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Speaker 1: H what trafficking? But no, wait, Sophie, we can't uh,

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Speaker 1: we can't. We can't open like that, can we?

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Speaker 2: No, that's not what are you even attempting to do

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Speaker 2: right now?

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Speaker 1: Well? You know how like you know how like back

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Speaker 1: in like the sixties, you'd be like if you were

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Speaker 1: like getting up on the stage, you're gonna be like

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Speaker 1: a beat poet or somebody be like, what's up children,

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Speaker 1: like something like that. You know, I was gonna be like,

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Speaker 1: what's trafficking my children? But that's not a good introduction.

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Speaker 2: Terrible introduction.

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Speaker 1: It's a terrible introduction.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I like, conceptually, I like that vibe for you,

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Speaker 3: but yeah, but the execution was not there.

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry because you and I are both big, big

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Speaker 1: into beat poetry.

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Speaker 2: That is things that people know about us.

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Speaker 1: That is what Yeah classic, yeah, big big beat. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: this is Behind the Bastards, podcast about the worst people

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Speaker 1: in all of history, one of whom is me for today? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that introduction, And to distract from my incompetence, we have

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Speaker 1: a wonderful guest today, Chelsea Weber Smith. Chelsea, you are

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Speaker 1: the host of American Hysteria, a podcast about how fantastical

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Speaker 1: thing has shaped our culture. You deal with a lot

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Speaker 1: of stuff like hoaxes and moral panics, which is just

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Speaker 1: a wonderful premise for a show. How are you doing today, Chelsea.

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Speaker 4: I'm doing great. Thank you so much to you both

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Speaker 4: for having me. I'm really excited.

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Speaker 2: That was a really professional introduction.

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Speaker 3: I just want to say when I met Chelsea, I

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Speaker 3: met Melsea in person. It was like a week before

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Speaker 3: Lauren Lauren. How do we describe Lauren? Lauren?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, Lauren is somebody who does a lot of like

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Speaker 4: pr stuff for us.

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Speaker 5: Lauren's like, really the patron saint of podcast.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Lauren's like yeah, yeah, Lauren's Lauren reached out to

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Speaker 3: I was like, I want to get Lauren. Lauren deserves

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Speaker 3: all the credit. I want to get Lauren's proper introduction.

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Speaker 3: It was like, do you want to have this person

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Speaker 3: on your podcast? I was like sure. And then a

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Speaker 3: week later I was at a very strange bar with

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Speaker 3: our mutual friend Sarah Marshall, and I met Chelsea likes

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Speaker 3: several jello shots and it was great.

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Speaker 2: It was such a good.

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Speaker 5: Time, complete like happenstance, not brand.

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Speaker 4: You've just seen the Wickerman, which Sarah has been obsessed

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Speaker 4: with and we all see trafficking.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I love the Wickerman was very cool.

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Speaker 1: Wait, wait, which one Nicholas Cage the original? Okay, okay, okay, good.

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Speaker 3: Anoint the They're actually both charming in their own ways.

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Speaker 1: Things to recommend both well. Chelsea. First off, welcome to

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Speaker 1: the show. Sorry I introduced it with a child trafficking bit.

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Speaker 1: More to the point, I want to ask you a

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Speaker 1: question that I ask all of my friends, all my

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Speaker 1: family members, kids at the playground near my house. How

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Speaker 1: do you feel about swastika's?

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Speaker 5: I feel bad about them, bad.

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Speaker 1: Bad about swastika's.

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Speaker 4: Okay, I generally don't like seeing them. I don't like

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Speaker 4: hearing about them being seen anti swastika here, have.

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Speaker 1: You ever in the world seen a swastika that was like,

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Speaker 1: definitely not a Nazi swastika?

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Speaker 2: Hmm?

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Speaker 4: Do you mean sort of perhaps like an attempt to

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Speaker 4: shock by a teenager.

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Speaker 1: No, I mean that that is also a thing that happens.

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Speaker 1: But I mean, what do you know about the origins

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Speaker 1: of the swastika pre oh, okay, Hitler, et cetera.

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Speaker 4: I know, I know, sort of the cliche answer of

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Speaker 4: that it was originally I believe an Indian symbol of

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Speaker 4: something like good luck.

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Speaker 5: Is that true? Is that right?

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Speaker 1: It is? It is a Hindu symbol, it's also a

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Speaker 1: Buddhist symbol. It actually goes back much further than that.

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Speaker 1: So that's that's what we're talking about today. The working

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Speaker 1: title of this week's episodes are What's Up with Swastikas?

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Speaker 1: Because obviously this is behind the Bastards, So we're going

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Speaker 1: behind the Nazis by talking about the origins of the swastikas,

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Speaker 1: how it became a symbol for the Nazis. But also

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Speaker 1: when we're talking about the swastika, we're talking about like

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Speaker 1: a religious symbol that goes back real far. And so

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Speaker 1: the fact that it's primarily most people have the same

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Speaker 1: reaction you have, which is like swasika, that's like the

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Speaker 1: Nazi thing, which causes problems for people for whom it's

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Speaker 1: like an old a religious symbol that goes back a

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Speaker 1: long time. So that's that's what we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about this week because there's a lot of history here

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Speaker 1: that most people are unaware of. So, yeah, are you

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Speaker 1: ready to learn all about swastika's?

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Speaker 5: I have never been more ready in my life.

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Speaker 1: That's good.

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Speaker 5: I'm buckled in.

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Speaker 1: It would be probably kind of problematic if you had

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Speaker 1: been just shamp it at the bit and learn about swastika.

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Speaker 3: I was.

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Speaker 1: That's why I read a book.

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Speaker 5: You know, I do read books about World War Two

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Speaker 5: a lot.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, yeah. The big idea, like.

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Speaker 4: It's kind of this kind of history, and it's so

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Speaker 4: important to know the origins of things, because you can't

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Speaker 4: understand the thing unless you understand the thing it came

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Speaker 4: out of.

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Speaker 1: All right, well, let's let's go back in time. Everyone

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Speaker 1: can imagine your your particular favorite time machine noise, and

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Speaker 1: we're we're going back way back to the mid nineteen thirties. Okay,

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Speaker 1: it's a rough period for all Homo sapiens. Hitler has

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Speaker 1: just risen to power in Germany. He started the process

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Speaker 1: of crushing his enemies, which obviously includes everyone in the

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Speaker 1: country who is of Jewish ancestry. He introduces the Nuremberg

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Speaker 1: Laws and I think nineteen thirty five, which bring international

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Speaker 1: attention to a growing stream of outrages that are going

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Speaker 1: to culminate in the Holocaust. And while all this is

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Speaker 1: happening over in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, the congregants of

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Speaker 1: the Adath emmanual synagogue watch in stultified horror is Hitler's

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Speaker 1: bigotry empowers anti Semites across the globe like many Ds

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Speaker 1: for a Jews, they raise money to help their relatives

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Speaker 1: immigrate from Europe. They write furious letters to newspapers ignoring

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Speaker 1: Hitler's crimes. And you know, they worry more than anything else, right,

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Speaker 1: which is understandable. You know, how much further will this

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Speaker 1: hate spread? Are they safe even in New Jersey? And

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Speaker 1: while they're coping with all this, which is a lot

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Speaker 1: to have on your mind, your conscience, one of their

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Speaker 1: congregants notices something during a service, which is that in

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Speaker 1: the vestibule of their synagogue there's a mosaic, a beautiful

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Speaker 1: handmade mosaic that features dozens and dozens and dozens of swastikas.

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Speaker 1: Now this is obviously a problem, right, you don't want

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Speaker 1: to have that in your synagogue in the nineteen thirties,

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Speaker 1: and after a quick discussion, they decide to pave the

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Speaker 1: swastikas out. Fast forward about one hundred years, you know,

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Speaker 1: you have World War Two, all that that horrible stuff happens.

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Speaker 1: You know, the rebuilding process occurs afterwards, you know, life

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Speaker 1: goes on, and on December fifth, twenty twenty one, for

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Speaker 1: the first time in like ninety years or so, the

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Speaker 1: Adath Emmanual Synagogue finds itself again with a swastika near

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Speaker 1: the vestibule. Now this one had been applied by a

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Speaker 1: sticker wielded by some unknown Nazi who adds in writing

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Speaker 1: the message we are everywhere. Now that's a chilling, horrifying,

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Speaker 1: depressing story. But in between those two incidents, the the

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Speaker 1: swastikas that had been placed inside the vestibule of the

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Speaker 1: synagogue long before the rise of Hitler, and the swastika

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Speaker 1: added there in the twenty twenties by a Nazi. In

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Speaker 1: between those two incidents is a really fascinating and strange story,

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Speaker 1: and that's what we're going to be talking about today.

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Speaker 1: Unlike a lot of you know, the swastika is almost

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Speaker 1: certainly the most well known hate symbol in the world.

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Speaker 1: But unlike a lot of other particularly famous hate symbols,

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Speaker 1: the Confederate flag, for example, the Klansman's hood, the SS

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Speaker 1: lightning bolts, the swastika is not in and of itself problematic.

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Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is the swastika was

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Speaker 1: not created as a symbol of hate. It was turned

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Speaker 1: into one later. And one of the things that you understand,

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Speaker 1: like you start to learn when you look into this,

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Speaker 1: is that not only is the swastika something that predates

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Speaker 1: the Nazis, it may be one of, if not the

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Speaker 1: oldest complex symbols created by human beings. Now there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of debate about this. Scholarship over the swastika has

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Speaker 1: invited vigorous debate for very obvious reasons, over both the

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Speaker 1: geographic and the temporal nature of its origins. When it

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Speaker 1: comes to the word itself, we do have a lot

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Speaker 1: clearer of an origin. We know exactly where the word

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Speaker 1: swastika came from, and its origins are Sanskrit, and it

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Speaker 1: does mean, as you noted, well being, good luck, and fortune.

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Speaker 1: That is like the meaning of the word swastika. And

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Speaker 1: in fact, the first recorded instance of the word swastika

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Speaker 1: predates the first recorded instance of the symbol swastika in

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Speaker 1: the Mdus Valley, right so in you know, India, that

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Speaker 1: kind of region. The word swastika seems to predate the

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Speaker 1: actual use of the symbol. This is again, whenever you're

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Speaker 1: talking about stuff that's old, the dates are kind of fluid.

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Speaker 1: But best sort of assumption is that like around the

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Speaker 1: fourth millennium BCE is when the swastika first shows up

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Speaker 1: in the Indus Valley, right, So that's pretty old, you know.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like this.

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Speaker 3: I don't know, Chelsea, I feel like this is not

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Speaker 3: something like if you hearing it's one of the old

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Speaker 3: symbols ever created by human beings.

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Speaker 2: Was not something I knew.

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Speaker 5: No, no, I did not expect that at all.

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Speaker 4: I've been reading a lot of books lately about kind

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Speaker 4: of the origins of the conception of God, which includes

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Speaker 4: like so much religious symbolism, and this feels like right

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Speaker 4: right in my interests right now, and I'm so excited

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Speaker 4: about this, And we'll talk.

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Speaker 1: A little bit later about why. But there there were

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Speaker 1: starting kind of the eighteen hundreds, which is when scholarship

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Speaker 1: around the swastika and kind of the modern recognized sense

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Speaker 1: of the word really starts, there was a belief among

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Speaker 1: some anthropologists that it was probably the oldest complex symbol,

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Speaker 1: the oldest symbol that's not just a simple shape, right,

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Speaker 1: you know, you see the sun, you draw a circle

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Speaker 1: or whatever, but like the oldest complex shape. There's no

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Speaker 1: way to prove that right, that's an absolutely unprovable just

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Speaker 1: because of the age of everything involved here. But there's

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Speaker 1: not really anything that's like a clearer like like bet

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Speaker 1: for the oldest symbol. By the way, we're talking about

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Speaker 1: like this within the context of the swastika arising in

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Speaker 1: the fourth millennium BCE in the Indus Valley. It goes

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Speaker 1: back way further than that now for a long time.

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Speaker 1: And most people, if you ask, most people who are

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Speaker 1: kind of casually familiar, they say, oh, yeah, it was

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Speaker 1: a symbol in India right well before the Nazis picked

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Speaker 1: it up. That is not the oldest recorded instance of

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Speaker 1: the use of the swastika. And I'm going to quote

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Speaker 1: now from an article in the BBC. If you want

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Speaker 1: to see just how deeply rooted the swastika pattern is

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Speaker 1: in Europe, a good place to start is Kiev, where

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Speaker 1: the National Museum of the History of Ukraine has an

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Speaker 1: impressive range of exhibits. Among the museum's most highly prized

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Speaker 1: treasures is a small ivory figurine of a female bird

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Speaker 1: made from the tusk of a mammoth. It was found

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Speaker 1: in nineteen oh eight at the Paleolithic settlement of Mizine

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Speaker 1: near the Russian border. On the torso of the bird

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Speaker 1: is engraved an intricate meander pattern of joined up swastikas.

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Speaker 1: It is the oldest identified swastika pattern in the world

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Speaker 1: and has been radiocarbon dated to an astonishing fifth teen

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Speaker 1: thousand years ago. Whoa, So we were making swastikas way

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Speaker 1: before we had cities, right Like, there's yeah, like, this

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Speaker 1: is an ancient, ancient symbol. It was found with a

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Speaker 1: bunch of phallic a bunch of dicks, right like, it

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Speaker 1: was found with a bunch of dicks, because it's a

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Speaker 1: fertility symbol. You know, you see that kind of stuff

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Speaker 1: all over the world. Now, I think people might expect

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Speaker 1: us to given the present war in Ukraine and the

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Speaker 1: fact that both Ukraine and Russia have serious problems with

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Speaker 1: far right neo Nazi combat organizations, you might expect us

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Speaker 1: to go into that here, but it's not really relevant.

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Speaker 1: We're talking fifteen thousand years ago, so one way or

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Speaker 1: the other, it has nothing to do with the present

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Speaker 1: issues with the far right in that part of the world. Again,

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Speaker 1: this is it like predates the First City by like

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Speaker 1: five thousand years and despite the shocking age of the

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Speaker 1: Ukrainian swastik is. This does not mean that they originate,

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Speaker 1: that the symbol itself was first used near Kiev or

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Speaker 1: any you know, anywhere in that region, Because there's a

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Speaker 1: fascinating theory, and I was completely unaware of this until

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Speaker 1: I started doing my research as to where the swastika

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Speaker 1: came from. Now, again, when scholarship around the swastika starts

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Speaker 1: in kind of the eighteen hundreds, one of the assumptions

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Speaker 1: is that, and this is going to play into the

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Speaker 1: Nazis later, it has to have started at a single place.

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Speaker 4: Right.

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Speaker 1: The idea that these anthropologists have is the swastika is

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Speaker 1: so complicated, such a complex symbol, it can't have arisen

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Speaker 1: in multiple places simultaneously.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: It must have been originated by us at one place

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Speaker 1: and then carried over to the rest of the world. Now,

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Speaker 1: this happens to gel with a lot of theories at

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Speaker 1: the time about like this kind of Atlantis super civilization

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Speaker 1: that's seed in culture and whatnot. This is probably not

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Speaker 1: the case. The swastika probably arose independently in a number

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Speaker 1: of parts of the world, and the kind of best

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Speaker 1: explanation as to how came in nineteen sixty five from

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Speaker 1: a paleontologist named Valentina Bibikova, who was looking at this

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Speaker 1: Ukrainian piece of art with swastikas in it, depositive that

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Speaker 1: a probable origin for the symbol itself is the actual

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Speaker 1: structure of mammoth ivory, because when you cut mammoth ivory

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Speaker 1: into cross sections, there's a naturally occurring pattern within the

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Speaker 1: ivory that looks kind of like a swastika. And that

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Speaker 1: could explain very easily why there's variations of the same

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Speaker 1: symbol all over the world. It was people hunting that

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Speaker 1: and other kind of animals with ivory that might make

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Speaker 1: a similar pattern in the cross sections.

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Speaker 5: Wow, that's so cool.

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Speaker 1: That's yeah, I have no idea about this, isn't.

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Speaker 4: That I was thinking of like a collective consciousness, like

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Speaker 4: if we were a little bit far out into like

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Speaker 4: a Youngian universe like these some sort of primordial symbol

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Speaker 4: being expressed in different places. But what you said sounds

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Speaker 4: a little bit more polive.

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Speaker 1: Bunch of a bunch of ladies and dudes fucking around

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Speaker 1: with bones for a.

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Speaker 4: Long time, being like this represents the bones, which represents

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Speaker 4: the animal which I want to eat.

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Speaker 1: So it's everything And again you got to think about

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Speaker 1: like what sort of options people have for entertainment at

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Speaker 1: the time. We often say this, but Bone were the

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Speaker 1: original podcast. Oh yeah, you know it is no yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: just a fact. Yeah, this brings me to our sponsors

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Speaker 1: for this week, Bone Box. Just a lot of Honestly,

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Speaker 1: it's just a bunch of illegal livery. You will get

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Speaker 1: in a lot of trouble if that's catch you ordering.

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Speaker 3: I believe I believe the month first Barbie was carved

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Speaker 3: out of mammoth bone.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, that's absolutely true.

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Speaker 4: We just did a whole episode on Barbie and yeah yeah.

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Speaker 1: By Greta Gerwick. She actually goes back about fifteen thousand

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Speaker 1: years too. People don't know this.

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Speaker 5: She's actually a mortal. Yeah, yes, she continues to prove it.

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Speaker 3: And for those keeping track, it did take us only

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Speaker 3: fifteen minutes to make a Barbie reference.

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Speaker 2: You're welcome, that's right.

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Speaker 5: Right, we know what the people want.

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Speaker 1: The origin of all human culture, So yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: that's really interesting. Rather than kind of have being transferred

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Speaker 1: all obviously, cultural exchange happens too. People take their swastikas

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Speaker 1: and they conquer or move to other parts of the world,

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Speaker 1: and that spreads it as well. It's not just one thing,

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Speaker 1: but it's very likely that multiple different parts of the

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Speaker 1: world kind of arrive at the swastika independently. One noteworthy

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Speaker 1: example of the use of the symbol comes from the

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Speaker 1: Akan people of Ghana, who used it in their gold

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Speaker 1: weights at around fourteen hundred a d. You can find

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Speaker 1: some photos of these online and they look like Nazi gold, right,

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Speaker 1: Like look that you would guess that's probably like some

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Speaker 1: stolen Nazi gold, But these predate the Nazis by you know,

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Speaker 1: five hundred something years. Fascinating, right, so fascinating, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it is kind of we'll be talking about this.

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Speaker 1: But it also the fact that when you see this

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Speaker 1: you immediately are like, oh, that's some stolen Nazi gold

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Speaker 1: does point to how potent the symbol remains as a

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Speaker 1: symbol of evil too, just like because of you know,

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Speaker 1: dem Nazis. But yeah, So in eighteen ninety four, a

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Speaker 1: historian named Thomas Wilson wrote one of the it might

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Speaker 1: have been the first modern histories of the swastika, attempting

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Speaker 1: to use kind of modern historiography and scientific method to

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Speaker 1: determine where it came from. And it was Thomas Wilson,

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Speaker 1: who first made the claim that the swastika was quote

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Speaker 1: probably the first symbol made with definite intention in human history.

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Speaker 1: By this, he means not just a representative image, but

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Speaker 1: one that was passed from person to person, tribe to tribe,

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Speaker 1: and traveled intentionally with meaning intact across cultures. There is

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Speaker 1: no way of proving this, and it seems like Wilson,

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Speaker 1: it's probably fair to say now he was coming on

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Speaker 1: a little strong, but it's not too much to say

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Speaker 1: that the swastika would have been one of the first

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Speaker 1: symbols to spread around the world. And there is some

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Speaker 1: mystery as to why. While these symbols presence in Southeast Asia,

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Speaker 1: Eastern Europe, and North Africa can be explained via the

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Speaker 1: known and documented patterns of trade, really kind of the

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Speaker 1: only way to just like it's also been found as

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about all over the Americas. And

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Speaker 1: this is why I started by talking about that piece

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Speaker 1: of mammoth ivory, because this is really the only explanation,

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Speaker 1: right like there was not people were not like walking

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Speaker 1: from Kiev to or the location of modern day Kiev

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Speaker 1: to North America fifteen thousand years ago. From what we

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Speaker 1: can tell people indigenous people in the Americas who were

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Speaker 1: here much longer than that, we're using swastika's much further

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Speaker 1: back than that. Whenever you talk about kind of the

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Speaker 1: timing here, you know that's a complicated and very politically,

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Speaker 1: shall we say, dicey story. But we do know that

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Speaker 1: swastikas were in use. And I'm going to stop calling

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Speaker 1: them swastikas in a second, because the people of the

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Speaker 1: Americas didn't call them that, But we're in use, particularly

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Speaker 1: in what is now the Americans southwest and West coast,

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Speaker 1: for a very long time. The Navajo people who have

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Speaker 1: for a considerable period of time inhabited a large portion

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Speaker 1: of modern Arizona, New Mexico southern California, have been using

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Speaker 1: the swastika since kind of the prehistoric period, and they

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Speaker 1: called it, and what we'll be calling it when we

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Speaker 1: refer to their use of it, is the whirling log.

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Speaker 1: Right that is the name of the symbol, not just

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Speaker 1: for the Navajo, but for a number of other tribes

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Speaker 1: kind of in that part of the Americas, and it

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Speaker 1: is it is representative. It's called the whirling log because

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Speaker 1: it's representative of a specific story. And without getting into

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Speaker 1: too much detail about spiritual beliefs that are outside of

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Speaker 1: my depth. It's one of these tales where like you've

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Speaker 1: got a heroic character who is forced on a dangerous journey.

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Speaker 1: He receives the aid of gods, gods and spirits and

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Speaker 1: he kind of learns mystic lessons along the way, right,

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Speaker 1: and the whirling log is representative of this story. The

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Speaker 1: Navajo are not the only indigenous people of the Americas

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Speaker 1: to use variants of the whirling log, but they're probably

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Speaker 1: the most well documented ancient American users. We don't know

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Speaker 1: how long the symbol has been in use over here

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Speaker 1: because the primary way in which they used it was

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Speaker 1: for these kind of sand drawings as part of religious rituals.

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Speaker 1: So it was in a way that most of the

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Speaker 1: time when it was used, it was not kind of

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Speaker 1: being preserved long term.

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Speaker 4: Right.

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Speaker 1: They weren't carving it into huge edifices. They were using

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Speaker 1: it for these kind of rituals in which it was

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Speaker 1: not meant to last, right, And it was his story

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Speaker 1: with it.

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Speaker 4: Was it like a way to give a narrative, like

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Speaker 4: that narrative that you just kind of told of a

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Speaker 4: hero's journey, Do you.

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Speaker 1: Know, I think it was it was representative of a

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Speaker 1: specific story that had religious significance for them, and it

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Speaker 1: was also like that kind of it was used in

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Speaker 1: a in a series of rituals that they carried out.

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Speaker 1: That's kind of the extent of I don't want to

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Speaker 1: like get too deep into the ways. I don't want

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Speaker 1: to be a culture that I, you know, is not

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Speaker 1: very far outside of my wheeledhouse. But it was. It

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Speaker 1: was used widely, and it was used widely in a

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Speaker 1: fashion that, like most of the uses, would not have

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Speaker 1: been preserved for long periods of time, because that was

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Speaker 1: not the point of using the symbol. So I want

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Speaker 1: to quote from an article in the Collector's Guide of

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Speaker 1: New Mexico talking about some of the historiography on the

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Speaker 1: use of the whirling log. In his book The Swastika

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Speaker 1: Symbol in Navajo Textiles, Dennis J. Anger cites Thomas Wilson's

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Speaker 1: research in the eighteen nineties that the earliest evidence of

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Speaker 1: the swastika in America was found in excavations in Tennessee

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Speaker 1: and Ohio. That the swastika found its way to the

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Speaker 1: Western hemisphere in prehistoric times cannot be doubted. Anger quotes

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Speaker 1: Wilson's writing one of the specimens shows its antiquity and

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Speaker 1: its manufacture by the Aborigines, untainted by contact with the whites.

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Speaker 1: That's obviously eighteen nineties language here. But it does originate it.

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Speaker 1: You find it in a number of parts of North America.

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Speaker 1: I believe there's evidence of it in South America Iyo, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Ohio and Tennessee. It was a big brass swastika that

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Speaker 1: was found like underground as part of an excavation. And

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Speaker 1: you know, so again, this goes back quite as far

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Speaker 1: as we can tell, like the likeliest I think the

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Speaker 1: likeliest assumption is that it was created, it was developed

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Speaker 1: or whatever independently by people in the Americas, right, which

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Speaker 1: happens with a bunch of stuff, right kind of Famously,

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Speaker 1: the bow and arrow is developed independently by a number

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Speaker 1: of different cultures. You know this, There's no reason why

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Speaker 1: the swastika wouldn't. It's not more complex than a bow

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Speaker 1: and arrow, for sure. But yeah, so I have a.

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Speaker 4: Question really quick, So does that mean there was some

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Speaker 4: sort of like ivory situation happening here.

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Speaker 5: I'm not like very privy to your early animals.

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Speaker 1: You know, there are mammoths in the Americas, so it

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Speaker 1: may have been that it may have just been somebody

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Speaker 1: perhaps perhaps somebody too who was like, you know, utilizing

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Speaker 1: substances as part of a religious ritual, who noticed that,

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Speaker 1: like or who kind of saw maybe it was like

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Speaker 1: the way the clouds were moving around the sun or

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Speaker 1: something that maybe like a spindle whirl, you know. Who

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Speaker 1: knows where it came, like how it first got used,

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Speaker 1: because it's its earliest documented use kind of is outside

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Speaker 1: of the whirling log use that the Navajo are using

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Speaker 1: in the southeast part of the continent, because we're talking

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Speaker 1: about like Tennessee, Ohio. So we probably will never know

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Speaker 1: specifically who had it first in the Americas, but maybe

434
00:22:02,640 --> 00:22:05,680
Speaker 1: even it might have originated in a couple of different

435
00:22:05,840 --> 00:22:09,119
Speaker 1: cultures in the Americas independently. You know, there's no reason

436
00:22:09,160 --> 00:22:13,040
Speaker 1: why that wouldn't have been the case. Now, that book

437
00:22:13,080 --> 00:22:16,440
Speaker 1: I just cited from the swastika symbol in Navajo textiles

438
00:22:16,560 --> 00:22:20,480
Speaker 1: was written in the eighteen nineties, because the swastika happened

439
00:22:20,480 --> 00:22:23,040
Speaker 1: to be a very big topic at just that point

440
00:22:23,119 --> 00:22:27,080
Speaker 1: in time. And this does bring us back to the Nazis.

441
00:22:27,680 --> 00:22:29,720
Speaker 1: It all starts with a very what I would call

442
00:22:29,760 --> 00:22:34,199
Speaker 1: a stupid genius, a guy named Heinrich Schleimann, and Heinrich

443
00:22:34,240 --> 00:22:36,479
Speaker 1: Schleiman is the man who's going to find the ruins

444
00:22:36,480 --> 00:22:40,280
Speaker 1: of Troy, and he's really bad at it. He does

445
00:22:40,359 --> 00:22:42,399
Speaker 1: succeed in finding the ruins of Troy, but he's like

446
00:22:42,440 --> 00:22:44,960
Speaker 1: the worst guy to find the ruins of Troy, such

447
00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:48,560
Speaker 1: an idiot. So Schleman's an interesting character. Thato was born

448
00:22:48,760 --> 00:22:51,679
Speaker 1: December twenty sixth, eighteen twenty two in a town that

449
00:22:51,720 --> 00:22:54,320
Speaker 1: I'm not going to try to pronounce. It's in Germany.

450
00:22:54,440 --> 00:22:57,720
Speaker 1: It's one of those German towns with just a mess

451
00:22:57,760 --> 00:23:00,320
Speaker 1: of a name. He's the fifth of nine chow and

452
00:23:00,320 --> 00:23:02,920
Speaker 1: his dad is a dirt poor pastor. And when Heinrich

453
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:05,679
Speaker 1: is seven, he becomes fascinated with the myth of the

454
00:23:05,720 --> 00:23:09,000
Speaker 1: Trojan War. Now, at that point in time and kind

455
00:23:09,040 --> 00:23:11,720
Speaker 1: of the mid to late eighteen hundreds, when he's going

456
00:23:11,760 --> 00:23:15,560
Speaker 1: to school and whatnot, the Trojan War is seen as

457
00:23:15,880 --> 00:23:20,600
Speaker 1: probably an apocryphal story. Most serious scholars at least don't

458
00:23:20,600 --> 00:23:23,440
Speaker 1: believe that it's a literal story about a literal war

459
00:23:23,520 --> 00:23:27,000
Speaker 1: for Troy. It's kind of more of a mythological tale.

460
00:23:27,400 --> 00:23:29,480
Speaker 1: But he falls in love with this story, and he

461
00:23:29,520 --> 00:23:32,440
Speaker 1: certainly doesn't assume that it's a myth. Like many poor

462
00:23:32,520 --> 00:23:34,760
Speaker 1: kids of his era, he was sent by his father

463
00:23:34,880 --> 00:23:37,040
Speaker 1: to go live and work with a relative. You hear

464
00:23:37,119 --> 00:23:38,800
Speaker 1: this kind of story a lot. We've covered a lot

465
00:23:38,840 --> 00:23:43,480
Speaker 1: of Germans on this show, interestingly enough, and a lot

466
00:23:43,520 --> 00:23:45,240
Speaker 1: of them have a similar background where it's like, we're

467
00:23:45,280 --> 00:23:47,200
Speaker 1: kind of poor my dad's you know, his dad sent

468
00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:49,879
Speaker 1: him off to live with his uncle or whatever, and

469
00:23:49,920 --> 00:23:52,119
Speaker 1: when he's nine, he enrolls in a school where he

470
00:23:52,160 --> 00:23:54,920
Speaker 1: lives away from his family for a couple of years.

471
00:23:55,560 --> 00:23:58,480
Speaker 1: He was a lonely kid. One of the few constants

472
00:23:58,520 --> 00:24:00,960
Speaker 1: in his early life which was difficult was his obsession

473
00:24:01,040 --> 00:24:05,200
Speaker 1: with Greek and Roman mythology. His dad encourages this at first,

474
00:24:05,240 --> 00:24:07,280
Speaker 1: but starts to get worried about it kind of later

475
00:24:07,359 --> 00:24:09,719
Speaker 1: on because Heinrich just doesn't give it up. But then

476
00:24:09,760 --> 00:24:12,840
Speaker 1: his father gets accused of embezzling church funds, which puts

477
00:24:12,840 --> 00:24:16,160
Speaker 1: an end to Heinrich's education and forces him to apprentice

478
00:24:16,160 --> 00:24:19,240
Speaker 1: as a grocer. He would later claim that his love

479
00:24:19,240 --> 00:24:22,000
Speaker 1: of Homer really blossomed while he was walking home from

480
00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:24,560
Speaker 1: work one day and he comes across this drunk guy

481
00:24:24,560 --> 00:24:26,679
Speaker 1: in the street who's just kind of reciting parts of

482
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:30,560
Speaker 1: the odyssey. I don't know why that hit him so hard,

483
00:24:30,600 --> 00:24:33,040
Speaker 1: but it did. And Schleimann spent the next few years

484
00:24:33,080 --> 00:24:36,080
Speaker 1: going through something of an odyssey himself. He lost his

485
00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:39,120
Speaker 1: job after he started coughing up blood randomly one day.

486
00:24:39,200 --> 00:24:42,680
Speaker 1: This is the eighteen hundreds, and yeah, the thing you do,

487
00:24:42,760 --> 00:24:44,439
Speaker 1: and what do you do when you start coughing up

488
00:24:44,440 --> 00:24:47,600
Speaker 1: blood randomly? You get a job as a cabin boy

489
00:24:47,680 --> 00:24:49,720
Speaker 1: on a boat, so that way they can at least

490
00:24:49,720 --> 00:24:53,320
Speaker 1: throw your body overboard when you die. Right, But he

491
00:24:53,359 --> 00:24:55,840
Speaker 1: doesn't die. Even though the boat he's on crashes in

492
00:24:55,880 --> 00:24:59,879
Speaker 1: a storm, he survives and makes it to age twenty two,

493
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:02,800
Speaker 1: which point he gets a gig for an import export firm.

494
00:25:03,359 --> 00:25:06,840
Speaker 1: This is where he's going to actually like shine because

495
00:25:06,880 --> 00:25:11,040
Speaker 1: he has an excellent head for business. He's extremely successful.

496
00:25:11,119 --> 00:25:13,760
Speaker 1: He makes a bunch of money, picks up Dutch in Russian,

497
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:16,400
Speaker 1: and by the time he's like thirty six years old,

498
00:25:16,560 --> 00:25:20,720
Speaker 1: he's rich and respected. And he decides, I'm going to retire. Right,

499
00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:23,359
Speaker 1: I've already stared death in the face a whole bunch

500
00:25:23,359 --> 00:25:26,440
Speaker 1: of times. I'm not working anymore. I'm going to take

501
00:25:26,520 --> 00:25:28,879
Speaker 1: my money and I am going to roll the dice

502
00:25:28,920 --> 00:25:31,800
Speaker 1: on what's always been my life dream, finding the city

503
00:25:31,840 --> 00:25:34,000
Speaker 1: of Troy and proving that it was real. And I

504
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:36,040
Speaker 1: know you're wondering, where do the swastikas come in?

505
00:25:36,119 --> 00:25:36,320
Speaker 4: There?

506
00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:37,720
Speaker 1: There are coming. Don't worry.

507
00:25:38,160 --> 00:25:41,960
Speaker 4: This is like such an interesting midlife crisis that's happening here.

508
00:25:42,119 --> 00:25:43,080
Speaker 1: I'll find the truth.

509
00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:46,600
Speaker 3: I do feel like a lot of mindrayth crisis is

510
00:25:46,680 --> 00:25:49,280
Speaker 3: start with well, I read the Odyssey, like I do

511
00:25:49,359 --> 00:25:52,240
Speaker 3: feel like that is that is usually in the.

512
00:25:52,200 --> 00:25:56,040
Speaker 1: Organ you know, the uh Well, nowadays I think the

513
00:25:56,040 --> 00:25:59,840
Speaker 1: equivalent of that is reading American Psycho for for middle

514
00:25:59,840 --> 00:26:02,399
Speaker 1: A businessmen. But back in the day, it was the

515
00:26:02,400 --> 00:26:08,800
Speaker 1: Odyssey the American Psycho of the Old World. Yeah, we

516
00:26:08,840 --> 00:26:11,399
Speaker 1: all remember that moment where Odysseus is talking with the

517
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:19,479
Speaker 1: other Greeks about his business cards. Okay, So, as I

518
00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:22,040
Speaker 1: noted earlier, there was tremendous debate in the day as

519
00:26:22,080 --> 00:26:25,080
Speaker 1: to whether or not any city such as Troy had

520
00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:28,399
Speaker 1: ever existed. Now, since ancient times, there had been a

521
00:26:28,480 --> 00:26:32,119
Speaker 1: general area in Anatolia, which today is just kind of

522
00:26:32,160 --> 00:26:34,800
Speaker 1: like we call Turkey, but that's like the name for

523
00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:39,800
Speaker 1: the geographical region, and that area called there was a

524
00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:43,400
Speaker 1: part of anatolia called the Troad that had been in

525
00:26:43,440 --> 00:26:45,960
Speaker 1: like ancient times when the Romans are running shit. This

526
00:26:46,080 --> 00:26:48,920
Speaker 1: is where everyone had just like said, Troy had been.

527
00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:52,800
Speaker 1: And this is kind of one of the first, one

528
00:26:52,800 --> 00:26:55,359
Speaker 1: of the first like pieces of nerd culture, right, because

529
00:26:55,520 --> 00:27:01,320
Speaker 1: Western nerd culture really starts with the Ily in the Odyssey. Right,

530
00:27:01,359 --> 00:27:04,160
Speaker 1: So in ancient Roman days, we're talking two thousand years ago,

531
00:27:04,680 --> 00:27:07,439
Speaker 1: rich nerds are like traveling to the Troad to like

532
00:27:07,920 --> 00:27:11,040
Speaker 1: visit the sites that they think the Iliad took place in, right,

533
00:27:11,119 --> 00:27:13,840
Speaker 1: Like they're probably dressing up as like Hector and Achilles,

534
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:17,600
Speaker 1: you know that. Yeah, Yeah, that's the birth of nerd

535
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:23,280
Speaker 1: culture right there. Anyway, whatever, there's no evidence. Again, there

536
00:27:23,359 --> 00:27:25,760
Speaker 1: was not hard evidence that the city of Troy had

537
00:27:25,800 --> 00:27:29,520
Speaker 1: been there. It's just the place people had gone to. Schleiman, though,

538
00:27:29,920 --> 00:27:32,520
Speaker 1: was certain that it was real and certain that the Troad,

539
00:27:32,680 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 1: somewhere in there was the actual ruins of Troy. Since

540
00:27:36,080 --> 00:27:38,520
Speaker 1: he had money and time, he decided to travel to

541
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:40,840
Speaker 1: the likeliest spot and dig the fucker up.

542
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:45,160
Speaker 3: Literally, like that guy to our signo, bro, it happened,

543
00:27:45,800 --> 00:27:47,840
Speaker 3: I was there that guy.

544
00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:50,960
Speaker 5: So did he show up with a shovel. Yeah, yeah,

545
00:27:50,960 --> 00:27:51,880
Speaker 5: I'm talking to team.

546
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:54,520
Speaker 1: Do we have a tea sho He shows up with boys, right,

547
00:27:54,680 --> 00:27:57,360
Speaker 1: like he hires boys to do the diggings.

548
00:27:57,400 --> 00:27:58,159
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what he.

549
00:27:58,160 --> 00:28:00,000
Speaker 5: Did back then, Hire a bunch of boys.

550
00:27:59,760 --> 00:28:02,520
Speaker 1: That's yeah. Everyone's talking to day about how we've just

551
00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 1: developed a new semiconductor. We need to return to tradition.

552
00:28:05,800 --> 00:28:09,200
Speaker 1: Just boys and shovels, you know. That was That's what

553
00:28:09,200 --> 00:28:13,280
Speaker 1: what built civilization is groups of boys with shovels, paid

554
00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:15,439
Speaker 1: pennies a day. That's what we need to go back to.

555
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:19,040
Speaker 1: I just rewatched the Inana Jones movie, so im.

556
00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:22,360
Speaker 2: I was like, what is in your brain right now?

557
00:28:27,000 --> 00:28:29,879
Speaker 1: So he gets his boys and he shows up at

558
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:32,440
Speaker 1: the Troad and I'm going to quote for what comes

559
00:28:32,480 --> 00:28:36,480
Speaker 1: next from a write up by archaeologists for the British Museum.

560
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:40,280
Speaker 1: Frank Calvert lived in the Troad, an owned land next

561
00:28:40,280 --> 00:28:43,560
Speaker 1: to the mound of Hissarlik. An amateur but skilled archaeologist,

562
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:45,680
Speaker 1: he was convinced that this would be a good place

563
00:28:45,720 --> 00:28:48,360
Speaker 1: to dig, so when Shleeman visited in eighteen sixty eight

564
00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:50,440
Speaker 1: with homer in one hand and a spade in the other,

565
00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:53,560
Speaker 1: determined to make his name in archaeology. Calvert found him

566
00:28:53,560 --> 00:28:58,040
Speaker 1: easy to persuade. Now, this is a time when Calvert,

567
00:28:58,200 --> 00:29:01,240
Speaker 1: you know, kind of convinced is Shleman that like he's

568
00:29:01,240 --> 00:29:03,080
Speaker 1: got a spot to dig that he thinks is where

569
00:29:03,120 --> 00:29:05,160
Speaker 1: Troy is. This is a period of time where the

570
00:29:05,200 --> 00:29:07,760
Speaker 1: Ottoman Empire, which governs the area is kind of the

571
00:29:07,840 --> 00:29:11,000
Speaker 1: sick man of Europe, and so it's it's a great

572
00:29:11,040 --> 00:29:13,400
Speaker 1: place to be a rich guy who wants to like

573
00:29:13,440 --> 00:29:17,280
Speaker 1: pay to fuck around. Because normally most countries, if you're like,

574
00:29:17,320 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 1: I want to dig up one of your like historical

575
00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:22,760
Speaker 1: landmarks just to see what's under there, they'd be like, well, no,

576
00:29:23,160 --> 00:29:25,880
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to do that. But Shleman is kind

577
00:29:25,880 --> 00:29:28,840
Speaker 1: of just able to bribe his way into things. It's

578
00:29:28,920 --> 00:29:32,160
Speaker 1: a little bit messier of a period of time, and

579
00:29:32,320 --> 00:29:37,000
Speaker 1: shockingly Calvert was right. He picks the right area. He does,

580
00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:40,440
Speaker 1: in fact know where the ruins of Troy are, but

581
00:29:40,520 --> 00:29:44,120
Speaker 1: it's not immediately obvious. They start finding like ruins and

582
00:29:45,240 --> 00:29:47,959
Speaker 1: shit aphemera, but it's not obvious to them because they

583
00:29:47,960 --> 00:29:50,720
Speaker 1: don't really know what they're doing that these are ruins

584
00:29:50,760 --> 00:29:53,720
Speaker 1: of Troy that they found. They're just kind of coming

585
00:29:53,720 --> 00:29:56,880
Speaker 1: across pieces of pottery, old bits of buildings. But in

586
00:29:57,240 --> 00:30:00,560
Speaker 1: Shleiman's mind, Troy is this like wealthy city and everything's

587
00:30:00,600 --> 00:30:03,440
Speaker 1: plated in gold and colorful, and they're just finding like

588
00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:06,440
Speaker 1: old crap because like that's what everything old looks like.

589
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:08,280
Speaker 1: Unless you really know what you're looking at, it's just

590
00:30:08,320 --> 00:30:09,520
Speaker 1: like junk most of the.

591
00:30:09,480 --> 00:30:11,520
Speaker 2: Time, right, looking for a brad Pitt.

592
00:30:12,560 --> 00:30:14,600
Speaker 1: He was looking for Brad Pitt in there. You know,

593
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:19,080
Speaker 1: he is expecting something glorious and impressive. And obviously, again

594
00:30:19,120 --> 00:30:20,840
Speaker 1: this is kind of a logical because if you even

595
00:30:20,840 --> 00:30:24,920
Speaker 1: if you take the story in the Iliad as literal, like, well,

596
00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:26,880
Speaker 1: the Greek sacked it, right, they wouldn't have left the

597
00:30:26,920 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 1: good shit. It's just gonna be junk that's left behind

598
00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:34,200
Speaker 1: after they kill everybody. So they dig past what they

599
00:30:34,240 --> 00:30:36,080
Speaker 1: think of as the crap. They keep going deeper, and

600
00:30:36,080 --> 00:30:37,680
Speaker 1: they keep going deeper. And I'm gonna quote from the

601
00:30:37,680 --> 00:30:42,320
Speaker 1: Smithsonian magazine now, as after his first excavation season failed

602
00:30:42,360 --> 00:30:45,680
Speaker 1: to yield promising results, Schleiman adopted a new tactic, instructing

603
00:30:45,680 --> 00:30:48,520
Speaker 1: his team to dig an enormous forty five foot deep trench.

604
00:30:48,880 --> 00:30:52,560
Speaker 1: His methods a note Jill Rubikalba and Eric H. Klein

605
00:30:52,640 --> 00:30:55,640
Speaker 1: and digging for Troy from Homer to Hissarlik were savage

606
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:58,400
Speaker 1: and brutal, even by the standards of the nineteenth century.

607
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:01,200
Speaker 1: The authors add, he plowed through layers of soil and

608
00:31:01,280 --> 00:31:04,760
Speaker 1: everything in them without proper record keeping, no mapping of finds,

609
00:31:04,800 --> 00:31:09,800
Speaker 1: few descriptions of discoveries. So he finds Troy, but he

610
00:31:09,920 --> 00:31:13,600
Speaker 1: digs past it and destroys most of the ruins of Troy,

611
00:31:13,680 --> 00:31:16,240
Speaker 1: or at least a lot of them, until he finds

612
00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 1: some gold that he decides must have belonged to the

613
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:22,480
Speaker 1: famous king Priam. Archaeologists will later prove it's way older

614
00:31:22,520 --> 00:31:24,760
Speaker 1: than that. Like, he did find some cool looking gold shit,

615
00:31:24,800 --> 00:31:28,200
Speaker 1: but it is not from fucking Priam, and he he

616
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:31,680
Speaker 1: obliterates most of the actual traces of historic Troy because

617
00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:34,360
Speaker 1: Schliemann is kind of a we aboo, right, Like he's

618
00:31:34,360 --> 00:31:39,960
Speaker 1: a Homer we aboo right. Anyway, very funny story. How

619
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:43,080
Speaker 1: this relates back to our premise today is that one

620
00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:45,800
Speaker 1: of the clear discoveries that Heinrich did make was he

621
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:49,360
Speaker 1: finds a bunch of pottery in this mound, adorned with

622
00:31:49,440 --> 00:31:54,680
Speaker 1: a fascinating symbol, the swastika. Now at this point people

623
00:31:54,760 --> 00:31:57,160
Speaker 1: knew the swastika is in use. Not only are the

624
00:31:57,560 --> 00:31:59,520
Speaker 1: you know, the Navajo and other peoples in the Southwest

625
00:31:59,560 --> 00:32:02,760
Speaker 1: using it, but it's in use all over you know,

626
00:32:02,880 --> 00:32:06,640
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia, right. It is a religious symbol for Hindu people,

627
00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:09,280
Speaker 1: it's a religious symbol for Buddhist people. You find it

628
00:32:09,320 --> 00:32:11,600
Speaker 1: all over stuff in China. It's a very common symbol

629
00:32:11,640 --> 00:32:16,080
Speaker 1: in China as well, not just for Buddhists. So this

630
00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:18,760
Speaker 1: is kind of and the reason why this sort of

631
00:32:18,760 --> 00:32:21,720
Speaker 1: electrifies people is that when you're talking about the late

632
00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:24,080
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, you know, think back to the episodes we've

633
00:32:24,120 --> 00:32:27,600
Speaker 1: done on Helena Blovatsky and stuff. This is the origins

634
00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:29,920
Speaker 1: of the stuff that's going to become Nazi race science

635
00:32:29,960 --> 00:32:33,840
Speaker 1: people are already talking about Aryans. They're talking about this

636
00:32:33,960 --> 00:32:38,959
Speaker 1: kind of mythical precursor civilization that they believe seeded, you know,

637
00:32:39,120 --> 00:32:42,800
Speaker 1: high civilization around the world that presumably to a lot

638
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:46,920
Speaker 1: of Europeans is like white, right, Like that's a big

639
00:32:47,040 --> 00:32:50,600
Speaker 1: like belief at the time. And we know that like

640
00:32:50,680 --> 00:32:53,360
Speaker 1: these Indo Aryan people that kind of start off in

641
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 1: the Indus Valley have traveled around like up in through

642
00:32:58,480 --> 00:33:01,800
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia, up through like modern day Russia and into Europe.

643
00:33:02,360 --> 00:33:06,479
Speaker 1: And the fact that they find swastikas in these ruins

644
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:09,800
Speaker 1: of Troy is kind of evidence of this root race,

645
00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:13,680
Speaker 1: this precursor Aryan people. Right, That's how it gets interpreted

646
00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:15,720
Speaker 1: by a lot of folks at the time. Right, this

647
00:33:15,880 --> 00:33:18,480
Speaker 1: is proof of these theories that are starting to gain

648
00:33:18,520 --> 00:33:22,600
Speaker 1: a lot of purchase among chunks of European society. Schleeman

649
00:33:22,760 --> 00:33:26,080
Speaker 1: is fascinated by the swastika, and he continues, you know,

650
00:33:26,120 --> 00:33:28,080
Speaker 1: it's a big deal when he finds what he thinks

651
00:33:28,120 --> 00:33:30,560
Speaker 1: is Troy, that we now know is something else. But

652
00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:34,240
Speaker 1: he keeps doing archaeology around the world, often illegal archaeology,

653
00:33:34,400 --> 00:33:38,480
Speaker 1: generally bad archaeology. But because a lot of people had

654
00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:40,200
Speaker 1: not been digging in the place as he was, he

655
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:42,120
Speaker 1: also does find a lot of shit. And some of

656
00:33:42,120 --> 00:33:45,040
Speaker 1: the shit he finds is that he keeps finding swastikas

657
00:33:45,080 --> 00:33:48,120
Speaker 1: on stuff. Right. He would later decide that the swastika

658
00:33:48,120 --> 00:33:52,800
Speaker 1: because he finds a bunch of swastikas in like old Jewish,

659
00:33:52,920 --> 00:33:56,880
Speaker 1: like religious icons and like temples and stuff. He decides

660
00:33:56,920 --> 00:33:59,840
Speaker 1: that it's related to the Hebrew letter Tau, which is

661
00:33:59,840 --> 00:34:03,080
Speaker 1: the sign of life and was ritualistically drawn on the

662
00:34:03,120 --> 00:34:07,520
Speaker 1: foreheads of believers, which incidentally is how Charles Manson would

663
00:34:07,560 --> 00:34:10,160
Speaker 1: later explain why he put a swastika on his forehead.

664
00:34:11,160 --> 00:34:14,560
Speaker 1: Now note that I said how Manson explained, not why

665
00:34:14,600 --> 00:34:16,680
Speaker 1: he actually did it. But that is there. Manson is

666
00:34:17,640 --> 00:34:21,359
Speaker 1: where like Manson is reading this kind of stuff decades later, right,

667
00:34:21,400 --> 00:34:24,080
Speaker 1: because it's still relevant and sort of weird fringe occult

668
00:34:24,560 --> 00:34:29,920
Speaker 1: communities and whatnot. Speaking of Charles Manson, why you know,

669
00:34:29,960 --> 00:34:32,360
Speaker 1: who would have been a lot better at running a cult?

670
00:34:33,520 --> 00:34:35,320
Speaker 1: Who's that our sponsors?

671
00:34:35,719 --> 00:34:37,359
Speaker 5: Oh?

672
00:34:37,440 --> 00:34:41,680
Speaker 1: Yeah's easily easily, of course. Yeah, in a way, we're

673
00:34:41,680 --> 00:34:52,399
Speaker 1: all in that cult already, and we're back and we're

674
00:34:52,440 --> 00:34:58,680
Speaker 1: talking about our wonderful sponsors who something something helter skelter whatever.

675
00:34:58,760 --> 00:35:05,200
Speaker 1: Let's continue with the episode. Schleiman's findings of the swastika

676
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:08,440
Speaker 1: are read attentively by growing communities of Aryan nerds, these

677
00:35:08,520 --> 00:35:12,880
Speaker 1: kind of proto Nazis, and anthropologist Gwendolin Lake will later write, quote,

678
00:35:13,040 --> 00:35:17,080
Speaker 1: when Heinrich Schleiman discovered swastika like decorations on pottery fragments

679
00:35:17,080 --> 00:35:19,839
Speaker 1: and all archaeological levels at Troy, it was seen as

680
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:23,040
Speaker 1: evidence for a racial continuity and proof that the inhabitants

681
00:35:23,040 --> 00:35:25,680
Speaker 1: of the site had been Aryan all along. The link

682
00:35:25,680 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 1: between the swastika and Indo European origin, once forged, was

683
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:32,800
Speaker 1: impossible to discard. It allowed the projection of nationalist feelings

684
00:35:32,800 --> 00:35:36,359
Speaker 1: and associations onto a universal symbol which hint served as

685
00:35:36,360 --> 00:35:39,919
Speaker 1: a distinguishing boundary marker between non Aryan, or rather non

686
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:43,479
Speaker 1: German and German identity. So this is going to take off,

687
00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:47,600
Speaker 1: particularly among the Germans right, which are just starting to

688
00:35:47,600 --> 00:35:50,719
Speaker 1: be a thing. You know, he's in Troy eighteen sixty eight.

689
00:35:51,160 --> 00:35:55,840
Speaker 1: Germany gets invented two years later, right, Maybe I don't know,

690
00:35:56,640 --> 00:35:59,080
Speaker 1: we could have just done Belgium too, and probably saved

691
00:35:59,080 --> 00:36:01,959
Speaker 1: ourselves a lot of trouble. But you know, whatever would

692
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:05,840
Speaker 1: have been nice would have been nice. So the growing

693
00:36:05,880 --> 00:36:09,680
Speaker 1: swastika craze among European intellectual weirdos and Americans who are

694
00:36:09,719 --> 00:36:14,160
Speaker 1: themselves weird fanboys of European intellectual weirdos leads us right

695
00:36:14,239 --> 00:36:18,120
Speaker 1: back to the Navajo. Now, up until the late eighteen hundreds,

696
00:36:18,160 --> 00:36:21,400
Speaker 1: the swastika or the whirling log in this context was

697
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:24,720
Speaker 1: used only in religious ceremonies by at least by by

698
00:36:24,800 --> 00:36:28,600
Speaker 1: the Navajo and other peoples in the Southwest, primarily like

699
00:36:28,680 --> 00:36:32,360
Speaker 1: sand paintings. But there's these two Americans who start opening

700
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:37,000
Speaker 1: like Caucasian Americans who start opening trading posts in Navajo Territory.

701
00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:39,719
Speaker 1: And these guys names are Lorenzo Hubble and JB. Moore,

702
00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:44,480
Speaker 1: And they're aware of the swastika craze that's sweeping across

703
00:36:44,520 --> 00:36:46,840
Speaker 1: Europe as a result of Schleiman's work, and they start

704
00:36:47,320 --> 00:36:50,000
Speaker 1: they become aware of the fact that the whirling log

705
00:36:50,600 --> 00:36:53,799
Speaker 1: is in use throughout the Southwest. Now, another thing that's

706
00:36:53,840 --> 00:36:57,680
Speaker 1: happening at this time is that the quote unquote West,

707
00:36:57,960 --> 00:37:00,160
Speaker 1: you know, in that sort of conception of life like

708
00:37:00,200 --> 00:37:04,480
Speaker 1: the Wild West whatever, which is obviously flawed at inaccurate

709
00:37:04,520 --> 00:37:07,360
Speaker 1: historical conception, but it is a popular conception in the

710
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:10,240
Speaker 1: minds of a lot of Americans, particularly in the East Coast,

711
00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:14,799
Speaker 1: has ignited a craze for all things Native American. Right,

712
00:37:15,520 --> 00:37:18,560
Speaker 1: both Americans and the coasts are kind of obsessing over

713
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:25,120
Speaker 1: generally inaccurate stories and pieces of you iconography, items that

714
00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:27,759
Speaker 1: had been owned or made by Native Americans. And this

715
00:37:27,840 --> 00:37:29,840
Speaker 1: is also a huge deal over in Europe.

716
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:30,040
Speaker 4: Right.

717
00:37:30,120 --> 00:37:31,799
Speaker 1: A lot of this is centered around these kind of

718
00:37:31,800 --> 00:37:35,040
Speaker 1: noble savage depictions of indigenous peoples in fiction like the

719
00:37:35,080 --> 00:37:38,520
Speaker 1: books of Carl May, which inspire Hitler to a significant degree,

720
00:37:39,440 --> 00:37:41,560
Speaker 1: and to hubbl and more, the fact that all this

721
00:37:41,600 --> 00:37:45,000
Speaker 1: is happening at the same time represents a clear opportunity

722
00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:46,160
Speaker 1: for profit. Right.

723
00:37:46,560 --> 00:37:48,880
Speaker 4: Oh, and also that's when the wild West shows are happening,

724
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:52,280
Speaker 4: right exactly, Yes, Buffalo Bill's Wild West shows.

725
00:37:52,480 --> 00:37:54,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, so all of this is kind of happening at

726
00:37:54,400 --> 00:37:58,600
Speaker 1: the same time. And Hubblan Moore notice this. They want

727
00:37:58,600 --> 00:38:01,920
Speaker 1: to take advantage in sell art that's being made by

728
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:06,120
Speaker 1: by Navajo, particularly by Navajo silversmiths, and silversmithing is like

729
00:38:06,560 --> 00:38:08,960
Speaker 1: a really significant thing. I mean, it has a lot

730
00:38:08,960 --> 00:38:11,200
Speaker 1: to do with the survival of the Navajo people. There's

731
00:38:11,239 --> 00:38:13,480
Speaker 1: a very good book about this called The Counterfeiters of

732
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:18,880
Speaker 1: Bosque Redondo. Fascinating book, really interesting piece of history about

733
00:38:18,920 --> 00:38:22,520
Speaker 1: how effectively the Navajo averted a genocide that was, you know,

734
00:38:22,560 --> 00:38:26,240
Speaker 1: being carried out by the United States. Really interesting story.

735
00:38:26,880 --> 00:38:29,320
Speaker 1: But anyway, there's a lot of like really good silver

736
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:32,239
Speaker 1: products being made and there's tremendous demand for them, particularly

737
00:38:32,280 --> 00:38:34,440
Speaker 1: over in the cities of the East Coast and in Europe,

738
00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:37,600
Speaker 1: and win Hubble and Moore, see that the swastika is,

739
00:38:37,920 --> 00:38:40,920
Speaker 1: you know, or in this case, the whirling log is

740
00:38:40,960 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 1: a simple in use here. They're like, you guys, got

741
00:38:43,200 --> 00:38:46,000
Speaker 1: to start putting that on some of this silver stuff

742
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:48,439
Speaker 1: and some of this other artwork that you're putting out,

743
00:38:48,640 --> 00:38:51,720
Speaker 1: because that shit'll sell. People love the like white people

744
00:38:51,800 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 1: love swastikas, right now, you got to start making this

745
00:38:55,160 --> 00:38:59,239
Speaker 1: on stuff, right and so yeah, and again a lot

746
00:38:59,280 --> 00:39:01,000
Speaker 1: of the stuff that's been made is being made by

747
00:39:01,040 --> 00:39:05,080
Speaker 1: folks in the area, like Pueblo people, but it all

748
00:39:05,160 --> 00:39:08,160
Speaker 1: kind of gets marketed as like you know, a specific

749
00:39:08,200 --> 00:39:10,640
Speaker 1: you know, these are you know, Navajo relics and whatnot

750
00:39:10,719 --> 00:39:12,720
Speaker 1: that we're selling to you in New York or whatever.

751
00:39:13,400 --> 00:39:16,839
Speaker 1: And the two most popular motifs in the artwork that's

752
00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:20,239
Speaker 1: being taken from the south West and sold over in

753
00:39:20,280 --> 00:39:23,879
Speaker 1: the cities of the East coasts are Indian heads and swastikas.

754
00:39:23,920 --> 00:39:26,200
Speaker 1: Those are the two like things that that white people

755
00:39:26,280 --> 00:39:27,880
Speaker 1: want to buy when they're buying this stuff.

756
00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:31,520
Speaker 5: Yeah, no idea, Yeah, I had no idea.

757
00:39:32,400 --> 00:39:35,560
Speaker 1: Klein, who has written a book on Navajo spoons Silver

758
00:39:35,600 --> 00:39:38,000
Speaker 1: Spoons to be published by the Museum of New Mexico

759
00:39:38,120 --> 00:39:40,960
Speaker 1: Press or that was published by the Museum of New Mexico.

760
00:39:41,000 --> 00:39:44,160
Speaker 1: Press noted that the first spoon that she had located

761
00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:47,319
Speaker 1: with both a swastika and an engraved date coincided with

762
00:39:47,360 --> 00:39:50,520
Speaker 1: the opening of the Saint Louis Exposition in nineteen oh four.

763
00:39:50,960 --> 00:39:53,239
Speaker 1: The item was years made years earlier, probably in the

764
00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:58,000
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds, but like like that's where it was sold,

765
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:00,000
Speaker 1: so probably it was made and then it got stamped

766
00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:02,000
Speaker 1: with a date later on so it could be sold

767
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:04,279
Speaker 1: at this big expo where there's a ton of tourists, right,

768
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:07,960
Speaker 1: presumably Europeans who are coming over to the Americas for

769
00:40:08,080 --> 00:40:11,319
Speaker 1: this World's Fair, and they want to buy something that's

770
00:40:11,440 --> 00:40:14,640
Speaker 1: like native American, right, because that's a craze over in Europe,

771
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:17,879
Speaker 1: and the people selling this stuff know that, like, well,

772
00:40:17,880 --> 00:40:20,600
Speaker 1: Europeans love them some swastikas, they're all they can't shut

773
00:40:20,680 --> 00:40:22,560
Speaker 1: up about it. So let's get some of that shit

774
00:40:22,600 --> 00:40:24,360
Speaker 1: out and let's put it on the fucking table.

775
00:40:24,520 --> 00:40:24,719
Speaker 4: Right.

776
00:40:25,120 --> 00:40:27,840
Speaker 1: So these two guys that I was talking about start

777
00:40:27,920 --> 00:40:32,719
Speaker 1: a commercial spoon company manufacturing quote unquote Navajo spoons as

778
00:40:32,760 --> 00:40:35,600
Speaker 1: mementos of the fair. These are just generally mass produced

779
00:40:35,640 --> 00:40:38,640
Speaker 1: spoons that have absolutely nothing to do with indigenous people,

780
00:40:38,640 --> 00:40:42,360
Speaker 1: but like they're lying, you know. In nineteen oh six,

781
00:40:42,440 --> 00:40:46,799
Speaker 1: More starts offering swastika spoons in his catalog, and by

782
00:40:46,840 --> 00:40:49,480
Speaker 1: the time the spoon craze dies out, and around nineteen fifteen,

783
00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:52,360
Speaker 1: as Klan writes, quote, you had so many stamps and

784
00:40:52,440 --> 00:40:55,720
Speaker 1: dies with swastikas that the symbol appears on bracelets, sides

785
00:40:55,760 --> 00:40:59,160
Speaker 1: of rings, ash trays, salt sellers. Any silver stamped item

786
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:03,600
Speaker 1: was fair game for the swastika camp. And again this

787
00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 1: is the like yeah, uh uh yeah, that's so, that's

788
00:41:08,719 --> 00:41:13,360
Speaker 1: that's kind of how the swastika becomes a big popular

789
00:41:13,480 --> 00:41:18,920
Speaker 1: thing in the Americas as like an actual uh chashki, right,

790
00:41:19,040 --> 00:41:21,400
Speaker 1: Like that's how it's this sacred symbol that's used in

791
00:41:21,440 --> 00:41:25,320
Speaker 1: religious observances. And then Americans are like, see what's happening

792
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:28,720
Speaker 1: with Schleimann, see this kind of craze over Native American products,

793
00:41:28,719 --> 00:41:31,160
Speaker 1: and are like, well, let's just fucking take this shit

794
00:41:31,239 --> 00:41:33,719
Speaker 1: and sell it at world's fairs and stuff. What's capitalize

795
00:41:33,760 --> 00:41:35,640
Speaker 1: on this baby, you know, that's what we fucking do.

796
00:41:36,160 --> 00:41:39,920
Speaker 4: And so those like Americans were already kind of soaked

797
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:42,440
Speaker 4: in this symbol. I guess everywhere like a w A

798
00:41:42,520 --> 00:41:44,319
Speaker 4: dummy JD bracelets.

799
00:41:44,440 --> 00:41:48,760
Speaker 1: Well, that is actually exactly how ubiquitous it becomes. Yeah,

800
00:41:48,800 --> 00:41:51,759
Speaker 1: so this is the growth of the swastika obsession in

801
00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:54,799
Speaker 1: the United States. And again, the actual symbol as it's

802
00:41:54,800 --> 00:41:57,319
Speaker 1: being used by Indigenous Americans or at least you know,

803
00:41:57,760 --> 00:42:00,400
Speaker 1: the group that it's being claimed to be made from,

804
00:42:00,760 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 1: is the whirling log But I'm saying swasti swastika because

805
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:07,000
Speaker 1: that is what Americans are calling it, and they're specifically

806
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:11,040
Speaker 1: thinking about the quote unquote aryan swastikas that Schleiman has found.

807
00:42:11,120 --> 00:42:11,279
Speaker 3: Right.

808
00:42:13,080 --> 00:42:16,920
Speaker 1: So, in Europe, obviously the anti Semitic rite, which is

809
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:20,560
Speaker 1: a growing power, is using the swastika and adopting it

810
00:42:20,600 --> 00:42:23,360
Speaker 1: as kind of a symbol, but it's still not exclusive

811
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:25,840
Speaker 1: to it there. And in the United States it becomes

812
00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:28,760
Speaker 1: very quickly divorced from any real meaning at all beyond

813
00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:33,160
Speaker 1: good luck or general good vibes. Through the early nineteen hundreds,

814
00:42:33,200 --> 00:42:36,160
Speaker 1: it starts to become one of the most ubiquitous symbols

815
00:42:36,239 --> 00:42:39,239
Speaker 1: from marketing and product logos in the country. If I

816
00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:42,479
Speaker 1: could compare the swastika in the Americas in the early

817
00:42:42,560 --> 00:42:45,520
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds to any modern symbol. It would probably be

818
00:42:45,560 --> 00:42:47,840
Speaker 1: the peace sign like it is used. Think about like

819
00:42:47,880 --> 00:42:49,840
Speaker 1: a peace sign on a can of Arizona iced t

820
00:42:50,440 --> 00:42:53,560
Speaker 1: That's how they use the swastika in this period of time.

821
00:42:54,520 --> 00:42:57,360
Speaker 1: And again, some Americans, particularly in the cities, would be

822
00:42:57,440 --> 00:42:59,920
Speaker 1: familiar with it as an aryan symbol. Many of the

823
00:43:00,080 --> 00:43:02,600
Speaker 1: would have seen it in purported Indian artwork, you know,

824
00:43:02,680 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 1: spoons and the like. But they also wouldn't have looked

825
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:08,279
Speaker 1: askance at seeing a swastika printed on the label of

826
00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:11,400
Speaker 1: a cigar, which happened regularly, or on a color for

827
00:43:11,480 --> 00:43:14,520
Speaker 1: a ad for Coca Cola, who used the swastika freely

828
00:43:14,600 --> 00:43:19,000
Speaker 1: in both print ads and decorative chatch games. Oh yeah,

829
00:43:19,120 --> 00:43:23,680
Speaker 1: this actually, this causes a problem last year because there's

830
00:43:23,719 --> 00:43:26,000
Speaker 1: this guy in Chattanooga with a metal detector who's just

831
00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:28,200
Speaker 1: kind of like walking around the woods or whatever, and

832
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:31,160
Speaker 1: he finds an old metal swastika with a Coca Cola

833
00:43:31,200 --> 00:43:34,680
Speaker 1: logo on it. Wow, advertising bottles for just five cents.

834
00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:38,759
Speaker 1: And Sophie's going to show you this this Coca gar I.

835
00:43:38,800 --> 00:43:40,359
Speaker 2: Like can't speak what.

836
00:43:42,320 --> 00:43:46,680
Speaker 4: It's a bottle opener too.

837
00:43:46,680 --> 00:43:47,880
Speaker 5: Hook on there to models.

838
00:43:47,880 --> 00:43:51,719
Speaker 4: That is so wild, And of course I imagine that

839
00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:55,040
Speaker 4: people did not know the full context of this item

840
00:43:55,120 --> 00:43:56,800
Speaker 4: when it was put onto the internet.

841
00:43:57,680 --> 00:44:01,879
Speaker 3: If this wasn't equated to Nazis, what a very cool

842
00:44:01,920 --> 00:44:02,560
Speaker 3: looking thing.

843
00:44:04,160 --> 00:44:07,279
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well yeah, I mean again, it's hard to

844
00:44:07,360 --> 00:44:10,440
Speaker 1: imagine if the Nazis hadn't come along and used it.

845
00:44:10,480 --> 00:44:13,319
Speaker 1: But like, there's an alternate reality in which there's just

846
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 1: swastikas all over the place. People are like fucking Jim Bros.

847
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:19,160
Speaker 1: Are getting tattooed with them and not as a Nazi thing.

848
00:44:19,239 --> 00:44:21,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, this does explain the ending of mad men like

849
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:22,359
Speaker 3: a lot.

850
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:27,560
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Carlsburg used it on their beer bottles, and

851
00:44:27,640 --> 00:44:29,840
Speaker 1: the Boy Scouts take it up as one of their symbols.

852
00:44:30,080 --> 00:44:32,560
Speaker 1: And I'm going to quote now from a book by

853
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:35,400
Speaker 1: a guy named Stephen Heller, who writes an excellent, excellent

854
00:44:35,480 --> 00:44:37,280
Speaker 1: history book about the swastika's origin.

855
00:44:37,600 --> 00:44:38,040
Speaker 3: Quote.

856
00:44:38,320 --> 00:44:41,399
Speaker 1: The Boy Scouts established an Order of the White Swastika

857
00:44:41,400 --> 00:44:45,240
Speaker 1: in Portsmouth, Ohio, Camp Russell, New York, and Saint Joseph, Missouri.

858
00:44:45,480 --> 00:44:48,760
Speaker 1: Over the course of twelve weekends, Scouts completed twelve different skills.

859
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:52,760
Speaker 1: Boys who fulfilled their tasks received a white Swastika badge.

860
00:44:53,040 --> 00:44:56,720
Speaker 1: I'm going I guess the value of that dropped real precipitously.

861
00:44:56,840 --> 00:45:03,160
Speaker 1: In the mid thirties, Wow, the Girls Club of America

862
00:45:03,200 --> 00:45:06,480
Speaker 1: also took up the symbol, and they named their popular

863
00:45:06,600 --> 00:45:11,520
Speaker 1: magazine the Swastika. That was the Girls Club's official magazine.

864
00:45:11,520 --> 00:45:15,880
Speaker 1: From nineteen fourteen to nineteen eighteen, Every Girls Club member

865
00:45:16,080 --> 00:45:19,640
Speaker 1: would receive a colorful magazine studded with the future symbol

866
00:45:19,640 --> 00:45:22,680
Speaker 1: of the Third Reich. Members would save for weeks in

867
00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:25,040
Speaker 1: order to be able to afford the club's most coveted

868
00:45:25,040 --> 00:45:28,959
Speaker 1: piece of merch, a diamond covered swastika pin. One add

869
00:45:29,040 --> 00:45:33,440
Speaker 1: cheerfully proclaims what every girl wants her own swastika.

870
00:45:35,040 --> 00:45:38,520
Speaker 5: God.

871
00:45:39,200 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 1: Absolutely, these are not fascists. There's nothing problematic about these.

872
00:45:43,200 --> 00:45:45,400
Speaker 1: But you cannot find an issue of the swastika that

873
00:45:45,440 --> 00:45:48,800
Speaker 1: doesn't look like straight up Nazi propaganda, right, and it makes.

874
00:45:48,640 --> 00:45:50,560
Speaker 5: Everything so confusing?

875
00:45:49,760 --> 00:45:55,359
Speaker 4: And what is can we Nazim's because America?

876
00:45:55,440 --> 00:45:55,680
Speaker 1: Can we?

877
00:45:55,760 --> 00:45:58,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just this thing that you're showing us.

878
00:45:58,080 --> 00:46:00,799
Speaker 1: Robert Chelsea, do you want to take that home?

879
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:01,680
Speaker 2: You want to try that?

880
00:46:01,880 --> 00:46:05,000
Speaker 5: Because it's okay, choice, okay.

881
00:46:05,520 --> 00:46:09,200
Speaker 4: So in large letters on the top, it says the

882
00:46:09,280 --> 00:46:13,279
Speaker 4: Swastika written and issued. Wait it says written issued and

883
00:46:13,360 --> 00:46:15,640
Speaker 4: read by the Girls Club. On either side of that,

884
00:46:15,680 --> 00:46:19,600
Speaker 4: we have two swastikas, and then below that a glamorous

885
00:46:20,440 --> 00:46:23,719
Speaker 4: girl scout girl club member who's wearing kind of like

886
00:46:23,960 --> 00:46:26,759
Speaker 4: a big bow in her hair, and she's got like

887
00:46:26,760 --> 00:46:30,359
Speaker 4: a handkerchief tied around her neck and she's just kind

888
00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:33,040
Speaker 4: of looking up in a glamorous look.

889
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 5: And then it says.

890
00:46:34,600 --> 00:46:38,200
Speaker 4: Cheru blike at the same time cheru blike, yeah, definitely

891
00:46:38,280 --> 00:46:41,160
Speaker 4: chero blike. But there's like a little undercurrent of like

892
00:46:41,320 --> 00:46:43,480
Speaker 4: something controversial about her.

893
00:46:43,520 --> 00:46:44,239
Speaker 5: I don't know what it is.

894
00:46:44,480 --> 00:46:48,640
Speaker 4: But then it says junior, seniors, everybody. And then it

895
00:46:48,719 --> 00:46:50,279
Speaker 4: gets really small and I carry it.

896
00:46:51,120 --> 00:46:54,640
Speaker 1: Here's one more month, Yeah.

897
00:46:55,560 --> 00:47:02,319
Speaker 4: Winning a prize in the big.

898
00:46:59,360 --> 00:47:04,280
Speaker 1: Big second contest. I just love that. What every girl

899
00:47:04,360 --> 00:47:10,520
Speaker 1: wants a swastika of her own. Oh incredible, here's ads.

900
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:20,760
Speaker 1: We're back. So by the time the Girls Club adopts

901
00:47:20,760 --> 00:47:24,040
Speaker 1: the swastika, it is already in use by certain elements

902
00:47:24,080 --> 00:47:27,520
Speaker 1: of the European occultist far right. Now. One of the

903
00:47:27,560 --> 00:47:30,680
Speaker 1: most influential figures here is a guy named Jorg Lonz

904
00:47:30,760 --> 00:47:34,480
Speaker 1: von Liebenfels or Adolph Lands is his real name. He

905
00:47:34,560 --> 00:47:37,320
Speaker 1: calls himself again, whenever you see one of these guys

906
00:47:37,320 --> 00:47:39,640
Speaker 1: who doesn't, who decides to pick up a name with

907
00:47:39,680 --> 00:47:41,840
Speaker 1: a Vaughan in it, they're trying to pretend to be

908
00:47:42,360 --> 00:47:47,400
Speaker 1: German nobility. So Adolph Lands is a Christian gnostic and

909
00:47:47,440 --> 00:47:50,640
Speaker 1: a former member of the Cistercian Order, or at least

910
00:47:50,640 --> 00:47:52,799
Speaker 1: an initiate into the Cistercian Order. I don't think he've

911
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:55,440
Speaker 1: everfunk comes a full member. In eighteen ninety two, he

912
00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:58,279
Speaker 1: experienced a vision that caused convinced him that there was

913
00:47:58,320 --> 00:48:01,520
Speaker 1: a coming war between Arian and the lesser races of

914
00:48:01,600 --> 00:48:04,560
Speaker 1: the world. So he decides to dedicate his life to

915
00:48:04,640 --> 00:48:08,719
Speaker 1: preparing the ground for such a conflict. In eighteen ninety nine,

916
00:48:08,719 --> 00:48:11,680
Speaker 1: he founds what he calls the Order of the New Templar.

917
00:48:12,239 --> 00:48:16,160
Speaker 1: It focuses on advocating for racial purity and controlled breeding.

918
00:48:16,600 --> 00:48:20,480
Speaker 1: It also pushed what Lands calls an aero Christian doctrine,

919
00:48:20,760 --> 00:48:24,280
Speaker 1: which is in many ways a precursor for Nazism. Now.

920
00:48:24,680 --> 00:48:27,400
Speaker 1: Lands is very much a medievalist, and he is obsessed

921
00:48:27,440 --> 00:48:30,520
Speaker 1: with a somewhat historically questionable view that the Templars of

922
00:48:30,560 --> 00:48:33,600
Speaker 1: the Crusades had been fighting a secret war to wipe

923
00:48:33,640 --> 00:48:36,839
Speaker 1: out evil rather than they were operating like a bank

924
00:48:36,960 --> 00:48:40,719
Speaker 1: basically right, Like that's you know. So he decides he's

925
00:48:40,760 --> 00:48:43,319
Speaker 1: going to revive the order and he runs it from

926
00:48:43,400 --> 00:48:47,560
Speaker 1: Cassel Werfenstein. Yes, if you're a fan of those video games,

927
00:48:47,800 --> 00:48:50,759
Speaker 1: this is the actual origin of all of that shit. Yeah,

928
00:48:50,800 --> 00:48:55,640
Speaker 1: castl Werfenstein. So he starts carrying out ceremonies, occult ceremonies

929
00:48:55,640 --> 00:48:58,680
Speaker 1: there dedicated to the Aryans and sort of this like

930
00:48:58,760 --> 00:49:02,440
Speaker 1: coming war with the lesser races, and all of those

931
00:49:02,480 --> 00:49:05,319
Speaker 1: ceremonies are conducted under a new flag that he has

932
00:49:05,360 --> 00:49:09,120
Speaker 1: designed for himself, a red swastika and blue lilies on

933
00:49:09,200 --> 00:49:12,680
Speaker 1: a golden background. In nineteen oh five, he founds a

934
00:49:12,680 --> 00:49:18,000
Speaker 1: magazine Ostara, which is the most racist magazine that you

935
00:49:18,040 --> 00:49:20,640
Speaker 1: can imagine, more or less, and the cover of it,

936
00:49:20,719 --> 00:49:23,720
Speaker 1: the logo is a drawing of a knight wearing robes

937
00:49:23,760 --> 00:49:27,480
Speaker 1: that look a little clanny, and they're bedecked with swastikas. Right,

938
00:49:27,640 --> 00:49:30,840
Speaker 1: just this fucking night couldn't have more swastikas on sass.

939
00:49:31,480 --> 00:49:35,000
Speaker 1: So midway through World War One and like nineteen sixteen,

940
00:49:35,120 --> 00:49:39,600
Speaker 1: Lonz creates the term ariosophie to describe his new brand

941
00:49:39,640 --> 00:49:43,520
Speaker 1: of Aryan race science. Among other things, he advocates for

942
00:49:43,640 --> 00:49:48,239
Speaker 1: keeping brood mothers in convents for Aryan stud males to impregnate.

943
00:49:49,040 --> 00:49:52,200
Speaker 1: This is more or less the policy that Heinrich Himmler,

944
00:49:52,239 --> 00:49:55,240
Speaker 1: who also later will have a castle where he carries

945
00:49:55,280 --> 00:49:58,880
Speaker 1: out occult rituals, would attempt to follow. For the SS right,

946
00:49:58,920 --> 00:50:00,920
Speaker 1: they have a Libans born program that is very much

947
00:50:00,960 --> 00:50:04,000
Speaker 1: based on lands as ideas I actually read, you might

948
00:50:04,040 --> 00:50:07,200
Speaker 1: find this fascinating, Jelsey. I read a book recently. It's

949
00:50:07,200 --> 00:50:12,480
Speaker 1: called Swastikan Night, and it is a kind of dystopian

950
00:50:12,880 --> 00:50:18,040
Speaker 1: future fiction about a future world where like the Nazis

951
00:50:18,560 --> 00:50:21,839
Speaker 1: and Japan kind of split the world between them, and

952
00:50:22,080 --> 00:50:25,319
Speaker 1: seven hundred years after the victory of the Nazis, they

953
00:50:25,360 --> 00:50:29,560
Speaker 1: have basically wiped out the concept of women as like

954
00:50:29,600 --> 00:50:32,200
Speaker 1: a part of the human race. They're only used for breeding.

955
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:35,759
Speaker 1: The Nazis are all kind of like, it's kind of

956
00:50:35,760 --> 00:50:37,839
Speaker 1: this almost Greek thing where they like, you know, have

957
00:50:38,200 --> 00:50:41,080
Speaker 1: a lot of these sort of like relationships with each

958
00:50:41,120 --> 00:50:44,160
Speaker 1: other that are It's an odd book. What's interesting about

959
00:50:44,200 --> 00:50:46,080
Speaker 1: it is that it was written in nineteen thirty seven

960
00:50:46,200 --> 00:50:49,560
Speaker 1: by an early feminist, So it's this like treatise because

961
00:50:49,600 --> 00:50:53,279
Speaker 1: her attitude is that the root of like Nazi authoritarianism

962
00:50:53,840 --> 00:50:56,640
Speaker 1: was the domination of women by men, and so it's

963
00:50:56,680 --> 00:51:00,239
Speaker 1: this her kind of meditation on what society men would

964
00:51:00,239 --> 00:51:04,200
Speaker 1: build if they could eliminate women effectively. It's a really

965
00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:07,760
Speaker 1: interesting book. It is probably the book that inspires nineteen

966
00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:11,160
Speaker 1: eighty four or Well takes a number of structural elements

967
00:51:11,200 --> 00:51:16,040
Speaker 1: from the book fascinating. The Feminist Press has a version

968
00:51:16,080 --> 00:51:18,719
Speaker 1: of it that they put out with a really good forward.

969
00:51:18,760 --> 00:51:21,040
Speaker 1: I devoured it in about an afternoon. Really interesting book,

970
00:51:21,040 --> 00:51:24,280
Speaker 1: Swastika Night. But it's very much based because again, nineteen

971
00:51:24,400 --> 00:51:28,400
Speaker 1: thirty seven is when this book gets written. One of

972
00:51:28,400 --> 00:51:30,760
Speaker 1: the interesting things about it is that, like in Envisioning

973
00:51:30,800 --> 00:51:33,279
Speaker 1: a Nazi Future, there's no reference to Himmler or the

974
00:51:33,440 --> 00:51:36,000
Speaker 1: SS because in thirty seven he wasn't really as big

975
00:51:36,040 --> 00:51:38,279
Speaker 1: of a figure in the Nazis that like somebody in

976
00:51:39,200 --> 00:51:41,600
Speaker 1: the UK or whatever would have known about. But the

977
00:51:41,680 --> 00:51:44,600
Speaker 1: author of that book is really familiar with Lands and

978
00:51:44,680 --> 00:51:46,600
Speaker 1: with a lot of the stuff Lands is saying about

979
00:51:46,640 --> 00:51:49,480
Speaker 1: his desire to sort of take women out of society

980
00:51:49,520 --> 00:51:53,200
Speaker 1: and make them into brood mares for the anyway, interesting stuff.

981
00:51:53,280 --> 00:51:55,960
Speaker 1: Check out swastika Knight. If you're interested in that kind

982
00:51:56,000 --> 00:52:02,240
Speaker 1: of thing, it's a fascinating piece of history. So LANs

983
00:52:03,040 --> 00:52:06,879
Speaker 1: has his castle, he's doing his proto Nazi rituals, right.

984
00:52:07,360 --> 00:52:10,879
Speaker 1: He's got this magazine Ostara, and he's got this swastika

985
00:52:10,920 --> 00:52:14,000
Speaker 1: flag that's becoming increasingly influential on like this chunk of

986
00:52:14,040 --> 00:52:17,200
Speaker 1: the occult anti Semitic rite. And one of the things

987
00:52:17,200 --> 00:52:19,760
Speaker 1: we know is that Hitler is a frequent enough reader

988
00:52:19,800 --> 00:52:22,600
Speaker 1: of Ostara that kind of during his rise to power,

989
00:52:22,680 --> 00:52:25,239
Speaker 1: he visits Lands to get copies of issues of the

990
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:28,960
Speaker 1: magazine that he had been missing. Lanza's ideas and his

991
00:52:29,120 --> 00:52:32,120
Speaker 1: use of the swastika were hugely influential in the growing

992
00:52:32,160 --> 00:52:34,600
Speaker 1: far right, which is going to be supercharged when the

993
00:52:34,600 --> 00:52:39,279
Speaker 1: German army collapses in nineteen eighteen. Now, nineteen eighteen is

994
00:52:39,320 --> 00:52:42,920
Speaker 1: coincidentally the year the Girls Club stops using the swastika

995
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:47,600
Speaker 1: for their magazine. Yeah, this might have had something to

996
00:52:47,680 --> 00:52:51,080
Speaker 1: do with the fact that after the Germany loses you

997
00:52:51,120 --> 00:52:53,600
Speaker 1: start seeing a lot more swastikas on a lot more

998
00:52:53,680 --> 00:52:56,799
Speaker 1: like murderous far right militias. Maybe the Girls Club didn't

999
00:52:56,800 --> 00:52:59,680
Speaker 1: want that press, you know that it might have been

1000
00:52:59,719 --> 00:53:01,320
Speaker 1: a fall.

1001
00:53:01,280 --> 00:53:04,360
Speaker 4: And it's so interesting because like, I don't know, obviously,

1002
00:53:04,560 --> 00:53:07,440
Speaker 4: there's a lot of misconceptions about Americans in the nineteen

1003
00:53:07,480 --> 00:53:12,840
Speaker 4: thirties and what we thought about, you know, the white race,

1004
00:53:12,920 --> 00:53:16,040
Speaker 4: and sure, and it was very much like our context

1005
00:53:16,120 --> 00:53:19,480
Speaker 4: and our ideas were simultaneously inspiring the Nazis.

1006
00:53:19,719 --> 00:53:20,399
Speaker 5: We also have.

1007
00:53:20,480 --> 00:53:24,440
Speaker 4: This like huge rise of the KKK again, where the

1008
00:53:24,520 --> 00:53:28,000
Speaker 4: KKK becomes like kind of heroic. It's a very strange

1009
00:53:28,040 --> 00:53:30,799
Speaker 4: time in American history that I think we simplify because

1010
00:53:30,840 --> 00:53:34,000
Speaker 4: it's like, oh, the United States versus the Nazis, and

1011
00:53:34,560 --> 00:53:37,440
Speaker 4: we're some kind of anti fascist heroes when really we're

1012
00:53:37,480 --> 00:53:42,279
Speaker 4: extremely fascist ourselves. And I don't know, it's interesting that

1013
00:53:42,520 --> 00:53:44,919
Speaker 4: it went as long as it did. But I'm glad

1014
00:53:45,000 --> 00:53:47,400
Speaker 4: the girls decided, you know, this isn't for us.

1015
00:53:47,800 --> 00:53:50,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, the girls, though, mixed the right call here in

1016
00:53:50,360 --> 00:53:54,759
Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen really really good time to stop using the swastika.

1017
00:53:54,920 --> 00:53:57,560
Speaker 4: I mean there were KKK beauty pageants not you know,

1018
00:53:57,600 --> 00:54:00,040
Speaker 4: a decade or so before, so they could have gone either.

1019
00:54:00,600 --> 00:54:04,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and like not to say that. Yeah. Anyway,

1020
00:54:04,640 --> 00:54:07,120
Speaker 1: very very interesting period of time. And also the stuff

1021
00:54:07,120 --> 00:54:10,440
Speaker 1: we're talking about with how the swastika becomes very wrapped

1022
00:54:10,480 --> 00:54:13,839
Speaker 1: up in the minds of Americans with like Native Americans

1023
00:54:14,360 --> 00:54:16,839
Speaker 1: is part of like has an impact on Hitler because

1024
00:54:16,920 --> 00:54:21,919
Speaker 1: Hitler kind of idolizes Indigenous Americans at the same time

1025
00:54:21,960 --> 00:54:27,399
Speaker 1: that he idolizes the US government's use of camps and

1026
00:54:27,560 --> 00:54:30,520
Speaker 1: genocidal tactics. In order to take the content he's like,

1027
00:54:30,800 --> 00:54:33,239
Speaker 1: it's confused. You can refer back to our Karl May

1028
00:54:33,320 --> 00:54:37,759
Speaker 1: episodes for sort of more on that. But yeah. The

1029
00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:41,800
Speaker 1: first use documented use by like a far right millet

1030
00:54:41,840 --> 00:54:45,840
Speaker 1: militia in Germany using a swastika was in nineteen nineteen,

1031
00:54:45,880 --> 00:54:49,439
Speaker 1: when a specific unit of Freikorps veterans who gunned down

1032
00:54:49,520 --> 00:54:52,319
Speaker 1: socialists in the street, like have a bunch of swastikas

1033
00:54:52,320 --> 00:54:54,919
Speaker 1: on their shit, Like that's the symbol that they fight under.

1034
00:54:55,000 --> 00:54:58,600
Speaker 1: This is after the empire kind of collapses. The use

1035
00:54:58,640 --> 00:55:01,799
Speaker 1: of swastika's buy the different right wing militant groups is

1036
00:55:01,840 --> 00:55:04,480
Speaker 1: seen as a hopeful sign by the Aryan nerds and

1037
00:55:04,520 --> 00:55:08,400
Speaker 1: anti Semitic wizards of the Tula Society, which strongly pushed

1038
00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:10,440
Speaker 1: for the use of swastikas among the far right in

1039
00:55:10,480 --> 00:55:13,680
Speaker 1: Weimar Germany. The Nazi Party is going to adopt the

1040
00:55:13,719 --> 00:55:18,520
Speaker 1: symbol in nineteen twenty, and Hitler probably picks the swastika

1041
00:55:18,719 --> 00:55:21,520
Speaker 1: because of Lonz's use of it in his flag, because

1042
00:55:21,520 --> 00:55:25,600
Speaker 1: again Hitler's reading Ostara. But there's other stories you'll get

1043
00:55:25,640 --> 00:55:27,800
Speaker 1: as to why Hitler picked it that are a little weirder.

1044
00:55:28,840 --> 00:55:31,799
Speaker 1: One that you sometimes hear that's almost certainly not true,

1045
00:55:31,920 --> 00:55:35,000
Speaker 1: almost like ninety nine percent definitely apocryphal, is that his

1046
00:55:35,160 --> 00:55:38,320
Speaker 1: mom had a swastika on her headstone when she was buried,

1047
00:55:38,320 --> 00:55:41,480
Speaker 1: and the symbols stuck in Hitler's mind ever since. People

1048
00:55:41,520 --> 00:55:44,000
Speaker 1: were because it was kind of a good luck symbol.

1049
00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:46,600
Speaker 1: There's definitely people that get like a swastika on their

1050
00:55:46,600 --> 00:55:48,879
Speaker 1: gravestone back in the day. It's not like I don't

1051
00:55:48,920 --> 00:55:52,000
Speaker 1: think it's impossible. But this is much less credible to

1052
00:55:52,040 --> 00:55:54,840
Speaker 1: me than the explanation Stephen Heller gives in his book

1053
00:55:56,160 --> 00:55:59,440
Speaker 1: and excerpts from Minkomf devoted to symbolism. He wrote in

1054
00:55:59,480 --> 00:56:03,440
Speaker 1: a stupa defyingly formal prose, replete with euphemisms and epithets

1055
00:56:03,480 --> 00:56:07,800
Speaker 1: that enforced his own self styled heroism, yet convincingly argued

1056
00:56:07,800 --> 00:56:10,200
Speaker 1: the need for a powerful symbol, emblem, logo for his

1057
00:56:10,280 --> 00:56:13,000
Speaker 1: nascent party. The lack of such symbols, he wrote, had

1058
00:56:13,000 --> 00:56:15,680
Speaker 1: not only disadvantages for the moment, but it was unbearable

1059
00:56:15,719 --> 00:56:18,319
Speaker 1: for the future. The disadvantages were above all, that the

1060
00:56:18,320 --> 00:56:21,200
Speaker 1: party members lacked every outward sign of their belonging together.

1061
00:56:21,280 --> 00:56:24,120
Speaker 1: Well for the future, it was unbearable to lack an

1062
00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:26,120
Speaker 1: emblem that had the character of a symbol of the

1063
00:56:26,160 --> 00:56:28,160
Speaker 1: movement and that as such could be put up in

1064
00:56:28,200 --> 00:56:32,320
Speaker 1: opposition to the international the Communists. Hitler called the first

1065
00:56:32,320 --> 00:56:34,920
Speaker 1: time he witnessed a large Communist Party rally, where he

1066
00:56:34,960 --> 00:56:37,400
Speaker 1: saw a sea of red on flags, scarves, and flowers

1067
00:56:37,440 --> 00:56:40,439
Speaker 1: among the one hundred thousand in attendants, I personally could

1068
00:56:40,440 --> 00:56:42,720
Speaker 1: feel and understand how easily a man of the people

1069
00:56:42,719 --> 00:56:45,319
Speaker 1: succumbs to the suggestive charms of such a grand and

1070
00:56:45,400 --> 00:56:50,319
Speaker 1: massive spectacle. And so that's probably like that's realistically, he's

1071
00:56:50,360 --> 00:56:52,600
Speaker 1: looking for a powerful symbol that can be like that

1072
00:56:52,719 --> 00:56:55,319
Speaker 1: red flag that people can like you nine under that's

1073
00:56:55,320 --> 00:56:59,200
Speaker 1: already iconic, and the swastikas everywhere. People are comfortable with it.

1074
00:56:59,280 --> 00:57:02,640
Speaker 1: People like it. It's a striking symbol. The fact that

1075
00:57:02,680 --> 00:57:04,879
Speaker 1: it's been around for so long is proof that it's

1076
00:57:04,920 --> 00:57:08,120
Speaker 1: just some people are just drawn to swastika's right even today,

1077
00:57:08,520 --> 00:57:11,040
Speaker 1: Like the best if you're writing a fucking book that

1078
00:57:11,160 --> 00:57:14,279
Speaker 1: it involves in any way the fucking Nazis, right, best

1079
00:57:14,280 --> 00:57:15,879
Speaker 1: thing you do is stick a swastika on the cover

1080
00:57:15,960 --> 00:57:18,760
Speaker 1: because motherfucker's walking past and the book stopped. Like they'll

1081
00:57:18,760 --> 00:57:20,680
Speaker 1: stop at a swastika to look at it, right.

1082
00:57:20,600 --> 00:57:22,960
Speaker 5: And they already have good feelings about it at that point.

1083
00:57:23,440 --> 00:57:27,160
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, it's like, oh, it's a swastika, yeah.

1084
00:57:27,120 --> 00:57:30,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, the the pschon, Yeah, it's it's something else.

1085
00:57:31,360 --> 00:57:31,760
Speaker 5: Wow.

1086
00:57:32,560 --> 00:57:37,080
Speaker 1: So the specific version of the swastika that Hitler adopts

1087
00:57:37,160 --> 00:57:40,200
Speaker 1: is called the hogen Kroi, which is just a German

1088
00:57:40,320 --> 00:57:44,200
Speaker 1: term for hooked cross. Right, uh, it faces the opposite direction.

1089
00:57:44,320 --> 00:57:46,960
Speaker 1: Hitler's gonna like flip the swastika around from its most

1090
00:57:46,960 --> 00:57:50,080
Speaker 1: common use, but others you can find swastikas that are

1091
00:57:50,080 --> 00:57:52,960
Speaker 1: flipped around prior to the Nazis. He's not like the

1092
00:57:52,960 --> 00:57:55,840
Speaker 1: only person who ever does this. Where Hitler is unique

1093
00:57:55,880 --> 00:57:59,320
Speaker 1: is that he tilts his hogen Kroi forty five degrees

1094
00:57:59,360 --> 00:58:01,320
Speaker 1: from horizont And this is the way you're going to

1095
00:58:01,360 --> 00:58:04,000
Speaker 1: see it in like the nineteen thirty five national flag

1096
00:58:04,040 --> 00:58:07,680
Speaker 1: of Germany, his swastika is usually tilted right. There is

1097
00:58:07,840 --> 00:58:10,040
Speaker 1: one more point that kind of argues for the fact

1098
00:58:10,080 --> 00:58:13,680
Speaker 1: that Lansa's swastika flag in his magazine Ostara was the

1099
00:58:13,720 --> 00:58:16,280
Speaker 1: influence for Hitler, which is that when the Nazis come

1100
00:58:16,320 --> 00:58:21,200
Speaker 1: to power, Hitler bans Lonzo's writing, and Heller suggests, quote,

1101
00:58:21,240 --> 00:58:23,600
Speaker 1: this is perhaps a way for Hitler to disavow the

1102
00:58:23,640 --> 00:58:25,880
Speaker 1: fact that he was influenced by anything other than his

1103
00:58:25,920 --> 00:58:27,480
Speaker 1: own immaculate conceptions.

1104
00:58:28,720 --> 00:58:32,120
Speaker 4: Uh huh, yeah, yeah, that makes sense to me.

1105
00:58:32,360 --> 00:58:34,880
Speaker 1: Classic Hitler, Yeah, classic Hitler.

1106
00:58:36,800 --> 00:58:37,000
Speaker 4: Yeah.

1107
00:58:38,280 --> 00:58:40,560
Speaker 1: While the symbol at this point started to accrue a

1108
00:58:40,600 --> 00:58:44,560
Speaker 1: distinctly more toxic sheene for Europeans Americans than is now,

1109
00:58:44,840 --> 00:58:47,520
Speaker 1: didn't give two tugs of a dead rat's tail what

1110
00:58:47,600 --> 00:58:50,840
Speaker 1: those creepy foreigners were during over in Europe. The nineteen

1111
00:58:50,920 --> 00:58:55,040
Speaker 1: twenties are a banner age for utterly meaningless uses of

1112
00:58:55,080 --> 00:58:58,600
Speaker 1: the swastika in any fucking product imaginable. And I think

1113
00:58:58,640 --> 00:59:02,680
Speaker 1: my favorite in retrospac funny swastika themed product is probably

1114
00:59:02,720 --> 00:59:06,480
Speaker 1: this tube of fresh antiseptic deodorant cream, which also heals

1115
00:59:06,480 --> 00:59:10,400
Speaker 1: and suits tender sore feet for just ten cents, little,

1116
00:59:10,640 --> 00:59:13,600
Speaker 1: just a little, swastika underneath the picture of this lady

1117
00:59:13,600 --> 00:59:15,360
Speaker 1: who smells nice thanks to the cream.

1118
00:59:15,680 --> 00:59:20,080
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's sort of a creepy man, right, he's.

1119
00:59:19,880 --> 00:59:22,560
Speaker 1: Doing it, Joe Biden, Right, he's sniffing her hair, you know,

1120
00:59:22,640 --> 00:59:26,600
Speaker 1: because he likes this. He likes Nazi swastika cream so much.

1121
00:59:26,760 --> 00:59:28,960
Speaker 3: You can't see his hands in the photo, but you

1122
00:59:29,000 --> 00:59:33,959
Speaker 3: know they're not supposed to be a delightful antiseptic deyodor cream.

1123
00:59:34,120 --> 00:59:38,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no.

1124
00:59:39,440 --> 00:59:41,720
Speaker 4: And there was just so much meaningless shit being pumped

1125
00:59:41,720 --> 00:59:43,960
Speaker 4: out in the twenties anyway, because it was like we

1126
00:59:44,040 --> 00:59:47,840
Speaker 4: had so much surplus money after the First war. It's

1127
00:59:47,880 --> 00:59:50,960
Speaker 4: just a big party, and you know, let's let's party

1128
00:59:50,960 --> 00:59:52,640
Speaker 4: with the products we make too, apparently.

1129
00:59:53,160 --> 00:59:55,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's I think you have to a lot

1130
00:59:55,440 --> 00:59:57,320
Speaker 1: of times when people are talking about why the Nazis

1131
00:59:57,360 --> 01:00:00,280
Speaker 1: adopted swastika, they focus a lot like we have on

1132
01:00:00,360 --> 01:00:03,360
Speaker 1: lawns and these kind of occult use of it, this

1133
01:00:03,440 --> 01:00:05,680
Speaker 1: sort of attitude of its involvement with the arians, And

1134
01:00:05,720 --> 01:00:08,160
Speaker 1: that's obviously an important part of the story, but it's

1135
01:00:08,200 --> 01:00:12,520
Speaker 1: equally important that the swastika is a benign symbol. It's

1136
01:00:12,640 --> 01:00:14,680
Speaker 1: such a benign and safe symbol that you could use

1137
01:00:14,720 --> 01:00:17,080
Speaker 1: it to self fucking deodorant, right. Yeah, that is a

1138
01:00:17,120 --> 01:00:21,000
Speaker 1: big part of why it's a useful symbol for the Nazis.

1139
01:00:22,240 --> 01:00:24,840
Speaker 1: And this kind of comes back to We talk a

1140
01:00:24,840 --> 01:00:26,640
Speaker 1: lot on the show when we're talking about fascism. We

1141
01:00:26,640 --> 01:00:29,920
Speaker 1: talk a lot about Umberdo Echoes definition of fascism. And

1142
01:00:30,000 --> 01:00:32,600
Speaker 1: one of the things Echo notes that is among his

1143
01:00:32,760 --> 01:00:38,720
Speaker 1: kind of most salient observations is that fascism. One an

1144
01:00:38,800 --> 01:00:42,120
Speaker 1: inherent characteristic of fascism is that it is syncretic. And

1145
01:00:42,160 --> 01:00:45,720
Speaker 1: here's how he describes what that means. Syncretism is not only,

1146
01:00:45,760 --> 01:00:48,480
Speaker 1: as the dictionary says, the combination of different forms of

1147
01:00:48,520 --> 01:00:52,920
Speaker 1: belief or practice, such a combination which tall must tolerate contradictions.

1148
01:00:53,280 --> 01:00:56,120
Speaker 1: Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom,

1149
01:00:56,120 --> 01:00:58,800
Speaker 1: and wherever they seem to say different or incompatible things,

1150
01:00:58,960 --> 01:01:01,880
Speaker 1: it is only because all are eluding allegorically to the

1151
01:01:01,920 --> 01:01:04,880
Speaker 1: same primeval truth. If you browse in the shelves that

1152
01:01:04,920 --> 01:01:08,120
Speaker 1: in American bookstores are labeled New Age, you can find

1153
01:01:08,280 --> 01:01:10,720
Speaker 1: there even Saint Augustine, who as far as I know,

1154
01:01:10,880 --> 01:01:14,320
Speaker 1: was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and stone Hinge,

1155
01:01:14,680 --> 01:01:17,400
Speaker 1: that is a symbol of her fascism. And one of

1156
01:01:17,440 --> 01:01:20,040
Speaker 1: the things that Echoes talking about here is this use

1157
01:01:20,240 --> 01:01:28,080
Speaker 1: of pieces of history, of iconography, of mythology that you

1158
01:01:28,120 --> 01:01:31,280
Speaker 1: can adopt into a fascist understanding of the world, and

1159
01:01:31,320 --> 01:01:33,880
Speaker 1: that acts as kind of a llure to different groups

1160
01:01:33,880 --> 01:01:36,160
Speaker 1: of people. Right, you know, you're into stone Hinge, you're

1161
01:01:36,200 --> 01:01:38,640
Speaker 1: into Aliens, you're into you know, Saint Augustine. If you

1162
01:01:38,720 --> 01:01:40,640
Speaker 1: can find a way to kind of like it's this

1163
01:01:40,640 --> 01:01:44,160
Speaker 1: thing QAnon does, right. It absorbs everything sort of into

1164
01:01:44,240 --> 01:01:47,440
Speaker 1: itself as part of its ability to spread, and.

1165
01:01:47,200 --> 01:01:48,960
Speaker 5: It's creating a full mythology.

1166
01:01:49,320 --> 01:01:51,320
Speaker 4: Yeah right, it's like creating that was a big part

1167
01:01:51,360 --> 01:01:55,840
Speaker 4: I think of Nazi Germany was taking the Old Germany

1168
01:01:55,920 --> 01:01:56,600
Speaker 4: and bringing it back.

1169
01:01:56,640 --> 01:01:58,320
Speaker 5: But it wasn't factually the Old Germany.

1170
01:01:58,320 --> 01:02:00,600
Speaker 4: And it's just pieces of different folk that made it

1171
01:02:00,640 --> 01:02:05,160
Speaker 4: sound badass and heroic and strong. And that's how powerful

1172
01:02:05,200 --> 01:02:08,000
Speaker 4: folklore can be, especially if you take bits and pieces

1173
01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:09,840
Speaker 4: of it and build your own shit.

1174
01:02:10,000 --> 01:02:12,960
Speaker 1: It's like it doesn't have to it doesn't have to

1175
01:02:13,000 --> 01:02:15,720
Speaker 1: be logical, it doesn't have to all fit. You can

1176
01:02:15,760 --> 01:02:19,640
Speaker 1: take pieces of Norse mythology and Odin worship and you

1177
01:02:19,680 --> 01:02:22,160
Speaker 1: can subsume that into your fashions at the same time

1178
01:02:22,200 --> 01:02:26,920
Speaker 1: as you're taking bits of Catholicism, right, Yeah, And likewise

1179
01:02:27,000 --> 01:02:29,439
Speaker 1: kind of you take the swastika, the symbol that we've

1180
01:02:29,520 --> 01:02:33,160
Speaker 1: all always used, that's been everywhere, and you make it

1181
01:02:33,280 --> 01:02:36,200
Speaker 1: yours and the kind of good will. And you know

1182
01:02:36,360 --> 01:02:39,640
Speaker 1: nowadays obviously that there's no more good will for the swastika.

1183
01:02:39,640 --> 01:02:42,360
Speaker 1: That's just sort of inherent in most cultures at least,

1184
01:02:42,720 --> 01:02:46,560
Speaker 1: But back in the day, basically everyone felt fine with

1185
01:02:46,600 --> 01:02:49,640
Speaker 1: the swastika. So you make that your thing, and it's

1186
01:02:49,840 --> 01:02:51,800
Speaker 1: one of the things that can help draw It makes

1187
01:02:51,800 --> 01:02:55,400
Speaker 1: you seem come like less scary, it makes you seem

1188
01:02:55,440 --> 01:02:58,360
Speaker 1: more approachable. It's just one of the things that helps

1189
01:02:58,480 --> 01:03:04,760
Speaker 1: build the appeal of this movement. And yeah, this is

1190
01:03:05,520 --> 01:03:09,960
Speaker 1: good stuff, just good, good shit. So beyond this. By

1191
01:03:10,000 --> 01:03:11,960
Speaker 1: the time the Nazis draw close to power in the

1192
01:03:12,040 --> 01:03:15,480
Speaker 1: early thirties, they had been marching and bleeding and fighting

1193
01:03:15,560 --> 01:03:18,760
Speaker 1: under the swastika for a full decade. Some four hundred

1194
01:03:18,760 --> 01:03:21,920
Speaker 1: of them have died in sundry assassinations and street fights

1195
01:03:21,920 --> 01:03:24,480
Speaker 1: in the Weimar era, and these men, along with the

1196
01:03:24,520 --> 01:03:27,040
Speaker 1: dead of the beer Hall Putsch, had become sainted by

1197
01:03:27,040 --> 01:03:29,920
Speaker 1: the party and the bloody flags they fought under, bloody

1198
01:03:29,960 --> 01:03:33,880
Speaker 1: swastika flags started to gain a religious significance to the

1199
01:03:33,880 --> 01:03:37,560
Speaker 1: devoted in Germany. George L. Moss, one of the twentieth

1200
01:03:37,560 --> 01:03:40,800
Speaker 1: centuries historians of Nazi Germany and also a survivor of

1201
01:03:40,840 --> 01:03:44,400
Speaker 1: the Holocaust himself, later observed it was the strength of

1202
01:03:44,440 --> 01:03:47,840
Speaker 1: fascism in general that it realized as other political movements

1203
01:03:47,840 --> 01:03:50,560
Speaker 1: and parties did not, that with the nineteenth century, Europe

1204
01:03:50,560 --> 01:03:53,640
Speaker 1: had entered a visual age, the age of political symbols

1205
01:03:53,640 --> 01:03:56,920
Speaker 1: such as the national flag or national anthem, which as

1206
01:03:56,960 --> 01:04:00,160
Speaker 1: instruments of mass politics, in the end proved more effective

1207
01:04:00,200 --> 01:04:04,000
Speaker 1: than any didactic speeches. And that's where we're going to

1208
01:04:04,080 --> 01:04:04,560
Speaker 1: end today.

1209
01:04:05,960 --> 01:04:12,600
Speaker 4: Wow, I am so I'm just so impressed and intrigued

1210
01:04:12,600 --> 01:04:15,280
Speaker 4: by this research. And yeah, I just I had no idea,

1211
01:04:15,320 --> 01:04:17,240
Speaker 4: and I honestly feel a little shocked at myself for

1212
01:04:17,320 --> 01:04:18,360
Speaker 4: not knowing more about this.

1213
01:04:19,320 --> 01:04:21,600
Speaker 1: I mean I did most.

1214
01:04:23,680 --> 01:04:25,040
Speaker 5: How I not know about that.

1215
01:04:25,240 --> 01:04:27,560
Speaker 1: When I when I read that bit about like, well

1216
01:04:27,600 --> 01:04:29,960
Speaker 1: maybe it's from like the fucking the way a cross

1217
01:04:30,000 --> 01:04:33,520
Speaker 1: section of a fucking mammoth, you know, tusk looks, I

1218
01:04:33,520 --> 01:04:38,160
Speaker 1: had to like sit back and go shit, Huh. That

1219
01:04:38,200 --> 01:04:39,720
Speaker 1: actually makes a lot of sense.

1220
01:04:41,760 --> 01:04:44,720
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I just love the idea that symbols simultaneously

1221
01:04:44,760 --> 01:04:47,240
Speaker 4: appear in different cultures like that. I mean, and I

1222
01:04:47,240 --> 01:04:49,920
Speaker 4: think there are these explanations that we can have, but

1223
01:04:49,960 --> 01:04:53,640
Speaker 4: there's also something possibly built into our DNA that maybe

1224
01:04:53,680 --> 01:04:57,920
Speaker 4: we'll never understand about why we're attracted to certain symbols biologically.

1225
01:04:58,040 --> 01:05:01,440
Speaker 4: Maybe they represent something that we're recognized on an unconscious level.

1226
01:05:02,520 --> 01:05:05,040
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's just like the use of red is

1227
01:05:05,040 --> 01:05:07,320
Speaker 1: an effective color to use for a lot of different

1228
01:05:07,320 --> 01:05:09,120
Speaker 1: things because it gets our attention in the same way

1229
01:05:09,120 --> 01:05:11,600
Speaker 1: that like I have a little feeder from my chickens

1230
01:05:11,640 --> 01:05:15,480
Speaker 1: where they like there's little red nubs because chickens just

1231
01:05:15,520 --> 01:05:18,000
Speaker 1: pecket shit that's red because like blood is red. It's

1232
01:05:18,040 --> 01:05:20,000
Speaker 1: the same reason why like if one of them gets injured,

1233
01:05:20,040 --> 01:05:22,760
Speaker 1: the other others will like start eating it, right they

1234
01:05:22,800 --> 01:05:25,280
Speaker 1: see they see red and they go after it. Uh.

1235
01:05:25,920 --> 01:05:29,640
Speaker 1: And you know, we don't quite do that, otherwise hospitals

1236
01:05:29,640 --> 01:05:32,760
Speaker 1: would be much scarier places. But we do react a

1237
01:05:32,800 --> 01:05:35,400
Speaker 1: certain way when we see that color, and it's effective

1238
01:05:35,480 --> 01:05:36,560
Speaker 1: for doing certain.

1239
01:05:36,320 --> 01:05:39,080
Speaker 4: And you know what else, yellow is the most effective color,

1240
01:05:39,160 --> 01:05:42,200
Speaker 4: and that is why buses are painted yellow because our

1241
01:05:42,240 --> 01:05:44,920
Speaker 4: eye perceives it, you know, point zero zero and whatever

1242
01:05:46,040 --> 01:05:48,280
Speaker 4: percent faster than any other color, you know. And that's

1243
01:05:48,280 --> 01:05:51,240
Speaker 4: so that's always happening on levels that we don't recognize

1244
01:05:51,320 --> 01:05:54,240
Speaker 4: or understand. But uh, we're always reacting to the world.

1245
01:05:54,280 --> 01:05:56,160
Speaker 4: And I think about that all the time. How we're

1246
01:05:56,200 --> 01:06:01,320
Speaker 4: reacting to the world. Uh, on an unconscious is biological,

1247
01:06:01,440 --> 01:06:03,840
Speaker 4: animalistic level, And there seems to be I don't know,

1248
01:06:03,880 --> 01:06:07,400
Speaker 4: there's something about the swastika that feels like a collective

1249
01:06:07,520 --> 01:06:09,560
Speaker 4: consciousness type of symbol.

1250
01:06:10,440 --> 01:06:12,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's definitely like that.

1251
01:06:12,480 --> 01:06:12,640
Speaker 4: Yeah.

1252
01:06:12,680 --> 01:06:14,600
Speaker 1: Again, as you said, that's kind of like a young

1253
01:06:14,800 --> 01:06:18,000
Speaker 1: and sort of attitude towards it. I mean, we do

1254
01:06:18,120 --> 01:06:19,840
Speaker 1: have this, and who knows how much of that is

1255
01:06:19,960 --> 01:06:22,880
Speaker 1: like because we you and I at a certain level,

1256
01:06:22,920 --> 01:06:26,120
Speaker 1: I can read this history. Neither of us can see

1257
01:06:26,160 --> 01:06:29,960
Speaker 1: the swastika or think about it without thinking about the Nazis.

1258
01:06:29,960 --> 01:06:32,400
Speaker 1: It is impossible for a modern person, at least in

1259
01:06:32,440 --> 01:06:34,520
Speaker 1: our culture, less the case maybe you go over in

1260
01:06:34,520 --> 01:06:37,160
Speaker 1: India and something where someone's first experience with the symbol

1261
01:06:37,280 --> 01:06:39,480
Speaker 1: is going to be wildly different. But you and I

1262
01:06:39,600 --> 01:06:43,160
Speaker 1: cannot see a swastika even knowing intellectually this stuff and

1263
01:06:43,200 --> 01:06:48,640
Speaker 1: not see it as that right even you know, yeah, exactly,

1264
01:06:48,680 --> 01:06:53,120
Speaker 1: that's just the way it is. But you know what

1265
01:06:53,240 --> 01:06:57,920
Speaker 1: I can see and view objectively is your excellent podcast,

1266
01:06:58,040 --> 01:07:01,440
Speaker 1: American Hysteria. Well I can't see it, but I can

1267
01:07:01,480 --> 01:07:02,040
Speaker 1: listen to it.

1268
01:07:02,520 --> 01:07:03,760
Speaker 4: Yes, do you have?

1269
01:07:03,840 --> 01:07:05,160
Speaker 5: Everyone can Yeah?

1270
01:07:05,320 --> 01:07:06,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, you want to do your plugs?

1271
01:07:07,200 --> 01:07:07,480
Speaker 3: Sure?

1272
01:07:07,520 --> 01:07:09,080
Speaker 5: Sure, yeah.

1273
01:07:09,120 --> 01:07:11,800
Speaker 4: As you mentioned, we do a show about the fantastical

1274
01:07:11,800 --> 01:07:15,920
Speaker 4: thinking of American culture and how that's affected everything from

1275
01:07:16,040 --> 01:07:19,640
Speaker 4: you know, even sometimes before colonization, but America as we

1276
01:07:19,720 --> 01:07:24,040
Speaker 4: know it breaking down its urban legends, moral panics, conspiracy theories,

1277
01:07:24,400 --> 01:07:28,880
Speaker 4: craze as, hoaxes, everything. Anytime that something weird happened in America,

1278
01:07:28,920 --> 01:07:31,880
Speaker 4: we're on it and try to explain that thing through

1279
01:07:32,080 --> 01:07:34,439
Speaker 4: history and how it changes through the decades and give

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Speaker 4: context in that way. Yeah, and you can get it

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Speaker 4: anywhere that you find your podcast. We're on Instagram at

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Speaker 4: American Hysteria Podcast. And I hope you guys come listen.

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Speaker 1: Hell yeah, hell yeah, all right, everybody, this has been

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Speaker 1: behind the bastards. I have a novel. It's called After

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Speaker 1: the Revolution. You type that title into anything where you

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Speaker 1: buy a book from It doesn't matter where or scream

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Speaker 1: it into the face of the manager of your favorite

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Speaker 1: or least favorite bookstore.

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Speaker 3: I thought you, for some reason, you were going to

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Speaker 3: say Applebee's Scream scream.

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Speaker 1: An applebe the Applebee's manager with what's going to happen

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Speaker 1: to him? After the revolution. Famously, Mark said, the two

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Speaker 1: classes in society are Applebee's managers and everyone else. And

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Speaker 1: one day we will liberate ourselves. My brothers, sisters can't.

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Speaker 5: Wait to get that bumpersticker.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's the episode.

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Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 3: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia

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Speaker 3: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.