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Speaker 1: Hmm, what's eating My Bags of Dicks? I'm Robert Evans.

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Speaker 1: This is Behind the Bastards, the show where I talk

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Speaker 1: about terrible people and try new intros. This one was

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Speaker 1: inspired by something Sophie said minutes before I started this episode,

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Speaker 1: when Jamie Loftus expressed a concern that someone would hear

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Speaker 1: her chewing and would attack her for it on the Internet,

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Speaker 1: and Sophie said that person could eat a bag of dicks,

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Speaker 1: which is why the show opened that way. I like

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Speaker 1: the context, Robert, You're so good at providing historical contact here,

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Speaker 1: everything glitting things that just happened. It's necessary. Everyone needs

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Speaker 1: to understand why why I say the things that I say,

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Speaker 1: and why I opened this show with What's Eating My

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Speaker 1: Bags of Dicks? I understand why people are bothered by

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Speaker 1: an occasional eating sound on Mike, But I encourage everyone

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Speaker 1: to remember that this is entertainment that is free, and

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Speaker 1: if you don't like it, you can simply go pay

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Speaker 1: for something, or eat a bag of dicks. According to that,

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Speaker 1: or eat a bag of dicks. Eat a bag of dicks,

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Speaker 1: and then other people will hear you chewing. Now I

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Speaker 1: do I do have I do have a lot of

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Speaker 1: sympathy for people who just like, for whatever reason, can't

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Speaker 1: stand the sound of other people chewing because it bugs

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Speaker 1: me sometimes with certain people, like I can't stand the

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Speaker 1: sound of other people eating cereal. It drives me fucking nuts.

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Speaker 1: Other foods I don't have an issue with, but cereal

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Speaker 1: is not something you can control, and so I don't

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Speaker 1: judge people for having issues with it. To the plate,

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Speaker 1: but it is an occasional part of life. It is

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Speaker 1: an occasional part of life. People eat food, uh, And

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Speaker 1: that's just the world in which we live. And one

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Speaker 1: day robots will do all of our eating for us.

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Speaker 1: But that day is not today. No, No, let's start

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Speaker 1: talking about Eddie Burnet's again. So at the start of

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Speaker 1: our last episode, I made the case that it would

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Speaker 1: Burnet's deserves to be considered one of America's founding fathers.

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Speaker 1: He invented the tactics of publicity stunts and pr flax

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Speaker 1: masquerading as journalists that so dominate our national discourse today.

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Speaker 1: You can look at that Vogue article about Ozma al Asad,

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Speaker 1: which we discussed in the Bashar al Assad episode. It's

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Speaker 1: just one of many descendants of Eddie Burns's tactics. He

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Speaker 1: got women smoking, he helped make thin be vogue, He

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Speaker 1: invented fox socially conscious ad tactics that cloak capitalism and

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Speaker 1: robes of charity, And perhaps more than anything else, he

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Speaker 1: invented bacon as a staple of the American breakfast. Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. What do you call the kind of

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Speaker 1: person who will not shut up about bacon besides obnoxious

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Speaker 1: bacon eaters every time? Because I I love bacon. It's great.

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Speaker 1: Who doesn't love bacon? Even if you think it's unethical

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Speaker 1: to eat? You agree that it smells and tastes incredible.

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Speaker 1: I love bacon, but I dislike when people I feel

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Speaker 1: like it's it is a talking point for m R

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Speaker 1: A s I've like any time any time and m

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Speaker 1: R A comes out there like, oh look Jamie, mom

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Speaker 1: just suck. She doesn't even like like beer, babes and bacon.

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Speaker 1: Like I've been, people have invoked the three bees at

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Speaker 1: me before. There's just it is a weird talking point,

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Speaker 1: and I would like to hold upward Berney is personally

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Speaker 1: responsible for it. Yeah, I mean it's it's one of

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Speaker 1: those things where like, uh, the story of how bacon

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Speaker 1: became what it is right now, which is like this

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Speaker 1: internet famous like everybody does these uh look at this

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Speaker 1: thing that's made I made a burger patty entirely out

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Speaker 1: of woven bacon or whatever, like all of these like bacon. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Like that's a tactic to get people because people were

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Speaker 1: eating less bacon, so they were like, how do we

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Speaker 1: make bacon cool? It was incorporated into like the quote

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Speaker 1: unquote like random culture of the mid two thousands. I

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Speaker 1: feel like everyone because it's kind of a funny word. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: everyone would like an Invader Zim sleeve of tattoos talks

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Speaker 1: about bacon too much. And if you're like a company

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Speaker 1: that produces a product and you can have it be

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Speaker 1: that kind of popular where like people are making random

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Speaker 1: internet jokes just because the word bacon is funny. Um,

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Speaker 1: and then it you know, and then they eat more

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Speaker 1: bacon because like it's one of those things. It works.

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Speaker 1: Because as I was researching how Eddie Burne's made bacon

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Speaker 1: go viral in America, uh, I craved bacon and I

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Speaker 1: bought a whole fucking pile of bacon and ate it

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Speaker 1: because I desperately wanted to eat bacon after reading everything

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Speaker 1: that like had been like you see a bunch of

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Speaker 1: and it's the same thing, Like you see a bunch

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Speaker 1: of bacon memes on Twitter, and it's like these are dumb,

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Speaker 1: and like I understand how stupid they are, but bacon

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Speaker 1: is delicious and now I'm gonna go eat some. It

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Speaker 1: does help when the product is fun to consume. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it really does. Um Now, in the mid nineteen twenties,

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Speaker 1: Beechnut Packing Company, who was one of America's major bacon producers,

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Speaker 1: had noticed their sales were starting to plummet. This may

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Speaker 1: have had something to do with the thinness craze that

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Speaker 1: Eddie Burnet's had actually helped to spark. Whatever the cause,

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Speaker 1: Americans were eating lighter breakfasts and going without bacon more

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Speaker 1: mornings than not, so Beechnut Packing Company hired Bernet's to

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Speaker 1: turn ship around. Now, Jamie, the average standard admin move

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Speaker 1: might have been to attack the competition and try to

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Speaker 1: steal market share from other bacon companies, but Barnes knew

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Speaker 1: there was no point in doing that. Beech Nuts stood

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Speaker 1: to make way more money by just changing America's breakfast

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Speaker 1: habits to include too much bacon. He instituted this change

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Speaker 1: the same way he got America to smoke by finding

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Speaker 1: doctors in bribing them to lie to the country. Going

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Speaker 1: to quote from an inc dot com article, here, Bern's

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Speaker 1: contacted a doctor he knew and who also had substantial

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Speaker 1: financial ties to his agency, and commissioned to study on

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Speaker 1: the health effects of bacon. When the physician came back

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Speaker 1: with was that bacon was in fact the perfect breakfast

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Speaker 1: food and that it replaces the energy you lose during sleep.

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Speaker 1: I fucking I love twenties like bad medical advice reasoning

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Speaker 1: cigarettes feel your cue es own bacon replaces your sleep energy,

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Speaker 1: just like inventing things that don't actually exist. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: of course you're going to have less energy after sleeping,

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Speaker 1: so you need bacon. Is exhausting, I mean that is

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Speaker 1: that also? Yeah, just contradicts the very concept of sleep. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's yeah, it's amazing, it's incredible. Once a shured

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Speaker 1: of these results, Bernes asked the doctor to communicate his

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Speaker 1: findings to the medical community, which he did by distributing

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Speaker 1: them to a list of five thousand m d s

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Speaker 1: across the country. Within no time, doctors from coast to

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Speaker 1: coast were recommending that their patients eat bacon for breakfast,

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Speaker 1: and the eating habits of a nation were transformed. So

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Speaker 1: there we go, Thanks Eddie. Honestly, I mean that is

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Speaker 1: I think one of the more positive things that he

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Speaker 1: did for the world. I mean, it's never good to

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Speaker 1: lie about something being healthy that's not healthy, but that

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Speaker 1: certainly wasn't his idea. And yes it was his idea

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Speaker 1: to say that a healthy I feel like that's been

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Speaker 1: happening since before, before Edward Burnet's that like lying about

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Speaker 1: something being healthy. No, I mean not just lying about

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Speaker 1: something being healthy, finding a doctor to cook up a

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Speaker 1: fake study about something being healthy, to make that go

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Speaker 1: viral so that people would start eating all of the

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Speaker 1: bacon in the world. Like you can tie so much

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Speaker 1: of like our modern health bullshit to Edward Burnet is

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Speaker 1: getting a doctor to be like, bacon replenishes your energy.

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Speaker 1: And now it's like it's come down to be like no,

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Speaker 1: kale juice is like, you know, got to fight cancer

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Speaker 1: and stuff. But at all it's descended from the same

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Speaker 1: tactic like dr oz wouldn't be possible without Edward. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: because before like yeah, you'd have lies where people would

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Speaker 1: be like this morphine cough syrup is good for your kid.

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Speaker 1: But after medicine started to really become a thing and

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Speaker 1: like antibiotics were real, and like, it was clear that

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Speaker 1: like doctors were more legitimate than they've been in the

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Speaker 1: old sawbones. Day Burns was the first guy to be like, Okay, well,

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Speaker 1: I've got to I've got to kick this up a notch.

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Speaker 1: I can't just lie about something being healthy. I gotta

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Speaker 1: bribe doctors to lie about something being healthy. And that's

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Speaker 1: how we're gonna fucking get this ship on the road.

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Speaker 1: And it worked, and it worked, and I'm I'm not

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Speaker 1: too mad about it. It's a bad it's a bad practice.

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Speaker 1: But I like bacon at breakfast, so do I. It's delicious,

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Speaker 1: And he was objectively right that it's a fantastic breakfast food. Um,

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Speaker 1: but I did feel like I'd be remiss if I

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Speaker 1: didn't talk a little bit about the health consequences of

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Speaker 1: all of this bacon consumption on the American people. So

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Speaker 1: I found an article. Yeah, I found an article on

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Speaker 1: The Guardian about an announcement made by the World Health

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Speaker 1: Organization based on the conclusions of twenty two cancer experts

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Speaker 1: in ten countries reviewing more than four studies on the

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Speaker 1: health impact of processed meats like bacon. Quote the Who

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Speaker 1: advised that consuming fifty grams of processed me today equivalent

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Speaker 1: to just a couple of rashers of bacon or one dog,

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Speaker 1: would raise the risk of getting bowel cancer by eight

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Speaker 1: over a lifetime. Eating larger amounts raises your risk more.

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Speaker 1: Learning that your own risk of cancer is increased from

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Speaker 1: something like five percent to something like six percent may

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Speaker 1: not be frightening enough to put you off bacon sandwiches forever.

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Speaker 1: But learning that consumption of processed meat causes an additional

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Speaker 1: thirty four thousand worldwide cancer deaths a year is much

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Speaker 1: more chilling. So if we're if we're calculating the death

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Speaker 1: toll of Eddie Burnet's, on top of that two million

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Speaker 1: dead cigarette ladies, we had another thirty or four thousand

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Speaker 1: a year from bacon from the bacon edge lords. Wow, Wow,

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Speaker 1: that's brutal. Okay, that is brutal. Now I'm a fair man, Jamie.

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Speaker 1: And unlike with tobacco, I don't think we can blame

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Speaker 1: Berne's for purposefully harming here because back in the twenties,

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Speaker 1: whiskey was still medicine and while he knew that his

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Speaker 1: medical expert was a paid lying hill to get people

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Speaker 1: to eat more bacon, he did not know that bacon

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Speaker 1: was going to give our grandparents bow cancer. Um, so

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Speaker 1: you can blame him somewhat for that because he knew

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Speaker 1: he was lying for money. But it's not like we cigarettes,

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Speaker 1: where he knew he was getting people to give themselves cancer.

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Speaker 1: He had, yeah, like where he had the research and

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Speaker 1: had a counter argument prepared. Yeah, okay, I mean yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm I'm almost like willing to defend him for this

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Speaker 1: of just like, yeah, it's not good to have a

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Speaker 1: like a snake oil doctor cop for your product. But

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Speaker 1: if the product ain't delicious, if the damned ifest is

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Speaker 1: its taste, yeah, you know. Now. Over the course of

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Speaker 1: the Roaring twenties, Berne's gradually refined his strategy create newsworthy

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Speaker 1: stories by any means necessary, and use that to generate

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Speaker 1: demand for the product he was representing. He eventually turned

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Speaker 1: it into something like a science. By nineteen thirty one,

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Speaker 1: Berns was raking in more than sixty thousand dollars a

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Speaker 1: year in profits, which equates to more than nine thousand

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Speaker 1: dollars a year in modern dollars. By nineteen thirty five,

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Speaker 1: he was earning five times that much. But Edward Burns

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Speaker 1: was not just content being good at his job and

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Speaker 1: making money. He wanted to be seen as an intellectual titan,

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Speaker 1: a serious scholar of mass consciousness. So he started writing

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Speaker 1: books Propaganda in nineteen twenty eight, which was about well,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's propaganda. Uh. This quote from the book

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Speaker 1: is telling about how bernes ideology developed. Quote. The conscious

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Speaker 1: and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of

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Speaker 1: the masses is an important element in a democratic society.

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Speaker 1: Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an

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Speaker 1: invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country.

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Speaker 1: We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed,

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Speaker 1: and our ideas suggested largely by men we have never

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Speaker 1: heard of. It is they who pull the wires that

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Speaker 1: control the public mind. He writes this considering himself a

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Speaker 1: good guy, which is amazing because like, this is almost

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Speaker 1: exactly what Alex Jones believes about the world. He just

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Speaker 1: thinks it's a different group of people, and Bernes is like, no,

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Speaker 1: this is what we're doing. It is so funny, like

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Speaker 1: how books of this era that it just you sound

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Speaker 1: like a villain. But yeah, but he is. He sees

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Speaker 1: himself as the good guy for sure. And Berne's considered

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Speaker 1: himself a liberal, But he was also a very elitist liberal.

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Speaker 1: So not a populist, not a socialist, certainly. He was

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Speaker 1: one of those people who feared and reviled the masses.

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Speaker 1: Much of his work and the cynicism behind it, came

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Speaker 1: from his strongly held belief that the masses were fundamentally

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Speaker 1: dumb and dangerous. They had to be led and molded

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Speaker 1: by men like him who could channel their unconscious desires

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Speaker 1: in productive or at least profitable directions. Cool. So not

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Speaker 1: not an ego issue with him, not at all. No,

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Speaker 1: not an ego issue thinking that he knows what's good

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Speaker 1: for the world better than the people of the world.

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Speaker 1: But me, and I'm going to kill them with cigarettes

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Speaker 1: exactly Eddie Bernet's that's a that's a fucking epitaph. Someone

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Speaker 1: find his his gravestone and carved that in there. Everyone

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Speaker 1: is trashed but me, So I'm going to get them

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Speaker 1: hooked on cigarettes. Amazing. Yeah, who's the jewel equivalent of

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Speaker 1: Eddie Burns today. I'm just want to I mean, he's

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Speaker 1: the guy who runs jewel maybe, yeah, who runs drill.

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Speaker 1: All right, I'm going to investigate anyways. Continue. In nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirty three, he published what would become his most influential work,

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Speaker 1: Crystallizing Public Opinion. His focus in this book was on

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Speaker 1: what he called the engineering of consent. A phrase is

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Speaker 1: horrifying as it is not sound. Yeah, it's it sounds horrible, right,

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Speaker 1: Like that's bad. That sounds like some Tucker Max ship. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that sounds like a little Tucker maxie. Yea god, Okay,

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Speaker 1: what is that? What is the goal of engineering consent?

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Speaker 1: He says, is to provide leaders with the ability to quote, control,

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Speaker 1: and regiment the masses according to our will without their

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Speaker 1: knowing about it. Oh like consent, Like yeah, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: just have to remind everyone. At no point did Bernet's

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Speaker 1: consider himself a bad guy. He's saying this ship and

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Speaker 1: he thinks like, but I'm I'm I'm in the right here. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's like, how do you hear this stuff? There? It's

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Speaker 1: no wonder that. However, many years in the future, his

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Speaker 1: daughter is like, no, he wasn't that great, Like he

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Speaker 1: was he was kind of a piece of ship, yea.

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Speaker 1: His daughter seemed kind of consistent about that. You don't

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Speaker 1: use the phrase piece of ship. But they're very critical well,

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Speaker 1: the fact that he's able to be like, I'm a feminist.

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Speaker 1: I did kill like a million ladies, but I killed

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Speaker 1: all of the women who were alive in my day.

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Speaker 1: Other than that, I was very progressive. Yeah. Obviously, while

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Speaker 1: Bernet's considered himself a good guy, he was very popular

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Speaker 1: among bad guys, and starting in the nineteen twenties, he

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Speaker 1: accrued a new and increasingly influential fan, a fella you

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Speaker 1: might have heard about by the name of Joseph Gebel's.

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Speaker 1: Now there we go, Jacobs, there it is. Even though

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Speaker 1: Berne's himself was Jewish, Gebbels loved him. He kept a

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Speaker 1: copy of Crystallizing Public Opinion in a place of honor

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Speaker 1: in his office and utilized all of Berne's well worn

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Speaker 1: techniques to create a cult of personality around Adolf Hitler.

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Speaker 1: According to an article on Burnet's in the Conversation Quote,

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Speaker 1: Burne's learned that the Nazis were using his work in

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three from a foreign correspondent for Hearst newspapers.

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Speaker 1: He later recounted in his nineteen sixty five autobiography, they

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Speaker 1: were using my books as the basis for a destructive

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Speaker 1: campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me, but

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Speaker 1: I knew that any human activity can be used for

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Speaker 1: social purposes or misused for anti social ones. This observation, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: what's that? The use of the phrase anti social purposes

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Speaker 1: to describe the Holocaust is very diplomatic. It's also interesting

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Speaker 1: because it's exactly the terminology Nazis used. They called people

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Speaker 1: like homosexuals, people like trans folks, and Jewish people the

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Speaker 1: selves a social That was one of the terms they

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Speaker 1: used to talk about the people who they later exterminated. Um.

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Speaker 1: Interesting to me. Um. Now. This observation led Supreme Court

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Speaker 1: Justice Felix Frankfurter Or to warn Franklin Roosevelt against allowing

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Speaker 1: Burns to play a leadership role in World War Two,

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Speaker 1: describing him and his colleagues as professional poisoners of the

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Speaker 1: public mind, exploiters of foolishness, fanaticism, and self interest, which

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Speaker 1: is very true. Yeah, that's a lot more direct. Yeah, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: which is why Berne's does not get to have as

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Speaker 1: much fun in World War Two as he had in

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Speaker 1: World War One. Real tragedy there. Now, it's shocking to

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Speaker 1: me that Berne's was surprised to see his tactics used

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Speaker 1: for evil. He had not confined himself to the political realm.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen four, he'd helped popularize President Calvin Coolidge by

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Speaker 1: creating the Nonpartisan Committee for Calvin Calvin Coolidge and basically

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Speaker 1: hiring famous people to come to the White House and

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Speaker 1: chill out with the president. Coolidge had a reputation for

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Speaker 1: being cold and utterly a humorous, so Berne has made

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Speaker 1: sure there were headlines about Al Jolson, the most popular

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Speaker 1: comedian of the day, making him laugh. Three weeks after

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Speaker 1: this article ran coolidge one reelection, So he made Coolidge

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Speaker 1: seem cool. Wow, man, it's it's something horrible. But sometimes

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Speaker 1: when I hear news from this era, I'm like, well,

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Speaker 1: maybe people just shouldn't have been so fucking stupid. There.

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Speaker 1: It is, though. It's the same thing as Donald Trump

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Speaker 1: showing up on Jimmy Kimmel's show or not Jimmy Kimmel,

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Speaker 1: what's his fucking name, Jimmy fallon Jimmy Fallon show and

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Speaker 1: having his hair touseled. It's the same thing It's like,

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Speaker 1: this guy has a bad reputation. Put him with a famous,

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Speaker 1: popular comedian, and that will make him look nice. Most

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Speaker 1: people are Yeah, that'll make him seem at least humane. Exactly.

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Speaker 1: It's exactly what worked on Coolidge, and it worked with

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Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Yeah, life as hell. Bernie has also worked

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Speaker 1: with Herbert Hoover. He advised the president's administration as it

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Speaker 1: fought to sell the nation and Hooper's disastrously incompetent policies

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Speaker 1: aimed at mitigating the Great Depression. Berne's influence on Hoover

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Speaker 1: is obvious in this line from a speech Hoover gave

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Speaker 1: to a group of advertising executives. You have taken over

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Speaker 1: the job of creating a Zaiah and if transformed people

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Speaker 1: into constantly moving happiness machines, machines which have the compkey

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Speaker 1: to economic progress. Constantly moving Yeah, how do you not

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Speaker 1: know you're evil if you're calling people happiness machines. Constantly

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Speaker 1: moving happiness machines sounds like a shitty R E M song.

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Speaker 1: It's no, it sounds like a great R E M album.

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Speaker 1: Constantly moving happiness machines. Yeah, that is basically an r

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Speaker 1: M album. Right, There was a shiny happy people like, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it sounds just weird and arrogant enough to be an

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Speaker 1: r album. Constantly moving happiness machines. It is so uncanny Valley,

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Speaker 1: it's fucking wild. Yeah, fucking Herbert Hoover says that the

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Speaker 1: guy who sees the Great Depression, and it's like, clearly

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Speaker 1: the solution to this is more capitalism. We just didn't

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Speaker 1: go far enough. It was it was a commitment issue.

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Speaker 1: It was fully commn issue. It was a commitment issue. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: all right, yeah, yeah. So Berne's advised Herbert Hoover's campaign

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Speaker 1: and its attempt to defeat the rise of Democratic candidate

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Speaker 1: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. According to the father of spin quote, first,

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Speaker 1: he would enlist his cadra of disinterested experts from business, labor,

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Speaker 1: and academia. Only this time he was out to win

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Speaker 1: over the entire nation, which meant signing up as many

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Speaker 1: as twenty group leaders to his nonpartisan fact finding committee.

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Speaker 1: For Hoover, they would get out the word that the

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Speaker 1: economy was about to turn around, and they would help

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Speaker 1: puncture the inferior personality of Roosevelt by convincing voters that

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Speaker 1: the Democratic candidate was not the progressive people thought he was,

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Speaker 1: and that he has been subject to tammany and political jobbery.

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Speaker 1: Dividing the opposition was the key to conquering it. Burnet's

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Speaker 1: believed in this case that meant persuading the fifteen million

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Speaker 1: Americans who had voted four years before for Democrat Alfred

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Speaker 1: Smith to switch to Hoover right in Smith's name, or

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Speaker 1: simply stay home on election day. One publicity campaign would

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Speaker 1: spotlight leading Democrats who thought it had been a mistake

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Speaker 1: to nominate Roosevelt instead of Smith. Another would show Hoover

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Speaker 1: to be a courageous, humane leader who brought the nation piece,

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Speaker 1: if not prosperity. Burnet has also made clear, as he

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Speaker 1: had in his corporate campaigns, but the best way to

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Speaker 1: win over the public was by appealing to instinct rather

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Speaker 1: than reason. Always keep in mind the tendency of human

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Speaker 1: beings to symbolize their leaders. As Achilles heel Proof his

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Speaker 1: strategy paper advised also that the inferiority complex of individuals

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Speaker 1: will respond to feelings superior to a fool create issues

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Speaker 1: that appeal to pugnacious instincts of human beings. Now you

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Speaker 1: may recognize all this as the exact same strategy that

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Speaker 1: worked in two thousand sixteens literally feeling very familiar, convinced

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Speaker 1: leftist to say home, convinced them that the person, the

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Speaker 1: other Democrat who lost the nomination, that they should write

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Speaker 1: in that person's name and instead and get them to

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Speaker 1: want to fight in order to like like focus on

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Speaker 1: the instincts that make them angry rather than in the

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Speaker 1: stuff that brings them together. Like it's this. It's the

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Speaker 1: same strategy that worked in but fuck fuck Crucially, thankfully,

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Speaker 1: it didn't work in this campaign, which is why the

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Speaker 1: United States did not turn into a fascist hell state

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Speaker 1: like Germany and why the Nazis lost World War Two.

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Speaker 1: So thankfully, FDR was just too fucking good at running

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Speaker 1: a political campaign to lose to this. But it worked

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Speaker 1: a century, almost a century later. So many thoughts, and

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Speaker 1: I'm going to say none of them allowed at this time.

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Speaker 1: Oh boy, you know, it'll clear your your mind's palette,

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Speaker 1: Jamie Robert, I just really need some capitalist messaging to

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Speaker 1: get me through the next couple of minutes, honest. A

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Speaker 1: couple of products, a service or three, and then we'll be,

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Speaker 1: we'll be We'll be on the fucking road to happy town.

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Speaker 1: That is the exact baking palet cleanser. I'm seeking all

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Speaker 1: right palettes, which are a type of product. We're back.

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Speaker 1: I hope you all enjoyed those ads for Raytheon, which

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Speaker 1: which you know is the finest provider of of missile

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Speaker 1: guidance equipment. I'm gonna use I'm going to use the

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Speaker 1: discount code. You know. It's it's funny we're joking about

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00:22:15,720 --> 00:22:17,919
Speaker 1: Raytheon a bunch, But I grew up in Plano, Texas,

391
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Speaker 1: where they're headquartered, and like my scout master as a kid,

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Speaker 1: like the guy who taught me how to like start

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Speaker 1: a fire and survive in the wilderness, did something for Raytheon,

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Speaker 1: And we don't know what he could. All he could

395
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Speaker 1: could say about his job is that he worked for Raytheon,

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Speaker 1: and he was the kind of guy who like whatever

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Speaker 1: he did. The way that he relaxed every year was

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Speaker 1: by spending a month alone in the bottom of the

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Speaker 1: Grand Canyon. Like so you know, he's been doing some

400
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Speaker 1: any any person who needs to take a very specific

401
00:22:46,880 --> 00:22:51,439
Speaker 1: alone dark vacation annually is not doing something good for

402
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Speaker 1: a living, like what he would sometimes go with a friend.

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Speaker 1: And one year that friend broke his leg and so

404
00:22:56,760 --> 00:22:58,280
Speaker 1: he had to like use a flare to get the

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00:22:58,320 --> 00:23:01,159
Speaker 1: guy helicoptered out, and then he could continued alone for

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Speaker 1: weeks after that. Like that's whatever he did at work,

407
00:23:04,119 --> 00:23:06,080
Speaker 1: Like that's how he what he needed in order to

408
00:23:06,160 --> 00:23:10,440
Speaker 1: like get straight again afterwards, and he would return from

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Speaker 1: this feeling cleansed and ready to function up for another

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Speaker 1: eleven months. I mean, it's one of those things. I

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Speaker 1: don't know what the funk he was doing. I'm sure

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Speaker 1: it's horrible. He also like taught me everything I know

413
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Speaker 1: about woodcrafting, and I'm I'm I'll always be grateful for that.

414
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Speaker 1: He was. He was an incredible woodsman, but like a

415
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Speaker 1: complicated man. The odor I've gotten in, the more I've

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Speaker 1: learned about Raytheon, the more I've started to be, like,

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Speaker 1: oh my god, what the funk were you doing? Man'.

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Speaker 1: I'm thrilled to be descended from a long line of

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Speaker 1: weed smoking remedial algebra teachers. It's a very uncomplicated existence.

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Speaker 1: People who never hurt nobody, never hurt nobody, and they

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Speaker 1: certainly never taught nobody anything about algebra. Yeah. So, when

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Speaker 1: we last left off, Edward Burns had invented Donald Trump's

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Speaker 1: election strategies. It's fucking wild. That hurt my heart to heart.

424
00:24:10,040 --> 00:24:15,400
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah. Now, obviously his attempts to stop FDR

425
00:24:15,520 --> 00:24:18,200
Speaker 1: from winning the election did not work. They weren't even close.

426
00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:22,159
Speaker 1: Hoover got one of the most resounding defeats in the

427
00:24:22,240 --> 00:24:27,040
Speaker 1: history of American politics. Tone deaf weirdo. Yeah, he was

428
00:24:27,040 --> 00:24:30,600
Speaker 1: a tone deaf weirdo. He was a terrible president. He

429
00:24:30,680 --> 00:24:32,720
Speaker 1: was a terrible, terrible president, one of the worst we

430
00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:38,800
Speaker 1: ever had. Um But Eddie's tactics for engineering consent worked

431
00:24:38,840 --> 00:24:41,680
Speaker 1: more often than they didn't. Burns knew that well, and

432
00:24:41,720 --> 00:24:43,840
Speaker 1: as a clearly intelligent man, he should have known that

433
00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:47,000
Speaker 1: writing out a how to guide for manipulating mass consciousness

434
00:24:47,160 --> 00:24:49,119
Speaker 1: could be used by Nazis just as well as it

435
00:24:49,119 --> 00:24:51,480
Speaker 1: could be used by people who wanted to sell cigarettes.

436
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:54,840
Speaker 1: But Berns wanted to be regarded as a great and

437
00:24:54,960 --> 00:24:57,159
Speaker 1: serious thinker, and the only way to do that was

438
00:24:57,200 --> 00:24:59,360
Speaker 1: to publish a book and make sure everyone knew how

439
00:24:59,359 --> 00:25:02,880
Speaker 1: smart he was. What Burns did with crystallizing public opinion

440
00:25:02,960 --> 00:25:05,679
Speaker 1: was the propaganda equivalent of phil figuring out how to

441
00:25:05,720 --> 00:25:08,399
Speaker 1: build an atom bomb with household materials and then just

442
00:25:08,480 --> 00:25:11,640
Speaker 1: throwing the instructions up on Reddit. Now it's like, yeah,

443
00:25:11,680 --> 00:25:13,240
Speaker 1: it's like when I taught you how to make a

444
00:25:13,280 --> 00:25:17,760
Speaker 1: bomb inside of fight club, Like wh what? What? What?

445
00:25:17,800 --> 00:25:21,560
Speaker 1: Why put that in the thing? Where's the need? Now?

446
00:25:21,680 --> 00:25:23,680
Speaker 1: The grossest part of this story is that many of

447
00:25:23,760 --> 00:25:26,920
Speaker 1: the ideas Burns wrote about and Crystallizing Public Opinion weren't

448
00:25:26,960 --> 00:25:30,720
Speaker 1: even his own ideas. Originally, years before, an academic named

449
00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:34,240
Speaker 1: Walter Lippman had published a book called Public Opinion. According

450
00:25:34,280 --> 00:25:37,880
Speaker 1: to an article I found in the International Journal of Communication, quote,

451
00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:40,760
Speaker 1: what Bernis represents as a friendly reading a public opinion

452
00:25:40,760 --> 00:25:44,120
Speaker 1: in his own quickly crafted sequel to Lipman's book, Crystallizing

453
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 1: Public Opinion is actually a calculated reversal of Lippmann's argument.

454
00:25:48,080 --> 00:25:51,119
Speaker 1: Lippman was a vehement critic of propaganda who condemned the

455
00:25:51,160 --> 00:25:54,359
Speaker 1: manufacture of consent by public relations when that field was

456
00:25:54,359 --> 00:25:58,000
Speaker 1: still in its infancy. Crystallizing Public Opinion inverts and subverts

457
00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:01,840
Speaker 1: Lippman's radical critique into an apollo g for pr. So

458
00:26:01,880 --> 00:26:05,000
Speaker 1: this guy Lippmann, who's a serious scholar, represents what people

459
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,560
Speaker 1: like Berne's are doing, like recognizes it, sees it as horrifying,

460
00:26:08,600 --> 00:26:11,919
Speaker 1: and writes a book outlining why what they're doing is dangerous,

461
00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:15,159
Speaker 1: and then Burns basically flips that around into oh, this

462
00:26:15,200 --> 00:26:17,480
Speaker 1: guy wrote out, really well, what we're doing, I'll just

463
00:26:17,560 --> 00:26:19,399
Speaker 1: turn it into a how two guy to make it

464
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:21,800
Speaker 1: easier for other people to do it just strips it

465
00:26:21,800 --> 00:26:24,160
Speaker 1: down and it's like, but no, he does explain how

466
00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:26,200
Speaker 1: to do it. Let's just take out the parts where

467
00:26:26,200 --> 00:26:28,840
Speaker 1: we talk about why it's culturally he says, this is

468
00:26:28,880 --> 00:26:32,480
Speaker 1: a nightmare. Like, no, but he did tell us how

469
00:26:32,520 --> 00:26:35,639
Speaker 1: to build the bomb. He just deleted all the stories

470
00:26:35,680 --> 00:26:39,480
Speaker 1: about people dying with bombs. Yeah, about the consequences of

471
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:43,600
Speaker 1: bomb use. So once bern book was out and into

472
00:26:43,600 --> 00:26:46,399
Speaker 1: the hands of men like Joseph Garribel's, Burns finally started

473
00:26:46,440 --> 00:26:49,479
Speaker 1: to get what he wanted. Respect New York University let

474
00:26:49,520 --> 00:26:52,359
Speaker 1: him teach the very first PR course in academic history.

475
00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:56,680
Speaker 1: While Lippman was and remains respected in the industry, Bernes's

476
00:26:56,760 --> 00:27:00,640
Speaker 1: ideas took a much deeper hold, and unfortunately those ideas

477
00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:04,640
Speaker 1: included stereotypes are awesome. Actually, I'm gonna quote again from

478
00:27:04,640 --> 00:27:09,240
Speaker 1: that International Journal Communication article quote. Littman was consistently critical

479
00:27:09,280 --> 00:27:12,119
Speaker 1: of the manipulation of public opinion by wartime propaganda and

480
00:27:12,119 --> 00:27:16,200
Speaker 1: the transfer of propaganda techniques to peacetime endeavors. Conversely, Burne's

481
00:27:16,240 --> 00:27:19,680
Speaker 1: contends that propaganda has positive social value in creating unified

482
00:27:19,720 --> 00:27:23,040
Speaker 1: purpose in wartime in agreement on industrial purposes in peacetime.

483
00:27:23,320 --> 00:27:26,480
Speaker 1: Burnet's regards stereotypes as quote a great aid that the

484
00:27:26,480 --> 00:27:29,119
Speaker 1: public relations counsel in his work, because they can be

485
00:27:29,160 --> 00:27:32,479
Speaker 1: grasped by the average mind, even though he acknowledges they

486
00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:35,720
Speaker 1: are not necessarily truthful pictures of what they're supposed to portray.

487
00:27:36,040 --> 00:27:39,560
Speaker 1: No matter. According to Burnet's, PR practitioners can use stereotypes

488
00:27:39,560 --> 00:27:41,399
Speaker 1: to reach a public and then add their own ideas

489
00:27:41,440 --> 00:27:44,000
Speaker 1: to fortify their position and give it greater carrying power.

490
00:27:44,320 --> 00:27:47,879
Speaker 1: PR can also create new stereotypes to advance client's interests.

491
00:27:47,960 --> 00:27:51,960
Speaker 1: He does, however, acknowledge that stereotypes have one disadvantage. Demagogues

492
00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:55,960
Speaker 1: can use them to take advantage of the public. It's

493
00:27:56,000 --> 00:27:59,520
Speaker 1: the only disadvantage of stereotypes. Yeah, that's as long as

494
00:27:59,560 --> 00:28:02,600
Speaker 1: he said at it there. Well, I mean, this is

495
00:28:03,440 --> 00:28:06,920
Speaker 1: at least we're getting into the cartoon villain territory that

496
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:10,240
Speaker 1: I've come to expect with this program. Because I was

497
00:28:10,280 --> 00:28:12,720
Speaker 1: feeling too challenged at the beginning, I'm like, oh, no,

498
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:19,120
Speaker 1: he descends into egotistical madness. Okay, yeah, he's literally saying like, well,

499
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:22,480
Speaker 1: stereotypes can be used to create fascism, and they're also

500
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:26,399
Speaker 1: usually lies, but they help you sell ship, like usually

501
00:28:26,440 --> 00:28:31,520
Speaker 1: coming people who have no negative stereotypes about themselves. Yeah yeah, well,

502
00:28:31,560 --> 00:28:33,680
Speaker 1: I mean, but it doesn't because Bernet's This is actually

503
00:28:33,760 --> 00:28:36,840
Speaker 1: another interesting thing that Berne's was Jewish by like birth,

504
00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:39,320
Speaker 1: but he was an atheist and he was like angry

505
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 1: that people considered him Jewish, um because he just didn't

506
00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:47,000
Speaker 1: want to be identified as religious at all. But like

507
00:28:47,080 --> 00:28:51,960
Speaker 1: you'd think he would understand how dangerous stereotypes be. It

508
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:55,840
Speaker 1: sounds like he always understands that, but just would but

509
00:28:56,080 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 1: needs the respect and like the whatever Lorie can come

510
00:29:01,400 --> 00:29:05,160
Speaker 1: with being the father of spin more than he cares

511
00:29:05,200 --> 00:29:10,320
Speaker 1: about anyone. It's like, I mean, I understand, like, based

512
00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:12,280
Speaker 1: on the kind of like figure he's trying to be,

513
00:29:12,280 --> 00:29:15,600
Speaker 1: I understand why he would divorce himself from any identity

514
00:29:15,800 --> 00:29:23,560
Speaker 1: at all, because yeah, but what a tool. I'm just

515
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:27,040
Speaker 1: like stuffing my face with bacon. I'm stressed. Oh I'm

516
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:30,560
Speaker 1: gonna eat so much bacon after this fucking episode, still winning.

517
00:29:30,600 --> 00:29:34,360
Speaker 1: He can't stop still winning. Yeah. Edward Burnet spent his

518
00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:36,960
Speaker 1: life taking advantage of the public after World War Two.

519
00:29:37,040 --> 00:29:40,120
Speaker 1: That meant fighting the Cold War in the name of capitalism.

520
00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:42,960
Speaker 1: He convinced President Eisenhower that the right reaction to the

521
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:45,520
Speaker 1: threat of the Soviet Union was to urge Americans towards

522
00:29:45,560 --> 00:29:48,360
Speaker 1: an irrational fear of communism in order to drive spending.

523
00:29:48,640 --> 00:29:53,440
Speaker 1: Eisenhower's first political campaign directly tied consumer culture to patriotism,

524
00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:59,680
Speaker 1: culminating oh yeah, culminating in his you otto by slogan

525
00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:03,360
Speaker 1: Rotto was in car. Eisenhower was telling Americans it was

526
00:30:03,360 --> 00:30:06,440
Speaker 1: their patriotic duty to buy more things. That's how you

527
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:11,960
Speaker 1: beat the commies is by embracing consumerism. Yeah well yeah yeah.

528
00:30:12,080 --> 00:30:15,960
Speaker 1: Radion like Radon, like the wonderful people at Radion. Now

529
00:30:16,040 --> 00:30:20,480
Speaker 1: the bulk of his anti communist work would of Bern's

530
00:30:20,640 --> 00:30:23,080
Speaker 1: anti communist work would, however, be done in the name

531
00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:26,480
Speaker 1: of a corporation, not the United States government, and that

532
00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:31,360
Speaker 1: corporation was the United Fruit Company now United Fruit now

533
00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:34,920
Speaker 1: Chiquida owned a huge chunk of Guatemala. In the late

534
00:30:34,960 --> 00:30:38,160
Speaker 1: forties and early fifties. They had secured the central American

535
00:30:38,200 --> 00:30:41,520
Speaker 1: Empire by basically bribing and cutting wildly beneficial deals with

536
00:30:41,520 --> 00:30:44,360
Speaker 1: the corrupt government in the area. This allowed them to

537
00:30:44,400 --> 00:30:47,000
Speaker 1: grow and export bananas at very low cost, but it

538
00:30:47,040 --> 00:30:50,239
Speaker 1: also completely screwed over the local workers and ensured they

539
00:30:50,280 --> 00:30:52,320
Speaker 1: made virtually no money from the trade, and that the

540
00:30:52,400 --> 00:30:55,320
Speaker 1: nation of Guatemala itself did not benefit in any meaningful

541
00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:59,800
Speaker 1: way from United Fruits booming sales. The whole state of

542
00:30:59,800 --> 00:31:02,760
Speaker 1: a airs owed an awful lot to Edward Burnet's For

543
00:31:02,840 --> 00:31:06,120
Speaker 1: one thing, he helped make bananas popular in America. United

544
00:31:06,160 --> 00:31:08,160
Speaker 1: Fruit hired him in the late forties with a mandate

545
00:31:08,240 --> 00:31:11,040
Speaker 1: to add the fruit to America's diet. Berne has achieved

546
00:31:11,080 --> 00:31:13,360
Speaker 1: this goal by using his usual tactics. He found a

547
00:31:13,480 --> 00:31:15,600
Speaker 1: doctor who said bananas were good for people, and then

548
00:31:15,600 --> 00:31:18,000
Speaker 1: engineered a spate of news stories around the country about

549
00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:22,320
Speaker 1: the amazing health benefits of of bananas. Classic Bernets, which is,

550
00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:24,160
Speaker 1: you know, not a bad thing, bananas are great for you,

551
00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:26,920
Speaker 1: great thing to bananas. I mean, his his approach is

552
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:33,080
Speaker 1: so unwavering, whether he's like, yeah, bananas, cigarettes like Red's

553
00:31:33,200 --> 00:31:36,640
Speaker 1: fair kind of all the same. Yeah, find someone with

554
00:31:36,680 --> 00:31:40,480
Speaker 1: a fancy title to lie to America yeah, yeah, which

555
00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 1: is still works today. It's it's there's still like whole

556
00:31:44,000 --> 00:31:50,240
Speaker 1: TV channels like Dedicade. Yeah, fucking Dr Phil. Like if

557
00:31:50,280 --> 00:31:54,880
Speaker 1: it was just Phil, nobody would give a ship. So

558
00:31:55,240 --> 00:31:57,960
Speaker 1: as time went on, Edward Burnet has made actual visits

559
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:00,520
Speaker 1: to guatemal it became clear to him how bad conditions

560
00:32:00,560 --> 00:32:03,840
Speaker 1: actually were for most Guatemalans. Under years of corrupt rule,

561
00:32:03,880 --> 00:32:07,880
Speaker 1: Guatemala's leaders exempted the United Fruit Company from most internal taxes.

562
00:32:08,040 --> 00:32:10,480
Speaker 1: They let it import goods duty free. They gave it

563
00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 1: control of the nation's only Atlantic seaport and almost all

564
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:16,600
Speaker 1: of its railroads. They capped workers salaries that no more

565
00:32:16,600 --> 00:32:19,200
Speaker 1: than fifty cents a day. Since the United Fruit was

566
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:22,680
Speaker 1: the country's largest employer and landowner, this effectively locked the

567
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:27,400
Speaker 1: entire nation into perpetual serfdom to an American fruit company. Now.

568
00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:30,320
Speaker 1: Edward Burns was, above all else, the kind of guy

569
00:32:30,360 --> 00:32:33,200
Speaker 1: who did need to see himself as a hero, and

570
00:32:33,280 --> 00:32:35,480
Speaker 1: this was more than he could bear. According to the

571
00:32:35,520 --> 00:32:37,840
Speaker 1: father of spen Quote. When he returned from a month

572
00:32:37,840 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 1: long company sponsored trip to Guatemala and Honduras in September Ninette,

573
00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:44,920
Speaker 1: Burns wrote his Fruit Company clients a long memo warning

574
00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:49,000
Speaker 1: them about low worker morale and substandard living conditions. Goodwill

575
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:52,240
Speaker 1: of all groups towards Fruit Company is poor, he said. Ignorance,

576
00:32:52,280 --> 00:32:55,280
Speaker 1: conscious and unconscious, distortion by politicos and power or seeking

577
00:32:55,280 --> 00:32:58,560
Speaker 1: power by fellow travelers and communist influences all contribute their part.

578
00:32:58,800 --> 00:33:01,400
Speaker 1: Guatemala is in a state of transition. All these situations

579
00:33:01,440 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 1: complicate the issue and make the company vulnerable unless certain

580
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:07,640
Speaker 1: things happen. He advised United Fruit to basically share just

581
00:33:07,760 --> 00:33:10,200
Speaker 1: a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of the wealth they were

582
00:33:10,200 --> 00:33:12,480
Speaker 1: making in order to alleviate conditions on the ground and

583
00:33:12,520 --> 00:33:16,680
Speaker 1: reduce unrest. Being a gigantic capitalist behemoth helmed entirely by

584
00:33:16,760 --> 00:33:19,680
Speaker 1: racist to believe brown people were subhuman, United Fruit was

585
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:22,920
Speaker 1: unwilling to do this. Burne's later wrote, the people in

586
00:33:22,960 --> 00:33:25,960
Speaker 1: the tropics were remote from Boston. They produced their banana quotas,

587
00:33:26,000 --> 00:33:28,400
Speaker 1: and that was what counted. Fruit Company executives in the

588
00:33:28,400 --> 00:33:30,720
Speaker 1: Tropics were tough characters who had come up through the ranks.

589
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:33,280
Speaker 1: They were action oriented men. What I propose must have

590
00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:36,000
Speaker 1: seemed like molly coddling. I got no reaction to my

591
00:33:36,080 --> 00:33:40,520
Speaker 1: voluminous report. Now, based on his own code of ethics,

592
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:44,120
Speaker 1: which He'd outlined in his nine book Propaganda, Burne's should

593
00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:46,160
Speaker 1: have quit. He had written that a good pr man

594
00:33:46,280 --> 00:33:49,360
Speaker 1: quote refuses a client whom he believes dishonest, a product

595
00:33:49,360 --> 00:33:51,760
Speaker 1: which he believes to be fraudulent, or a cause which

596
00:33:51,760 --> 00:33:55,800
Speaker 1: he believes to be anti social. But look at his

597
00:33:55,880 --> 00:33:59,400
Speaker 1: fucking resume. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Berne's clearly believed that

598
00:33:59,480 --> 00:34:02,120
Speaker 1: United for its behavior was anti social, But he also

599
00:34:02,200 --> 00:34:04,200
Speaker 1: knew that they were paying him a hundred thousand dollars

600
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:06,160
Speaker 1: a year, so he continued to work for them, And

601
00:34:06,240 --> 00:34:09,040
Speaker 1: as left wing movements rose in the country and agitated

602
00:34:09,080 --> 00:34:12,319
Speaker 1: for taking back some of Guatemala's natural resources from United Fruit,

603
00:34:12,719 --> 00:34:16,080
Speaker 1: Berne's advised his employers on how to fight back. In

604
00:34:16,160 --> 00:34:19,200
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, he wrote, this whole manner of effective

605
00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:22,040
Speaker 1: counter communist propaganda is not one of improvising. It could

606
00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:24,640
Speaker 1: only be fought by the same scientific approach that is applied.

607
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:27,000
Speaker 1: Let us say to a problem of fighting a certain

608
00:34:27,040 --> 00:34:31,360
Speaker 1: plant disease through a scientific method of approach. Now the

609
00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:34,400
Speaker 1: disease in Guatemala from the perspective of United Fruit and

610
00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:38,920
Speaker 1: Edward Burne's was a fellow named Jacobo Arbez. Now Arbez

611
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:41,279
Speaker 1: was not a communist, but he was a socialist. In in

612
00:34:41,200 --> 00:34:44,160
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty one, he'd been elected president of Guatemala.

613
00:34:44,440 --> 00:34:47,720
Speaker 1: His big campaign issue was land reform, and upon taking office,

614
00:34:47,760 --> 00:34:50,919
Speaker 1: he'd launched Degree nine hundred, a program that confiscated four

615
00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:55,120
Speaker 1: hundred thousand acres of unused United Fruit land and redistributed

616
00:34:55,160 --> 00:34:58,799
Speaker 1: it to poor Guatemalan farmers. In nineteen fifty Yeah, it

617
00:34:58,800 --> 00:35:02,080
Speaker 1: seems like a great idea. Only about ten percent of

618
00:35:02,120 --> 00:35:04,960
Speaker 1: Guatemalan land was actually available for purchase for the ninety

619
00:35:05,040 --> 00:35:07,520
Speaker 1: percent of its people who might want to own it.

620
00:35:07,880 --> 00:35:10,319
Speaker 1: United Fruit had bought up everything else, and in their

621
00:35:10,360 --> 00:35:13,799
Speaker 1: tax filings they reported on the land as being almost valueless,

622
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:16,840
Speaker 1: essentially barren, in order to pay less money in taxes.

623
00:35:17,239 --> 00:35:20,120
Speaker 1: So when our bends seized their land, he only paid

624
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:22,920
Speaker 1: them back the incredibly low value that they had assessed

625
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:26,560
Speaker 1: for its value. Uh now, this would seem like karmic

626
00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:29,520
Speaker 1: justice if everything I'm about to happen talk about hadn't

627
00:35:29,600 --> 00:35:34,520
Speaker 1: happened next. So yeah, yeah, it's it's really kind of

628
00:35:34,560 --> 00:35:37,160
Speaker 1: like United Fruits like, oh no, this land is almost worthless,

629
00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:39,279
Speaker 1: so they don't have to pay much in taxes on it,

630
00:35:39,680 --> 00:35:42,359
Speaker 1: and then when Arbez buys it back, He's like, well, okay,

631
00:35:42,440 --> 00:35:44,960
Speaker 1: then I'll pay you the worthless price for the land.

632
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:52,359
Speaker 1: Uh yeah yeah. Was he not able to dunk on him? Yeah? Yeah,

633
00:35:53,200 --> 00:35:55,000
Speaker 1: Like it was like one of the only things that

634
00:35:55,040 --> 00:36:00,319
Speaker 1: this shitty gup man hadn't done was ruined a tree

635
00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:03,560
Speaker 1: that wasn't his own. But oh he's got around to

636
00:36:03,640 --> 00:36:06,319
Speaker 1: that as well. He got around to that ship real quick. Then,

637
00:36:06,400 --> 00:36:11,239
Speaker 1: also pressing people internationally, now, United Fruit went to the

638
00:36:11,239 --> 00:36:13,919
Speaker 1: Eisenhower administration and wind that the seizure of their land

639
00:36:13,960 --> 00:36:16,920
Speaker 1: was a clear example of evil communism sneaking into Latin America.

640
00:36:17,320 --> 00:36:19,319
Speaker 1: They warned the president that it wouldn't stop at just

641
00:36:19,440 --> 00:36:22,959
Speaker 1: returning Guatemal's land to its people. United Fruits Inconvenience would

642
00:36:22,960 --> 00:36:25,239
Speaker 1: be the first Domino to fall, eventually taking all of

643
00:36:25,280 --> 00:36:29,120
Speaker 1: America freedom and capitalism with it. Now, that's a rather

644
00:36:29,320 --> 00:36:33,239
Speaker 1: hard line of bullshit to sell. Thankfully, United Fruit had

645
00:36:33,239 --> 00:36:36,200
Speaker 1: the greatest salesman on the planet. The year before the

646
00:36:36,239 --> 00:36:39,880
Speaker 1: government had started its land expropriation program, Bernese had actually

647
00:36:39,920 --> 00:36:43,360
Speaker 1: suggested United Fruit launch a media campaign to quote induced

648
00:36:43,400 --> 00:36:46,279
Speaker 1: the President and State Department to issue a policy pronouncement

649
00:36:46,280 --> 00:36:50,680
Speaker 1: comparable to the Monroe doctrine concerning expropriation. His idea was

650
00:36:50,719 --> 00:36:54,080
Speaker 1: to convince Americans, specifically Americans in power, that the arbe

651
00:36:54,120 --> 00:36:57,680
Speaker 1: As administration's totally just land reform was the same as, say,

652
00:36:57,880 --> 00:37:02,080
Speaker 1: Joseph Stalin murdering five million Ranian peasants through starvation genocide.

653
00:37:02,400 --> 00:37:05,640
Speaker 1: He planned to start by picking ten popular magazines, including

654
00:37:05,680 --> 00:37:08,799
Speaker 1: Reader's Digest in the Saturday Evening Post, and convincing their

655
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:12,319
Speaker 1: editors to run similar stories about the crisis in Guatemala

656
00:37:12,680 --> 00:37:15,800
Speaker 1: quote from Burns. In certain cases, stories would be written

657
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:18,200
Speaker 1: by staff men. In other certain other cases, the magazine

658
00:37:18,280 --> 00:37:20,200
Speaker 1: might ask us to supply the story, and we, in

659
00:37:20,239 --> 00:37:23,000
Speaker 1: turn would engage a most suitable writer to handle the matter.

660
00:37:23,600 --> 00:37:27,120
Speaker 1: So yeah, just just so, just not a lot of

661
00:37:27,120 --> 00:37:31,560
Speaker 1: fact checking going on. No, he's he's providing the facts

662
00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:37,040
Speaker 1: to the journalists. Uh yeah, that still happens. Another thing

663
00:37:37,080 --> 00:37:41,200
Speaker 1: that has not stopped happening. Uh yep, yep, yep. Cool.

664
00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:44,800
Speaker 1: Once Guatemal land expropriation really got started in earnest United

665
00:37:44,840 --> 00:37:47,959
Speaker 1: Fruit greenlit Berness campaign, and he engineered a whole spate

666
00:37:48,000 --> 00:37:50,719
Speaker 1: of stories aimed at making Yacobo Arbez look like a

667
00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:54,080
Speaker 1: Mayan Mao. This culminated on a two week too, in

668
00:37:54,120 --> 00:37:57,080
Speaker 1: a two week tour of Guatemala in which Burns led

669
00:37:57,160 --> 00:38:00,760
Speaker 1: several journalists through the country in nineteen fifty two. Here's

670
00:38:00,800 --> 00:38:04,280
Speaker 1: the Father of spen quote. With him were the publishers

671
00:38:04,280 --> 00:38:07,200
Speaker 1: of Newsweek, the Cincinnati in Choir, the Nashville Banner, and

672
00:38:07,239 --> 00:38:10,080
Speaker 1: the New Orleans Item, a contributing editor from Time, the

673
00:38:10,160 --> 00:38:13,000
Speaker 1: foreign editor of Scripps Howard, and high ranking officials from

674
00:38:13,000 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 1: the United Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Miami Herald,

675
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:19,320
Speaker 1: and the Christian Science Monitor. Bern's insisted in his memoires

676
00:38:19,320 --> 00:38:21,359
Speaker 1: that the journalists were free to go where they wanted,

677
00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:23,920
Speaker 1: talk to whoever they wanted, and report their findings freely,

678
00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:26,759
Speaker 1: and he reacted angrily to suggestions in later years that

679
00:38:26,800 --> 00:38:29,400
Speaker 1: the trip was manipulative. But Thomas McCann, who in the

680
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:32,439
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties was young public relations official with United Fruit,

681
00:38:32,640 --> 00:38:34,600
Speaker 1: wrote in his memoires the trip and others like it

682
00:38:34,640 --> 00:38:37,080
Speaker 1: were under the company's careful guidance, and of course at

683
00:38:37,120 --> 00:38:40,319
Speaker 1: company expense. The trips were ostensibly to gather information, but

684
00:38:40,360 --> 00:38:42,960
Speaker 1: what the press would here and see was carefully staged

685
00:38:42,960 --> 00:38:45,840
Speaker 1: and regulated by the host, the plan represented a serious

686
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:49,560
Speaker 1: attempt to compromise objectivity. Moreover, it was a compromise implicit

687
00:38:49,600 --> 00:38:52,800
Speaker 1: in the invitation, only underscored by Burnet's and the company's

688
00:38:52,800 --> 00:38:56,719
Speaker 1: repeated claims to the contrary. So that's cool. So he's

689
00:38:56,760 --> 00:39:00,360
Speaker 1: just generating a bunch of bullshit that by bowl that

690
00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:01,880
Speaker 1: he can then, I mean, it's just like a different

691
00:39:01,960 --> 00:39:05,080
Speaker 1: version of what he did with the doctors, but more like,

692
00:39:05,120 --> 00:39:08,560
Speaker 1: oh well, Jenna's journalists are credible, So let me find

693
00:39:08,920 --> 00:39:12,120
Speaker 1: someone who will lend their name to a whole pile

694
00:39:12,160 --> 00:39:14,400
Speaker 1: of bullshit that's too much for people to read on

695
00:39:14,440 --> 00:39:16,760
Speaker 1: their own, and they'll just be like, all right, works

696
00:39:16,760 --> 00:39:20,000
Speaker 1: for me. He knew what sort of newspapers everyone in

697
00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:21,840
Speaker 1: the White House was reading, and he made sure that

698
00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:25,319
Speaker 1: they all published stories about how communism was overtaking Guatemala.

699
00:39:25,880 --> 00:39:30,440
Speaker 1: Simple as that. A right, okay, cool? Well, I fucking

700
00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:34,120
Speaker 1: hate this guy. You know what I don't fucking hate Jamie?

701
00:39:34,480 --> 00:39:38,560
Speaker 1: What Robert? The wonderful products and services that support our program.

702
00:39:38,600 --> 00:39:42,000
Speaker 1: I'm honest, I can't wait to hear about more of them.

703
00:39:42,120 --> 00:39:46,439
Speaker 1: I hope it's a chiquita banana ad man. I hope

704
00:39:46,440 --> 00:39:50,799
Speaker 1: it's an ad Jaqua is evil. I hope it's an

705
00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:55,040
Speaker 1: ad for the new Chiquido wire guided uh bananas, which

706
00:39:55,080 --> 00:39:58,719
Speaker 1: which of course manufactured in part by raytheon guidance chips. Yeah.

707
00:39:58,719 --> 00:40:04,480
Speaker 1: I hope that it's a he did Banana Amazon Prime crossover. Yeah. Yeah,

708
00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:07,360
Speaker 1: let's get all of the big companies working together to

709
00:40:07,360 --> 00:40:10,480
Speaker 1: to drone strike bananas into the mouths of hungry people.

710
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:22,440
Speaker 1: I love it, products, products. We're back, and we're talking

711
00:40:22,480 --> 00:40:28,719
Speaker 1: about Eddie b saying can he get worse? Yes? Yes,

712
00:40:29,040 --> 00:40:32,000
Speaker 1: uh spoiler alert. In like a minute and a half,

713
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:46,480
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about genocide. So the whole banana Yeah,

714
00:40:46,680 --> 00:40:50,080
Speaker 1: now true to form. Edward Burnet's also commissioned scholarly studies

715
00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:53,000
Speaker 1: in order to lend extra legitimacy to United Fruit. She

716
00:40:53,040 --> 00:40:56,600
Speaker 1: commissioned to twenty five page content analysis of seventeen thousand

717
00:40:56,600 --> 00:40:59,560
Speaker 1: words spoken by Guatemala's new left wing leaders and then

718
00:40:59,600 --> 00:41:02,719
Speaker 1: compare them to statements from Soviet leaders. The conclusion of

719
00:41:02,719 --> 00:41:05,759
Speaker 1: the report was obvious the our Bez administration were hard

720
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:09,160
Speaker 1: line commies. Quote every item mentioned, and almost verbatim form

721
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:12,319
Speaker 1: is frequently found in Soviet propaganda messages. I love some

722
00:41:12,400 --> 00:41:16,799
Speaker 1: good false equivalence it's like it happen because literally all

723
00:41:17,120 --> 00:41:19,279
Speaker 1: it's happened the shitty memes on the internet that like

724
00:41:19,360 --> 00:41:21,920
Speaker 1: reply guys get into your mentions and they're like, oh,

725
00:41:21,960 --> 00:41:25,480
Speaker 1: well you said this, and uh, this fucking murderer also

726
00:41:25,520 --> 00:41:30,879
Speaker 1: said this word, so you're a murderer, dude, and fun, fun, fun, fun,

727
00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:34,759
Speaker 1: And they're the same guys who will tell you it's

728
00:41:34,760 --> 00:41:37,680
Speaker 1: not valid to point out when somebody literally repeats Nazi

729
00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:41,799
Speaker 1: propaganda verbatim, it's a quite quite amazing and like the

730
00:41:41,840 --> 00:41:44,160
Speaker 1: thing that they're calling communism here, I want to point

731
00:41:44,160 --> 00:41:46,880
Speaker 1: out like our bez was was a socialist, was not

732
00:41:46,920 --> 00:41:49,560
Speaker 1: a communist, was a guy who was like his most

733
00:41:49,680 --> 00:41:53,800
Speaker 1: radical stance was like, no, the old, incredibly corrupt leaders

734
00:41:53,800 --> 00:41:57,200
Speaker 1: of our country sold all of our nation's national resources

735
00:41:57,320 --> 00:42:00,239
Speaker 1: to a fruit company for pennies on the dollar so

736
00:42:00,280 --> 00:42:02,799
Speaker 1: that they could get rich, and it's locked our nation

737
00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:05,000
Speaker 1: into a form of slavery, and we're just not going

738
00:42:05,040 --> 00:42:07,040
Speaker 1: to let that happen. Like, you don't get to own

739
00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:09,800
Speaker 1: the whole country because you bought it from a corrupt

740
00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:13,839
Speaker 1: asshole twenty years ago. Like that that's what he said,

741
00:42:14,800 --> 00:42:19,160
Speaker 1: is yeah, yeah, yeah, And he's not even kicking United

742
00:42:19,160 --> 00:42:21,840
Speaker 1: Fruit out. He's taking the land that they hadn't developed

743
00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:24,080
Speaker 1: at all, that they were just holding onto in case

744
00:42:24,160 --> 00:42:25,840
Speaker 1: and saying no, we're going to give this to people,

745
00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:29,440
Speaker 1: like the company could have still made a shipload of money.

746
00:42:29,520 --> 00:42:32,800
Speaker 1: Like it's one of those things. Communism got a major

747
00:42:32,840 --> 00:42:35,440
Speaker 1: hold in the country after everything that we're about to

748
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:39,640
Speaker 1: talk to happened, because when these moderate reformers came along,

749
00:42:40,360 --> 00:42:42,279
Speaker 1: we fought them tooth and nail and treated them like

750
00:42:42,320 --> 00:42:46,920
Speaker 1: they were Joseph fucking Stalin reincarnated. Like it's very frustrating

751
00:42:46,960 --> 00:42:52,279
Speaker 1: that what the paper said, Roberts so so bernes is

752
00:42:52,320 --> 00:42:55,720
Speaker 1: propaganda and United Fruits lobbying did its work. He managed

753
00:42:55,760 --> 00:42:58,000
Speaker 1: to get his work, all these articles and studies into

754
00:42:58,000 --> 00:42:59,719
Speaker 1: the hands of top men in the White House and

755
00:42:59,760 --> 00:43:02,839
Speaker 1: in the National Security Apparatus. The CIA began to train

756
00:43:02,880 --> 00:43:05,719
Speaker 1: an arm and insurgent movement, the Liberation Army, under a

757
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:09,120
Speaker 1: piece of ship named Carlos Castillo Armas. Armas was a

758
00:43:09,160 --> 00:43:12,280
Speaker 1: military officer living in exile. He and his two hundred

759
00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:16,239
Speaker 1: CIA picked guerrillas entered Guatemala on June eighteenth, nineteen fifty four,

760
00:43:16,280 --> 00:43:19,520
Speaker 1: with CIA air support. Bern's ensured coverage of the coup

761
00:43:19,560 --> 00:43:22,919
Speaker 1: and called them an Army of Liberation. Armas forces took

762
00:43:22,920 --> 00:43:27,160
Speaker 1: over Guatemala within a week, and he was quickly named president. Shockingly,

763
00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:30,560
Speaker 1: the CIA backed military dictator did not have the best

764
00:43:30,600 --> 00:43:34,160
Speaker 1: interests of the Guatemalan people at heart. Arms is first act. Yeah,

765
00:43:34,200 --> 00:43:38,120
Speaker 1: I know, really surprising. His first act was to return

766
00:43:38,200 --> 00:43:40,960
Speaker 1: all the land taken from United Fruit back to the company.

767
00:43:41,239 --> 00:43:43,719
Speaker 1: He told Vice President Nixon, tell me what you want

768
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:47,000
Speaker 1: me to do, and I will do it. Many Guatemalans were,

769
00:43:47,040 --> 00:43:49,120
Speaker 1: of course, unhappy with the state of affairs, and by

770
00:43:49,120 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties the situation had degraded into a brutal

771
00:43:52,040 --> 00:43:56,520
Speaker 1: internesting conflict. The Banana Wars had begun. According to the

772
00:43:56,600 --> 00:44:01,359
Speaker 1: Council on Hemispheric Relations, it's a shitty war, are dude.

773
00:44:01,560 --> 00:44:03,799
Speaker 1: That's true. It's true. I guess that's not really the

774
00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:07,400
Speaker 1: focus of I mean, it's just accurate. These are a

775
00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:13,160
Speaker 1: war started over fucking bananas. Fucking bananas. The civil war

776
00:44:13,200 --> 00:44:15,920
Speaker 1: between the newly formed leftist guerrillas and the government lasted

777
00:44:15,920 --> 00:44:19,160
Speaker 1: for over thirty years, costing approximately two hundred thousand lives,

778
00:44:19,200 --> 00:44:22,040
Speaker 1: mostly people of Mayan descent. When the US assisted in

779
00:44:22,120 --> 00:44:25,200
Speaker 1: modernizing the government, troops in nineteen sixty five, kidnappings and

780
00:44:25,239 --> 00:44:29,480
Speaker 1: assassinations significantly increased in a systematic manner. The war's victims

781
00:44:29,480 --> 00:44:32,919
Speaker 1: included farm workers, student activist, Catholic priests, and labor leaders

782
00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 1: who are part of a non violent social movement. The

783
00:44:35,239 --> 00:44:37,720
Speaker 1: war was devastating. More people were killed in this conflict

784
00:44:37,719 --> 00:44:40,520
Speaker 1: than in any Latin American war. The valiant efforts of

785
00:44:40,560 --> 00:44:43,960
Speaker 1: the guatemal And Historical Clarification Commission, which the government initiated

786
00:44:43,960 --> 00:44:46,600
Speaker 1: at the end of the war, identified genocide in the

787
00:44:46,640 --> 00:44:51,319
Speaker 1: Mayan communities. This is atrocious and horrible, and I and

788
00:44:51,560 --> 00:44:55,200
Speaker 1: just I mean a little beside the point, but how

789
00:44:55,280 --> 00:44:58,040
Speaker 1: have I never heard about this before? This is like

790
00:44:58,719 --> 00:45:01,799
Speaker 1: you should have that. Yeah, it seems like if you're

791
00:45:01,800 --> 00:45:03,480
Speaker 1: going to talk about this is one of the things

792
00:45:03,480 --> 00:45:05,719
Speaker 1: that frustrates me a lot. People will bring up the

793
00:45:05,920 --> 00:45:09,160
Speaker 1: huge death count of of communist regimes around the world,

794
00:45:09,440 --> 00:45:12,640
Speaker 1: totally valid, absolutely worth talking about the tens of millions

795
00:45:12,680 --> 00:45:14,520
Speaker 1: who died under the Mow and the millions who died

796
00:45:14,560 --> 00:45:17,680
Speaker 1: under Stalin. But then they pretend like there's no death

797
00:45:17,680 --> 00:45:20,040
Speaker 1: toll for capitalism. They ignore the twenty or thirty million

798
00:45:20,080 --> 00:45:21,799
Speaker 1: who died in India as a result of the East

799
00:45:21,800 --> 00:45:24,360
Speaker 1: India corporations we form of the land they allure the

800
00:45:24,400 --> 00:45:26,720
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of people who died in Latin America

801
00:45:26,800 --> 00:45:28,640
Speaker 1: and are still dying as a result of all the

802
00:45:28,960 --> 00:45:33,319
Speaker 1: like it's because history education in the United States is

803
00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:37,120
Speaker 1: criminally incompetent at a systemic level. Well, and it's just, yeah,

804
00:45:37,120 --> 00:45:42,040
Speaker 1: it has to ignore the evils of capitalism or uh,

805
00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:46,000
Speaker 1: young people might start out asking questions. Yeah, and I

806
00:45:46,280 --> 00:45:49,160
Speaker 1: you know one other fucking thing we have to blame for.

807
00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:52,600
Speaker 1: We have Bernet's to blame for is Sa Guavara t shirts?

808
00:45:53,080 --> 00:45:58,880
Speaker 1: Because Yeah. One observer of Yacobo arbez Is overthrow was

809
00:45:58,920 --> 00:46:03,080
Speaker 1: a young Argentine and traveler named she Guavara. He told

810
00:46:03,120 --> 00:46:05,720
Speaker 1: his mother that the Armust coup was the moment quote

811
00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:08,759
Speaker 1: that I left the path of reason. As New York

812
00:46:08,760 --> 00:46:11,640
Speaker 1: Times writer Daniel Kurtz fell And wrote in his two

813
00:46:11,680 --> 00:46:15,480
Speaker 1: thousand eight article Big Fruit, so too did Latin America.

814
00:46:15,600 --> 00:46:17,600
Speaker 1: That day marked a turning point, the end of a

815
00:46:17,600 --> 00:46:19,840
Speaker 1: hopeful age of reform in the beginning of a bloody

816
00:46:19,880 --> 00:46:22,920
Speaker 1: age of revolution and reaction. Over the next four decades,

817
00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:25,480
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of people were killed in guerilla attacks,

818
00:46:25,520 --> 00:46:30,680
Speaker 1: government crackdowns, and civil wars across Latin America. This is

819
00:46:31,320 --> 00:46:39,560
Speaker 1: fucking cool, fucking horrible. I can't even this like the cigarettes.

820
00:46:39,600 --> 00:46:42,719
Speaker 1: I can wrap my head around the bacon. Fine, this

821
00:46:42,840 --> 00:46:45,200
Speaker 1: is just I mean, this is next level. This is

822
00:46:45,239 --> 00:46:50,600
Speaker 1: just like propaganda warfare. Well, yeah, it's a fucking nightmare.

823
00:46:50,719 --> 00:46:53,560
Speaker 1: And you mentioned not having heard about any of this before.

824
00:46:53,560 --> 00:46:55,640
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess that's pretty common among our listeners.

825
00:46:56,080 --> 00:46:58,440
Speaker 1: The only reason I had is that when I was

826
00:46:58,480 --> 00:47:01,280
Speaker 1: in my early twenties, a group of friends and I

827
00:47:01,360 --> 00:47:04,520
Speaker 1: lived in Guatemala for several wonderful months and it's I

828
00:47:04,800 --> 00:47:08,840
Speaker 1: I fucking love Guatemal. It's unbelievably beautiful, like maybe the

829
00:47:08,880 --> 00:47:12,359
Speaker 1: prettiest place I've ever been. It's certainly like up there

830
00:47:12,480 --> 00:47:16,160
Speaker 1: on that list of just like lands that take your

831
00:47:16,200 --> 00:47:20,520
Speaker 1: breath away. But it was impossible to not notice all

832
00:47:20,560 --> 00:47:23,640
Speaker 1: the scars of like decades of civil war. There were

833
00:47:23,680 --> 00:47:25,440
Speaker 1: there would be times where we would like be driving

834
00:47:25,440 --> 00:47:27,400
Speaker 1: through a field and you'd noticed that it was like

835
00:47:27,400 --> 00:47:29,799
Speaker 1: it was covered in grass, but the texture of the

836
00:47:29,880 --> 00:47:32,200
Speaker 1: land was like the surface of the moon, and it

837
00:47:32,280 --> 00:47:35,279
Speaker 1: was because so much mortar fire had filled it with

838
00:47:35,360 --> 00:47:37,799
Speaker 1: craters that had then gotten grown over with grass. There's

839
00:47:37,880 --> 00:47:40,880
Speaker 1: be thousands of craters. Or you drive past old buildings

840
00:47:40,920 --> 00:47:43,600
Speaker 1: covered in heavy machine gun fire, like holes from machine

841
00:47:43,600 --> 00:47:46,960
Speaker 1: gun rounds um or you'd be walking down the street

842
00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:50,680
Speaker 1: in Antigua and you would see fifteen or twenty old

843
00:47:50,760 --> 00:47:54,040
Speaker 1: men missing arms and legs, like lying on the side

844
00:47:54,040 --> 00:47:57,040
Speaker 1: of a building, begging for money, all clearly with like

845
00:47:57,200 --> 00:48:00,600
Speaker 1: war injuries and stuff on. And so I start like, like,

846
00:48:00,640 --> 00:48:03,239
Speaker 1: what the funk happened here? And that's where I didn't

847
00:48:03,239 --> 00:48:05,120
Speaker 1: really learn about Bernet's at that point, but I learned

848
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:07,879
Speaker 1: about United Fruit and the fucking banana wars. I mean

849
00:48:07,920 --> 00:48:10,160
Speaker 1: the fact that you had to physically be there to

850
00:48:10,239 --> 00:48:14,680
Speaker 1: even learn that this had happened, like speaks volumes, yeah, yeah,

851
00:48:14,719 --> 00:48:17,040
Speaker 1: and it might like my study of that started when

852
00:48:17,040 --> 00:48:19,279
Speaker 1: I was in these little Mayan villages around Lago at

853
00:48:19,560 --> 00:48:22,040
Speaker 1: Lawn and people would explain to me why the because

854
00:48:22,080 --> 00:48:24,439
Speaker 1: you see soldiers all over the place in Guatemala, because

855
00:48:24,440 --> 00:48:26,160
Speaker 1: it's it's one of those countries where they don't have

856
00:48:26,239 --> 00:48:28,880
Speaker 1: laws like we do, Like the military doesn't do like

857
00:48:29,680 --> 00:48:32,040
Speaker 1: law work in the United States, Like they don't keep

858
00:48:32,040 --> 00:48:34,759
Speaker 1: the peace. That's for police to do. Guatemala doesn't have

859
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:37,040
Speaker 1: laws like that, so you see soldiers a lot on

860
00:48:37,080 --> 00:48:39,399
Speaker 1: the street and stuff. But once we got to these

861
00:48:39,400 --> 00:48:42,200
Speaker 1: little Mayan villages, there would be no soldiers. And I

862
00:48:42,280 --> 00:48:44,480
Speaker 1: started asking the people I met, like why that was,

863
00:48:44,560 --> 00:48:46,520
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, we don't let the military in

864
00:48:46,600 --> 00:48:49,480
Speaker 1: here because of the genocide they committed, you know, back

865
00:48:49,560 --> 00:48:54,040
Speaker 1: in like the a couple of decades ago. Um, so

866
00:48:54,320 --> 00:49:00,879
Speaker 1: reasonably reasonable, extremely reasonable, that's very reasonable. And I mean

867
00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:04,359
Speaker 1: I like, joke and ship are on, like how could

868
00:49:04,400 --> 00:49:07,360
Speaker 1: how could people not like realize that things are going

869
00:49:07,400 --> 00:49:10,040
Speaker 1: to kill them? And but it's like and then there's

870
00:49:10,719 --> 00:49:15,120
Speaker 1: you know, I and probably most people in this country

871
00:49:15,160 --> 00:49:18,920
Speaker 1: have this huge blind spot that is just like intentional

872
00:49:18,960 --> 00:49:21,840
Speaker 1: eraser to make it easier to you know, be okay

873
00:49:21,880 --> 00:49:27,080
Speaker 1: with how we how we live. Well, ye oh god, Robert,

874
00:49:27,080 --> 00:49:29,600
Speaker 1: you're really you're really killing me with this one. This

875
00:49:29,680 --> 00:49:35,799
Speaker 1: is yeah, it's it's a bad one. It's fucking bad. Okay. Well,

876
00:49:36,000 --> 00:49:40,440
Speaker 1: Edward reading more about this wow. Edward Burns died a

877
00:49:40,520 --> 00:49:44,720
Speaker 1: millionaire on March nine. He was a hundred and four

878
00:49:44,840 --> 00:49:48,120
Speaker 1: fucking years old. He left behind the world scarred by

879
00:49:48,120 --> 00:49:50,399
Speaker 1: the wars. He helped to incite. There were other Latin

880
00:49:50,480 --> 00:49:52,560
Speaker 1: American wars by the way that he got involved with,

881
00:49:52,760 --> 00:49:54,440
Speaker 1: like this is just as much as I had time

882
00:49:54,480 --> 00:49:57,120
Speaker 1: to write about. Well for him it went so great,

883
00:49:57,960 --> 00:50:01,280
Speaker 1: uh and a world utterly dumb NATed by the propagandistic

884
00:50:01,320 --> 00:50:04,319
Speaker 1: techniques that he pioneered. Perhaps the most insidious piece of

885
00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:07,520
Speaker 1: his legacy is the possibly fatal damage done to the

886
00:50:07,560 --> 00:50:11,400
Speaker 1: field of journalism. When Bernet's started manipulating the media, PR

887
00:50:11,520 --> 00:50:13,960
Speaker 1: was a new field, and the handful of extant PR

888
00:50:14,040 --> 00:50:17,879
Speaker 1: flax were massively outnumbered by reporters and journalists. By two

889
00:50:17,880 --> 00:50:21,960
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, that situation had completely reversed itself. There are

890
00:50:21,960 --> 00:50:26,160
Speaker 1: currently six PR people for every journalist in the United States.

891
00:50:26,680 --> 00:50:30,839
Speaker 1: Like the alleys full of they make a lot more money,

892
00:50:30,920 --> 00:50:34,880
Speaker 1: which is why if you look into past Pulitzer Prize winners,

893
00:50:35,200 --> 00:50:38,439
Speaker 1: an awful lot of them go into PR because it's

894
00:50:38,480 --> 00:50:41,000
Speaker 1: like and it's like I can't even blame them. It's like, Okay,

895
00:50:41,000 --> 00:50:44,720
Speaker 1: you worked your ass off making fucking nothing, and you

896
00:50:44,719 --> 00:50:47,920
Speaker 1: you told you know, an incredibly important story and got recognized.

897
00:50:48,239 --> 00:50:50,720
Speaker 1: Now it's time to ensure that you can retire someday.

898
00:50:51,080 --> 00:50:56,200
Speaker 1: Like it's man having ethics means that you're gonna, you know,

899
00:50:56,239 --> 00:50:59,319
Speaker 1: be seeing a lot of group on doctors. Yeah, on

900
00:50:59,360 --> 00:51:03,960
Speaker 1: the upside, Amy Edward Burne's also advised the Multiple Sclerosis

901
00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:06,560
Speaker 1: Foundation to call themselves the m S Foundation because it

902
00:51:06,600 --> 00:51:08,839
Speaker 1: was better branding. So like, you know, it equals out.

903
00:51:08,920 --> 00:51:11,319
Speaker 1: You cause a war, you help the MS Foundation make

904
00:51:11,400 --> 00:51:14,880
Speaker 1: more money. Icon in the last episode, how dare you?

905
00:51:15,080 --> 00:51:17,400
Speaker 1: And then and then you throw the banana wars at

906
00:51:17,440 --> 00:51:20,239
Speaker 1: the last second, how dare you? You know, well, you

907
00:51:20,280 --> 00:51:25,120
Speaker 1: can be a feminist icon and also help spark a brutal,

908
00:51:25,320 --> 00:51:28,120
Speaker 1: genocidal civil war in Guatemala. But you can't be a

909
00:51:28,160 --> 00:51:31,560
Speaker 1: feminist icon and kill every woman. You know, its cigarettes,

910
00:51:32,080 --> 00:51:34,879
Speaker 1: you can't. Well, he didn't know, not his not his

911
00:51:34,920 --> 00:51:38,319
Speaker 1: wife because he got her to stop smoking. Oh god, yeah,

912
00:51:38,360 --> 00:51:42,360
Speaker 1: I hate all women and women except my wife. M

913
00:51:43,600 --> 00:51:51,160
Speaker 1: Bernie Bernie Bernie Bernie Bernet, Eddie b the god. All

914
00:51:51,239 --> 00:51:57,920
Speaker 1: villains live forever, We all villains live forever. Yeah, old

915
00:51:58,040 --> 00:52:01,640
Speaker 1: cube head. So that was there's no more. There's no more?

916
00:52:01,920 --> 00:52:04,680
Speaker 1: Or is there no? That's the fucking tale of Eddie Burnet's.

917
00:52:04,719 --> 00:52:06,000
Speaker 1: That's as much of it as I'm going to tell.

918
00:52:06,280 --> 00:52:08,880
Speaker 1: There's a lot more. The book The Father of spin

919
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:10,800
Speaker 1: is a is a fine book if you want to

920
00:52:10,880 --> 00:52:14,400
Speaker 1: learn more about the guy. Um, but I feel like

921
00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:19,400
Speaker 1: this is enough to know about Edward Burns. Yeah. Yeah,

922
00:52:19,520 --> 00:52:22,719
Speaker 1: I certainly learned. I certainly learned a lot. And now

923
00:52:22,760 --> 00:52:26,759
Speaker 1: I understand why his daughters hate him so much. Ebisil

924
00:52:27,400 --> 00:52:34,960
Speaker 1: Yeah yes, oh cube head himself. M hm, oh cube head.

925
00:52:35,239 --> 00:52:40,520
Speaker 1: So Jamie, you got any plugables to plug god? Um yeah,

926
00:52:40,560 --> 00:52:47,319
Speaker 1: not that they're Yes. You can listen to the Bechtel Cast. Uh,

927
00:52:47,560 --> 00:52:52,480
Speaker 1: my name Caitlin Durante's podcast every Thursday at Bechtel Cast.

928
00:52:52,520 --> 00:52:57,000
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at Jamie Lofts help ilbeit.

929
00:52:57,239 --> 00:53:01,040
Speaker 1: At Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I guess if you want to

930
00:53:01,040 --> 00:53:06,160
Speaker 1: come see a show, you can do that. So fringe

931
00:53:06,239 --> 00:53:11,160
Speaker 1: out with your hinge out, fringe out my show, it's

932
00:53:11,200 --> 00:53:16,799
Speaker 1: my it's my, uh the Elizabeth Holmes Show. Basically, I

933
00:53:16,800 --> 00:53:20,319
Speaker 1: mean actually you could do a really good like comparison

934
00:53:20,480 --> 00:53:23,440
Speaker 1: to hang out with your your wing out. They're using

935
00:53:23,960 --> 00:53:30,560
Speaker 1: a local British Isles uh synonym for pubic hair. Um. Yeah,

936
00:53:30,600 --> 00:53:32,719
Speaker 1: that people will will hinge out with your mine out

937
00:53:33,080 --> 00:53:37,319
Speaker 1: your minge. Yeah. Never say that again, Robert, Never say

938
00:53:37,960 --> 00:53:40,680
Speaker 1: that that's that's a that's a slang term in the

939
00:53:40,680 --> 00:53:44,279
Speaker 1: place you're going to be going. God, why are you

940
00:53:44,280 --> 00:53:47,759
Speaker 1: gonna be so cute about all this? Man? Well, you

941
00:53:47,800 --> 00:53:50,319
Speaker 1: know what, you know what fanny means up there too, right?

942
00:53:51,040 --> 00:53:54,000
Speaker 1: But right, No, it means vagina In the Aisles, it

943
00:53:54,000 --> 00:53:57,360
Speaker 1: means vagina. Fanny is slang for a vagina in the

944
00:53:57,400 --> 00:54:00,680
Speaker 1: British Isles. So what this is very real important for

945
00:54:00,719 --> 00:54:02,560
Speaker 1: you to know you you are in danger if you

946
00:54:02,600 --> 00:54:06,840
Speaker 1: don't understand. Well, yeah, so I if I mean not

947
00:54:06,920 --> 00:54:09,239
Speaker 1: that I've ever said fanny, but if you said sit

948
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:12,960
Speaker 1: on it, people would be confused, very very sit on

949
00:54:13,000 --> 00:54:15,840
Speaker 1: your Fannie means a very different thing in the British

950
00:54:15,880 --> 00:54:20,359
Speaker 1: Isles than it does in americaly. Okay, okay, well good,

951
00:54:20,560 --> 00:54:24,000
Speaker 1: thank thank you for these travel tips. I do need them. Yeah. Also,

952
00:54:24,120 --> 00:54:29,040
Speaker 1: blood putting, surprisingly tasty, really fucking good. Like everybody, everybody

953
00:54:29,040 --> 00:54:31,240
Speaker 1: talks about the British, I think they have the second

954
00:54:31,280 --> 00:54:33,920
Speaker 1: best breakfast food I've ever encountered. They're not better at

955
00:54:33,920 --> 00:54:36,960
Speaker 1: breakfast than the Irish, but they're very good in my opinion.

956
00:54:37,200 --> 00:54:39,920
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan, So enjoy yourselves. I don't know

957
00:54:39,920 --> 00:54:42,440
Speaker 1: anything about Scottish food that scares me, so I have

958
00:54:42,480 --> 00:54:44,560
Speaker 1: no idea. Yeah, I'll just have to find out when

959
00:54:44,560 --> 00:54:47,879
Speaker 1: I get there. Drink a lot of talisker, though I do,

960
00:54:48,000 --> 00:54:52,240
Speaker 1: I do recommend that. All right. Well, Jamie loftus French Festival.

961
00:54:52,520 --> 00:54:56,520
Speaker 1: Watch her be the champion queen of comedy that we

962
00:54:56,600 --> 00:54:58,839
Speaker 1: all know her to be. Cheer her on in her

963
00:54:58,920 --> 00:55:03,400
Speaker 1: journey through scott and listeners online. If you know of

964
00:55:03,480 --> 00:55:06,560
Speaker 1: other slang terms that she should know before she goes there,

965
00:55:06,800 --> 00:55:10,080
Speaker 1: hit us up on Twitter and warn her. Um, I

966
00:55:10,120 --> 00:55:13,000
Speaker 1: don't Yeah, I don't want to get killed for saying

967
00:55:13,040 --> 00:55:15,680
Speaker 1: the wrong thing. Yeah, that happens a lot. The British

968
00:55:15,719 --> 00:55:18,440
Speaker 1: are a violent people, violent and I'm and I'm getting

969
00:55:18,480 --> 00:55:20,200
Speaker 1: them just pre Brexit. So it's going to be a

970
00:55:20,200 --> 00:55:25,440
Speaker 1: stressful time. Oh yeah, everyone's gonna be swinging tally whackers.

971
00:55:25,480 --> 00:55:28,200
Speaker 1: That seems like a British slang for a weapon. Sounds

972
00:55:28,239 --> 00:55:33,120
Speaker 1: like something, It sounds like something. Well, I'm Robert Evans. Uh,

973
00:55:33,160 --> 00:55:36,120
Speaker 1: this is behind the Bastards, has been behind the bastards.

974
00:55:36,120 --> 00:55:38,040
Speaker 1: It's not anymore because it's over. You can find me

975
00:55:38,080 --> 00:55:39,719
Speaker 1: on Twitter and I right, okay, you can find the

976
00:55:39,800 --> 00:55:42,000
Speaker 1: show on Twitter and Instagram and at Bastards pot. You

977
00:55:42,040 --> 00:55:44,800
Speaker 1: can buy t shirts on the public by looking for

978
00:55:44,880 --> 00:55:47,439
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards on t public. And that's it. That's

979
00:55:47,440 --> 00:55:54,160
Speaker 1: the fucking episode. Thanks for being launch. That's the goal

980
00:55:54,200 --> 00:55:56,759
Speaker 1: with every episode Behind the Bastards is to leave you

981
00:55:56,920 --> 00:56:02,480
Speaker 1: feeling worse than you did before the all right products.

982
00:56:03,800 --> 00:56:06,239
Speaker 1: They usually don't end by shouting products, but I did.

983
00:56:06,400 --> 00:56:09,640
Speaker 1: Why Why I'm just thinking, just thinking of them always.

984
00:56:10,400 --> 00:56:12,640
Speaker 1: There will be an ad after this, you know that,

985
00:56:12,960 --> 00:56:15,400
Speaker 1: Sophie M