Speaker 1: Al Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People, did
Speaker 1: Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that things are real complicated
Speaker 1: and sometimes there's a difference between moral action and strategic action,
Speaker 1: and it's impossible to know. But what you can know
Speaker 1: ahead of time is that my name is Margaret Kiljoy
Speaker 1: and I'm the host. You can also know you probably
Speaker 1: have guessed because you've probably listened to part one, unless
Speaker 1: you're a very strange person. That My guest is Carl
Speaker 1: Casardo from en Range TV. How are you?
Speaker 2: I'm doing great? Hello everybody, It's good to be back.
Speaker 2: Hopefully Margaret, you're doing well. And I am personally extremely
Speaker 2: excited to hear about Council Communism. Like I've been waiting
Speaker 2: a while now I'm dying for that part. I mean,
Speaker 2: I mean, I know what happens to Vanderloubi, but like
Speaker 2: I don't know about the Council Communism part. So that's
Speaker 2: what's what I'm here for.
Speaker 1: I know exactly. And our producer Sharen Sharan, how are you?
Speaker 3: I am good? Thank you for having me. Also very
Speaker 3: stoked to learn what that is. Council of Communism yep.
Speaker 1: And our audio engineer is Daniel Hi. Daniel Hi Daniel, Hi,
Speaker 1: I know or it's okay. Our theme musical was written
Speaker 1: forced by un woman. My favorite thing in the world
Speaker 1: is when listeners tell me that. They say it also
Speaker 1: when they're like at work and shit, so cute.
Speaker 3: I know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I'm really into it makes me happy.
Speaker 2: So you're adding into the general positive zeitgeist and the
Speaker 2: magnetic sphere. For Daniel right there, it was like boom,
Speaker 2: it just happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just like a little bit of strangeness going
Speaker 1: out into the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So today is the moment you've all been waiting for. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: there'll be fire and political intrigue. But first, niche left
Speaker 1: his theory from one hundred years ago that has no
Speaker 1: about relevance to modern leftism.
Speaker 2: Hooray.
Speaker 1: Yes, but it is relevant to this story. And I
Speaker 1: actually think understanding the ins and outs of all of
Speaker 1: this stuff that happened in the early twentieth century in
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century has on me so much good at
Speaker 1: giving me a vantage point to understand what's going on today.
Speaker 1: The foolish thing to do would be to think that
Speaker 1: the things that happen in the past are the same
Speaker 1: as what's happening now. Right, But It has helped me
Speaker 1: think about how people have like faced similar problems and
Speaker 1: what they've come up with, and it just I find
Speaker 1: it interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I like that you said that because I sort of,
Speaker 2: I mean, I know and I understand that also not
Speaker 2: exactly full quote of you know, those who don't understand
Speaker 2: the past are doomed to repeat it. I don't really
Speaker 2: buy that. No, but those who don't know the past
Speaker 2: don't have depth and understanding of the human condition and
Speaker 2: better comprehension of what things happening now mean totally.
Speaker 1: You can kill someone with the dull sword, and you
Speaker 1: can kill someone of the sharp sword, and it's easier
Speaker 1: to do with the sharp sword. If I'm using the
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones. The reason you read books is to
Speaker 1: sharpen your intellect. You know, most importantly, understanding nitty gritty
Speaker 1: stuff about ancient political ideology is cool and fun and
Speaker 1: it has hip, and it will win you friends at parties.
Speaker 1: It will win you exactly one friend at any given party,
Speaker 1: the other random nerd who happens to be there. Everyone
Speaker 1: else will leave you alone. They'll come over, they'll hear
Speaker 1: what you're talking about, they'll leave. It's great. You get
Speaker 1: to win at parties, you only have to talk to
Speaker 1: one person at a time.
Speaker 2: It's like the Church of the subject, you says, I
Speaker 2: drink to make other people interesting. I learned these topics
Speaker 2: to find the other interesting person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And so Marinus was a council communist.
Speaker 1: There are not many council communists anymore. If there are,
Speaker 1: and you're listening, I actually think you're onto something. It's great,
Speaker 1: it's fine. I met a former one once and he
Speaker 1: was in his probably seventies, maybe eighties, and he had
Speaker 1: written a bunch of books about council communism in the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, and then he became an anarchist. Council
Speaker 1: communists are look forever ago, there was this split between
Speaker 1: libertarian socialists like anarchists, and authoritarian socialists like Marxists. Back
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century. The authoritarian side is, you know,
Speaker 1: the Marxist side, the liberty inside, the more anarchist side.
Speaker 1: This is not universally true. This is the broad strokes.
Speaker 1: And every now and then, over the ensuing you have this,
Speaker 1: you know, this tree that is split, and you have
Speaker 1: two different branches, right, and every now and then people
Speaker 1: from one branch will be like looking over at the
Speaker 1: other branch and being like, damn, that's a nice branch.
Speaker 1: They got like pretty good bark. Like I don't know
Speaker 1: what branches see in each other, but like, whatever branches
Speaker 1: see in each other, they're into about each other. Right.
Speaker 2: It's like, I'm tired of three hour meetings about what
Speaker 2: colors we should make our font What if we just
Speaker 2: get a dictator that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. And so the anarchist side, looking over towards
Speaker 1: the Marxist side, you would get as an example, I
Speaker 1: would say it would be the platformist anarchists who are like,
Speaker 1: what if anarchism was way more unified and organized at
Speaker 1: the expense of putonomy or whatever what. I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to talk shit on them, but they're cribbon notes from
Speaker 1: the Marxists, right. And then in the other direction, I
Speaker 1: know more examples of the other direction because our branch
Speaker 1: is better whatever, because my p spective of where I'm at,
Speaker 1: I see the other direction more if Marxist cribbing notes
Speaker 1: from the anarchists. And among other groups that have done this,
Speaker 1: there's like autonomous Marxists and various other groups are the
Speaker 1: council communists. Because council communists. At its core was communists
Speaker 1: who were like one if communism actually pushed for communism,
Speaker 1: as we covered at length in the Russian Civil War episodes,
Speaker 1: the Russian Communist Party aka the Bolsheviks, they had started
Speaker 1: off being into the idea of these councils aka the
Speaker 1: Soviets and the trade unions, and you know, some of
Speaker 1: these people and some of these councils wanted to workers
Speaker 1: to take power without creating a dictator, without taking that
Speaker 1: power away from the workers and then centralizing it into
Speaker 1: one place. Right, the Bolsheviks did the opposite. They centralized
Speaker 1: power and the Soviets the councils were left with nothing.
Speaker 1: So council communists spun off. At this point they looked
Speaker 1: at what was happening in Russia and they were like,
Speaker 1: what if the point was that power's supposed to stay
Speaker 1: in the hands of the working class During the revolution,
Speaker 1: I thought that was the whole thing. We were all
Speaker 1: dying over. A ton of Marxists in Germany and the
Speaker 1: Netherlands were into council communism in the nineteen twenties. I
Speaker 1: talked about the some of the political landscape in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties in Germany and how the Nazis were originally
Speaker 1: sort of minority party among the right and they gain
Speaker 1: power and stuff right and council Communism comes out of
Speaker 1: the German left overall. Again there's Dutch parts of it too,
Speaker 1: but basically, the German Communist Party originally started off pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It was interested in workers' power. It was not interested
Speaker 1: in being told what to do by the Bolsheviks. They're
Speaker 1: in a different country. But then in nineteen nineteen, the
Speaker 1: Communist Party of Germany, the KDP, they managed to do
Speaker 1: some political maneuvering against the will of the majority of
Speaker 1: their own members in classic Bolsheviks style, and so they
Speaker 1: made the party line of this group suddenly be now,
Speaker 1: we do whatever Russia tells us to do, even though
Speaker 1: most Communists didn't actually want to do this. So the
Speaker 1: party split. And here's where you get into that, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I ever seen Life of Brian? Oh of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: Trein you ever seen this movie Life of Brian? It's
Speaker 1: okay if I have, I have no memory of bit.
Speaker 1: But there's this part where like people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're the Judea's Party of Liberation. We're like, no, we're
Speaker 1: the where the I can't even do the bit. They're
Speaker 1: all like arguing amongst each other themselves, and they have
Speaker 1: basically the same name, and they're like arguing over fine
Speaker 1: points and the getting really mad at each other, and
Speaker 1: it's a fun joke. Well, the old Communist party was
Speaker 1: the Communist Party of Germany. The new one that they
Speaker 1: form is the Communist Workers Party of Germany.
Speaker 2: Oh, this changes everything right there, that makes the difference.
Speaker 2: That's the reformation that will make it succeed.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So they go from the KDP to the KADP,
Speaker 1: and they actually, I mean they're pretty cool. They set
Speaker 1: up a workers union modeled after the Industrial Workers of
Speaker 1: the World. Mark that off in your Bengo card, aka
Speaker 1: union for leftists who are more concerned with giving power
Speaker 1: to the working class than being obsessive about ideological labels.
Speaker 1: So I the council Communists, they all right, like I
Speaker 1: actually not not here talk shit on them. But they
Speaker 1: still see themselves as part of communism, right. They don't
Speaker 1: see themselves as part of anarchism or a new thing, right,
Speaker 1: And so they they apply to join this group called
Speaker 1: the Common Tern the Communist International, which used to be
Speaker 1: back in the day. This like sort of horizontal group
Speaker 1: of all these different socialists around Europe. Right these days,
Speaker 1: well the days I'm talking about, it's just run by Russia.
Speaker 1: So they're like, no, you can't fucking join. Fuck you
Speaker 1: get the fuck out of here. You all want to
Speaker 1: be independent. Fuck that, we don't want independence here, we're
Speaker 1: fucking the Bolsheviks. So you call this This tendency also
Speaker 1: gets called left wing communism, which I think is really funny.
Speaker 1: Lenin wrote a pamphlet called left Wing Communism in Infantile
Speaker 1: Disorder to make fun of them. Lenin got jokes, it
Speaker 1: is funny to think about that.
Speaker 2: How there's that means there's right wing communism. I mean
Speaker 2: it's just ket such a like fractionalization upon fractionalization, a
Speaker 2: pro fractionalization, and then a group trying to bring the
Speaker 2: factions together, but then don't. It's an endless story of humanity,
Speaker 2: regardless of any movement.
Speaker 1: No I know, I know. This is why I live
Speaker 1: alone on a mountain. Like, so this is how you
Speaker 1: get council communists. At first, they tried saving the common
Speaker 1: turn from authoritarianism. They're like, hey, what if we all
Speaker 1: get to be worker's power? Like it says in the
Speaker 1: name of communism, you know, and they were like pointing
Speaker 1: out accurately that Russia was a capitalist state. This did
Speaker 1: not work. They're like, fine, we're doing our own thing
Speaker 1: and the five principles of council communism. Don't worry, we'll
Speaker 1: get to fire soon. It's not one of their principles.
Speaker 1: Five principles are capitalism is in decline and needs to
Speaker 1: be abolished immediately. It should be replaced by workers control
Speaker 1: over the economy through council democracy. The bourgeoisie manipulates the
Speaker 1: working class with its social democratic ally in order to
Speaker 1: maintain capitalism. This manipulation must be resisted by boycotting electoral
Speaker 1: politics and fighting traditional labor unions. And finally, the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union is not an alternative to capitalism, just a new
Speaker 1: type of capitalism. So that's them. They did their thing
Speaker 1: in Germany and the Netherlands alongside the other left communists
Speaker 1: across the Western world, which was basically everyone who didn't
Speaker 1: want to fucking toe the party line of Bolshevism. Council
Speaker 1: communism was not particularly influential except in Germany and the Netherlands.
Speaker 1: It's just like, you know, you read the Wikipedia, they'll
Speaker 1: be like, wow, it's in all these countries and you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: but was there one hundred people in France And they're
Speaker 1: like yeah, there's one hundred people in France and you're
Speaker 1: like that's cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the one guy sending out postcards from Pueblo, Colorado
Speaker 2: isn't a movement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, although I guess that's kind of a fucking
Speaker 1: Nazi started.
Speaker 2: Well, you don't know where it's going to go, but
Speaker 2: it isn't the movement yet, right. It might be the
Speaker 2: yet Sea Crystal or something like that, but it's not
Speaker 2: in and of itself yet totally.
Speaker 1: And so everyone of all sides could not wait to
Speaker 1: throw the Council communists under the bus. So back to barness,
Speaker 1: who's about to be under the bus of history?
Speaker 2: Oh you know what that makes me think everyone wants
Speaker 2: to throw them under the bus because no one likes
Speaker 2: being called out on what is ultimately the hypocrisy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, totally.
Speaker 2: Everybody hates that when he checks out. Yeah yeah, when
Speaker 2: you're like, no, you're full of shit, everybody gets mad
Speaker 2: at that, even if you're right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone's mad at them. Yeah, because it is that
Speaker 1: it's that meme like everyone's mad at Jesus because he
Speaker 1: was right, you know, yeah, like that's what's happening here.
Speaker 1: Everyone's like, but the Bolsheviks are clearly bullshit, and everyone's like, no,
Speaker 1: there are a guy. I mean, I don't know what
Speaker 1: it's like to live in a place where people are like,
Speaker 1: that's our guy, even though they're bad and wrong, and
Speaker 1: you're like, what if that just isn't our guy anymore?
Speaker 1: And they're like, how dare you split the party? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Thankfully that's nothing like what we have going on, so
Speaker 2: we don't have to worry about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, No, it's just weird history. So Marnus is
Speaker 1: in the Netherlands. He's getting in and out of jail,
Speaker 1: and the word on the s and the Netherlands is
Speaker 1: that there might be about to be a civil war
Speaker 1: in Germany to stop Hitler from taking power. Right, this
Speaker 1: is like January nineteen thirty three. Hitler's just I guess
Speaker 1: this February nineteen thirty three. Hitler's just come to power.
Speaker 1: And everyone's like, oh, we might stop this, right, we
Speaker 1: might be able to have a civil war to stop this,
Speaker 1: if only there had been, And he's like, well, don't
Speaker 1: have a civil war without me, I'll throw cops through windows.
Speaker 1: Not a problem. I'll walk all the way there. And
Speaker 1: so he did. I think he hit checked again, but
Speaker 1: actually it took him a couple of weeks to get there,
Speaker 1: so maybe he did fucking walk. I don't know. He
Speaker 1: gets to Berlin, it's like mid February nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: and there's stormtroopers and shit now, and he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: the Nazis are taking over. Should we do something about this?
Speaker 1: And he is trying, like his first resort wasn't individual
Speaker 1: action at night. His first resort was he went to
Speaker 1: every meeting he could, including a group so he didn't
Speaker 1: like all that much, like the communists and the social Democrats,
Speaker 1: and he goes to every meeting and he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: what if instead of letting the Nazis take over, we
Speaker 1: stop the Nazis from taking over. I've got this wild idea.
Speaker 1: You know. He's that other meme, the guy standing up
Speaker 1: being like I have an idea, you know, the unpopular
Speaker 1: idea guy. He's trying really hard. He's getting people to
Speaker 1: talk about it on the streets. He keeps trying to
Speaker 1: like just like organize everywhere he goes. He's like hey, like,
Speaker 1: and he's going directly the workers. He's like, the parties
Speaker 1: aren't stopping it, how do we stop it? You know?
Speaker 1: And he's trying to incite riots. He does not successfully
Speaker 1: incite them. Nothing is working. On February twenty third, he's
Speaker 1: at a Communist Party meeting that is broken up by
Speaker 1: cops and no one even fights back. He's like, wait,
Speaker 1: what the fuck is happening. Then on February twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: the Communist Party headquarters is rated. I mentioned this earlier,
Speaker 1: and the Communists are still just trying to play nice,
Speaker 1: and he's like, we can't fucking nice while the Nazis
Speaker 1: are taking over. That is not an acceptable thing for
Speaker 1: us to do. He can't stand what's happening. He feels
Speaker 1: like has something has to be done. He wanted it
Speaker 1: to be a mass action through the proper channels of
Speaker 1: workers organizations. He's going to even the Social Democrats. That's
Speaker 1: not working. So he's like, all right, what about fire.
Speaker 1: So on the night of February twenty fifth, this is
Speaker 1: not the Reichstrog fire, it's two days earlier, he goes
Speaker 1: on a sort of failed arson spree. He's trying to
Speaker 1: burn down an unemployment office, a castle in the Imperial Palace.
Speaker 1: He did this by just kind of walking around and
Speaker 1: throwing burning tinder through mail slots. Right, that's why he's
Speaker 1: hitting a bunch of places in one night. He's just
Speaker 1: like walking all over town being like la la, la
Speaker 1: la la. I'm Johnny fire Seed.
Speaker 2: I was just gonna say, the Johnny apple Seed of Arson. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And none of those buildings burned down. But he's like,
Speaker 1: maybe these actions will spark the working class out of
Speaker 1: their lethargy. And he there's where I disagree with him.
Speaker 1: I think this is a miscalculation, and I think it's
Speaker 1: a miscalculation that he had because he's young and he's
Speaker 1: from a different country. The communists and even the Social
Speaker 1: Democrats have been fighting for a decade against fascism in
Speaker 1: Germany and they've been steadily losing ground. In my estimation,
Speaker 1: and I am not an expert, I don't think this
Speaker 1: was lethargy. I think this was burnout. It was despair
Speaker 1: and it was feeling defeated that I think people were
Speaker 1: dealing with. So Marnus is like, well, if at first
Speaker 1: you don't burn down an important building to spark a
Speaker 1: working class revolt, burn burn again. On February twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: he does the thing that puts him into the history books,
Speaker 1: just in a bad way. The specifics of this night
Speaker 1: are argued about even still one hundred years later, well,
Speaker 1: ninety years later, nearly never, Yeah, ninety nine years later, no,
Speaker 1: eighty whatever, I can't do math.
Speaker 2: I think it's ninety nine balloons, which is a different
Speaker 2: reference entirely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a bunch of balloons later.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Overall, the popular media version of this story is that
Speaker 1: the Nazis burned down the Reichstag to blame the Communists,
Speaker 1: or at the very least tricked Marnus into doing it.
Speaker 1: And then the rough consensus, maybe the majority rather than consensus,
Speaker 1: but the rough majority or consensus of historians is that, no,
Speaker 1: this was not a false flag attack. Marnus burned the
Speaker 1: Reichstag on his own volition. I'm not going to tell
Speaker 1: you that's definitely what happened. That's what I think happened.
Speaker 1: I feel fairly certain about that, and I'll tell you
Speaker 1: why I think it. At around nine pm on February
Speaker 1: twenty seventh, nineteen thirty three, Marnus broke into the Reichstag.
Speaker 1: Basically he was thinking. He was like, all right, this
Speaker 1: didn't work last time because I didn't go all in. Literally,
Speaker 1: He's like, I got to go inside these buildings to
Speaker 1: set them on fire. Right, He goes in to try
Speaker 1: and make sure the place burns. As soon as he
Speaker 1: breaks in. People see him break in. It's nine it's
Speaker 1: not When I first read that this happened at nine pm,
Speaker 1: I was like, do Germans just go to bed really early?
Speaker 1: Like what's happening, you know? And then I realized I
Speaker 1: read a different source and I learned more details, and
Speaker 1: I was like, no, they saw him do it. He
Speaker 1: broke in, and he was like, shit, the firefighters are
Speaker 1: already coming, the cops are already coming. I better fucking
Speaker 1: burn this place. And so he's running around inside trying
Speaker 1: to set shit on fire. And all he has is
Speaker 1: this like coal lighter, and I think that means it
Speaker 1: is a lighter for lighting coal, and not a lighter
Speaker 1: that works off of coal. But I could not tell
Speaker 1: you because I spent a while trying to learn and
Speaker 1: I couldn't figure it out. And he goes around. The
Speaker 1: kindling he brought isn't catching anything. He starts setting towels
Speaker 1: on fire. He takes off his own shirt and sets
Speaker 1: it on fire to try and start this fire, while
Speaker 1: the fire department is like outside using his coal and
Speaker 1: alzunder his coal fire lighter. He also sets the curtains
Speaker 1: on fire. This fire was started in multiple places, and
Speaker 1: this is where a lot of the conspiracy stuff comes from.
Speaker 1: Either he moved around quickly, which seems the most likely
Speaker 1: thing and the thing that most historians tend to believe
Speaker 1: that the curtains that he eventually lit like took a
Speaker 1: little while and he's like running around from curtain to
Speaker 1: curtain and setting them on fire around the building. Or
Speaker 1: I think this is also perfectly likely. He had accomplices
Speaker 1: and he shut the fuck up and he never mentioned them,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it could be either he goes over
Speaker 2: and lights the curtain and it just slowly starts a
Speaker 2: smolder till it goes up it hits that combustion point yep.
Speaker 2: Or yeah, but I mean, considering this guy's strength and
Speaker 2: bravado in the past that we've learned about him, him
Speaker 2: not breaking and talking about others is also very very
Speaker 2: understandable and very believable. Yeah, Well, what's weird is why
Speaker 2: didn't they bring any accelerant? I think they bring like
Speaker 2: lighter fluid or something.
Speaker 1: No, I don't know. I think yeah, and actually that
Speaker 1: almost even works. Stwories that like it was just right.
Speaker 1: It's because like it's right, and he clearly wasn't like
Speaker 1: the most thought out action that's ever happened, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It almost sounds like a whim like I'm doing it now,
Speaker 2: like if you were, because if you're planning.
Speaker 1: This, ZEPM, let's go yeah kind of.
Speaker 2: Because I mean, wouldn't you bring like a can of
Speaker 2: zippo or something like whatever the equivalent was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you might think it's way easier to catch things
Speaker 3: on fire if he was just like putting kindling in
Speaker 3: little mail slots, like yeah, maybe he has a different
Speaker 3: impression of how fire works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. He's just running around with a flint striker,
Speaker 1: being like why is that working? It's like a stone palate.
Speaker 2: With the string and he's like spinning it in the
Speaker 2: right stock. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The cops are outside because he's like he's burning his
Speaker 1: own shirt, right, Like he's willing to burn the shirt
Speaker 1: off his back.
Speaker 2: That's what I mean. It sounds like it was almost
Speaker 2: a whim like I'm just doing it, Like maybe he
Speaker 2: just got the moment or got the I don't know,
Speaker 2: but it's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And then there's the least likely thing, which
Speaker 1: is that Nazis spies knew he was going to be
Speaker 1: starting this fire, so they also positioned themselves to also
Speaker 1: start fires at the same time as him, which is
Speaker 1: what some people expect you to believe. The mighty Parliament
Speaker 1: building of Germany went up in flames. Martis was apprehended
Speaker 1: on the scene. I have read both outside on the
Speaker 1: street and inside the building. He has the lighter on him,
Speaker 1: He's scantily clad because he's been burning his clothes. He
Speaker 1: is sweaty and panting. And the most damning part is
Speaker 1: that he confessed immediately. He also immediately said that he'd
Speaker 1: done it alone and that he had no associations with
Speaker 1: the Communist Party, and that he had destroyed the Reichschag
Speaker 1: to protest against quote a political institution which was being
Speaker 1: used as an instrument to submit the workers to the
Speaker 1: yoke of a fascist dictatorship. But you know what isn't
Speaker 1: being used to yoke the workers to a fascist dictatorship.
Speaker 1: Approximately thirty percent of our advertisers, because nice, you get
Speaker 1: the idea of mixed feelings. Whatever, here's ads and we're back.
Speaker 1: So what absolutely is true about this action is that
Speaker 1: the Nazis are ready to take advantage of it. It
Speaker 1: seems somewhat obvious that they didn't plan it. They were
Speaker 1: just prepared for it as a probability. After all, they
Speaker 1: had a piece of legislation that had been written by
Speaker 1: their far right predecessors, as this is the piece of
Speaker 1: legislation to pass if the left is any kind of
Speaker 1: massive direct action. So once someone on the left did
Speaker 1: a massive direct action, they put it into place the
Speaker 1: thing that had been written a year ago within hours present.
Speaker 1: Hindenberg blows up, No, that's still the zeppelin I tried
Speaker 1: to write. Okay, I'm going to go completely off script
Speaker 1: and tell you I'm going to call this a fable
Speaker 1: because I learned this ten years ago and I have
Speaker 1: not fact check it since.
Speaker 2: Beautiful.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard about how Nazis ruined airship travel?
Speaker 2: I have not. I don't know if this is a
Speaker 2: joke or not, but I wish those things still existed now.
Speaker 2: The idea of sitting in a zeppelin going over the ocean.
Speaker 2: Sounds really cool, and I'm not a steampunk so it
Speaker 2: just sounds neat. I know.
Speaker 1: It's like way Greener I used to be a steam bunk,
Speaker 1: so he used to write about airship travel and how
Speaker 1: Nazis ruined it. Because again I'm running off ten year
Speaker 1: old notes here, so treat this as a fable, even
Speaker 1: though I believe it to be true. The head of
Speaker 1: like airship travel in Weymar, Germany was someone who cared
Speaker 1: about I think he was a centrist, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: He wasn't like a radical, and he wasn't a Nazi,
Speaker 1: was anti Nazi, and he cared about safety. And so
Speaker 1: the Nazis got rid of him, and then they put
Speaker 1: in place this like total yes man who just did
Speaker 1: whatever the fucking Nazis said, cut back on costs. Again,
Speaker 1: no comparison to what's happening now where corporations come in
Speaker 1: and like start changing the way that airline safety works.
Speaker 1: That obviously would never happen and no whistleblowers will get
Speaker 1: shot whatever anyway, So the Nazis are like, wait, did they.
Speaker 2: Take a submarine to the Titanic? I'm lost? Was that
Speaker 2: what happened? Oh?
Speaker 1: No saying how the bow? Oh right, no, okay, So
Speaker 1: the Nazi fucking started cheaping out on airship safety and
Speaker 1: the Hindenburg was like, actually reasonably safe. I know there's
Speaker 1: the whole like hydrogen versus helium argument blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, but I'm not gonna get into that. And
Speaker 1: then the Hindenburg went down and the entire world looked
Speaker 1: at it and was like, oh shit, airships are scary.
Speaker 1: They burn again, old information here. I mean it was
Speaker 1: like a little less than one hundred people in the Hindenburg,
Speaker 1: and like, I think a third of them died, and
Speaker 1: like that's a lot. I don't want to be in
Speaker 1: a I don't want to be in a space where
Speaker 1: a third of people die. Right, I will take a
Speaker 1: falling airship that is on fire, or I have a
Speaker 1: two thirds chance of safety over a fucking airplane crashing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: any day.
Speaker 3: That's what I was thinking, Like one crash, then no
Speaker 3: more forever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's more or less what happened. Again, based on
Speaker 1: information that I thought I was going to put into
Speaker 1: the script and then realize my script is already long enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And from a capitalist perspective, they're not cost efficient.
Speaker 2: You can't jam as much crap and people onto them
Speaker 2: and sell those tickets for overpriced amounts. Right, So that's
Speaker 2: another problem too.
Speaker 1: But it can be so green compared to airplane travel.
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, yeah. They just kind of float along with
Speaker 2: very little propulsion required.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow, I think I would be terrified to be
Speaker 1: on one. I'm gonna be real.
Speaker 3: Why how's it.
Speaker 2: Different even if it was packed with helium? I mean,
Speaker 2: it seems like that seems pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I mean the same reason I don't want to take
Speaker 1: a boat across the ocean, just like storms and shit.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean I bet if I like
Speaker 1: did it, I'd become fine with it, you know.
Speaker 3: The idea if it's a little bit overwhelming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not like man heights rule, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: more of a like Right, I can accept this.
Speaker 2: And it's really funny too when you think about Boy
Speaker 2: this is off script, but like World War One, some
Speaker 2: of the Zeppelins were used for bombing raids and such,
Speaker 2: and those things were notoriously hard to shoot down.
Speaker 1: Oh really, Allied pilots like.
Speaker 2: Oh, they were incredibly difficult, And.
Speaker 3: So I would think it was the opposite for some
Speaker 3: reason right.
Speaker 2: Alley pilots were die bombing on them and dropping bombs
Speaker 2: and stuff because these things were considered like the dreadnoughts
Speaker 2: of the sky. They were very hard to shoot down.
Speaker 2: So to go from this World War One militarized version
Speaker 2: to this theoretically civilian version that just blows up because
Speaker 2: someone like struck a match or whatever. That happened to
Speaker 2: the Hindenburg is like an example of where it could
Speaker 2: have been and where it went right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, Carl quote unquote not a steampunk casarta. We
Speaker 1: call you behind your back.
Speaker 2: As I rant about how cool zeppelins are.
Speaker 1: I know, but they are okay, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: couple things that they were right about.
Speaker 2: And you know what, cog wheels are cool too.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, but they yeah, not as design, not
Speaker 1: as design. That's where it all went downhill. So anyway,
Speaker 1: my dog is like, would you please shut up about this?
Speaker 1: He will just have to deal with it. So within
Speaker 1: hours of this fire, President Hindenberg invoked that Article forty
Speaker 1: eight that I'm in charge no matter what, even though
Speaker 1: we pretend we have a democracy thing, and the cabinet
Speaker 1: enacted the decree of the right President for the protection
Speaker 1: of the people in the state. Hitler said, quote, if
Speaker 1: this fire, as I believe, is the work of communists,
Speaker 1: then we must crush out this murderous pest with an
Speaker 1: eye iron fist, which is like not very nice of
Speaker 1: a way to phrase things. I'm starting to think this
Speaker 1: Hitler guy is no good. And it's so interesting, right
Speaker 1: because the Nazi claim is that this fire was going
Speaker 1: to be a signal for a larger uprising. It wasn't.
Speaker 1: It should have been, but it wasn't.
Speaker 2: This again, thinking about like history and understanding the past
Speaker 2: and now or then and even now, like when John
Speaker 2: Brown instigated his raid against Harper's ferry, as we said
Speaker 2: in an episode you said an episode one of this
Speaker 2: you know, the South said this is just the beginning
Speaker 2: of many abolitionists that are going to do this very thing,
Speaker 2: and that's why we must do something about it. And
Speaker 2: that didn't actually appear to be true. Like John Brown
Speaker 2: had funding and had allies and had he had a
Speaker 2: little army, right, but there wasn't like this upswing of
Speaker 2: like massive amounts of abolitionist white abolitionist violence that was
Speaker 2: John Brown was a bit anomaloist in that regard, like
Speaker 2: and so here you see after the Reichstag fire, the
Speaker 2: same exact thing. This is just the beginning of many
Speaker 2: communist uprisings that are going to strike across all of
Speaker 2: Greater Germany. Yeah, that same tool of fear. First of all,
Speaker 2: knowing that you're doing wrong, right, you were an authoritarian
Speaker 2: piece of shit as the planter class was, and knowing
Speaker 2: you're doing wrong and the fear of people calling you
Speaker 2: on it through direct action is a powerful tool for
Speaker 2: more authoritarianism.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. And so with this law that they passed, there's
Speaker 1: no freedom of speech, no freedom assembly, no privacy, no
Speaker 1: freedom of press. They legalized phone tapping and stealing mail.
Speaker 1: There's also no autonomy of states. Any state government can
Speaker 1: be removed. No warrants are necessary to search houses, and
Speaker 1: they expand the death penalty to include arson. Around four
Speaker 1: thousand people were rounded up immediately without warrants, and I
Speaker 1: don't know the fate of all of them. I know
Speaker 1: the fate of one of the anarchists I read about
Speaker 1: who died in a concentration camp a year later. And
Speaker 1: they rounded up four thousand communist, social democrats and anarchists.
Speaker 1: This was, as near as I can tell, the day
Speaker 1: that ended a ground militant organizing in Germany. Survivors fled
Speaker 1: the country or went underground. After this, All of this
Speaker 1: happened a week before the new parliament whatever elections for government,
Speaker 1: and these elections still happened, which is kind of impressive
Speaker 1: that despite these roundups, the Communists won eighty one seats
Speaker 1: out of six hundred total. Despite arresting all the competition,
Speaker 1: the Nazis still didn't win a majority. Well, they still
Speaker 1: had a plurality, right. The Nazis didn't need a majority though,
Speaker 1: because what they did is now they had a list
Speaker 1: of eighty one new people to arrest, and they arrested
Speaker 1: all of the Social Democrat and Communist ministers and therefore
Speaker 1: were able to control everything. And the way that they
Speaker 1: were able to control everything is that there's a center party,
Speaker 1: the Catholic Center Party, and overall the Catholics don't like
Speaker 1: Hitler and Nazis, and some of them do really brave things, right,
Speaker 1: but they're a centrist party, and so the Nazis are like, well,
Speaker 1: all right, we won't ban Catholicism if you just let
Speaker 1: us take power. And the Catholics are like, okay, and
Speaker 1: let them take power. So not the strongest moment from
Speaker 1: the Centrists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but never underestimate the power of the concept of
Speaker 2: the perception of self preservation, right, like, yeah, totally, so
Speaker 2: often that carrots is dangled. Yeah, but it's almost always
Speaker 2: a lie. It's only self preserved mostly usually self preservation
Speaker 2: only for a little while. Right.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it's so funny that we keep falling into that trap,
Speaker 1: even though there's that fucking famous poem you know, or
Speaker 1: famous speech it gets turned into a poem. But on
Speaker 1: March twenty third, nineteen thirty three, they passed the Enabling Act.
Speaker 1: The basically, the Nazis and the Catholics pass the Enabling
Speaker 1: Act to give Hitler absolute power, making Parliament meaningless. They're like, uh,
Speaker 1: we vote ourselves to suck. Did not matter. Then, when
Speaker 1: President Hindenberg died of natural causes, he was eighty seven
Speaker 1: in August nineteen thirty four. He actually, right before this,
Speaker 1: he was like, before Hindenburg died, he was like, y'all
Speaker 1: should fucking you suck? Fuck you, you're being a little
Speaker 1: bit too much. I'm gonna I'm thinking about doing stuff
Speaker 1: to you. And in response, they had the Night of
Speaker 1: Long Knives. This actually gets a little bit beyond what
Speaker 1: I totally understand because I didn't put it in my script.
Speaker 1: But he dies, he's eighty seven. Hitler announces that the
Speaker 1: president and chancellor roles are being combined and he becomes
Speaker 1: the Fure, and he's like, you know, I want this
Speaker 1: to be like legal. So on August nineteenth, nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: there's a plebisite basically, when you like get the entire
Speaker 1: country to vote on an issue to see how people
Speaker 1: feel about it, to see if they approved of the
Speaker 1: merging of the two officers and having Hitler be the Fure.
Speaker 1: Ninety six percent of the population turned out to vote,
Speaker 1: and ninety percent of the people voted yes. Well, this
Speaker 1: was the least fair. This was not a fair election.
Speaker 1: He probably would have won to be real, right, there
Speaker 1: are stormtroopers stationed at all the pole stations. Some ballots
Speaker 1: were pre marked, yes, spoiled ballots were just marked into
Speaker 1: the yes category. More people voted than there were people
Speaker 1: to vote in some places.
Speaker 3: Surryan, So you can I just have a quick TANGI
Speaker 3: really quick. My grandma I'm Syrian, and my grandma was
Speaker 3: a teacher in Syria, and teachers in Syria are civil workers,
Speaker 3: and so when hafs I said Basher's dad was elected
Speaker 3: in quotes, they had an election and the civil servants
Speaker 3: were counting the votes, and she said that she was
Speaker 3: told to drop the no in the trash and put
Speaker 3: yes in the yes pile, and so democracy, Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: that sounds like the fair good election.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but ninety six percent of there's no such
Speaker 2: thing as ninety six percent voter turnout. And getting a
Speaker 2: situation would ninety percent of people agree on anything is
Speaker 2: a human impossibility.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe ninety percent of people with a gun literally
Speaker 1: their head will say yes, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: But like in terms of like a legitimate there's there's
Speaker 2: no way. There's just that doesn't exist. That is outside
Speaker 2: of the realm of human physics.
Speaker 1: And like I'm impressed Hamburg voted twenty percent no and
Speaker 1: Berlin voted like eighteen or sixteen percent no or something,
Speaker 1: which means that a much higher percentage of people did
Speaker 1: vote no. Right, And it is one of these things
Speaker 1: where it's like you think the liberals won't act where
Speaker 1: I'm ready to vote tomorrow if I could, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's not as clearly not enough voting no in
Speaker 1: this blood site did not stop Hitler.
Speaker 3: If anything, I would think that they would target the
Speaker 3: people that said noo, like they did with the people
Speaker 3: that were elected.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, it actually seemed like there is actually some bravery
Speaker 1: in going out of voting now in this Bloo site,
Speaker 1: because like you just watched them murder a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of people and their stormtroopers around, and like, no one
Speaker 1: knows quite how bad it's about to get, but they
Speaker 1: can suspect, you know, they've had a long time to
Speaker 1: see what. Hitler was pretty upfront about his plans, you know, but.
Speaker 3: He was hitlering from the beginning. He made it into
Speaker 3: a verb earlier, and I thought that was funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think it was probably very hard at
Speaker 2: that time, to be honest, like coming out of the
Speaker 2: violin our Republic, which was this really like libertine progressive space,
Speaker 2: like one of the most interesting bohemian times we've seen
Speaker 2: in human history. To go from that to full on
Speaker 2: conservative dictatorship authoritarianism is a hard thing to comprehend, Like,
Speaker 2: how did my country that was, you know, this free
Speaker 2: place where going to all sorts of bars and drag
Speaker 2: shows and all these things that were going on in
Speaker 2: Bohemian Weimar suddenly become this. It's hard to perceive if
Speaker 2: you were living through that, it would be hard. Unerstaid
Speaker 2: that it can't happen here, that's impossible, Like I bet
Speaker 2: that was. There was a lot of that going on
Speaker 2: for a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. So
Speaker 1: that's how Hitler came to power. But this isn't really
Speaker 1: an episot about how Hitler got to power. I just
Speaker 1: had to explain it because I had to explain the
Speaker 1: reichstrog So what matter guy Marnus, and why does history
Speaker 1: seem as a Nazi agent? And why at the very
Speaker 1: beginning did I say that I'm going to blame homophobia communists, Well,
Speaker 1: because the Communists of the reason that everyone thinks is
Speaker 1: a Nazi agent. Because as soon as the fire was set,
Speaker 1: the Communists and the social democrats, rather than blaming the
Speaker 1: Nazis for taking power and being like, hey, it's probably
Speaker 1: good that people are fighting that we're bending over backwards
Speaker 1: to see you could throw Marnus under the bus the fastest.
Speaker 3: To kind of separate themselves from him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it was a little less like, don't worry,
Speaker 1: Nazis were nice, were your friends? It was a little
Speaker 1: bit that, right, and it was also just a like
Speaker 1: wactual thing. It was a lot of bit that even
Speaker 1: though they were like still anti Nazi, right. A group
Speaker 1: of communists in Paris collectively wrote a book in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three. So there's like, he gets arrested right away, right,
Speaker 1: he's arrested on the scene, and they have this like
Speaker 1: other thing where a bunch of like lefties have this
Speaker 1: like other trial for him in a different country where
Speaker 1: they're like, let's find out what really happened. But it's
Speaker 1: not they're not finding out what really happened. They released
Speaker 1: this book nineteen thirty three at the end of the
Speaker 1: year while the trial's going on, or maybe a little
Speaker 1: before the trial goes on. It's called The Brown Book
Speaker 1: of the Reichstrog Fire and Hitler Terror. And this book
Speaker 1: is a best seller in twenty four languages and is
Speaker 1: the reason that people to this day believe that the
Speaker 1: Reichstrog Fire was a false flag attack. The core of
Speaker 1: their argument about why Marnus was a Nazi agent is
Speaker 1: that they say Marnus was gay, and in fact, all
Speaker 1: the Nazis bunch of gays. The Nazis are nothing but
Speaker 1: a bunch of decadent homosexual criminals.
Speaker 3: That was part of their argument.
Speaker 1: That's like the whole of that's their main argument. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's bold. We don't know whether or not Marnus was gay.
Speaker 1: It seems possible. There is the around this time, you
Speaker 1: get the report that I've covered on this show. I
Speaker 1: can't remember the name of it, in like nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: something like, there was a report of study of human
Speaker 1: history sexuality that found out that about thirty percent of
Speaker 1: maybe like thirty or forty percent of men have had
Speaker 1: homosexual experiences. And then you know, so like maw might
Speaker 1: have been. We do know he was in love with
Speaker 1: a woman once. That doesn't mean much. We also know
Speaker 1: that he was a broke, traveling vagabond, and sex work
Speaker 1: seems like a way he absolutely could have made money
Speaker 1: as well as anything else. I would want him to
Speaker 1: be gay. Being gay as cool as hell. Yeah, many
Speaker 1: of our advertiser it's not June anymore. No, no advertisers
Speaker 1: are pretending to be gay anymore.
Speaker 2: But you know what, no, this is, this is July.
Speaker 2: So now they're about disability.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, well he's he's blind. Oh so he's blind.
Speaker 2: There you go. So they support him because of his disabilities.
Speaker 2: He's his disability and he's blind. So there is that's
Speaker 2: that's what the ad should be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know, I actually do think that, like,
Speaker 1: these months are not bad. What's bad is the cynicism
Speaker 1: with which capitalist Oh.
Speaker 2: No, no, I hope that wasn't interpreted that way. No,
Speaker 2: it's no.
Speaker 1: I think we all know that.
Speaker 3: I think I think our listeners would know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the corporate ucer pation of it, right, It's
Speaker 2: that it's that good guy badge nonsense that they put
Speaker 2: on their commercials for one month only in this country
Speaker 2: while they're doing something horrible in Saudi Arabia. Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, it's that classic beam of like a warship or
Speaker 3: something dropping bombs and it's like Republican Democrat and then
Speaker 3: it's like there's a pride flag on the Democrat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's all it really means, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think your listeners are smart enough to know that
Speaker 3: we don't mean it in any bad way.
Speaker 1: But I hope they're smart enough to know that we
Speaker 1: believe with all of our hearts that these goods and
Speaker 1: services are absolutely good and we're back. So the core
Speaker 1: argument in this book is rooted in homophobia and not fact.
Speaker 1: They basically made up an elaborate fairy tale, Hey, fairy tale, sorry,
Speaker 1: that a bunch of gay stormtroopers set the fire and
Speaker 1: Marnus's pimp had made him take the fall for it,
Speaker 1: which he was willing to do because gay men are
Speaker 1: pitiful and desperate for affection. He was de sperate for
Speaker 1: the affection of these gay Nazi stormtroopers, and also that
Speaker 1: they would out him as a homosexual if he didn't
Speaker 1: take the fall, And like, look, it's probably a crime
Speaker 1: to be homosexual. I'm willing to bet it's more of
Speaker 1: a crime to set the Reichstag on fire.
Speaker 3: But also like he probably wouldn't give a shit just
Speaker 3: based on his history.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know, No, this is all made up.
Speaker 1: It's complete, I know, I know.
Speaker 3: I mean, like that argument is just so thin and flimsy,
Speaker 3: so stupid, Like he threw a cop out a window.
Speaker 3: We think he fucking cares if you call him gay
Speaker 3: in public?
Speaker 1: Come on, yeah, you know right, he'll either agree or
Speaker 1: throw you out a window, right, Like so.
Speaker 2: I just want to know. It was this brown book
Speaker 2: published by Time Life. It was like the little thing
Speaker 2: you put on your on your coffee table. The time
Speaker 2: life series of Communists, fire and Arson.
Speaker 1: I you know, I actually it's funny because the response
Speaker 1: book that they later write a different people defending him
Speaker 1: right is called the Red Book, and so it's like
Speaker 1: there's like something going on with how they name these
Speaker 1: things that I just like don't totally get, but there's
Speaker 1: nothing that holds up in this book. During the months
Speaker 1: when Marnus was supposedly plotting with gay Nazis to do
Speaker 1: gay Nazi crimes, he was in Dutch prison for breaking
Speaker 1: the windows of that agency that wouldn't fund his library
Speaker 1: for the unemployed. They also claimed that he'd been kicked
Speaker 1: out of the Communist Party for being suspected of being
Speaker 1: a police informant Comrade after Comrade came forward to just
Speaker 1: be like, that's not true. No one has ever thought that.
Speaker 1: Say what you want about this man, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: mostly say positive things except some of the strategic decisions.
Speaker 1: He was committed to socialism with the core of his soul,
Speaker 1: Like this is like one of the most evil hatchet
Speaker 1: jobs in history. Should Marness have started that fire? Probably
Speaker 1: not in retrospect. Is it morally justifiable. Absolutely, it's morally justifiable.
Speaker 1: They're the Nazis, Like we should set their things on fire.
Speaker 1: They're the Nazis.
Speaker 2: Like, right, but it doesn't mean it all right, I agreed,
Speaker 2: But it also doesn't mean it's tactically sound, right, that's
Speaker 2: the mistake totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he was on the right track when he
Speaker 1: was trying to spur mass action. You know. Yes, I
Speaker 1: know people who've gone to jail because they have felt
Speaker 1: that their attempts to integrate with a larger social movement,
Speaker 1: to participate in things have not gone well. And then
Speaker 1: they've been like, well what do I do? And they've
Speaker 1: been like, well maybe I should torch some cop cars
Speaker 1: or whatever, you know, and then gone to prison and like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just a pattern. I see.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean he tried to motivate an entire group
Speaker 2: of people that he thought were going to actually have
Speaker 2: the backbone to do something, and when they don't, he's
Speaker 2: left with this, considering his life's experiences, I could I
Speaker 2: could see in his mind he's left with this, like, well,
Speaker 2: someone has to do something, and I guess that's me yep, right,
Speaker 2: And that's what happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, And sometimes you're John Brown and sometimes you're Marnus.
Speaker 2: You know, although John Brown wasn't alone, as we said, right,
Speaker 2: he was funded and backed, so he wasn't totally isolated.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, Actually that's actually a very good point. And
Speaker 1: like and Marnus had a like it was part of
Speaker 1: a movement, but was kind of acting outside that move
Speaker 1: meant even more than John Brown was. That's a very
Speaker 1: good point. Now, the Nazis would have one hundred percent
Speaker 1: consolidated their power regardless. I'm going to talk about that
Speaker 1: a little bit more later. This was the excuse that
Speaker 1: they happened to use. I personally do not think history
Speaker 1: would look fundamentally different if Marnus had stayed home that night.
Speaker 1: I think we're talking about the difference of a week
Speaker 1: or two. In fact, the Nazis had talked about kind
Speaker 1: of waiting until after that next election before they started
Speaker 1: arresting everyone, because then they know who to arrest.
Speaker 2: You know, I guess you could say what he did
Speaker 2: was he turned out to be an accelerationist for what
Speaker 2: was an inevitable reality. And if you know, if there
Speaker 2: wasn't an arson fire, they would have picked and chosen something,
Speaker 2: or they would have just created something out of whole cloth.
Speaker 2: It didn't have to be an event, would have to
Speaker 2: be like we know of a plot. They would have
Speaker 2: just made it happen.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, yeah, done.
Speaker 3: Joke about him being an accelerationist when he didn't have one.
Speaker 2: That's true. He was an accelerationist without a can of
Speaker 2: Zippo lighter fluid, Like yeah, that's that's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. So his trial, five people were put on
Speaker 1: trial for the Reichstag fire. It was Marnus aka the
Speaker 1: one who did it and confessed to doing it and
Speaker 1: would have done it again, and then some other people,
Speaker 1: the leader of the elected Communists in the parliament, and
Speaker 1: three Bulgarian Communists. The Communist accusation against Marnis was that
Speaker 1: he was a gay Nazi wanted the gay Nazis to
Speaker 1: gay Nazi like him. The Nazi accusation against Marnis is
Speaker 1: that he was a Communist party member who had been
Speaker 1: part of a massive communist conspiracy to overthrow the government
Speaker 1: and institute communism, which is closer to the truth. He
Speaker 1: was a council Communist who was hoping that his individual act,
Speaker 1: or possibly a small group act will never know, would
Speaker 1: spark a popular revolt against fascism. The Nazis had wanted
Speaker 1: to get the Social Democrats blamed for it too, but
Speaker 1: it didn't work. The Social Democrats in Germany are just
Speaker 1: so astoundingly centrist that no one would buy this. They
Speaker 1: were a huge reason in the public's mind as to
Speaker 1: why the country didn't fall to communism in nineteen eighteen.
Speaker 1: Nineteen nineteen was the Social Democrats, so they were like, nah,
Speaker 1: could have been them. The public was willing to blame
Speaker 1: the Communist Party. This is almost equally absurd. The German
Speaker 1: Communist Party was parliamentary to its core at this point
Speaker 1: and only believed in mass action and not individual action.
Speaker 1: The Communists and the Social Democrats both came out to
Speaker 1: condemn the fire, despite having been saying for years, oh,
Speaker 1: the Nazis aren't existential threats to democracy and human life.
Speaker 1: But they're like, you can't set their stuff on fire.
Speaker 3: Peacefully protest, that's all you gotta do. Just peacefully protest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, stand in your free speech zone with your sign
Speaker 2: and it'll be fine.
Speaker 1: Exactly so they know who you are. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no throwing rocks, no burden shit, history will change eventually.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you throw cops through windows. What the fuck?
Speaker 1: I used to make pins that said hucking rocks at
Speaker 1: cops is not a crime, and I made them as
Speaker 1: little pins. And then one time a cop was giving
Speaker 1: me a three hundred dollars ticket for sitting on a
Speaker 1: sidewalk eating a sandwich. What And I was like, oh God,
Speaker 1: he reads my pin, my life is about to get
Speaker 1: so much worse. But he did not read the pin.
Speaker 3: That would be a moment where my stomach would be
Speaker 3: in my throat.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I was pretty used to being hassled by
Speaker 1: cops at that point in my life. Three hundred dollars
Speaker 1: for sitting on a sidewalk, Yeah, it's a way to
Speaker 1: try and get people to move out of town. They're like,
Speaker 1: we don't want homeless people in this town. We're going
Speaker 1: to give you three hundred dollar ticket. We know you
Speaker 1: can't pay it, so you'll probably leave rather than pay it.
Speaker 1: Little did they know I was like actually housed. I
Speaker 1: had just gotten food from a food cart and was
Speaker 1: just like sitting on the sidewalk. But I still dress
Speaker 1: like I'm a crustpunk. But like, you know, anyway, but
Speaker 1: you didn't have a dog, did you? No? No?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean It's my understanding is that, besides having companionship,
Speaker 2: the dog frequently makes it harder for them to fuck
Speaker 2: with you in such a simple way because they don't
Speaker 2: want to deal with the paperwork about the animal.
Speaker 1: Oh it makes some sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's what I've been told from Krusty's
Speaker 2: like around here. But I don't know if that's fact
Speaker 2: or fiction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of myth building that we do
Speaker 1: when we live in strange lifestyles. But it might be true.
Speaker 2: You know, I wouldn't doubt. The bureaucracy is an annoying
Speaker 2: thing to deal with, and I could see some lazy cogoing.
Speaker 2: I don't want to deal with freaking animal control or whatever,
Speaker 2: so it makes the next person to pick on easier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it makes sense.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So together, the Communists, the social Democrats, and the Nazis
Speaker 1: all agreed this fire was the greatest crime of our
Speaker 1: time and Marinus is the worst person in history. They
Speaker 1: disagree about why he's the worst person, right, some of
Speaker 1: them are like, he's a Nazi, he's a Kami, right O,
Speaker 1: Like he's gay? Yeah, oh he is even worse. Yeah, no, totally.
Speaker 1: The other four co defendants had alibis and had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with it, and even at this early stage
Speaker 1: under Nazi control, they were exonerated. The whole time that
Speaker 1: he's on trial, fully aware that the rest of his
Speaker 1: supposed comrades are throwing him under the bus, he never
Speaker 1: says a single word against any of his Code defendants,
Speaker 1: despite the words that they say against him. I want
Speaker 1: to quote an anarchist newspaper from nineteen thirty three talking
Speaker 1: about that, like during the trial quote, he has said
Speaker 1: nothing that might in any way damage his Code defendants.
Speaker 1: He has not even tried an elaborate exposition of his
Speaker 1: political and social views at the trial, most probably for
Speaker 1: fear that they might be interpreted as akin to those
Speaker 1: of the four communists the German government is trying to
Speaker 1: link to the Reichstag fire, who he wishes an all
Speaker 1: justice to exonerate. So he's like not even going to
Speaker 1: get into the like, well, I'm a comedy, but like
Speaker 1: not that kind of COMI because he's afraid that it'll
Speaker 1: be used against the communists. You know, his co defendants
Speaker 1: did not offer him the same grace. One called him
Speaker 1: an narcosyndicalist, which I think they I think it was
Speaker 1: like derogatory, like in you know, I just think it's funny.
Speaker 1: It's fine be an narcosyndicalist. One of the Bulgarian communists
Speaker 1: fought for him getting the death penalty. Wow, he wanted
Speaker 1: the Nazis to kill this council communist because he'd quote
Speaker 1: worked against the proletariat. Jail guy. Yeah, hate that guy.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure, I bet you noe know. Those people
Speaker 2: had a fun rest of their life regardless of this.
Speaker 3: That's fair.
Speaker 1: Actually, that's true. And I'm going to talk about what
Speaker 1: happened to the people who wrote the Brown Book in
Speaker 1: a moment.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah.
Speaker 1: For the most part, the libertarian socialist movement aka the anarchist,
Speaker 1: the anarcho syndicalists, the council Communists, the left communist blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blahlah. The people don't like Bolsheviks. They were
Speaker 1: the ones defending him. They set up defense committees and
Speaker 1: shit in a bunch of different countries. And the first
Speaker 1: day of the trial, folks published the Red Book. And
Speaker 1: this was a refutation of all of the lives of
Speaker 1: the Brown Book. It is filled with all of the
Speaker 1: character references of everyone coming forward and being like no
Speaker 1: You're just entirely wrong. You've entirely made this up. This
Speaker 1: man is a very committed socialist. I haven't read The
Speaker 1: Red Book yet, and I'm terrified to read it because
Speaker 1: of like it might also be like, in no way
Speaker 1: was he gay. That would be terrible. He's good and
Speaker 1: not bad. So I'm like afraid of finding that. But
Speaker 1: what I do know is that and Weimar, Germany, Magnus Hirschfeld,
Speaker 1: one of the famous researchers of human sexuality and history,
Speaker 1: had once written about the anarchists, being like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: where that's that's where you find the gay lefties. All
Speaker 1: the gays are anarchists, so you know, I'm sure there's homophobia.
Speaker 1: But if you've read The Red Book, message me, but
Speaker 1: I won't notice it because it's kind of get filtered
Speaker 1: into my unread messages on Instagram, which is the only
Speaker 1: public way to reach me. And I don't read my
Speaker 1: unread messages from different people I don't know, so it
Speaker 1: won't work. But you can try, and I sometimes look whatever. Anyway, Honestly,
Speaker 1: if you've read The Red Book, you probably like know
Speaker 1: me through various connections to not that many people in
Speaker 1: this world who are likely to have ever read this.
Speaker 2: All five of them are already direct friends or contacts.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, anyway. As for the editors of the Brown
Speaker 1: book that he's a gay Nazi fairy tale, there is
Speaker 1: about two different ways that like Stalinist communists in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties and forties died. One of them is that
Speaker 1: you get killed by Hitler. The other one is that
Speaker 1: he had killed by Stalinists. It's a crapshoot as to
Speaker 1: who has killed more communists, Stalin or Hitler, because these
Speaker 1: two were killed by other Stalinists. One of them was
Speaker 1: murdered by his fellow Stalinists in nineteen forty the other
Speaker 1: went on to hunt down socialist and anarchists during the
Speaker 1: Spanish Civil War before he was then turned on by
Speaker 1: his own side and hanged in Prague in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: two for being counter revolutionary or whatever. The fuck is
Speaker 1: not a good idea to be an authoritarian. As for Marnus,
Speaker 1: he was convicted and he was sentenced to death. On
Speaker 1: January tenth, nineteen thirty four, three days before his twenty
Speaker 1: fifth birthday. They marched him out to the guillotine and
Speaker 1: took off his head. Damn that man did a lot
Speaker 1: in fucking twenty four years. Yeah, the Nazis refused his
Speaker 1: family's request for the body, and he was buried twice
Speaker 1: as deep as usual in an anonymous grave under a stone,
Speaker 1: devoid of any inscription. He was actually exhumed last year
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three, because they wanted to run toxicology
Speaker 1: reports on his body, because there's all of this, Like,
Speaker 1: people still argue about this a lot, right now, right, what.
Speaker 3: Would they what would toxicology show?
Speaker 1: So he was so quiet and like almost sleepy during
Speaker 1: his trial that people thought he might have been drugged
Speaker 1: by the Nazis. When they exhumed his body to look,
Speaker 1: they found no positive proof of that, but they weren't.
Speaker 1: You can't prove negative proof on one hundred year old corpse,
Speaker 1: right right, right, So we do not know. It makes
Speaker 1: sense to me this story of this, like wild adventurer
Speaker 1: who is going blind, who knows his time is done,
Speaker 1: who is just trying to stay quiet to not let
Speaker 1: anyone else get in trouble for what he's done, and
Speaker 1: goes to his grave. I don't need any convincing that
Speaker 1: he was drugged.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, accepting his fate, but at the same
Speaker 2: time being brave for those around him. Yeah, and the
Speaker 2: potential I don't know if this was going through his
Speaker 2: mind at all, but being a martyr really, like, I mean,
Speaker 2: all those things could have been going through his mind.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, he also knew what a hatchet job had
Speaker 1: been done on him.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: His fellow Communists like used their defense argument was basically
Speaker 1: the Brown Book. They were like, now fuck him though
Speaker 1: he's a Nazi. You know, that's got to be heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: Like a couple of different articles I've read about have
Speaker 1: talked about like the second death of him or you know,
Speaker 1: because he's like also just killed by history. And when
Speaker 1: the Nazi government fell after Carl, would you say that's
Speaker 1: the largest military effort in the history of humanity?
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, The Eastern Front has never been ever seen
Speaker 2: before and hopefully never again. But World War Two, the
Speaker 2: Eastern Front in particular, but all of it combined is
Speaker 2: absolutely the most the largest conflict ever seen easily.
Speaker 1: Yeah. After everyone got together and destroyed a lawful lot
Speaker 1: more buildings than just the one. They put the Nazis
Speaker 1: on trial, and the prominent Nazi Goring put it bluntly,
Speaker 1: no Nazis were involved in the burning of the Reichstag
Speaker 1: and the Communist ministers would have been arrested eventually anyhow.
Speaker 1: In fact, he said it would have been more useful
Speaker 1: if they had waited a few weeks because they didn't
Speaker 1: know all the Communist ministers yet, because the elections hadn't
Speaker 1: happened yet. In nineteen fifty nine, a journalist wrote like
Speaker 1: seven hundred pages of evidence about Marnus had indeed acted alone,
Speaker 1: and at that point it became the general view of historians.
Speaker 1: Marnus's brother Yan kept fighting for his brother's legacy. Marnus
Speaker 1: was tried and retried again and again. After his death
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six, his sentence was reversed to eight
Speaker 1: years because they're like, well, he burned a building. You're
Speaker 1: not supposed to do that. You know, wait, how does
Speaker 1: that am? I? It's just for history. Oh, he's dead, right,
Speaker 1: Like they they're trying to be like, well, let's find
Speaker 1: out what the real truth and justice would be, right, okay,
Speaker 1: you know they're LARPing, yeah, totally justice system, yeah okay.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty he was acquitted, and then in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one they reversed his acquittal and he was convicted
Speaker 1: again to eight years in prison. I feel like he's
Speaker 1: been through enough, you know, I know. And then in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight he was finally pardoned. And then
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen a book came out that was like, no,
Speaker 1: he was totally a Nazi. And I haven't read that
Speaker 1: book yet, but it's like, I think its core argument
Speaker 1: is that, like the fire was started in multiple places,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, not physically possible for one man, which
Speaker 1: is how I first ran across the Like, this man
Speaker 1: would not have told you if he had friends there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is no part of me that thinks that this
Speaker 1: man couldn't keep a secret to his grave. Like you
Speaker 1: do not look at this man and say, here's someone
Speaker 1: who hasn't thought about what's involved in revolutionary struggle, the
Speaker 1: person who's been struggling since he was well born, but
Speaker 1: ten you know, Yeah, either.
Speaker 2: One of those situations is just as plausible as we
Speaker 2: said earlier. And also the fire succeeded in damaging the
Speaker 2: Reichs dog significantly. But yeah, it was also such a
Speaker 2: state of ill prepared to do what he planned to
Speaker 2: do too, which is oddly and I would think if
Speaker 2: there was more people involved, they would have had even
Speaker 2: though they had success, they would have even more success.
Speaker 2: I don't have to put that in a better way.
Speaker 1: I think that you're probably right. And that's like how
Speaker 1: I ended up. Like I started off kind of doing
Speaker 1: this research being like, oh, because I knew enough to
Speaker 1: know he was like a pretty solid comrade, and that
Speaker 1: also he knew how to keep his mouth shut. So
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, there's other people and he kept
Speaker 1: his mouth shut. Whatever you because I've run across that
Speaker 1: time and time again in my history research, right, But no,
Speaker 1: you're right. Like by the end, I'm like, no, it's
Speaker 1: probably him alone, And I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, right,
Speaker 1: maybe we will find out. There's no part of me
Speaker 1: that believes that he was a Nazi agent, But maybe
Speaker 1: we'll find out that the Nazis like ran over and
Speaker 1: start some more fires or or knew he was going
Speaker 1: to do it, and like they.
Speaker 3: Probably saw him do it at nine pm and they
Speaker 3: nine thirty, maybe through a matching or something. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, at least if this had happened nowadays,
Speaker 2: ring door camera would have provided the footage to the call.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, and he still would have done it because
Speaker 1: he was not afraid of I mean, he tried to
Speaker 1: swim the channel twice just to get enough money to like,
Speaker 1: fucking yeah walk to China with you know me.
Speaker 3: I feel like this might be another reason why he
Speaker 3: didn't make it a huge effort to defend himself, because
Speaker 3: I feel like he's been through, like interacted with enough
Speaker 3: authorities to realize, like, I wouldn't do any good. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like he kind of accepted his fate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, totally. And that is the story of Marnus,
Speaker 1: And it is the story of how the Reichschrog fire
Speaker 1: was not an inside job, and how almost all the time,
Speaker 1: when people want to say something's a conspiracy or that
Speaker 1: it is an inside job, they're wrong. And when we
Speaker 1: assume that something was an inside job, we're often taking
Speaker 1: an agency away from people who make bad decisions for
Speaker 1: good reasons, even if we were the opposite team. Right.
Speaker 1: Imagine those J sixers, right, They're all being accused by
Speaker 1: their own side of being false flag. And I think
Speaker 1: that's funny as shit because I fucking hate them all,
Speaker 1: But like it's also almost heartbreaking, right because they're like,
Speaker 1: we're doing it. Come on, everyone, we're gonna defend democracy
Speaker 1: by staging a coup or whatever fucking's going through their heads.
Speaker 1: And then everyone's immediately like, ah, those are Antifa, Like
Speaker 1: like imagine how heartbreaking that would be. And I just
Speaker 1: like get so like I don't know, and this is
Speaker 1: like not universally true. There are false flag attacks, right,
Speaker 1: But what I think usually happens is that everyone is
Speaker 1: ready to play the hands that they have been dealt.
Speaker 1: And the Nazis absolutely had a contingency plan for exactly
Speaker 1: this situation and then used it. So whenever you're like, ah,
Speaker 1: they were so ready to capitalize on the following yeah,
Speaker 1: we should be ready to capitalize on bad things. That
Speaker 1: happened was when I used to get docks by Nazis.
Speaker 1: I just like use it to sell more albums because
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yeah, these people are trying to
Speaker 1: murder me and everyone I love. They hate my music video.
Speaker 1: You want to see my music video? Fuck it? You know,
Speaker 1: we play the fucking hands we're delt like yeah, it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean I made up my own I mean whatever
Speaker 1: to get like three thousand views on YouTube. No one
Speaker 1: actually thinks this, but like.
Speaker 2: Well that's I think essentiallyest thing I think, like maybe
Speaker 2: it's humanity in general, Maybe it's just the way our
Speaker 2: brains work, Maybe it's societal who knows what the how
Speaker 2: these we get to where we get to. But I
Speaker 2: think the simple thing is is that when it has
Speaker 2: been proven without a doubt or close to it, that
Speaker 2: it was some form of conspiratorial action, then that's worth considering, right,
Speaker 2: But it should not be the jump to default.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The default should be the simplest answer possible. And that's
Speaker 2: probably what happened. And if it was dumb to boot,
Speaker 2: it was probably even more correct because people do dumb stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying he did something dumb or not.
Speaker 1: I'm saying no, I mean Marus kind of did something dumb.
Speaker 1: I just it didn't work out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I'm just saying that. I'm just saying, simplest
Speaker 2: answer with a touch of dumb is a very human thing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And that's where we should just default to totally.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the restag Fire episode that I was like, man,
Speaker 1: am I doing this? But I'm doing it, and I
Speaker 1: did it, and I hope we'll see you all next
Speaker 1: week when we talk about more cool people who did
Speaker 1: either cool stuff or questionable stuff.
Speaker 2: Sometimes one or the other Right, they don't even know
Speaker 2: when they're doing the action. It's like how the action
Speaker 2: turns out, turns out to be if it was cool
Speaker 2: or not right, I mean to a degree.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, glooping back to John Brown, his failure turned out
Speaker 2: to be only effective in that in the long run
Speaker 2: it made it work in a different way. But that
Speaker 2: could have easily gone to just like this idiot got
Speaker 2: himself killed, like that could have been the end of it, right, totally,
Speaker 2: So this could have also turned out differently if that,
Speaker 2: If things had just lined up differently, or they hadn't
Speaker 2: thrown them under the bus, who knows what could have
Speaker 2: come of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if Germany had had a civil war to try
Speaker 1: and stop Nazis, world would have looked pretty different. They
Speaker 1: might have lost the civil war, but they would have
Speaker 1: fucked up the Nazis in the process.
Speaker 2: Well, when you reach up to that top shelf and
Speaker 2: pull out that jar that says chaos on it and
Speaker 2: open that lid, you literally don't know what's coming out.
Speaker 2: You just don't like that's you open the It is
Speaker 2: what's advertised on the tin, And that's totally Sometimes it
Speaker 2: works out and sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Totally. Well, if people want to open up a jar
Speaker 1: of the YouTube, I got nothing, Carl, what are you
Speaker 1: up to?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean my normal thing. If you haven't
Speaker 2: seen me already, you can find me on YouTube in
Speaker 2: range TV, or you can find all my decentralized distribution points,
Speaker 2: which I've been talking about for nine years now in
Speaker 2: range dot TV. Even though everyone watches on YouTube. There's
Speaker 2: an example of something like that. Boy, if we had
Speaker 2: been decentralizing control of the media for the last nine years,
Speaker 2: maybe we'd be in a better place today.
Speaker 1: Hmm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a whole other conversation. But anyways, I do
Speaker 2: a lot of topics based on firearms, historical content and
Speaker 2: the intersectionality of the social implications of those things combined
Speaker 2: for good and bad. So if that's a topic that
Speaker 2: interest you that's different than the normal firearms stuff, you
Speaker 2: might find out there in range dot TV. And thank
Speaker 2: you for having me here. This was a really I
Speaker 2: didn't know what we were going to be talking about,
Speaker 2: but I'm really honored and thankfully you brought me onto
Speaker 2: the show again. Yeah, especially for this topic. It's a
Speaker 2: thank you appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I was like sitting there and I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: Carl this week, I was like, ah, it's perfect because
Speaker 1: I was like, I mean, it's not a gun episode, right,
Speaker 1: but it is absolutely a you know, history of World
Speaker 1: War two and history of conflict, and you know the
Speaker 1: social stuff that comes before the larger military conflict and things.
Speaker 1: So I was I was really excited to have you.
Speaker 1: If folks who are listening want to play a tabletop
Speaker 1: role playing game I wrote, it's called Pan Number City.
Speaker 1: I wrote it with two other people, and it is available.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say wherever you get, but well, I
Speaker 1: guess it's probably available wherever you get books. Should we
Speaker 1: probably should buy it from a game seller or from
Speaker 1: us at Strangers in the Tangled Wilderness. If you just
Speaker 1: look up pannumber City and it's fun and you can
Speaker 1: play in a kind of vimar our style but high
Speaker 1: fantasy revolt against a god king. Everyone's like running around
Speaker 1: on motorcycles that explode and playing jazz even though everyone's starving,
Speaker 1: and people hang out and talk to rats. If you
Speaker 1: want to watch me play this game with Jamie Loftus
Speaker 1: playing a rat king someone who hangs out and talks
Speaker 1: to rats, you can find that on YouTube. If you
Speaker 1: look up a number city. That's what I want to plug.
Speaker 1: I really like the game I wrote, Otherwise I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have written it. Nice.
Speaker 3: Merger also wrote a book that you should pre order.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm gonna plug.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the Sapling Cage and duh. See y'all next week.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 3: Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.