Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Hashtag never again when we do this.
Speaker 1: Podcast hashtag never again. We're never going to do this podcast.
Speaker 1: That's where we're going with.
Speaker 2: We're done, We're done forever. Anyway, Welcome back to the Bastards,
Speaker 2: a podcast where I just carried out a cunning power
Speaker 2: play against my producer, Sophie Lifterman. She was not ready
Speaker 2: for it at all. It came down upon her like
Speaker 2: like the tanks of Operation Barbarossa on Michael Robert.
Speaker 3: How does it feel? How does it feel?
Speaker 2: Dad? It feels? You know, this is this is my
Speaker 2: ensurgiment of Kiev, you know, perfect beautiful Michael, I feel
Speaker 2: like a god.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Great, unstopped. That's the goal.
Speaker 1: I really, I really want to cut off the feed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you probably should. I am now comparing myself to
Speaker 2: the fair Mack.
Speaker 3: So that's not going to Daniel Malcolm.
Speaker 1: Could you just shut him off?
Speaker 2: Just replace me with an AI version asking Michael, Michael,
Speaker 2: how are you doing today? I hear you've got a novel.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, Oh we're doing the plug right at the top.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 2: We're in the p zone. Michael.
Speaker 3: Okay, I've had long had a fantasy of founding the
Speaker 3: Sokel low kel kel zone zone. But that's neither here
Speaker 3: nor there. Robert, thank you for the opportunity to push
Speaker 3: my novel. I really really mean it. From the bottom
Speaker 3: of my plug bag. I released my debut novel. It's
Speaker 3: a sci fi fantasy, magical realist memoir in the sense
Speaker 3: that you'll barely know that it's about my life because
Speaker 3: there's robots and spells and shit, but it is. So
Speaker 3: if you're interested in someone who.
Speaker 2: Knows you, there's a lot of robots and wizards around
Speaker 2: you at any gain.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, that is. If you're interested in like
Speaker 3: alcoholism or my time at Cracks, that's in there too.
Speaker 3: In a sense, it's called the Climb. There will be
Speaker 3: a free three hour sample coming out, probably out by
Speaker 3: the time this drops on the small Beans feed, which
Speaker 3: is my own podcast network. You can find that just
Speaker 3: by pointing your podcast app at small Beans and looking
Speaker 3: for the Climb, or you can get the whole thing
Speaker 3: over at patreon dot com slash Smallbeans slash shop, where
Speaker 3: you can find the audiobook version, which I imagine most
Speaker 3: people will want, but there's also a pdf version and
Speaker 3: an e reader version and all that good stuff.
Speaker 2: Awesome, yeah, excellent, excellent stuff.
Speaker 3: Check it out.
Speaker 2: Michael. You and I worked at a website called cracked
Speaker 2: dot com back in the day, and I've.
Speaker 3: Never heard that word, and I don't know what you're
Speaker 3: talking about.
Speaker 2: We worked with a guy named Tom Ryman who did
Speaker 2: a great video once about how in the movie Jaws,
Speaker 2: the shark is alcoholism. Right, there's no your shark. Everything
Speaker 2: in that is explicable as a bunch of drunk people
Speaker 2: by the ocean, like get fucking up and destroying their
Speaker 2: own boat and whatnot. I always like that interpretation, and
Speaker 2: I do now always watch movies with an eye for like,
Speaker 2: what what thing in this could represent alcoholism, which has
Speaker 2: made the Star Wars series a lot more energy.
Speaker 3: Just gotta say that episode also made me realize which
Speaker 3: I don't think they touch upon, even the famous shark death.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, you put a bottle in your mouth,
Speaker 3: you die. Yeah, it's alcoholism.
Speaker 2: It's all alcoholism anyway. You know what's not alcoholism? Michael,
Speaker 2: is there already? Really that is sometimes alcoholism? God willing
Speaker 2: if we get that. The Big jim Bean sponsors Sophy's
Speaker 2: been clamoring for.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, it sounds like me, Yeah.
Speaker 2: What's like alcoholism? Is the addiction that the liberal own
Speaker 2: of mainstream newspapers in the United States had with trying
Speaker 2: to normalize and support the growth of fascism in Europe.
Speaker 2: That is a kind of addiction. Oh that yeah, uh
Speaker 2: huh uh huh. That is the that's the liquor of
Speaker 2: fools is thinking that you can make a deal with
Speaker 2: the fascists. Speaking of fools, you're all fools for not
Speaker 2: knowing that this was the cold open and it's the
Speaker 2: hot open. We're back, Michael. Are you toasty? Are you
Speaker 2: burning up?
Speaker 3: I'm offended by being called a fool, but I'll get
Speaker 3: it in time.
Speaker 1: Have question, how do you think those people that were
Speaker 1: supposed to go to space for eight days feel about
Speaker 1: being stuck there? And definitely I keep saying I keep
Speaker 1: thinking about them, and I'm like, I imagine.
Speaker 2: I imagine if you're if you get into space, it's
Speaker 2: because your whole life has been geared towards.
Speaker 3: Letting you spa sweet I would say, until it gets
Speaker 3: to like three four months, I'd be sweet. Bonus.
Speaker 2: This is what it's about, dope. This has been what
Speaker 2: my whole life is for. But I don't know these people.
Speaker 2: Maybe they're miserable. I don't care. Wow, you go to space,
Speaker 2: you have to accept that you're going to space. It's
Speaker 2: dangerous up there. We're not supposed to be in space.
Speaker 2: It's a bad place to be, and it's going to
Speaker 2: be unpleasant.
Speaker 3: You know that space's whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if somebody offered you a trip to space, would
Speaker 1: you go absolutely?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, question I'm a novel seeker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, but I would not enjoy it while
Speaker 2: I was there. Right, it would be a life changing experience,
Speaker 2: but it's supposed to I'm sure it's deeply uncomfortable and
Speaker 2: physically just a nightmare.
Speaker 1: They were supposed to go for eight days, and they're
Speaker 1: they're saying it could be twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: Maybe, Yeah, I mean, okay, that's that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: That sounds yeah, there's there's you know, you know, the
Speaker 2: only thing less trustworthy than fascist governments in Europe in
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties is the Boeing Corporation today.
Speaker 1: So oh, I thought you were going to say it
Speaker 1: was like, let's killing us, let's maybe try to do
Speaker 1: you know some podcasts about some bad guys.
Speaker 3: You'll never say that.
Speaker 2: We're still here fuck them. So in some ways, the
Speaker 2: US media responded to the rise of Hitler and Mussolini
Speaker 2: worse than the German or Italian media had done. This
Speaker 2: was due in a degree to simple distance. Fascism was
Speaker 2: seen by a lot of these guys. It's a foreign ideology.
Speaker 2: So whatever they're saying about killing journalists and whatnot, that's
Speaker 2: not going to hurt us over here in the United
Speaker 2: States because we're not Europe right now. That wasn't the
Speaker 2: only reason why so much of the media was sympathetic
Speaker 2: to Hitler and Mussolini a lot. In a lot of cases,
Speaker 2: it was because the rich men who owned those media
Speaker 2: organs were fascists, or at least fasci philo fascists, right.
Speaker 2: They liked the fascists. Many of the wealthy men who
Speaker 2: owned large published in houses saw communism as a rising
Speaker 2: threat in Italy as a bulwark against the USSR, which,
Speaker 2: if you just think about the military capabilities that Italy
Speaker 2: evinced during World War Two, is extremely funny. The idea
Speaker 2: of Italy trying to fight the Red Army, it's just yeah,
Speaker 2: well last in about fourteen minutes. Anyway. Within days of
Speaker 2: the March on Rome, the Birmingham Age Herald, a major
Speaker 2: Alabama paper, described Mussolini as looking like a movie star. Wow,
Speaker 2: he's really got a movie star. Good looks this fascist
Speaker 2: who's remade the government in his own image. What a
Speaker 2: hot guy.
Speaker 3: Hey, that Putin looks good with his top off. Though
Speaker 3: you got it too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they never stopped falling for it. Much was made
Speaker 2: of the fact that actual movie stars found Mussolini magnetic.
Speaker 2: In February of nineteen twenty seven, and Motion Picture Magazine
Speaker 2: published a photo of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, both
Speaker 2: movie stars, doing a fascist salute in honor of their
Speaker 2: new friend Mussolini they met the year before. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: doug Old Doug Fairbanks doing the Mussolini salute for his
Speaker 2: new friend. Benito. Rudolph Valentino, an Italian born star born
Speaker 2: star known as the Great Lover by Hollywood press, was
Speaker 2: often compared positively to Il Duce Right, Like, Wow, Valentino
Speaker 2: and the dictator of Italy are very similar. You know,
Speaker 2: good looking guys. I bet Mussolini fucks. That's journalism.
Speaker 1: I need to hear that sentence.
Speaker 2: Oh, you know, Mussolini fucked Sophie.
Speaker 1: You know that's I don't need to hear it though.
Speaker 3: Look that's what the US media argued, So that's the
Speaker 3: cold open, and we got.
Speaker 2: It's never a cold open with Musset.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: The early obsession many Americans had from Mussolini, which transferred
Speaker 2: to Hitler in substantial degree, was due to several interlocking causes.
Speaker 2: Katie Hole, a lecturer in American studies at the University
Speaker 2: of Amsterdam, argues that these reasons were the Italian corporate
Speaker 2: state's ability to project the image that they had solved
Speaker 2: the problems of democracy, combined with Mussolini's personal masculine magnetism
Speaker 2: and the belief that fascism offered a solution to the
Speaker 2: Great Depression. We can see a lot of the same
Speaker 2: factors at work today in right wing idolization of strong
Speaker 2: men like Erdowin and support for profoundly anti democratic solutions
Speaker 2: to problems, best embodied by the coup attempt on January sixth.
Speaker 2: The reality was that Mussolini's government was incompetent, a fact
Speaker 2: that would soon be made evident with their disastrous invasion
Speaker 2: of Ethiopia and incompetent handling of World War Two. But
Speaker 2: many mainstream reporters in the US took the fascist government's
Speaker 2: claims about its own success at face value. They believe
Speaker 2: the trains ran on time because the fascist said, we've
Speaker 2: got the trains working, even though the trains did not
Speaker 2: run on time. That was not a real thing.
Speaker 3: I love when history is the exact opposite. Like I
Speaker 3: recently learned that Lizzie Borden almost certainly didn't kill her parents,
Speaker 3: and the media just shat on her until that became
Speaker 3: the history so interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as a result, you know, they really put
Speaker 2: a black mark on all of us who have killed
Speaker 2: people with axes, and it's just not very fair, to
Speaker 2: be honest, you know, Like we're like, axe murder is
Speaker 2: a legitimate American pastime, and I just.
Speaker 3: Only a few steps away from criminalizing the machete. And
Speaker 3: then obviously this show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always wrong to cut people up into pieces
Speaker 2: because you're angry.
Speaker 1: I just want to point it You've gifted me both
Speaker 1: those things, which is so funny, I know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because Morny whatever.
Speaker 2: I'm a patriotic, red blooded American Sophie, and I think
Speaker 2: that everyone deserves the right to partake in this country's
Speaker 2: great traditions, you know, And that's where I am that's
Speaker 2: great acts. The Saturday Evening Post published Mussolini's autobiography as
Speaker 2: a serial starting in nineteen twenty eight. They described the
Speaker 2: FASCISTI movement as rough in its methods, but praised it
Speaker 2: for halting the radical left. That's the Saturday Evening Post.
Speaker 2: They're a little rough, but at least they dealt with
Speaker 2: those radical workers trying to get fair wages. Similar tributes
Speaker 2: came in from the Chicago Tribune. The New York Times
Speaker 2: credited fascism with bringing Italy back to a state of normalcy.
Speaker 2: In his study Mussolini and Fascism, The View from America,
Speaker 2: John Patrick Diggins notes that out of one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty articles that mentioned Mussolini and new US newspapers from
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty five to nineteen thirty two, the majority had
Speaker 2: either a neutral or a amused positive tone. Right, there
Speaker 2: was no sort of fear about this guy, you know.
Speaker 2: He was just kind of exciting and look he dealt
Speaker 2: with those men old commis, right, these evil anarchists. One
Speaker 2: of the relatively few journalists to write objectively on Mussolini
Speaker 2: for American papers in this early portion of his reign
Speaker 2: was John Gunther, who profiled him for Harper's and his
Speaker 2: piece is an interesting historical document for its takes on Mussolini,
Speaker 2: but it's absolutely critical for its insights into the way
Speaker 2: the international press functioned around Mussolini, right Gunther. Because he's
Speaker 2: a guy who gets to interview in profile, Mussolini is
Speaker 2: familiar with the process, and he sees what happens to
Speaker 2: other journalists, the guys who are writing all of these
Speaker 2: fawning articles that are turning Mussolini into a celebrity back
Speaker 2: in the US. Quote interviews, Mussolini knows are the best
Speaker 2: of all possible forms of propaganda. Thus he is so
Speaker 2: lavish with them. Most newspapermen and their editors cannot resist
Speaker 2: the flattery of conversation with a dictator or head of state.
Speaker 2: Once they have been received by Mussolini or Hitler, they
Speaker 2: feel a sense of obligation, which warps their objectivity. Is
Speaker 2: very difficult for the average correspondent to write unfavorably about
Speaker 2: a busy and important man who has just donated him
Speaker 2: a friendly hour of conversation. I think it's a critical
Speaker 2: revelation not just about how the media, even up to today,
Speaker 2: reports on dictators and fascists, but how they report On
Speaker 2: like guys like Peter Teel, very wealthy billionaires, guys like
Speaker 2: Elon Musk. Right, they're so odd to be in the
Speaker 2: presence of a celebrity and a man of power who
Speaker 2: is dedicating time that makes them feel so important that
Speaker 2: they become warmer and less objective towards the subject of
Speaker 2: the interview.
Speaker 3: And if you happen to form any kind of personal connection,
Speaker 3: like my own window into this is working for IGN
Speaker 3: and reviewing games, and they're constantly accused of and I
Speaker 3: think you have to be really rigorous with yourself to
Speaker 3: avoid being like, well, the game sucked, but they all
Speaker 3: seem so nice, and they gave me access to their
Speaker 3: time and their work. I can't just give them a
Speaker 3: four or whatever. And that's just video game reviews. So
Speaker 3: I can't imagine being like, I'm gonna come out against
Speaker 3: the president actually after meeting him and shaking his hand
Speaker 3: and all that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a real problem, one that has not gotten
Speaker 2: to be any less of a problem.
Speaker 3: I think that's somewhat propinquity. Good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that is a good word. Speaking of propinquity,
Speaker 2: someone interested in drawing more modern parallels here might bring
Speaker 2: up the case of Maggie Haberman. Her work for The
Speaker 2: New York Times reporting on the Trump White House was
Speaker 2: praised by many liberals, even though Trump's people saw her
Speaker 2: as providing positive pr Haberman was criticized back in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two when she finally published a much ballyhooed book
Speaker 2: about the Trump administration, which included a she quoted the
Speaker 2: former president as promising not to leave office after his
Speaker 2: defeat in twenty twenty. Now, Haberman didn't report on this
Speaker 2: at the time, and a lot of people were, like,
Speaker 2: the fact that the president said in front of you
Speaker 2: that he would refuse to leave office after losing an
Speaker 2: election was probably something the American people immediately needed access to.
Speaker 2: As a journalist, you had an ethical responsibility to tell
Speaker 2: them right away. But Haberman, a lot of people will allege,
Speaker 2: wanted to withhold this information because if she put it out,
Speaker 2: she would have lost her access to Trump, and she
Speaker 2: wanted to stick with him because she wanted to get
Speaker 2: more stuff to put in her books so that she
Speaker 2: would get more money for it. Right The argument here
Speaker 2: the criticism of Maggie is that she held off on
Speaker 2: reporting crucial information about a threat to democracy for her
Speaker 2: own personal financial enrichment right now. Haberman's people, for their part,
Speaker 2: claim she shared this fact with her editors, and her
Speaker 2: editors at the time were like, no, the fact that
Speaker 2: the president has refused to leave office is not newsworthy,
Speaker 2: which I do believe editors at the time would make
Speaker 2: that call. But that's a bad unethical call, right, Like what.
Speaker 3: Is dimentionally He'll say it to a bunch of evangelicals
Speaker 3: on camera, so it'll be fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just.
Speaker 3: It'll come out, thank you.
Speaker 2: Don't worry. January's right around the corner. Something's gonna happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Back in the thirties, New York Times correspondents made equally
Speaker 2: problematic judgments in their coverage of our friend of the Pod,
Speaker 2: Adolf Hitler. Perhaps the most sinister example of this was
Speaker 2: the case of New York Times correspondent Frederick Birschell. Prior
Speaker 2: to Nazism's final victory over by Our Democracy, Birchill had
Speaker 2: followed Hans Schaeffer in what was called the caged Hitler theory.
Speaker 2: This was the idea that if Hitler got into power,
Speaker 2: decent conservatives and government would moderate his behavior, and so
Speaker 2: letting Hitler win was not disastrous, right, Like it was
Speaker 2: a brilliant plan to weigh the Nazi leader down with
Speaker 2: busy work that would stop him from doing any damage. Right,
Speaker 2: perfect strategy. Yeah, that's gonna work. Great, thank god, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: thank god. We've got this. We've got the plan. Speaking
Speaker 2: of plans, Michael, I have a plan to sell you
Speaker 2: some of these products and services. We're back, Michael. I
Speaker 2: hope you have enjoyed purchasing.
Speaker 3: I bought them all.
Speaker 2: You bought them all?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I bought them all purely to support the economy
Speaker 3: and therefore the state.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got lasick for parts of your body that
Speaker 2: aren't even your eyes. You just use the lasers at you.
Speaker 3: I said, how much laser can this buy me? And
Speaker 3: slap my wallet on the count.
Speaker 2: That's right, That's right. Yeah, they love They just love lasering.
Speaker 2: You know, any any god fearing American does really anyway
Speaker 2: back to a non god fearing American. What are you
Speaker 2: talking about, Sophie, I'm just talking about our our man
Speaker 2: who thinks that he's he's going to stop Hitler by
Speaker 2: giving Hitler everything he wants.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Burchell was one of a few New York Times Berlin
Speaker 2: Bureau correspondents who stayed on after the Nazis took power.
Speaker 2: He had a major influence on how Americans perceived the
Speaker 2: coming regime, and so it had an impact when he claimed,
Speaker 2: in writing for The New York Times, there will be
Speaker 2: quote no extreme persecution of Nazi opponents under Hitler's regime,
Speaker 2: and he said the Nazis aren't going to be mean
Speaker 2: to anybody who opposed them because quote, there would be
Speaker 2: no advantage to the government in unsettling Germany's social structure. Yeah.
Speaker 2: You really got the pulse of the Nazis there, Burchill.
Speaker 3: What would they have to game killing all the Jews?
Speaker 3: That would be Meanwhile, he's doing speeches like we must
Speaker 3: give Yeah, no, here's the deal. We let him, when
Speaker 3: we fee let him, you know, take more rope, more rope, bring.
Speaker 2: Him down, the whole thing, a rope over to him,
Speaker 2: and then leave.
Speaker 3: You know, we see the wire. This is a five
Speaker 3: year process.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So the Enabling Act of March nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: three brought the Nazis pretty much total power. Many Americans
Speaker 2: did find this deeply unsettling, and so with the Times
Speaker 2: a consent, Burchell took to the airwaves on CBS radio,
Speaker 2: he avoided any mention of the anti Semitic violence that
Speaker 2: Nazis had already been engaging in since Hitler's ascension, and
Speaker 2: instead toward told millions of Americans there was quote no
Speaker 2: cause for general alarm. He advised his audience to dismiss
Speaker 2: from their minds any thought that there would be in
Speaker 2: Germany any slaughter of the National Socialist Government's enemies or
Speaker 2: racial oppression in any vital degree. The wrongest a man
Speaker 2: has ever been, like powerful Jaco Tapper. Energy out of
Speaker 2: this guy, just like the Nazis aren't going to kill anyone.
Speaker 2: Why would you think that, calm down, everything's gonna be fine.
Speaker 3: Quote me on that. It's almost like someone torturously trying
Speaker 3: to figure out an opposite day sentence. Yeah, quickly, the
Speaker 3: Nazis will spare all the Christians. This dude's wrong or lying.
Speaker 3: This is not coming together.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, while Birchall was optimistic about the Hitler regime
Speaker 2: in public, he knew that he couldn't actually like, he
Speaker 2: knew that because he's reporting from Berlin. He knows the
Speaker 2: Nazis are actively at the moment murdering Jews and Communists, right,
Speaker 2: He knew that what he was saying was indefensible, but
Speaker 2: he justified lying to make Hitler seem safe to his publisher,
Speaker 2: Arthur Sulzberger. By informing Soulsburger, I conceived of the notion
Speaker 2: of making the broadcast a bait for a real live
Speaker 2: interview with Hitler, one which I have been vainly seeking.
Speaker 2: He was lying to the American people about Hitler not
Speaker 2: wanting to murder anyone, so that he could get an
Speaker 2: interview with Hitler.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Great, and presumably the interview is him going like
Speaker 3: I want to murder everybody, you know, it's just disseminating
Speaker 3: his view. So it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the most poisonous access journalism has ever been.
Speaker 2: Is this right here?
Speaker 1: Yep?
Speaker 3: And now this is officially the point in this two
Speaker 3: episode story arc where I'm going, Okay, I see where
Speaker 3: you're going with this in terms of modern day Yeah,
Speaker 3: like Israeli coming to Coman.
Speaker 2: Not just that, Honestly, like I wrote this before, you
Speaker 2: know that had reached the global fashion. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: like a lot of things. You know, we've been seeing this.
Speaker 2: This has been very evident and clear for a long time.
Speaker 2: Although you are right, like that's part of why I
Speaker 2: felt the need to rejigger this article in light of
Speaker 2: what's been happening in goz It, right, is that like, oh,
Speaker 2: I think there's actually a moral responsibility to draw that
Speaker 2: comparison and make it much clearer. There was an immediate
Speaker 2: and a massive backlash to whatchual was doing with The Times,
Speaker 2: and it was led with particular fervor by a number
Speaker 2: of Jewish papers. Now, none of these because these are
Speaker 2: like small community papers, right, because you know you've got
Speaker 2: this is still a period in which there are neighborhoods
Speaker 2: that are like, this is the Jewish neighborhood in this
Speaker 2: city or whatever, and so they'll have their paper. None
Speaker 2: of these have the clout or the reach of The Times, though,
Speaker 2: so none of them are able to speak to a
Speaker 2: national audience. Really, they are rightfully yelling about what Hitler's doing,
Speaker 2: but they just don't have the kind of mouthpiece that
Speaker 2: The Times is. And for the next ten years, The
Speaker 2: New York Times failed utterly to hire any men of
Speaker 2: serious skill to work at Berlin Bureau. Much of this
Speaker 2: can be traced to the owner of the paper, Adolph Ox,
Speaker 2: who wanted his reporters to conduct themselves like quote, an
Speaker 2: order of monks. One result of Ox's commitment to impartial journalism,
Speaker 2: as he saw it, was that most reports from Berlin
Speaker 2: during Hitler's rise and the early years of the regime
Speaker 2: we're little more than a collection of quotes from various
Speaker 2: German newspapers. This began became a problem when the Nazis
Speaker 2: started banning opposition papers from taking control and taking control
Speaker 2: of Jewish own publishing houses like Olstein. So the Nazis
Speaker 2: run the papers, and Ox is like, we should just
Speaker 2: most of our coverage, should just be reporting on what complications.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, It's now also amazing because it isn't one
Speaker 3: of their stupid arguments for killing everyone that the Jews
Speaker 3: run the media. It's like, yeah, the projection thing. It's like, no,
Speaker 3: you run the media.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well they've taken over now. But like, what's interesting
Speaker 2: to me Ox, this guy who's like, you know, we
Speaker 2: should mostly just be reporting what the German press is saying,
Speaker 2: not being critical to the Nazis.
Speaker 3: It's transparents, it's fair and balanced to just transparently pass
Speaker 3: things along.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, yes, and he is he is he is Jewish.
Speaker 2: Ox is a Jewish Man, right, But he disliked the
Speaker 2: idea that the Times might be he's so obsessed with objectivity.
Speaker 2: His big fear is not we're going to let a
Speaker 2: genocide happen. It's if we're seen as sympathetic to Jews
Speaker 2: in Germany, people might consider us an activist paper. And
Speaker 2: there's nothing worse for.
Speaker 3: A personal mistake. And I'm that Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like these people are disgusted by the concept of activism.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Arthur Hayes Solsburger, effectively Ox's air as publisher of The Times,
Speaker 2: admitted privately that he didn't have any sympathy. Again, Sulzburger
Speaker 2: is also Jewish. He had no sympathy for Jews suffering
Speaker 2: under Nazism because and he this is literally what he writes,
Speaker 2: he was quote too fortunately born right. In other words,
Speaker 2: Sulzburg admitted, I just don't care about poor Jews suffering
Speaker 2: in Germany because I'm a rich, urban Jewish man in
Speaker 2: the United States. Why would I be sympathetic to poor, uneducated,
Speaker 2: rural Jews fleeing from Eastern Europe? Right, he got too.
Speaker 3: Seinfeld on Bill Maher spoken Cigars, saying Trump is not
Speaker 3: it's funny how Trump won't really affect me. Yeah, no shit, dude,
Speaker 3: of course, awareness beyond that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's and it's just very clear. Solsburger found these
Speaker 2: people almost like these poor refugees from Eastern Europe who
Speaker 2: had run and flooded in the Germany as a result
Speaker 2: of you know, pagrams during the Russian Civil War. He
Speaker 2: found them as gross as the Nazis did, right, because
Speaker 2: they're like poor and dirty. You know, that's this guy's attitude, right.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that about them, but like, that's clearly
Speaker 2: what Solsburger thinks. As early as the eighteen nineties, Solzberger
Speaker 2: and Ox had embarked on a quest to, in their
Speaker 2: words again their words, de jewify The New York Times.
Speaker 2: The current publisher of The New York Times, by the way,
Speaker 2: is Arthur Greg Sulzberger. On a related note, here's a
Speaker 2: tweet from climate reporter Kendri Pierre Lewis about the conversation
Speaker 2: she had with a quote top New York Times editor.
Speaker 2: I wonder who it was. I think about a lot
Speaker 2: about the top New York Times editor who I told
Speaker 2: that his story. Urians were warning, we're in a similar
Speaker 2: period to the ramp up to the Holocaust, and maybe
Speaker 2: we could look back and see what the New York
Speaker 2: Times had done wrong to not repeat mistakes. He shrugged,
Speaker 2: The New York Times didn't really cover the Holocaust, and
Speaker 2: that's true. I don't know if she was talking to Soulsburger,
Speaker 2: but whoever she was talking to at the Times had
Speaker 2: the same attitude that Sulsberger had to the Holocaust, which
Speaker 2: is that's not our business.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I haven't thought that far. I don't care.
Speaker 2: Is it good to cover genocide? Impossible to say? What
Speaker 2: do you have to be unbiased to do so?
Speaker 3: Is it perhaps why Early Man created the concept of
Speaker 3: impartial journalism to whotos about genocides?
Speaker 2: Yeah, huts tutsis have different opinions on machetes. Like, it's just.
Speaker 1: That he's like, my families own this paper since, like
Speaker 1: I don't know, eighteen ninety six or whatever, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go against the family because I'm a rich guy,
Speaker 1: and that's what we do.
Speaker 2: I think it's it's they're so rich and so these
Speaker 2: people have are generations removed from any kind of normal life. Right,
Speaker 2: they can't feel fear, right, the only fear they can
Speaker 2: feel is the fear that mean old socialists are going
Speaker 2: to take some of their money. That is the only
Speaker 2: thing that stirs any.
Speaker 3: Sort of their dolls eyes dead.
Speaker 2: Yes, that is how I would describe souls burger black
Speaker 2: eyes like a doll's eye.
Speaker 3: Someone is coming for your money. That's the only thing
Speaker 3: that can get get our eyes out.
Speaker 2: That's all these motherfuckers, right. That's why newspapers should be
Speaker 2: a public good funded by taxes. I don't know, it's
Speaker 2: not perfect, there's flaws with that, but it'll you know,
Speaker 2: we've seen how our system works very well over the
Speaker 2: course of the Second World War. The Times did it,
Speaker 2: in fact cover the Holocaust, though it is fair to
Speaker 2: say not well. One thing that's often to defend the
Speaker 2: Times people when they they published around two one hundred
Speaker 2: articles about the mass murder of Jews and undesirable groups
Speaker 2: by the Nazis. Shape you know, that's state that's three
Speaker 2: or four a week leading up to the war years
Speaker 2: and that sounds good, right, you know, Given this, one
Speaker 2: might conclude that Kindra is being unfair, but I don't
Speaker 2: think she is. And I'm going to read a quote
Speaker 2: from the History News Network to elucidate why at the
Speaker 2: end of the war and for decades afterward, Americans claimed
Speaker 2: they did not know about the Holocaust as it was happening.
Speaker 2: How was it possible for so much information to be
Speaker 2: available in the mass media, yet simultaneously for the public
Speaker 2: to be ignorant. The reason is that the American media
Speaker 2: in general, in the New York Times in particular, never
Speaker 2: treated the Holocaust as an important news story. From the
Speaker 2: start of the war in Europe to its end nearly
Speaker 2: six years later. The story of the Holocaust made the
Speaker 2: front page made the Times front page only twenty six
Speaker 2: times out of twenty four thousand front page stories, and
Speaker 2: most of these stories referred to the victims as refugees
Speaker 2: or persecuted minorities. In only six of those stories where
Speaker 2: Jews identified on page one as the primary victims while
Speaker 2: the Holocaust was happening. Out of twenty four thousand front
Speaker 2: page stories during the period of the Holocaust, six times
Speaker 2: were their front page articles that identified the Jews as
Speaker 2: a victim of Nazi violence.
Speaker 3: Wow one per million.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, about one per million. Nor did the story
Speaker 2: lead the paper, appearing in the right hand column, reserved
Speaker 2: for the day's most important news, not even when the
Speaker 2: concentration camps were liberated at the end of the war.
Speaker 2: In addition, the Times intermittently and timidly editorialized about the
Speaker 2: extermination of the Jews, and the paper rarely highlighted it
Speaker 2: in either the week in review or the magazine section. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm focusing a lot on The Times here, and my
Speaker 2: focus on them is rooted in the fact that The
Speaker 2: Times was and is dull today our nation's chief paper
Speaker 2: of record, and as a result, we have a lot
Speaker 2: of detail as to how its journalists and editors saw
Speaker 2: the problem of rising Nazi power. Now, I don't think
Speaker 2: that tells the whole story, because there are a lot
Speaker 2: of there. Not only are there a lot of individual
Speaker 2: journalists at the Times who did care about reporting on
Speaker 2: the Holocaust, just as by the way, the Times visual
Speaker 2: investigation desk has done crucial reporting on what's been being
Speaker 2: done in Gaza. Right, you know, there are good people
Speaker 2: at the Times, the editors and owners of the paper,
Speaker 2: while the editors are a mixed bag and the ownership
Speaker 2: of the paper is fucking terrible. Right. That's my stance
Speaker 2: on the matter. It's also worth noting that again, many
Speaker 2: local US papers, and particularly smaller Jewish papers, did a
Speaker 2: marvelous job of spreading detailed information about the first Nazi crimes. Likewise,
Speaker 2: there were marvelous foreign correspondence in Germany who did dogged
Speaker 2: and courageous work exposing early Nazi atrocities. The problem was
Speaker 2: that for years, influential papers like The Times refused to
Speaker 2: take their work seriously. The fear was, as always bias.
Speaker 2: One of the best sources on early Nazi violence was
Speaker 2: the Jewish Telegraph Agency, which had been founded by an
Speaker 2: Austrian and provided early evidence of mass violence against German Jews.
Speaker 2: The Times refused to report on its reporting like they
Speaker 2: like they were doing. They refused to do what they
Speaker 2: were doing with like German papers right and cover like
Speaker 2: what the JTA was saying, because it was not neutral. Right,
Speaker 2: It's a Jewish paper, so it can't neutrally report on
Speaker 2: violence against Jews. So we're not going to cover that
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 3: But as we talked about in the first episode, nothing
Speaker 3: is neutral. That's boy never has neutral point of view
Speaker 3: over the other. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now they didn't actively, they didn't reject all stories
Speaker 2: from the JTA out of hand. When the agency happened
Speaker 2: to interview a source, the Times considered it credible because
Speaker 2: they were famous in this case Albert Einstein. The Times
Speaker 2: was happy to carry a JTA wire story. Now, Einstein
Speaker 2: is one of the most popular public in a lie
Speaker 2: actuals of the early twentieth century. When the JTA asked
Speaker 2: him for his thoughts on the nineteen thirty German elections,
Speaker 2: he stated that the quote Hitler vote is only a
Speaker 2: symptom not necessarily of anti Jewish hatred, but of momentary
Speaker 2: resentment caused by economic misery and unemployment within the ranks
Speaker 2: of the German youth. Now Einstein was extremely wrong there, right,
Speaker 2: The Hitler vote was absolutely a symptom of anti Jewish hatred.
Speaker 3: Emotionally driven. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Now that said, I will note Einstein was a consistent
Speaker 2: opponent of the Nazis, and you can find quotes from
Speaker 2: him that are much more direct and sensible in their
Speaker 2: opposition to Hitler. So I think we can forgive the
Speaker 2: statement from Einstein as a single lapse of judgment, right, Like,
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to shit on the man's attitude towards
Speaker 2: the Nazis, but he was wrong in this. And it's
Speaker 2: interesting though that this was the thing the time that
Speaker 2: like the Times chose to take a JTA story. This time,
Speaker 2: when Einstein is saying don't be a The Nazis aren't racist,
Speaker 2: you know. Even as the war years began, the Times
Speaker 2: continued to avoid reportage on attacks by Nazi street gangs
Speaker 2: against Jewish Germans. When the Warsaw Ghetto uprising occurred, the
Speaker 2: story was buried on page ten. Even coverage of the
Speaker 2: liberation of Auschwitz tended to avoid mentioning that the vast
Speaker 2: majority of victims were Jewish.
Speaker 3: It's just in the leisure In the leisure section, they're like,
Speaker 3: don't vacation there right now, but we won't say why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't summer in Auschwitz this year?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jesus.
Speaker 2: This is where things get a little complicated, because it
Speaker 2: is probably fair to say that non Jewish victims of
Speaker 2: the Holocaust are forgotten or not sufficiently discussed, due in
Speaker 2: part to an understandable desire to compensate for the poor
Speaker 2: coverage Sulzburger and his colleagues put out during the genocide itself.
Speaker 2: In his Cambridge Press study about the burying the Times
Speaker 2: did of the Holocaust, Laurel Left notes that the primary
Speaker 2: reason Sulzberger refused to change his initial reaction towards reporting
Speaker 2: on Nazi violence against Jews was an unspoken fear that
Speaker 2: he would risk his own position in American society, often
Speaker 2: framed as part of a broader fear that Jewish assimilation
Speaker 2: in the US would be harmed if too much attention
Speaker 2: was paid to the suffering of Eastern European Jews under fascism,
Speaker 2: Daniel Johnson writes in an article for commentary dot org.
Speaker 2: Above all, he was wary of any new influx of
Speaker 2: European Jews into the United States. Assimilation, for Sulzberger was
Speaker 2: a prize for which he was prepared to let other
Speaker 2: Jews make any sacrifice that's good. Yeah, yeah, just a
Speaker 2: nice little reminder of like what human evil is.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's not just these Nazis wanting to exterminate people. It's
Speaker 2: this guy going like I could help maybe save lives,
Speaker 2: but you know that might endanger me being able to
Speaker 2: go to the best parties. So let's just not do that.
Speaker 2: Let's just not cover this, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that maybe the most discouraging thing for
Speaker 3: your soul that you can witness is extreme It's like, okay,
Speaker 3: extreme violence and cruelty is bad enough, but spectators who
Speaker 3: laugh or yeah, treat it like it's fine, and you're
Speaker 3: like Damn, the human being can really get dark Jesus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, when people just aren't concerned, don't care about,
Speaker 2: you know, what's happening, what's being done to people, right,
Speaker 2: Like I this has always been like my frustration talking
Speaker 2: to like some of my members, members my family who
Speaker 2: supported the Iraq War about like stuff I saw in Iraq,
Speaker 2: and like they they they're so bored of it, of
Speaker 2: being taught, of talking about the damage that they helped
Speaker 2: to do. It just absolutely no interest in thinking about
Speaker 2: it and talking about it.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: That's what the Republican Party has tried to move on to,
Speaker 2: being like, you know, fuck the Iraq War, like like
Speaker 2: they weren't the ones who did it, right, you know,
Speaker 2: not that they were the only ones who did it.
Speaker 2: There's plenty of Democrats who voted for it, but like
Speaker 2: you guys, it was you're a thing, like you don't
Speaker 2: get to fucking escape it because you don't want to
Speaker 2: talk about it anymore.
Speaker 3: And the ring of their world, as far as those
Speaker 3: people are terrorists, is a narrative that's still foundational to
Speaker 3: what's going on now.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and I yeah, the way in which it's
Speaker 2: interesting to me because like I think I do actually
Speaker 2: talk about terrorism in a way that's unbiased, because, like
Speaker 2: I'm very sympathetic to the aims of the PKK, which
Speaker 2: is a Kurdish terrorist organization, right the fact that they
Speaker 2: have and I'm not supportive of terrorism, but I think
Speaker 2: that oftentimes in history there are groups that find themselves
Speaker 2: resorting to that and their broad aims are still justified. Right.
Speaker 2: I feel the same way about the anc right. Nelson
Speaker 2: Mandela was not just tarred as a terrorist because of
Speaker 2: a political campaign by the apartheid government. Nelson Mandela went
Speaker 2: into hiding and established the arm wing of the A
Speaker 2: and C, which bombed civilians, right like he was a terrorist.
Speaker 2: You know, like terrorism, you can you can objectively say
Speaker 2: all of these things are terrorism, and that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that like you support it when the cause is good.
Speaker 2: It just means that you acknowledge there are terrorists sometimes
Speaker 2: whose overall cause is justified. It's like looking at the IRA,
Speaker 2: do I think, like, do I think it was evil
Speaker 2: to like throw a bomb in a pub? Yeah, that
Speaker 2: is evil. It's bad to bomb a pub, But that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean the overall fight was evil, right, like you
Speaker 2: It's just everyone everyone agrees that terrorism is fine in
Speaker 2: certain circumstances. I don't see any moral difference.
Speaker 3: And they're like, this is the good kind. So we
Speaker 3: picked a different word because this is the approved form
Speaker 3: of domestic terrorism. We're okay with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the the bombing of Western Europe by the Allies
Speaker 2: during World War Two was one of the largest acts
Speaker 2: of terrorism in history. It is the deliberate targeting of
Speaker 2: civilians to frighten them and break their will. There's no
Speaker 2: other way to describe it but terrorism. That's what it
Speaker 2: fucking was, right, And you know, I would argue that,
Speaker 2: like it actually didn't work. You can't really bomb people's
Speaker 2: will to fight away. But I don't think actually in
Speaker 2: World War Two we were wrong to have tried it
Speaker 2: for a period of time because the situation was fucking
Speaker 2: desperate and you're going to you're going to try everything
Speaker 2: at that point, right, Like, it's just how people react
Speaker 2: in the situations like this. Everyone does it, Every side
Speaker 2: does it. I think that's actually reporting on it objectively,
Speaker 2: you know. But the tie.
Speaker 3: Remember you were very pro Maquis and anti Kardassian when that.
Speaker 2: I am extremely supportive of Maki a do I like
Speaker 2: chacote No as an actor. I dislike it. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 2: I look, I support uh insurgent attacks against Cardassian infrastructure
Speaker 2: and I always have. Yeah, but the falthy carties yeah, whoa, whoa, Michael,
Speaker 2: we don't got to get all Miles O'Brien in here.
Speaker 3: Yes, let's go down this tangent.
Speaker 2: Speaking of Miles O'Brien, A lot of people would argue
Speaker 2: the Miles O'Brien of physics was Albert Einstein, and Einstein
Speaker 2: reached out to Sulzberger to try to help him, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of after this point. He reaches out to Sulzburg
Speaker 2: at one point because there's a Berlin theater critic named
Speaker 2: Alfred Kerherr who is obviously carries a Jewish Man, and
Speaker 2: the Nazis want him dead. They have a real thing
Speaker 2: against critics. So Einstein reaches out to Sulzburgers with like, hey,
Speaker 2: you have a lot of poll and power. Can you
Speaker 2: help us get this guy out of Germany and into
Speaker 2: the United States so he doesn't get murdered, And Solsburger
Speaker 2: yells at Einstein. He says, I am disassociated from any
Speaker 2: movement which springs from the oppression of Jews in Germany.
Speaker 2: Only in this way can the unprejudiced and unbiased portion
Speaker 2: of the Times be understood. What an insane thing to say,
Speaker 2: I am. I will refuse to pay attention to the
Speaker 2: oppression of Jews in Germany because that's the only way
Speaker 2: that we can be unbiased is this isn't happening.
Speaker 3: That's the neutral stance is pretend.
Speaker 2: It's not happening.
Speaker 3: You know. Wow.
Speaker 2: So that statement is particularly ironic when we return again
Speaker 2: to how The Times has recently covered protests against the
Speaker 2: genocide and Gaza. I read an article recently on drop
Speaker 2: site news by Arvind Dilawar, a freelance journalist who had
Speaker 2: worked for The Times, reporting on an article about an
Speaker 2: anti Zionist protest in New Jersey. The precise focus of
Speaker 2: the protest was Israeli realtors holding an event to auction
Speaker 2: off a legally seized Palestinian land arvand writes quote amid
Speaker 2: Israel's ongoing genocide and the Gaza strip. The Times article
Speaker 2: described the protest as contributing to escalating fear intention in
Speaker 2: the otherwise peaceable t Neck as a pivotal example of
Speaker 2: alleged anti Semitic activity in the area. My co author
Speaker 2: John Leland, a Time staff reporter quoted township council member
Speaker 2: Hillary Goldberg, who claimed her home had been broken into
Speaker 2: as part of a string of abuse in response to
Speaker 2: her vocal support of Israel and her Jewish background. I
Speaker 2: have been threatened. I had a box truck with my
Speaker 2: picture on it and the words liar, liar, driven around town.
Speaker 2: My house has been broken into. I have received anti
Speaker 2: Semitic messages, Goldberg told Leland, adding I have never felt
Speaker 2: so afraid to be Jewish as now. And hey, look,
Speaker 2: if protests had been were corresponding to surges in violence
Speaker 2: towards Jewish people, you know that's worth reporting. But in
Speaker 2: this case, the claim by Hillary is, so far as
Speaker 2: we can tell, untrue. Arvind filed a record's request, and
Speaker 2: the records he received from the police showed that police
Speaker 2: concluded no break d was attempted at her property, right
Speaker 2: that no crime at all had been attempted against Goldberg.
Speaker 2: They had found no evidence of it. There were no
Speaker 2: signs of forced entry. She calls them a dozen times
Speaker 2: for follow up checks on her home, and at no
Speaker 2: point do the police find anything indicating her claims were true.
Speaker 2: Arvind goes on to write, believing a correction to the
Speaker 2: time story was an order, or at least an update
Speaker 2: to give readers a fuller picture. I shared the police
Speaker 2: reports with Leland, who told me he had already gotten
Speaker 2: them and despite the explicit contradictions, no correction would be issued.
Speaker 2: When presented with the police reports, Management at the Times
Speaker 2: also declined to reconcile them with its coverage. Instead, Managing
Speaker 2: director of external Communications, Charlie Stadelander said in a statement
Speaker 2: that the article was thoroughly reported, fact checked and edited
Speaker 2: and we stand behind its publication. Goldberg did not respond
Speaker 2: to multiple requests for comment.
Speaker 3: The cops are like there was a truck going around
Speaker 3: her house with her face that said truth teller truth. Yeah,
Speaker 3: everything's the opposite of what you're saying it.
Speaker 2: Is yea, and look again, I don't want to pretend. Obviously,
Speaker 2: there has been a surge in anti Semitism, and some
Speaker 2: of it is tied. I don't blame the fact that
Speaker 2: people are protesting against a genocide for it, but those
Speaker 2: protests have provided cover for Nazis. Right. You can find
Speaker 2: evidence of that, and there is evidence that likes aspects
Speaker 2: of like far right propag anti Jewish propaganda have been
Speaker 2: adopted by some.
Speaker 3: Folks, they're like anything to say antiges.
Speaker 2: Yes, of course, I yeah, exactly. That is a thing
Speaker 2: that happens. It's a thing you have to guard against happening, right,
Speaker 2: It's a thing you have to be aware of. But
Speaker 2: The Times is deliberately refusing to like correct their reporting.
Speaker 2: That makes the problem look much worse than it is.
Speaker 2: And it's because their narrative that they want to portray
Speaker 2: about these protests is helped by that inaccurate reporting, right,
Speaker 2: And that's to them neutrality cool stuff. Back to the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties over in France, excellent work was done La Humanity,
Speaker 2: the paper of the French Communist Party, which wrote unsparingly
Speaker 2: about Nazi violence towards Jews and other targeted groups. This
Speaker 2: reporting was ignored by the American press because it was
Speaker 2: a communist paper. Now there's a great book about all this, Berlin,
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty three, written by French media critic Daniel Schneiderman.
Speaker 2: I found an interview with Schneiderman in The New Yorker
Speaker 2: for back in twenty nineteen that contains a fascinating quote
Speaker 2: on what he called activist journalism, which he argues was
Speaker 2: the only journalism that responded ethically to the rise of fascism.
Speaker 2: Activist journalism, Schneidermann writes, journalism that subordinates the quest for
Speaker 2: truth to the quest for a truth that is useful
Speaker 2: to its cause is the only journalism that today doesn't
Speaker 2: have to feel ashamed about what it produced. Everything reasonable, scrupulous, balanced,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, contributed to lulling the crowd to sleep.
Speaker 2: If I had been a reader at the time, though,
Speaker 2: I probably would have quickly stopped reading after a few days,
Speaker 2: dissuaded by the bludgeting. So Schneiderman saying, like, the only
Speaker 2: only these activist papers that had a clear angle angle
Speaker 2: are the ones who accurately described the danger of the Nazis.
Speaker 2: But I think if I had been reading them at
Speaker 2: the time, I wouldn't have paid much attention because it's
Speaker 2: just kind of exhausting to get that sort of ideological bludgeting.
Speaker 2: And I find this compelling. I think it's actually kind
Speaker 2: of courageous that he admits that, right, that's an evidence
Speaker 2: of an honest thinker who was like, I can see
Speaker 2: that these people were the only ones who did the
Speaker 2: right thing, and I don't think I would have listened
Speaker 2: to them at the time. I actually respect being able
Speaker 2: to say that about yourself quite a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it definitely bums me out though through the climate
Speaker 3: change lens, because a similar analog would be we're gonna die,
Speaker 3: We're all gonna die, We're all gonna die, and eventually
Speaker 3: you're like, look, I know, but I'm sick of hearing it.
Speaker 3: It's really depressed they are, though, Or did you not
Speaker 3: like this? This really is that level of problem?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh. Yeah, Again, I like Schneiderman a lot
Speaker 2: because he's he's kind of able to acknowledge that about
Speaker 2: himself and all of us, like you, like, no matter
Speaker 2: what you think, you do this about something you kind
Speaker 2: of have to to survive, right, But that's part of
Speaker 2: where these guys, how these guys thrive, these monsters thrive. Yeah,
Speaker 2: now it is uh, you know, I find this all
Speaker 2: especially worth pointing out because the next period in Sophie,
Speaker 2: did we do a second ad break? Nope? You know
Speaker 2: what the next period for all of us, Michael is
Speaker 2: going to be to cut to ads. So have a
Speaker 2: little have a little ad, you know, shovel some ads
Speaker 2: into your face, you know, ads are as a great writer.
Speaker 2: William Shakespeare once said the oatmeal of art, So enjoy
Speaker 2: some oatmeal while we get ready to do more art.
Speaker 2: We're back, Michael Maestro sway, are your fingers ready to
Speaker 2: tap the ivories of talking about.
Speaker 3: My keyboard as easily? Google William Shakespeare oatmeal and try
Speaker 3: to figure out what the fuck that was about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like to think he knew about oatmeal because
Speaker 2: as a British person.
Speaker 3: Teeth, why not oatmeal? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Did he quin crocodile?
Speaker 3: He did?
Speaker 2: What a cool guy?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Billy shakes where I'm sure it's based on a
Speaker 3: Greek root or something, but I like to think that
Speaker 3: he's just saw one and he's like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a fucking crocodile. It is one of those
Speaker 2: you know, there's some animals like you look at a
Speaker 2: fucking uh a marmoset, right, and like that it's not
Speaker 2: obviously a marmoset. Other names could have worked for a marmoset.
Speaker 2: You'll get a crocodile and you're like, yeah, that's a
Speaker 2: fucking crocodile.
Speaker 3: Where you're like, you are a top That is totally Yeah.
Speaker 2: For sure. Every Todd I've seen has been a Todd anyway.
Speaker 2: So the next period of American journalism regarding the fascists,
Speaker 2: you know, the one that occurred from the late thirties
Speaker 2: up to the start of the war. Things got a
Speaker 2: little better, you know, quite a bit better by the end.
Speaker 2: The rapid change in American attitudes towards isolationism in World
Speaker 2: War Two is some evidence of this. But we also
Speaker 2: see it in the response of the populace and the
Speaker 2: mainstream media to domestic fascist groups like the Silver Shirts
Speaker 2: and the German American bund. Here, at least, the outright
Speaker 2: sympathy of the Italian liberal press and the frightened tremulousness
Speaker 2: of the Weimar media were less present. When the Booned
Speaker 2: famously rallied in Madison Square Garden in nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 2: Reporters on scene for Booned clashes with anti fascists wrote
Speaker 2: articles with titles like Nazi advocacy of Roosevelt's death charged
Speaker 2: and seven are injured at Nazi rally and that's like,
Speaker 2: you know good. In an article several days after the rally,
Speaker 2: even The Times argued that Bundists were quote determined to
Speaker 2: destroy our democracy. The paper's editor later released a statement
Speaker 2: saying the boone went to set up an American Hitler,
Speaker 2: and this the Times was at least following in the
Speaker 2: footsteps of the American people, who by this point had
Speaker 2: started taking the warnings of reporters who were quite biased
Speaker 2: against Nazis seriously. And I might argue that they only,
Speaker 2: you know, the Times only jumps on the bandwagon of
Speaker 2: doing that when it becomes clear that there are Nazis
Speaker 2: in the US who might threaten them even more than
Speaker 2: being sympathetic to Jews in Germany would. As US entry
Speaker 2: to World War Two grew closer, the most influential reporting
Speaker 2: on the Nazis came not from the unbiased, monklike reporters
Speaker 2: valued by AUX but from foreign correspondents like William Schier
Speaker 2: and Dorothy Thompson. Thompson's most influential article, and today this
Speaker 2: is one of the most influential things anyone will ever
Speaker 2: write about Fascism, was published in August of nineteen forty
Speaker 2: one for Harper's Me magazine. It had the evocative title
Speaker 2: Who Goes Nazi? And, rather than purporting to be even
Speaker 2: handed journalism, it presents the reader with a series of
Speaker 2: fictional characters from various backgrounds, all conversing at a dinner
Speaker 2: party and it asks the reader to predict which ones
Speaker 2: might go Nazi. I take some enjoyment in the fact
Speaker 2: that Thompson included a character in her article who was
Speaker 2: almost certainly based on mister Soulsberger. Right on the head
Speaker 2: editor at the Times quote, mister Jay over there is
Speaker 2: a Jew. Mister Jay is a very important man. He
Speaker 2: is immensely rich. He has made a fortune through a
Speaker 2: dozen directorates in various companies, through a fabulous marriage, through
Speaker 2: a speculative flare, and through a native gift for money
Speaker 2: and a native love of power. He is intelligent and arrogant.
Speaker 2: He seldom associates with Jews. He deploys any mention of
Speaker 2: the Jewish question. He believes that Hitler should not be
Speaker 2: judged from the standpoint of anti Semitism. He thinks that
Speaker 2: the Jews should be reserved on all political questions. He
Speaker 2: considers Roosevelt an enemy of business. He thinks it was
Speaker 2: a serious blow to the Jews that Frankfurter should have
Speaker 2: been appointed to the Supreme Court. The saturnine mister c
Speaker 2: the real Nazi in the room, engages him in a
Speaker 2: flatteringly attentive conversation. Mister Jay agrees with mister C. Holy,
Speaker 2: mister J is definitely attracted by mister C. He goes
Speaker 2: out of his way to ask his name. They have
Speaker 2: never met before. A very intelligent man, he says. And
Speaker 2: Thompson's article today still draws a lot of hatred from
Speaker 2: conservatives who find it very unfair and unbiased. And it
Speaker 2: was Dorothy understood that fairness and objectivity don't fight fascism.
Speaker 2: There's a good chance her pros will make you feel uncomfortable,
Speaker 2: and it ought to. But I promise if you read
Speaker 2: her article, you will at least feel something. Now, I'm
Speaker 2: not half the writer Dorothy was, so rather than attempt
Speaker 2: to wrap this piece up myself, Michael, I'm going to
Speaker 2: leave you with one last quote from that essay. It's fun,
Speaker 2: a Macabs sort of fun, this parlor game of who
Speaker 2: goes Nazi? And it simplifies things asking the question in
Speaker 2: regard to specific personalities. Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people
Speaker 2: never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose
Speaker 2: name is in the blue book or bill from City
Speaker 2: College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes.
Speaker 2: You'll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated
Speaker 2: and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son,
Speaker 2: the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by
Speaker 2: smelling out the wind of success. They would all go
Speaker 2: Nazi in a crisis. Believe me, nice people don't go Nazi.
Speaker 2: Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion.
Speaker 2: It is something in them. Those who haven't anything in
Speaker 2: them to tell them what they like and what they don't,
Speaker 2: whether it is breeding or happiness, or wisdom or a
Speaker 2: code however old fashion or however modern, go Nazi. It's
Speaker 2: an amusing game. Try it at the next big party
Speaker 2: you go to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, accuse everyone, you did say, agree earth, Yeah. I
Speaker 3: think it gets at the base of something that people
Speaker 3: are wielding to great effect right now, which is it's
Speaker 3: weird to hate people for no reason. They're weird little guys.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, And I think that recognition that, like, you
Speaker 2: become a Nazi when there's nothing inside you but the
Speaker 2: love of and need for wealth and power, right when
Speaker 2: that's the only thing you've got. That's that like, it's
Speaker 2: fundamentally a product of insecurity. And so the way to
Speaker 2: fight these people, as we're starting to see with like
Speaker 2: vance here is to make them feel more insecure, right
Speaker 2: when you when you frame them, when you when you
Speaker 2: either talk of them as like, well, these are just
Speaker 2: common sult of the earth people with legitimate grievances, or
Speaker 2: when you do what I think a lot of liberals
Speaker 2: started to do with Trump, which is why you've got
Speaker 2: this weird chunk of people who like, don't think he
Speaker 2: could have been shot just like honestly as part of
Speaker 2: an assassination attempt. You know, people treat them like almost
Speaker 2: a supernatural enemy, right, like they're you know, they're they're
Speaker 2: this kind of like uh like evil demonic force as
Speaker 2: opposed to no, these are sad, insecure, sick little weirdos, right,
Speaker 2: and when you when you shine that light on them,
Speaker 2: when you make that clear. However you do it, if
Speaker 2: you do it through just objective reporting, which you can do,
Speaker 2: or if you do it through satire, right, whatever you
Speaker 2: have to do, you have to find their points of
Speaker 2: insecurity and stick a thumb in them, right. That is
Speaker 2: how you That is how you fight these people without
Speaker 2: pulling out guns. Right if you want to avoid that,
Speaker 2: and I sure do, that's how you do it.
Speaker 3: That's how you get kicked out of Tenacious Da.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, god.
Speaker 3: It is. It sucks. It's such a oh bro cod
Speaker 3: come on man, man.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, but I don't know who wouldn't who wouldn't
Speaker 2: sacrifice a thirty year friendship for the bliss that is
Speaker 2: getting to be in the what's that fucking video game
Speaker 2: movie that Jack Black's about to be in?
Speaker 3: Borderlands?
Speaker 2: Border Lands?
Speaker 3: Why God considered fucking terrible? There's already known.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, no, nothing more valuable than getting to
Speaker 2: be in the Borderlance movie.
Speaker 3: Because of an off the cuff joke that no offense.
Speaker 3: Literally everyone thought in their head, like there's no it's whatever. Anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it speaks to what we're saying in terms of, yes,
Speaker 3: in a vacuum, violence is always shocking and feels unnatural
Speaker 3: in a way. But remember that the one context where
Speaker 3: it kind of makes sense is like, yeah, but if
Speaker 3: someone's been beating the shit out of you for eight hours, like,
Speaker 3: there's a point, there's a point.
Speaker 2: There's there's a point, right, uh. And that point was
Speaker 2: for us in the political sense of like getting dirty.
Speaker 2: That point was like six years ago, like six to
Speaker 2: eight years ago.
Speaker 3: And all right, we've held ourselves back long enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, Michael, speaking of fighting back, you know what,
Speaker 2: you can fight back against your boredom by reading Michael's novel.
Speaker 2: That's right, will make you entertained and happy.
Speaker 3: It's true I plugged it at the top, but I'll
Speaker 3: mention again. It's called The Climb. You can get a
Speaker 3: free sample by checking out the small Beans podcast feed,
Speaker 3: or check out the small Beans Patreon page and click
Speaker 3: the shop tab. If you end up wanting the whole thing,
Speaker 3: it's an audiobook and a book book. You can get
Speaker 3: either flavor. Now, anyway, we got thank you so much.
Speaker 1: We got two things to plug at the end here.
Speaker 2: Robert, Yeah, do it so.
Speaker 1: I'll do the first one if you do the second one.
Speaker 3: Deal. Okay, it's clearly forgot the plug, sohi, no.
Speaker 1: I remember by the time we get there. I think
Speaker 1: the first one is we have a new podcast that
Speaker 1: cools on media, hosted by Molly Conger. It's called Weird
Speaker 1: Little Guys and shows like that relate to episodes like this.
Speaker 3: I Stell's plugged it earlier. If I know.
Speaker 1: I caught that and I was like, wow, swam really
Speaker 1: really calling it good.
Speaker 3: I'm loving it so far.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you. Molly's amazing. And the other thing, Robert is.
Speaker 2: What is the other thing? Sophie, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm looking and to Robert and we go, I'm looking
Speaker 1: at you. Other people can look at.
Speaker 2: You, you know what, Sophie, let me explain to you.
Speaker 2: So about like one hundred and fifty or so years ago,
Speaker 2: some I'm guessing they were frenchmen figured out that if
Speaker 2: you like, put a hole in a box and run
Speaker 2: light through it, you can kind of get images to
Speaker 2: print essentially onto pieces of paper.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: This led to the creation of what we're called photographs
Speaker 2: and cameras, and eventually people recognize that if you take
Speaker 2: a lot of these still images and you run them
Speaker 2: in sequence, you can create the illusion of movement. And
Speaker 2: now we at cool Zone have joined this glorious tradition
Speaker 2: by pivoting to video ourselves, because that's never.
Speaker 1: Bad YouTube dot com slash at behind the.
Speaker 3: Back, masterfully stretched.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you, Michael, thank you, and thank you.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's the episode, bye, is it? I mean,
Speaker 1: do you have anything else you'd like to add?
Speaker 2: Michael, It's nice to talk No, I was just saying
Speaker 2: it's nice to talk to you. That's what I want
Speaker 2: to know. Yeah, yeah, yeah did you?
Speaker 3: Did you?
Speaker 2: The recent news came out that Tim Walls is a
Speaker 2: second Dreamcast player. I think this might be what cinches
Speaker 2: the election.
Speaker 3: You know, can we do another hour on that perfect blue.
Speaker 2: And he's a monster.
Speaker 3: Oh we have different attitudes, so good dude.
Speaker 2: I want to say Crazy Taxi was on the Dreamcast.
Speaker 3: One of the launch titles. I believe Dreamcast Day.
Speaker 2: It was really the refer yeah, the precursor to that
Speaker 2: good GTA three energy.
Speaker 3: Yeah for real. I was just thinking about Crazy Taxi.
Speaker 2: And there was the Simpsons rip off of Crazy tax
Speaker 2: It was pretty good too. Hit and Run, Yeah, hit
Speaker 2: and Run, great game anyway, think about the Simpsons. Now,
Speaker 2: folks to wear some screen huh you? Well bye.
Speaker 4: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 4: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 4: Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 2: Eight