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Speaker 1: Also media.

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Speaker 2: Welcome back to Behind the Bastard. It's a podcast about

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Speaker 2: the very worst people in all of history, a topic

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Speaker 2: I am well suited to address because I am one

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Speaker 2: of the worst people in all of history, or at

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Speaker 2: least I feel that way because I am calamitously hungover.

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Speaker 2: I am the villain in my own life and very

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Speaker 2: angry at myself. Here to express rage at me. My

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Speaker 2: guest and friend, Maggie may fist fit. Is you see

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Speaker 2: how I'm doing today, Maggie, I see how I'm doing.

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Speaker 2: You see where my head is fu.

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Speaker 3: Oh my god, It's almost like I'm not hungover either.

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Speaker 2: I mean more fucking electrolytes. Sure, Thursday night's a normal

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Speaker 2: party night, absolutely, when you have a normal human schedule

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Speaker 2: like us.

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Speaker 3: How to say, for our kinds?

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Speaker 2: Yes, it is, yeah, for our kind, normal healthy people

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Speaker 2: in the entertainment industry. Maggie, you and I go way back.

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Speaker 2: We were colleagues at the old place, cracked dot com.

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Speaker 2: And you have grown and spread your wings from there

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Speaker 2: like all of our wonderful colleagues, And you have a

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Speaker 2: YouTube channel now, and you've just came out with a

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Speaker 2: new project that I'm very excited to check out. Do

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Speaker 2: you want to talk a little bit about what you're

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Speaker 2: doing and plug your pluggables before we get into this episode.

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Speaker 4: Absolutely, well, you know, I think it's apt. We're going

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Speaker 4: to be talking about supposedly someone.

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Speaker 2: Terrible, something terrible.

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Speaker 4: God, Oh, I'm so prepared, much like. Yeah, the show

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Speaker 4: is called Amy's Den and Dreamhouse. It's on Nebula. It's

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Speaker 4: also about terrible things, terrible things that happened to you

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Speaker 4: in adulthood, you and all of us.

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Speaker 3: So I'm very excited. I'm so excited to learn today, Robert, Well, we.

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Speaker 2: Are going to be talking about something terrible that I

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Speaker 2: did not know about. Actually, this is this is one

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Speaker 2: that kind of took me by surprise, the topic of

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Speaker 2: this episode, because we are to be chatting a little

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Speaker 2: bit about a car company you might know of called Volkswagen.

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Speaker 2: Do you know much about Volkswagen.

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Speaker 3: Volkswagen New Beetle driving you wild?

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Speaker 2: Sure? Yeah, absolutely, that's one thing they're known for. Barbie

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Speaker 2: had one, Uh, Barbie had a Volkswagen and uh.

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Speaker 3: Some tenuous connections to Nazism.

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Speaker 2: Is that it's not tenuous, I'll tell you that much

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Speaker 2: right now. Maggie, Okay, will we talked a little bit

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Speaker 2: about that. I knew that like Volkswagen was connected to

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Speaker 2: the Nazis like a lot of car companies, right, Like,

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Speaker 2: there's no good car company. There's no like car company

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Speaker 2: that's just got like a spotless clean record, no war crimes,

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Speaker 2: no one evil was ever involved, you know, like fucking

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Speaker 2: obviously everyone's aware of the fun journey that Elon Musk

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Speaker 2: and Tesla have been on lately. But like Ford Motor

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Speaker 2: Company was founded by a notorious anti Semite, right, yeah,

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Speaker 2: people are aware, oh in Michigan. Yes, Ford wound up

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Speaker 2: being a valuable part of the United States is like

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Speaker 2: war effort, right, they made a lot of cars that

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Speaker 2: were used by the military. But Ford himself, Henry, would

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Speaker 2: have been much happier if the US has sided with

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Speaker 2: Nazi Germany.

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Speaker 4: Right, Like absolutely, he's raring to go in my memory

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Speaker 4: of his young.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, raring to go with his Nazi newspaper about

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Speaker 2: anti Semitism. And it gets deeper than that, obviously. Toyota

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Speaker 2: in Mitsubishi got their start building war machines for the

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Speaker 2: Empire of Japan, and that's not clean work, you know, which,

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Speaker 2: as I love my Toyota.

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Speaker 3: Ditto, that's what I ad didn't know, okay, okay, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Oh yes, yeah, yeah yeah. Toyota in Mitsubishi, he made

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Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of cars, a lot of

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Speaker 2: vehicles for Imperial Japan, which did not get up to

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Speaker 2: anything good with them. And obviously every major German automaker

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Speaker 2: that existed in the thirties contributed to the Third Reich, right,

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Speaker 2: not just in terms of making cars for the very

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Speaker 2: but like utilizing slave labor, all that good stuff. So

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Speaker 2: that's not super surprising, right, just the fact that a

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Speaker 2: lot of car companies have evil backstories or were involved

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Speaker 2: with shady regimes. We're going to be talking about something

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Speaker 2: that did surprise me, which is that Volkswagen operated a

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Speaker 2: slave plantation in Brazil in the latter half of the

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Speaker 2: twentieth century. What I didn't know much about that.

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Speaker 4: Whoa, oh, your words are catching up to my homeover brain.

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Speaker 2: Yes, we're talking about Volkswagen's Brazilian slave plantation today. Okay,

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Speaker 2: you know, get everybody off on a good mood. Obviously,

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Speaker 2: we very rarely encounter fascism in our day to day

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Speaker 2: lives or on the news, so you know, it's always

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Speaker 2: it's refreshing to hear some history you.

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Speaker 3: Know, so just remind me of the yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Things used to be bad before we as a species

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Speaker 2: really figured everything out, you know, right, Yeah, so this

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Speaker 2: won't be entirely surprising if you're familiar with Volkswagen's origin story,

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Speaker 2: the fact that they had a slave plantation. Let's talk

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Speaker 2: a little bit about VW's origin story, right, because it's

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Speaker 2: a dark one. Woo. You know that, Like there's a

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Speaker 2: tenuous connection, right, and so we're going to get into

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Speaker 2: kind of what that connection entails. In February of nineteen

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Speaker 2: thirty three, right at the dawn of the Nazi regimes,

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Speaker 2: right after Hitler took office, Adolph Hitler appeared at a

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Speaker 2: car show in Germany to announce the start of a

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Speaker 2: people's motorization, right. And this was his plan and the

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Speaker 2: plan that the Nazi Party was really pushing to motorize

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Speaker 2: the right. The goal was eventually to have every family

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Speaker 2: have their own car, which is an ambitious goal at

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Speaker 2: this point. Right, we're still talking about like the military

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Speaker 2: is handling most things with horses, right, I mean, even

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Speaker 2: through World War Two, that'll be the case with the Germans.

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Speaker 2: Automobiles though, were a really direct symbol of the future

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Speaker 2: and futurism was a cornerstone of fascism, the early fascists,

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Speaker 2: and it starts in Italy. You know, this isn't something

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Speaker 2: that has its origins even with German fascists. Italian fascists

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Speaker 2: are obsessed with cars because they're obsessed with speed. Airplanes

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Speaker 2: are the same thing, right.

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Speaker 4: Oh, that does make sense, actually, yeah, yeah, okay, yes, yes,

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Speaker 4: And that's kind of like fascism is at this point.

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Speaker 2: It's not just looking back to these kind of like

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Speaker 2: quote unquote traditional values and this you know, desire to

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Speaker 2: return to these kind of more medieval attitudes of social organization.

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Speaker 2: There's also a lot of obsession with like the future

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Speaker 2: and with speed and all of this stuff. A big

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Speaker 2: part of Hitler's appeal and like a major cornerstone of

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Speaker 2: his campaign is that he flies everywhere. Right. This is

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Speaker 2: the first time in a democracy that a major political

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Speaker 2: candidate had traveled primarily by air to a bunch of

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Speaker 2: their appearances, and it was it allowed him to reach

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Speaker 2: a lot more places, and it also it fed into

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Speaker 2: this image that like fascism is this ideology of the future,

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Speaker 2: you know, not.

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Speaker 3: Familiar at all. Uh yeah, that's bringing no bells today.

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Speaker 2: They're embracing AI and shit, right, but like it's the

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Speaker 2: same basic idea, right, this kind of like reckless embrace

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Speaker 2: of like speed and technology. And yeah, so one of

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Speaker 2: Hitler's immediate priorities is kind of announcing and trying to

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Speaker 2: really like propaganize the fact that like the third Reich

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Speaker 2: is going to be a motorized society, you know. And

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Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty four, the next year, the Reich Association

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Speaker 2: of the German Auto industry entered into talks with a

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Speaker 2: pioneering automobile designer, Ferdinand Porsche. That last name is probably

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Speaker 2: familiar to most people, right, this is the guy who

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Speaker 2: started Porsche, right, obviously, the Porsche Yes, mister yes. And

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Speaker 2: they sit down with Porsche and they ask him to

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Speaker 2: create a cheap and efficient personal automobile, something that would

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Speaker 2: be a wordable for like the average German family, and

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Speaker 2: something that like you could basically replace, you know, the

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Speaker 2: horses and other methods of transit with this cheap personal car. Right.

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Speaker 2: And the name that they give to this this people's

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Speaker 2: car is the Volkswagon, which just pretty much literally means

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Speaker 2: the people's car, right. The Vulcan is the people In.

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Speaker 3: The very beginning yeah, okay.

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Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, yeah, that's where the name comes from.

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Speaker 4: Great, get all your six you know, six thousand children

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Speaker 4: into the tiny car you motorized.

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Speaker 2: You win. Yeah, get your huge Nazi family into this

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Speaker 2: tiny car, and yeah it'll be great. So, unlike many

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Speaker 2: of the Reich's policies, Hitler personally directed the search for

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Speaker 2: a people's car. There was a bunch of shit that

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Speaker 2: like Hitler was I mean even like to an extent,

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Speaker 2: like the Holocaust was a thing that like he delegated

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Speaker 2: a lot he is directly involved in, like the quest

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Speaker 2: to motorize Germany. In an extent, that's kind of rare

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Speaker 2: for him, right, because he is a big delegation guy.

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Speaker 4: You know, Yeah, this is like a well beyond the work,

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Speaker 4: he's just delegating everything and like yeah, having sex all the.

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Speaker 2: Time, okay, Yeah, Like this is something he's personally obsessed with,

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Speaker 2: just kind of kind of in the same manner that

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Speaker 2: like he's obsessed with the rebuilding of Berlin and all

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Speaker 2: of these kind of like architectural programs where they're creating

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Speaker 2: these like massive buildings that will be symbols of the

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Speaker 2: new Reich. He's personally involved in that and he's personally

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Speaker 2: involved in this quest to motorize Germany. And Hitler never

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Speaker 2: knew how to drive himself. He was not a driver,

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Speaker 2: but he took great pleasure in being chauffeured around the country.

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Speaker 2: One of his hobbies was just having people drive him around.

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Speaker 2: He likes going on rides. Cars were more exciting back then,

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Speaker 2: you know, we hadn't gotten completely burnt out on them.

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Speaker 2: And Porsche, Fernand Porsche had been an advocate for something

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Speaker 2: like the Volkswagen for years prior to the Nazis coming

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Speaker 2: to power. So this was one of those things that

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Speaker 2: was really convenient for Porsche.

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Speaker 3: Kismet, Yes, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Exactly, it's kismet, you know. And his biographer Wolf from

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Speaker 2: Peida describes both Porscha and Hitler as made for each other,

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Speaker 2: writing quote, Hitler needed a creative mind to produce his

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Speaker 2: compact car suitable for mass production, and Porsche needed a

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Speaker 2: political backing to enable him to build it without financial pressure. Right,

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Speaker 2: So this is a match made in I mean, not heaven,

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Speaker 2: but it's it's really convenient to both men.

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Speaker 3: Well the other place, Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, in Porsche, I mean he's not not a Nazi,

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Speaker 2: but his primary he's he's obsessed with this quest to

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Speaker 2: make you know, a cheap automobile that's available for everybody.

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Speaker 2: And he just kind of he doesn't really give a

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Speaker 2: shit to sell who he has to work with to

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Speaker 2: make it happen. Right, His dream is just to get

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Speaker 2: this car made.

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Speaker 3: So he's a good guy.

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Speaker 2: He's a great man, right.

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Speaker 3: The entrepreneur working for himself. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, he just doesn't give a shit, like about you know,

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Speaker 2: the fact that it's going to be produced by slaves.

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Speaker 2: About what matters to him is getting this car out

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Speaker 2: he has. He's got tunnel blindness over the Volkswagen. Now,

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Speaker 2: from the jump, the Volkswagen was not a purely civilian endeavor.

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Speaker 2: In nineteen thirty four, Porsche's company published a brochure laying

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Speaker 2: out that their future car also had to be practical

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Speaker 2: for particular military purposes. Right, And this is both like

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Speaker 2: Germany has limited resources. There's this kind of understanding that

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Speaker 2: if a war breaks out, these civilian cars will probably

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Speaker 2: get pressed into service.

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Speaker 3: And also a bunch of volkswagons.

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Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, the line okay beats walking.

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Speaker 3: Okay, they're so unintimidated.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you ever tried to walk to rush away? So

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Speaker 2: the Volkswagon becomes a cornerstone of what's called the Strength

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Speaker 2: through Joy program, which is a major set of policies

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Speaker 2: that's organized by the Reich Association for Leisure Activities. Now,

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Speaker 2: I've seen Strength through Joy translated by German publications as

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Speaker 2: Strength through Pleasure, and I think this is probably a

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Speaker 2: case where a lot of English translators maybe do a

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Speaker 2: better job of capturing the initial meeting, because strength through

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Speaker 2: Pleasure makes it sound weird in a way that it

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Speaker 2: wasn't like the idea was. You know, the Nazis when

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Speaker 2: they came to power, they had to signpost and kind

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Speaker 2: of adapt a lot of left wing talking points. You know,

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Speaker 2: initially early on there was a left wing of the party.

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Speaker 2: They get purged during the night a long knives, and

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Speaker 2: part of that is, well, these socialists are always talking

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Speaker 2: about stuff like vacation days. And you know, a big

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Speaker 2: thing that the USSR did and that Communist Yugoslavia did

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Speaker 2: was they would build all these gigantic like recreation hotels

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Speaker 2: and whatnot that were like resorts that were meant for

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Speaker 2: like working class people. Right, this was a major thing

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Speaker 2: that they were doing. And the Nazis tried to have

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Speaker 2: their version of that, in part because you know, this

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Speaker 2: is just a way in which they were kind of

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Speaker 2: trying to compete with the left, but also in part

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Speaker 2: because this was part of the promise of fascist right. Right, obviously,

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Speaker 2: do this.

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Speaker 3: And this and this, you will get a fancy Hilton, Yes, yeah,

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Speaker 3: to swim in.

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Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. We're going to steal all this shit from

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Speaker 2: these groups of people that are going to be forced

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Speaker 2: out of society and annihilated. And as a result, you'll

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Speaker 2: get a vacation every year, you'll get to go to

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Speaker 2: the beach with your family, you'll get a car. That

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Speaker 2: was the idea, right, This is never something that they

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Speaker 2: fully achieve, but this is the idea behind the Strength

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Speaker 2: through Joy program, Right, is we're kind of buying the

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Speaker 2: loyalty of the working class, of the classes that had

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Speaker 2: been unionized and had previously, in German electoral history, gotten

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Speaker 2: more towards left. The ideas we're going to kind of

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Speaker 2: get them on our side by promising access to all

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Speaker 2: of these luxuries.

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Speaker 3: Right, it's the Google method.

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Speaker 4: You get, you know, a couple ping pong tables, right,

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Speaker 4: they'll say after work, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yes, it's exactly how Silicon Valley used to work right,

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Speaker 2: strength through joy, productivity through joy, and so the motorization

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Speaker 2: of Germany is a big part of this. Right. The

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Speaker 2: idea that a normal party member would be able to

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Speaker 2: afford their own family car in a country that had

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Speaker 2: been as strapped with poverty and economic collapse is Germany

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Speaker 2: that had gone through something as devastating as a famine

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Speaker 2: so recently. That's really appealing, right, and it makes fascism

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Speaker 2: look really powerful, the fact that, well, you know, a

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Speaker 2: few years ago everyone was starving, and now we're talking

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Speaker 2: about giving everyone their own car. Right again, they never

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Speaker 2: do this, but it's important to Hitler and it's important

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Speaker 2: to the image of Nazism that they were trying to

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Speaker 2: do this right, that this was something that they were

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Speaker 2: talking about, right, And cars were expressly a luxury commodity

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Speaker 2: when Hitler took over. When he comes to power, only

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Speaker 2: about one fiftieth of the country owned automobiles. And the

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Speaker 2: idea is that cars are not cheap, right, And the

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Speaker 2: Volkswagen is supposed to cost just nine hundred and ninety

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Speaker 2: nine Reich's marks, and there will be like an installment plan,

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Speaker 2: so regular citizens are able to afford it, and it

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Speaker 2: is a big deal. Automobile ownership is intensely politicized from

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Speaker 2: the very earliest years of the Reich. The German General

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Speaker 2: Automotive Club expelled all of its Jewish members in nineteen

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Speaker 2: thirty three, and after Coristall Knock in nineteen thirty eight,

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Speaker 2: Jews were legally bidden from driving or owning cars in

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Speaker 2: the Reich. Hitler approves the first Volkswagen prototype near the

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Speaker 2: end of nineteen thirty five, and the late spring of

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Speaker 2: nineteen thirty eight, construction begins on the first factory in Wolfsburg.

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Speaker 2: Hitler himself made an appearance at the ceremony, basically cuts

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Speaker 2: the ribbon as they're creating and building this factory in Wolfsburg.

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Speaker 2: And at this point the Volkswagen which is known initially,

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Speaker 2: they don't start calling it the Volkswagen, it's called the

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Speaker 2: KDF Wagon, which I think is just like the strength

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Speaker 2: through Joy wagon. Basically, no, sure, right, yeah, they found

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Speaker 2: it better year. We can all agree Volkswagen rolls off

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Speaker 2: the tongue better than the KDF wagon. Oh yeah, no,

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Speaker 2: my friend's got this classic KDF wagon. It's still got

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Speaker 2: the swastikas on the back end and everything.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, right, you'll fuck death wagon.

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Speaker 2: Right, Oh, Kill Death Fuck Wagon. Yeah, there we go.

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Speaker 2: So the idea in Nazi propaganda is that the KDF

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Speaker 2: wagon is going to be the symbol of the national

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Speaker 2: Socialist People's community, and the plant in Wolfsburg would be

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Speaker 2: known as the city of the KDF car. In short order,

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Speaker 2: Hitler promised more than one point five million of these

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Speaker 2: cars would be produced every year. Now they never achieve this.

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Speaker 2: This is never more than a propagandistic boast. Because they

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Speaker 2: start building the factory in nineteen thirty eight and World

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Speaker 2: War Two kicks off like a year later, and so

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Speaker 2: as soon as Germany gets into a war with everybody,

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Speaker 2: the military need for different vehicles and tanks, trump's the

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Speaker 2: desire to get civilians automobiles. You can only do one

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Speaker 2: at a time, basically, given the nature of the German

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Speaker 2: economy and their access to resources.

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Speaker 4: And look at that they already have the factory going.

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Speaker 3: That's so convenient. Yeah wow, really planning ahead right right.

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Speaker 2: It just moves immediately over to like military production, right,

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Speaker 2: and resource shortages were so severe during this period of

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Speaker 2: time that Volkswagen has to almost immediately pivot to using

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Speaker 2: slave labor to meet production quotas as soon as the

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Speaker 2: war kicks off, and I want to quote from an

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Speaker 2: article the Holocaust Encyclopedia summarizing how this process got going.

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Speaker 2: Volkswagen was among the first companies to take advantage of

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Speaker 2: the forced labor of Soviet prisoners of war. The factory

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Speaker 2: employed a variety of categories of workers, including German employees

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Speaker 2: and migrant workers, but also prisoners of war concentration camp inmates,

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Speaker 2: including Jews, and increasingly large numbers of Soviet and Polish

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Speaker 2: civilian foreign forced laborers known as Eastern workers. A first

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Speaker 2: concentration camp on the site our Bytesdorf, was established on

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Speaker 2: factory property in April of nineteen forty two. Forced laborers

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Speaker 2: eventually made up approximately sixty percent of the workforce at

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Speaker 2: the city of the KDF car. So, throughout the war,

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Speaker 2: the early Volkswagens you know, and the military vehicles they

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Speaker 2: pivot to making, are being made primarily by slaves, right,

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Speaker 2: Like that's from the jump VW is cars made by

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Speaker 2: slave labor, which is great, This is great.

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Speaker 3: I mean you know, now we just have yes, a

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Speaker 3: very similar yeah.

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Speaker 2: Now we just use slaves to get the rare earth minerals, right, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 2: we use.

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Speaker 3: Kids for cars. Now, So you know, it's it all

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Speaker 3: shakes up.

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Speaker 2: Well, their tiny hens can reach the precious minerals in the.

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Speaker 3: Congo as they get their hair stuck in the weaving.

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Speaker 2: Well, shure, yeah, you're gonna lose some kids. Speaking of

341
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Speaker 2: child's slave labor, you know who doesn't use that. Whatever

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Speaker 2: sponsor comes next, unless it's like Haribo, if it's the

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Speaker 2: Gummy bear people, they definitely use child slave labor. Just

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Speaker 2: as that's up, we're back. So we're talking nineteen forty two.

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Speaker 2: The city of the KDF car is primarily using slave labored.

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Speaker 2: Now they're not making cars for civilians, the making cars

347
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Speaker 2: for the military concentration camp inmates because they need they

348
00:18:50,680 --> 00:18:53,040
Speaker 2: have to be skilled laborers. You can't just grab anyone

349
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Speaker 2: to help make a car, right, You need people who

350
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Speaker 2: have certain abilities or certain knowledge. So they're they're kind

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Speaker 2: of combe concentration camps. They're going to places like Auschwitz, right,

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Speaker 2: And in fact, a Volkswagen engineer travels to Auschwitz in

353
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Speaker 2: nineteen forty four to pick out three hundred skilled metalworkers

354
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Speaker 2: from their recently transported Hungarian Jewish population. War needs being

355
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Speaker 2: what they were, large portions of the factory had been

356
00:19:17,440 --> 00:19:19,879
Speaker 2: turned over to making munitions, so they're not just making

357
00:19:20,080 --> 00:19:23,480
Speaker 2: vehicles like they're increasingly just because of how desperate the

358
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Speaker 2: war is using these auto factories to make like tank

359
00:19:26,440 --> 00:19:30,520
Speaker 2: shells and artillery shells and bullets and stuff. Another six

360
00:19:30,600 --> 00:19:33,600
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty skilled Jewish female laborers are brought in

361
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Speaker 2: to make shells and explosives at the Volkswagen factory. Their

362
00:19:37,240 --> 00:19:41,280
Speaker 2: facility became a subcamp of the Neuangama concentration camp, and

363
00:19:41,320 --> 00:19:44,320
Speaker 2: by the war's end the plant consisted of four concentration

364
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Speaker 2: camps and eight forced labor camps. The number of Eastern

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Speaker 2: workers alone neared five thousand people, half of them female.

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Speaker 2: The number of skilled female laborers brought another issue, which

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Speaker 2: is that a lot of these female workers are arriving

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Speaker 2: at the slave factory pregnant, right, or they become pregnant

369
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Speaker 2: while they're working at the facility, for reasons I shouldn't

370
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Speaker 2: have to explain, you.

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Speaker 3: Know, yes, yes, And this is a problem.

372
00:20:09,840 --> 00:20:13,040
Speaker 2: Right for the Nazis, because you have kind of two choices.

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Speaker 2: One of them is ship these people back to where

374
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Speaker 2: they had been taken from, which is what they do initially,

375
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Speaker 2: right when they find that they've got pregnant Eastern workers,

376
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Speaker 2: is they just send them back to whatever camp they'd

377
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Speaker 2: come from. Ooops, put them back right right right? Oh yeah,

378
00:20:27,760 --> 00:20:30,919
Speaker 2: now I'm not ready to raise a baby since the

379
00:20:30,960 --> 00:20:34,120
Speaker 2: third right. But this isn't like a great solution because

380
00:20:34,160 --> 00:20:36,680
Speaker 2: they need these people, right. These are not interchangeable. These

381
00:20:36,680 --> 00:20:39,119
Speaker 2: are skilled like metal workers and the like, right, So

382
00:20:39,400 --> 00:20:41,640
Speaker 2: they want these people because they don't have enough people

383
00:20:41,680 --> 00:20:43,399
Speaker 2: who know how to do this kind of shit, and

384
00:20:43,440 --> 00:20:46,160
Speaker 2: they can't just send all of them back because they're

385
00:20:46,160 --> 00:20:48,320
Speaker 2: by definition doing work that the right doesn't have enough

386
00:20:48,320 --> 00:20:52,560
Speaker 2: bodies to accomplish. Fritz Sockel, who is the German Secretary

387
00:20:52,640 --> 00:20:56,440
Speaker 2: for Labor Allocation, reverses this policy late in the war,

388
00:20:56,920 --> 00:20:59,719
Speaker 2: like their morale actually does kind of matter to an

389
00:20:59,720 --> 00:21:02,399
Speaker 2: extra So you can't just like take their kids. I mean,

390
00:21:02,400 --> 00:21:03,800
Speaker 2: that's what they're going to do, but you have to

391
00:21:04,040 --> 00:21:05,720
Speaker 2: you have to at least pretend that you're going to

392
00:21:05,760 --> 00:21:07,640
Speaker 2: take care of these kids, right, because it does sort

393
00:21:07,640 --> 00:21:10,080
Speaker 2: of matter how productive these laborers are.

394
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Speaker 4: They're going to lego land a nice farm weekend, nice

395
00:21:14,800 --> 00:21:17,160
Speaker 4: farm to get cigarettes.

396
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Speaker 2: And so late in the war, Old Fritz establishes the

397
00:21:20,160 --> 00:21:25,600
Speaker 2: first nursery facilities at the Volkswagen concentration camps for children

398
00:21:25,640 --> 00:21:26,920
Speaker 2: of foreign laborers.

399
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Speaker 3: So dark.

400
00:21:28,480 --> 00:21:31,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's really bad because, as you might adage it,

401
00:21:31,280 --> 00:21:34,159
Speaker 2: a Nazi nursery for the children of slave labors, not

402
00:21:34,240 --> 00:21:38,560
Speaker 2: a great place for kids. Now on paper, these are

403
00:21:38,560 --> 00:21:42,439
Speaker 2: being described and being described to the pregnant workers as

404
00:21:42,560 --> 00:21:46,399
Speaker 2: birthing centers and places where infants will be watched and

405
00:21:46,520 --> 00:21:51,280
Speaker 2: cared for while their parents work. Right, Obviously, the Nazis

406
00:21:51,320 --> 00:21:54,199
Speaker 2: have no real interest in taking care of untermens children.

407
00:21:54,480 --> 00:21:56,400
Speaker 2: They don't want these people to exist at all.

408
00:21:56,520 --> 00:22:00,720
Speaker 3: Do have universal childcare for their slave labor? Wow? Yeah,

409
00:22:00,920 --> 00:22:02,960
Speaker 3: I have some strongly worded letters to write.

410
00:22:03,640 --> 00:22:06,639
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. I can't believe the Nazis would do something

411
00:22:06,680 --> 00:22:10,359
Speaker 2: with this bad. So the first nursery facility gets opened

412
00:22:10,400 --> 00:22:12,919
Speaker 2: at the Volkswagen camp in early nineteen forty three, and

413
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Speaker 2: I want to quote from the same write up again,

414
00:22:15,040 --> 00:22:17,960
Speaker 2: medical supervision of the maternity ward and children's home became

415
00:22:18,000 --> 00:22:21,480
Speaker 2: the responsibility of the factory physician, an overseer of Volkswagen's

416
00:22:21,520 --> 00:22:25,320
Speaker 2: medical facilities, doctor Hans Corbel. In time, children were sent

417
00:22:25,359 --> 00:22:27,320
Speaker 2: to a similar home in the nearby town of Ruin,

418
00:22:27,640 --> 00:22:30,280
Speaker 2: where the mortality was close to one hundred percent. It

419
00:22:30,359 --> 00:22:32,720
Speaker 2: is thought that three hundred and sixty five infants in toddlers,

420
00:22:32,720 --> 00:22:35,720
Speaker 2: the children of female Eastern workers who labored at Volkswagen,

421
00:22:35,800 --> 00:22:39,880
Speaker 2: died at Ruin. So this is just a death camp

422
00:22:39,920 --> 00:22:42,639
Speaker 2: for little kids, right. They're kind of pretending it's not

423
00:22:43,280 --> 00:22:45,480
Speaker 2: so that these people are are functional, but that is

424
00:22:45,520 --> 00:22:48,480
Speaker 2: what they're doing, is they're just killing these kids. Now,

425
00:22:48,520 --> 00:22:51,720
Speaker 2: at the end of the war, the Volkswagen factory manager

426
00:22:51,880 --> 00:22:55,840
Speaker 2: is a guy named Anton Pike Piech, and he winds

427
00:22:55,920 --> 00:22:57,680
Speaker 2: up in charge of a military unit made up of

428
00:22:57,720 --> 00:23:01,000
Speaker 2: Volkswagen employees acting as reserves who are supposed to be

429
00:23:01,000 --> 00:23:04,040
Speaker 2: like defending this factory. It doesn't work well, and as

430
00:23:04,080 --> 00:23:06,720
Speaker 2: soon as it becomes clear the war is lost, ol

431
00:23:06,800 --> 00:23:09,960
Speaker 2: Anton flees to Austria and hides out on the personal

432
00:23:10,080 --> 00:23:13,240
Speaker 2: estate of Ferdinand Porsche, who's his father in law. He

433
00:23:13,280 --> 00:23:15,359
Speaker 2: takes about ten million Reichs Marks with him. When the

434
00:23:15,440 --> 00:23:17,560
Speaker 2: Nazis lose and he tries to hide out there, it's

435
00:23:17,560 --> 00:23:21,119
Speaker 2: not going to be super successful because like it's Austria,

436
00:23:21,240 --> 00:23:25,080
Speaker 2: you haven't fled that far, Like it's still going to

437
00:23:25,119 --> 00:23:29,200
Speaker 2: be occupied. And yeah, he's going to get charged criminally

438
00:23:29,280 --> 00:23:32,080
Speaker 2: for his involvement here. As is doctor Corbel who ran

439
00:23:32,200 --> 00:23:36,440
Speaker 2: that child death camp nursery thing. Corbel actually gets charged

440
00:23:36,480 --> 00:23:39,320
Speaker 2: by the British occupying officials with criminal neglect in nineteen

441
00:23:39,359 --> 00:23:42,359
Speaker 2: forty six and he's executed in nineteen forty seven. And

442
00:23:42,440 --> 00:23:44,520
Speaker 2: again I just really want to emphasize these are all

443
00:23:44,600 --> 00:23:48,720
Speaker 2: Volkswagen employees, right, yes, and doctor Corbel is going to

444
00:23:48,760 --> 00:23:51,280
Speaker 2: be one of the very few VW employees to pay

445
00:23:51,320 --> 00:23:54,800
Speaker 2: for his war era crimes. Porsche and Pike, you know,

446
00:23:54,840 --> 00:23:56,760
Speaker 2: obviously we know who fred end Porsche is. Pike is

447
00:23:56,760 --> 00:23:59,560
Speaker 2: the guy who is managing the factory. They're both arrested

448
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:02,640
Speaker 2: and held custody after the war, but the Allied authorities

449
00:24:02,680 --> 00:24:05,080
Speaker 2: never got a round really charging them with any crimes.

450
00:24:05,440 --> 00:24:08,919
Speaker 2: Volkswagen continues to operate after World War Two, and the

451
00:24:08,960 --> 00:24:12,040
Speaker 2: Wolfsburg plant remained the headquarters of the company up until

452
00:24:12,040 --> 00:24:15,919
Speaker 2: the modern era. They never changed their HQ from like

453
00:24:16,080 --> 00:24:19,399
Speaker 2: the place where they had slave factories, because again this

454
00:24:19,480 --> 00:24:21,600
Speaker 2: is this very German thing, and it's like, well, the

455
00:24:21,680 --> 00:24:25,080
Speaker 2: buildings are perfectly good, Like it's not the building we

456
00:24:25,200 --> 00:24:28,320
Speaker 2: go on to. Why would we change where we're based out,

457
00:24:29,080 --> 00:24:35,040
Speaker 2: No one, We have the factory right here. Wow, the

458
00:24:35,160 --> 00:24:38,800
Speaker 2: vibes yeah. I remember visiting saxon Housen, which is a

459
00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:42,320
Speaker 2: concentration camp near Berlin, was primarily for political prisoners ten

460
00:24:42,400 --> 00:24:45,320
Speaker 2: or fifteen years ago, and you know, as we're going through,

461
00:24:45,359 --> 00:24:46,840
Speaker 2: they point out this building and it's like and that's

462
00:24:46,840 --> 00:24:49,840
Speaker 2: where you know, the camp guards would be trained. And

463
00:24:49,880 --> 00:24:52,200
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, you know, what is it today?

464
00:24:52,040 --> 00:24:54,359
Speaker 2: And like, well, it's a police trading facility today. And

465
00:24:54,400 --> 00:24:56,199
Speaker 2: I was like, you guys, couldn't just make another building.

466
00:24:57,440 --> 00:25:01,600
Speaker 2: You're training cops here now, Like what the fuck did

467
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:08,040
Speaker 2: no one sit down and talk about this? Okay, cool

468
00:25:08,080 --> 00:25:12,120
Speaker 2: stuff Germany sick joke. Who I mean, we're hardly ones

469
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:15,600
Speaker 2: to talk these days, but come on, oh oh excuse me.

470
00:25:15,640 --> 00:25:18,760
Speaker 3: We build our own cop towns from scratch.

471
00:25:18,920 --> 00:25:21,680
Speaker 2: We do. But we still people still getting married at plantations,

472
00:25:21,760 --> 00:25:22,800
Speaker 2: right you know?

473
00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:25,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah.

474
00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:28,080
Speaker 2: So it took forty years for there to be any

475
00:25:28,160 --> 00:25:31,639
Speaker 2: kind of open reckoning with Volkswagen company history on like

476
00:25:31,680 --> 00:25:33,600
Speaker 2: a serious scale. You know, this is the kind of

477
00:25:33,600 --> 00:25:37,120
Speaker 2: thing that builds increasingly, you know, once there's a couple

478
00:25:37,200 --> 00:25:39,439
Speaker 2: of decades distance from the war years.

479
00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:40,320
Speaker 3: That's interesting.

480
00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:42,959
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, it takes a little while, not that, like

481
00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:45,359
Speaker 2: there's none initially, but it does take a while for

482
00:25:45,400 --> 00:25:48,119
Speaker 2: things to really build up. This kind of culminates in

483
00:25:48,160 --> 00:25:51,000
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty six, as a part of kind of this

484
00:25:51,160 --> 00:25:54,720
Speaker 2: pressure for them to reckon with their past, Volkswagen hires

485
00:25:54,760 --> 00:25:57,879
Speaker 2: a historian named Hans Mulmsen to write a warts and

486
00:25:57,920 --> 00:25:59,840
Speaker 2: all history of the company, and this is, you know,

487
00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:02,600
Speaker 2: ar it's a partial reckoning, which culminates in nineteen ninety

488
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:05,879
Speaker 2: one when the company created a fund to compensate former

489
00:26:05,960 --> 00:26:08,639
Speaker 2: slave laborers to the tune of some twelve million marks.

490
00:26:09,359 --> 00:26:12,720
Speaker 2: Additional reparations attempts are executed over the years, and so

491
00:26:12,760 --> 00:26:17,240
Speaker 2: there are some there's some effort taken to like payback

492
00:26:17,440 --> 00:26:21,840
Speaker 2: people that Volkswagen profited from enslaving. Right that happens some

493
00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:26,120
Speaker 2: near the end of the twentieth century. Now, I wouldn't

494
00:26:26,119 --> 00:26:29,520
Speaker 2: describe this as even the minimum you know it's worth, though,

495
00:26:29,560 --> 00:26:32,800
Speaker 2: really driving home the fact that even the proactive steps

496
00:26:32,880 --> 00:26:36,680
Speaker 2: Volkswagen took in this period only happened because their hands

497
00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:40,320
Speaker 2: were forced by constant attempts by activists to make the

498
00:26:40,359 --> 00:26:43,680
Speaker 2: autogiant reckon with its history. One of my favorite examples

499
00:26:43,680 --> 00:26:46,200
Speaker 2: of this is there's a really good art piece by

500
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:50,000
Speaker 2: an Austrian artist Wolfgang Flats called it was all Adolph,

501
00:26:50,040 --> 00:26:52,080
Speaker 2: which is made using the hood of a VW beetle.

502
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:53,800
Speaker 2: You can see that it's like the hood of a

503
00:26:53,880 --> 00:26:57,359
Speaker 2: Volkswagen beetle, an old one kind of rusted with a

504
00:26:57,440 --> 00:26:59,760
Speaker 2: swastika in the center and then the colors of the

505
00:27:00,359 --> 00:27:01,840
Speaker 2: flag running underneath it.

506
00:27:02,600 --> 00:27:03,080
Speaker 3: That's good.

507
00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:06,399
Speaker 4: I wondered this was before or after a Volkswagen barbie

508
00:27:06,680 --> 00:27:07,639
Speaker 4: feels like it could be.

509
00:27:07,920 --> 00:27:10,800
Speaker 2: I believe this is before. Well, no, no, no, I

510
00:27:10,800 --> 00:27:12,760
Speaker 2: think would have been right around the same time. That

511
00:27:12,800 --> 00:27:15,800
Speaker 2: was in the nineties, right, I think so. I think

512
00:27:15,840 --> 00:27:18,119
Speaker 2: this would have been contemporaneous to that, you know, more

513
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:23,680
Speaker 2: or less. Yeah, good art, Yeah, I like it. Of course,

514
00:27:23,760 --> 00:27:27,200
Speaker 2: with a backstory like that, Volkswagen took great pains over

515
00:27:27,200 --> 00:27:29,520
Speaker 2: the next eighty something years of their long and storied

516
00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:34,320
Speaker 2: corporate history to avoid anything morally questionable. You'd never catch Volkswagen,

517
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:37,440
Speaker 2: for example, enslaving hundreds and hundreds of people in order

518
00:27:37,480 --> 00:27:40,119
Speaker 2: to make a buck. Only of course you would, because

519
00:27:40,160 --> 00:27:42,720
Speaker 2: going into the fifties and sixties, all of the men,

520
00:27:42,960 --> 00:27:45,520
Speaker 2: not all, but a lot of the guys running Volkswagen

521
00:27:45,880 --> 00:27:49,359
Speaker 2: were former Nazis. In fact, many if not. Most of

522
00:27:49,600 --> 00:27:53,560
Speaker 2: like Volkswagen's executive suite, were guys who'd worked at Volkswagen

523
00:27:53,640 --> 00:27:56,080
Speaker 2: during the Third Reich and just hadn't been punished at all,

524
00:27:56,119 --> 00:27:58,880
Speaker 2: and they just kept working at Volkswagen after the war.

525
00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:03,760
Speaker 3: That was so soon though, right, like, right, Okay, this

526
00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:04,480
Speaker 3: is the norm.

527
00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:07,240
Speaker 2: This is the Norman German industry, the Norman German politics.

528
00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:09,880
Speaker 2: A lot of obviously there are guys who had been

529
00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:11,800
Speaker 2: on the left and who had gotten punished to wind

530
00:28:11,880 --> 00:28:13,879
Speaker 2: up in politics after the war, but a lot of

531
00:28:13,920 --> 00:28:16,840
Speaker 2: former Nazis wind up in business and politics running companies

532
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:19,360
Speaker 2: after the war because most of them don't get punished.

533
00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:23,439
Speaker 2: And so this all is relevant to Brazil because in

534
00:28:23,520 --> 00:28:26,119
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty four, less than twenty years after the end

535
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:29,119
Speaker 2: of World War Two, Brazil gets taken over by a

536
00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:33,680
Speaker 2: military dictatorship. Right, the democratically elected government gets overthrown and

537
00:28:34,080 --> 00:28:38,000
Speaker 2: the military takes over. The Brazilian military junta would govern

538
00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:41,200
Speaker 2: the country with an iron fist until nineteen eighty five,

539
00:28:41,240 --> 00:28:45,080
Speaker 2: so a little over twenty years. Like many dictatorships, they

540
00:28:45,080 --> 00:28:47,840
Speaker 2: did engage in massive infrastructure projects. Right, this is a

541
00:28:47,880 --> 00:28:50,320
Speaker 2: big part of like what the junta where they're kind

542
00:28:50,360 --> 00:28:54,239
Speaker 2: of claiming their legitimacy is that we're building highways, you know,

543
00:28:54,360 --> 00:28:58,160
Speaker 2: we're modernizing the country. We're pushing for large numbers of

544
00:28:58,160 --> 00:29:02,080
Speaker 2: civilians to move from these kind of more developed, crowded

545
00:29:02,240 --> 00:29:05,360
Speaker 2: urban areas and develop more of these massive chunks of

546
00:29:05,400 --> 00:29:07,720
Speaker 2: empty jungle wilderness, right, Yes.

547
00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:13,280
Speaker 3: To get their own car, uh, their giant right. It rhymes,

548
00:29:13,480 --> 00:29:14,880
Speaker 3: It's true, Yeah, it rhymes.

549
00:29:14,880 --> 00:29:16,160
Speaker 2: And a big part of this is like, well, we

550
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:17,280
Speaker 2: kind of got to get rid of a lot of

551
00:29:17,320 --> 00:29:20,520
Speaker 2: the Amazon. You know, that's just wasted space. Brazil's going

552
00:29:20,560 --> 00:29:22,280
Speaker 2: to be a modern country. We got to pave over

553
00:29:22,320 --> 00:29:25,760
Speaker 2: that motherfucker. You know, we all agree all that. Yeah,

554
00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:28,520
Speaker 2: too much Amazon is a real problem for Brazil. You know,

555
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:30,040
Speaker 2: we got to get rid of that shit so we

556
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:33,400
Speaker 2: can have cattle farms and the like. So the fact

557
00:29:33,440 --> 00:29:36,720
Speaker 2: that the military junta does engage in this kind of

558
00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:40,840
Speaker 2: building and industrialization process, it's cited a lot by defenders

559
00:29:40,880 --> 00:29:44,200
Speaker 2: of the regime, including Gyr Bolsonnaro, who just got convicted

560
00:29:44,240 --> 00:29:48,120
Speaker 2: of doing a coup. But Bolsonnaro is very much influenced

561
00:29:48,120 --> 00:29:50,560
Speaker 2: by the military dictatorship, right, he is a guy who

562
00:29:50,640 --> 00:29:53,720
Speaker 2: will always see this as like the military dictatorship was

563
00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:56,160
Speaker 2: doing the right thing, and that's what we His whole

564
00:29:56,640 --> 00:29:58,800
Speaker 2: time and power was trying to go back to those

565
00:29:58,880 --> 00:30:00,520
Speaker 2: days in a lot of ways, right and this way.

566
00:30:00,520 --> 00:30:03,560
Speaker 2: He was a huge advocate for the illegal logging and

567
00:30:03,720 --> 00:30:06,640
Speaker 2: clear cutting of the Amazon. This is a thing that

568
00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:09,440
Speaker 2: was important to him. And this really, I'm not going

569
00:30:09,480 --> 00:30:12,480
Speaker 2: to say it starts entirely under the military junta, but

570
00:30:12,520 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 2: the military junta makes it a major part of the regime,

571
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:16,960
Speaker 2: right is that we're going to get rid of this

572
00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:20,840
Speaker 2: fucking jungle and develop it. And so what you're seeing

573
00:30:20,960 --> 00:30:24,000
Speaker 2: in this period from the sixties to the early eighties

574
00:30:24,080 --> 00:30:27,120
Speaker 2: is the birth of the systematic state encouraged annihilation of

575
00:30:27,160 --> 00:30:30,560
Speaker 2: the rainforest. This has continued to be a celebrated cause

576
00:30:30,600 --> 00:30:34,800
Speaker 2: among the Brazilian right wing ever since. The overwhelming ideological

577
00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:37,880
Speaker 2: need on behalf of the military dictatorship to develop the

578
00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:41,800
Speaker 2: wild parts of Brazil led them to offer multinational corporations

579
00:30:41,840 --> 00:30:44,120
Speaker 2: a mix of tax breaks and public funds if they

580
00:30:44,120 --> 00:30:46,480
Speaker 2: would invest in projects that would help with the clear

581
00:30:46,520 --> 00:30:50,160
Speaker 2: cutting of the Amazon. Cattle ranching was the preferred way

582
00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:52,800
Speaker 2: of doing this, right, because if you're going to create

583
00:30:52,800 --> 00:30:54,840
Speaker 2: a cattle rancher, you got to cut down a shitload

584
00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 2: of forest. His cows don't do great in super dense forest, right,

585
00:30:58,520 --> 00:31:01,520
Speaker 2: you want to replaced all those ease with pasture. Right.

586
00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:05,680
Speaker 2: And if you have huge herds of cattle, the jungle's

587
00:31:05,720 --> 00:31:07,400
Speaker 2: not going to grow back because the cows are going

588
00:31:07,440 --> 00:31:13,240
Speaker 2: to stomp everything down and right, exactly everywhere, yeah, shit everywhere.

589
00:31:13,680 --> 00:31:15,240
Speaker 2: This is so this is kind of seen as like

590
00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:16,680
Speaker 2: this is the perfect way to get rid of our

591
00:31:16,720 --> 00:31:21,720
Speaker 2: Amazon problem and ensure that we have more meat right now.

592
00:31:22,080 --> 00:31:25,200
Speaker 2: The process was in line with the military government's overarching

593
00:31:25,320 --> 00:31:29,200
Speaker 2: resource strategy in this period. Basically the translation was integrate

594
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:31,320
Speaker 2: so as not to surrender, right, And this is kind

595
00:31:31,360 --> 00:31:36,600
Speaker 2: of an answer to colonialism international capitalism, where we're inviting

596
00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:38,880
Speaker 2: this stuff in. But we don't just want these foreign

597
00:31:38,920 --> 00:31:42,960
Speaker 2: companies to strip our land of value. We want them

598
00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:45,200
Speaker 2: to make Obviously, it's important they need to make a

599
00:31:45,200 --> 00:31:47,120
Speaker 2: profit or they won't be interested, and we want to

600
00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:49,520
Speaker 2: make a profit, but we also want to develop land

601
00:31:49,560 --> 00:31:51,120
Speaker 2: for other use by Brazilians.

602
00:31:51,200 --> 00:31:51,320
Speaker 1: Right.

603
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:54,360
Speaker 2: That's kind of the ideological underpinning of what's happening here.

604
00:31:55,080 --> 00:31:57,880
Speaker 2: Per an article in The Washington Post by Terrence McCoy

605
00:31:57,920 --> 00:32:01,400
Speaker 2: and Marina Diaz quote. Volkswagen Brazil, than the largest car

606
00:32:01,440 --> 00:32:04,760
Speaker 2: maker in Latin America, accepted the challenge in the untamed

607
00:32:04,880 --> 00:32:09,880
Speaker 2: municipality of Santana du Aruguaya. The Valet du Rio Crystallino Company,

608
00:32:09,960 --> 00:32:14,440
Speaker 2: a subsidiary whose leadership included Volkswagen Brazil's president Wolfgang Sour

609
00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:18,640
Speaker 2: and human resources director admun Gannum, obtained a large parcel

610
00:32:18,680 --> 00:32:21,040
Speaker 2: of land. Executives back in Germany and visioned to herd

611
00:32:21,040 --> 00:32:23,200
Speaker 2: of more than one hundred thousand cattle and an answer

612
00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:27,080
Speaker 2: to world hunger. This world not only needs cars, Volkswagen

613
00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:30,960
Speaker 2: president Rudolph Leading declared in nineteen seventy four, but also

614
00:32:31,120 --> 00:32:35,320
Speaker 2: meet this slave thing isn't like to make cars. They're

615
00:32:35,320 --> 00:32:40,280
Speaker 2: getting into the cattle business. A natural a move for Volkswagen.

616
00:32:40,520 --> 00:32:45,000
Speaker 4: I mean no, I mean when they explain it, it

617
00:32:45,040 --> 00:32:45,960
Speaker 4: makes so much sense.

618
00:32:46,240 --> 00:32:49,040
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, the world needs not just cars but

619
00:32:49,160 --> 00:32:49,640
Speaker 2: meat too.

620
00:32:49,880 --> 00:32:50,920
Speaker 3: I'm getting the vision.

621
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:55,120
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, So Volkswagen settles on a chunk of forested

622
00:32:55,200 --> 00:32:57,520
Speaker 2: land in the southeastern state of Para, which is about

623
00:32:57,560 --> 00:33:00,880
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty thousand hectares inside this like chunk

624
00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:02,480
Speaker 2: of land that they're going to turn into a ranch,

625
00:33:02,720 --> 00:33:06,080
Speaker 2: which means that Volkswagens like this plot that they have

626
00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 2: purchased is larger than like the capital of Brazil itself.

627
00:33:09,640 --> 00:33:13,200
Speaker 2: This is a massive piece of property and the farm

628
00:33:13,240 --> 00:33:18,120
Speaker 2: becomes known as the Fazinda Volkswagen. Now, Volkswagen, being an

629
00:33:18,160 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 2: auto company, didn't have people on staff who knew how

630
00:33:21,120 --> 00:33:24,080
Speaker 2: to clear cut land or operate a cattle farm because

631
00:33:24,080 --> 00:33:27,280
Speaker 2: that's kind of outside of their wheelhouse. So the opted

632
00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:30,720
Speaker 2: to hire outside contractors who could do the job for them. Right,

633
00:33:31,440 --> 00:33:34,680
Speaker 2: bring in some guys and they'll know how to do

634
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 2: this stuff. And using contractors in this way, this is

635
00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:40,720
Speaker 2: not just a Volkswagen thing, right, As I said, the

636
00:33:40,760 --> 00:33:44,760
Speaker 2: military dictatorship is inviting all sorts of foreign multinationals into

637
00:33:44,760 --> 00:33:47,680
Speaker 2: the country to do stuff like this, to operate farms,

638
00:33:47,680 --> 00:33:51,120
Speaker 2: to clear the rainforest. And the standard is that you

639
00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:54,880
Speaker 2: have a subsidiary company that is in charge of whatever

640
00:33:54,920 --> 00:33:58,480
Speaker 2: efforts you're doing here in Brazil, and that company hires

641
00:33:58,560 --> 00:34:02,160
Speaker 2: local contractors to fight you laborers. And the colloquial name

642
00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:05,760
Speaker 2: for these contractors is gattos or cats. And I haven't

643
00:34:05,800 --> 00:34:08,520
Speaker 2: seen like a good explanation for why they're calling these

644
00:34:08,520 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 2: guys cats. But that's like what these guys who are

645
00:34:11,239 --> 00:34:15,640
Speaker 2: finding you kind of itinerant laborers, right, that's what they're called.

646
00:34:16,040 --> 00:34:19,080
Speaker 2: The gattos are paid a flat fee to find workers

647
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:23,640
Speaker 2: and meet certain production quotas. Uh oh right, Yes, anyone

648
00:34:23,680 --> 00:34:27,160
Speaker 2: who's study the history of capitalism, you know how this

649
00:34:27,200 --> 00:34:31,319
Speaker 2: is going to end. Right, Okay, we could go back

650
00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:33,480
Speaker 2: to the very birth of capitalism during the age of

651
00:34:33,480 --> 00:34:36,120
Speaker 2: sale under the Dutch and British East India companies. Right,

652
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:38,920
Speaker 2: there's a starvation genocide and Bengal at the end of

653
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:42,160
Speaker 2: the seventeen hundreds that kills somewhere between like ten and

654
00:34:42,200 --> 00:34:45,040
Speaker 2: thirty million people, and it's a product of the British

655
00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:48,359
Speaker 2: East India company has these local guys. These are like

656
00:34:48,600 --> 00:34:52,600
Speaker 2: generally like English employees, but they're like local contractors and whatnot.

657
00:34:53,239 --> 00:34:55,920
Speaker 2: They want to get the most profit out of their

658
00:34:56,040 --> 00:35:00,520
Speaker 2: territory by maximizing how much food they're extracting from like

659
00:35:00,560 --> 00:35:04,560
Speaker 2: these different regions, these villages, and they don't really care

660
00:35:04,600 --> 00:35:07,319
Speaker 2: if there's enough food for the people who live there,

661
00:35:07,360 --> 00:35:12,120
Speaker 2: because anything that's not being shipped out and monetized is

662
00:35:12,239 --> 00:35:14,400
Speaker 2: money that they think is going out of their pocket.

663
00:35:14,520 --> 00:35:16,279
Speaker 2: And so tens of millions of people are going to

664
00:35:16,280 --> 00:35:19,520
Speaker 2: starve to death. So these guys, these local employees of

665
00:35:19,560 --> 00:35:23,200
Speaker 2: the company can maximize their own big right, a.

666
00:35:23,200 --> 00:35:26,920
Speaker 3: Classic potato famine situation. Let's take all of it.

667
00:35:27,160 --> 00:35:31,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, this is an old story, right, and Volkswagen's

668
00:35:31,480 --> 00:35:34,279
Speaker 2: going to put a kind of a different spin on it.

669
00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:36,200
Speaker 2: But you can sort of see like this is not

670
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:38,240
Speaker 2: like coming out of nowhere, right.

671
00:35:38,360 --> 00:35:40,040
Speaker 3: Right, They're gonna tell it again.

672
00:35:40,280 --> 00:35:44,680
Speaker 2: Ugh, yeah, yeah, exactly. The Gato's hired by Volkswagen, tralled

673
00:35:44,680 --> 00:35:47,680
Speaker 2: distant towns in the Sticks, places like Mato Grosso and

674
00:35:47,719 --> 00:35:50,680
Speaker 2: Tokatin in order to find workers, and they promise these

675
00:35:50,719 --> 00:35:53,359
Speaker 2: people good contracts. On paper, these are good jobs. There's

676
00:35:53,480 --> 00:35:56,439
Speaker 2: high pay. They're promising them. You'll get free medical care,

677
00:35:56,520 --> 00:35:59,480
Speaker 2: you'll have quality housing. And so these laborers, and these

678
00:35:59,480 --> 00:36:02,839
Speaker 2: are generally people who come from bumfuck nowhere, right, are

679
00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:05,359
Speaker 2: signing on thinking like, Okay, we'll I'll be away from

680
00:36:05,360 --> 00:36:07,719
Speaker 2: home for like six months or a year, and I'll

681
00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:10,080
Speaker 2: save up a bunch of money and I'll come back

682
00:36:10,080 --> 00:36:12,400
Speaker 2: to my families with this healthy nest egg that we

683
00:36:12,440 --> 00:36:14,600
Speaker 2: can use to fund the next stage of our lives. Right,

684
00:36:14,840 --> 00:36:18,120
Speaker 2: Like a cat like a cat, exactly, like a cat

685
00:36:18,239 --> 00:36:22,359
Speaker 2: like a cat. Yeah, per the Washington Post quote, that's

686
00:36:22,400 --> 00:36:24,600
Speaker 2: not how things worked out, not for any of them.

687
00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:27,480
Speaker 2: The Gattos drove them to isolated chunks of forest up

688
00:36:27,520 --> 00:36:30,440
Speaker 2: to eighty kilometers from the entrance of the Volkswagen farm itself.

689
00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:33,000
Speaker 2: They were expected to pay for their housing, for their food,

690
00:36:33,040 --> 00:36:35,520
Speaker 2: and for their medical care. Since there were no towns,

691
00:36:35,640 --> 00:36:38,480
Speaker 2: certainly not ones the armed guards watching them would allow

692
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:40,359
Speaker 2: them to visit, they had no choice but to pay

693
00:36:40,360 --> 00:36:43,040
Speaker 2: whatever price that Gatto's decided to charge for these services.

694
00:36:43,320 --> 00:36:45,680
Speaker 2: In short order, they found themselves in debt when the

695
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:48,280
Speaker 2: actual circumstances of their labor proved to be much rougher

696
00:36:48,280 --> 00:36:50,480
Speaker 2: than they'd been promised, and who tried to return home

697
00:36:50,560 --> 00:36:54,400
Speaker 2: were stopped by men with guns. One employee, Manuel Lima,

698
00:36:54,520 --> 00:36:57,800
Speaker 2: told interviewers later of his experiences, which began in April

699
00:36:57,800 --> 00:36:59,560
Speaker 2: of nineteen eighty one, and not you know, this gets

700
00:36:59,560 --> 00:37:02,640
Speaker 2: started the seventies, but most of our stories of these guys,

701
00:37:02,680 --> 00:37:06,640
Speaker 2: our accounts kind of start in the eighties. That's so recent, right,

702
00:37:06,719 --> 00:37:10,000
Speaker 2: this is happening when Reagan's in office. The only water

703
00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:13,040
Speaker 2: was from a filthy well swarming with mosquitoes. We all

704
00:37:13,040 --> 00:37:15,880
Speaker 2: got sick. Feverish with malaria as I was weak. I

705
00:37:15,960 --> 00:37:18,520
Speaker 2: left midway through the logging. Seventeen of us sought the

706
00:37:18,520 --> 00:37:20,719
Speaker 2: pay we were owed, but they didn't want to pay,

707
00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:24,440
Speaker 2: and Lima and his group are forbidden from leaving, right

708
00:37:24,480 --> 00:37:26,399
Speaker 2: They're like, okay, give us our money, we're too sick

709
00:37:26,400 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 2: to continue. They're like, you don't. Aren't owed any money,

710
00:37:29,680 --> 00:37:32,160
Speaker 2: and also you're not allowed to leave, and so the

711
00:37:32,200 --> 00:37:35,720
Speaker 2: Gattos forced them to return to clearing the forest at gunpoint.

712
00:37:36,239 --> 00:37:38,440
Speaker 2: Lima and six of his friends are only allowed to

713
00:37:38,520 --> 00:37:40,880
Speaker 2: leave five months later because they had been worked so

714
00:37:41,040 --> 00:37:43,480
Speaker 2: near to death that the Gattos decided keeping them was

715
00:37:43,560 --> 00:37:45,959
Speaker 2: more trouble than it was worth. They did not get

716
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:50,000
Speaker 2: paid for their work. Quote, we left penniless and gravely ill,

717
00:37:50,200 --> 00:37:54,600
Speaker 2: he recalled. So that's cool, that's cool. Yeah, it looks like.

718
00:37:54,600 --> 00:37:56,719
Speaker 3: It all worked out. Her dreams came true.

719
00:37:56,800 --> 00:37:58,920
Speaker 2: It looks like it all worked out. Yeah. Yeah. I

720
00:37:58,960 --> 00:38:01,560
Speaker 2: mean I am reading this and being like, wow, you know,

721
00:38:01,600 --> 00:38:03,840
Speaker 2: writing comedy for the Internet not such a bad gig.

722
00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:06,560
Speaker 2: You know, a lot of us did leave penniless and

723
00:38:06,600 --> 00:38:08,319
Speaker 2: gravely ill, but not that bad, you know.

724
00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:11,920
Speaker 3: Wo wow.

725
00:38:12,080 --> 00:38:16,640
Speaker 2: Anyway, speaking of the Internet, let's hear some ads from

726
00:38:16,680 --> 00:38:28,160
Speaker 2: the internet, and we're back. So we're telling the stories

727
00:38:28,160 --> 00:38:31,399
Speaker 2: of some of these Volkswagen laborers who aren't technically they're

728
00:38:31,440 --> 00:38:35,200
Speaker 2: working for a subsidiary of Volkswagen. They're directly employed by

729
00:38:35,239 --> 00:38:37,520
Speaker 2: a contractor. So VW can say, well, these were never

730
00:38:37,560 --> 00:38:41,000
Speaker 2: our employees, but like they're working Volkswagen's land.

731
00:38:41,160 --> 00:38:44,319
Speaker 3: We had no idea, Yes, we didn't know.

732
00:38:45,080 --> 00:38:49,120
Speaker 2: How could we have known. Another laborer, L. E. S. Decarmo,

733
00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:52,520
Speaker 2: was interviewed in November of nineteen eighty three about his experiences.

734
00:38:52,800 --> 00:38:55,440
Speaker 2: He recalled, we worked four months clearing the land through

735
00:38:55,520 --> 00:38:59,240
Speaker 2: rain and biting flies. On Sundays, we walked sixteen kilometers

736
00:38:59,239 --> 00:39:01,640
Speaker 2: from meat and other food for ourselves and our companions.

737
00:39:01,680 --> 00:39:03,080
Speaker 2: At the end of the felling, we didn't get a

738
00:39:03,120 --> 00:39:06,440
Speaker 2: single cent the Gatto Herminio said. We still owed thirteen

739
00:39:07,360 --> 00:39:10,279
Speaker 2: and sixty you know, off the local currency. Right. So

740
00:39:11,239 --> 00:39:14,239
Speaker 2: what you're seeing here, what's happening to these people. The

741
00:39:14,320 --> 00:39:17,400
Speaker 2: term for this is debt peonage. Right. This is not

742
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:22,080
Speaker 2: chattel slavery, right. These people are technically employees, unlike you

743
00:39:22,080 --> 00:39:25,560
Speaker 2: know slaves brought over from the you know, Atlantic slave trade.

744
00:39:25,640 --> 00:39:31,560
Speaker 2: It's the modern right, it's wokes slavery. You know, they're

745
00:39:31,600 --> 00:39:37,719
Speaker 2: being paid employee kind of. They're being paid now they

746
00:39:37,760 --> 00:39:40,440
Speaker 2: have to pay for their health care and food and

747
00:39:41,040 --> 00:39:44,319
Speaker 2: their housing obviously first, and that winds up being more

748
00:39:44,360 --> 00:39:48,200
Speaker 2: money than they can possibly earn. And they can't leave

749
00:39:48,360 --> 00:39:50,439
Speaker 2: until they've made up for the debt that they owe

750
00:39:50,480 --> 00:39:53,239
Speaker 2: the company as soon as they start working. But they're not,

751
00:39:53,600 --> 00:39:59,640
Speaker 2: like you know, owned by the company right legally, legally, yeah, legally,

752
00:39:59,800 --> 00:40:03,960
Speaker 2: it's different from channel slavery, right and how dare you?

753
00:40:04,120 --> 00:40:06,880
Speaker 2: And like, the logic is whenever these people are like,

754
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:09,680
Speaker 2: but you're not letting them leave, their argument is like, well,

755
00:40:09,680 --> 00:40:12,000
Speaker 2: but they owe us money. You wouldn't expect this isn't

756
00:40:12,040 --> 00:40:14,960
Speaker 2: a charity. You wouldn't expect Volkswagen, or you wouldn't expect

757
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:18,280
Speaker 2: these these gattos to lose money because their employees couldn't

758
00:40:18,280 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 2: avoid going into debt, right, you know. And the reality

759
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:23,239
Speaker 2: is they don't have any choice. For one thing, they're

760
00:40:23,239 --> 00:40:25,799
Speaker 2: out in the middle of the jungle. They can't just

761
00:40:25,840 --> 00:40:29,000
Speaker 2: go like buy or like rent houses because there's not

762
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:31,920
Speaker 2: like villages and towns that they're allowed to live in.

763
00:40:32,239 --> 00:40:35,400
Speaker 2: So they have to get their food and stuff from

764
00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:38,640
Speaker 2: these you know, Volkswagen basically, or these different like gattos.

765
00:40:38,640 --> 00:40:41,040
Speaker 2: They don't have a choice here, so they're just fucked

766
00:40:41,080 --> 00:40:44,680
Speaker 2: as soon as they get hired. One unnamed worker later

767
00:40:44,760 --> 00:40:48,520
Speaker 2: informed a fact finding delegation of Sal Paulo legislators, quote,

768
00:40:48,520 --> 00:40:50,600
Speaker 2: all I did was work to pay for jeans, flip

769
00:40:50,600 --> 00:40:53,640
Speaker 2: flops and little food. Nine months of relentless labor cutting

770
00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:56,360
Speaker 2: trees for the multinational under the orders of the contractor,

771
00:40:56,400 --> 00:40:59,600
Speaker 2: and I was trapped with no way out. Now, I

772
00:40:59,600 --> 00:41:03,160
Speaker 2: think we've set up here how gnarly this system was

773
00:41:03,280 --> 00:41:05,799
Speaker 2: and hideous. I think it's important here that we take

774
00:41:05,840 --> 00:41:08,560
Speaker 2: a little bit of a substantial digression, because it would

775
00:41:08,600 --> 00:41:12,000
Speaker 2: be wrong for me to talk about Volkswagen's operations in

776
00:41:12,000 --> 00:41:15,360
Speaker 2: Brazil as if they were just descended from the company's

777
00:41:15,400 --> 00:41:18,279
Speaker 2: birth as an organ of the Nazi state. Now would

778
00:41:18,280 --> 00:41:19,880
Speaker 2: it be right for me to make it seem as

779
00:41:19,920 --> 00:41:22,279
Speaker 2: if the military junta that ruled Brazil for much of

780
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:25,040
Speaker 2: the latter third of the twentieth century was something totally

781
00:41:25,080 --> 00:41:28,760
Speaker 2: novel in the nation's history. Slave labor was rampant during

782
00:41:28,800 --> 00:41:32,000
Speaker 2: the military dictatorship and after. Because it's still a major

783
00:41:32,040 --> 00:41:35,840
Speaker 2: problem in Brazil to this day. It's rampant because slavery

784
00:41:35,920 --> 00:41:39,200
Speaker 2: has always been key to the Brazilian economy since its

785
00:41:39,239 --> 00:41:43,319
Speaker 2: birth as a colony. The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database was

786
00:41:43,320 --> 00:41:45,960
Speaker 2: first published in nineteen ninety nine and as a collection

787
00:41:46,080 --> 00:41:49,440
Speaker 2: of detailed files on some thirty five thousand slave trafficking

788
00:41:49,520 --> 00:41:53,839
Speaker 2: voyages starting in fifteen twenty and continuing until eighteen sixty six,

789
00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:56,960
Speaker 2: it represents the most detailed accounting of the history of

790
00:41:57,040 --> 00:42:00,880
Speaker 2: chattel slavery as an import industry. While these files represent

791
00:42:00,960 --> 00:42:03,200
Speaker 2: just a fraction of the total number of humans forcibly

792
00:42:03,239 --> 00:42:06,200
Speaker 2: transported from Africa to the New World and elsewhere, it

793
00:42:06,239 --> 00:42:09,920
Speaker 2: still includes files on some ninety thousand plus enslaved Africans,

794
00:42:10,320 --> 00:42:13,920
Speaker 2: and according to this database, Brazil took in more enslaved

795
00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:17,200
Speaker 2: Africans than any other place on the face of the planet. Right,

796
00:42:17,480 --> 00:42:20,680
Speaker 2: Brazil is the number one place where the Atlantic slave

797
00:42:20,719 --> 00:42:25,839
Speaker 2: trade sins people. Nowhere else even no single place comes close, really, right?

798
00:42:25,960 --> 00:42:30,000
Speaker 2: WHOA Yeah, And this is something I don't think a

799
00:42:30,040 --> 00:42:33,400
Speaker 2: lot of Americans are, particularly I think Brazilians are, but

800
00:42:33,440 --> 00:42:34,600
Speaker 2: a lot of Americans aren't aware.

801
00:42:35,320 --> 00:42:38,000
Speaker 3: We just assume we're the best at everything, that.

802
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:40,600
Speaker 2: We were doing the most of this and like to

803
00:42:40,640 --> 00:42:42,640
Speaker 2: be clear here, as we'll talk about we were intimately

804
00:42:42,640 --> 00:42:44,839
Speaker 2: involved in the Brazilian slave trades, so we're not clean

805
00:42:44,880 --> 00:42:45,520
Speaker 2: on this either.

806
00:42:45,560 --> 00:42:47,200
Speaker 3: We played a supporting role in there.

807
00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:51,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, but this is a huge deal in Brazil.

808
00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:54,399
Speaker 2: For an API article by Eleanor Hughes, nearly five million

809
00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:57,480
Speaker 2: kidnapped Africans disembarked in Brazil, more than twelve times the

810
00:42:57,560 --> 00:43:00,920
Speaker 2: number taken to mainland North America. Brazil the last country

811
00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:03,839
Speaker 2: in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery in eighteen eighty eight.

812
00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:07,320
Speaker 2: So that's pretty stark, and that's why these problems continue

813
00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:11,080
Speaker 2: because it's always been so key to how Brazil has operated.

814
00:43:11,640 --> 00:43:15,320
Speaker 2: For additional context, the estimated total number of people taken

815
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:19,120
Speaker 2: from slave ships from Africa to the Americas is around

816
00:43:19,120 --> 00:43:22,480
Speaker 2: ten million. This means Brazil or Portuguese America as it

817
00:43:22,520 --> 00:43:25,240
Speaker 2: was known for most of this period, accounted for somewhere

818
00:43:25,239 --> 00:43:30,440
Speaker 2: near half of the entire Atlantic slave trade. Right like massive,

819
00:43:30,880 --> 00:43:33,040
Speaker 2: it's possible to exaggerate.

820
00:43:33,280 --> 00:43:33,840
Speaker 3: Wow.

821
00:43:34,120 --> 00:43:37,320
Speaker 2: Now, the importation of enslaved Africans to the United States

822
00:43:37,440 --> 00:43:41,120
Speaker 2: was legally halted in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Obviously,

823
00:43:41,760 --> 00:43:44,160
Speaker 2: slavery continues in the US after that point, but we're

824
00:43:44,160 --> 00:43:47,600
Speaker 2: not legally importing slaves right from the Atlantic. It still

825
00:43:47,640 --> 00:43:51,279
Speaker 2: happens to an extent, and people are still selling enslaved people,

826
00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:55,520
Speaker 2: obviously until the end of the civil war, but it continues.

827
00:43:55,560 --> 00:43:58,960
Speaker 2: The importation of these people continues in Brazil for much longer.

828
00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:02,799
Speaker 2: Slaves provide the main source of workers in coffee plantations

829
00:44:02,800 --> 00:44:06,279
Speaker 2: in Brazil. After eighteen thirty one, Brazil finally abolished the

830
00:44:06,320 --> 00:44:10,000
Speaker 2: importation of slaves, right, uh huh, Okay, yeah, it's key

831
00:44:10,040 --> 00:44:12,240
Speaker 2: to the growth of coffee as a world industry.

832
00:44:12,480 --> 00:44:13,319
Speaker 3: Uh huh.

833
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:16,120
Speaker 2: And even after eighteen thirty one, when the formal ban

834
00:44:16,480 --> 00:44:19,680
Speaker 2: is put in place, around a million enslaved Africans are

835
00:44:19,880 --> 00:44:23,720
Speaker 2: forcibly imported to Brazil and what Yale University Press author

836
00:44:23,840 --> 00:44:27,200
Speaker 2: Leonardo Marx described as one of the greatest crimes of

837
00:44:27,200 --> 00:44:31,600
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century. Even by nineteenth century standards, we're just

838
00:44:31,640 --> 00:44:34,760
Speaker 2: saying something because we did a lot of crimes against

839
00:44:34,840 --> 00:44:36,640
Speaker 2: humanity in the old nineteenth century.

840
00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:43,000
Speaker 3: Yeah perspective, huh.

841
00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:45,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're doing bad by the standards of like slavery

842
00:44:45,239 --> 00:44:49,520
Speaker 2: in the nineteenth century. Brazil is on another level. Leonardo

843
00:44:49,560 --> 00:44:52,440
Speaker 2: goes on to write the new context of illegality, however,

844
00:44:52,560 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 2: changed some of the characteristics of the slave trade to Brazil.

845
00:44:55,320 --> 00:44:58,520
Speaker 2: In order to circumvent authorities, especially the British Navy, slave

846
00:44:58,560 --> 00:45:02,640
Speaker 2: traders increasingly employed US resources in their operations. US built

847
00:45:02,640 --> 00:45:05,600
Speaker 2: ships became a predominant feature of the transatlantic slave trade

848
00:45:05,600 --> 00:45:09,399
Speaker 2: for their speed and quality good old American manufacturing, as

849
00:45:09,520 --> 00:45:12,359
Speaker 2: was the case in most sectors of maritime commerce. More

850
00:45:12,440 --> 00:45:14,640
Speaker 2: complicated was the fact that the U. S Flag also

851
00:45:14,680 --> 00:45:16,759
Speaker 2: started to be used by slave traders as a cover

852
00:45:16,920 --> 00:45:19,040
Speaker 2: to protect them from the actions of the British Navy.

853
00:45:19,239 --> 00:45:21,239
Speaker 2: The United States was one of the few countries that

854
00:45:21,280 --> 00:45:24,240
Speaker 2: refused to establish anti slave trade treaties with the British

855
00:45:24,360 --> 00:45:26,759
Speaker 2: that included the mutual right of search, which had been

856
00:45:26,760 --> 00:45:29,400
Speaker 2: one of the causes of the War of eighteen twelve. Consequently,

857
00:45:29,520 --> 00:45:31,600
Speaker 2: the country managed to suppress the slave trade to its

858
00:45:31,640 --> 00:45:34,400
Speaker 2: own dominions, but it had much less success in curtailing

859
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:37,200
Speaker 2: its participation in the traffic to other places, such as Brazil.

860
00:45:37,640 --> 00:45:40,880
Speaker 2: US companies based in Rio de Janeiro simultaneously became the

861
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:43,080
Speaker 2: main sellers of US ships and the main exporters of

862
00:45:43,120 --> 00:45:45,880
Speaker 2: slave produced coffee. Most of this coffee went to the

863
00:45:45,960 --> 00:45:48,560
Speaker 2: United States, whose consumption of the hot beverage expanded as

864
00:45:48,600 --> 00:45:51,000
Speaker 2: part of the construction of its own national identity, as

865
00:45:51,000 --> 00:45:52,560
Speaker 2: opposed to the tea drinking British.

866
00:45:52,640 --> 00:45:54,640
Speaker 3: Oh, we are.

867
00:45:53,960 --> 00:45:57,120
Speaker 2: Intimately involved in why slavery is such a big deal

868
00:45:57,200 --> 00:45:59,960
Speaker 2: in Brazil, right, were providing the ships, we're providing legal

869
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:03,000
Speaker 2: cover to the people doing this illegally, and we're buying

870
00:46:03,040 --> 00:46:06,920
Speaker 2: all the coffee that these slaves are producing, right right, Well, it's.

871
00:46:06,880 --> 00:46:10,400
Speaker 4: First to former own identity, and that's like really important.

872
00:46:10,719 --> 00:46:13,160
Speaker 2: And to be fair, the British, their hands are not

873
00:46:13,239 --> 00:46:16,600
Speaker 2: clean because they're into tea instead of coffee. They start

874
00:46:16,640 --> 00:46:23,680
Speaker 2: a war and Shina over this, right. Yeah, Look, if

875
00:46:23,719 --> 00:46:27,360
Speaker 2: you like a hot caffeinated beverage in the nineteenth century,

876
00:46:27,520 --> 00:46:30,600
Speaker 2: you're getting involved in something fucked up. Also the twentieth

877
00:46:30,640 --> 00:46:33,560
Speaker 2: and twenty first centuries. Whatever, you know, you know.

878
00:46:33,520 --> 00:46:35,560
Speaker 4: You don't got a hand in to Mormons, but they

879
00:46:35,600 --> 00:46:38,080
Speaker 4: were a gast hotbed, is that you know?

880
00:46:38,560 --> 00:46:41,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, they've got their Mormon tea with a fedra in it. Yeah,

881
00:46:41,480 --> 00:46:46,840
Speaker 2: that's good, that's local. Yeah. So US entities remained intimately

882
00:46:46,840 --> 00:46:49,440
Speaker 2: involved in the Brazilian slave trade until the eighteen fifties.

883
00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:53,680
Speaker 2: When it was unevenly but largely suppressed. Slavery did not

884
00:46:53,719 --> 00:46:57,520
Speaker 2: officially end inside Brazilian territory until the early eighteen nineties,

885
00:46:57,800 --> 00:47:00,640
Speaker 2: and again there's still a problem with slavery day, like

886
00:47:00,680 --> 00:47:03,080
Speaker 2: there's a sizable amount of effort that goes on in

887
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:06,359
Speaker 2: Brazil to deal with modern day slavery. During the long

888
00:47:06,440 --> 00:47:09,520
Speaker 2: period in which slavery was practiced openly in Brazil, there

889
00:47:09,520 --> 00:47:13,080
Speaker 2: were regular periodic escapes of enslaved workers who would form

890
00:47:13,160 --> 00:47:16,480
Speaker 2: their own settlements, sometimes containing more than a thousand runaways

891
00:47:16,520 --> 00:47:21,400
Speaker 2: during their height, and the state where Volkswagen operates its ranch, Para,

892
00:47:21,560 --> 00:47:24,239
Speaker 2: was a particular hub of these communities due to its isolation.

893
00:47:24,760 --> 00:47:26,920
Speaker 2: This is relevant to the reason the military hont To

894
00:47:26,960 --> 00:47:29,959
Speaker 2: focused on developing the area, right, the fact that there's

895
00:47:29,960 --> 00:47:32,719
Speaker 2: so many of these, like freed slave colonies, that that's

896
00:47:32,760 --> 00:47:35,200
Speaker 2: part of the history here, that a lot of the

897
00:47:35,280 --> 00:47:37,719
Speaker 2: people who are going to be working and enslaved on

898
00:47:37,719 --> 00:47:41,279
Speaker 2: this plantation are themselves the descendants of slaves, right, or

899
00:47:41,280 --> 00:47:44,520
Speaker 2: at least partially the descendants of slaves since the time

900
00:47:44,560 --> 00:47:48,000
Speaker 2: of Portuguese colonization. This region of the country, which is

901
00:47:48,080 --> 00:47:51,920
Speaker 2: so isolated and heavily forested, had represented a barrier to

902
00:47:51,960 --> 00:47:55,320
Speaker 2: every kind of authoritarian system in the territory. The jungle

903
00:47:55,360 --> 00:47:58,560
Speaker 2: stood in opposition to the colonial government that the racial

904
00:47:58,640 --> 00:48:02,040
Speaker 2: caste system, and now of the dictatorship, they chose to

905
00:48:02,120 --> 00:48:05,440
Speaker 2: tame the jungle using the raw manpower of in many cases,

906
00:48:05,680 --> 00:48:08,400
Speaker 2: descendants of the same slaves who once sheltered in the

907
00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:14,960
Speaker 2: jungles they were now tearing down right, right, Yeah, it's

908
00:48:15,360 --> 00:48:18,560
Speaker 2: pretty it's pretty blak, right, but it also makes sense

909
00:48:18,640 --> 00:48:20,319
Speaker 2: like these the fact that these areas are so hard

910
00:48:20,320 --> 00:48:22,800
Speaker 2: to reach means that they're a threat to the power

911
00:48:22,880 --> 00:48:25,520
Speaker 2: of the regime, and so that's an additional reason to

912
00:48:25,680 --> 00:48:26,839
Speaker 2: want to do this.

913
00:48:26,880 --> 00:48:27,520
Speaker 3: Absolutely.

914
00:48:27,800 --> 00:48:30,520
Speaker 2: Yeah. And slavery is so baked into the very fabric

915
00:48:30,560 --> 00:48:33,080
Speaker 2: of Brazil's economy that it's return during the period of

916
00:48:33,080 --> 00:48:35,560
Speaker 2: the junta's time in power was reversion to the mean

917
00:48:35,680 --> 00:48:38,600
Speaker 2: more than anything else. The website Amazon Today has done

918
00:48:38,600 --> 00:48:41,440
Speaker 2: a good job of documenting other less famous cases of

919
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:44,520
Speaker 2: confirmed slave work during the same period that Volkswagen's ranch

920
00:48:44,560 --> 00:48:48,000
Speaker 2: was in operation. Quote, in June of nineteen eighty five,

921
00:48:48,239 --> 00:48:51,799
Speaker 2: the farmer Sebastio Terboi from Rodonia was accused of keeping

922
00:48:51,800 --> 00:48:54,160
Speaker 2: more than one hundred mining farm workers under a captive

923
00:48:54,200 --> 00:48:56,200
Speaker 2: regime on their farms, one of which was on the

924
00:48:56,200 --> 00:48:59,280
Speaker 2: border with Bolivia. The workers were recruited by the cat

925
00:48:59,520 --> 00:49:04,520
Speaker 2: Itamar magal Verdepino and transported on behalf of Salvador Fernandez,

926
00:49:04,600 --> 00:49:06,680
Speaker 2: owner of a restaurant. They were forced to work in

927
00:49:06,719 --> 00:49:09,799
Speaker 2: deforestation from four o'clock in the morning until the sun disappeared,

928
00:49:10,000 --> 00:49:12,720
Speaker 2: did not receive the promised payment, slept in canvas camps

929
00:49:12,719 --> 00:49:16,040
Speaker 2: and were watched by twenty armed guards. So this is

930
00:49:16,040 --> 00:49:19,799
Speaker 2: not again, this is something that's much bigger than just Volkswagen.

931
00:49:19,840 --> 00:49:22,480
Speaker 2: And these are always very similar cases. Right, You're seeing here,

932
00:49:22,520 --> 00:49:25,080
Speaker 2: like this isn't even a multinational corporation. This is like

933
00:49:25,120 --> 00:49:27,960
Speaker 2: a guy who owns a restaurant. That is this is

934
00:49:28,000 --> 00:49:30,480
Speaker 2: like his side business, yes, you know, helping to keep

935
00:49:30,520 --> 00:49:33,120
Speaker 2: these people enslaved in order to mine for him.

936
00:49:33,200 --> 00:49:36,160
Speaker 3: Well, you know, he watched the podcast, he listened to

937
00:49:36,200 --> 00:49:36,960
Speaker 3: all their advice.

938
00:49:37,120 --> 00:49:40,400
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right yeah, fellow entrepreneur.

939
00:49:40,800 --> 00:49:43,160
Speaker 2: Right, he caught a YouTube ad telling him, like, you know,

940
00:49:43,480 --> 00:49:48,880
Speaker 2: the ultimate kind of passive income is just owning people. Right. So,

941
00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:52,360
Speaker 2: another complaint made by representatives of the Federation of Workers

942
00:49:52,360 --> 00:49:55,239
Speaker 2: in Agriculture in nineteen ninety five found slave labor being

943
00:49:55,280 --> 00:49:58,440
Speaker 2: practiced at a farm called Nova Deli and Para. Seven

944
00:49:58,480 --> 00:50:00,279
Speaker 2: workers were found to have been kept for years and

945
00:50:00,360 --> 00:50:04,240
Speaker 2: only given food. Investigation into this farm revealed another owned

946
00:50:04,239 --> 00:50:06,920
Speaker 2: by the same person, with a clandestine cemetery in it

947
00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:10,280
Speaker 2: filled with quote bones and signs of incineration of bodies

948
00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:14,239
Speaker 2: covered by tires in black plastic. Such graveyards are a

949
00:50:14,239 --> 00:50:16,960
Speaker 2: common sight in uncovered Brazilian slave plantations.

950
00:50:17,239 --> 00:50:19,840
Speaker 3: My tires sorrious.

951
00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:22,040
Speaker 2: Yeah right, I think just to hide it, right, you

952
00:50:22,080 --> 00:50:24,080
Speaker 2: burn some tires on top of it, and it kind

953
00:50:24,080 --> 00:50:27,560
Speaker 2: of obscures what's airid there. I found another more recent

954
00:50:27,640 --> 00:50:30,560
Speaker 2: article from twenty twenty four in the Intercept, which discusses

955
00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:32,960
Speaker 2: a farm that was expropriated by the Brazilian state in

956
00:50:33,000 --> 00:50:35,320
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight under an amendment to the Constitution

957
00:50:35,360 --> 00:50:37,760
Speaker 2: in two thousand and one that allowed land from people

958
00:50:37,800 --> 00:50:40,279
Speaker 2: holding slaves to be confiscated and turned over to the

959
00:50:40,280 --> 00:50:43,680
Speaker 2: descendants of its victims. Such actions are important, but they

960
00:50:43,680 --> 00:50:46,840
Speaker 2: don't reverse the damage generations of slavery did the fabric

961
00:50:46,880 --> 00:50:49,239
Speaker 2: of Brazilian society, some of which is what allowed the

962
00:50:49,360 --> 00:50:51,719
Speaker 2: junta to take power in the first place. Per An

963
00:50:51,800 --> 00:50:54,200
Speaker 2: article and the impact of slavery on local institutions in

964
00:50:54,239 --> 00:50:57,360
Speaker 2: Brazil from the Latin American and Caribbean Center by Andrea

965
00:50:57,400 --> 00:51:01,040
Speaker 2: Papadilla quote A widespread reliance on slave labor may have

966
00:51:01,080 --> 00:51:04,720
Speaker 2: heightened racial cleavages, making resource sharing through taxation and public

967
00:51:04,760 --> 00:51:07,800
Speaker 2: goods more difficult. Second to high incidence of slavery deprived

968
00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:10,040
Speaker 2: a large share of the population of a political voice

969
00:51:10,040 --> 00:51:13,640
Speaker 2: and limited competition between municipalities. Since slaves could not vote

970
00:51:13,640 --> 00:51:16,560
Speaker 2: with their feet, this reduced the strength of citizens demands

971
00:51:16,600 --> 00:51:20,200
Speaker 2: and the accountability of local politicians. Thus, slavery is likely

972
00:51:20,239 --> 00:51:23,360
Speaker 2: to have affected the development of fiscal capacity and provision

973
00:51:23,400 --> 00:51:26,319
Speaker 2: of public goods, both directly and indirectly. On one hand,

974
00:51:26,360 --> 00:51:29,280
Speaker 2: slaves lecked even the limited political voice that free Brazilian

975
00:51:29,280 --> 00:51:32,600
Speaker 2: citizens had. On the other, slavery influenced the settlement of

976
00:51:32,640 --> 00:51:35,200
Speaker 2: foreign migrants and therefore the extent to which this dynamic

977
00:51:35,200 --> 00:51:39,000
Speaker 2: group of citizens was able to shape local institutions. Right, so,

978
00:51:39,800 --> 00:51:41,759
Speaker 2: the fact that this such a huge chunk of the

979
00:51:41,800 --> 00:51:46,560
Speaker 2: country is enslaved, it means both the state develops in

980
00:51:46,600 --> 00:51:49,240
Speaker 2: such a way where this chunk of the populace goes

981
00:51:49,320 --> 00:51:51,640
Speaker 2: most of the length of the state's existence without having

982
00:51:51,680 --> 00:51:54,960
Speaker 2: any kind of a voice in politics, and that contributes

983
00:51:55,000 --> 00:51:58,239
Speaker 2: to the development of these authoritarian systems. Right again, you

984
00:51:58,280 --> 00:52:00,760
Speaker 2: can look at similar things have happened in the United States,

985
00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:02,520
Speaker 2: right and are continuing to happen.

986
00:52:02,600 --> 00:52:05,600
Speaker 3: You know, it's so perfect, it's the perfect formula.

987
00:52:05,680 --> 00:52:12,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, really incredible. Oh wow, yeah. And

988
00:52:12,080 --> 00:52:14,280
Speaker 2: you know, up to this the present day, in Brazil,

989
00:52:14,360 --> 00:52:17,000
Speaker 2: black and biracial Brazilians are likely to be poor, to

990
00:52:17,080 --> 00:52:20,040
Speaker 2: face imprisonment, and to die early than their peers. Only

991
00:52:20,080 --> 00:52:22,799
Speaker 2: about a quarter of Brazil's Lower House of Congress come

992
00:52:22,840 --> 00:52:26,440
Speaker 2: from this segment of the population. So Volkswagen's operations in

993
00:52:26,480 --> 00:52:29,960
Speaker 2: Brazil were nothing new for it or for Brazil, except

994
00:52:30,000 --> 00:52:33,120
Speaker 2: for one crucial fact, which is that they would eventually

995
00:52:33,239 --> 00:52:35,719
Speaker 2: be subject to a reckoning. And we will talk about

996
00:52:35,760 --> 00:52:38,920
Speaker 2: that and more in Part two. Are we feeling Maggie?

997
00:52:38,960 --> 00:52:41,920
Speaker 4: Whoa ugh? Good?

998
00:52:42,680 --> 00:52:43,000
Speaker 3: Good?

999
00:52:43,960 --> 00:52:44,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm feeling great.

1000
00:52:44,920 --> 00:52:52,440
Speaker 3: This is so fascinating. I feel great, yeah, aring for so.

1001
00:52:51,120 --> 00:52:54,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, we will talk a lot about what happened next

1002
00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:57,040
Speaker 2: and how this all continued. But first, why don't you

1003
00:52:57,040 --> 00:52:58,600
Speaker 2: plug your pluggables? Oh?

1004
00:52:59,200 --> 00:53:03,360
Speaker 3: Yes, how does one transition? I feel like my brain's

1005
00:53:03,360 --> 00:53:04,000
Speaker 3: been cooked.

1006
00:53:04,400 --> 00:53:07,520
Speaker 4: Well, you know what if you're feeling down, if you

1007
00:53:07,600 --> 00:53:11,120
Speaker 4: feeling a little sad after this episode, you know over

1008
00:53:11,160 --> 00:53:13,560
Speaker 4: a nebula like, Yeah, there's a show called Amy's Dead

1009
00:53:13,600 --> 00:53:14,360
Speaker 4: and dream House.

1010
00:53:15,160 --> 00:53:16,760
Speaker 3: It also tackles, yeah.

1011
00:53:16,600 --> 00:53:20,160
Speaker 4: Some pretty dark topics, but you know, the fun guys

1012
00:53:20,160 --> 00:53:23,440
Speaker 4: of a kid show. So go check that out. And

1013
00:53:23,480 --> 00:53:26,600
Speaker 4: then yeah, you can find my video essays just at

1014
00:53:26,640 --> 00:53:29,920
Speaker 4: my name Maggie may Fish. We do a very fun

1015
00:53:29,960 --> 00:53:34,960
Speaker 4: one coming out about true crime and Ganda. So you know,

1016
00:53:35,320 --> 00:53:37,719
Speaker 4: I can't wait for fun just fun things at the

1017
00:53:37,719 --> 00:53:39,439
Speaker 4: top of my brain right now.

1018
00:53:39,560 --> 00:53:43,400
Speaker 2: You know, well, check that out, check out Maggie's whole

1019
00:53:43,480 --> 00:53:47,560
Speaker 2: ouvra of work, and you know, check out the history

1020
00:53:47,560 --> 00:53:50,359
Speaker 2: of slavery in Brazil. It's probably something we should all

1021
00:53:50,400 --> 00:53:54,840
Speaker 2: read more about. It's pretty bleak, I don't know. Also,

1022
00:53:54,920 --> 00:53:57,360
Speaker 2: maybe I was gonna say, don't buy a Volkswagon, but

1023
00:53:57,400 --> 00:53:59,200
Speaker 2: really there's not a car you can buy without some

1024
00:53:59,239 --> 00:54:02,239
Speaker 2: sort of nightmare history to it or nightmare present too.

1025
00:54:02,600 --> 00:54:05,920
Speaker 3: It really is what towlsman are you picking up?

1026
00:54:05,960 --> 00:54:08,920
Speaker 2: You know, I will say Volkswagen's worse than most. You know,

1027
00:54:08,960 --> 00:54:10,680
Speaker 2: they got caught a couple of years ago for just

1028
00:54:10,719 --> 00:54:15,279
Speaker 2: like massively committing fraud on an enormous scale, like lying

1029
00:54:15,360 --> 00:54:18,759
Speaker 2: about the emissions of their diesel vehicles, like yeah, like

1030
00:54:18,880 --> 00:54:21,920
Speaker 2: it's a huge deal. And then we could talk about

1031
00:54:21,960 --> 00:54:25,279
Speaker 2: like the fact that they operate factories and Zinjang and

1032
00:54:25,400 --> 00:54:28,279
Speaker 2: China that they have a really questionable human rights record too.

1033
00:54:28,360 --> 00:54:30,840
Speaker 2: But I don't know, You're not going to find a

1034
00:54:30,880 --> 00:54:33,960
Speaker 2: clean auto maker here. So steal a car. That's what

1035
00:54:34,080 --> 00:54:36,719
Speaker 2: I'm saying. Everybody, steal all of your vehicles.

1036
00:54:36,800 --> 00:54:37,640
Speaker 3: Steal a car.

1037
00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:40,640
Speaker 2: That's the only ethical way to buy a car. Yeah,

1038
00:54:40,800 --> 00:54:47,479
Speaker 2: auto theft. Great, all right, Well that's part one. Everybody.

1039
00:54:48,719 --> 00:54:51,640
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1040
00:54:51,760 --> 00:54:54,359
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

1041
00:54:54,440 --> 00:54:58,399
Speaker 1: Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1042
00:54:58,520 --> 00:55:00,120
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

1043
00:54:59,840 --> 00:55:01,240
Speaker 3: You get your podcasts.

1044
00:55:01,239 --> 00:55:04,640
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes

1045
00:55:04,960 --> 00:55:08,600
Speaker 1: every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot

1046
00:55:08,600 --> 00:55:11,200
Speaker 1: com slash at Behind the Bastards