbol for something that has nothing

462
00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:27,080
Speaker 1: to do with you. Yeah, those cats have no understanding

463
00:27:27,160 --> 00:27:29,840
Speaker 1: of class theory. It's like if someone like murder me

464
00:27:30,280 --> 00:27:32,479
Speaker 1: and then they're like, well, this has something to do

465
00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:36,160
Speaker 1: with Like my opinion on the new Taylor Swift record

466
00:27:36,240 --> 00:27:38,520
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with Jamie, but I killed her

467
00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:42,000
Speaker 1: as to send a message. It would be like if

468
00:27:42,080 --> 00:27:44,560
Speaker 1: one group of aliens came to Earth and murdered you

469
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:46,720
Speaker 1: for something they knew human beings were going to do

470
00:27:46,760 --> 00:27:49,680
Speaker 1: a hundred years in the future. Something you're completely incapable

471
00:27:49,680 --> 00:27:53,320
Speaker 1: of understanding or knowing about, Like just yeah, this like

472
00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:57,040
Speaker 1: it's just wild. But these apprentices felt their masters treated

473
00:27:57,080 --> 00:28:00,600
Speaker 1: the family cats better than their workers. Um. And because

474
00:28:01,119 --> 00:28:04,639
Speaker 1: they couldn't quite you know, murder their bosses. Uh, they

475
00:28:04,720 --> 00:28:06,600
Speaker 1: got a crowd together and they captured a bunch of

476
00:28:06,720 --> 00:28:09,119
Speaker 1: rich people's cats, and then they put them on trial

477
00:28:09,240 --> 00:28:12,280
Speaker 1: and sentenced them to be hung until dead. And they

478
00:28:12,359 --> 00:28:15,400
Speaker 1: hung just a funkload of cats to death. They made

479
00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:17,840
Speaker 1: like the owners of the cats watch. It was super

480
00:28:17,880 --> 00:28:23,160
Speaker 1: fucked up. I don't know what to do right now. Well,

481
00:28:24,040 --> 00:28:26,080
Speaker 1: what you can do right now is you can get

482
00:28:26,119 --> 00:28:28,040
Speaker 1: a little bit into the head of a sensitive young

483
00:28:28,080 --> 00:28:32,320
Speaker 1: soul like Maximiani Portas, because a lot of this stuff

484
00:28:32,359 --> 00:28:34,680
Speaker 1: was still going on in France. It wasn't at its worse,

485
00:28:34,800 --> 00:28:37,720
Speaker 1: but like cat torture and burning was still happening in

486
00:28:37,760 --> 00:28:40,560
Speaker 1: the countryside. And she sees this as a little girl

487
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:43,400
Speaker 1: and is like, this is part of why she hates

488
00:28:43,440 --> 00:28:46,160
Speaker 1: those like you know, French revolutionary all use of freedom

489
00:28:46,160 --> 00:28:49,120
Speaker 1: and equality is She's like, well, clearly this is all bullshit.

490
00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:51,320
Speaker 1: Look at what they're doing to these animals, Like where's

491
00:28:51,360 --> 00:28:54,320
Speaker 1: their you know, equality and freedom and like like like

492
00:28:54,440 --> 00:28:59,120
Speaker 1: she that's kind of like where she comes at this from, right. Um. Yeah,

493
00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:02,920
Speaker 1: so she's deeply sympathetic to animals and particularly cats, and

494
00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:09,360
Speaker 1: basically incapable of being sympathetic to human beings. Um and yeah,

495
00:29:09,560 --> 00:29:12,680
Speaker 1: so an interesting story. I'm going to be interested in

496
00:29:12,720 --> 00:29:16,720
Speaker 1: how she galaxy brains being sympathetic towards the plight of

497
00:29:16,720 --> 00:29:21,200
Speaker 1: of of brutally murdered cats to becoming a fascist. But

498
00:29:22,160 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 1: you know, I fascism common thing for fascists, to be honest,

499
00:29:28,400 --> 00:29:34,560
Speaker 1: it's to fascism, well, you know, not committing cat murders,

500
00:29:34,560 --> 00:29:38,120
Speaker 1: but like hating people because of how garbage they are

501
00:29:38,320 --> 00:29:40,720
Speaker 1: and thinking fascism is the only way to fix something

502
00:29:40,800 --> 00:29:44,360
Speaker 1: because people just can't be allowed to live on their own. Okay,

503
00:29:44,400 --> 00:29:46,120
Speaker 1: I knew that. I think I thought you were saying

504
00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:51,040
Speaker 1: cats specific reasons. I'm like, well, this is a true education. Yeah. Now,

505
00:29:51,280 --> 00:29:53,920
Speaker 1: Maximiani was very good in school. She was a bright student.

506
00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:56,960
Speaker 1: She read and wrote constantly, and her very favorite writer

507
00:29:57,200 --> 00:30:02,040
Speaker 1: was a nineteenth century French poet, Charles Leconte Delisle. Uh.

508
00:30:02,120 --> 00:30:05,760
Speaker 1: And here's how Savitri's biographer describes Leconte Delisle's work in

509
00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:08,600
Speaker 1: the book Hitler's Priestess, which is really the only decent

510
00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:13,200
Speaker 1: biography of Savitri Devi quote Leconte Delisle's own tragic view

511
00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:15,560
Speaker 1: of the universe. His romantic colors were always tinged with

512
00:30:15,600 --> 00:30:19,720
Speaker 1: somber pessimism, strongly appealed to Maximiani. He regarded all religious

513
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:22,200
Speaker 1: symbols as fragments of a divine truth, but the profusion

514
00:30:22,200 --> 00:30:24,520
Speaker 1: of faiths over time convinced him of the relative value

515
00:30:24,520 --> 00:30:27,400
Speaker 1: and ultimate vanity of every doctrine. Beset by a sense

516
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:31,280
Speaker 1: of cosmic futility, Leconte Delisle rejected Christianity and evoked the

517
00:30:31,320 --> 00:30:34,680
Speaker 1: stoical heroism of barbarian and exotic people's and his famous

518
00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:39,000
Speaker 1: poem Psycho Poems Barbara's. He was also powerfully attracted to

519
00:30:39,040 --> 00:30:41,720
Speaker 1: Hinduism following the translation of its sacred texts in the

520
00:30:41,760 --> 00:30:45,120
Speaker 1: eighteen forties. Maximiani felt a profound sympathy with Le Conte

521
00:30:45,160 --> 00:30:48,600
Speaker 1: Delisle's view of life's fragility, the vanity of existence, and

522
00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:50,960
Speaker 1: the illusion of the world. His romantic poems about the

523
00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:54,520
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptians, the Scandinavians, the Celts and Hindus their proud

524
00:30:54,560 --> 00:30:57,640
Speaker 1: paganism and heroic action, yet final resignation in the face

525
00:30:57,640 --> 00:31:00,480
Speaker 1: of death and oblivion confirmed her own of version to

526
00:31:00,560 --> 00:31:05,000
Speaker 1: Christianity and helped her form her own fatalistic worldview. So

527
00:31:05,480 --> 00:31:09,240
Speaker 1: goths didn't exist in the early twentieth century, but Maximi

528
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:12,920
Speaker 1: is clearly that she is a proto goth It's again,

529
00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:14,880
Speaker 1: it's just like, if there had been a hot topic

530
00:31:14,920 --> 00:31:19,920
Speaker 1: for her to uh, you know, be, a lot could

531
00:31:19,960 --> 00:31:23,920
Speaker 1: have been avoided. Imagine how many hot topic employees were

532
00:31:23,960 --> 00:31:28,400
Speaker 1: saved by that business, Yeah, a lot of them. Imagine

533
00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:32,520
Speaker 1: how many fascists we avoided by, for example, the existence

534
00:31:32,520 --> 00:31:39,560
Speaker 1: of Kylo Wrin fan fiction. Honestly, honestly, it's wow. That

535
00:31:39,720 --> 00:31:42,600
Speaker 1: actually hit for me. Wow, that hit that people. People

536
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:45,000
Speaker 1: need an outlet, you know, and if you don't, this

537
00:31:45,040 --> 00:31:47,440
Speaker 1: is what happens. Right, You're just like, if you can

538
00:31:47,520 --> 00:31:51,160
Speaker 1: make it horny and palatable, you're going to prevent something bad.

539
00:31:51,320 --> 00:31:54,720
Speaker 1: This was a a young girl who desperately needed to

540
00:31:54,720 --> 00:31:58,400
Speaker 1: be distracted, and nothing distracted her, and that it's a

541
00:31:58,480 --> 00:32:02,040
Speaker 1: problem had blaze at a pretty clear track for you

542
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:04,960
Speaker 1: to really, I mean, I just yeah, send me back

543
00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:07,400
Speaker 1: in time with a Jack Skellington hoodie for this woman.

544
00:32:08,080 --> 00:32:10,920
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that would have solved so many problems,

545
00:32:11,360 --> 00:32:14,400
Speaker 1: created some others. I mean, she still would have been

546
00:32:14,400 --> 00:32:18,120
Speaker 1: a deeply annoying person, but like I had a Jack

547
00:32:18,200 --> 00:32:20,360
Speaker 1: Skellington hoodie. But also I had never seen the movie.

548
00:32:20,360 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 1: I was a total poser. Oh boy, that's going to

549
00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:26,400
Speaker 1: get you canceled harder than anything else today. And then

550
00:32:26,480 --> 00:32:28,320
Speaker 1: I saw the movie and guess what, I didn't like

551
00:32:28,440 --> 00:32:33,760
Speaker 1: it very much. I watched it. It's fine, it's fine. Well,

552
00:32:33,800 --> 00:32:36,040
Speaker 1: actually I don't. I think it's maybe not so good.

553
00:32:36,360 --> 00:32:39,720
Speaker 1: Beautiful animation though, anyways, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you get

554
00:32:39,720 --> 00:32:44,840
Speaker 1: a judge it for its time, ah do I? Anyways,

555
00:32:46,640 --> 00:32:56,200
Speaker 1: it was no For example, the Little Toaster, I don't know, yeah, no, no,

556
00:32:56,360 --> 00:33:00,520
Speaker 1: it didn't kids up. I loved the Little Toaster. Damaged

557
00:33:00,520 --> 00:33:06,000
Speaker 1: me forever, really, that's why. But he was brave robber.

558
00:33:08,320 --> 00:33:11,720
Speaker 1: That's why you throw bagels, right, Robert, I don't know.

559
00:33:11,840 --> 00:33:16,560
Speaker 1: It's why I'm scared of fucking radiators. You've got to

560
00:33:16,600 --> 00:33:21,160
Speaker 1: do some exposure therapy for you. With brave old toaster.

561
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:26,840
Speaker 1: That's why he doesn't toast his bagels. He only. I mean,

562
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:31,480
Speaker 1: that's like the thing tragic. M's tragic. Imagine the path

563
00:33:31,560 --> 00:33:36,520
Speaker 1: we could have avoided. I know Maximiani Portis was very

564
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:39,720
Speaker 1: political as a young girl. Um when World War One

565
00:33:39,760 --> 00:33:42,920
Speaker 1: started in nineteen fourteen, she at nine years old, knew

566
00:33:43,040 --> 00:33:45,920
Speaker 1: very clearly that she did not trust the entent powers

567
00:33:46,400 --> 00:33:49,720
Speaker 1: UM so like England, France, you know, Russia. Some of

568
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:52,600
Speaker 1: this likely came from the fact that Greece's King Constantine

569
00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:54,920
Speaker 1: was very pro German and refused to get into the

570
00:33:54,960 --> 00:33:57,080
Speaker 1: war on the side of either the entent or the

571
00:33:57,120 --> 00:34:01,160
Speaker 1: central Powers UM. But the King of Greece's prime minister,

572
00:34:01,320 --> 00:34:05,800
Speaker 1: a guy named Venizelos UM which I'm probably mispronouncing, uh,

573
00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:08,160
Speaker 1: disagreed with the king. He was very pro British and

574
00:34:08,200 --> 00:34:11,080
Speaker 1: supported Greece getting into the war. The two fought over

575
00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:13,960
Speaker 1: this for years until in nineteen sixteen a group of

576
00:34:14,000 --> 00:34:17,000
Speaker 1: pro Venizelos army officers staged a coup against the king.

577
00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:19,799
Speaker 1: There were rumors that the untuanted back this, and those

578
00:34:19,840 --> 00:34:22,080
Speaker 1: rumors seemed credible in light of the fact that French

579
00:34:22,120 --> 00:34:25,160
Speaker 1: and British troops landed in Salonika and Athens in nineteen

580
00:34:25,160 --> 00:34:28,320
Speaker 1: fifteen and sixteen to force Greek compliance in their demands

581
00:34:28,320 --> 00:34:31,239
Speaker 1: from military access to the Macedonian Front so they could

582
00:34:31,280 --> 00:34:35,640
Speaker 1: better fight Austria Hungary. Um, that's a lot a history there,

583
00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:38,840
Speaker 1: but basically she's very pro Greece and wants Greased to

584
00:34:38,840 --> 00:34:40,720
Speaker 1: stay out of the war because she also likes Germany,

585
00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:43,840
Speaker 1: hates the English, hates the French, and she's piste off

586
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:48,080
Speaker 1: because England and France back this prime minister who wants

587
00:34:48,080 --> 00:34:50,160
Speaker 1: Greased to get into the war and they also funk

588
00:34:50,200 --> 00:34:53,160
Speaker 1: with Greek sovereignty and stuff. She gets really angry overall.

589
00:34:53,239 --> 00:34:56,920
Speaker 1: And and how old is she at this point? Like

590
00:34:56,960 --> 00:35:01,359
Speaker 1: where where are we? Nine? Ten eleven years old? When

591
00:35:01,400 --> 00:35:03,719
Speaker 1: I imagine, did you know what was going on in

592
00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:05,440
Speaker 1: the world when you were nine or ten years old? Like?

593
00:35:05,480 --> 00:35:08,200
Speaker 1: How where were you? I was pretty I mean not

594
00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:10,279
Speaker 1: nine and eleven. Happened when I was like twelve, And

595
00:35:10,320 --> 00:35:12,719
Speaker 1: that was definitely like the start of me getting political.

596
00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:16,520
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, I was. I was in World War One. Yeah,

597
00:35:16,560 --> 00:35:18,680
Speaker 1: you know. World War One's that level of thing, right

598
00:35:18,680 --> 00:35:21,480
Speaker 1: where like even a little kid is gonna like, you're

599
00:35:21,480 --> 00:35:23,360
Speaker 1: gonna pay attention to that ship. It's kind of a

600
00:35:23,400 --> 00:35:25,719
Speaker 1: big deal. You won't have a fully formed opinion, but

601
00:35:25,760 --> 00:35:28,640
Speaker 1: you'll you'll know what's going on. You'll know what's going

602
00:35:28,680 --> 00:35:30,760
Speaker 1: I guess I'm just like, it would be so bizarre

603
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:32,879
Speaker 1: to me if someone was like Jamie's beliefs at eight

604
00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:36,840
Speaker 1: years old, was nine eleven? Was school got out early

605
00:35:36,880 --> 00:35:39,560
Speaker 1: that day? And and this is where I should note

606
00:35:39,719 --> 00:35:42,040
Speaker 1: that this is going to be an imperfect episode in

607
00:35:42,120 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 1: terms of that sort of thing, because our main source

608
00:35:44,600 --> 00:35:47,560
Speaker 1: on this is Hitler's Priestess, which is a biography that's

609
00:35:47,560 --> 00:35:51,520
Speaker 1: fairly decent but also flawed because it's mainly based on

610
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:55,399
Speaker 1: Savitri Devi's own biographical writings of her recollections of her

611
00:35:55,400 --> 00:35:58,239
Speaker 1: own life. Like, there's just not a lot of information.

612
00:35:58,239 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of weren't a lot of people

613
00:35:59,680 --> 00:36:01,839
Speaker 1: to go back to and like talk to about her

614
00:36:01,920 --> 00:36:04,480
Speaker 1: and as a child and stuff who were still alive

615
00:36:04,600 --> 00:36:08,359
Speaker 1: when she became relevant. I think it was written if

616
00:36:08,480 --> 00:36:12,280
Speaker 1: I could write about like what I thought I thought

617
00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:14,399
Speaker 1: at eight years old, I'd be like, Jamie was a

618
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:17,759
Speaker 1: brilliant genius who had start opinions on foreign policy. Okay,

619
00:36:17,760 --> 00:36:21,160
Speaker 1: got it well. But that said, given the I don't

620
00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:24,080
Speaker 1: think we shouldn't discard all of this because if you

621
00:36:24,120 --> 00:36:27,040
Speaker 1: look at the thrust of her life, she does live

622
00:36:27,080 --> 00:36:29,880
Speaker 1: the life of someone who's always been very political I

623
00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:37,200
Speaker 1: mean yeah exactly so, um yeah. Venizelos and his men

624
00:36:37,320 --> 00:36:39,640
Speaker 1: took over part of Greece with the backing of Britain

625
00:36:39,640 --> 00:36:42,000
Speaker 1: and France UH, and those two countries were happy to

626
00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:44,680
Speaker 1: recognize his government while they carried out a brutal ten

627
00:36:44,719 --> 00:36:47,200
Speaker 1: month blockade of the Greek provinces that stayed loyal to

628
00:36:47,239 --> 00:36:50,160
Speaker 1: the king. And young Maximiani watched all this as she

629
00:36:50,200 --> 00:36:53,240
Speaker 1: grew into an adolescent girl. Some of her earliest memories

630
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:56,320
Speaker 1: were news reports of protests from Athens of royalist crowds

631
00:36:56,400 --> 00:36:59,560
Speaker 1: railing against the entent and Maximiani sided with them and

632
00:36:59,600 --> 00:37:02,520
Speaker 1: consider of the Antons treatment of Greece to be basically criminal.

633
00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:06,080
Speaker 1: Her disgust was reinforced after the war. In the wake

634
00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:09,040
Speaker 1: of the Central powers defeat, the Ottoman Empire was broken

635
00:37:09,120 --> 00:37:11,960
Speaker 1: up and Greece was given control in the Versailles Treaty

636
00:37:12,040 --> 00:37:15,120
Speaker 1: of A city called Smyrna now Smyrna is a city

637
00:37:15,160 --> 00:37:18,280
Speaker 1: on the Aegean coast of Anatolia, which is modern day Turkey.

638
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:21,160
Speaker 1: It was the center of a nearly three thousand year

639
00:37:21,160 --> 00:37:24,480
Speaker 1: old Greek community that lived on the coast of Anatolia.

640
00:37:24,600 --> 00:37:27,839
Speaker 1: Greece with some justification thought that a lot of Anatolia

641
00:37:27,920 --> 00:37:30,600
Speaker 1: ought to be part of Greece because it was culturally

642
00:37:30,640 --> 00:37:33,960
Speaker 1: and historically Greece, and the newly created nation of Turkey

643
00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:37,560
Speaker 1: did not agree. So, with the backing of the Versailles Treaty,

644
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:40,759
Speaker 1: Greece invaded Smyrna in nineteen nineteen to make good on

645
00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:42,719
Speaker 1: the promises that you know, had been made to them

646
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:45,200
Speaker 1: by the entant, and the fighting was a disaster from

647
00:37:45,200 --> 00:37:47,920
Speaker 1: the beginning. The Ottoman Empire had been defeated in the

648
00:37:47,920 --> 00:37:50,719
Speaker 1: war technically, but on the ground and actual battles their

649
00:37:50,719 --> 00:37:52,759
Speaker 1: soldiers had performed pretty well. They'd fought off a big

650
00:37:52,800 --> 00:37:55,680
Speaker 1: invasion at Gallipoli. The birth of the Turkish nation after

651
00:37:55,719 --> 00:37:57,360
Speaker 1: the fall of the Ottoman Empire was met with a

652
00:37:57,400 --> 00:38:00,759
Speaker 1: swelling of nationalist fervor in Anatolia, and this helped to

653
00:38:00,800 --> 00:38:04,360
Speaker 1: spawn a powerful insurgent Turkish movement dedicated to defeating the

654
00:38:04,360 --> 00:38:08,719
Speaker 1: Greek invasion m hm. SO. A truce was reached in

655
00:38:08,800 --> 00:38:12,320
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, but like many recent truces in Turkish military history,

656
00:38:12,360 --> 00:38:14,520
Speaker 1: it was not a real truce, and around the same

657
00:38:14,520 --> 00:38:17,759
Speaker 1: time King Constantine was restored to the Greek throne. This turn,

658
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:20,560
Speaker 1: the remaining Great powers of Europe against Greece, and even

659
00:38:20,600 --> 00:38:23,480
Speaker 1: though they promised Greece Smyrna and the Versailles Treaty in

660
00:38:23,600 --> 00:38:26,640
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty one, they basically like like, funk that ship

661
00:38:26,920 --> 00:38:29,719
Speaker 1: and hold all of their support. Do we know where

662
00:38:29,719 --> 00:38:35,440
Speaker 1: the where the Greeks at this time stood on cats? Uh?

663
00:38:35,480 --> 00:38:37,560
Speaker 1: You know, they're closer to the Middle East. So I'm

664
00:38:37,560 --> 00:38:44,319
Speaker 1: gonna guess more pro cat, more pro cat. Okay, Okay, yeah,

665
00:38:44,360 --> 00:38:47,440
Speaker 1: I think yeah. The further in that direction you get

666
00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:50,319
Speaker 1: more pro cat, less pro dog. You know, I think

667
00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:57,440
Speaker 1: that's generally fair Western They've got a lot of dogs. Yeah, yeah, dog.

668
00:38:58,360 --> 00:39:01,040
Speaker 1: Maybe they just lit cats and dogs on fire. I

669
00:39:01,080 --> 00:39:04,600
Speaker 1: don't know. I did not do that research. Okay, these

670
00:39:04,640 --> 00:39:07,759
Speaker 1: are the questions I have Robert take of relieve them.

671
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:12,880
Speaker 1: So the French and Italian governments like betray Greece first,

672
00:39:12,960 --> 00:39:15,560
Speaker 1: and they signed agreements with the Turkish leader Mustapha Kamal

673
00:39:15,680 --> 00:39:17,360
Speaker 1: and to ignore the promises they had made in the

674
00:39:17,440 --> 00:39:20,240
Speaker 1: Verse I Treaty to Greece. Britain held out the longest,

675
00:39:20,239 --> 00:39:23,759
Speaker 1: but when Greece launched an offensive in Anatolia in March

676
00:39:23,760 --> 00:39:27,800
Speaker 1: of nine, all of the allies suddenly adopted a policy

677
00:39:27,800 --> 00:39:30,879
Speaker 1: of neutrality. Britain banned for their arms sales to Grease Well,

678
00:39:30,920 --> 00:39:33,480
Speaker 1: France was happy to allow its weapons makers to sell

679
00:39:33,520 --> 00:39:36,360
Speaker 1: straight to Turkey. The whole effort to incorporate the Greek

680
00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:39,400
Speaker 1: regions of Anatolia into the Greek nation ended in disaster

681
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:43,000
Speaker 1: and military defeat. In nineteen twenty two, Greek forces fled

682
00:39:43,080 --> 00:39:45,680
Speaker 1: Asia Minor, and the Turkish army conducted a campaign of

683
00:39:45,719 --> 00:39:49,480
Speaker 1: extermination and ethnic cleansing on their agan coast. They massacred

684
00:39:49,560 --> 00:39:53,400
Speaker 1: some thirty thousand Christians, a mix of Greeks, Armenians and Frank's,

685
00:39:53,560 --> 00:39:56,239
Speaker 1: in order to ensure no Greek independence movement would ever

686
00:39:56,320 --> 00:40:00,439
Speaker 1: crop up on their coast again. This Mrner debacle. This,

687
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:03,760
Speaker 1: this is why there's no real Greek community in Anatoly anymore,

688
00:40:03,800 --> 00:40:06,000
Speaker 1: not like there was for three thousand years prior. This

689
00:40:06,040 --> 00:40:10,520
Speaker 1: is like what she wipes out that community. Uh So,

690
00:40:11,040 --> 00:40:14,720
Speaker 1: you can see why a Greek nationalist like Maximiani Portas,

691
00:40:14,800 --> 00:40:17,400
Speaker 1: who is like fifteen sixteen years old then and like

692
00:40:17,600 --> 00:40:22,640
Speaker 1: really actually starting to like understand the world, is furious

693
00:40:22,719 --> 00:40:24,880
Speaker 1: about all this, and it it breeds in her a

694
00:40:25,080 --> 00:40:29,640
Speaker 1: powerful hatred of the entent powers, particularly of France and

695
00:40:29,719 --> 00:40:33,319
Speaker 1: of of England. Um. And she basically felt that like

696
00:40:33,360 --> 00:40:36,000
Speaker 1: all these fancy words they had about liberty and democracy

697
00:40:36,040 --> 00:40:38,640
Speaker 1: were bullshit when they couldn't even hold the basic promises

698
00:40:38,680 --> 00:40:40,680
Speaker 1: and protect the lives of tens of thousands of innocent

699
00:40:40,719 --> 00:40:45,600
Speaker 1: Greek civilians, which is very valid. Yes, yeah, yeah, Now

700
00:40:45,680 --> 00:40:47,680
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to like ignore the Turkish point of

701
00:40:47,760 --> 00:40:49,680
Speaker 1: view in this too, like Greece is not in the

702
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:52,680
Speaker 1: right here as a country either, Like everybody's in the wrong,

703
00:40:52,719 --> 00:40:56,239
Speaker 1: although Turkey massacrest people, so I'm gonna say, maybe they're

704
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:59,839
Speaker 1: more in the wrong. But this is complicated. But this

705
00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:02,360
Speaker 1: is sort of how Maximiani is very much on the

706
00:41:02,400 --> 00:41:04,960
Speaker 1: side of Greece is fucked over. And this is an

707
00:41:05,120 --> 00:41:09,240
Speaker 1: entirely like a crime committed by the Entente powers against

708
00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:12,400
Speaker 1: against Greece, and it sets up the rest of her

709
00:41:12,480 --> 00:41:17,799
Speaker 1: life in a lot of ways. Um. So other influences

710
00:41:17,840 --> 00:41:20,160
Speaker 1: on her developing mind, where the sight of French crowds

711
00:41:20,160 --> 00:41:23,560
Speaker 1: and leon cheering uproariously at the brutal terms of the

712
00:41:23,560 --> 00:41:26,520
Speaker 1: Treaty of Versailles when they were announced. She was horrified

713
00:41:26,880 --> 00:41:30,080
Speaker 1: when the French government stationed black Synegalese troops to occupy

714
00:41:30,120 --> 00:41:33,160
Speaker 1: the Ruhr, Germany's industrial heartland. Now, this is one of

715
00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:35,359
Speaker 1: those moves by France that engendered a whole shit litter

716
00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:37,960
Speaker 1: racism in Central Europe. It was a big influence on

717
00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:40,879
Speaker 1: a lot of early Nazi thinkers too. And obviously black

718
00:41:40,920 --> 00:41:43,440
Speaker 1: soldiers aren't he worse than white ones, but as civilians

719
00:41:43,480 --> 00:41:46,320
Speaker 1: living under military occupation, you're going to hate whatever foreign

720
00:41:46,320 --> 00:41:48,960
Speaker 1: soldiers occupy your country. And if those soldiers are the

721
00:41:48,960 --> 00:41:51,840
Speaker 1: only black people who've ever met, it wasn't a great

722
00:41:51,840 --> 00:41:58,919
Speaker 1: move on France's behalf Jesus Christ. Yeah, so I'm trying

723
00:41:58,920 --> 00:42:00,360
Speaker 1: to set up all of like this is like the

724
00:42:00,360 --> 00:42:04,560
Speaker 1: ship that is forming. She's twelve, fifteen, sixteen is all

725
00:42:04,600 --> 00:42:08,000
Speaker 1: this is going on like formative fucking years. Yea. Yeah.

726
00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:11,480
Speaker 1: So she hates France, she hates England, she hates black people,

727
00:42:11,760 --> 00:42:16,400
Speaker 1: she hates Turkish people, She's she loves a lot more hate.

728
00:42:16,880 --> 00:42:22,920
Speaker 1: She loves cats. This is the consistent one. Yeah. Yeah. Uh.

729
00:42:23,040 --> 00:42:27,080
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty three, a fresherly graduated Maximiani Portis left

730
00:42:27,120 --> 00:42:29,520
Speaker 1: France to attend college in Greece. She was just on

731
00:42:29,560 --> 00:42:31,759
Speaker 1: the edge of eighteen and furious with the status quo

732
00:42:31,800 --> 00:42:34,200
Speaker 1: in Europe. Without any real clear idea of how she

733
00:42:34,280 --> 00:42:37,200
Speaker 1: thought things ought to be. Instead, she did, however, know

734
00:42:37,280 --> 00:42:40,040
Speaker 1: that she was obsessed with Hellenism, which is like ancient

735
00:42:40,400 --> 00:42:45,240
Speaker 1: Greek culture. She's a she's dork. Yeah, she's a big

736
00:42:45,280 --> 00:42:51,399
Speaker 1: fucking joy. She's like Troy, Oh my god. She would

737
00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:54,600
Speaker 1: not shut up about the Elliot. She was a fucking you.

738
00:42:55,239 --> 00:42:57,960
Speaker 1: I find multiple translations and you're like, can you not?

739
00:42:59,160 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 1: She has wrong and profoundly thirsty opinions on Achilles. She's

740
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:09,960
Speaker 1: like ranked gods and goddesses hot. If she'd seen the

741
00:43:10,000 --> 00:43:12,680
Speaker 1: actual movie Troy that came out like a decade ago,

742
00:43:12,719 --> 00:43:15,000
Speaker 1: she would have been furious, because there's no way Brad

743
00:43:15,040 --> 00:43:22,320
Speaker 1: Pitt was as hot as the Achilles in her mind. Beautiful. Yeah,

744
00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:25,080
Speaker 1: she believed the old Greeks had been quote a civilization

745
00:43:25,120 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 1: of iron, rooted in truth, a civilization with all the

746
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:30,120
Speaker 1: virtues of the ancient world, none of its weaknesses, and

747
00:43:30,160 --> 00:43:33,480
Speaker 1: all the technical achievements of the modern age, without modern hypocrisy,

748
00:43:33,600 --> 00:43:38,239
Speaker 1: pettiness and moral squalor. Now this is of course wildly inaccurate. Uh.

749
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:41,680
Speaker 1: The ancient Greeks were like unbelievably fucked up. They also

750
00:43:41,719 --> 00:43:43,600
Speaker 1: did a lot of cool shit obviously, like every other

751
00:43:43,640 --> 00:43:47,839
Speaker 1: ancient that's all ancient people do, a lot of cool shit.

752
00:43:47,920 --> 00:43:53,120
Speaker 1: All Aztecs amazing shit, horribly fucked up, ancient Romans, amazing ship,

753
00:43:53,360 --> 00:43:57,160
Speaker 1: Han Chinese ancient amazing ship. Horribly for everybody. Yeah. In

754
00:43:57,200 --> 00:43:59,520
Speaker 1: the Greek specific case, uh, they fucked a bunch of

755
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:02,840
Speaker 1: little kids. They repeatedly put narcissistic idiots in charge of

756
00:44:02,840 --> 00:44:05,799
Speaker 1: their city states. They made numerous blunders that ensured their

757
00:44:05,800 --> 00:44:08,640
Speaker 1: period of military and economic might was short lived. And

758
00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:11,279
Speaker 1: they also created some of the most influential philosophy and

759
00:44:11,320 --> 00:44:13,719
Speaker 1: fiction and art that has ever been made in the

760
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:18,279
Speaker 1: history of the human race. Complicated people, Um, Maximiani does

761
00:44:18,320 --> 00:44:21,000
Speaker 1: not get a complex picture of ancient Greece. It's just

762
00:44:21,280 --> 00:44:27,319
Speaker 1: the good ship. Yeah. Yeah, Um, you might say, like,

763
00:44:27,840 --> 00:44:29,440
Speaker 1: I don't know, like I want to say, her understanding

764
00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:32,279
Speaker 1: of Greek history was not deep. It was certainly incomplete.

765
00:44:32,560 --> 00:44:36,000
Speaker 1: Um that said pretty much only like, the only thing

766
00:44:36,040 --> 00:44:38,400
Speaker 1: Europeans would write about the ancient Greeks in that period

767
00:44:38,480 --> 00:44:40,880
Speaker 1: was wildly positive. You weren't going to get like critical

768
00:44:42,120 --> 00:44:46,440
Speaker 1: like commentary on, for example, pederasty in ancient Greece in

769
00:44:46,600 --> 00:44:49,719
Speaker 1: fucking nineteen twenty like it's you're just not going to

770
00:44:49,800 --> 00:44:54,279
Speaker 1: read that. Um. Yeah. So her love of Greece was

771
00:44:54,320 --> 00:44:58,080
Speaker 1: mostly focused on obsessing over their incredible art and fantasizing

772
00:44:58,120 --> 00:45:01,359
Speaker 1: about the idealized culture that she to existed there, right,

773
00:45:01,400 --> 00:45:03,759
Speaker 1: I mean this, I mean we as children all read

774
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:08,680
Speaker 1: revisionist history about horrifying cultures. I was obsessed with ancient

775
00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:12,040
Speaker 1: Rome a lot of the same reasons, of course, because

776
00:45:12,040 --> 00:45:13,560
Speaker 1: you're just like, oh, it seems like the only dio

777
00:45:13,680 --> 00:45:17,040
Speaker 1: dope stuff and more cool outfits. Well, I will say

778
00:45:17,040 --> 00:45:18,640
Speaker 1: I was kind of a fucked up kid, so when

779
00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:21,080
Speaker 1: I learned about like all of the fucking crucifixions and

780
00:45:21,080 --> 00:45:24,359
Speaker 1: ship I was kind of like, hell yeah, but you're

781
00:45:24,360 --> 00:45:29,640
Speaker 1: so metal. I mean, it is pretty fucking metal metal.

782
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:32,200
Speaker 1: We'll talk about what they did to Spartacus and his

783
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:35,400
Speaker 1: friends one of these days, but it's fucking one of

784
00:45:35,440 --> 00:45:37,960
Speaker 1: like the biggest mic drop moments in the history of

785
00:45:38,000 --> 00:45:40,919
Speaker 1: torturing people to death with wood. Um. I think that's

786
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:48,239
Speaker 1: fair to say. Thrilled to have such a hyper specific um.

787
00:45:48,320 --> 00:45:52,800
Speaker 1: So she moves to Greece. She's super happy for a while. Obviously,

788
00:45:52,880 --> 00:45:55,040
Speaker 1: best place in the world for this girl is fucking Grace.

789
00:45:55,080 --> 00:45:57,600
Speaker 1: At this point in time Um and the time she

790
00:45:57,680 --> 00:46:02,440
Speaker 1: spent discovering the wonders of Athens rules Um coincided with

791
00:46:02,480 --> 00:46:05,160
Speaker 1: some very important goings on in Germany. I'm gonna quote

792
00:46:05,160 --> 00:46:08,919
Speaker 1: again from the book Hitler's Priestess. Years later, she would

793
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:11,480
Speaker 1: recall that she spent such a sunlit afternoon upon the

794
00:46:11,520 --> 00:46:15,040
Speaker 1: Acropolis on ninth October ninety three, the fateful day of

795
00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:17,440
Speaker 1: Hitler's push, when he and his followers had attempted a

796
00:46:17,440 --> 00:46:20,520
Speaker 1: coup against the Varian government and staged a march to

797
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:23,160
Speaker 1: the felde Heron Hall in the center of Munich. The

798
00:46:23,160 --> 00:46:25,759
Speaker 1: police successfully broke up the march, and sixteen martyrs of

799
00:46:25,760 --> 00:46:28,280
Speaker 1: the early Nazi movement fell beneath the hail of bullets.

800
00:46:28,480 --> 00:46:30,760
Speaker 1: When details of the incident were published in the world

801
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:33,640
Speaker 1: press the following day, there was some discussion over lunch

802
00:46:33,640 --> 00:46:36,040
Speaker 1: at the International Home Hostel, which is where she was

803
00:46:36,080 --> 00:46:38,880
Speaker 1: crashing at the time. Maximiani admits that she did not

804
00:46:38,960 --> 00:46:41,000
Speaker 1: yet connect Hitler with her own dream of a new

805
00:46:41,080 --> 00:46:44,400
Speaker 1: racial order based on her view of classical Greek antiquity. However,

806
00:46:44,440 --> 00:46:47,279
Speaker 1: she strongly sympathized with him as an enemy of the

807
00:46:47,320 --> 00:46:49,680
Speaker 1: Allies on account of his contempt for the Versailles Treaty

808
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:52,520
Speaker 1: and saw a parallel between his nationalist idea of one

809
00:46:52,560 --> 00:46:55,840
Speaker 1: state for all Germans and the Magali idea among the Greeks,

810
00:46:55,840 --> 00:46:58,040
Speaker 1: which is the idea that like Greece should recoup its

811
00:46:58,080 --> 00:47:00,560
Speaker 1: ancient like power and like Taco for the places that

812
00:47:00,560 --> 00:47:05,000
Speaker 1: had controlled back in the day. She's a little ideal argument. Yeah.

813
00:47:05,440 --> 00:47:07,960
Speaker 1: She engaged in a heated argument in defensive Hitler with

814
00:47:07,960 --> 00:47:11,640
Speaker 1: the French managerist of the hostel. So so we've lost

815
00:47:11,719 --> 00:47:14,839
Speaker 1: arguing about Hitler's with the hostel. No, we lost her

816
00:47:14,920 --> 00:47:18,840
Speaker 1: when she's been gone for a while. Yeah, but you

817
00:47:18,880 --> 00:47:22,000
Speaker 1: know who won't argue in support of Hitler with a

818
00:47:22,080 --> 00:47:26,880
Speaker 1: French hostel owner in Athens. Robert the products and services

819
00:47:26,960 --> 00:47:30,640
Speaker 1: support this podcast would never ever heard us or do

820
00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:33,399
Speaker 1: something wrong. I've been saying it for years. I have

821
00:47:33,760 --> 00:47:37,120
Speaker 1: all agreed for years. Fingers crossed for a dig pill

822
00:47:37,160 --> 00:47:40,400
Speaker 1: ad right after this. But a great transition, both of you.

823
00:47:41,000 --> 00:47:51,560
Speaker 1: Just wonderful work. We're back. So it was during this

824
00:47:51,600 --> 00:47:54,239
Speaker 1: first visit to Greece that Maximiani Portis would have seen

825
00:47:54,360 --> 00:47:56,440
Speaker 1: the symbol for the first time that would come to

826
00:47:56,480 --> 00:47:59,520
Speaker 1: define her life and legacy. I am talking, of course,

827
00:47:59,840 --> 00:48:03,360
Speaker 1: about the swastika. Odds are good she would have encountered

828
00:48:03,360 --> 00:48:06,040
Speaker 1: it for the first time in the National Museum of Athens,

829
00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:08,520
Speaker 1: which hosted a huge amount of what were believed to

830
00:48:08,560 --> 00:48:11,880
Speaker 1: be Trojan artifacts, which had been uncovered by the pioneering

831
00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:17,000
Speaker 1: and controversial archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann. Now Schleiman was not a

832
00:48:17,000 --> 00:48:19,759
Speaker 1: professional archaeologist, which is not weird for the time. Most

833
00:48:19,800 --> 00:48:21,960
Speaker 1: of like the archaeologies of this period, or like gentlemen

834
00:48:22,040 --> 00:48:25,880
Speaker 1: adventurers who I mean get our nerds. Basically the people

835
00:48:25,960 --> 00:48:28,839
Speaker 1: in the people in like the Mummy movies, who are

836
00:48:28,840 --> 00:48:35,080
Speaker 1: just wearing people in Tarzan. That was the most accurate

837
00:48:35,120 --> 00:48:37,440
Speaker 1: thing about the Mummy movie, other than the way mummies

838
00:48:37,480 --> 00:48:41,799
Speaker 1: react to shotguns. They're all they're all named Clayton. Yeah yeah,

839
00:48:42,680 --> 00:48:46,279
Speaker 1: so Schlimann uh yeah. Throughout the mid eighteen hundreds had

840
00:48:46,280 --> 00:48:49,719
Speaker 1: been a very successful German arms merchant, trading raw materials

841
00:48:49,760 --> 00:48:52,279
Speaker 1: for the ingredients to make ammunition um and he had

842
00:48:52,360 --> 00:48:54,839
Speaker 1: nursed a deep obsession with the Iliot his entire life.

843
00:48:55,040 --> 00:48:57,200
Speaker 1: In his late middle age, he decided to take his

844
00:48:57,280 --> 00:48:59,560
Speaker 1: fortune to the Aegean and try to uncover the true

845
00:48:59,600 --> 00:49:03,239
Speaker 1: loka of the ancient city of Troy. Unlike pretty much

846
00:49:03,280 --> 00:49:07,600
Speaker 1: any like traditional archaeologists, Schlimann used the Iliad as a guide.

847
00:49:07,600 --> 00:49:11,240
Speaker 1: He thought this book was like basically essentially accurate um

848
00:49:11,280 --> 00:49:12,880
Speaker 1: and he followed the poem as if it had been

849
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:16,480
Speaker 1: a work of serious historical scholarship, and shockingly enough, this

850
00:49:16,680 --> 00:49:19,879
Speaker 1: kind of worked. In eighteen seventy one, after three years

851
00:49:19,880 --> 00:49:22,360
Speaker 1: of searching, Schleiman found what was very likely to have

852
00:49:22,400 --> 00:49:25,560
Speaker 1: been the site of ancient Troy. His methods of digging

853
00:49:25,560 --> 00:49:28,400
Speaker 1: it up were brutal. He used crowbars and battering rams

854
00:49:28,400 --> 00:49:32,319
Speaker 1: and destroyed countless thousands of artifacts, including ironically, what a

855
00:49:32,320 --> 00:49:35,840
Speaker 1: lot of archaeologists now believe was the actual physical evidence

856
00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:39,040
Speaker 1: of Troy. He dug too far down basically because he was.

857
00:49:39,120 --> 00:49:42,920
Speaker 1: He fucked up and probably destroyed what actual Trojan relics

858
00:49:42,960 --> 00:49:45,279
Speaker 1: there were. But he doesn't find what a lot of

859
00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:47,600
Speaker 1: people think was the site of Troy. It's just other

860
00:49:47,640 --> 00:49:49,359
Speaker 1: ship was built there and he dug up the wrong

861
00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:55,520
Speaker 1: ship anyway. It's fucked up, Yes, yes, So his research

862
00:49:55,960 --> 00:49:58,720
Speaker 1: or his digging, despite all the ship destroyed, produced hundreds

863
00:49:58,800 --> 00:50:01,880
Speaker 1: upon hundreds upon hundred of artifacts which people at the

864
00:50:01,920 --> 00:50:05,400
Speaker 1: time believed to be Trojan and many of those artifacts,

865
00:50:05,440 --> 00:50:08,359
Speaker 1: more than eighteen hundred of them were in blasmed with

866
00:50:08,520 --> 00:50:12,120
Speaker 1: various types of swastika. And I'm gonna quote next from

867
00:50:12,200 --> 00:50:15,880
Speaker 1: Scientific American. He would go on to see the swastika

868
00:50:15,960 --> 00:50:19,120
Speaker 1: everywhere from Tibet to Paraguay to the Gold Coast of Africa.

869
00:50:19,200 --> 00:50:22,520
Speaker 1: And as Schliemann's exploits grew more famous and archaeological discoveries

870
00:50:22,520 --> 00:50:25,160
Speaker 1: became a way of creating a narrative of national identity,

871
00:50:25,440 --> 00:50:28,920
Speaker 1: the swastika grew more prominent. It exploded in popularity as

872
00:50:28,960 --> 00:50:32,000
Speaker 1: a symbol of good fortune, appearing on Coca Cola products,

873
00:50:32,040 --> 00:50:35,799
Speaker 1: boy Scouts and girls club materials, and even American military uniforms.

874
00:50:36,200 --> 00:50:38,880
Speaker 1: The Antiquities on Earth by Dr Schlieman at Troy acquire

875
00:50:38,920 --> 00:50:42,040
Speaker 1: for us a double interest, wrote British linguist Archibald says

876
00:50:42,080 --> 00:50:44,719
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety six. They carry us back to the

877
00:50:44,800 --> 00:50:50,759
Speaker 1: later stone ages of the Aryan race. Oh dear on

878
00:50:51,080 --> 00:50:55,600
Speaker 1: Coca Cola products. Probably if that was just a product

879
00:50:55,680 --> 00:50:59,680
Speaker 1: or service advertised, But it wasn't a nutz. It's like

880
00:50:59,760 --> 00:51:02,040
Speaker 1: I spent some time living in in and it's the

881
00:51:02,160 --> 00:51:04,880
Speaker 1: swasticas all over the dam and it is weird. It takes.

882
00:51:05,040 --> 00:51:07,000
Speaker 1: You never really get used to it because of like

883
00:51:07,120 --> 00:51:10,479
Speaker 1: what it means to the West. It's always like there's

884
00:51:10,480 --> 00:51:12,799
Speaker 1: so many swast because around here, that is I mean,

885
00:51:12,800 --> 00:51:16,239
Speaker 1: and that is fascinating to like track the history of

886
00:51:16,280 --> 00:51:19,320
Speaker 1: a symbol and like how it affects different areas of

887
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:23,680
Speaker 1: the world differently. That sounds extremely darring. I actually I

888
00:51:23,719 --> 00:51:26,080
Speaker 1: have some like tapestries that I picked up in India

889
00:51:26,160 --> 00:51:28,440
Speaker 1: that have little swastikas on them in parts, and it's

890
00:51:28,480 --> 00:51:31,319
Speaker 1: one of those things where it's like every now and then,

891
00:51:31,360 --> 00:51:33,480
Speaker 1: like they're not the same as the Nazi swasticas, but

892
00:51:33,480 --> 00:51:35,560
Speaker 1: they're close enough that people will be like, what, No,

893
00:51:37,960 --> 00:51:40,920
Speaker 1: I need to leave your home right now? Yeah, I

894
00:51:40,920 --> 00:51:44,960
Speaker 1: mean yeah, Like most people are pretty small, so most

895
00:51:44,960 --> 00:51:51,319
Speaker 1: people aren't getting na Nazi swastie. If I was over

896
00:51:51,560 --> 00:51:53,520
Speaker 1: your house and you said that, I would be like,

897
00:51:54,080 --> 00:51:57,000
Speaker 1: I actually, my uber is here, you know, like if

898
00:51:57,000 --> 00:52:02,400
Speaker 1: you're like, they're not nasty swas Nazi swasticas, so calm down. Yeah,

899
00:52:02,440 --> 00:52:04,640
Speaker 1: it's like that. And they offered me a Miller Lite.

900
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:12,040
Speaker 1: They're not not would you like a Miller Light? No? Exactly.

901
00:52:12,600 --> 00:52:16,719
Speaker 1: My standard greeting people, Yeah, that's how you greet all

902
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:20,320
Speaker 1: your guests. That's specifically how I say to hello to

903
00:52:20,400 --> 00:52:24,799
Speaker 1: the officers who pulled me over for speeding. No, I

904
00:52:24,840 --> 00:52:26,640
Speaker 1: would be and he said that, I I know, I've

905
00:52:26,719 --> 00:52:29,560
Speaker 1: gone down that Wikipedia hole at one point of just

906
00:52:29,600 --> 00:52:36,200
Speaker 1: like tracking the symbology the symbology of the There's criticism

907
00:52:36,280 --> 00:52:38,200
Speaker 1: of Schleiman honestly for his methods, but he's not in

908
00:52:38,239 --> 00:52:40,440
Speaker 1: any way a Nazi, Like he's just a guy who

909
00:52:40,480 --> 00:52:43,239
Speaker 1: finds a bunch of swastika is buried underground, and he's

910
00:52:43,280 --> 00:52:47,680
Speaker 1: just an unqualified archaeologist using his money in a weird way.

911
00:52:48,040 --> 00:52:50,960
Speaker 1: He's he's very controversial. Still, there are aspects of what

912
00:52:51,000 --> 00:52:52,600
Speaker 1: he did that a lot of people praise because he

913
00:52:52,920 --> 00:52:55,280
Speaker 1: got a lot of ship right, but he also destroyed

914
00:52:55,320 --> 00:52:58,160
Speaker 1: a huge amount of cultural antiquities. He's an interesting person.

915
00:52:58,200 --> 00:53:02,840
Speaker 1: You should read about Schleiman if you're stidn archaeology. Yeah, yeah,

916
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:05,759
Speaker 1: I mean it seems like a lot of those gentlemen

917
00:53:05,880 --> 00:53:10,800
Speaker 1: explorers really delighted and you know, like destroying and selling

918
00:53:10,840 --> 00:53:13,200
Speaker 1: off pieces of ancient history that had nothing to do

919
00:53:13,280 --> 00:53:18,319
Speaker 1: with them. All of them are problematic. Yeah, I will

920
00:53:18,360 --> 00:53:22,120
Speaker 1: say Schliemann is one who comes from like a pure

921
00:53:22,360 --> 00:53:28,440
Speaker 1: place of just being really into this history. Um, but yeah,

922
00:53:28,480 --> 00:53:35,680
Speaker 1: you know they're all problematic, so hashtag yeah. Now the Swasti,

923
00:53:35,680 --> 00:53:38,640
Speaker 1: because he found increasingly all over the world, played directly

924
00:53:38,640 --> 00:53:41,400
Speaker 1: into a shared delusion that was spreading like a disease

925
00:53:41,440 --> 00:53:44,319
Speaker 1: among many of the era's white people, the myth of

926
00:53:44,400 --> 00:53:48,640
Speaker 1: the ancient arian. Now in actual historical terms, arian is

927
00:53:48,680 --> 00:53:51,680
Speaker 1: a term used to refer to the Indo Aryan language group.

928
00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:55,719
Speaker 1: It was never a racial classification. The terms started being

929
00:53:55,800 --> 00:54:02,320
Speaker 1: used because early linguists noticed strange similarities between languages like German, Romani, Punjabi, Hindu,

930
00:54:02,440 --> 00:54:05,840
Speaker 1: Urdu in Sanskrit. Well, the term Arian was initially applied

931
00:54:05,840 --> 00:54:09,600
Speaker 1: to speakers of various Indo Iranian languages. The understanding of

932
00:54:09,600 --> 00:54:12,279
Speaker 1: the word became corrupted in the late eighteen hundreds. This

933
00:54:12,360 --> 00:54:15,160
Speaker 1: occurred along the same time that colonialism started to reach

934
00:54:15,200 --> 00:54:17,360
Speaker 1: its absolute zenith, and there were a lot of white

935
00:54:17,360 --> 00:54:20,000
Speaker 1: folks looking for reasons to justify the fact that they

936
00:54:20,000 --> 00:54:23,640
Speaker 1: were basically plundering and enslaving the entire world. There were

937
00:54:23,680 --> 00:54:26,040
Speaker 1: also a lot of white folks looking at their increasingly

938
00:54:26,160 --> 00:54:30,720
Speaker 1: multiracial societies, which at that point, like ment Italians and Slavs,

939
00:54:30,719 --> 00:54:33,320
Speaker 1: breed with Germans and British people. And we're getting concerned

940
00:54:33,320 --> 00:54:35,960
Speaker 1: about this fact. Uh. And I'm gonna refer back to

941
00:54:36,000 --> 00:54:39,920
Speaker 1: Smithsonian Magazine again quote. The rising interest in eugenics and

942
00:54:40,000 --> 00:54:42,919
Speaker 1: rachel hygiene, however, led to some to corrupt Aryan into

943
00:54:42,960 --> 00:54:45,840
Speaker 1: a descriptor for an ancient master racial identity with a

944
00:54:45,880 --> 00:54:49,120
Speaker 1: clear through line to contemporary Germany. As The Washington Post

945
00:54:49,120 --> 00:54:51,399
Speaker 1: reported in a story about the rise of Nazism several

946
00:54:51,480 --> 00:54:54,239
Speaker 1: years before the start of World War Two, Arianism was

947
00:54:54,280 --> 00:54:57,640
Speaker 1: an intellectual dispute between bewhiskered scholars as to the existence

948
00:54:57,640 --> 00:55:00,239
Speaker 1: of a pure and undefiled Aryan race at once stage

949
00:55:00,280 --> 00:55:03,879
Speaker 1: of Earth's history. In the nineteenth century, French aristocrat Arthur

950
00:55:03,920 --> 00:55:07,080
Speaker 1: de Gobnel and others made the connection between the mythical

951
00:55:07,120 --> 00:55:09,680
Speaker 1: Arians and the Germans, who are the superior descendants of

952
00:55:09,680 --> 00:55:11,880
Speaker 1: the early people, now destined to lead the world to

953
00:55:11,960 --> 00:55:15,280
Speaker 1: greater advancement by conquering their neighbors. The findings of Schlieman's

954
00:55:15,280 --> 00:55:18,240
Speaker 1: digg in Turkey then suddenly had a deeper ideological meaning

955
00:55:18,520 --> 00:55:21,960
Speaker 1: for the nationalists. The purely Arian symbol Schliemann uncovered was

956
00:55:22,040 --> 00:55:24,800
Speaker 1: no longer an archaeological mystery. It was a stand in

957
00:55:24,880 --> 00:55:28,600
Speaker 1: for their superiority. German nationalist groups like the reich Schamerbund,

958
00:55:28,640 --> 00:55:31,279
Speaker 1: a nineteen twelve anti Semitic group and the Bavarian Frey

959
00:55:31,280 --> 00:55:34,720
Speaker 1: Corp paramilitary. Basically, the proud boys of the era UM

960
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:37,920
Speaker 1: used the swastika to reflect their newly discovered identity as

961
00:55:37,960 --> 00:55:42,480
Speaker 1: the master race. Now, the reality is that swastikas appeared

962
00:55:42,520 --> 00:55:45,080
Speaker 1: damn near everywhere in human history. It's a common design

963
00:55:45,120 --> 00:55:47,080
Speaker 1: and a striking one, and a bunch of different groups

964
00:55:47,080 --> 00:55:49,560
Speaker 1: of people have independently figured it out over time. And

965
00:55:49,560 --> 00:55:51,759
Speaker 1: people should stop talking to you about your blanket and

966
00:55:51,800 --> 00:55:56,640
Speaker 1: actually just relaxed. They're pretty small. If you're nowadays, the

967
00:55:56,719 --> 00:56:00,440
Speaker 1: swastika is the swastika, like it's the Nazi thing unless

968
00:56:00,440 --> 00:56:04,359
Speaker 1: you're in India. Um, because the world's big. Um. But

969
00:56:04,960 --> 00:56:06,560
Speaker 1: back in these days, like if you're looking at like

970
00:56:06,600 --> 00:56:08,279
Speaker 1: ancient history, it's best to kind of look at the

971
00:56:08,280 --> 00:56:10,719
Speaker 1: swastica like humor that weird s doodle we all put

972
00:56:10,760 --> 00:56:14,040
Speaker 1: on our trapper keepers back in the nineties. Like no

973
00:56:14,080 --> 00:56:16,480
Speaker 1: one invented that. It just showed up everywhere. That's the

974
00:56:16,520 --> 00:56:20,440
Speaker 1: fucking swastika in prehistory. Um, It's just all over the

975
00:56:20,480 --> 00:56:27,200
Speaker 1: damn place. But of course, yeah, oh I have that blanket. Yeah.

976
00:56:27,800 --> 00:56:30,600
Speaker 1: It was not seen as this though, um by a

977
00:56:30,600 --> 00:56:34,440
Speaker 1: lot of people, and anthropologist Gwendoline Lake notes quote when

978
00:56:34,520 --> 00:56:37,920
Speaker 1: Heinrich Schleeman discovered swastica like decorations on pottery, flagments and

979
00:56:37,960 --> 00:56:40,880
Speaker 1: all archaeological levels at Troy, it was seen as evidence

980
00:56:40,880 --> 00:56:43,520
Speaker 1: for a racial continuity and proof that the inhabitants of

981
00:56:43,560 --> 00:56:46,200
Speaker 1: the site had been Arian all along. The link between

982
00:56:46,200 --> 00:56:49,880
Speaker 1: the swastika and Indo European origin, once forged, was impossible

983
00:56:49,880 --> 00:56:53,040
Speaker 1: to discard. It allowed the projection of nationalist feelings and

984
00:56:53,080 --> 00:56:56,480
Speaker 1: associations onto a universal symbol, which hints served as a

985
00:56:56,520 --> 00:56:59,919
Speaker 1: distinguishing boundary mark up between non Arian, or rather non

986
00:57:00,120 --> 00:57:05,720
Speaker 1: German and German identity. That's fascinating that, I mean, because

987
00:57:06,080 --> 00:57:08,680
Speaker 1: you can understand the logic, but it also is kind

988
00:57:08,719 --> 00:57:11,360
Speaker 1: of absurd to assume that like, oh, this symbol is

989
00:57:11,480 --> 00:57:15,120
Speaker 1: always surely must mean the exact same thing thousands of

990
00:57:15,200 --> 00:57:19,200
Speaker 1: years ago as it does to me today. Now. The

991
00:57:19,280 --> 00:57:21,800
Speaker 1: people then were as dumb as the people who planted

992
00:57:21,880 --> 00:57:27,160
Speaker 1: the Iowa Caucuses. Wow, that's why all this happened. Robert,

993
00:57:27,240 --> 00:57:30,120
Speaker 1: my my dog worked on the shadow app so really

994
00:57:30,360 --> 00:57:36,520
Speaker 1: watch your mouth. That is son he invested in the

995
00:57:36,560 --> 00:57:41,959
Speaker 1: shadow app I have to say it this all up? Yeah,

996
00:57:42,000 --> 00:57:43,800
Speaker 1: I mean, of course he kept he was talking about

997
00:57:43,800 --> 00:57:46,240
Speaker 1: shadow app for and I'm like, that can't be real.

998
00:57:46,880 --> 00:57:50,200
Speaker 1: And then I thought it was the Dog from what

999
00:57:50,240 --> 00:57:52,640
Speaker 1: was that movie with the dogs and cats that talk

1000
00:57:52,680 --> 00:57:56,840
Speaker 1: and they find their family terrible. I don't know a

1001
00:57:56,840 --> 00:58:00,000
Speaker 1: good movie Homeward Bound Homeward. Oh, I haven't seen Homeward

1002
00:58:00,040 --> 00:58:04,280
Speaker 1: it found. Sonny definitely just wanted to harm people, and

1003
00:58:04,320 --> 00:58:06,200
Speaker 1: he wanted to harm the discourse, and that's why he

1004
00:58:06,240 --> 00:58:10,200
Speaker 1: invested in Shadow Up. That's fair. That's fair. You could

1005
00:58:10,200 --> 00:58:16,200
Speaker 1: call him the Hitler of the Iowa CAUCUSUS, which many has,

1006
00:58:16,560 --> 00:58:21,240
Speaker 1: but it makes me uncomfortable. Sitting in Athens, reading the

1007
00:58:21,280 --> 00:58:24,080
Speaker 1: news of Hitler's movement in Germany and staring at ancient

1008
00:58:24,120 --> 00:58:27,720
Speaker 1: swastika's on beloved Greek artifacts, things started to come together

1009
00:58:27,760 --> 00:58:31,200
Speaker 1: in Maximiani Portis's mind. She moved to Greece permanently in

1010
00:58:31,280 --> 00:58:35,400
Speaker 1: ninety after finishing college and renouncing her French citizenship. The

1011
00:58:35,480 --> 00:58:37,960
Speaker 1: very next year, nine she went with her mother and

1012
00:58:38,000 --> 00:58:40,560
Speaker 1: aunt on a trip to the Holy Land that wound

1013
00:58:40,600 --> 00:58:42,800
Speaker 1: up having just as deep an impact on her developing

1014
00:58:42,840 --> 00:58:46,800
Speaker 1: mind as the swastika. Now, Maximiani had never been very religious.

1015
00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:48,880
Speaker 1: Her mother and aunt were, though, and while they failed

1016
00:58:48,920 --> 00:58:51,920
Speaker 1: to inculcate a love of Christ in Maximiani, they did

1017
00:58:51,960 --> 00:58:56,160
Speaker 1: succeed in making her hate Jewish people, which is not

1018
00:58:56,240 --> 00:58:59,040
Speaker 1: the part of Christianity to transfer. If you're gonna pick

1019
00:58:59,120 --> 00:59:01,640
Speaker 1: one of all, well, I mean there's so many different

1020
00:59:01,680 --> 00:59:06,080
Speaker 1: horrible things to take away from Christianity, and that is, um,

1021
00:59:06,200 --> 00:59:09,800
Speaker 1: that is the worst of all. She got none of

1022
00:59:09,800 --> 00:59:16,760
Speaker 1: the good stuff, just the anti Semitism. Uh yeah, she um, yeah,

1023
00:59:16,840 --> 00:59:19,280
Speaker 1: it's not great. It's not great. I'm starting to think

1024
00:59:19,320 --> 00:59:22,840
Speaker 1: this lady maybe not so nice, not heading in a

1025
00:59:22,880 --> 00:59:25,840
Speaker 1: great direction. Yeah. Now, a lot of this was tied

1026
00:59:25,880 --> 00:59:28,280
Speaker 1: to the fact that Maximiani was so in love with

1027
00:59:28,400 --> 00:59:32,640
Speaker 1: Greek culture, and she was really piste off because she

1028
00:59:32,760 --> 00:59:35,160
Speaker 1: was like particularly love with like ancient Greek pagan culture,

1029
00:59:35,200 --> 00:59:37,720
Speaker 1: like the old Greek gods and their myths and stuff,

1030
00:59:38,040 --> 00:59:40,160
Speaker 1: and none of that stuff was very relevant other than

1031
00:59:40,160 --> 00:59:42,680
Speaker 1: it's like an academic thing by this point in history,

1032
00:59:43,120 --> 00:59:46,360
Speaker 1: and Christianity and Judaism were obviously hugely relevant in Europe,

1033
00:59:46,520 --> 00:59:49,480
Speaker 1: and she hated this, and she blamed the Jews for

1034
00:59:49,520 --> 00:59:52,360
Speaker 1: the fact that nobody other people weren't as into Greek

1035
00:59:52,400 --> 00:59:54,680
Speaker 1: history as she was, Like, this is like the core

1036
00:59:54,720 --> 00:59:56,560
Speaker 1: of it. For it was like she's in love with

1037
00:59:56,600 --> 00:59:59,280
Speaker 1: like Zeus and ship and she's like, why don't people

1038
00:59:59,320 --> 01:00:01,640
Speaker 1: like this as much as I do? If the Jews,

1039
01:00:01,640 --> 01:00:08,120
Speaker 1: she's become a chaos nerd. No, it's great, It's not great. Yeah,

1040
01:00:08,280 --> 01:00:11,479
Speaker 1: that's really bad. So her trip to the Holy Land

1041
01:00:11,520 --> 01:00:13,240
Speaker 1: with her mom and aunt was a bit of a

1042
01:00:13,280 --> 01:00:18,720
Speaker 1: weird one, Okay, I mean, I'm yeah. She was revolted

1043
01:00:18,760 --> 01:00:21,560
Speaker 1: by the obeisance they played to Judeo Christian holy sites,

1044
01:00:21,640 --> 01:00:24,240
Speaker 1: and as she touristed her way through old Jerusalem, she felt,

1045
01:00:24,280 --> 01:00:27,880
Speaker 1: in her biographer's words, overwhelmed and repelled by the exotic

1046
01:00:28,040 --> 01:00:32,720
Speaker 1: nature of the Jews. They're attired their customs, observances and festivals,

1047
01:00:32,920 --> 01:00:36,160
Speaker 1: the strange dark men and broad brimmed hats and long

1048
01:00:36,240 --> 01:00:41,120
Speaker 1: black coats hastening to prayers at the Wailing Wall. Okay,

1049
01:00:42,120 --> 01:00:47,200
Speaker 1: it's interesting that Goodwin Clark portuss biographer mentions this specifically,

1050
01:00:47,200 --> 01:00:49,600
Speaker 1: seeing these Jewish people and being like horrified by the

1051
01:00:49,600 --> 01:00:52,520
Speaker 1: way they look in their coats and hairlocks and long

1052
01:00:52,560 --> 01:00:56,320
Speaker 1: black coats. It's possible that precise moment never happened, but

1053
01:00:56,400 --> 01:01:00,000
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that this moment bears a striking resemblance

1054
01:01:00,040 --> 01:01:03,160
Speaker 1: to a tale Adolf Hitler told regularly about the supposed

1055
01:01:03,200 --> 01:01:06,360
Speaker 1: moment that he specifically gained his hatred of Jewish people.

1056
01:01:06,720 --> 01:01:08,680
Speaker 1: And here's how he wrote about that moment in mind

1057
01:01:08,760 --> 01:01:16,720
Speaker 1: comp this takes place in Lynz, no, sorry, in Austria Vienna. Once,

1058
01:01:16,720 --> 01:01:18,880
Speaker 1: since I was strolling through the inner city I suddenly

1059
01:01:18,960 --> 01:01:22,040
Speaker 1: encountered an apparition in a black caftan and black hairlocks.

1060
01:01:22,240 --> 01:01:25,040
Speaker 1: Is this a jew? Was my first thought, for to

1061
01:01:25,120 --> 01:01:27,080
Speaker 1: be sure, they had not looked like that in Lenz,

1062
01:01:27,160 --> 01:01:30,320
Speaker 1: where he grew up. I observed the man furtively and cautiously.

1063
01:01:30,480 --> 01:01:33,120
Speaker 1: But the longer I stared at this foreign face, scrutinizing

1064
01:01:33,160 --> 01:01:35,840
Speaker 1: feature for feature, the more my first question assumed a

1065
01:01:35,880 --> 01:01:39,000
Speaker 1: new form. Is this a German? This is like a

1066
01:01:39,080 --> 01:01:42,600
Speaker 1: huge moment in like Hitler lore. It's possible that the

1067
01:01:42,680 --> 01:01:46,920
Speaker 1: reason that that portis writes her own think like her

1068
01:01:46,960 --> 01:01:49,960
Speaker 1: own story this way is that she's hearkening to mind Camp,

1069
01:01:50,000 --> 01:01:52,840
Speaker 1: because again, she writes about this later. It's also possible

1070
01:01:52,880 --> 01:01:55,280
Speaker 1: they just were similar people and had a similar moment.

1071
01:01:55,600 --> 01:02:00,600
Speaker 1: If she's the primary resource for herself, she seems to

1072
01:02:00,640 --> 01:02:03,320
Speaker 1: have like a fair grasp on storytelling. It makes sense

1073
01:02:03,320 --> 01:02:05,760
Speaker 1: that she would pull it doesn't make sense. She's like, oh,

1074
01:02:05,800 --> 01:02:08,680
Speaker 1: this is the end of Act one, where's my insighting?

1075
01:02:08,840 --> 01:02:12,920
Speaker 1: She needs she wrote her own insighting incident. If it didn't, yeah,

1076
01:02:13,320 --> 01:02:15,840
Speaker 1: I'll take a leaf out of you know. It's like, uh,

1077
01:02:16,120 --> 01:02:20,680
Speaker 1: you know, George Lucas uh stole from from Great Japanese

1078
01:02:20,680 --> 01:02:24,960
Speaker 1: Cinema to make Star Wars, and in a very similar fashion,

1079
01:02:25,160 --> 01:02:31,040
Speaker 1: Savitri Devi stole from Adolf Hitler, the of notchrue artists,

1080
01:02:31,040 --> 01:02:35,120
Speaker 1: Steele Rombert. It's what they it's what they been saying

1081
01:02:35,200 --> 01:02:38,120
Speaker 1: for generations. Yeah, that is funny. I mean I feel

1082
01:02:38,120 --> 01:02:40,760
Speaker 1: like that same logic of like you have to have

1083
01:02:40,840 --> 01:02:43,840
Speaker 1: a story to go with your hatred. They have that

1084
01:02:44,000 --> 01:02:48,240
Speaker 1: same logic on like Iron Chef, you know, like you

1085
01:02:48,280 --> 01:02:50,040
Speaker 1: have they have like there has to be a story

1086
01:02:50,160 --> 01:02:52,360
Speaker 1: that goes with this dish, and sometimes you're like, sometimes

1087
01:02:52,400 --> 01:02:55,880
Speaker 1: it just is she just cooks some fucking food, asshole.

1088
01:02:56,080 --> 01:02:59,000
Speaker 1: Sometimes you just make some food and it's bad and

1089
01:02:59,080 --> 01:03:03,840
Speaker 1: it's terrible. Yeah, so, uh, Maximiani would go on to

1090
01:03:03,920 --> 01:03:07,040
Speaker 1: claim that after this visit to the Holy Land, she

1091
01:03:07,200 --> 01:03:10,000
Speaker 1: decided that Hitler's campaign of hate against Jewish people was

1092
01:03:10,040 --> 01:03:13,280
Speaker 1: not just a matter of German concern, it was an

1093
01:03:13,320 --> 01:03:16,160
Speaker 1: international crusade. She came to believe that all of the

1094
01:03:16,200 --> 01:03:18,880
Speaker 1: formerly pagan nations of Europe had to throw off their

1095
01:03:18,960 --> 01:03:23,240
Speaker 1: Judeo Christian heritage and like reconnect with their pagan roots.

1096
01:03:23,880 --> 01:03:27,080
Speaker 1: Um And this is the first time she realizes that

1097
01:03:27,120 --> 01:03:29,920
Speaker 1: sees a national socialist, and she the way she described it,

1098
01:03:30,040 --> 01:03:33,280
Speaker 1: she realizes she's always been a national socialist, and so

1099
01:03:33,360 --> 01:03:36,440
Speaker 1: she falls fully in love with Hitler at this point,

1100
01:03:37,160 --> 01:03:42,720
Speaker 1: um And she's not a German Nazi though, And initially

1101
01:03:42,760 --> 01:03:45,880
Speaker 1: the way she decides to like act on this newfound

1102
01:03:46,000 --> 01:03:50,640
Speaker 1: Nazism is to basically try to revive Greek nationalism and

1103
01:03:50,640 --> 01:03:54,520
Speaker 1: pagan beliefs, kind of with the structure of national socialism

1104
01:03:54,520 --> 01:03:57,040
Speaker 1: over them. And so she returns to Athens and she

1105
01:03:57,080 --> 01:03:59,360
Speaker 1: sets to work trying to cobble together her own Greek

1106
01:03:59,440 --> 01:04:02,440
Speaker 1: version of not Seism, but focused around a religious component

1107
01:04:02,480 --> 01:04:05,560
Speaker 1: that involved return to worshiping the ancient Greek pantheon. I

1108
01:04:05,640 --> 01:04:10,920
Speaker 1: mean always this woman. Yeah. Uh. Now, by this point,

1109
01:04:11,080 --> 01:04:13,400
Speaker 1: the ancient Greeks had become sort of the Uberman in

1110
01:04:13,440 --> 01:04:15,880
Speaker 1: her own mind, and this conception was nursed by the

1111
01:04:15,880 --> 01:04:18,080
Speaker 1: bits of hitler speeches that made their way over into

1112
01:04:18,120 --> 01:04:20,400
Speaker 1: the press and her part of the world. By nineteen

1113
01:04:20,520 --> 01:04:23,240
Speaker 1: thirty she finally read Mind Camp for the very first time,

1114
01:04:23,320 --> 01:04:26,600
Speaker 1: which introduced Maximiani to Hitler's theories about the Aryan race.

1115
01:04:27,040 --> 01:04:30,520
Speaker 1: His ideas about the superior race consistently undermined by the

1116
01:04:30,560 --> 01:04:34,960
Speaker 1: evil Jews, jailed remarkably well with Maximiani's own beliefs about

1117
01:04:35,040 --> 01:04:38,600
Speaker 1: the ancient Greeks and the Jews. She became increasingly obsessed

1118
01:04:38,640 --> 01:04:40,920
Speaker 1: with the Arians and in part the idea of seeking

1119
01:04:40,960 --> 01:04:44,760
Speaker 1: out the remaining evidence of their existence, and at the

1120
01:04:44,840 --> 01:04:47,840
Speaker 1: time it was generally understood that India had been conquered

1121
01:04:47,840 --> 01:04:50,800
Speaker 1: and ruled by the Arians. Many among the weirder Nazi

1122
01:04:50,880 --> 01:04:53,640
Speaker 1: sets saw Hinduism as an example of a pure Aryan

1123
01:04:53,720 --> 01:04:57,640
Speaker 1: pagan tradition uncorrupted by Judaism. They found the Hindu cast

1124
01:04:57,680 --> 01:05:00,920
Speaker 1: system deeply intriguing as well for reasons that should be obvious,

1125
01:05:00,920 --> 01:05:03,640
Speaker 1: and enshrined a small number of superior beings and power

1126
01:05:03,760 --> 01:05:07,680
Speaker 1: over a vast number of less valuable individuals. In nineteen

1127
01:05:07,760 --> 01:05:11,040
Speaker 1: thirty two, Maximiani's father died and she decided to take

1128
01:05:11,080 --> 01:05:13,400
Speaker 1: this as an opportunity to travel to India to seek

1129
01:05:13,400 --> 01:05:15,760
Speaker 1: out the truth of the ancient Arians. It's like a

1130
01:05:15,840 --> 01:05:21,120
Speaker 1: Nazi version of Eat, Pray Love. Yeah, this is in

1131
01:05:21,160 --> 01:05:23,560
Speaker 1: another world. This is a very cute movie, and she

1132
01:05:23,720 --> 01:05:27,520
Speaker 1: just took every rod the same from it. It's you

1133
01:05:27,520 --> 01:05:31,160
Speaker 1: remember that horrible Cameron Crow movie Elizabethtown or Orlando Blue

1134
01:05:31,240 --> 01:05:34,320
Speaker 1: drive the Country with his dad's ashes and it's like,

1135
01:05:34,480 --> 01:05:36,560
Speaker 1: I'm glad we had this talk. And You're like, what

1136
01:05:36,600 --> 01:05:39,760
Speaker 1: the funk are you? That sounds like forty different movies, Jamie,

1137
01:05:40,160 --> 01:05:43,520
Speaker 1: It's no, it's the same. It's the same. All my

1138
01:05:43,560 --> 01:05:47,360
Speaker 1: elizabeth Town heads will know it's the same. Paula Dean's

1139
01:05:47,360 --> 01:05:56,480
Speaker 1: in that movie. Oh God, speaking of Nazis now. Um

1140
01:05:56,560 --> 01:05:58,960
Speaker 1: So Savitri decide she's gonna go to fucking India. And

1141
01:05:59,000 --> 01:06:00,800
Speaker 1: she's not the only person with this idea of going

1142
01:06:00,800 --> 01:06:02,880
Speaker 1: to India to seek out the Arians. In fact, the

1143
01:06:02,960 --> 01:06:05,680
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five Heinrich Hemmler's s S founded the on

1144
01:06:05,800 --> 01:06:09,280
Speaker 1: a Nerby, a scientific think tank dedicated to finding evidence

1145
01:06:09,280 --> 01:06:12,280
Speaker 1: of the ancient Arians, and they actually sent multiple expeditions

1146
01:06:12,280 --> 01:06:15,840
Speaker 1: into India and Tibet. Maximiani went to India to find

1147
01:06:15,840 --> 01:06:18,080
Speaker 1: evidence of the Arians too, but she also went there

1148
01:06:18,120 --> 01:06:21,640
Speaker 1: to see firsthand evidence of a civilization founded upon what

1149
01:06:21,840 --> 01:06:25,120
Speaker 1: she believed was a natural racial hierarchy. She felt that

1150
01:06:25,200 --> 01:06:27,800
Speaker 1: Indian society looked how the world would appear in the

1151
01:06:27,880 --> 01:06:31,600
Speaker 1: year eight thousand, after six thousand years of Nazi rule,

1152
01:06:32,360 --> 01:06:36,200
Speaker 1: very specific women eight thousand. The Jonas Brothers didn't even

1153
01:06:36,200 --> 01:06:43,040
Speaker 1: think that far. You know that they're huge, the Naziment

1154
01:06:43,560 --> 01:06:47,680
Speaker 1: that I do not get that joke. The Jonas brothers

1155
01:06:47,800 --> 01:06:51,280
Speaker 1: first single in two thousand six or maybe seven was

1156
01:06:51,320 --> 01:06:55,120
Speaker 1: a song called year three thousand. They said, not much

1157
01:06:55,120 --> 01:06:58,440
Speaker 1: has changed, but we live underwater. That's all they knew about.

1158
01:06:59,000 --> 01:07:03,800
Speaker 1: That's a lot that age. Jamie. Well, they say that

1159
01:07:03,960 --> 01:07:16,120
Speaker 1: not much has Jade noted the underwater. It's a weird

1160
01:07:16,840 --> 01:07:19,600
Speaker 1: it makes no sense. Okay, saw Robert continue your podcast.

1161
01:07:20,000 --> 01:07:23,640
Speaker 1: But she's thinking to a year eight thousand, eight thousand,

1162
01:07:25,080 --> 01:07:28,200
Speaker 1: Kevin Jennis already has You have to give her credit.

1163
01:07:28,320 --> 01:07:36,360
Speaker 1: She is eight times as ambitious as Hitler. God. Yeah,

1164
01:07:36,480 --> 01:07:39,000
Speaker 1: So upon her arrival in the country, her beliefs were

1165
01:07:39,040 --> 01:07:42,320
Speaker 1: seemingly confirmed when she watched a parade celebrating Rama, a

1166
01:07:42,440 --> 01:07:46,120
Speaker 1: deified Aryan hero. The parade featured huge numbers of dark

1167
01:07:46,120 --> 01:07:50,120
Speaker 1: skinned Indians bowing and worshiping a lighter skinned statue of Rama.

1168
01:07:50,560 --> 01:07:53,760
Speaker 1: And Rama is most assuredly not white, although he is

1169
01:07:53,800 --> 01:07:58,720
Speaker 1: often depicted as lighter skinned, but he is. He's definitely Indian. Um.

1170
01:07:58,760 --> 01:08:01,560
Speaker 1: But it was not uncommon Europeans who were attracted to

1171
01:08:01,600 --> 01:08:04,520
Speaker 1: India in this period to decide that a number of

1172
01:08:04,520 --> 01:08:08,280
Speaker 1: ancient Hindu heroes and gods were in fact white. Um.

1173
01:08:08,280 --> 01:08:11,040
Speaker 1: This was like a common thing. And in fact, Maximiani's

1174
01:08:11,040 --> 01:08:13,280
Speaker 1: favorite poet who we talked about earlier, Laconte de Lisle,

1175
01:08:13,560 --> 01:08:16,040
Speaker 1: had actually written a poem about Rama that referred to

1176
01:08:16,120 --> 01:08:18,920
Speaker 1: him as Thou whose blood is pure, Thou whose body

1177
01:08:19,000 --> 01:08:26,000
Speaker 1: is white, and a subduer of all the profane races. So, yeah,

1178
01:08:26,080 --> 01:08:29,599
Speaker 1: everyone's a little bit of a Nazi in colonialism. That's

1179
01:08:29,680 --> 01:08:32,360
Speaker 1: kind of the deal. That's kind of their thing. It's

1180
01:08:32,439 --> 01:08:35,880
Speaker 1: kind of I mean that, yeah, not shocking. And if

1181
01:08:35,880 --> 01:08:38,519
Speaker 1: you're if you're interested in the story of Rama, one

1182
01:08:38,520 --> 01:08:40,760
Speaker 1: thing I would recommend it super accessible. There's a movie

1183
01:08:40,800 --> 01:08:44,759
Speaker 1: online by Nina Paley, who's a female graphic artist who's amazing,

1184
01:08:44,800 --> 01:08:47,160
Speaker 1: called Sita sings the blues. If you just google that,

1185
01:08:47,280 --> 01:08:49,320
Speaker 1: it's the whole movie is free. It's one of those

1186
01:08:49,360 --> 01:08:51,759
Speaker 1: beautiful pieces of animation. It's why I went to Indian

1187
01:08:51,760 --> 01:08:54,840
Speaker 1: in the first places. Incredible movie. Um. And one of

1188
01:08:54,920 --> 01:08:57,000
Speaker 1: the things that does really well is it has all

1189
01:08:57,040 --> 01:09:01,479
Speaker 1: these scenes where like individual like myths from like Hindu

1190
01:09:01,840 --> 01:09:05,599
Speaker 1: mythology are explained by like groups of people arguing about them, which,

1191
01:09:05,640 --> 01:09:08,240
Speaker 1: if you actually go to India, is how you learn

1192
01:09:08,280 --> 01:09:10,080
Speaker 1: about myths. Like if you talk about the myth of

1193
01:09:10,120 --> 01:09:13,759
Speaker 1: Sita and Rama to like a family, everyone in the family,

1194
01:09:13,800 --> 01:09:16,120
Speaker 1: you know, like like multiple different versions of the story,

1195
01:09:16,200 --> 01:09:18,040
Speaker 1: and people will argue with each other. Like it's not

1196
01:09:18,120 --> 01:09:23,719
Speaker 1: like Christian orthodoxy or whatever. Like it's very very complicated stuff,

1197
01:09:23,800 --> 01:09:28,880
Speaker 1: but fascinating. Um. So yeah. Maximiani is convinced that this

1198
01:09:28,920 --> 01:09:31,200
Speaker 1: guy's white though, um and she falls in love with

1199
01:09:31,240 --> 01:09:34,680
Speaker 1: India um and eventually finds her way to an ashram

1200
01:09:34,840 --> 01:09:37,680
Speaker 1: in Bengal, where she's able to live cheap and learn

1201
01:09:37,760 --> 01:09:40,599
Speaker 1: Hindi and study Hindu religious traditions. She gets a job

1202
01:09:40,640 --> 01:09:43,720
Speaker 1: outside of Delhi teaching English and Indian history, and she

1203
01:09:43,800 --> 01:09:46,559
Speaker 1: grew more and more taken with Hinduism, until in nineteen

1204
01:09:46,600 --> 01:09:50,960
Speaker 1: thirty six she adopted a Hindu name, Savitri Devi, taken

1205
01:09:50,960 --> 01:09:55,040
Speaker 1: from a Hindu solar goddess. This woman is obsessed with

1206
01:09:55,520 --> 01:09:58,320
Speaker 1: gods and goddess, loves gods and goddess is so much.

1207
01:09:58,360 --> 01:10:03,080
Speaker 1: She's such a dork. Yeah, it's specifically sun gods and goddesses.

1208
01:10:03,160 --> 01:10:05,960
Speaker 1: She's fucking obsessed with akat in two. It's weird. There

1209
01:10:06,000 --> 01:10:07,680
Speaker 1: was a girl in my middle school who was like,

1210
01:10:07,760 --> 01:10:10,800
Speaker 1: call me Artemis, and we were like, no, okay, no,

1211
01:10:11,840 --> 01:10:14,880
Speaker 1: we did, we did and are and and if I

1212
01:10:14,960 --> 01:10:18,479
Speaker 1: was also a dork, but not that kind of dork god. No,

1213
01:10:19,000 --> 01:10:22,160
Speaker 1: I was just a normal, bright eyes loving dork. I'm

1214
01:10:22,200 --> 01:10:25,720
Speaker 1: a big believer in calling people by whatever name they

1215
01:10:25,760 --> 01:10:28,120
Speaker 1: prefer to be referred to, unless it's the name of

1216
01:10:28,160 --> 01:10:31,640
Speaker 1: a god or goddess. Then I just start, I just

1217
01:10:31,680 --> 01:10:35,280
Speaker 1: get furious. Yeah, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna push

1218
01:10:35,320 --> 01:10:37,599
Speaker 1: that behavior. Well, she was. She was Artemis for all

1219
01:10:37,640 --> 01:10:40,080
Speaker 1: of eighth grade, and then she went back to uh,

1220
01:10:40,360 --> 01:10:42,800
Speaker 1: just just Alex for the rest of that. As far

1221
01:10:42,840 --> 01:10:46,639
Speaker 1: as I know her life, that's fine. Yeah, yeah, any

1222
01:10:46,680 --> 01:10:50,360
Speaker 1: other name really now. Early on in her time in India,

1223
01:10:50,439 --> 01:10:52,280
Speaker 1: Savitri had hiked to the top of a hill and

1224
01:10:52,320 --> 01:10:55,480
Speaker 1: seeing a beautiful Indian fortress, one of many such colossal

1225
01:10:55,479 --> 01:10:58,160
Speaker 1: ancient relics that dot the country. She was taken by

1226
01:10:58,240 --> 01:11:01,839
Speaker 1: its beauty and equally horrified a more modern Jesuit hospital

1227
01:11:01,840 --> 01:11:05,080
Speaker 1: that had been constructed nearby. This was powerfully symbolic to her,

1228
01:11:05,120 --> 01:11:07,320
Speaker 1: and she claimed that it cemented in her a deep

1229
01:11:07,400 --> 01:11:10,719
Speaker 1: need to protect Hindu India from being infected by Judaeo

1230
01:11:10,880 --> 01:11:14,639
Speaker 1: Christian taint. Starting in nineteen thirty seven, she began working

1231
01:11:14,640 --> 01:11:18,400
Speaker 1: as an anti Christian preacher for Swami Satyananda's Hindu mission

1232
01:11:18,400 --> 01:11:21,240
Speaker 1: in Calcutta. For two years, she criss crossed the country,

1233
01:11:21,320 --> 01:11:24,080
Speaker 1: meeting with various tribal elders and arranging public debates with

1234
01:11:24,160 --> 01:11:26,760
Speaker 1: Christian missionaries. And I'd like to quote now from an

1235
01:11:26,840 --> 01:11:31,679
Speaker 1: article by konrad Elst, an indiologist who's analyzed this history. Quote.

1236
01:11:32,000 --> 01:11:34,720
Speaker 1: Thoroughly familiar with the mentality and methods of her adversary,

1237
01:11:34,840 --> 01:11:37,040
Speaker 1: she could destroy the credit of the imported religion in

1238
01:11:37,080 --> 01:11:40,320
Speaker 1: the minds of the villagers and prevent or undo many conversions.

1239
01:11:40,560 --> 01:11:43,000
Speaker 1: There was a sharp contradiction between her own racist and

1240
01:11:43,040 --> 01:11:46,559
Speaker 1: anti egalitarian convictions and the reformist and egalitarian program of

1241
01:11:46,560 --> 01:11:49,400
Speaker 1: the Hindu mission. To the Hindu mission, Hinduism was a

1242
01:11:49,479 --> 01:11:52,200
Speaker 1: value to in itself. To Savitri Devi, it was but

1243
01:11:52,280 --> 01:11:55,000
Speaker 1: an instrument of her imagined Aryan race. In her years

1244
01:11:55,000 --> 01:11:58,639
Speaker 1: as a preacher, she kept her non Hindu preoccupations to herself,

1245
01:11:58,680 --> 01:12:02,160
Speaker 1: but in her memoirs uh she declared that she conceived

1246
01:12:02,160 --> 01:12:05,479
Speaker 1: of her reconversion mission as an exercise and deception. From

1247
01:12:05,520 --> 01:12:08,320
Speaker 1: the racist arian viewpoint, it was necessary to give the

1248
01:12:08,360 --> 01:12:12,639
Speaker 1: most backward and degenerate Aborigines a false Hindu consciousness. She wrote.

1249
01:12:13,720 --> 01:12:15,439
Speaker 1: This is one of the major areas where you'll run

1250
01:12:15,439 --> 01:12:17,880
Speaker 1: into disputes about Savitri Devi. The common view on her

1251
01:12:17,960 --> 01:12:22,440
Speaker 1: legacy is spoiler that she proposed a synthesis between Hinduism

1252
01:12:22,439 --> 01:12:25,600
Speaker 1: and Nazism, and aspects of this are true, But it

1253
01:12:25,600 --> 01:12:28,160
Speaker 1: would be more accurate to say that she found Hinduism

1254
01:12:28,200 --> 01:12:32,080
Speaker 1: a useful tool for advancing Nazism. Um and I'm gonna

1255
01:12:32,120 --> 01:12:35,800
Speaker 1: quote again from else essay. In contrast with the Hindu nationalists,

1256
01:12:35,800 --> 01:12:38,799
Speaker 1: but in tune with Indian Marxists and Castists, she believed

1257
01:12:38,840 --> 01:12:41,599
Speaker 1: that the concept nation and a program of nationalism could

1258
01:12:41,600 --> 01:12:44,240
Speaker 1: not apply to India. In nineteen thirty eight, she used

1259
01:12:44,240 --> 01:12:47,160
Speaker 1: the slogan make every Hindu and Indian nationalist, and every

1260
01:12:47,160 --> 01:12:50,040
Speaker 1: Indian nationalist to Hindu. Now, this seems to be something

1261
01:12:50,400 --> 01:12:54,240
Speaker 1: not legitimately yeah, and she didn't really believe it. In

1262
01:12:54,280 --> 01:12:57,440
Speaker 1: her autobiography years later, she expressed the belief that nationalism

1263
01:12:57,479 --> 01:12:59,760
Speaker 1: could only exist within members of the same race, and

1264
01:12:59,800 --> 01:13:01,840
Speaker 1: she thought that all the different casts in India were

1265
01:13:01,840 --> 01:13:05,000
Speaker 1: different races. And we're getting into the weeds here too much.

1266
01:13:05,479 --> 01:13:08,320
Speaker 1: But it's important to understand for what comes next that

1267
01:13:08,360 --> 01:13:12,080
Speaker 1: Sabitri Devi advocated for Hindu nationalism, but not because she

1268
01:13:12,120 --> 01:13:14,519
Speaker 1: believed strongly in it, because she saw it as a

1269
01:13:14,600 --> 01:13:17,960
Speaker 1: useful tool for harming the British Empire in advancing Nazism

1270
01:13:18,960 --> 01:13:21,680
Speaker 1: main goal. So she's merely co opting it for her

1271
01:13:21,680 --> 01:13:25,400
Speaker 1: own sinister purposes. It's a little more complicated than that,

1272
01:13:25,479 --> 01:13:28,439
Speaker 1: because she also loves it, like she's She's takes on

1273
01:13:28,520 --> 01:13:30,799
Speaker 1: a lot of Hindu beliefs. It's this is a weird

1274
01:13:30,960 --> 01:13:34,320
Speaker 1: story and there's no like, super simple answer to it.

1275
01:13:34,439 --> 01:13:37,040
Speaker 1: But it's not as simple as she just becomes Hindu

1276
01:13:37,120 --> 01:13:44,880
Speaker 1: and also Nazi. Like it's weirder than that too. No

1277
01:13:44,920 --> 01:13:48,719
Speaker 1: one edited this out I need people to know what

1278
01:13:48,720 --> 01:13:51,879
Speaker 1: what I've been forced to endure. You just like literally

1279
01:13:51,920 --> 01:13:54,760
Speaker 1: did that into the microphone. Literally it was hard. I

1280
01:13:54,840 --> 01:13:57,720
Speaker 1: had to. I'm sorry. I can see Robert right now.

1281
01:13:57,760 --> 01:14:00,320
Speaker 1: And he wiped his nose on the mic and he

1282
01:14:00,479 --> 01:14:06,240
Speaker 1: was lit it and then licked it. You licked it.

1283
01:14:06,600 --> 01:14:12,800
Speaker 1: All of this gets edited out now. Many Hindu nationalists

1284
01:14:12,840 --> 01:14:15,880
Speaker 1: were very bullish about the Nazis because Great Britain owned

1285
01:14:15,920 --> 01:14:18,840
Speaker 1: India and ruled it as a brutal colonial oppressor, and

1286
01:14:18,920 --> 01:14:22,240
Speaker 1: they figured, you know, the enemy of my enemy, right. Uh.

1287
01:14:22,360 --> 01:14:23,800
Speaker 1: Not all of them felt this way. There were a

1288
01:14:23,800 --> 01:14:26,400
Speaker 1: lot of Hindu nationalists who were against the Nazis because

1289
01:14:26,400 --> 01:14:30,000
Speaker 1: they were like, well, but their Nazis, um, so again

1290
01:14:30,400 --> 01:14:34,080
Speaker 1: paying everybody with the same brush. Yeah, But Savitri got

1291
01:14:34,120 --> 01:14:36,920
Speaker 1: along very well with the set of Hindu nationalists who

1292
01:14:36,920 --> 01:14:40,080
Speaker 1: are like, yeah, the Nazi seemed good, um. And she's

1293
01:14:40,160 --> 01:14:44,719
Speaker 1: particularly taken with Dr Asit Krishna Mukherji, when, of India's

1294
01:14:44,800 --> 01:14:49,400
Speaker 1: few actual committed Nazis in nineteen thirty seven and thirty eight,

1295
01:14:49,479 --> 01:14:52,880
Speaker 1: Mukerji started to publish a bi monthly pro Nazi magazine,

1296
01:14:52,960 --> 01:14:56,280
Speaker 1: The New Mercury. Savitri met him in early nineteen thirty eight.

1297
01:14:56,320 --> 01:15:01,200
Speaker 1: And they didn't instantly fall in love, um, but she

1298
01:15:01,280 --> 01:15:05,160
Speaker 1: fell in love with like his mind. She was probably bisexual, um,

1299
01:15:05,200 --> 01:15:08,200
Speaker 1: but certainly wasn't interested in Mukerji in any way. But

1300
01:15:08,400 --> 01:15:11,959
Speaker 1: she falls in love with like this guy's Nazism. Basically

1301
01:15:12,160 --> 01:15:15,880
Speaker 1: they're that kind of so they're in God, that's so,

1302
01:15:16,040 --> 01:15:21,320
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not gad, that's bleak because it's like, yeah,

1303
01:15:21,479 --> 01:15:25,120
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're going to marry a Nazi and

1304
01:15:25,160 --> 01:15:29,120
Speaker 1: they're you're not even attracted to them, no excuse, no

1305
01:15:29,240 --> 01:15:31,960
Speaker 1: excuse you, but you know what I mean. She has

1306
01:15:32,000 --> 01:15:33,880
Speaker 1: a little bit of an excuse, but we're getting to it.

1307
01:15:34,080 --> 01:15:37,080
Speaker 1: So you are cutting love lady, all kinds of slack, Robert.

1308
01:15:37,720 --> 01:15:41,400
Speaker 1: I'm just explaining her. Do you have a crop? Now?

1309
01:15:42,320 --> 01:15:45,080
Speaker 1: She so, she she doesn't. They don't get together right away.

1310
01:15:45,560 --> 01:15:48,640
Speaker 1: She loves his understanding of Nazi ideology, and particularly his

1311
01:15:48,680 --> 01:15:51,240
Speaker 1: emphasis on the mythst of the Old arians U and

1312
01:15:51,320 --> 01:15:53,519
Speaker 1: Mukerji was like obsessed with the Thule Society of the

1313
01:15:53,520 --> 01:15:55,280
Speaker 1: tool of society, and it acquired a lot of their

1314
01:15:55,280 --> 01:15:58,240
Speaker 1: occult writing. So he's like that kind of nerd, and

1315
01:15:58,439 --> 01:16:02,400
Speaker 1: Mukerji seems to like genuinely appreciate Savitri's ideas and the

1316
01:16:02,439 --> 01:16:04,040
Speaker 1: fact that she was just as much of a nerd

1317
01:16:04,080 --> 01:16:06,479
Speaker 1: for Nazism as he was, but he was baffled by

1318
01:16:06,479 --> 01:16:10,000
Speaker 1: her insistence on staying in India while Nazi Germany like

1319
01:16:10,200 --> 01:16:13,160
Speaker 1: rose to the heights of its power in early nineteen

1320
01:16:13,200 --> 01:16:15,519
Speaker 1: thirty nine, He asked her, what have you been doing

1321
01:16:15,520 --> 01:16:18,320
Speaker 1: in India all these years, with your ideas and your potentialities,

1322
01:16:18,400 --> 01:16:21,000
Speaker 1: wasting your time and energy. Go back to Europe, where

1323
01:16:21,080 --> 01:16:23,919
Speaker 1: duty calls you. Go and help the rebirth of Aryan Heathendom,

1324
01:16:23,960 --> 01:16:26,840
Speaker 1: where there are still Arians strong and wide awake. Go

1325
01:16:26,960 --> 01:16:29,679
Speaker 1: to him who was truly life and resurrection, the leader

1326
01:16:29,680 --> 01:16:32,439
Speaker 1: of the Third Reich. Go at once. Next year will

1327
01:16:32,439 --> 01:16:34,840
Speaker 1: be too late. And he was kind of right about that,

1328
01:16:35,040 --> 01:16:38,080
Speaker 1: but he was convinced that she could do Yeah, yeah,

1329
01:16:38,200 --> 01:16:43,719
Speaker 1: I'm like, well historically okay, yeah. Savitri, though, was convinced

1330
01:16:43,720 --> 01:16:45,640
Speaker 1: that she could do more for the cause of Nazism

1331
01:16:45,640 --> 01:16:48,320
Speaker 1: in India than in Germany. She'd become close with members

1332
01:16:48,400 --> 01:16:53,679
Speaker 1: of the rush Tria Swam Savik Song or RSS, an

1333
01:16:53,720 --> 01:16:57,679
Speaker 1: India Hindu nationalist movement that were very similar to the Nazis.

1334
01:16:58,160 --> 01:17:01,160
Speaker 1: The founder or One of the founders, be Hedgwar, formed

1335
01:17:01,160 --> 01:17:05,280
Speaker 1: the group to defend Hindu society from daily onslaughts by outsiders,

1336
01:17:05,439 --> 01:17:08,200
Speaker 1: and he included Muslim Indians as members of that group.

1337
01:17:08,760 --> 01:17:12,759
Speaker 1: Like all fascist organizations, the RSS had a uniform khaki shorts,

1338
01:17:12,880 --> 01:17:15,800
Speaker 1: a white shirt and a black cap. RSS members met

1339
01:17:15,880 --> 01:17:18,840
Speaker 1: daily to train with bamboo beatsticks called lathis and to

1340
01:17:18,960 --> 01:17:23,639
Speaker 1: learn about Hindutva Hindu nationalism. In nineteen thirty nine, Savitri

1341
01:17:23,720 --> 01:17:26,600
Speaker 1: wrote a warning to the Hindus. The books Forward was

1342
01:17:26,640 --> 01:17:29,040
Speaker 1: written by G. D. Savarkar brothers to one of the

1343
01:17:29,080 --> 01:17:31,439
Speaker 1: co founders of the r s S and, according to

1344
01:17:31,479 --> 01:17:34,479
Speaker 1: an article by South Asian affairs analyst Peter Friedrick, quote

1345
01:17:34,760 --> 01:17:38,519
Speaker 1: DEVII advanced VD Savarkar's thesis of Hindutva that India is

1346
01:17:38,560 --> 01:17:41,599
Speaker 1: a Hindu nation of Hindu people and only for Hindu people.

1347
01:17:41,840 --> 01:17:45,440
Speaker 1: She claimed that Hindu society is India itself, called Hinduism

1348
01:17:45,520 --> 01:17:48,240
Speaker 1: the national religion of India and suggested that Hindu should

1349
01:17:48,240 --> 01:17:52,439
Speaker 1: tell non Hindus, we represent India, not you. Therefore India

1350
01:17:52,560 --> 01:17:56,960
Speaker 1: is ours, not yours. She urged Hindus to recover, along

1351
01:17:57,000 --> 01:18:00,120
Speaker 1: with their national consciousness, their military virtues of old to

1352
01:18:00,240 --> 01:18:03,880
Speaker 1: rebecome a military race. The method, she said, should be

1353
01:18:03,920 --> 01:18:06,879
Speaker 1: the organization of the young men and pledge bound military

1354
01:18:06,960 --> 01:18:10,760
Speaker 1: like batches with Hindu nationalism as their only ideal. And

1355
01:18:10,800 --> 01:18:12,880
Speaker 1: here's where I pause to note that the current Prime

1356
01:18:12,920 --> 01:18:16,320
Speaker 1: Minister of India, Narindra Modi, is a member of the RSS.

1357
01:18:16,840 --> 01:18:19,200
Speaker 1: A warning to Hindus is still considered to be a

1358
01:18:19,240 --> 01:18:23,200
Speaker 1: deeply influential text within the Hindu nationalist movement and the RSS.

1359
01:18:23,600 --> 01:18:26,200
Speaker 1: Moody probably read it as a child and a list

1360
01:18:26,240 --> 01:18:28,360
Speaker 1: of his crimes. And the thousands of murders and mosque

1361
01:18:28,400 --> 01:18:31,040
Speaker 1: bombings and beatings carried out by Hindu nationalists against Indian

1362
01:18:31,120 --> 01:18:33,439
Speaker 1: Muslims would go beyond the scope of this episode, but

1363
01:18:33,479 --> 01:18:36,400
Speaker 1: it is worth noting that the current authoritarian lurched by India,

1364
01:18:36,520 --> 01:18:39,719
Speaker 1: the world's largest democracy, owes at least a decent amount

1365
01:18:39,760 --> 01:18:43,599
Speaker 1: to the work of Savitri Devi. So that's cool. You're

1366
01:18:43,680 --> 01:18:46,559
Speaker 1: in love with her? Are? Oh my god? I mean

1367
01:18:46,640 --> 01:18:48,519
Speaker 1: it is a sign of where this is going that

1368
01:18:48,600 --> 01:18:51,920
Speaker 1: I kind of glossed over the fact that she played

1369
01:18:51,920 --> 01:18:55,400
Speaker 1: a role in the establishment of what's starting to become

1370
01:18:55,439 --> 01:18:59,800
Speaker 1: a fascist dictatorship in India. We just have so much

1371
01:19:00,080 --> 01:19:02,160
Speaker 1: the ground to cover. We have so much to cover.

1372
01:19:02,240 --> 01:19:05,800
Speaker 1: We don't have time for the fascist dictatorship today. We

1373
01:19:05,880 --> 01:19:08,679
Speaker 1: have some time, but yeah, okay, okay, well we'll make time.

1374
01:19:08,760 --> 01:19:11,719
Speaker 1: We'll make time for the fashion. In nineteen forty Britain

1375
01:19:11,720 --> 01:19:14,599
Speaker 1: and Germany went to war. Savitri's extremist beliefs were well

1376
01:19:14,640 --> 01:19:16,559
Speaker 1: known at this point, and she was forced to marry

1377
01:19:16,640 --> 01:19:18,760
Speaker 1: Mukerjee in order to stay in the country. So that's

1378
01:19:18,800 --> 01:19:20,760
Speaker 1: why they get married. It's a it's basically a green

1379
01:19:20,800 --> 01:19:23,479
Speaker 1: card thing. Yeah, got it. She described it as a

1380
01:19:23,520 --> 01:19:26,719
Speaker 1: sexless marriage, primarily to allow her to stay in the country,

1381
01:19:26,920 --> 01:19:29,240
Speaker 1: and she did what she could for Nazism while in India,

1382
01:19:29,360 --> 01:19:32,640
Speaker 1: spying on British military positions for the access and facilitating

1383
01:19:32,640 --> 01:19:36,120
Speaker 1: communication between sub hos Chandra Bose, leader of the National

1384
01:19:36,160 --> 01:19:39,240
Speaker 1: Indian Army of pro Axis Group, and the Japanese government.

1385
01:19:39,600 --> 01:19:41,920
Speaker 1: In a different world, these contributions might have played a

1386
01:19:42,000 --> 01:19:44,960
Speaker 1: role in a Japanese invasion of India, but World War

1387
01:19:45,000 --> 01:19:47,240
Speaker 1: Two went the way it did, and Hitler eventually shot

1388
01:19:47,280 --> 01:19:50,360
Speaker 1: himself at a bunker to avoid capture. Familiar Vitree learned

1389
01:19:50,360 --> 01:19:53,920
Speaker 1: of his death through an overheard conversation from two Muslim

1390
01:19:53,960 --> 01:19:57,920
Speaker 1: men on the Marabar Coast. She was inconsolable for days

1391
01:19:57,960 --> 01:19:59,559
Speaker 1: over the death of her hero and the end of

1392
01:19:59,600 --> 01:20:02,160
Speaker 1: the belief system she had dedicated her life to championing,

1393
01:20:02,400 --> 01:20:04,920
Speaker 1: but mcare she told her not to worry. This was

1394
01:20:04,960 --> 01:20:07,639
Speaker 1: merely part of the cycle of ages, and the dark

1395
01:20:07,680 --> 01:20:13,080
Speaker 1: age brought on by Hitler's defeat would someday end, And likewise, Jamie,

1396
01:20:13,720 --> 01:20:16,800
Speaker 1: one of this episode must now end, but this dark

1397
01:20:16,840 --> 01:20:19,960
Speaker 1: age will continue on Thursday with part two of the

1398
01:20:19,960 --> 01:20:27,240
Speaker 1: story of Savitri Devon. No, okay, how you doing, Jamie.

1399
01:20:27,479 --> 01:20:32,439
Speaker 1: I'm look, I'm just unclenching. That's important for the next

1400
01:20:32,479 --> 01:20:34,719
Speaker 1: two minutes, and then we can talk about it again.

1401
01:20:37,080 --> 01:20:40,320
Speaker 1: Always be clenching. Yeah, go plug your plug doubles. First,

1402
01:20:40,439 --> 01:20:44,240
Speaker 1: Oh right, uh leave that in. I want people to

1403
01:20:44,280 --> 01:20:49,160
Speaker 1: know that I had And also leave in Robert blowing

1404
01:20:49,200 --> 01:20:51,840
Speaker 1: his nose on the mic. Then Chris, leave that in.

1405
01:20:52,280 --> 01:20:54,280
Speaker 1: You can edit out. It's going to be horrible, Chris.

1406
01:20:54,320 --> 01:20:56,519
Speaker 1: You can edit out the part where Robert is like

1407
01:20:57,000 --> 01:21:00,880
Speaker 1: young Delicious after licking his own not off the mic,

1408
01:21:01,040 --> 01:21:04,200
Speaker 1: but everything else should probably stay in. I feel like

1409
01:21:04,240 --> 01:21:08,160
Speaker 1: this is legally abuse. You could probably report me to

1410
01:21:08,360 --> 01:21:12,040
Speaker 1: h R. Could be fun. Could be fine. My Twitter

1411
01:21:12,280 --> 01:21:17,120
Speaker 1: is Jamie Loft. This help on my Instagram is at

1412
01:21:17,200 --> 01:21:20,880
Speaker 1: Jamie christ Superstar and I'm touring for the better part

1413
01:21:21,000 --> 01:21:24,599
Speaker 1: of February. You can go to my website Jamie lofts

1414
01:21:24,680 --> 01:21:28,800
Speaker 1: is Innocent dot com to find out where yeah yeah,

1415
01:21:29,840 --> 01:21:35,400
Speaker 1: and you can find Sophie on Twitter finding her at

1416
01:21:35,520 --> 01:21:40,920
Speaker 1: Why Underscore Sophie Underscore Why, And that's it. That's all

1417
01:21:41,000 --> 01:21:45,160
Speaker 1: you can find of us online, which you're on Behind

1418
01:21:45,200 --> 01:21:48,479
Speaker 1: the Bastards dot com, including the full free text of

1419
01:21:48,560 --> 01:21:51,799
Speaker 1: Hitler's Priestess if you want to read this book. Um,

1420
01:21:51,840 --> 01:21:58,479
Speaker 1: the episodes over go stop the French from murdering cats? Yes, great,