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Speaker 1: Discover the Forest dot org, brought to you by the
Speaker 1: United States Forest Service and the AD Council. What's overthrowing
Speaker 1: the government? My consortium of shady financial interests? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I got no h. This is behind the
Speaker 1: insurrections of the Find Behind the Bastards mini series about
Speaker 1: fascist attempts to seize power. Uh. And this is our
Speaker 1: last episode of this beautiful mini series. We did have
Speaker 1: a seventh episode planned, but um I had some personal news.
Speaker 1: That's that's gonna alter our work schedule a little bit.
Speaker 1: But we will get to that episode at some point,
Speaker 1: but not next week. Um My guest with this one,
Speaker 1: as as with always on our mini series, Jason Petty
Speaker 1: a k A. Prop What's always Alwa's property is in
Speaker 1: a building. Now, prop, I'm gonna come right to the chase.
Speaker 1: Have you heard of the business plot? No? Oh good?
Speaker 1: Oh well. One of the things that's fun about this
Speaker 1: is that, um, one of our characters from behind the
Speaker 1: police is the main character of this story. Um, our
Speaker 1: old friends Smedley Butler. Yeah, the guy who ran the
Speaker 1: police in Philadelphia, the marine. That's that's going to be exciting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that guy. So the business plot is there's
Speaker 1: a reason why you haven't heard of it. Uh. A
Speaker 1: lot of people have put in a lot of effort
Speaker 1: to make sure that people don't talk about this anymore. UM.
Speaker 1: Imagine a cadre of plutocratic bankers, financiers, and media moguls
Speaker 1: all conspired to take over US democracy and institute of
Speaker 1: fascist state hidden as a fake democracy. Um, shouldn't take
Speaker 1: a whole lot of imagination. Yeah. Um, that's what people
Speaker 1: say to record industry is yeah, the record industry or
Speaker 1: the way a lot of our government works right now,
Speaker 1: Like the fact that Janet Yellen uh had financial ties
Speaker 1: to one of the giant hedge funds that shut down
Speaker 1: the game stock trading and stuff like, yeah, you know
Speaker 1: it may sound that sounds familiar to people. Um, but
Speaker 1: usually we're talking about it. Most people were talking about
Speaker 1: you know when we talk about like, well, there's a
Speaker 1: cadre of elites who control you know, the government. Um,
Speaker 1: they meet it in sort of a deep state. Since
Speaker 1: but there was a time where the wealthiest men in
Speaker 1: America engaged in a very real conspiracy to have a
Speaker 1: paramilitary army sees the levers of power overthrow the president
Speaker 1: and institute of fascist state. Um. And there's people alive
Speaker 1: today who lived through it. It happened in the thirties.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, yeah, this is this is a story
Speaker 1: people should know. Um. I think you'll find this one interesting. Props. So, okay,
Speaker 1: is gonna this is gonna be one of those ones
Speaker 1: where I'm like, I'm actually going in. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a fun one. Yes. So, our our story starts with
Speaker 1: one of my favorite historical figures. As I told you,
Speaker 1: Major General Smedley Butler. We're talking about old Smedley again. Um,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna start by talking about him because he's
Speaker 1: at the center of all this. So okay, Smedley Butler
Speaker 1: was born in eighteen eighty one, who is the eldest
Speaker 1: son of a Quaker family from Westchester, Pennsylvania. His father, Thomas,
Speaker 1: was a congressman and his maternal grandfather was in Congress
Speaker 1: as well, So this is a guy who comes from
Speaker 1: a lot of privilege in power. UM. He attended the
Speaker 1: Haverford School, which is a secondary school for rich kids
Speaker 1: from Philadelphia, and he thrived in this upper crust, elite institution.
Speaker 1: He became captain of the school baseball team and quarterback
Speaker 1: of the football team, and he seemed to be on
Speaker 1: the road to a career in politics or business. But
Speaker 1: then thirty eight days before his seventeenth birthday, he left
Speaker 1: school to enlist in the United States Marine Corps UM.
Speaker 1: So he's on like a path to follow you into
Speaker 1: business or into politics. And then when he's sixteen, he
Speaker 1: leaves home to join the Marines. Now this pisses off
Speaker 1: his dad, who didn't want his kid joining the Marines.
Speaker 1: But the reason Smedley had joined is that the Spanish
Speaker 1: American War had just started, which we chatted about of
Speaker 1: it last week, and Smedley wanted to fight UM. So
Speaker 1: he lied about his age to the Marines and was
Speaker 1: commissioned as a second lieutenant. He landed in Guantanamo Bay,
Speaker 1: Cuba shortly after it was captured, and he didn't see
Speaker 1: any action there. His unit was sent back to the
Speaker 1: mainland and he could have been cashiered out, you know,
Speaker 1: gone back into go you know, doing a business thing.
Speaker 1: But he decided to stay in the Marines and take
Speaker 1: a commission as a first lieutenant and go fight in
Speaker 1: the Philippines. Um. He was not immediately good at war.
Speaker 1: He was initially tasked with garrison duty, which bored him
Speaker 1: so much that he just spent all of his time drunk.
Speaker 1: He was at one point relieved of command temporarily due
Speaker 1: to something he did in his bedroom, which is all
Speaker 1: that we know about the incident he did. He did
Speaker 1: something with alcohol in his bedroom that made his superiors
Speaker 1: be like, this guy can't be in charge of people
Speaker 1: for a while. Yeah, yeah, phil phill in the blanks,
Speaker 1: you know. Um So, in October of eighteen nine nine,
Speaker 1: he saw his first combat action when he led three
Speaker 1: Marines to conquer a town from the people who you
Speaker 1: know lived there, right, Like, this is a colonial, brutal
Speaker 1: colonial war. Were still colonial, got it, Like, he's he's
Speaker 1: a he's the bad guy right there, We're we're the
Speaker 1: bad guys in that war. Um. Yeah, and Butler fell
Speaker 1: in love with battle and with the Marine Corps. He
Speaker 1: just was very it was very good at fighting. Like
Speaker 1: he this is a really difficult, desperate situation, and he
Speaker 1: comports himself well, he's good at leading men in combat. Um.
Speaker 1: And he becomes after fighting so enthralled with the Marine
Speaker 1: Corps that he hires a tattoo artist to give him
Speaker 1: a full from his neck to his belly tattoo of
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps emblem like this. He's very into the Marines. Okay,
Speaker 1: loves him some being a marine. Yeah, you're getting a
Speaker 1: full day. That's that's that's some being affleck, you know.
Speaker 1: But I think, yeah, there's I know, people, including some
Speaker 1: Marine bets, who will argue that the Marine Corps kind
Speaker 1: of the cultist of the of the military branches. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And some might argue that's because they're the best at
Speaker 1: what they do. Um. But Butler is definitely drinking the
Speaker 1: fucking kool aid. Right. So he gets sent to China
Speaker 1: next as part of the U. S. Dettachment sent over
Speaker 1: during the Boxer Rebellion. He's wounded in calm At and
Speaker 1: despite having a bullet like one of his men gets
Speaker 1: hurt and he runs out to get him and get
Speaker 1: shot in the leg. And despite having a bullet in
Speaker 1: his leg, he drags multiple men to safety while actively
Speaker 1: under fire and bleeding. Um and again the box reveillion
Speaker 1: another brutal colonial action. Um. But he's he comports himself
Speaker 1: very well. Now, at that time, commissioned officers were unable
Speaker 1: to receive the Medal of Honor, otherwise he probably would
Speaker 1: have earned one. But he received some decorations for his
Speaker 1: gallantry under fire. Smedley Butler would spend the next couple
Speaker 1: of decades as he would grow into what was probably
Speaker 1: the best soldier in the American Empire. Like he is
Speaker 1: an exceptional imperial soldier. Um. He fights in the Banana Wars,
Speaker 1: which were a series of police actions and intervention in
Speaker 1: the Caribbean and in Central America made on behalf of
Speaker 1: US business interests, killing people for He's he's killing people
Speaker 1: for banana companies. He's killing people for United you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: He fights in Honduras, where he was constantly near death
Speaker 1: with fever and received the knickname Old Gimlet Eye because
Speaker 1: his eye his every like he was, he looked terrifying.
Speaker 1: He was this gaunt, scar filled monster with bloodshot eyes.
Speaker 1: Um and like just feverish. Yeah, that's his old gimlet
Speaker 1: eye is. Like he looks like a fucking a wraith.
Speaker 1: You know. I love this guy. He's except for his
Speaker 1: except for his colonial colonial stuff. Yeah. Yeah, he's fighting
Speaker 1: on the wrong side, but he's objectively a badass. Um. So,
Speaker 1: Butler racks up promotion after promotion. He enforces US foreign
Speaker 1: policy in Nicaragua. He sent us a spy during the
Speaker 1: Mexican American War. He sent us a spy to Mexico City,
Speaker 1: or one of the wars that we fall with Mexico.
Speaker 1: He sent us a spy to Mexico City to help
Speaker 1: the United States gather information for the siege of Vera Cruz,
Speaker 1: which a lot of people don't know we were doing
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds. We like bombed Vera Cruz. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a good warren Zevon song about it. Butler was
Speaker 1: one of nearly sixty American servicemen who received Medals of
Speaker 1: Honor for their service in Mexico because he fights in
Speaker 1: in Vera Cruz as well. Uh, and virtually all of
Speaker 1: those medals were complete bullshit, like they hand out sixty
Speaker 1: medals of Honor for the Siege of Vera Cruz. And
Speaker 1: they're doing it because Woodrow Wilson, the President, knows that, like,
Speaker 1: this is an ugly colonial war, and he wants to
Speaker 1: dress it up by making it look like by putting
Speaker 1: out a bunch of stories of heroism and stuff. So
Speaker 1: he hands out the military's highest honor like candy, and
Speaker 1: there's actually a bunch of It's a big controversy at
Speaker 1: the time because a lot of veterans are like, you're
Speaker 1: devaluing the medal of honor by using it this way. Um.
Speaker 1: And Smedley Butler receives one of these show medals of
Speaker 1: honor and he tries to return it, arguing that he'd
Speaker 1: done nothing to deserve it and he shouldn't get it,
Speaker 1: but he's ordered by his superiors to keep the medal
Speaker 1: and wear it on his uniform. Um. So you're seeing
Speaker 1: he's starting he's starting to like realize, like that's kind
Speaker 1: of messed up. Why why I I don't deserve this?
Speaker 1: Don't give this to me? Um? Like that, Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: he keeps me, He keeps me like imbalanced. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna he's he's he's a growth story. Smedley. Smedley's
Speaker 1: always Jane Jake, especially knowing because of the behind the
Speaker 1: police stuff, like I know where this guy lands where
Speaker 1: I'm just like, why am I feeling any stupidly about you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's that's that's not even quite Yeah, well we'll
Speaker 1: talk about it. So in Haiti. In Haiti, Butler wins
Speaker 1: his second Medal of honor Um, and this was one
Speaker 1: for actual fighting. His unit was sent into the country
Speaker 1: when the president was murdered by a mob. Butler and
Speaker 1: his troops repeatedly outnumbered by insurgents, and over a long
Speaker 1: campaign succeeded in breaking the insurgency and establishing order for
Speaker 1: the U S back dictatorship. Butler himself helped organize the
Speaker 1: Haitian police, and in his own recollection, he and his
Speaker 1: men hunted enemy rebels quote like pigs. Um. So again
Speaker 1: this he is a brutal soldier of empire, like building
Speaker 1: the police force for a dictator. Um. You have to
Speaker 1: kind of look at but yeah, it's not great. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not great now. Smedley was promoted to brigadier general
Speaker 1: at age thirty seven. He was in Remains one of
Speaker 1: the most highly decorated soldiers in the entire history of
Speaker 1: the United States military. He's got two medals of honor. Um,
Speaker 1: and he's he's like, you know, as a general rule,
Speaker 1: generals don't get medals of honor, certainly not two of them. Um,
Speaker 1: they don't tend to be fighting guys. But Smedley is
Speaker 1: a fighting guy. He's not a stand back and give orders.
Speaker 1: He'sould get stuck in kind of dude. Um. He desperately
Speaker 1: wanted to fight in France during World War One, but
Speaker 1: he was not assigned combat duty. This is probably because
Speaker 1: by the later stage of his career he was seen
Speaker 1: as politically unreliable due to the tendency he developed over
Speaker 1: the years to say exactly what he felt. But the
Speaker 1: retired in late nineteen thirty one. He ran for Senate
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty two, supporting prohibition, but he was defeated,
Speaker 1: and in the late stage of his career while he's
Speaker 1: still in the Marines. Is when he's running the police
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia during that brief tenure. Um. So this is
Speaker 1: you know, our story starts after he's he you know,
Speaker 1: he took what he learned in Haiti and tried to
Speaker 1: apply it to the Philadelphia Police. It didn't work out great,
Speaker 1: but he's kind of the father in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: one of the fathers of militarizing the US police. UM.
Speaker 1: And now he's he's retired. He tried to get into politics.
Speaker 1: He's not good at it. UM And by the early
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, Smedley Butler, who is probably the greatest soldier
Speaker 1: in any empire ever had um had started to change
Speaker 1: his mind on some things. A lot of this had
Speaker 1: to do with the Great Depression and a social movement
Speaker 1: that it spawned called the Bonus Army. The gist of
Speaker 1: it is that when the economy crashed, a bunch of
Speaker 1: World War One veterans found themselves unemployed, in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases homeless and starving. These guys had been given
Speaker 1: what we're called service certificates in nineteen twenty four, which
Speaker 1: was the government saying we will pay you a bunch
Speaker 1: of money for what you did in the war, but
Speaker 1: not yet because these were bonds, so they couldn't redeem
Speaker 1: them until nineteen forty five. Right. It was like imaginary money,
Speaker 1: imaginary money that like, in thirty years, this will be
Speaker 1: enough money to maybe retire on but like not now,
Speaker 1: but there's we're starving now, you know, like I can't
Speaker 1: wait another fifty years. Um. So obviously in nineteen doesn't
Speaker 1: seemed like a good deal. But after two years of
Speaker 1: economic collapse, a lot of people just couldn't wait anymore. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in June of nineteen thirty two, more than forty
Speaker 1: veterans protested in Washington, d c UH. They called themselves
Speaker 1: the Bonus Expeditionary Force or the Bonus Army, and they
Speaker 1: advocated for Congress to pass an immediate soldiers bonus for
Speaker 1: serving in World War One. Now again, we're all living
Speaker 1: through our own version of of something similar. So you
Speaker 1: know what comes next. Congress adjourned without actually doing anything.
Speaker 1: Here we go. This pisses the Bonus Army off, and
Speaker 1: they started getting loud and unruly, so the shot two
Speaker 1: of them, which eventually provoked a riot. The whole massive
Speaker 1: men set up this enormous camp in order to hold
Speaker 1: up and wait for Congress to do something. Right, they like,
Speaker 1: build a camp and they're like, we're not leaving until
Speaker 1: you give us some fucking money. Um. The bill makes
Speaker 1: its way into Congress, but it gets defeated Congress based
Speaker 1: on some powerful financial interests decides it's too expensive to
Speaker 1: pay these veterans UM, so they lose. They don't get
Speaker 1: their bonus. But the camp doesn't disperse. Um. And when
Speaker 1: the camp doesn't disperse, the Hoover administration announces that it's
Speaker 1: sending in the army to evict the soldiers. Now, it
Speaker 1: was at this point that General Smedley Butler visited the camp. Um.
Speaker 1: He told the soldiers that he thought they were well
Speaker 1: within their rights to lobby Congress corporations can why can't
Speaker 1: Why can't people like us? You know? Um. He spent
Speaker 1: the night there with the men, He had breakfast with them.
Speaker 1: He told them they were good soldiers, and he was
Speaker 1: proud of them. Um. And a week or so later
Speaker 1: he leaves. In a week or so later, America's most
Speaker 1: overrated General Douglas MacArthur disperses the crowd with a mix
Speaker 1: of men on horseback and poison gas um. And this
Speaker 1: radicalizes Butler. Um. Initially he just becomes very anti Herbert
Speaker 1: Hoover and and you know, advocates for Hoover to get
Speaker 1: his ass kicked in the election that year. And Hoover
Speaker 1: does lose reelection that year. It turned out to maybe
Speaker 1: be a bad idea. I can't turn on the people.
Speaker 1: Broom no, no. And he's a ship president in general.
Speaker 1: Um So, obviously Fdr Franklin Delano Rose about wins wins
Speaker 1: the election. That year he becomes the president, he promises
Speaker 1: Americans a new Deal, which wealthy capitalists saw as a
Speaker 1: clear sign that Roosevelt was about to open the door
Speaker 1: to Soviet commune is him and take all of their money.
Speaker 1: Why are you also scared all the time? Man? We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about that. There's an interesting story there. Um. So.
Speaker 1: One of the men who get scared by the New
Speaker 1: Deal is a guy named Robert Sterling Clark, and he's
Speaker 1: the heir to the singer sewing machine for fortune. Um.
Speaker 1: Everybody's seen a singer sewing machine. That's the kind of
Speaker 1: money this guy has, you know. That's interesting. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And we're talking singer sewing machines in the thirties when
Speaker 1: everybody uses them all the time. Actually, every house had it.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's not a hobby. It's the only way
Speaker 1: you have pants. Um. Another guy who got scared was
Speaker 1: a Wall Street financier named Grayson M. P. Murphy, and
Speaker 1: another was Prescott Bush, the father of President George H. W. Bush.
Speaker 1: And who is it that? Yeah, yeah, he he really
Speaker 1: doesn't like the New Deal. Um. And Prescott Bush is
Speaker 1: an investment banker on Wall Street at the time. Um. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: So these three are the best own members of what
Speaker 1: came to be called the Business plot. And we'll talk
Speaker 1: about them all a bit more. But before we get
Speaker 1: into their plan to overthrow the United States government and
Speaker 1: institute a fascist state, I should probably make it clear
Speaker 1: that a lot of rich Americans in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: wanted to at least see FDR thrown out on his
Speaker 1: ask for suggesting that rich people be taxed to stop
Speaker 1: poor people from dying in the street. Again, not surprising
Speaker 1: to anyone that it's not It wasn't new then. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read of I found a very good summary
Speaker 1: of of kind of this situation and the American culture
Speaker 1: at the time from a college thesis by Bradley Galka
Speaker 1: of the University of Albany that I really recommend reading.
Speaker 1: He does a great job of putting this all together. Quote.
Speaker 1: William Manchester, in his book The Glory in the Dream
Speaker 1: describes the fear which upper class Americans had of a
Speaker 1: lower class revolt in the months before Roosevelt's inauguration. Among
Speaker 1: the propertied classes, he writes, the distinction between the poor
Speaker 1: wanting bread and a full on communist revolutionary was often
Speaker 1: non existent. The rich would have to take their security
Speaker 1: into their own hands. If the government could not keep order,
Speaker 1: each man must look to his own Businessmen in a
Speaker 1: number of cities formed committees to cope with nameless terrors,
Speaker 1: should railroad and telephone lines be cut and surrounding highways blocked,
Speaker 1: Candles and canned goods were stockpiled. A Hollywood director carried
Speaker 1: with him a wardrobe of old clothes so that he
Speaker 1: could disappear into the crowd on a moment's notice. In
Speaker 1: New York, hotels discovered that wealthy guests, who usually least
Speaker 1: suits for the winter, were holding up in their country homes.
Speaker 1: Some had mounted machine guns on their roofs. Manchester goes
Speaker 1: on to say that the paranoid elites were not really
Speaker 1: so paranoid. The evidence strongly suggests. He writes that had
Speaker 1: Roosevelt in fact been another Hoover, the United States would
Speaker 1: have followed seven Latin American countries whose governments had been
Speaker 1: overthrown by depression victims. So there is revolution in the air,
Speaker 1: and it scares the funk out of these people their
Speaker 1: Bolton machine guns to their country houses, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: So the fears of this particular group of rich white
Speaker 1: dudes were further confirmed by the fact that twing writers
Speaker 1: in intellectuals were louder than ever in their anticipation of
Speaker 1: a coming communist revolution. Things were, from the outside, at least,
Speaker 1: looking pretty good in Soviet Russia compared to at least
Speaker 1: the reality that a lot of Americans knew. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two, the socialist presidential candidate we used to have
Speaker 1: socialist presidential candidates tripled his share of the vote from
Speaker 1: the nine election. Um. And uh yes, so socialism is
Speaker 1: actually doing starting to do pretty well in American politics.
Speaker 1: Socialism was mainstream in a way that seems impossible now.
Speaker 1: One example of how mainstream it was, Governor Floyd Olson
Speaker 1: of Minnesota announced that he would not take any recruit
Speaker 1: for the National Guard who quote doesn't carry a red card,
Speaker 1: because he said, Minnesota is a left wing state, like
Speaker 1: communists in the army. I'm the governor of Minnesota. What
Speaker 1: world is this? Okay, yeah, so yeah, obviously, if you've
Speaker 1: got a left wing governor of an entire state saying
Speaker 1: Minnesota is socialist and we're raising an army, a lot
Speaker 1: of capitalists are going to get freaked out. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The right wing governor of Kansas, Alf Landon declared that quote,
Speaker 1: the iron hand of a national dictator is in preference
Speaker 1: to a paralytic stroke. So the right is saying we
Speaker 1: need a dictator, and the left is saying we need
Speaker 1: an army. Um. You might recognize this as kind of
Speaker 1: identical in rhetoric to both what we were see hearing
Speaker 1: in Portugal and Spain before those countries had Couz Right
Speaker 1: Portugal saying like an iron chancellor. Yeah, he's saying maybe
Speaker 1: the iron hand of a dictator, you know, yeah, same rhetoric.
Speaker 1: Republicans were surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, willing to
Speaker 1: endorse outright fascism over socialism. Senator David Reid of Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: a Republican, stated, if this country ever needed a Mussolini,
Speaker 1: it needs one. Now wait wait, wait you let yeah
Speaker 1: he let that come out of his mouth. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: you are not you are not thinking, you're not thinking
Speaker 1: a long game, big homie. Okay, long game. Things turn
Speaker 1: out kind of upside down for Mussolini. But that's a
Speaker 1: story for another day. So in saying this, Senator Reid
Speaker 1: was tapping into what was at that point more or
Speaker 1: less an American meme, a surprising love of Mussolini. Benito
Speaker 1: Mussolini was huge in America in this period. This is
Speaker 1: like the twenties and thirties. People did not know that.
Speaker 1: So I did not know because I spent so you know,
Speaker 1: obviously during this time, I'm I'm in Harlem. Yeah, my
Speaker 1: whole history is what's happening with black people right now?
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. So I never even thought
Speaker 1: about my lord, like there was Mussolini standing yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what's happening with white people at the time. They're
Speaker 1: getting real Mussolini jazz. You know, here have been jazz.
Speaker 1: You talk about Mussolini kind of fly man, that guy,
Speaker 1: look the way he wears boots. So historian John P.
Speaker 1: Diggins argues that a large number of American journalists in
Speaker 1: the twenties and thirties supported Italy's fascist regime from the
Speaker 1: March on Rome out up to the outbreak of Italy's
Speaker 1: invasion at the Ethiopia in nine five. That's kind of
Speaker 1: what like stops the Mussolini uh honeymoon period when he
Speaker 1: gasses a bunch of people to death. Um, But up
Speaker 1: until that point, he's really big. Diggins writes that a
Speaker 1: large number of American journalists quote succumbed to fascist propaganda
Speaker 1: and if you actually prop prostituted themselves in the pay
Speaker 1: of the Italian government. So Mussolini spends a lot of money, um,
Speaker 1: trying to push articles and think pieces that would give
Speaker 1: fascism a positive reputation in the United States. He's bribing
Speaker 1: reporters and editors to write articles that make fascism seem
Speaker 1: good now. Historian Jeanne mcnowne uh notes that he Mussolini
Speaker 1: spent particular effort influencing quote the financiers who needed to
Speaker 1: be able to count on favorable future conditions for the
Speaker 1: European investments. Mussolini's favorite target and his best friends in
Speaker 1: the United States were JP Morgan and his family. You
Speaker 1: go dropping his names, he's out of nowhere names. We're like, wait,
Speaker 1: that guy, Like the story just turned so weird that
Speaker 1: JP Morgan, JP Morgan loved fascism turns out wild. This
Speaker 1: is when I wish I had one of those buttons
Speaker 1: so I could do that. Yeah. Now, another big Mussolini
Speaker 1: fan and his primary propaganda distributor was the press syndicate
Speaker 1: run by William Randolph Hurst, Um also big fan of fascism.
Speaker 1: So we'll talk a little bit more about Hurst in
Speaker 1: a bit, But I want to note that there were
Speaker 1: also some very good reporters at the time who saw
Speaker 1: what was happening, what Mussolini was doing, and who spoke
Speaker 1: out against it elucidly improperly. The Chicago Tribunes George Selds
Speaker 1: was probably one of the best journalists for this. He
Speaker 1: wrote quote far away Fascism has been attacked, exposed, and
Speaker 1: denounced by the same publications which for years ran articles
Speaker 1: lauding Mussolini and his notable backers in all lands and
Speaker 1: the Hurst Newspapers, which published from nineteen thirty four to
Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor dozens of signed propaganda articles by Dr Gebel's
Speaker 1: Gearing and other Nazis now call them names, but no
Speaker 1: publication which takes money from certain big business elements will
Speaker 1: dare name the native or nearby fascists in many instances
Speaker 1: the publications themselves are part of our own fascism, and
Speaker 1: that selves is kind of recognizing. And it was one
Speaker 1: of the few guys to be like, really try to
Speaker 1: drum home, drive them openly. And this he wrote this
Speaker 1: obviously after World War two started. It like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: as soon as we're war, y'all are against Mussolini and Hitler.
Speaker 1: But you let them publish fucking articles before you, before
Speaker 1: this ship happened. Come on and you ignore. Yeah. Cels
Speaker 1: argued that fascism, American fascism, was not just limited to
Speaker 1: lunatic fringes of society, but was influential in major economic, social,
Speaker 1: and political circles. He asserted that there were communists in
Speaker 1: the United States who quote organized big business in a
Speaker 1: movement against labor, signed a pact with Nazi agents for
Speaker 1: political and economic penetration of the US, founded a million
Speaker 1: dollar a year propaganda outfit to corrupt the press, radio schools,
Speaker 1: and churches, and delayed the winning of the war through
Speaker 1: the acts of dollar a year men looking out for
Speaker 1: present profits and future monopoly rather than for the quick
Speaker 1: defeat of fascism. And there's a lot of these guys,
Speaker 1: and like, when you're looking at American corporations who directly
Speaker 1: with their money supported fascism and funded fascist propaganda. You're
Speaker 1: talking General Motors, you're talking the DuPont Corporation, and you're
Speaker 1: talking Reader's Digest who were wig into fascism. God, dog man,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, there's no ending, bro, there's just no Wow.
Speaker 1: We don't talk about the time Readers Digest was whole
Speaker 1: hog for Mussolini. Yeah, like again, yeah, that's number three
Speaker 1: the name you never thought you'd get when a law
Speaker 1: time you said the will you because you when the
Speaker 1: last time any of y'all said the word Reader's dig In.
Speaker 1: I've been published in them and I don't think about them. Yes, Roberts,
Speaker 1: what that's funny? Yeah? But you know who won't fund
Speaker 1: a fascist propaganda campaign to convince financiers that Benito Mussolini
Speaker 1: has the right idea? Pick me, pick me, pick me.
Speaker 1: I know the answer to the answer, and the answer
Speaker 1: who who is it? Who won't do that? Sophie, the
Speaker 1: Fine Products and Services that sponsor this podcast nailed it. Nay. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Robert laund and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're the
Speaker 1: hosts of the science podcast Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
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Speaker 1: weirdest questions in the universe, like if sci fi teleportation
Speaker 1: was possible, how would it square with the multitudes of
Speaker 1: organisms that inhabit our human bodies? Can we find evidence
Speaker 1: of emotions in animals like bees, ants, and crayfish? How
Speaker 1: would an interplanetary civilization function just free will exist? Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind examines neurological quandaries, cosmic mysteries, evolutionary marvels,
Speaker 1: and the wonders of techno history. Basically, this show is
Speaker 1: the altar where we worship the weirdness of reality. If
Speaker 1: anybody ever told you you ask the weirdest questions, it
Speaker 1: is time to come join us in the place where
Speaker 1: you belong. The Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast new
Speaker 1: episodes publish every Tuesday and Thursday, with bonus episodes on Saturdays.
Speaker 1: Listen to Stuff to Blow Your Mind on the I
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Speaker 1: been begging us to do a New Girl recap for years,
Speaker 1: and we finally made a podcast where we answer all
Speaker 1: your burning questions like is there really a bear? In
Speaker 1: every episode of New Girl? Plus each week you'll hear
Speaker 1: hilarious stories like this at the end when he says,
Speaker 1: you got some schmid on your face. I feel like
Speaker 1: I pitched that joke. I believe that I feel like
Speaker 1: I did. I'm not on a thousand percent I want
Speaker 1: to say that was I tossed that one out. Listen
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Speaker 1: We're back and God Almighty, I know that JP Morgan
Speaker 1: the bank does adver throw in random adds sometimes, and
Speaker 1: I kind of hope one came in in between as
Speaker 1: we're talking about incredible. Uh, it's very funny, um, very funny.
Speaker 1: So this is all all of this stuff that we're
Speaker 1: talking about, is what's cooking off in the background when
Speaker 1: a funkload of rich guys and we don't know all
Speaker 1: of the folks involved or who they were. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about why near the end of this. But obviously some
Speaker 1: of them are JP Morgan, like um, William Randolph Hurst
Speaker 1: is is almost certainly a part of it. There's a
Speaker 1: good chance Henry Ford was, but we don't know exactly
Speaker 1: who was involved. We know some of the people though,
Speaker 1: including George H. W. Bush's dad. So at any rate,
Speaker 1: this cabal of financiers and rich guys pick a couple
Speaker 1: of patsy's to do the grunt work because they decide, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, the very wealthiest men are like, we need
Speaker 1: to find a way to take power, and we need
Speaker 1: to do it stealthily because Americans won't stand for an
Speaker 1: open fascist coup. Um, so we're going to need They
Speaker 1: pick a couple of guys to kind of do the
Speaker 1: grunt work of actually organizing this fascist coup. And the
Speaker 1: dudes they pick are Gerald C. McGuire and Bob Doyle, um.
Speaker 1: And they're these guys are bond salesman, right, their stock
Speaker 1: traders essentially, um. And they're both veterans imaginary money again, yeah,
Speaker 1: their imaginary money guys. Uh. And they're both members of
Speaker 1: the American Legion, which had been established to support veterans
Speaker 1: rights and activities. And they're both vets, you know, um,
Speaker 1: which is not you know a lot of people are vets.
Speaker 1: World War One's just ended. So these guys, like these
Speaker 1: rich dudes, some of whom we had also been veterans, UM,
Speaker 1: had watched what had happened with the Bonus Army in
Speaker 1: d C. They'd seen tens of thousands of veterans march
Speaker 1: on Washington, UM And obviously they hadn't supported those guys
Speaker 1: getting any money because it would have meant taxing rich people.
Speaker 1: But they thought there was potential and having tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of combat hardened men march on the capitol, and
Speaker 1: they basically started saying to themselves, what if we could
Speaker 1: harness that kind of force and put it under the
Speaker 1: control of a guy that we control and they trust,
Speaker 1: maybe we could overthrow the government. WHOA And Americans wouldn't
Speaker 1: be because they'd say, oh, these are our vets, you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're coming into fix things, you know. Yeah, well there,
Speaker 1: you know, we support our troops exactly. It's a good idea,
Speaker 1: you know, you get to overthrow. So obviously they're looking
Speaker 1: at who can we who can we put in control
Speaker 1: of tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of veterans
Speaker 1: who will be easy for us to control, but also
Speaker 1: who everyone respects and loves, and who no one's going
Speaker 1: to accuse of any ulterior motives. Oh my god, who
Speaker 1: is it? While it's the perfect soldier of empire, the
Speaker 1: greatest imperial warrior whoever existed? Retired General Smedley Butler. They're like,
Speaker 1: this is the guy who can do it. And he
Speaker 1: and they look, look at all of these all of
Speaker 1: these wars that we profited from that we got America
Speaker 1: into to make money. He fought it and ran things
Speaker 1: like he he's already done this for us. He's perfect,
Speaker 1: you know damn Yeah. So I'm gonna quote a right
Speaker 1: up by Artia Publishing for what happens next. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's yeah, Like he's he's obviously, he's who you go with. Quote.
Speaker 1: During their first meeting with Butler, McGuire and Doyle asked
Speaker 1: the Major General to speak at a Legion convention in Chicago,
Speaker 1: claiming they wanted to point out the various problems with
Speaker 1: the legion's leadership. But there was at first open to
Speaker 1: this idea, knowing that the Legion had several administrative issues
Speaker 1: that ultimately compromised veteran benefits. So they're like, hey, the
Speaker 1: Legions having a vote in convention to like vote on
Speaker 1: it's its leaders. You know, we are also vets, and
Speaker 1: like we you know, obviously you're you're the guy we
Speaker 1: respect the most. Would you give a speech about some
Speaker 1: of the problems our organization is happening? And He's like, sure,
Speaker 1: you know, it seems like a reasonable thing to do.
Speaker 1: He's always going to try to help out soldiers when
Speaker 1: he can. Um. But then he as he kind of
Speaker 1: looks through the speech that they've written, he realizes that
Speaker 1: it says almost nothing about the American Legion leadership and
Speaker 1: is instead entirely about the gold standard and about how
Speaker 1: the government needs to go back to the gold standard. Yo.
Speaker 1: I had the clapper that because I'm like, that is
Speaker 1: a juke. That is a really good jun Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's a zag and Smedley. Smedley's like, wait a second,
Speaker 1: what I thought you wanted me to help get the
Speaker 1: American Legion working better? Why the fund? Do I care
Speaker 1: about the gold standards? I care about that? Yeah? Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So they were like basically the what was that The
Speaker 1: actual case here is that all of these bankers were
Speaker 1: scared that they had gold back loans from the government
Speaker 1: that weren't going to be paid back in full by
Speaker 1: the president. Um. And you know, they also kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to get Butler used to working for them as
Speaker 1: their agents and see if they could like use them further.
Speaker 1: It's a couple of things going on here. That is
Speaker 1: textbook rich guy man, very textbook richly, like just right
Speaker 1: on the nose. And what they don't realize about Butler
Speaker 1: is that he's not the perfect imperial so drew anymore.
Speaker 1: By this point, he's he's become a socialist um and
Speaker 1: he doesn't bite. Uh. He actually thought McGuire might be
Speaker 1: mentally ill because what the guy was suggesting seems so
Speaker 1: strange to him. And Butler's impression of McGuire didn't change
Speaker 1: over the next few months, because the stockbroker keeps approaching
Speaker 1: the old general with new requests to address the American
Speaker 1: Legion for really incoherent reads what seems to Butler incoherent reasons, okay,
Speaker 1: and so in August of nineteen thirty three, Butler and
Speaker 1: McGuire meet again, and by this point Butler had started
Speaker 1: to realize that McGuire was working for someone. He starts
Speaker 1: to piece together there's a through line for all these
Speaker 1: weird things he's asking me to do. There's got to
Speaker 1: be someone pulling the strings behind this um. Now, because
Speaker 1: McGuire was the kind of guy who only valued money,
Speaker 1: he saw Butler's reticence and decided that like, oh, he's
Speaker 1: not suspicious because I'm asking him to do weird things.
Speaker 1: He wants to know that I have backing, So he
Speaker 1: basically flashes a huge pile of cash, and Butler's so
Speaker 1: so rich guy only thinks that every body thinks like
Speaker 1: rich guys. Yeah. Butler's like, it's really weird that you
Speaker 1: keep asking me to make all of these bizarre political
Speaker 1: addresses to the American Legion. And McGuire's like, hey, I
Speaker 1: got a hundred grand great, Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: what are you talking about though? Yeah? And this actually
Speaker 1: makes Butler more suspicious because in his mind, no honest
Speaker 1: man has access to a hundred thousand dollars. Keep it real,
Speaker 1: but like, I'm not supposed to like you, bro, But like, day,
Speaker 1: that's a great answer. Was like what what? Well, he's
Speaker 1: changed at this point, but there's he goes through a
Speaker 1: very satisfying evolution. McGuire admits that he has a backer.
Speaker 1: He says like, yeah, I work as a bond salesman
Speaker 1: for Grayson Murphy, who's a wealthy Wall Street financier who
Speaker 1: had also been a colonel during World War One, but
Speaker 1: not like a real like his job had been coordinating
Speaker 1: with the Red Cross. He got a rich guy job
Speaker 1: in the army for the war. You know. Um, So
Speaker 1: McGuire had paid a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to underwrite the start of the American Legion because it
Speaker 1: starts after World War One, and he thought of it
Speaker 1: as as an investment, right, Like Murphy's putting the American
Speaker 1: Legion together because he has a really rich guy is like,
Speaker 1: it's probably a good idea to have an organization of
Speaker 1: combat veterans who I can kind of direct, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a plot going on here. Yeah. Butler and McGuire
Speaker 1: start talking about McGuire's backers, and McGuire admits to Butler
Speaker 1: that his boss, Grayson, is one of nine Richmond who
Speaker 1: were trying to pay for a national convention of the
Speaker 1: American Legion in d C. Now, by this point, Smedley
Speaker 1: Butler knew something very crooked was going on, and Bradley
Speaker 1: Galka writes quote Butler did not commit to anything, but
Speaker 1: rather waited and listen to what McGuire had to say.
Speaker 1: The two met at the beginning of September. When asked
Speaker 1: if he had begun recruiting men to go to the
Speaker 1: national convention, Butler said no. He told McGuire that he
Speaker 1: would not even consider cooperating unless he was allowed to
Speaker 1: meet with one of the principal backers of the plot.
Speaker 1: McGuire promised to set up a meeting as soon as
Speaker 1: was possible. Treated his word, McGuire arranged for Butler to
Speaker 1: meet with one of the principles the following week. Man
Speaker 1: was actually an acquaintance of the general. His name was
Speaker 1: Robert Sterling Clark, known to Butler as the Millionaire Lieutenant
Speaker 1: This is the Singer Guy. Clark had been a junior
Speaker 1: officer under Butler's command in China during the Boxer Rebellion.
Speaker 1: According to Butler, Clark had been a batty sort of
Speaker 1: queer fellow who did all sorts of extravagant things. Him
Speaker 1: a batty bad like like as in like how we
Speaker 1: say that girls a battye or like as in battye
Speaker 1: b a t t y like this this he's this,
Speaker 1: you know. There he goes to war with this guy,
Speaker 1: and everyone knows this kid as a millionaire and he's weird, right,
Speaker 1: like he's a rich kid, you know. He's yeah, like wait,
Speaker 1: what do you mean by a batty? And I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: you call him a batty and then saying, well he
Speaker 1: does queer stuff like you just called him a batty,
Speaker 1: like bro, Like just okay, now I get it. Yeah
Speaker 1: you know, so yeah, that's clarify that so so so
Speaker 1: so wait so it makes sure I'm following along. So
Speaker 1: at this point, Smedley's antennas are all like his spidy
Speaker 1: in angling all over the place like some now right
Speaker 1: yeah something yeah. And then he's like, and I don't
Speaker 1: trust you rich kids like y'all never see no combat.
Speaker 1: You ain't no blood on your hands, man, you I
Speaker 1: you stayed on the porch the whole time. You wasn't
Speaker 1: running with the wild dog. So so help me understand.
Speaker 1: And then he goes and he meets what he's rich dude.
Speaker 1: He's like, I remember this kid, Yeah, this fucking kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And he's also he's also, this is kind
Speaker 1: of the guy that Smedley's a very intelligent man. He
Speaker 1: thinks something is fishy and he's like, I want to
Speaker 1: go up the food chain. I want to follow the
Speaker 1: money up and I want to talk to you. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna talk to the guy. Give any money, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: So the General meets with Clark, this millionaire air uh.
Speaker 1: And Clark's first question was whether or not Butler had
Speaker 1: read the speech that that Clark had helped right for him,
Speaker 1: and Butler was like, he says, yes, but it looks
Speaker 1: as if it were a big business speech. There's something
Speaker 1: funny about that speech. Mr Clark. Now, once it was
Speaker 1: clear that Butler knew he was being used for some purpose,
Speaker 1: even though he wasn't sure what that purpose was, Clark
Speaker 1: drops the act. So Butler says that, and Clark's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know something's going on. So I'm just gonna tell
Speaker 1: you the truth. And he tells Butler this quote. You
Speaker 1: understand just how we are fixed. I have got thirty
Speaker 1: million dollars. I do not want to lose it. I
Speaker 1: am willing to spend half of the thirty million to
Speaker 1: save the other half. If you go out and make
Speaker 1: this speech in Chicago, I am certain that they will
Speaker 1: adopt the resolution, and that will be one step towards
Speaker 1: the return of gold. To have the soldiers stand up
Speaker 1: for it. We can get the soldiers to go out
Speaker 1: in great bodies to stand up for it. And obviously
Speaker 1: gold isn't the end goal here, but that's how they
Speaker 1: want to like start things that's they're starting it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and this guy admits like, look, I I am
Speaker 1: trying to use you to keep my money, and I'm
Speaker 1: willing to spend half of my money to keep the
Speaker 1: other half. You know, That's what's important to me, is
Speaker 1: continuing to be a rich man. Yeah. Now in uh,
Speaker 1: there's there's some sort of like a kind of a
Speaker 1: dark and twisted but kind of good financial advice in that,
Speaker 1: like I'll spend half of this if it's gonna make
Speaker 1: my other half double. Yeah. It's like and he said,
Speaker 1: he's also saying like I'm I'm afraid that the decisions
Speaker 1: being made by this government will reduce my class. All. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying. Like this is like dark, like okay,
Speaker 1: this is this is why they're wealthy. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not just sitting on this stuff and I'm not
Speaker 1: willing to burn it all, but I'll spend on what's
Speaker 1: gonna protect the other half and increased the other half.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, it's how rich guys think,
Speaker 1: you know, it's how rich guys think. This enrages Butler
Speaker 1: when when he said, like Butler is kind of barely
Speaker 1: able to keep himself from just like flipping out at
Speaker 1: this guy. Because Butler, he had been obviously an imperial soldier,
Speaker 1: but his entire career, his focus, the thing that kept
Speaker 1: him going was the well being of the soldiers under
Speaker 1: his command. Right, he had risked his life repeatedly and
Speaker 1: been wounded to protect them in under his command. And
Speaker 1: this rich guy is saying, I want to use your
Speaker 1: fellow soldiers for my own to keep my money, and
Speaker 1: Butler's like, fuck that and fuck you, like you know,
Speaker 1: at this point, yeah, we've done. Yeah. Now, at this point,
Speaker 1: Smedley didn't quite realize that his entire career up to
Speaker 1: that point had been doing the same thing in other countries, Right,
Speaker 1: had been like risking the lives of his men to
Speaker 1: protect the money of rich people. He doesn't quite get
Speaker 1: that yet, but he sees that what he he understands
Speaker 1: what this guy is trying to do now, right, Um,
Speaker 1: So he gets angry and he tells the millionaire how
Speaker 1: he feels, I took an oath to sustain democracy and
Speaker 1: that is what I'm going to do and nothing else.
Speaker 1: I Am not going to get these soldiers marching around
Speaker 1: and stirred up over the gold standard. What the hell
Speaker 1: does a soldier know about the gold standard? Um damn
Speaker 1: different one. It's direct, man, when you see it like
Speaker 1: rather than like at a systemic or like a you know, uh,
Speaker 1: indirect way like you said, like ultimately you know you're
Speaker 1: at least in our most recent wars, you just went
Speaker 1: to protect somebody's money and to hold up a crooked regime,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. But if somebody couldn't. But
Speaker 1: if like if your general stood up to you and
Speaker 1: just said, hey, homie, uh, this place got oil, so
Speaker 1: we need a kill these people to get it, like
Speaker 1: you would be like, nothing to do that. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. I'm not gonna do that. What are
Speaker 1: you talking about? You know what I'm saying. But like
Speaker 1: when it's in your face the way it was with him,
Speaker 1: He's like, no, listen, here's the thing. I'm rich and
Speaker 1: I'm might lose it, so I need you to go
Speaker 1: get my money. Yeah. And this is this is a
Speaker 1: bit of a spoiler. This It being this direct for
Speaker 1: him is what helps him realize what the rest of
Speaker 1: his career had been. Like this really is We're not
Speaker 1: quite there yet, okay. McGuire, Like Butler's like, I am
Speaker 1: not going to do this thing for you. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna go fucking put my neck on the line for
Speaker 1: the gold standard. And McGuire's like, all right, I'll right,
Speaker 1: and he's like, can I use your phone? And while
Speaker 1: Butler listens, McGuire gets on the phone, uh in Butler's
Speaker 1: house or not McGuire. Uh. Sterling gets on the phone
Speaker 1: in Butler's house and he calls McGuire, the guy who
Speaker 1: had was his gopher um and tells him that Butler's
Speaker 1: not coming to the American Legion convention. And Sterling tells
Speaker 1: McGuire to use forty five thou dollars that he'd given
Speaker 1: him to flood the convention hall with telegrams urging a
Speaker 1: return to the gold standard. And that's exactly what happens
Speaker 1: at the convention. The telegrams flow in and the result
Speaker 1: solution is passed condemning like the move away from the
Speaker 1: gold Standard. And you know, Sterling kind of does this
Speaker 1: to show off to Butler, like, Okay, well, if you're
Speaker 1: not going to do this, let me show you what
Speaker 1: I can accomplish. I can just pay forty five grand
Speaker 1: to get fucking flyers put up and like will flood
Speaker 1: them with propaganda and make it happen. And Butler takes
Speaker 1: this as the lesson that it is right that these
Speaker 1: are powerful men, and this is like they do have
Speaker 1: the ability to to make this ship happen. Um. So
Speaker 1: for a little while, that's kind of all is. It's
Speaker 1: this weird thing over the gold Standard, and Butler it
Speaker 1: feels off to him, but he doesn't think much more
Speaker 1: about it until the next year, August of nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: when Gerald McGuire comes up to his house again and
Speaker 1: he and Butler meet and McGuire tells the general quote
Speaker 1: the time has come to get the soldiers together, and McGuire,
Speaker 1: who's a veteran himself, is referencing the Bonus Army. He's
Speaker 1: basically coming up and being like, hey, you know, the
Speaker 1: things are still hard for veterans. Why don't you and
Speaker 1: I work out something where we can get another group
Speaker 1: of soldiers together and maybe march them on Washington um.
Speaker 1: And Butler's like willing to have this conversation, right, He's
Speaker 1: not willing to do the gold Standard thing, but like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're talking about getting people together because veterans need some money.
Speaker 1: Absolutely that's my whole thing of money. Yeah. But then
Speaker 1: the conversation turns. McGuire tells Butler that he'd just gotten
Speaker 1: back from an overseas trip and it was on It
Speaker 1: wasn't a vacation, but his wealthy backers were paying him
Speaker 1: to go scouting. And this is what McGuire says, quote.
Speaker 1: I went abroad to study the part that the veteran
Speaker 1: plays and the various setups of the governments that they
Speaker 1: have abroad. I went to Italy for two or three
Speaker 1: months and studied the position that the veterans of Italy
Speaker 1: occupy and the fascist set up of government, and I
Speaker 1: discovered that they are the background of Mussolini. They keep
Speaker 1: them on the payrolls in various ways and keep them
Speaker 1: contented and happy, and they're his real backbone, the force
Speaker 1: on which he may depend in case of trouble to
Speaker 1: sustain him. But that setup would not suit us at all.
Speaker 1: The soldiers of America would not like that. I then
Speaker 1: went to Germany to see what Hitler was doing, and
Speaker 1: his whole strength lies in organizations of soldiers too, but
Speaker 1: that would not do. I looked into the Russian business.
Speaker 1: I found the use of soldiers over there would never
Speaker 1: appeal to our men. Then I went to France and
Speaker 1: I found just exactly the sort of organization we are
Speaker 1: going to have. It is an organization of super soldiers.
Speaker 1: And what he's talking about, you remember the cross of
Speaker 1: Fire that we talked about last episode in France, that
Speaker 1: French veterans organization. You got five officers, a thousand officers
Speaker 1: and n c o s and they control the votes
Speaker 1: of five million men, and they're very, very far right right,
Speaker 1: and they have a role in the insurrection that happens
Speaker 1: over in France, which has just happened at this point.
Speaker 1: So these rich guys watch what happens in France and
Speaker 1: almost succeeds and are like, oh, you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: not a bad idea. Why don't we set up a
Speaker 1: veterans organization like that? Uh yeah, So that's what McGuire
Speaker 1: is like, we need to build the same thing that
Speaker 1: they have in France, because if we can get five
Speaker 1: million votes or so, like a coalition of five million votes,
Speaker 1: we can win any election we want. We can get
Speaker 1: rid of you know, Roosevelt, or we can march them
Speaker 1: on the capitol. You know, if we have half a
Speaker 1: million soldiers so Butler said, all right, like, I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not against this idea. If you want to organize
Speaker 1: a bunch of veterans to to to make political changes,
Speaker 1: act as a voting block, that makes sense to me
Speaker 1: because I care about veterans issues. Um, but what do
Speaker 1: you want to use them for? Right? Why are you?
Speaker 1: Why are we building this because he's still suspicious of
Speaker 1: this guy over the Golden State? Do yeah? And McGuire
Speaker 1: shares them, like, no, they're going to support the president.
Speaker 1: That's what we want them to do, is to kind
Speaker 1: of support the president and his efforts to fix the economy.
Speaker 1: And Butler points out when McGuire says this, Butler points
Speaker 1: out that like, well, in all these speeches you wanted
Speaker 1: me to give earlier, you would have me. You wanted
Speaker 1: me to oppose all of FDR's policies. So why are
Speaker 1: you trying to make a veterans organization to support FDR now?
Speaker 1: And McGuire responds, don't you understand that the setup has
Speaker 1: got to be changed a bit? Now we have got him,
Speaker 1: we have got the president. He has got to have
Speaker 1: more money. There's not any more money to give him.
Speaker 1: Eight percent of the money now is in government bonds,
Speaker 1: and he cannot keep this racket up much longer. He
Speaker 1: has got to do something about it. He has either
Speaker 1: got to get more money out of us or he
Speaker 1: has got to change the method of financing the government.
Speaker 1: And we are going to see to it that he
Speaker 1: does not change that method. He will not change it.
Speaker 1: They're worried about him, like going into debt and devaluing
Speaker 1: the dollar and stuff. Um. So Butler sees where this
Speaker 1: is going and he asks McGuire straight up, the idea
Speaker 1: of this great group of soldiers then is to sort
Speaker 1: of frighten him, is it. McGuire lying said that no,
Speaker 1: they don't want to scare FDR. They just want to
Speaker 1: support him. And then he introduces a new idea. He
Speaker 1: tells Butler, you know, the president's overworked, and he's he's
Speaker 1: an old man, he's not healthy. Wouldn't it be nice
Speaker 1: if we could give FDR an assistant president. We can
Speaker 1: use this big armed group of veterans to convince the
Speaker 1: President to create a new cabinet position, Secretary of General Affairs,
Speaker 1: and this person will do all of the actual work
Speaker 1: of the president, and he'll institute policies that my rich
Speaker 1: backers nowhere going to fix things for the American people.
Speaker 1: F DR will still be president, but he'll just be
Speaker 1: ceremonial and will be controlling things, and this big armed
Speaker 1: group of veterans will make sure that everybody plays nice.
Speaker 1: That right up under our noses. Bro. So McGuire tells
Speaker 1: Butler that this is all necessary because the president is sick,
Speaker 1: and even if it's not true that he's unable to
Speaker 1: do the job anymore, the American people will believe them
Speaker 1: if they say he's sick, because quote, we have got
Speaker 1: the newspapers. He's talking about the fact that William Randolph
Speaker 1: Hurst is one of the guys involved in this plot.
Speaker 1: Like whatever, whatever we need the American people to believe,
Speaker 1: they'll believe because we control the newspapers. So all we
Speaker 1: need to do is organize this body of men. So
Speaker 1: in suggesting this, McGuire's rich backers were looking to treat
Speaker 1: FDR kind of the same way Mussolini treated the King
Speaker 1: of Italy or Hitler treated Hindenburg in his last months.
Speaker 1: Of course, McGuire didn't point this out to Butler, but
Speaker 1: he asked, would you be interesting and heading up this
Speaker 1: super organization of veterans that we're going to use to
Speaker 1: take power. So he's all on the table now, like
Speaker 1: we're going to take over the government. We're going to
Speaker 1: do it in a way that's not obvious. We're going
Speaker 1: to use the newspapers to make sure people don't know
Speaker 1: that we've just stopped FDR from having any power, and
Speaker 1: we're if things are going to be run by the
Speaker 1: rich um and but so he's like, do you want
Speaker 1: to be the guy who leads this army of veterans
Speaker 1: into the capital to demand these things? And Butler response,
Speaker 1: I'm interested in it. I'm interested in this veterans organization,
Speaker 1: but I don't know about heading it. I am very
Speaker 1: greatly interested in it, because you know, my interest, my
Speaker 1: one hobby is maintaining a democracy. If you get these
Speaker 1: five a thousand soldiers advocating anything smelling a fascism, I'm
Speaker 1: going to get five thousand more and lick the hell
Speaker 1: out of you and we'll have a real war right
Speaker 1: at home. He's a direct man. Yeah, I love It's like, look,
Speaker 1: maybe I mean wars I fought. You think I'm scaredy you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like yeah, like and this like if you do this
Speaker 1: and I think you're trying to create a fascist state.
Speaker 1: I'll raise an army and I'll win. Like you don't
Speaker 1: know about the actual war vet, like I actually know
Speaker 1: the veterans. Yeah. Yeah, So this makes McGuire backped a
Speaker 1: little bit. He's realized he's maybe like gone, he was
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit too open about what they were
Speaker 1: planning to do. And he insists like, no, we're not
Speaker 1: trying to overthrow. We just want to support the president.
Speaker 1: We're not trying to take power. We want to support him.
Speaker 1: And Butler says, well, if that's the case, you're gonna
Speaker 1: need a lot of money, right, This is not going
Speaker 1: to be a cheap thing to do. And McGuire is like, well,
Speaker 1: we've got three million dollars on hand, you know, money
Speaker 1: and a problem. We get access to three hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars if necessary, And so Butler again it's like, who
Speaker 1: in the funk is putting up this money? Honest, men
Speaker 1: don't have three million dollars to throw around. And so
Speaker 1: he's like, where are you getting all of this money?
Speaker 1: And I know it's not just Clark Um or Sterling,
Speaker 1: the guy that I had met earlier. And McGuire says,
Speaker 1: you know how Clark told you he would spend half
Speaker 1: of his uh fortune to save the other half. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of other rich guys who feel the
Speaker 1: same way, right, Prescott Bush and JP Morgan and all
Speaker 1: these all these other rich dudes feel the same way.
Speaker 1: So Smedley Butler meant what he said. He was absolutely
Speaker 1: committed to American democracy and he never actually considered helping.
Speaker 1: But he knew the danger of what he was hearing
Speaker 1: and he wanted to be able to expose it, and
Speaker 1: to do that he was going to need a corroborating witness.
Speaker 1: So his goal now too becomes, I need someone else
Speaker 1: credible to be witnessed to the whole plans that we
Speaker 1: can go testify to Congress just in case, dude, dog
Speaker 1: this dude's antenna's are like they are a tuned because
Speaker 1: to be like you can't just be like f you
Speaker 1: and storm the room because these people don't need you.
Speaker 1: Don't find somebody else, you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 1: it's like the understanding that like just that power play.
Speaker 1: When you're in a role with people that wealthy, they
Speaker 1: always feel like they're in charge, but that but that
Speaker 1: power is given to them. But if you don't, if
Speaker 1: you don't give a shit about their money. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Then, been the power don't matter, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying that, Then you realize really what's
Speaker 1: happening here. It's like, oh wait, y'all got all this
Speaker 1: money and you still need this meeting with me. So
Speaker 1: there's some you know what I'm saying, So like he
Speaker 1: had his antenna's enough to be like, I need to
Speaker 1: make sure because it's not like these people can't put
Speaker 1: me away. I need somebody over here to watch all
Speaker 1: this happening because they wielding all his power and I
Speaker 1: am you know what I'm saying, like right now, I'm
Speaker 1: in their good graces right now, they're still hungry for me.
Speaker 1: So let me make sure I'm playing this is Antenna's
Speaker 1: are art? I love it? Yeah? You know he's he's thinking,
Speaker 1: he's thinking. He's thinking that right up by Arcadia Publishing
Speaker 1: again for What Happens Next. Having previously worked as the
Speaker 1: police captain of Philadelphia, Butler reached out to a Philadelphia
Speaker 1: record writer, Paul Calmly French, who agreed to meet with
Speaker 1: McGuire as well. During this meeting, McGuire told French that
Speaker 1: he believed a fascist state was the only answer for America,
Speaker 1: and that Smedley was the ideal leader because he could
Speaker 1: organize a million men overnight. So French, the very skilled journalist,
Speaker 1: comes in and kind of on the guys of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you want the press on your side, let's talk about
Speaker 1: what you're trying to do. And he's like, French is
Speaker 1: clearly a good interview and gets McGuire to admit, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to we want to make a fascist state.
Speaker 1: It's the only way forward for America, and Butler's the
Speaker 1: best guy to do it. So French takes detailed notes
Speaker 1: after all of these meetings, he would later tell Congress. Quote,
Speaker 1: during the course of the conversation, he continually discussed the
Speaker 1: need of a man on a white horse, as he
Speaker 1: called it, a dictator who would come galloping in on
Speaker 1: his white horse. He said that was the only way,
Speaker 1: either through the threat of armed force or the delegation
Speaker 1: of power and the use of a group of organized
Speaker 1: veterans to save the capitalistic system. Speaking of capitalistic systems,
Speaker 1: speaking of capitalism, you know who won't inside a fascist revolution?
Speaker 1: I mean, hopefully, hopefully fingers crossed. I have something to
Speaker 1: tell you at this ad break that just broken the news.
Speaker 1: But I guess I'll tell you now. Jeff just stepped
Speaker 1: down at CEO of Amazon. What the funk is happening.
Speaker 1: He's transitioning to an executive chair role. Something's about to
Speaker 1: go down. Yes, I have some theories. That's big. Take
Speaker 1: this break, taketah. Yeah, yeah, we're We're all, what are
Speaker 1: your theories? Something's fucking happening. So here's my theories. I
Speaker 1: think there was two things going on here. I think
Speaker 1: uh one is he's like, I would like the money
Speaker 1: without the headache, So let me just let somebody else
Speaker 1: had a headache, says All. Says this is from obviously
Speaker 1: the Washington Post because he owns it. Basis will step
Speaker 1: down from the role after founding the company more than
Speaker 1: twenty years ago. I'll sharing a new era for the
Speaker 1: e commerce merchant giant currently current Amazon Web Services chief
Speaker 1: and Jassy will take on the mantel of CEO. So
Speaker 1: I don't like our word mantle first of all. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think the money from the like from the
Speaker 1: from the web support platform services is now outpacing the products,
Speaker 1: so they like we need to move that way. Number
Speaker 1: one and number two I'm positive they're gonna break the
Speaker 1: company up. They're gonna break this up because it's yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I better get out now. They're gonna
Speaker 1: break this ship up. I really hear. Um, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: should be broken up. It's too much of the business.
Speaker 1: You can't be the grocery store and the groceries. I
Speaker 1: think he just wants to go off into the moon
Speaker 1: and just spend the rest of this to no one.
Speaker 1: I want all the money without the headache. No reasonable
Speaker 1: person would be worth a hundred billion plus dollars and
Speaker 1: want to keep doing a job. Why do you keep working? Yeah,
Speaker 1: go fill an island with I don't know, no more,
Speaker 1: no more rich guys with the islands. I always do
Speaker 1: have to say, yeah, it's like, you don't make a
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars to keep working. He'll he'll never spend
Speaker 1: this You will never spend this money. It's the only
Speaker 1: bi who's ever made sense to me is one of
Speaker 1: the Google founders who like spent hundreds of millions of
Speaker 1: dollars making a house blimp. And it's like, yeah, that's rad, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna a blimp, Like I can never you can't
Speaker 1: even give it away. There's not enough, There's not enough
Speaker 1: hours in the day. You know you're not gonna live
Speaker 1: enough years to spend this, Yeah you couldn't. Yeah, uh,
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Speaker 1: Breakfast wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Uh what
Speaker 1: a great what a great time. So uh we're talking
Speaker 1: about Yeah, this guy Butler brings in this journalist French
Speaker 1: who gets Who gets these guys to throw down some
Speaker 1: dirt right and admit what they're actually looking to do? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Um now? In his right up on the business plot,
Speaker 1: Bradley Galka notes quote. McGuire also discussed this group's intended
Speaker 1: solution to the national employment crisis. He said they were
Speaker 1: inspired by Adolf Hitler's policies in Europe, that the solution
Speaker 1: would be the institution of labor camps and barings and
Speaker 1: a mayor I could to mobilize the unemployed. You said,
Speaker 1: you said it out loud. You're not supposed say that
Speaker 1: out loud. Bro this head. The guy has some good ideas.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, like, we could save you. Hear me,
Speaker 1: hear me out. We could save capitalism, We could save
Speaker 1: cap What if we put the par in camps and
Speaker 1: make them work for us. They're not doing anything right.
Speaker 1: They're not doing anything right. Shouldn't be voting. They just
Speaker 1: gotta vote to take our money. But I'm in camps. Uh.
Speaker 1: Such an initiative, McGuire insisted, would solve the problem overnight.
Speaker 1: He also revealed that the plotters would force all suspected
Speaker 1: radicals across the country to register their movements with the government.
Speaker 1: That way, said McGuire, the new regime could stop a
Speaker 1: lot of these communist agitators who were running around the country.
Speaker 1: McGuire ended by insisting that another economic crash was inevitable
Speaker 1: and would come when bonds reached five percent interest. When
Speaker 1: that time comes, he said, the soldiers must prepare to
Speaker 1: save the nation. Now. It's worth reiterating two important takeaways
Speaker 1: from McGuire's interacttions with Butler and French. First, during McGuire's
Speaker 1: meeting with Butler at the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia, McGuire
Speaker 1: claimed that he and the plotters have got the newspapers.
Speaker 1: He told Butler that whatever cover story his boss has
Speaker 1: decided to put in the papers would be accepted by
Speaker 1: the dumb American people who would fall for it. In
Speaker 1: a second, damn it not wrong, not wrong, not wrong,
Speaker 1: and is right up of this is very good, it's
Speaker 1: and it's free. So I really recommend it for folks. Now.
Speaker 1: At this point, Butler decided he had enough information to
Speaker 1: go to Congress. On November ninety four, he appeared before
Speaker 1: the Special Committee on Unamerican Activities. Before the Committee and
Speaker 1: its lawyers, General, Butler laid out the details of the
Speaker 1: whole sordid scheme, providing Congress with French is corroboration and
Speaker 1: the detailed notes that he himself had taken of every conversation.
Speaker 1: He swore under oath that this was all true and
Speaker 1: that a cabal of bankers and industrial magnates were plotting
Speaker 1: to overthrow American democracy. So he goes to Congress and
Speaker 1: he puts it all out on the line, and the
Speaker 1: story hits the news media. Soon after, The New York Post,
Speaker 1: which at this time is a liberal newspaper, publishes the
Speaker 1: first report, which is written by French himself. It outlines
Speaker 1: the details of the plot accurately. The Post also publishes
Speaker 1: a second, shorter piece which provides the accused plotters with
Speaker 1: an opportunity to give their denials. Now, The Post coverage
Speaker 1: here was both responsible and vital, but McGuire had not
Speaker 1: been lying when he said that his secret backers controlled
Speaker 1: much of America's print media. A second wave of coverage
Speaker 1: bursts from conservative hearst Own newspapers. These papers tended to
Speaker 1: provide only the barest details of the actual plot and
Speaker 1: spend most of their time publishing denials by the accused magnates.
Speaker 1: One popular columnist, Arthur Brisbane, who worked for the hearst
Speaker 1: owned San Francisco Examiner, suggested that somebody may have been
Speaker 1: deceiving General Butler. He portrayed the business plot as more
Speaker 1: or less a practical joke and wrote mockingly that those
Speaker 1: wicked and bad and outrageous Wall streetman were the ones
Speaker 1: who actually had the most to fear from a fascist dictatorship.
Speaker 1: Adam Yeah, a flim flamboy, Yeah, flim yeah. This dumb
Speaker 1: general he just he just he got took in by
Speaker 1: a practical joke. You know, listen, he doesn't understand, you know,
Speaker 1: Doug and I man, I imagine even like how you
Speaker 1: stand in front of Congress and like this, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like if you have this this like sinking feeling when
Speaker 1: you're trying to say something that you know is true
Speaker 1: and you're positive to people in front of you don't
Speaker 1: believe you, and you're like, uh, damn, this ain't gonna
Speaker 1: I'm stuck, ain't I you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: I wonder if I don't know why. As he was talking,
Speaker 1: that was like the moment I pictured when he was
Speaker 1: like he went to Congress to tell them that, like
Speaker 1: he's snitching, but it's like a good type of snitch
Speaker 1: to where I'm like, no, I'm trying to tell you
Speaker 1: the truth. This is what these people are doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, because it's like even coming out of
Speaker 1: his mouth, he was probably like, do I sound crazy?
Speaker 1: I might sound crazy, but I'm trying to tell you
Speaker 1: this what they're doing. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So Adam Ox,
Speaker 1: writer for The New York Times, wrote an article about
Speaker 1: the business plot, and again it's not just herst papers.
Speaker 1: The New York Times gets in on this ship. He
Speaker 1: writes an article titled Credulity Unlimited, which also mocked Butler
Speaker 1: and painted him as a crank. What can we believe,
Speaker 1: apparently anything to judge by the number of people who
Speaker 1: lend a credulous ear to the story of General Butler's
Speaker 1: five hundred fascists and Buckram marching on Washington to seize
Speaker 1: the government. Details are lacking to lend versabilitude to an
Speaker 1: otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. The whole story sounds like
Speaker 1: a gigantic hoax. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this guy's crazy talked
Speaker 1: to him. No, this silly old man thinks that the
Speaker 1: popular rich dudes, we're just saying it's fine. And there is.
Speaker 1: One of the things that really does corroborate that the
Speaker 1: story is true is there's a massive and very organized
Speaker 1: media campaign to discredit Butler. And it's not just journalists.
Speaker 1: Will Rogers, the former Cowboy actor who like half of
Speaker 1: l A is named after. Yeah, I was like wait, wait, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah that Will Rogers, publishes an article in the New
Speaker 1: York Times. He gets to write a column for The Times,
Speaker 1: and this article both mocks Smedley Butler and in the article,
Speaker 1: after making fun of Butler for being an idiot. Will
Speaker 1: Rogers volunteers to lead a fascist army in his stead.
Speaker 1: If Smedley Butler don't take that job of marching down
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania at the head of Wall Streets fighting Brigade, I
Speaker 1: would like to get my application in. I got the
Speaker 1: Gray Horse. It won't be such a novelty as people think.
Speaker 1: This is clearly bullshit. But if it's not, I'd lead
Speaker 1: a fascist army on behalf of you. Man. Katie Perry
Speaker 1: tried to buy his house out here. Oh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a nice house. It's a very nice house. Went on
Speaker 1: a field trip once anyway. Yeah. New York City Mayor
Speaker 1: Fiorello LaGuardia called the business plot a cocktail push, by
Speaker 1: which he means he thought Butler had heard the plans
Speaker 1: at a part as a joke at a party and
Speaker 1: run away with the idea. Um, that's a great you.
Speaker 1: The more I hear their defense, that's a great cover story,
Speaker 1: it's a great coverage. They were just joking. Dude, we're
Speaker 1: just drinking. It's like the guy got to this party.
Speaker 1: He don't really wrong with us. He don't know how
Speaker 1: we don't know how you work. We're just playing around. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not It's not dumb, right, These aren't idiots. Now.
Speaker 1: The Committee, the Congressional Committee, the House An American Activities Committee,
Speaker 1: continues their investigation though, and they find additional evidence of
Speaker 1: the plot. Concerted digging revealed that a number of the
Speaker 1: men implicated in the plot had recently formed a conservative
Speaker 1: lobbying group called the American Liberty League. Its members included
Speaker 1: JP Morgan Jr. Irene DuPont, the CEO of General Voters,
Speaker 1: the CEO of General Foods, and other industrial leaders controlling
Speaker 1: roughly forty billion dollars in assets, which in modern terms
Speaker 1: is three quarters of a trillion dollars. All of the
Speaker 1: richest guys and that like, these are the dudes behind
Speaker 1: it now. This digging also turns up the fact that
Speaker 1: Prescott Bush, who was heavily involved in with the Nazi government,
Speaker 1: right he's working with them on the Hamburg America Lions
Speaker 1: and stuff. Um that Prescott Bush, under the proposed American
Speaker 1: fascist government would have acted as a liaison between the
Speaker 1: American dictatorship and the Nazi government. So George W. Bush's
Speaker 1: grandpa volunteered for the job of liaison between a fascist
Speaker 1: American state and the Nazis was like, oh, I love
Speaker 1: the Nazis. I'd be perfect at this job. Yeahs so,
Speaker 1: and then gave birth to presidents, two of them. Well,
Speaker 1: his wife gave birth to presidents. Let me clear that up. Sorry, ladies,
Speaker 1: he didn't give birth to nobody yet. Okay, he donated
Speaker 1: genetic material that led to two presidents, both of whom
Speaker 1: were trash. So the committee, after its investigation, never releases
Speaker 1: an official report on the business plot, but they do
Speaker 1: give a report to Congress, and in it they say
Speaker 1: that they quote trash. Oh it's about to get trasher
Speaker 1: before it's trash. The committee goes to Congress and they
Speaker 1: say everything we checked out that Butler said, we were
Speaker 1: able to verify. They say that they quote had received
Speaker 1: evidence that certain persons had made an attempt to establish
Speaker 1: a fascist organization in this country. There is no question
Speaker 1: that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have
Speaker 1: been placed in execution win and if the financial backers
Speaker 1: deemed it expedient. The names of the individuals involved, they said,
Speaker 1: would have to be kept secret until they could be
Speaker 1: investigated and their complicity verified. So they're like, we we
Speaker 1: we looked this up. And we found a lot of
Speaker 1: evidence that it was true, but we can't confirm anything yet,
Speaker 1: and we're not going to give the names of the
Speaker 1: individuals we found evidence about because we haven't finished the investigation, right,
Speaker 1: which sounds reasonable, that's how it's supposed to work. But
Speaker 1: they never finished the investigation, oh man, after saying hey,
Speaker 1: yeah this, Yeah, we've collaborated everything you said. Okay, cool,
Speaker 1: And we don't know why the investigation doesn't get finished.
Speaker 1: There are some theories, and I'm gonna quote the Washington
Speaker 1: Post for one of them. According to journalist John Buchanan
Speaker 1: speaking to the BBC in two thousand seven, this was
Speaker 1: probably because Roosevelt struck a deal with the backers of
Speaker 1: the plot. They could avoid treason charges and possible execution
Speaker 1: if they backed off their opposition to the new deal.
Speaker 1: Sally Denton, an author who wrote a book about the
Speaker 1: business plot, thinks the press may have ignored the report
Speaker 1: at the urging of the government, which didn't want the
Speaker 1: public to know how precarious things might have been. So
Speaker 1: the government that like was threatened by this may not
Speaker 1: have wanted it to be super public knowledge, right, just
Speaker 1: like the I don't think it's a good idea for
Speaker 1: people to know how quickly they came close, they came
Speaker 1: to overthrowing us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you shouldn't notice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and FDR probably sits down with these rich guys
Speaker 1: and it's like, look, we can hang you, and it
Speaker 1: will be ugly for everybody, Like there will be consequence,
Speaker 1: it will suck for me, Like listen, or you shut
Speaker 1: the funk up and let me do the new deal.
Speaker 1: You know, I love it man, the brand. Listen, this
Speaker 1: is a bad this is bad for everybody. Everybody loses.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna cut your head off. But like, let's just
Speaker 1: I love it. Good job, FDR. Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: was probably like I don't know, I'm not I say
Speaker 1: it was the right thing. I think it would have
Speaker 1: been better to prosecute these guys. But totally, he's in
Speaker 1: a rough position. He does what it seems like the
Speaker 1: best thing to do at the time. Now, based on
Speaker 1: her research, Sally Denton believes that had Smedley Butler gone
Speaker 1: along with the plot, it would have succeeded, and he
Speaker 1: might have been the only person capable of leading that
Speaker 1: fascist coup who also would have refused to do it.
Speaker 1: It is hard to overstate. How lucky we are that
Speaker 1: he was the man they went to write, like the
Speaker 1: one guy who had that kind of respect among veterans,
Speaker 1: who had that kind of talent and that kind of experience,
Speaker 1: and also doesn't give a funk about money, right, like
Speaker 1: the perfect Yes, the perfect combo yeah down, because he
Speaker 1: could if he even wanted it, and and cared about money.
Speaker 1: He could even extort these dudes, Yeah yeah, he could,
Speaker 1: and saying they're promisingly, we'll take care of your family.
Speaker 1: Your kids are never right. You're gonna take care of
Speaker 1: my family, Joe said, take care of my neighbor's family,
Speaker 1: and to take care of my children, the children, You're
Speaker 1: gonna take care of us until the pies. But he
Speaker 1: instead decides, the thing that I swore an oath for
Speaker 1: was to defend democracy, and that's what I'm going to
Speaker 1: fucking do. Um And for his part, the business plot
Speaker 1: seems to have been the final straw in Butler's radicalization.
Speaker 1: He realizes, after having been these rich guys trying to
Speaker 1: use him as a pon, that that's all he'd been
Speaker 1: doing his entire career as a soldier. He'd been upon
Speaker 1: a banbridge uh in nineteen thirty six, he votes for
Speaker 1: the socialist presidential candidate UM In nineteen thirty five, he
Speaker 1: publishes a short book based on a series of speeches
Speaker 1: he delivered. He starts traveling around the country delivering speeches,
Speaker 1: a speech titled war is a Racket, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to read you a summary. Butler wrote of his own
Speaker 1: book that kind of explains where this goes. War is
Speaker 1: a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest,
Speaker 1: easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is
Speaker 1: the only one international in scope. It is the only
Speaker 1: one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and
Speaker 1: the losses in lives. A racket is best to scribed,
Speaker 1: I believe, as something that is not what it seems
Speaker 1: to the majority of the people. Only a small inside
Speaker 1: group knows what it is about. It is conducted for
Speaker 1: the benefit of the very few, at the expense of
Speaker 1: the very many. Out of war, a few people make
Speaker 1: huge fortunes. And he's there's a lot of good quote
Speaker 1: from Butler in general. That is good when he say
Speaker 1: the losses are in lives, but the profits are in dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah god, yeah, good god. That's a bar. And he
Speaker 1: is truly unsparing. Like another quote of his that I
Speaker 1: love our boys were sent off to die with beautiful
Speaker 1: ideals painted in front of them. No one told them
Speaker 1: that dollars and cents were the real reason they were
Speaker 1: marching off to kill and die. Got dog dude, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a homeboy the music. He's a friend, but
Speaker 1: he's an incredible represents Bamboo. Yeah from Filipino dude. Uh
Speaker 1: uh boy, he's from l A who lives in the Bay.
Speaker 1: His wife, Rocky Rivera. Both amazing artists. Uh. Their whole
Speaker 1: label be Rock There all these like left wing guerrilla
Speaker 1: warfare like super revolutionary dudes. But he was he was
Speaker 1: an l A dude, got in trouble with the law
Speaker 1: and then, you know, like any other brown kid, you
Speaker 1: go to the military to try to like you know,
Speaker 1: get out of jail and kind of the same scenario.
Speaker 1: He came out of that so radicalized, so ready to
Speaker 1: be like this is all bull and I would never
Speaker 1: send another child, you know what I'm saying. He's not
Speaker 1: at all a pacifist, Don't get me wrong. Like the
Speaker 1: brother got a collection of like ancient island weapons, let
Speaker 1: alone guns. You know what I'm saying. So he ain't
Speaker 1: no pacifist, but he's like, I'm not dying for someone
Speaker 1: else's pockets. Yeah. It's like, yeah, this is crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and Butler, Butler is that. Butler's not a fashion
Speaker 1: or not not pacifist, and he's not anti military. He
Speaker 1: loves the military, he hates what it's used for. And
Speaker 1: he when he's delivering these speed which is he's trying
Speaker 1: to get Americans on board with a complete reformation of
Speaker 1: the military. Um, he believes that it should only ever
Speaker 1: be defensive in nature, and in order to make it that,
Speaker 1: he thinks the Navy should be limited to operating within
Speaker 1: two d miles of the coastline and the Army restricted
Speaker 1: from ever leaving the confines of the continental United States. UM.
Speaker 1: Yeah now that same yeah. Yeah, that he's he's trying
Speaker 1: to like, he thinks we need a military. It just
Speaker 1: we have to find a way to stop bankers from
Speaker 1: being able to use it to fight wars for profit.
Speaker 1: That's the problem. Um. In that same year, nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: Butler gives an interview to common Sense magazine where he
Speaker 1: tells the nation, quote, I spent thirty three years and
Speaker 1: four months in active military service, and during that period,
Speaker 1: I spent most of my time as a high class
Speaker 1: muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers.
Speaker 1: In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
Speaker 1: I remember that quote, Ye remember that quote from the
Speaker 1: police one. Yeah, he was just like, man, I'm just
Speaker 1: a goon. I was just a goon. Yeah, just muscle,
Speaker 1: just a goon. And man, this needs to be in
Speaker 1: dog I wish there's a reason it's not in your
Speaker 1: history textbooks, you know, every history book. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, because yeah, because the reality is we don't have.
Speaker 1: Like I was as you were talking, I was like,
Speaker 1: do is there any figure in America now that could
Speaker 1: do that? And I'm like, I don't know, only the
Speaker 1: imaginary one, Like who's the movie The American Sniper? Was
Speaker 1: that movie? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that dude's imaginary. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. The real the real person that
Speaker 1: he was was like a lunatic, like dangerous, like murderer
Speaker 1: and a liar. Yeah yeah, and he couldn't lead up
Speaker 1: dash this insurrection. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. But
Speaker 1: like if if if the guy that that was portrayed
Speaker 1: was a real person, and maybe, but we ain't got
Speaker 1: one in real life, what I'm saying. But the one
Speaker 1: that did exist came out of the other end, going, Yo,
Speaker 1: these wars were crap, and I was just out there
Speaker 1: getting y'all's bags. Kitness is ridiculous. I was a fucking gangster.
Speaker 1: Got He spent the rest of his life giving speeches
Speaker 1: and trying to radicalize veterans and mourning in public that
Speaker 1: he and his comrades had only ever fought for, in
Speaker 1: his words, the benefit of millionaires and billionaires. He insisted
Speaker 1: that he had named names to the committee, that he had,
Speaker 1: that he had given the names of the people involved,
Speaker 1: but that those names had been removed from his testimony
Speaker 1: before it was made public. In a radio of an interview,
Speaker 1: he insisted, like most committees, it has slaughtered the little
Speaker 1: and allowed the big to escape. The big shots weren't
Speaker 1: even called to testify. Yeah, if that ain't the Straights,
Speaker 1: broy it's very And it's not for nothing that he
Speaker 1: names himself as a gangster. You know, he recognizes like
Speaker 1: it's exactly why. Yeah, I'm saying the little, the little
Speaker 1: cornerboy doing fifteen years, you know what I'm saying. But
Speaker 1: nobody go to the You know what I'm saying, that
Speaker 1: the Russian oligarch that got him fifteen bricks, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like he's living nice in the Hollywood Hills.
Speaker 1: They don't even he's not even in the testimony, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. That's crazy, And it's fucking one
Speaker 1: of the things that is because there's so much that's
Speaker 1: a bummer about this story, right that they just get
Speaker 1: away with it. But there is there's hope in it too.
Speaker 1: And and the hope, I think is in the story
Speaker 1: of Smedley Butler, this guy who could not have been
Speaker 1: a more dedicated soldier of imperialism and realizes he was
Speaker 1: wrong and spends the rest of his life fighting against you.
Speaker 1: You can't, you can't. You know, there's no time machine.
Speaker 1: You can't go back and undo what you did to
Speaker 1: freaking Haiti and Costa Rica and the Banana Wars. You
Speaker 1: can't go back and redo that. But I can do
Speaker 1: the best, my best to pay it forward. That's good man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it is a It's a real story of of redemption,
Speaker 1: of redemption, and of a man who was had a
Speaker 1: You gotta respect the amount of self knowledge to be
Speaker 1: able to admit I spent thirty three fucking years as
Speaker 1: a gangster. My friends died in a gang war over money,
Speaker 1: you know, liken ours, but we don't even get to
Speaker 1: collect Big Sean on it. Last record was like, dude,
Speaker 1: John dying over street corners you don't even own, like
Speaker 1: and it's like, yeah, that like that where you just like,
Speaker 1: we don't even oh we don't even own these projects.
Speaker 1: We'll own these property. Dang, that's crazy. Yeah, anyway, that's
Speaker 1: the business plot. So it happened here. It happened here.
Speaker 1: Uh and the only reason it didn't happen all the
Speaker 1: way is that there happened to be one really good
Speaker 1: man in the middle of it. Dang, that is crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So thanks Smedley Butler. Right, we appreciate you one good dude. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I will say I think that's maybe another one
Speaker 1: of the optimistic things take out of it is that
Speaker 1: it is a story of sometimes a single person with
Speaker 1: the right who is willing to make a moral stand
Speaker 1: can be the difference between calamity um and and and
Speaker 1: not calamity. You know, yeah, wow, any proper you got
Speaker 1: some plug doubles to plug as we as we roll
Speaker 1: out of behind the insurrections. This has been You can't
Speaker 1: say a pleasure, can you? But it it was. I
Speaker 1: enjoy every time I get to like work with you
Speaker 1: all and here about the most horrible things in the world.
Speaker 1: They're always just They're a great time of my day.
Speaker 1: Although it takes me like an hour to recoup after
Speaker 1: we do this. Um, but yeah, thank you so much
Speaker 1: again for having me prop hip hop dot com. Uh
Speaker 1: if this as of the day that you're hearing this, um,
Speaker 1: which is Thursday, right is Thursday one. Yeah, I will
Speaker 1: be dropping new music the next day Friday morning, new video,
Speaker 1: new music. So uh, please go to proper pop dot com.
Speaker 1: You can subscribe to the YouTube, get on Spotify of
Speaker 1: a ton of new music. Um a new coffee drop
Speaker 1: into yeah, propit pop dot com. I gotta get you
Speaker 1: a bean man, Yeah you do, Yeah, you do. Gotta
Speaker 1: get you on poor Gummy Fridays too. Man, you're not
Speaker 1: on Instagram? Well, yeah, I do have an Instagram. I
Speaker 1: only follow one guy so far, and he's the guy
Speaker 1: who's making knives for me. You have an Instagram. I
Speaker 1: feel betrayed. I wanted to look at knives. I mean
Speaker 1: I forgive that part, but but I could. I could
Speaker 1: add I could have coffee and knives be my Instagram things.
Speaker 1: What about Sophie and Anderson? I get I talked to
Speaker 1: you on signal. This is true, this is heartful. But
Speaker 1: I feel you. I feel you. Either way, We're going
Speaker 1: to figure it out. Yes, I do you if you're
Speaker 1: a fun follow. Wait, maybe you log into the Bastards
Speaker 1: pods Instagram and I've never posted or whatever it is
Speaker 1: you do on Instagram. Do you post? Yeah, you post? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could add you. All right, Well, don't find me
Speaker 1: on anyway, grand because I'm not going to tell any
Speaker 1: action there. You'll find me prop on Instagram. No one
Speaker 1: else I will find yes, um and yeah, Well we'll
Speaker 1: be back next week for something different. Um. It'll be
Speaker 1: fun uh and a little bit of a break, and
Speaker 1: then we'll probably get back to talking about genocides pretty soon.
Speaker 1: Won't be long genocide every month. That's the behind the
Speaker 1: Bastards promise. That is our promise. I have a good one. Byewses.
Speaker 1: After thirty years, it's time to return to the halls
Speaker 1: of West Beverly High and hang out at the peach pit.
Speaker 1: On the podcast one O MG visit Jenny Guards and
Speaker 1: Tory Spelling for a rewatch of the A series Beverly
Speaker 1: Hills nine O two one oh. From the very beginning,
Speaker 1: we get to tell the fans all of the behind
Speaker 1: the scenes stories to actually happen, so they know what
Speaker 1: happened on camera obviously, but we can tell them all
Speaker 1: the good stuff that happen off camera. Listen to nine
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Speaker 1: had the feeling that there's something strange about reality. According
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Speaker 1: On the show, post Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick examine
Speaker 1: neurological quandaries, cosmic mysteries, evolutionary marvels, and much more. Prosthetics
Speaker 1: are true testaments to not only human craftsmanship and ingenuity,
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Speaker 1: Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis, a petty
Speaker 1: criminal named James Earl Ray was arrested. Case closed right
Speaker 1: James Sylvay was a pawn for the official story. Some
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