WEBVTT - Rachel Maddow and ULTRA 0:00:01.000 --> 0:00:03.880 Hey guys, ed here this week, we're coming to you 0:00:03.960 --> 0:00:07.520 with a special episode from the archives. It's my chat 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:12.760 with the Emmy Award winning political commentator Rachel Maddow. Rachel 0:00:12.920 --> 0:00:15.840 is also the host of the hit show Ultra, and 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:18.200 back in twenty twenty three, she and I sat down 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:22.160 to talk about our fascination with history, the eerily prescient 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:27.560 stories in our respective podcasts, and why we do the 0:00:27.600 --> 0:00:30.760 work we do. It's probably one of my favorite chats 0:00:30.800 --> 0:00:33.400 I've ever had on this podcast, and so I'm really 0:00:33.440 --> 0:00:37.120 excited to share it with you again today. Keep listening, 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:42.960 and we'll be back with a regularly scheduled episode next week. Enjoy. 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:52.920 Welcome back, SNAFU listeners. We're back to discuss a dicey subject, 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:58.440 a far right coup, an attempt to overthrow the democratically 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:04.480 elected government of the Night States of America. Because you'll 0:01:04.600 --> 0:01:08.800 never degue our country with wis you have to show 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:19.200 strength when you have to be strong, we have Nope, 0:01:19.280 --> 0:01:25.800 not that one. In the United States District Court Washington DC, 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:29.480 Chief Justice Edward C. Iiker, besides, at the trial of 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:33.600 thirty elled seditionists, here we go. That's the one that's right, 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:36.759 My friends, back in nineteen forty four, the Nazis tried 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:40.200 to overthrow the US government with the help of some 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:44.560 US congressmen know less. I'm talking about the Great Sedition 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:48.080 Trial of nineteen forty four, which is the subject of 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:53.160 a history podcast hosted by Rachel Maddow called Ultra Now. 0:01:53.320 --> 0:01:57.080 Ultra and Snafu have a lot in common. Both podcasts 0:01:57.120 --> 0:02:00.560 are deep dives into important moments in American history which 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:05.160 are largely forgotten, and yet they feel oddly prescient to 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:08.880 our world today. So naturally, I wanted to sit down 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:12.239 and talk with Ultra's creator. So today I'm coming into 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:15.400 your feed with a treat my conversation with Rachel Maddow 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:20.959 about Ultra and Snaffu. We talk about these two extraordinary stories, 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:24.720 forgotten history in general, the roots of authoritarianism, and how 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:28.200 it all weaves into current events. Rachel is well known 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:31.760 for being a rigorous on air journalist, author, and podcaster. 0:02:32.160 --> 0:02:38.360 She's curious, a deep thinker, profoundly insightful, and pretty damn funny, 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:40.520 all of which makes her a hell of a lot 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:43.600 of fun to talk to. I really enjoyed this conversation. 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:46.119 I learned a lot, and I think you will too. 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:52.880 So here it is my chat with Rachel Maddow. Hello, 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:58.760 Hi and Rachel Maddow. It's so cool to meet you. 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:00.760 This is awesome to meet you too. 0:03:00.840 --> 0:03:02.320 It's great. This is very exciting. 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:06.639 Indeed, I agree, thanks so much for jumping into our 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:11.600 SNAFU universe. So what's happening? Where are you? 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:15.840 I'm in rural dirt road, western Massachusetts. 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:16.480 Dirton Road. I don't know that. 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:21.400 It's kind of the ambient vibe where I We're really 0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:22.360 out in the middle of nowhere. 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:23.280 It's fantastic. 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:25.960 What are you hiding from, Rachel? What's going on? 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:29.040 Humans? 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:34.120 Yeah, okay, that's fair. Are you in a bunker? 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:36.520 What's weird? Actually? And this is true. 0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:39.600 The cottage that I'm in right now, this little house 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:42.640 in which we built this studio, audio studios and stuff 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:44.680 so I can do my TV show from here, has 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:48.280 a legit nuclear bomb shelter in the basement. 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:50.880 Because you built it or because it was already there. 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:51.600 No, it was there. 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:53.960 It was built by whoever had this house in the fifties. 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:57.400 And it's got concrete like this and triple rebar and 0:03:58.000 --> 0:03:59.960 when we came in to like flatten out the floor 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:02.600 and make everything normal, the contractor was like, we have 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:03.720 to leave the basement. 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.960 Can I tell you something. I'm not like a crazy 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:14.240 prepper kind of doomsday person, but like I would like 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:15.160 to have a bunker. 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:17.680 It just seems like a nice option. 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:20.760 Yeah, all right, well this is fun. I would love 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:25.760 to go deeper into apocalypse preparation, but we have some 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:28.799 really fun stuff to talk about. First of all, your 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:36.800 podcast Ultra was the number one podcast on Apple for 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:38.240 what like five. 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:40.279 Weeks, A bunch of weeks, A bunch of weeks it 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:42.479 was number one, and then it was less than number one, 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:44.120 and then it was back up to number one again. 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:46.480 So it was really a surprise and very exciting. 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:50.880 Yeah, and very well deserved. I listened to it twice. 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:53.800 I just had it was so fun. I listened to 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:55.440 it all the way through, and then I was like, 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:56.960 I gotta hear that again, but I don't have as 0:04:57.040 --> 0:04:59.279 much time, so I listened to it at like one 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:04.600 point eight. And it's funny when you listen to something 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:08.640 sped up like that, everyone sounds unbelievably intelligent. 0:05:09.920 --> 0:05:13.120 I had the opposite problem, which is that my doctor, 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:17.000 who is you know, my doctor like kind of my friend, 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:20.200 but my doctor texted me all concerned that there was 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:23.040 something wrong with me because he had listened to Ultra 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:25.000 and he was like, you really, I know you've had 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:26.919 issues with depression and stuff in the past, and you 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:29.120 really turns out he was listening to it on zero 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:30.080 point seventy five. 0:05:30.600 --> 0:05:38.200 Oh my god, he thought I was really down. That's amazing. 0:05:39.040 --> 0:05:43.000 He thought he had special medical insight into what was going. 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:47.680 On with Yeah, that's amazing. Great Ultra. It is an 0:05:47.720 --> 0:05:52.920 extraordinary story. It is extremely well told. It's incredibly engaging 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:56.080 and really really fun and I would love to just 0:05:56.080 --> 0:06:00.880 for our Snafoo listeners, if you haven't heard Ultra, can 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:03.640 you break it down? Just like, what's the basic story? 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:06.880 The basic story is in the lead up to World 0:06:06.920 --> 0:06:12.880 War Two there was a really really big Nazi and 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:13.960 I mean that specifically. 0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:15.159 I don't mean like Nazis. 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:19.080 I mean were the Nazis big Nazi effort to try 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:22.359 to exploit what the Germans called kernels of disturbance in 0:06:22.400 --> 0:06:25.000 the United States, and so they were trying to propagandize 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:29.560 us really heavily. They supported a bunch of American native 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:32.680 fascist movements that were way scarier than we remember them 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:37.719 in history, and they paid a bunch of members of 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:41.520 Congress and senators to be on their side for this effort, 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:45.599 and it all sort of culminated in the Great Sedition 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:50.000 Trial of nineteen forty four, when nearly thirty of the 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:53.559 folks who were involved with the Nazis in these various 0:06:53.600 --> 0:06:58.200 plots got put on trial and they got off. 0:06:58.240 --> 0:06:59.880 There was a mistrial, and they were all let go. 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:04.040 It's so profound, this story, It is so intense, and 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:08.280 it's totally mind blowing. In your description just now, you 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:11.920 said that trial was the Great Sedition Trial of what 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:17.200 nineteen forty forty four? That implies that this was like 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:22.640 a landmark event that we all know and understand. What's 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:26.240 so incredible about this story? To me, among there's lots 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:28.560 of things incredible about it, but one of the most 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:33.080 incredible things is how forgotten it is. And it's something 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:36.120 that I think our podcasts share, which is the sort 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:41.280 of forgotten history stories that are that are insanely important. 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:44.640 And one of the historians in your podcast actually says 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:49.280 at one point, I'm a PhD in history, and most 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:52.360 of my colleagues who are PhDs in history have never 0:07:52.440 --> 0:07:55.400 heard of this, and so then of course the general 0:07:55.480 --> 0:08:00.760 public has no idea, and I wonder why is it forgotten? 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:03.680 Well, it's you know, I was thinking about the parallels 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:08.320 with that and with Able Archer, with what you cover 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:12.960 in Snaffu, and I think there there is something that's 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:15.880 like important for us to reflect on as people who 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:18.560 tell stories and who are interested in history, which is 0:08:18.560 --> 0:08:23.920 that sometimes the reason something is forgotten is because of 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:29.960 who won and who lost. Right, Like the goods, history 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:33.120 is told by the winners, and sometimes what the winners 0:08:33.240 --> 0:08:35.679 most want is for us to forget that the thing happened. 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:40.160 And that's definitely I feel like that's a little bit 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:43.120 of the story that you unfold in in Snaffu, Like 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:47.200 with the CIA doing its assessment of what happened with 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:49.760 Able Archer and whether it was a close call, They're like. 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:51.560 No, no, no, it was fine. It was no big deal. 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:55.200 And that's part of the history that you uncover and 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:57.880 that you tell in the story. But it's also important 0:08:57.920 --> 0:09:00.680 that the CIA wants it to be minimized, not to 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:04.559 be remembered as a significant thing. And a sort of 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:08.480 different version of that happens in my story, where the 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:11.200 good news ending to the extent that there is one 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:13.920 is that all of the elected officials who were part 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:15.800 of this plot, who are the real bad guys here, 0:09:16.520 --> 0:09:20.319 the public knew enough, they found out enough about what 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:21.960 those guys were up to that they voted them all 0:09:21.960 --> 0:09:24.160 out of office, like all but one of them got 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:26.080 voted out of office. And so even though a lot 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:29.960 of them were household names, really influential members of the 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:32.560 House in the Senate at the time, once they got 0:09:32.720 --> 0:09:35.680 turfed out by voters who were disgusted by their behavior, 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:38.360 they went from being big deals to being losers. 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:39.640 And the losers get forgotten. 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:42.520 And so part of the history that we have to 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:46.600 contend with is how much are the players here minimized 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:50.439 in history, either because it's convenient for somebody or because 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:53.280 the good guys won, And how much does that affect 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:56.280 whether this story is easy to find or easy to 0:09:56.320 --> 0:10:00.480 be told. So I find that dynamic interesting because you 0:10:00.520 --> 0:10:03.200 have to put yourself then in the story in terms 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:05.079 of how hard it is for you to find these things. 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:08.320 Well, it's a little bit of a scary reality when 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:13.840 you think the forgotten stories of history are very often 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:17.840 some of the most important, because the reason that they're 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:21.560 forgotten is that they were either painful or embarrassing or 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:24.840 extremely problematic, and yet those are the things that we 0:10:25.040 --> 0:10:27.560 do have the potential to learn the most from. 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:30.280 And the other the other circumstance in which that happens 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:33.320 is because it was a really scary thing and some 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:36.200 Americans or some characters in the story rose up and 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:39.160 did the right thing and neutralized the danger, right, and 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:42.080 then the heroes. Yeah, but that's also those heroes. We 0:10:42.120 --> 0:10:44.760 also need to learn that story, you know. So it's 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:47.760 it's it can't It can be like a deliberate shunt 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:49.480 this a way, let's not think about it, But it 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:52.640 can also be a like who close call, let's forget 0:10:52.679 --> 0:10:53.080 about it? 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:56.719 Yeah, I know, Yeah, okay, So how the hell did 0:10:56.760 --> 0:11:00.640 you find it? Like with SNAFU, we just we wanted 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:02.920 to do a podcast, and we wanted to do something 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:09.439 kind of history and irreverent, and we set about looking 0:11:09.480 --> 0:11:12.640 for the thing. Did you know you wanted to do 0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:17.040 a podcast and look for something exciting and meaningful or 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:20.480 did you just dig up this story or stumble on 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:22.360 it and then say this has to be told? 0:11:22.480 --> 0:11:23.080 So I was. 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:26.080 I sort of feel like the all the best stories 0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:31.240 that I've ever been involved in telling come out of ignorance, 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:34.439 like come out of legitimate curiosity, like I don't understand 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:37.560 where this came from, or this thing that everybody thinks 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:39.679 makes sense to them doesn't make sense to me. And 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:42.480 I was going through that sort of train of thought 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:44.920 just as part of my news you know, my day 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:48.720 job at MSNBC, thinking about Holocaust denial. So we're having 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:53.040 this big upsurge in anti semitism and kind of anti 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:55.480 semitism wedded to political power. 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:56.560 Which is a very dangerous thing. 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:58.560 And at the core of all of it is this 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:01.160 sort of burbling thing where people say the Holocaust didn't happen. 0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:06.719 And I've always felt like it's not obvious to me 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:08.600 how that. 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:13.800 Can exist intellectually, sure, like it's one thing to be prejudiced, 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:16.000 it's another thing to say this obvious thing and history 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:17.079 of which we have all this proof. 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:19.120 I choose to contend that it didn't happen. 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:21.200 And so I was interested in where that came from, 0:12:21.240 --> 0:12:26.160 and particularly where it came from in the first instance, 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:28.840 like how early on did people start denying it? 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:29.440 And what I. 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:33.199 Found, to my surprise, is that Holocaust denial really came 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:36.600 from the United States. It didn't come from Germany, and 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:38.880 it happened really early on. It happened in the forties, 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:43.720 which is nuts because there's all these American gis and 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:47.920 refugees from Europe, including refugees from Germany coming here, who 0:12:47.960 --> 0:12:51.200 are eyewitnesses, who are survivors who had family members killed 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:53.600 or who were liberating the concentration camps. I mean, so 0:12:53.640 --> 0:12:56.880 all this irrefutable evidence, and yet this thing emerges in 0:12:56.880 --> 0:12:59.040 the late forties in the United States and then starts 0:12:59.040 --> 0:13:01.319 pinging around the world. We're going to say that didn't happen. 0:13:01.600 --> 0:13:04.160 So interested in where the hell did that come from 0:13:04.200 --> 0:13:07.000 and why and who were the characters who dreamed this 0:13:07.160 --> 0:13:09.560 out knowing that it was false, but concocting it for 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:13.920 a political reason, And in trying to figure that out, 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:16.000 which is a story I'm still going to tell, but 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:19.319 I haven't gotten there yet, I realized that actually those 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:21.840 folks came out of this milia during World War Two 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:25.400 in the United States that we've forgotten about, and they 0:13:25.440 --> 0:13:28.040 all went on trial and oh my god, the judge 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:29.920 died in the middle of the trial and they were 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:32.520 all set free. And then what happened to them is 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:36.080 so it ended up being kind of the prequel to 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:38.600 the story that I wanted to tell, but I realized 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:40.520 there was enough there that I should probably tell it. 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:44.520 That's that is fascinating. I feel like that's kind of 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:46.680 how some of the best stories do come about. 0:13:47.000 --> 0:13:48.800 Can I ask you a SNAFU question about that? 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:49.800 Please? Yeah? 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:53.360 I thought the thing that I most admired about the 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:56.880 storytelling in SNAFU was your sort of fearlessness about casting 0:13:56.920 --> 0:13:59.640 doubt on the story. So obviously there's I mean, for 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:01.920 everybody listened to it, like, there's lots of twists and 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:05.880 lots of you know, backing up and reconsidering stuff that's 0:14:05.920 --> 0:14:09.400 earlier been presented. And I wondered, when you constructed the 0:14:09.440 --> 0:14:12.320 story and when you decided to do it, did you 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:20.160 know about the doubt and uncertainty and sort of woliness 0:14:20.320 --> 0:14:23.400 of the bottom line of that story when you started, 0:14:23.520 --> 0:14:26.000 or did you think it was a more certain story 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:28.880 when you started and you only got to that you know, 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:32.080 more mature, complex bottom line once you were into it 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:33.240 in the middle of the research. 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:37.240 Yeah, it was the latter. Like everything you read about 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:41.280 Able Archer in the sort of to the extent that 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:44.000 it's in the zeitgeist, just little blips and blurbs. It 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:48.480 sounds like a very cut and dry thing, but like anything, 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:51.600 the more you dig, the more nuanced it becomes. And 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:57.080 then it became for us as storytellers just feeling a 0:14:57.280 --> 0:15:02.960 kind of response. It's ability to reflect that nuance and 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:06.600 the complexity. You know, even some even historians have some 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:10.720 different perspectives on it that are that are very meaningful. 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:12.720 I don't know. We really wanted to lean into the 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:14.720 integrity of it, and that made it a little bit 0:15:14.800 --> 0:15:19.760 messier of a story. But ultimately the messiness kind of 0:15:19.800 --> 0:15:24.680 gave rise to some really exciting questions and kind of pontifications, 0:15:24.720 --> 0:15:27.400 and that's really where we wound up kind of putting 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:29.360 the focus in that last episode. 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:32.760 Well, it makes it more profound and more real. It 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:35.440 also makes it more of a contribution to the history 0:15:35.560 --> 0:15:38.040 of it. Right to have all the interviews that you 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:42.200 do and to have an honest reflection of the real 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:46.280 you know, the legitimate contention with the various facts and 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:49.480 the various perspectives on it. It's a it's a it's 0:15:49.520 --> 0:15:52.080 a real work of history with all all the jokes included. 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:55.080 But also it does get you to a more profound 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:59.320 place in terms of getting I think encouraging critical thinking 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:01.680 about seemingly cut. 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:03.360 And dry episodes. 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:07.080 I just thought that was really, like I said, mature 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:08.440 and complex and cool. 0:16:10.120 --> 0:16:10.400 Go on. 0:16:13.000 --> 0:16:15.600 Also, you guys, you're just so handsome. 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:20.760 And it was No, that's I'm literally like getting chills. 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:23.360 That means so much to hear from you. Yeah, Rachel, 0:16:23.400 --> 0:16:27.960 I really really appreciate that, And yeah, we really put 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:30.360 a ton of work into it, and so that means 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:30.680 a lot. 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:35.880 I think you had it harder than I did, because, 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:39.000 in my case, the Great Sedition Trial of nineteen forty 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:42.920 four is forgotten. The only histories of it have been 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:46.440 written by people who sympathized with the fascist defendants, and 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:49.000 so all the histories of it have all been about 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:51.800 how they were railroaded and it was terrible that these 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:54.680 people were put on trial, and how ridiculous this contention 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:57.680 that the Nazis were working with any Americans? Do you 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:01.080 believe how prejudiced the Department of Justice is against good 0:17:01.160 --> 0:17:05.040 American conservatives, And so all the history, all the history 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:09.919 of it was really biased and all in the same direction, 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:13.000 and nobody had ever revisited that history looking at it 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:16.800 from a more balanced perspective, And so I didn't have to. 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:21.159 I didn't have to contend with sort of you know, 0:17:21.320 --> 0:17:25.480 great nuanced, honest broker perspectives on both sides. There was 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:28.199 just a bunch of clap trap written about it, and 0:17:28.240 --> 0:17:31.760 nobody had ever done a broader, less I think, in 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:34.360 my from my perspective, less biased look at the evidence. 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:38.919 Wasn't I thought Roggy wrote a book? But were you 0:17:38.960 --> 0:17:41.320 able to dig that up? Is that is that findable? 0:17:41.920 --> 0:17:42.320 Ish? 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:42.760 Yeah? 0:17:42.840 --> 0:17:44.560 I mean, if you want to get a copy of it, 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:46.359 I can maybe give you a deal. I think I 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:48.800 own all the copies of it there were. It never 0:17:48.840 --> 0:17:51.280 had like a second printing, It never went anywhere. 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:53.879 He really tells us, sorry, tell us who Roggy is, 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:55.600 because I just brought him up out of the blue. 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:59.920 So Roggy is O John Roggy, who is a German American. 0:18:00.040 --> 0:18:02.520 Interestingly enough, he grows up in the United States, son 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:05.040 of German immigrants, speaking German at home, and he's this 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:11.600 wonderkins lawyer and prosecutor and Justice Department official. And he 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:15.160 ends up being the crusading prosecutor who tries to bring 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:18.360 the sedition trial home, who tries to finish it, who 0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:23.000 fights against the mistrial and the great twist in my 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:27.840 story in Ultra is when as the trials falling apart, 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:33.200 Ragi gets leave to go to Germany and he gets 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:38.000 to try to prove his contention that these weren't just 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:42.280 conservative Americans who had their own anti Semitic fascist ideas 0:18:42.359 --> 0:18:45.239 that were actually working with the Nazi government. They're being 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:47.679 paid by the Germans in many instances. He gets to 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:49.879 prove that from the German side, and he interviews all 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:54.159 these Nazi prisoners and they in fact give him all 0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:56.159 the dirt on all the Americans they were working with, 0:18:56.240 --> 0:18:58.520 and so he's able to prove the collusion, if you will, 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:02.360 from the other side. And by the time he brings 0:19:02.440 --> 0:19:06.720 those findings home to the United States, we have won 0:19:06.760 --> 0:19:07.080 the war. 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:08.439 Everybody wants to move on. 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:13.359 Roggy has become a political figure in a way that 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:17.080 he is. He is very much demonized by one side 0:19:17.080 --> 0:19:20.199 and then ultimately by the other side, and nobody really 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:23.119 wants to hear it. And so he does create this 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:26.600 really valuable historical record. But by the time it lands 0:19:26.600 --> 0:19:28.359 he finally gets it published, he has to fight with 0:19:28.400 --> 0:19:30.760 the Justice Tournament to get it declassified and all this stuff. 0:19:30.960 --> 0:19:34.879 By the time it finally lands in the public record. 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:37.879 It's nineteen sixty one, and this is ancient history, and 0:19:37.920 --> 0:19:41.080 nobody buys the book, and nobody reviews it, and nobody 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:46.600 stocks it in their archives, and it just disappears until 0:19:46.680 --> 0:19:49.720 you know, all these decades later, that story ends up 0:19:49.760 --> 0:19:52.240 being of interest to me because of its resonance with 0:19:52.440 --> 0:19:57.280 our current situations. And thank god he did it, because 0:19:57.320 --> 0:19:59.600 the record's there, even though nobody cared about it in 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:01.320 his life time and he died in obscurity. 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:06.879 It just raises so many fascinating questions and issues. Okay, 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:11.440 so anti semitism or racism in all its forms, these 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:16.520 are things that most people agree are bad, right, They're 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:20.680 just bad, bad, and gone. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah. 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:27.760 They also seem embedded in most modern emergencies of fascism. Yeah. 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:32.240 I know, throughout history, totalitarianism pops up in many different 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:37.920 forms all over the political spectrum. But fascism, and I 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:42.080 ask this not as any kind of indictment of conservatism, 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:46.000 but fascism in particular, seems to bubble up from the right. 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:47.199 Why do you think that is? 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:50.960 Well, I mean I do think that there's you know, 0:20:50.960 --> 0:20:54.520 there's different types of authoritarianism, right, and there's definitely you know, 0:20:54.760 --> 0:21:00.159 left wing authoritarianism as well, of course, and the when 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:03.760 you're talking about you know, tyrannical forms of government. Right 0:21:03.800 --> 0:21:09.200 wing authoritarianism, which in some instances is fascism. Not always, 0:21:09.200 --> 0:21:13.080 but sometimes this is fascism ends up having a recurrent 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:18.520 appeal in our country and in other Western democracies. I 0:21:18.520 --> 0:21:22.040 think because people don't like democracy. I mean, the basic 0:21:22.119 --> 0:21:26.040 idea of democracy is that everybody gets a say. And 0:21:26.440 --> 0:21:30.240 if you think that you and people like you should 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:33.960 get a say but other people shouldn't, that's an instinct 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:37.240 that people have. And there can be left wing authoritarianism, 0:21:37.240 --> 0:21:39.160 which is a different drive and comes from a different 0:21:39.200 --> 0:21:43.040 place and leads to murder, leads to mass murder and 0:21:43.160 --> 0:21:45.560 terrible as much becomes as well, just as much Mayham. 0:21:45.760 --> 0:21:46.440 But on the right. 0:21:46.480 --> 0:21:49.600 The way it works is me and my people were 0:21:49.600 --> 0:21:52.920 the only people who should count as citizens. The other 0:21:53.040 --> 0:21:55.320 people who are technically you're telling me how to be 0:21:55.359 --> 0:21:58.359 part of this democracy are lesser than or evil or 0:21:58.359 --> 0:22:01.560 their interlopers, and we not only need to exclude them 0:22:01.600 --> 0:22:03.560 from the decision making process, but we need to blame 0:22:03.600 --> 0:22:05.520 them for all the things that are going wrong here, 0:22:05.600 --> 0:22:08.720 and we need to exclude them from the decision making 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:11.520 process and punish them for all the terrible things they've done, 0:22:11.560 --> 0:22:13.800 because if it was just us in charge, everything would 0:22:13.800 --> 0:22:17.200 be fine. And that's the basic idea. And that's why 0:22:18.600 --> 0:22:22.320 authoritarianism on the right almost always. 0:22:21.880 --> 0:22:23.600 Comes with anti semitism. 0:22:24.240 --> 0:22:25.960 It's either going to be anti semitism or it's going 0:22:26.040 --> 0:22:29.200 to be some other thing that looks like anti semitism 0:22:29.240 --> 0:22:31.840 that is directed towards some other minority group because you 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:34.639