0:01

What's overthrowing the government?

0:03

My consortium of shady financial

0:06

interests?

0:09

What's yeah, I don't

0:11

know, I got no. Uh.

0:15

This is behind the Insurrections

0:17

of the Find Behind the Bastards mini

0:19

series about fascist attempts to seize

0:21

power. Uh. And this is our last

0:24

episode of this beautiful mini series. We

0:26

did have a seventh episode planned, but UM,

0:29

I had some personal news. That's

0:32

that's gonna alter our work

0:34

schedule a little bit. But we will get to that episode

0:36

at some point, but not next week. UM.

0:40

My guest with this one, as as with

0:42

always on our mini series, Jason

0:44

Petty a k A. Prop. What's

0:47

alwa's al? What's properties in a building? Now?

0:50

Prop? I'm gonna come right to the chase. Have

0:52

you heard of the business plot?

0:55

No? Oh good?

0:58

Oh well. One of the things

1:00

that's fun about this is that, um,

1:03

one of our characters from behind the Police

1:05

is the main character of this story. UM,

1:08

our old friend Smedley Butler. Yeah,

1:10

the guy who ran the police in Philadelphia,

1:12

the marine l that's that's going to be

1:14

exciting. Yeah, I know

1:16

that guy. So the business

1:19

plot is there's a reason

1:21

why you haven't heard of it. Uh. A lot

1:23

of people have put in a lot of effort to make sure that

1:25

people don't talk about this anymore. UM.

1:28

Imagine a cadre of plutocratic

1:31

bankers, financiers, and media moguls

1:33

all conspired to take over US

1:35

democracy and institute of fascist

1:37

state hidden as a fake democracy.

1:40

UM. Shouldn't take a whole lot of imagination.

1:43

Yeah. Um,

1:46

that's what people say to record industry is yeah,

1:48

the record industry or the way a

1:50

lot of our government works right now, like the fact

1:52

that Janet Yellen uh had

1:54

financial ties to one of the giant hedge

1:56

funds that shut down the game stock

1:59

trading and stuff like. Yeah, you know, it may

2:01

sound that sounds familiar to people, UM,

2:03

but usually we're talking about it. Most

2:06

people were talking about you know when we talk about like,

2:08

well, there's a codra of elites who control you

2:10

know, the government. Um, they meet

2:12

it in sort of a deep state. Since

2:15

but there was a time where

2:17

the wealthiest men in America engaged

2:19

in a very real conspiracy to have a

2:21

paramilitary army sees the levels

2:23

of power overthrow the president and institute

2:26

of fascist state. UM.

2:28

And there's people alive today who lived through

2:30

it. It happened in the thirties. So

2:33

yeah, yeah, yeah, this is this

2:36

is a story people should know. Um, I think

2:38

you'll find this one interesting, props. So, okay,

2:40

is gonna this is gonna be one of those ones where I'm like, I'm

2:42

actually going in Yeah,

2:45

this is a fun one. Yes. So

2:48

our our story starts with one of my favorite

2:50

historical figures. As I told you, Major General

2:52

Smedley Butler. We're talking about old Smedley again.

2:55

Um, so we're gonna start

2:57

by talking about him because he's at the center of all this. So

3:00

okay. Smedley Butler was born in eighteen

3:02

eighty one, who was the eldest son of a Quaker

3:04

family from Westchester, Pennsylvania. His

3:07

father, Thomas, was a congressman and his

3:09

maternal grandfather was in Congress as well.

3:12

So this is a guy who comes from a lot of privilege

3:14

in power. Um. He

3:16

attended the Haverford School, which is a secondary

3:19

school for rich kids from Philadelphia,

3:21

and he thrived in this upper crust, elite

3:23

institution. He became captain of the school

3:25

baseball team and quarterback of the football

3:27

team, and he seemed to be on the road

3:29

to a career in politics or business.

3:31

But then thirty eight days before his seventeenth

3:34

birthday, he left school to enlist

3:36

in the United States Marine Corps. UM.

3:38

So he's on like a path to follow you into

3:41

business or into politics, and then when

3:43

he's sixteen, he leaves home to join the

3:45

Marines. Now this pisses off his dad,

3:47

who didn't want his kid joining the Marines. But

3:50

the reason Smedley had joined is

3:52

that the Spanish American War had just started,

3:54

which we chatted about of it last week, and Smedley

3:56

wanted to fight UM. So he lied

3:59

about his age too the Marines and was commissioned

4:01

as a second lieutenant. He landed in Guantanamo

4:03

Bay, Cuba, shortly after it was captured, and he didn't

4:05

see any action there. His unit

4:07

was sent back to the mainland and he could have been

4:09

cashiered out, you know, gone back into

4:12

go you know, doing a business thing. But

4:14

he decided to stay in the Marines and take a commission

4:16

as a first lieutenant and go fight in the Philippines.

4:19

UM. He was not immediately good at war.

4:21

He was initially tasked with garrison

4:23

duty, which boared him so much that he just spent

4:26

all of his time drunk. He was at one point

4:28

relieved of command temporarily due to something

4:30

he did in his bedroom, which is all that we know about

4:32

the incident. He did.

4:35

He did something with alcohol in his bedroom

4:37

that made his superiors be like, this guy can't

4:39

be in charge of people for a while.

4:45

Yeah, yeah, Phil, Phil in the blanks, you

4:47

know. Um.

4:51

So in October of eighteen nine, he

4:53

saw his first combat action when he led

4:55

three Marines to conquer a town from the people

4:58

who you know lived there, right, Like, this

5:00

is a colonial, brutal colonial war, still

5:02

colonial, got it? Like he's he's

5:04

a he's the bad guy right there. We're we're the bad

5:06

guys in that war. Um. Yeah.

5:09

And Butler fell in love with battle and with

5:11

the Marine Corps. He just was

5:13

very it was very good at fighting. Like

5:15

he this is a really difficult,

5:17

desperate situation, and

5:20

he comports himself well,

5:22

he's good at leading men in combat.

5:24

Um. And he becomes

5:27

after fighting so enthralled with the Marine Corps

5:29

that he hires a tattoo artist to give him

5:31

a full from his neck to his belly tattoo

5:34

of the Marine Corps emblem like

5:37

this, He's very into the Marines. Okay,

5:41

loves him some being a marine. Yeah,

5:44

you're getting a full day. That's that's that's

5:46

some being affleck you know what I'm saying. But I

5:49

think, yeah, there's I know people,

5:51

including some Marine bets, who will argue that the Marine

5:54

Corps kind of the cultist of the of the military

5:56

branches. Um. Yeah, And

5:58

some might argue that's because they're the best at what they

6:00

do. Um. But Butler is definitely

6:03

drinking the fucking kool aid. Right. So

6:07

he gets sent to China next as part of the US

6:09

detachment sent over during the Boxer Rebellion.

6:11

He's wounded in combat and despite having

6:14

a bullet like, one of his men gets hurt and

6:16

he runs out to get him and gets shot in

6:18

the leg. And despite having a bullet in his leg, he

6:20

drags multiple men to safety while

6:22

actively under fire and bleeding. Um

6:25

and again the box Rebellion another brutal colonial

6:28

action. Um, but he's

6:30

he comports himself very well. Now,

6:32

at that time, commissioned officers were unable

6:35

to receive the Medal of Honor, otherwise he probably

6:37

would have earned one, but he received some decorations

6:39

for his gallantry under fire. Smedley

6:42

Butler would spend the next couple

6:44

of decades as he would

6:46

grow into what was probably the best soldier

6:48

in the American Empire. Like he is

6:51

an exceptional imperial soldier.

6:54

Um. He fights in the Banana Wars, which were

6:56

a series of police actions and intervention in

6:58

the Caribbean and in Central America made on behalf

7:00

of US business interests, killing people

7:02

for He's he's killing people

7:05

for banana companies. He's killing people for United

7:07

you know. Uh. He fights in Honduras, where

7:09

he was constantly near death with fever and

7:12

received the nickname Old Gimlet Eye

7:14

because his eye his every

7:16

like he was. He looked terrifying. He was this

7:19

gaunt, scar filled monster

7:21

with bloodshot eyes. Um

7:23

and like just feverish. Yeah, that's his Old

7:25

Gimlet Eye is, Like he looks like a fucking a

7:28

wraith. You know. I

7:30

love this guy. He's except for his

7:34

except for his colonial colonial stuff.

7:37

Yeah. Yeah, he's fighting on the wrong

7:39

side, but he's objectively a badass.

7:41

Um. So Butler racks up promotion

7:44

after promotion. He enforces US foreign policy

7:46

in Nicaragua. He sent us a spy during

7:48

the Mexican American War. He sent us a spy to

7:50

Mexico City or one of the wars

7:53

that we fall with Mexico. He sent us a spy to Mexico

7:55

City to help the United States gather information

7:58

for the Siege of Vera Cruz, which a lot

8:00

of people don't know we were doing in the early nineteen

8:02

hundreds, We like bombed Vera Cruz. Yeah,

8:05

yeah, there's a good warren Zevon

8:07

song about it. Butler was one of nearly

8:10

sixty American servicemen who received Medals

8:12

of Honor for their service in Mexico because he fights

8:14

in in Vera Cruz as well. Uh, And

8:16

virtually all of those medals were complete bullshit, Like

8:18

they hand out sixty medals of honor

8:21

for the siege of Vera Cruz, and they're doing

8:23

it because Woodrow Wilson, the President,

8:25

knows that, like this is an ugly colonial

8:27

war, and he wants to dress it up by making it look

8:29

like by putting out a bunch of stories

8:31

of heroism and stuff. So he hands out

8:34

the military's highest honor like candy. And there's actually

8:36

a bunch of It's a big controversy at the

8:38

time because a lot of veterans are like, you're devaluing

8:40

the Medal of honor by using it this way

8:43

UM and Smedley. Butler receives one

8:45

of these show medals of honor and he tries

8:47

to return it, arguing that he'd done nothing to deserve

8:49

it and he shouldn't get it, but he's ordered

8:51

by his superiors to keep the medal and wear it

8:54

on his uniform. UM. So

8:56

you're seeing he's started. He's starting to like realize,

8:58

like that's kind of messed up. Why why, like

9:00

I I don't deserve this, don't give this to me? Um

9:03

like that. Yeah, he's he keeps me,

9:05

He keeps me like imbalanced. Yeah

9:08

yeah, yeah, you're gonna he's he's he's

9:10

a growth story, Smedley. Smedley is always

9:12

changing, especially knowing

9:15

because of the behind the police stuff, like I know where

9:17

this guy lands where I'm just like, why

9:19

am I feeling any stupidly about you? Yeah?

9:21

It's it's that's that's not even quite Yeah,

9:23

well we'll talk about it. So in Haiti. In

9:25

Haiti, Butler wins his second Medal of honor

9:28

UM and this was one for actual fighting.

9:30

His unit was sent into the country when the president

9:32

was murdered by a mob. Butler

9:34

and his troops repeatedly outnumbered by insurgents,

9:37

and over a long campaign succeeded in breaking

9:39

the insurgency and establishing order

9:41

for the U. S back dictatorship. Butler

9:44

himself helped organize the Haitian police,

9:46

and in his own recollection, he and his men

9:48

hunted enemy rebels quote like pigs.

9:51

Um. So again this he is a brutal

9:53

soldier of empire, like building the police

9:56

force for a dictator. Um.

9:58

You have to kind of look

10:00

at what. Yeah, it's not

10:03

great. Um, it's not great

10:05

now. Smedley was promoted to brigadier general

10:07

at age thirty seven. He was in

10:09

remains one of the most highly decorated soldiers

10:12

in the entire history of the United States military.

10:14

He's got two medals of honor. Um,

10:16

and he's he's like, you know, as a general rule,

10:18

generals don't get medals of honor,

10:20

certainly not two of them. Um, they don't

10:23

tend to be fighting guys. But Smedley is a fighting

10:25

guy. He's not a stand back and give orders. He should

10:27

get stuck in kind of dude. Um. He

10:29

desperately wanted to fight in France during World War

10:31

One, but he was not assigned combat duty. This

10:34

is probably because by the later stage of his

10:36

career, he was seen as politically unreliable

10:38

due to the tendency he developed over the years

10:40

to say exactly what he felt. But the

10:43

retired in late nineteen thirty one. He

10:45

ran for Senate in nineteen thirty two, supporting

10:47

prohibition, but he was defeated. And

10:49

in the late stage of his career, while he's still in the

10:51

Marines, is when he's running the police in Philadelphia

10:54

during that brief tenure. UM.

10:57

So this is you know, our story starts after

11:00

he's he you know, he took what he learned in Haiti

11:02

and tried to apply it to the Philadelphia police. It didn't

11:04

work out great. But he's kind of the father in

11:06

a lot of ways, one of the fathers of militarizing

11:09

the U. S. Police. UM.

11:11

And now he's he's retired, he tries to get

11:13

into politics. He's not good at it. UM

11:15

And by the early nineteen thirties Smedley

11:18

Butler, who is probably the greatest

11:20

soldier in any empire ever had

11:22

UM had started to change his mind on

11:24

some things. A lot of this had to do with the

11:26

Great Depression and a social movement that has

11:28

spawned called the Bonus Army. The

11:31

gist of it is that when the economy crashed,

11:33

a bunch of World War One veterans found themselves unemployed,

11:35

in a lot of cases, homeless and starving. These

11:38

guys had been given what we're called service

11:40

certificates in nineteen twenty four, which

11:42

was the government saying we will pay you

11:45

a bunch of money for what you did

11:47

in the war, but not yet because these

11:49

were bonds, so they couldn't redeem them until nineteen

11:51

forty five. Right. It was like imaginary

11:53

money, imaginary money that like, in

11:55

thirty years, this will be enough money to maybe retire

11:58

on, but like not now. But there's we're

12:00

starving now, you know, like I can't wait another fifty

12:02

years? Cool? Um, So obviously

12:05

don't seemed like a good deal. But after two years

12:08

of economic collapse, a lot of people just couldn't

12:10

wait anymore. Uh. And in June of nineteen thirty

12:12

two, more than forty veterans protested

12:15

in Washington, d c u. They

12:17

called themselves the Bonus Expeditionary

12:19

Force or the Bonus Army, and

12:21

they advocated for Congress to pass an immediate

12:23

soldiers bonus for serving in World War One.

12:26

Now again, we're all living through our own version of

12:28

of something similar. So you know what comes next. Congress

12:31

adjourned without actually doing anything. Here

12:35

we go. This pisses the bonus army

12:37

off and they started getting loud and unruly, so the

12:39

shot two of them, which eventually provoked

12:41

a riot the whole massive men set

12:43

up this enormous camp in order to hold up and

12:45

wait for Congress to do something. Right. They

12:48

like, build a camp and they're like, we're not leaving

12:50

until you give us some fucking money. Um.

12:53

The bill makes its way into Congress, but it gets

12:55

defeated. Congress, based on some powerful

12:57

financial interests, decides it's too expensive to

12:59

pay these veterans UM, so

13:01

they lose. They don't get their bonus. But the camp doesn't

13:03

disperse. Um. And when the camp doesn't

13:06

disperse, the Hoover administration announces

13:08

that it's sending in the army to evict the soldiers.

13:11

Now, it was at this point that General Smedley

13:13

Butler visited the camp. Um. He told the

13:15

soldiers that he thought they were well within their rights

13:17

to lobby Congress. Corporations can why

13:19

can't Why can't people like us? You know? Um?

13:22

He spent the night there with the men, he had

13:24

breakfast with them. He told them they were good soldiers

13:26

and he was proud of them. Um And a week

13:29

or so later he leaves. In a week or so later,

13:31

America's most overrated general, Douglas McArthur

13:33

disperses the crowd with a mix of men on horseback

13:36

and poison gas. Um

13:38

and this radicalizes Butler.

13:41

Um. Initially he just becomes very

13:43

anti Herbert Hoover and and you

13:45

know, advocates for Hoover to get

13:47

his ass kicked in the election that year. And Hoover

13:49

does lose reelection that year. It turned out

13:51

to maybe be a bad idea. I

13:55

can't turn on the people. No, no, And he's a ship

13:57

president in general. Um

14:00

So, obviously Fdr Franklin Delano Rose

14:02

about wins wins the election that year,

14:04

he becomes the president. He promises Americans

14:06

a new deal, which wealth they capitalists

14:09

saw as a clear sign that Roosevelt was about

14:11

to open the door to Soviet communism and take

14:13

all of their money.

14:16

Why are you also scared all

14:18

the time? Man? We're

14:21

gonna talk about that. There's an interesting story

14:23

there. Um So. One of the men who get

14:25

scared by the New Deal is a guy named Robert

14:27

Sterling Clark, and he's the heir to the singer

14:30

sewing machine for fortune. Um.

14:32

Everybody's seen a singer sewing machine. That's

14:34

the kind of money this guy has, you know. That's

14:36

interesting. Yeah. Yeah, And we're talking singer

14:39

sewing machines in the thirties when everybody

14:41

uses them all the time. Actually, every house

14:43

had it. It's yeah, it's not a hobby. It's the only

14:45

way you have pants. Um.

14:50

Another guy who got scared was a Wall Street

14:52

financier named Grayson M. P. Murphy.

14:55

And another was Prescott Bush,

14:57

the father of President George H. W.

14:59

Bu And who is it that? Yeah, yeah,

15:01

he he really doesn't like the New Deal. Um.

15:04

And Prescott Bush is an investment

15:07

banker on Wall Street at the time. Um

15:09

okay, yeah, So these

15:11

three are the best known members of what came

15:14

to be called the Business Plot. And we'll

15:16

talk about them all a bit more. But before

15:18

we get into their plan to overthrow

15:20

the United States government and institute a fascist

15:22

state, I should probably make it clear that

15:24

a lot of rich Americans in the nineteen thirties

15:27

wanted to at least see FDR thrown out

15:29

on his ask for suggesting that rich people be taxed

15:31

to stop poor people from dying in the street.

15:34

Again, not surprising to anyone that it's

15:37

not It wasn't new then, Yes,

15:42

um, I'm gonna read of I found a very good

15:44

summary of of kind of this situation

15:46

and the American culture at the time from

15:48

a college thesis by Bradley Galka of the

15:50

University of Albany that I really recommend reading.

15:52

He does a great job of putting this all together.

15:54

Quote William

15:57

Manchester, in his book The Glory and the Dream,

15:59

describes the fear which upper class Americans

16:01

had of a lower class revolt in the months before

16:03

Roosevelt's inauguration. Among the propertied

16:06

classes, he writes, the distinction between the

16:08

poor wanting bread and a full on communist

16:10

revolutionary was often non existent.

16:13

The rich would have to take their security into

16:15

their own hands. If the government could not keep

16:17

order, each man must look to his own Businessmen

16:20

in a number of cities formed committees to cope

16:22

with nameless terrors, should railroad

16:24

and telephone lines be cut and surrounding

16:26

highways blocked, Candles and canned

16:28

goods were stockpiled. A Hollywood director

16:30

carried with him a wardrobe of old clothes so that

16:33

he could disappear into the crowd on a

16:35

moment's notice. In New York hotels,

16:37

discovered that wealthy guests who usually leased

16:39

suits for the winter, were holding up in their country

16:41

homes. Some had mounted machine guns

16:44

on their roofs. Manchester goes

16:46

on to say that the paranoid elites were not really

16:48

so paranoid. The evidence strongly

16:50

suggests. He writes that had Roosevelt

16:52

in fact been another Hoover, the United States

16:54

would have followed seven Latin American countries

16:56

whose governments had been overthrown by depression

16:58

victims. So there is revolution

17:00

in the air, and it scares the funk out

17:02

of these people there bolton machine guns to their country

17:05

houses, you know. Um.

17:08

So the fears of this particular group

17:10

of rich white dudes were further confirmed

17:12

by the fact that left wing writers and intellectuals

17:14

were louder than ever in their anticipation of a

17:16

coming communist revolution. Things

17:18

were, from the outside, at least, looking pretty

17:20

good in Soviet Russia, compared to at least

17:22

the reality that a lot of Americans knew. In

17:25

nineteen thirty two, the socialist presidential

17:27

candidate we used to have socialist presidential

17:29

candidates tripled

17:34

his share of the vote from the nine election.

17:36

Um, and uh, yes, so

17:38

socialism is actually doing starting to do pretty

17:41

well in American politics. Socialism

17:43

was mainstream in a way that seems impossible

17:45

now. One example of how mainstream

17:48

it was, Governor Floyd Olson of

17:50

Minnesota announced that he would not

17:52

take any recruit for the National Guard, who

17:54

quote doesn't carry a red card,

17:56

because he said, Minnesota is a

17:59

left wing state. Like, I'm communists

18:02

in the army. I'm

18:04

the governor of Minnesota.

18:09

What world is this? Okay?

18:11

Yeah? So yeah, Obviously,

18:13

if you've got a left wing governor of an entire state

18:16

saying Minnesota is socialist and we're raising

18:18

an army, a lot of capitalists are going

18:20

to get freaked out. Whoa, whoa,

18:24

whoa. Yeah. The

18:27

right wing governor of Kansas, Alf Landon

18:29

declared that quote, the iron hand of a

18:31

national dictator is in preference

18:33

to a paralytic stroke. So the

18:36

right is saying we need a dictator, and the

18:38

left is saying we need an army. Um.

18:41

You might recognize this as kind of identical

18:43

in rhetoric to both what we were hearing in Portugal

18:45

and Spain before those countries had couz Right,

18:47

Portugal saying like an iron chancellor.

18:50

Yeah, he's saying, maybe the iron hand of a dictator,

18:53

you know, yeah, same rhetoric. Republicans

18:56

were surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly,

18:58

willing to endorse outright fascism

19:00

over socialism. Senator David

19:02

Reid of Pennsylvania, a Republican,

19:04

stated, if this country ever needed a

19:07

Mussolini, it needs one now. Wait

19:09

wait, wait, you let that come about your mouth. He

19:13

let that come out of his mouth. Okay, okay,

19:16

you are not you are not thinking. You're not thinking

19:18

a long game, big homie. Okay, long

19:21

game. Things turn out kind of upside down

19:23

for Mussolini. But that's a story

19:25

for another day. So in

19:27

saying this, Senator Reid was tapping

19:29

into what was at that point more or less

19:32

an American meme, a surprising

19:34

love of Mussolini. Benito

19:36

Mussolini was huge in America

19:38

in this period. This is like the twenties and thirties.

19:41

People did not know that. So

19:44

I did not know because I spent so you know, obviously

19:46

during this time, I'm

19:48

I'm in Harlem. Yeah. My whole history

19:51

is what's happening with black people right now? You know what I'm saying.

19:53

So I never even thought about my

19:56

lord, Like there was Mussolini standing

19:58

yeah, okay, yeah, that's what's half sting with white people

20:00

at the time. They're getting

20:02

real jazz. You

20:07

here have been jazz. Mussolini

20:09

kind of fly man. That guy.

20:11

Look at the way he wears boots.

20:15

So. Historian John P. Diggins

20:17

argues that a large number of American journalists

20:20

in the twenties and thirties supported Italy's

20:22

fascist regime from the March on Rome out

20:24

up to the outbreak of Italy's invasion at the Ethiopia

20:27

in ninety five. That's kind of what like

20:29

stops the Mussolini uh

20:32

honeymoon period when he gasses

20:34

a bunch of people to death. Um,

20:37

But up until that point, he's really big.

20:39

Diggins writes that a large number of American journalists

20:42

quote succumbed to fascist propaganda

20:44

and if you actually prostituted

20:46

themselves in the pay of the Italian government.

20:49

So Mussolini spends a lot of

20:51

money, um, trying to push articles

20:54

and think pieces that would give fascism a positive

20:56

reputation in the United States. He's bribing reporters

20:58

and editors UM to write articles

21:01

that make fascism seem good. Now

21:03

History and Jeanne mcnowne uh

21:05

notes that he Mussolini spent particular

21:07

effort influencing quote, the financiers

21:09

who needed to be able to count on favorable future

21:12

conditions for their European investments. Mussolini's

21:15

favorite target and his best friends in the United

21:17

States were JP Morgan and his family.

21:23

You go dropping his names, he's out

21:25

of nowhere names. We're like, wait,

21:27

that guy, Like, the story just turned so

21:30

weird, that JP Morgan, that

21:32

JP Morgan loved fascism

21:35

turns out wild. This

21:37

is when I wish I had one of those buttons so I could do

21:39

that. Yeah.

21:43

Now, another big Mussolini fan and

21:45

his primary propaganda distributor

21:47

was the Press Syndicate run by William

21:49

Randolph Hurst UM, also

21:52

big fan of fascism.

21:55

So we'll talk a little bit more about Hurst in a bit,

21:57

But I want to note that there were also some very good reporters

21:59

at the time who saw what was happening, what Mussolini

22:01

was doing, and who spoke out against it lucidly

22:04

improperly. The Chicago Tribunes

22:06

George Selds was probably one of

22:08

the best journalists for this. He wrote, quote,

22:11

far away fascism has been attacked, exposed,

22:13

and denounced by the same publications which for

22:16

years ran articles lauding Mussolini

22:18

and his notable backers in all lands and

22:20

the Hurst Newspapers, which published from nineteen

22:22

thirty four to Pearl Harbor dozens of signed

22:24

propaganda articles by Dr Gebel's Gearing

22:27

and other Nazis now call them names,

22:29

but no publication which takes money from certain

22:31

big business elements will dare name the native

22:34

or nearby fascists. In many instances,

22:36

the publications themselves are part of our own fascism,

22:39

and that selves is kind

22:41

of recognizing. And it was

22:43

one of the few guys to be like, really try

22:45

to drum home, drive them openly and this he wrote

22:48

this obviously after World War two started. It like, oh,

22:50

yeah, as soon as we're war, y'all are against Mussolini

22:52

and Hitler. But you let them publish fucking

22:54

articles before you before

22:57

this ship happened. Come

22:59

on, you ignore, yeah.

23:01

Selds argued that fascism, American

23:04

fascism was not just limited to lunatic

23:06

fringes of society, but was influential

23:09

in major economic, social, and political

23:11

circles. He asserted that there were communists

23:13

in the United States who quote organized big

23:15

business in a movement against labor, signed

23:18

a pact with Nazi agents for political

23:20

and economic penetration of the US, founded

23:23

a million dollar a year propaganda outfit to corrupt

23:25

the press, radio schools, and churches, and

23:27

delayed the winning of the war through the acts of dollar

23:29

a year men looking out for present profits

23:31

and future monopoly rather than for the quick defeat

23:33

of fascism. And there's

23:36

a lot of these guys. And like, when

23:38

you're looking at American corporations who

23:41

directly with their money supported fascism

23:43

and funded fascist propaganda. You're

23:45

talking General Motors, you're talking the

23:47

DuPont Corporation, and you're talking

23:50

Readers Digest who

23:52

were weigh ins in fascism.

23:55

God dog man, It's

23:57

like, yeah, there's no ending,

24:00

bro, there's just no Wow.

24:03

We don't talk about the time Reader's Digest

24:05

was whole hog for Mussolini. Yeah,

24:08

like again, yeah, that's number

24:10

three. The name you never thought you'd get. When

24:12

the last time you said, will you because you when

24:15

the last time any of y'all said the word reader's

24:17

digen. I've been published in them and I

24:19

don't think about them.

24:22

Roberts, what that's

24:24

funny? Yeah,

24:27

but you know who won't fund

24:29

a fascist propaganda campaign to

24:31

convince financiers that Benito Mussolini

24:34

has the right idea? Pick me, pick me, pick me. I

24:36

know the answer to the answer and the answer who who

24:38

is it? Who won't do that? Sophie, the Fine Products

24:40

and Services that sponsor this podcast nailed

24:43

it, nail We're

24:50

back, and God almighty, I know that

24:52

JP Morgan. The bank does advert

24:55

throw in random adds sometimes, and I kind

24:57

of hope one came in and between as we're talking

25:00

about incredible. Uh,

25:03

it's very funny, Um,

25:07

very funny. So uh, this

25:10

is all all of this stuff that we're talking about, is what's cooking

25:12

off in the background when a funkload of rich

25:14

guys and we don't know all of the folks involved

25:16

or who they were. We'll talk about why near the end of this,

25:18

but obviously some of them are JP

25:21

Morgan, like um,

25:24

William Randolph Hurst is is almost certainly

25:26

a part of it. There's a good chance Henry Ford was, but we don't

25:28

know exactly who was involved. We know some

25:30

of the people though, including George

25:33

H. W. Bush's dad. So at any rate, this

25:35

cabal of financiers and rich guys

25:37

pick a couple of patsy's to do the grunt

25:39

work because they decide, okay,

25:42

you know, the very wealthiest men are like, Okay,

25:44

we need to find a way to take power, and

25:46

we need to do it stealthily because Americans

25:48

won't stand for an open fascist coup.

25:51

Um, so we're going to need They pick

25:54

a couple of guys to kind of do the grunt work

25:56

of actually organizing this fascist

25:58

coup. And the dudes they pick are are

26:00

Gerald C. McGuire and Bob Doyle,

26:03

um. And they're these guys are bond salesmen,

26:05

right, their stock traders essentially, um.

26:08

And they're both veterans imaginary

26:10

money again, yeah, their

26:12

imaginary money guys. Uh. And

26:14

they're both members of the American Legion, which

26:16

had been established to support veterans

26:19

rights and activities. And they're both vets, you know, um,

26:21

which is not you know a lot of people are vets. World War

26:23

One's just ended. So these guys,

26:26

like these rich dudes, some of whom were

26:28

had also been veterans. UM had watched

26:30

what had happened with the Bonus Army in d C. They'd

26:32

seen tens of thousands of veterans march

26:35

on Washington UM and obviously

26:37

they hadn't supported those guys getting any money

26:39

because it would have been taxing rich people. But they

26:41

thought there was potential and having tens of

26:43

thousands of combat hardened men march

26:45

on the capitol, and they basically started saying

26:48

to themselves, what if we could harness

26:50

that kind of force and put it under the control

26:52

of a guy that we control and they trust,

26:55

maybe we could overthrow the government. WHOA

27:00

And Americans wouldn't be because they'd say, oh, these

27:02

are our vets, you know, they're they're coming into

27:04

fix things, you know. Yeah, well there,

27:06

you know, we support our troops exactly.

27:08

It's a good idea, you know, you

27:10

get to overthrow. So obviously they're

27:12

looking at who can we who can we put in control

27:15

of tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands

27:17

of veterans who will be easy for us

27:19

to control, but also who everyone respects

27:21

and loves and who no one's going to accuse of any ulterior

27:23

motives. Oh my god, who is it. Well,

27:25

it's the perfect soldier of empire, the greatest

27:28

imperial warrior whoever existed, Retired

27:30

General Smedley Butler. They're

27:34

like, this is the guy who can do it. And

27:36

he and they look look at

27:38

all of these all of these wars that we profited

27:41

from, that we got America into to make money.

27:43

He fought in and ran things. Like he he's

27:45

already done this for us. He's perfect, you

27:48

know. Damn Yeah.

27:50

So I'm gonna quote right up by our Kia

27:52

Publishing for what happens next. Yeah

27:54

yeah, they's yeah, like he's he's the obviously,

27:57

he's who you go with. Quote.

27:59

During a first meeting with Butler, McGuire

28:01

and Doyle asked the Major General to speak at

28:03

a Legion convention in Chicago, claiming

28:06

they wanted to point out the various problems with

28:08

the Legion's leadership. But there was at

28:10

first open to this idea, knowing that the Legion

28:12

had several administrative issues that ultimately

28:14

compromised veteran benefits. So they're like, hey, the

28:17

Legions having a vote in convention to like vote

28:19

on it's its leaders. You know,

28:21

we are also vets and like we you

28:23

know obviously you're you're the guy we respect

28:25

the most. Would you give a speech about some of the problems our

28:27

organization is happening? And he's like, sure, you know, it seems

28:30

like a reasonable thing to do. He's

28:32

always going to try to help out soldiers when

28:34

he can. Um. But

28:36

then he as he kind of looks

28:38

through the speech that they've written, he realizes that it

28:40

says almost nothing about the American Legion leadership

28:42

and is instead entirely about the gold

28:45

standard and about how the government

28:47

needs to go back to the gold standard. Yo,

28:52

I the clapper because I'm like, that is a

28:55

juke. That is a really good june. Yeah,

28:57

that's that's that's a zag. And Smedley's

29:01

like, wait a second, what

29:04

I thought you wanted me to help get the American

29:06

Legion working better? Why the funk? Do I care about

29:08

the gold standards? I care about that?

29:10

Yeah? Yeah. Um.

29:13

So they were like, basically the what

29:16

was that The actual case here is that all of these bankers

29:18

were scared that they had gold back loans

29:20

from the government that weren't going to be paid back in full

29:23

by the president. Um.

29:25

And you know, they also kind of wanted to get

29:27

Butler used to working for them as their agents

29:29

and see if they could like use them further. It's a couple

29:31

of things going on here that is textbook

29:34

rich guy man, very textbook rich,

29:37

like just right on the nose. And

29:39

what they don't realize about Butler is

29:41

that he's not the perfect imperial

29:44

soldier anymore. By this point, he's he's become

29:46

a socialist um and he

29:48

doesn't bite. Uh. He actually thought McGuire

29:51

might be mentally ill because what

29:53

the guy was suggesting seems so strange

29:55

to him. And Butler's impression

29:57

of McGuire didn't change over the next few months,

30:00

because the stockbroker keeps approaching the old

30:02

general with new requests to address the American

30:04

Legion for really incoherent

30:06

reads what seems to Butler incoherent

30:09

reasons, okay, and

30:12

so in August of nineteen thirty three, Butler and

30:14

McGuire meet again, and by this point Butler

30:16

had started to realize that McGuire was working

30:18

for someone. He starts to piece together there's

30:20

a through line for all these weird things he's

30:23

asking me to do. There's gotta be someone pulling

30:25

the strings behind this um

30:27

now, because McGuire was the kind of guy who only

30:29

valued money. He saw Butler's reticence

30:31

and decided that, like, oh, he's not suspicious

30:34

because I'm asked him to do weird things. He

30:36

wants to know that I have backing. So

30:38

he basically flashes a huge pile of cash

30:40

and Butler's so so rich guy only

30:42

thinks yeah that everybody thinks

30:44

like rich guys. Yeah.

30:46

Butler's like, it's really weird that you

30:48

keep asking me to make all of these bizarre political

30:51

addresses to the American Legion. And McGuire's like, hey,

30:53

I got a hundred grand right,

30:56

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, but what are you talking

30:58

about though? Yeah, And this actually

31:01

makes Butler more suspicious because in his mind,

31:03

no honest man has access to a hundred

31:05

thousand dollars. Keep it real,

31:07

but like, I'm not supposed

31:09

to like you, bro, But like, day,

31:12

that's a great answer. Was like what what? Well,

31:14

he's changed at this point, but there's

31:16

he goes through a very satisfying evolution.

31:20

McGuire admits that he has a backer.

31:22

He says like, yeah, I work as a bond

31:24

salesman for Grayson Murphy, who's a wealthy

31:26

Wall Street financier who had also been a colonel

31:28

during World War One, but not like a

31:30

real like his job had been coordinating

31:33

with the Red Cross. He got a rich guy job in the

31:35

army for the war, you know. Um,

31:38

So McGuire had paid a hundred and

31:40

twenty five thousand dollars to underwrite the start

31:42

of the American Legion because it starts after World

31:44

War One, and he thought of it as as

31:46

an investment, right, like Murphy's

31:49

putting the American Legion together because he

31:51

has a really rich guy is like, it's probably a good

31:53

idea to have an organization of combat veterans

31:55

who I can kind of direct, right, Yeah,

31:59

there's a plot going on here. Butler

32:02

and McGuire start talking about McGuire's backers,

32:04

and McGuire admits to Butler that his boss,

32:07

Grayson, is one of nine Richmond who

32:09

were trying to pay for a national convention of

32:11

the American Legion in d C. Now

32:14

by this point, Smedley Butler knew something very

32:16

crooked was going on, and Bradley

32:18

Galka writes quote Butler

32:20

did not commit to anything, but rather waited

32:23

and listen to what McGuire had to say. The

32:25

two met at the beginning of September. When asked

32:27

if he had begun recruiting men to go to the National Convention,

32:29

Butler said no. He told McGuire that he

32:31

would not even consider cooperating unless

32:33

he was allowed to meet with one of the principal backers

32:36

of the plot. McGuire promised to set up

32:38

a meeting as soon as was possible. Treated

32:40

his word, McGuire arranged for Butler to meet with one

32:42

of the principles the following week. The man

32:44

was actually an acquaintance of the general. His name

32:46

was Robert Sterling Clark, known to

32:48

Butler as the Millionaire Lieutenant This

32:50

is the Singer Guy. Clark had been a junior

32:53

officer under Butler's command in China during the

32:55

Boxer Rebellion. According to Butler, Clark

32:57

had been a batty sort of queer fellow

32:59

who did all sorts of extravagant things.

33:02

Tell him a batty bad like

33:05

like as in like how we say that girls a batty,

33:08

or like as in batta b a

33:10

t t y like this, this

33:12

he's this, you know. There he goes to war with this

33:14

guy, and everyone knows this kid is a millionaire and he's

33:16

weird, right like he's a rich kid,

33:19

you know. He's yeah.

33:22

I was like, wait, what do you mean by a batty? Like

33:25

and I was like, wait, you're calling him a batty and

33:27

then saying, well he does queer stuff like

33:29

you just called him a batty like, bro,

33:32

Like just okay, now I get it. Yeah

33:35

you know so man, Yeah

33:37

that's clarify that so

33:39

so so so wait so make sure I'm following

33:41

along. So at this point, Smedley's

33:45

antennas are all like his spidy in

33:48

angling all over the place like some

33:50

now right something. He's saying yeah,

33:53

and then he's like, and I don't trust you rich kids

33:55

like y'all never see no combat. You ain't no blood

33:58

on your hands. Man. You you stayed on the words

34:00

the whole time. He wasn't running with the wild dog, So

34:03

help me understand. And then he goes

34:05

and he meets what he's rich dude. He's like, I remember

34:07

this kid, Yeah, this fucking

34:09

kid. Yeah yeah. And he's also

34:12

he's also, this is kind of the guy

34:14

that Smedley's a very intelligent man. He

34:16

thinks something is fishy and he's like, I want to go up the

34:18

food chain. I want to follow the money up and I want to

34:20

talk to you. I'm want to talk to the guy. Give any money, you

34:22

know. Um. So the General

34:25

meets with Clark, this millionaire

34:27

air uh, and Clark's first question

34:30

was whether or not Butler had read the speech

34:32

that that Clark had helped write for him, and Butler

34:34

was like, he says, yes, but it looks as

34:36

if it were a big business speech. There's something

34:39

funny about that speech. Mr Clark. Now,

34:42

once it was clear that Butler knew

34:44

he was being used for some purpose, even though

34:46

he wasn't sure what that purpose was, Clark drops

34:48

the act. So Butler says that, and Clark's like, Okay,

34:50

you know something's going on. So I'm just gonna tell

34:52

you the truth. And he tells Butler this quote.

34:55

You understand just how we are fixed. I

34:57

have got thirty million dollars. I do

35:00

not want to lose it. I am willing to spend

35:02

half of the thirty million to save the other half.

35:04

If you go out and make this speech in Chicago,

35:07

I am certain that they will adopt the resolution, and

35:09

that will be one step towards the return of gold.

35:11

To have the soldiers stand up for it. We can get

35:13

the soldiers to go out in great bodies to stand

35:16

up for it. And obviously gold isn't

35:18

the end goal here, but that's how they want to like start

35:20

things. That's they're starting it. Yeah,

35:22

And and this guy admits like, look, I am

35:25

trying to use you to keep my money, and I'm

35:27

willing to spend half of my money to keep the other

35:29

half. You know. That's what's important to me, is

35:31

continuing to be a rich man. Yeah.

35:34

Now in uh, there's there's

35:36

some sort of like a kind

35:38

of a dark and twisted but kind

35:40

of good financial advice

35:43

in that, like I'll spend

35:45

half of it is if it's gonna make

35:47

my other half double. Yeah,

35:49

it's like he said, he's also saying like

35:52

I'm I'm afraid that the decisions

35:54

being made by this government will reduce

35:57

my class it all. Yeah, Yeah,

36:00

that that's what I'm saying. Like this is like dark,

36:02

like okay, this is this is why they wealthy.

36:04

It's like, well, I'm not just sitting on this

36:06

stuff and I'm not willing to burn at all, but

36:08

I'll spend on what's gonna

36:11

protect the other half and

36:13

increased the other half. You know what I'm saying.

36:15

It's how rich guys think, you know, it's how

36:17

rich guys think. Point. This enrages

36:20

Butler when when he said, like, Butler is kind

36:22

of barely able to keep himself from just like

36:24

flipping out at this guy. Because Butler he

36:27

had been obviously an Imperial soldier, but

36:29

his entire career, his focus, the thing

36:31

that kept him going was the well being of the soldiers

36:34

under his command. Right, he had risked his life

36:36

repeatedly and been wounded to protect

36:38

them in under his command. And this

36:41

rich guy is saying, I want to use your

36:43

fellow soldiers for my own to

36:45

keep my money. And Butler's like fuck

36:47

that and fuck you, like you know, at

36:49

this point, yeah, we're done. Yeah. Now,

36:52

at this point, Smedley didn't quite realize

36:54

that his entire career up to that point had been

36:56

doing the same thing in other countries.

36:58

Right, had been like risking the lives

37:01

of his men to protect the money of rich people. He

37:03

doesn't quite get that yet,

37:07

but he sees that what he he understands

37:09

what this guy is trying to do now, right, Um,

37:12

So he gets angry and he tells the millionaire how

37:14

he feels I took an oath to sustain

37:16

democracy, and that is what I'm going to

37:18

do and nothing else. I Am not going to

37:20

get these soldiers marching around and stirred up

37:22

over the gold standard. What the hell does a

37:24

soldier know about the gold standard? Um?

37:28

Damn. Different when it's

37:30

direct, man, when you see it like

37:32

rather than like at a systemic

37:34

or like a you know, ah, indirect

37:37

way like you said, like ultimately

37:39

you know you're at

37:41

least in our most recent wars,

37:44

you just went to protect somebody's money

37:47

and to hold up a crooked regime, you

37:49

know what I'm saying. But if somebody couldn't. But

37:51

if like if your general stood up

37:53

to you and just said, hey homie, uh,

37:56

this place got oil, so

37:59

we need to kill these people to get it, like

38:01

you would be like nothing to do that. You know what I'm

38:03

saying. I'm not gonna do that. What

38:05

are you're talking about? You know what I'm saying. But like when it's

38:07

in your face the way it was with him, He's like, no,

38:10

listen, here's the thing. I'm rich and

38:13

I'm might lose it, so I

38:15

need you to go get my money. Yeah.

38:19

And this is this is a bit of a spoiler,

38:23

this it being this direct for

38:25

him is what helps him realize what

38:27

the rest of his career had been. Like

38:30

this really is. We're not quite

38:32

there yet, okay, McGuire.

38:35

Like, Butler's like, I am not going

38:37

to do this thing for you. I'm not gonna

38:39

go fucking put my neck on the line for

38:41

the gold standard. And McGuire's like, all

38:43

right, all right, and he's like, can I use your phone? And

38:46

while Butler listens, McGuire gets on

38:48

the phone in Butler's house or

38:51

not McGuire. Uh. Sterling

38:53

gets on the phone in Butler's house and he calls

38:55

McGuire the guy who would was his gopher

38:58

um and tells him that Butler's not coming to the

39:00

American Legion convention. And Sterling

39:02

tells McGuire to use forty five thou dollars

39:04

that he'd given him to flood the convention hall with

39:06

telegrams urging a return to the gold

39:09

standard. And that's exactly what happens at

39:11

the convention. The telegrams flow in and

39:13

the result solution is passed, condemning like

39:15

the move away from the gold standard, And

39:18

you know, Sterling kind of does this to

39:20

show off to Butler, like, Okay, well if you're not going

39:22

to do this. Let me show you what I can accomplish. I

39:24

can just pay forty five grand to

39:26

get fucking flyers put up and

39:28

like will flood them with propaganda

39:30

and make it happen. And Butler takes

39:33

this as the lesson that it is right, that these

39:35

are powerful men, and this is like they do have

39:37

the ability to to make

39:39

this ship happen. UM.

39:42

So for a little while, that's kind of all it is. It's

39:44

this weird thing over the gold Standard, and Butler

39:47

it feels off to him, but he

39:49

doesn't think much more about it until the next year,

39:52

August of nineteen thirty four, when

39:54

Gerald McGuire comes up to his house again

39:56

and he and Butler meet and McGuire

39:58

tells the general quote the him has come

40:00

to get the soldiers together, and McGuire,

40:03

who's a veteran himself, is referencing the Bonus Army.

40:05

He's basically coming up and being like, hey, you know,

40:07

the things are still hard for veterans. Why

40:09

don't you and I work out something where we can get

40:12

another group of soldiers together and maybe march them

40:14

on Washington UM. And Butler's

40:16

like willing to have this conversation. Right, he's

40:18

not willing to do the gold standard thing, but like, oh, you're talking

40:20

about getting people together because veterans need some

40:23

money. Absolutely, that's my whole thing.

40:25

Yeah, But then

40:27

the conversation turns. McGuire

40:29

tells Butler that he'd just gotten back from an

40:31

overseas trip and it was on It wasn't a vacation,

40:34

but his wealthy backers were paying him to go

40:36

scouting. And this is what McGuire

40:38

says, quote. I went abroad to study

40:40

the part that the veteran plays and the various

40:42

setups of the governments that they have abroad. I

40:45

went to Italy for two or three months and

40:47

studied the position that the veterans of Italy

40:49

occupy and the fascist setup of government,

40:51

and I discovered that they are the background of Mussolini.

40:54

They keep them on the payrolls in various ways and

40:56

keep them contented and happy, and they're his real

40:58

backbone, the force on which he may depend

41:00

in case of trouble to sustain him. But that

41:03

set up would not suit us at all. The soldiers

41:05

of America would not like that. I then went

41:07

to Germany to see what Hitler was doing and

41:09

his whole strength lies in organizations of soldiers

41:11

too, but that would not do. I looked

41:13

into the Russian business. I found the use of

41:15

soldiers over there would never appeal to our men. Then

41:18

I went to France and I found just

41:20

exactly the sort of organization we are going

41:22

to have. It is an organization of super

41:25

soldiers. And what he's talking

41:27

about, you remember the cross of Fire

41:30

that we talked about last episode

41:32

in France, that French veterans organization.

41:34

You've got five officers, a thousand officers

41:37

and n c o s and they control the votes of five million

41:39

men, and they're very, very far right

41:41

right, and they have a role in the insurrection

41:44

that happens over in France, which has just happened

41:46

at this point. So these rich guys

41:49

watch what happens in France and almost succeeds

41:51

and are like, oh, you know, that's that's

41:53

not a bad idea. Why don't we set

41:55

up a veterans organization like that? Yeah,

41:59

So that's what McGuire fires like. We need to build

42:01

the same thing that they have in France, because

42:03

if we can get five million votes or so,

42:05

like a coalition of five million votes, we can win

42:07

any election. We want we can get rid of,

42:10

you know, Roosevelt, or we can march them

42:12

on the capitol, you know, if we have half a

42:14

million soldiers. So Butler

42:16

said, alright, like, I'm not I'm

42:18

not against this idea. If you want to organize

42:21

a bunch of veterans to to to make

42:23

political changes, act as a voting block,

42:25

that makes sense to me because I care about

42:27

veterans issues. Um, but what do

42:29

you want to use them for? Right? Why are you why

42:31

are we building this because he's still suspicious

42:34

of this guy over the Golden State doing yeah,

42:36

And McGuire shares them, like, no, they're going to support the

42:38

president. That's what we want them to do, is to kind of support

42:41

the president and his efforts to fix

42:43

the economy. And Butler points

42:45

out when McGuire says this, Butler points out that like,

42:47

well, in all these speeches you wanted me to give earlier,

42:50

you would have me. You wanted me to oppose all

42:52

of FDR's policies. So why are

42:54

you trying to make a veterans organization to support

42:56

FDR now? And McGuire responds,

42:59

don't you understand that the setup has got to be

43:01

changed a bit? Now? We have got him.

43:03

We have got the president. He has got to have more

43:06

money. There's not any more money to give him. Eight

43:08

percent of the money now is in government bonds. And he

43:10

cannot keep this racket up much longer. He

43:12

has got to do something about it. He has either

43:14

got to get more money out of us or he has got to

43:16

change the method of financing the government. And

43:19

we are going to see to it that he does not change

43:21

that method. He will not change it. They're

43:23

worried about him, like going into debt and devaluing

43:25

the dollar and stuff. Um. So, Butler

43:28

sees where this is going, and he asks McGuire

43:30

straight up, the idea of this great group of

43:32

soldiers then is to sort of frighten him,

43:35

is it. McGuire lying said

43:37

that no, they don't want to scare FDR. They

43:39

just want to support him. And then he introduces

43:42

a new idea. He tells Butler, you

43:44

know, the president's overworked, and he's he's an old

43:46

man, he's not healthy. Wouldn't it be nice

43:48

if we could give FDR an assistant president.

43:51

We can use this big armed group of veterans

43:54

to convince the president to create a new cabinet

43:56

position. Secretary of General Affairs,

43:59

and this person will do all of the actual work

44:01

of the president, and he'll institute policies

44:03

that my rich backers nowhere going to fix

44:05

things for the American people. F

44:08

DR will still be president, but he'll

44:10

just be ceremonial and will be controlling

44:13

things. And this big armed group of veterans

44:15

will make sure that everybody plays that

44:20

right up under our noses. Bro So

44:23

McGuire tells Butler that this is all necessary

44:26

because the president is sick, and

44:28

even if it's not true that he's unable

44:30

to do the job anymore, the American people

44:33

will believe them if they say he's sick,

44:35

because quote, we have got the newspapers.

44:38

He's talking about the fact that William Randolph

44:40

Hurst is one of the guys involved in this plot. Like

44:43

whatever, whatever we need the American people to believe,

44:45

they'll believe because we control the newspapers. So all

44:47

we need to do is organize this body of men. So,

44:51

in suggesting this, McGuire's rich

44:53

backers were looking to treat FDR kind

44:55

of the same way Mussolini treated the King of Italy

44:58

or Hitler treated Hindenburg. In his last

45:00

of course, McGuire didn't point this out to Butler,

45:02

but he asked, would you be interesting

45:04

and heading up this super organization of

45:07

veterans that we're going to use to take power.

45:09

So he's all on the table now, like we're

45:11

going to take over the government. We're

45:14

going to do it in a way that's not obvious. We're going to use the

45:16

newspapers to make sure people don't know that we've just stopped

45:19

FDR from having any power, and

45:21

we're if things are going to be run by the rich

45:23

um and but so he's like, do you want to be

45:26

the guy who leads this army of veterans

45:28

into the capital to demand these things?

45:31

And Butler response, I'm interested

45:33

in it. I'm interested in this veterans organization, but

45:36

I don't know about heading it. I am very greatly

45:38

interested in it, because you know, my interest,

45:40

my one hobby is maintaining a democracy.

45:43

If you get these five thousand soldiers

45:45

advocating anything smelling a fascism, I'm

45:47

going to get five thousand more and lick the

45:49

hell out of you and we'll have a real war right at home.

45:53

He's a direct man. Yeah, I

45:55

love it. He's like, look made mean wars

45:57

I fought. Do you think I'm scared of you? Like

46:01

yeah, Like and this like if you do this

46:03

and I think you're trying to create a fascist

46:05

state, I'll raise an army and I'll win. Like

46:07

you don't know about actual war vet

46:10

like I actually know the veterans. Yeah.

46:12

Yeah, So this makes McGuire backpedal

46:15

a little bit. He's realized he's maybe like gone,

46:17

he was maybe a little bit too open about what they were

46:19

planning to do. And he insists like, we're not trying

46:21

to overthrow. We just want to support the president. We're

46:23

not trying to take power. We want to support him.

46:26

And Butler says, well, if that's the case, you're

46:28

gonna need a lot of money, right, This is not going to be

46:30

a cheap thing to do. And McGuire is like, well, we've

46:32

got three million dollars on hand, you know, and

46:35

problem money and a problem we get access to three hundred

46:37

million dollars if necessary. And so

46:39

Butler again it's like, who in the funk is putting

46:42

up this money? Honest, men don't have three

46:44

million dollars to throw around, And

46:47

so he's like, where are you getting all of this money? And

46:49

I know, it's not just Clark Um

46:52

or Sterling, the guy that I had met earlier. And

46:54

McGuire says, you know how Clark told you he would

46:56

spend half of his uh fortune to

46:58

save the other half. Well, there's a lot of

47:00

other rich guys who feel the same way, right,

47:02

Prescott Bush and JP Morgan and all these all

47:04

these other dudes feel the same way.

47:08

So Smedley Butler meant what he said.

47:10

He was absolutely committed to American democracy

47:12

and he never actually considered helping.

47:15

But he knew the danger of what he was hearing and he wanted to

47:17

be able to expose it, and to do that he was

47:19

going to need a corroborating witness.

47:21

So his goal now too becomes, I need someone

47:23

else credible to be witnessed to the whole

47:26

plans that we can go testify to Congress

47:28

just in case, Dude, Smith dog,

47:31

This dude's antenna's are like they

47:33

are a tuned because to

47:35

be like you can't just be like f you

47:37

and storm the room because these

47:40

people don't need you. Don't find somebody else, you

47:42

know what I'm saying. And it's like

47:44

the understanding that like just that power

47:47

play when you in a role with people that wealthy,

47:49

they always feel like they in charge. But

47:51

that but that power is

47:54

given to them. If you don't, if

47:56

you'll give a shit about their money, you

47:58

know what I'm saying, then the power don't

48:00

matter, you know what I'm saying. Then you realize

48:03

really what's happening here. It's like, oh wait,

48:05

y'all got all this money and you still

48:07

need this meeting with me. So there's

48:09

some you know what I'm saying. So like he had his antenna's

48:12

enough to be like, I need to make sure because

48:14

it's not like these people can't put me away. I need

48:16

somebody over here to watch all this happening because

48:18

they wield in all his power and I am

48:21

you know what I'm saying, Like right now, I'm in their

48:23

good graces right now, They're still hungry

48:25

for me. So let me make

48:27

sure I'm playing his antenna's

48:30

are art? I love it? Yeah? You know he's he's thinking,

48:33

he's thinking, and he's thinking that right up

48:35

by Arcadia Publishing again for What Happens

48:37

Next. Having previously worked

48:39

as the police captain of Philadelphia, Butler

48:41

reached out to a Philadelphia record writer,

48:43

Paul come Lely, French, who agreed to meet

48:45

with McGuire as well. During this meeting,

48:48

McGuire told French that he believed a fascist

48:50

state was the only answer for America and

48:52

that Smedley was the ideal leader

48:54

because he could organize a million men

48:57

overnight. So French, the very skilled

48:59

journalist, comes in and kind of on the guys of like,

49:01

yeah, you want the press on your side, let's talk about what you're

49:03

trying to do. And he's like, French

49:06

is clearly a good interview and gets mugguire to admit,

49:08

like, yeah, I want to We want to make a fascist state. It's

49:10

the only way forward for America, and

49:13

Butler's the best guy to do it. So

49:16

French takes detailed notes after

49:18

all of these meetings, he would later tell

49:20

Congress. Quote, during the course of the conversation,

49:23

he continually discussed the need of a

49:25

man on a white horse, as he called it, a

49:27

dictator who would come galloping in on his white

49:29

horse. He said that was the only way,

49:31

either through the threat of armed force or the delegation

49:34

of power and the use of a group of organized veterans

49:36

to save the capitalistic system.

49:39

Speaking of capitalistic systems, Speaking

49:41

of capitalism. You

49:43

know who won't inside

49:46

a fascist revolution. I

49:49

mean hopefully hopefully

49:53

fingers crossed. I have something to tell you

49:55

at this ad break that just broken the news,

49:57

But I guess I'll tell you now. Jeff I

49:59

saw just stepped down at CEO

50:01

of Amazon. What the funk

50:04

is happening? He's transitioning to an executive

50:06

chair role. Something's

50:08

about to go down. Yes, I

50:10

have some theories. That's

50:13

big. Take this break. Take yeah, yeah, yeah, we're We're

50:15

all what are

50:17

your theories? Something's fucking happening. So

50:19

here's my theories. I think there was two things going

50:21

on here. I think uh

50:24

one is He's like, I

50:26

would like the money without the headache, So

50:29

let me just let somebody else had a headache,

50:32

says All. Says this is from

50:34

obviously the Washington Post because he hounds it.

50:38

Baviss will step down from the role after founding

50:41

the company more than twenty years ago. I'll

50:43

sharing a new era for the e commerce merchant

50:46

giant currently current

50:48

Amazon Web Services chief

50:50

and Jassy will take on

50:53

the mantel of CEO. I

50:56

don't like our words mantel first of all. Yeah,

50:58

yeah, but I think the money from the like

51:00

from the from the web support platform

51:03

services is now outpacing the products,

51:06

so they like, we need to move that way. Number

51:08

one and number two. I'm positive

51:11

they're gonna break the company up. They're

51:14

gonna break this up because it's yeah,

51:17

and he's like, I better get out now. They're gonna break

51:20

this ship up. I really

51:22

hear. Um, Yeah, it should

51:25

be broken up. It's

51:27

too much of a business. You

51:29

can't be the grocery store and the groceries. Yeah.

51:34

I think he just wants to go off into the moon

51:36

and just spend the rest of this. You

51:39

want to be no one. I want all the

51:41

money without the headache. No reasonable

51:43

person would be worth a hundred

51:45

billion plus dollars and want to keep

51:47

doing a job. Why do you keep working?

51:50

Yeah, go filling the island

51:52

with I don't know, no more, no

51:54

more guys with the islands. I

51:58

always do, yes, But what have to say? Yeah,

52:00

it's like, you don't take a hundred million dollars to keep

52:03

working? He said, He'll he'll never spend

52:05

this You will never spend this money. It's

52:08

the only billion who's ever made sense

52:10

to me. Is one of the Google founders who like spent hundreds

52:12

of millions of dollars making a house blimp

52:14

and it's like, yeah, that's rad. Like, yeah, I'm

52:19

gonna live in a blimp like I

52:21

can never you can't even give it away.

52:23

There's not enough there's not enough

52:26

hours in the day. You know, you're

52:28

not gonna live enough years to spend this. Yeah

52:30

you couldn't. Yeah. Uh,

52:34

all right, we're

52:41

back. Uh what a great what

52:43

a great time. So uh

52:46

we're talking about Yeah, this guy

52:48

Butler brings in this journalist French who gets

52:50

who gets these guys to throw down some dirt

52:53

right and admit what they're actually

52:55

looking to do? Yeah? Um

52:58

now in his right up on the business plot, Bradley

53:01

Galka notes quote. McGuire also

53:03

discussed this group's intended solution to the

53:05

national employment crisis. He said they were

53:07

inspired by Adolf Hitler's policies in Europe

53:09

that the solution would be the institution of labor

53:12

camps and barrys in America to mobilize

53:14

the unemployed. You said, you said

53:16

it out loud. You're not say

53:18

that out loud. Bro, This hed the guy has

53:20

some good ideas. I'm just saying,

53:23

like we could save you. Hear

53:25

me, hear me? Out. We

53:27

could save capitalism. We could

53:30

save cap What if we put the par in camps

53:32

and make them work for us. They're

53:35

not doing anything right. They're not doing anything right. Shouldn't

53:37

be voting. They've just gotta vote to take our money.

53:40

But I'm in camps. Uh. Such

53:42

an initiative, McGuire insisted, would solve

53:45

the problem overnight. He also revealed that

53:47

the Plotters would force all suspected radicals

53:49

across the country to register their movements

53:51

with the government. That way, said McGuire,

53:53

the new regime could stop a lot of these communist

53:56

agitators who were running around the country. McGuire

53:58

ended by insisting at another economic crash

54:01

was inevitable and would come when bonds reached five

54:03

percent interest. When that time comes, he said,

54:05

the soldiers must prepare to save the nation.

54:09

Now. It's worth reiterating two important

54:11

takeaways from McGuire's interactions

54:13

with Butler and French. First, during McGuire's

54:15

meeting with Butler at the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia,

54:18

McGuire claimed that he and the Plotters have got

54:20

the newspapers. He told Butler that whatever

54:22

cover story his boss has decided to put in the papers,

54:25

would be accepted by the dumb American people

54:27

who would fall for it. In a second,

54:29

damn it not wrong, not wrong,

54:32

not wrong, and is right up. This is very

54:34

good, it's and it's free. So I really recommend it

54:36

for folks. Now. At this point, Butler

54:38

decided he had enough information to go to Congress.

54:41

November four, he appeared

54:43

before the Special Committee on Unamerican

54:45

Activities. Before the Committee and its

54:47

lawyers General, Butler laid out the details

54:50

of the whole sordid scheme, providing

54:52

Congress with French is corroboration and the detailed

54:55

notes that he himself had taken of every conversation.

54:58

He swore under oath that this was all true and

55:00

that a cabal of bankers and industrial magnates

55:02

were plotting to overthrow American democracy.

55:05

So he goes to Congress and he puts

55:07

it all out on the line, and the story

55:09

hits the news media. Soon after, The New

55:11

York Post, which at this time is a liberal newspaper,

55:14

publishes the first report, which is written by

55:16

French himself. It outlines the details

55:19

of the plot accurately. The Post also

55:21

publishes a second, shorter piece which provides

55:23

the accused plotters with an opportunity to give

55:25

their denials. Now. The Post coverage

55:27

here was both responsible and vital, but

55:29

McGuire had not been lying when he said that his

55:32

secret backers controlled much of America's

55:34

print media. A second wave

55:36

of coverage bursts from conservative Hearst

55:38

owned newspapers. These papers

55:40

tended to provide only the barest details of the

55:42

actual plot and spend most of their time publishing

55:45

denials by the accused magnates. One

55:47

popular columnist, Arthur Brisbane, who

55:49

worked for the Hearst owned San Francisco Examiner,

55:52

suggested that somebody may have been deceiving

55:54

General Butler. He portrayed the business

55:56

plot as more or less a practical joke,

55:59

and wrote mockingly that those wicked

56:01

and bad and outrageous Wall Street men were

56:03

the ones who actually had the most to fear from a fascist

56:05

dictatorship. Yeah.

56:09

Flim flam boy, Yeah,

56:12

flim flam Yeah. Look at this dumb General.

56:14

He just he just he got took in by

56:16

a practical joke. You know, listen, he doesn't

56:18

understand, you know, Doug, and

56:21

I man, I imagine even like how

56:25

you stand in front of Congress and

56:27

like this, I

56:30

don't know, like if you have this this like sinking

56:32

feeling when you're trying to say something that you know is

56:34

true and you're positive to people in

56:37

front of you don't believe you, and you're like, uh,

56:40

damn, this ain't gonna I'm

56:42

stuck, ain't I You know what I'm saying? Like, I

56:44

wonder if I don't know why? As he was talking,

56:47

that was like the moment I pictured when he's like he

56:50

went to Congress to tell them that, like he's snitching,

56:52

but it's like a good type of snitch to where I'm

56:54

like, no, I'm trying to tell you the truth. This is what these

56:56

people are doing. Yeah, I

56:58

don't know, because it's like even coming out of his mouth,

57:01

he was probably like, do I

57:03

sound crazy? I might sound

57:05

crazy, but I'm trying to tell you just what they're doing.

57:08

Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

57:12

So Adam Ox, a writer for The New

57:14

York Times, wrote an article about

57:16

the business plot, and again it's not just herst papers.

57:18

The New York Times gets in on this ship. He

57:20

writes an article titled Credulity Unlimited,

57:23

which also mocked Butler and painted him as

57:25

a crank. What can we believe? Apparently

57:28

anything to judge by the number of people who lend a

57:30

credulous ear to the story of General Butler's

57:32

five hundred fascists and Buckram marching

57:34

on Washington to seize the government. Details

57:37

are lacking to lend versimilitude to an otherwise

57:39

bald and unconvincing narrative. The whole

57:41

story sounds like a gigantic hoax. Yeah,

57:44

yeah, yeah, this

57:47

guy's crazy, talk to him. No,

57:50

this silly old manular

57:53

rich dudes, we're just saying

57:57

it's fine. And there is. One

58:00

of the things that really does corroborate that the

58:02

story is true is there's a massive and

58:04

very organized media campaign to discredit

58:07

Butler. And it's not just journalists. Will

58:09

Rogers, the former Cowboy actor who

58:11

like half of l A is named after Yeah,

58:13

I was like wait, wait, yeah, yeah that Will

58:15

Rogers, publishes an article in the

58:17

New York Times. He gets to write a column for The

58:19

Times, and this article both mocks uh

58:22

Smedley Butler and in the article,

58:25

after making fun of Butler for being an idiot,

58:27

Will Rogers volunteers to lead a fascist

58:29

army in his stead. If Smedley Butler

58:31

don't take that job of marching down Pennsylvania

58:33

at the head of Wall Streets Fighting Brigade. I would

58:35

like to get my application in. I got the Gray

58:37

Horse. It won't be such a novelty as people

58:40

think. This is

58:42

clearly bullshit. But if it's not, I'd lead a fascist

58:44

army on behalf of Wall. Straight Man

58:48

Katie Perry tried to buy his house out here.

58:50

Oh yeah, it's a nice

58:52

house. It's a very nice house. Went

58:55

on a field trip once, anyway. Yeah.

58:58

New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia

59:01

called the business plot a cocktail push,

59:03

by which he means he thought Butler had

59:05

heard the plans at a part as a joke at a party

59:07

and run away with the idea. Um,

59:10

that's a great you. The more I hear their defense,

59:12

that's a great cover story, it's a great cover step.

59:14

They were just joking. Dude, we're just drinking.

59:17

It's like the guy got to this party. He don't really wrong

59:19

with us. He don't know how, we don't know how you work. We're

59:21

just playing around. Yeah, yeah, it's not

59:23

it's not dumb, right, These aren't idiots. Now.

59:26

The Committee, the Congressional Committee,

59:28

the House an American Activities Committee, continues

59:31

their investigation though, and they find

59:33

additional evidence of the plot. Concerted

59:35

digging revealed that a number of the men implicated

59:37

in the plot had recently formed a conservative

59:39

lobbying group called the American Liberty

59:41

League. Its members included JP

59:44

Morgan Jr. Irene DuPont,

59:46

the CEO of General Voters, the CEO

59:48

of General Foods, and other industrial leaders

59:51

controlling roughly forty billion dollars in

59:53

assets, which in modern terms is three quarters

59:55

of a trillion dollars um. All

59:58

of the richest guys and that like, these

1:00:01

are the dudes behind it now. This digging

1:00:03

also turns up the fact that Prescott Bush,

1:00:05

who was heavily involved in with

1:00:08

the Nazi government. Right he's working with them on the

1:00:10

Hamburg America allions and stuff. Um

1:00:12

that Prescott Bush, under the proposed American

1:00:15

fascist government would have acted as a liaison

1:00:17

between the American dictatorship and the Nazi

1:00:19

government. So George W. Bush's

1:00:21

grandpa volunteered

1:00:24

for the job of liaison between a fascist

1:00:26

American state and the Nazis. I was

1:00:28

like, oh, I love the Nazis. I'd be perfect at

1:00:30

this job. Yeah, Prescott

1:00:35

so and then gave birth to presidents

1:00:38

two of them well, his wife gave birth to

1:00:40

presidents. Let me clear that up. Sorry, ladies, he

1:00:43

didn't give birth to nobody yet. Okay, he donated

1:00:45

genetic material that led to two presidents,

1:00:48

both of whom were Trash. So

1:00:52

the committee, after its investigation,

1:00:54

never releases an official report on the business

1:00:56

plot, but they do give a report to Congress,

1:00:59

and in it they say that they quote trash.

1:01:02

Oh, it's about to get trasher before

1:01:05

it's trash. The committee goes to Congress

1:01:08

and they say everything we checked

1:01:10

out that Butler said, we were able to verify.

1:01:13

They say that they quote had received evidence

1:01:15

that certain persons had made an attempt to

1:01:17

establish a fascist organization in this country.

1:01:20

There is no question that these attempts

1:01:22

were discussed, were planned, and might

1:01:24

have been placed in execution win and if

1:01:26

the financial backers deemed it expedient. The

1:01:29

names of the individuals involved, they said, would

1:01:31

have to be kept secret until they could be investigated

1:01:34

and their complicity verified. So they're

1:01:36

like, we we we looked this up,

1:01:38

and we found a lot of evidence that it was true, but

1:01:40

we can't confirm anything yet,

1:01:43

and we're not going to give the names of the individuals. We

1:01:45

found evidence about because we haven't

1:01:48

finished the investigation, right, which sounds

1:01:50

reasonable, that's how it's supposed to work. But they

1:01:52

never finished the investigation, oh

1:01:55

man, after saying hey,

1:01:58

yeah this, Yeah, we've collaborated

1:02:01

everything you said, Okay, cool, And we

1:02:03

don't know why the investigation doesn't

1:02:05

get finished. There are some theories, and I'm gonna quote

1:02:08

the Washington Post from one of them. According

1:02:10

to journalist John Buchanan speaking to the BBC

1:02:12

in two thousand seven, this was probably

1:02:15

because Roosevelt struck a deal with the backers

1:02:17

of the plot. They could avoid treason charges

1:02:19

and possible execution if they backed off

1:02:21

their opposition to the new deal. Sally

1:02:23

Denton, an author who wrote a book about the business

1:02:25

plot, thinks the press may have ignored the report at

1:02:28

the urging of the government, which didn't want the

1:02:30

public to know how precarious things might have been.

1:02:32

So the government that like was threatened

1:02:34

by this may not have wanted

1:02:36

it to be super public knowledge, right, just

1:02:39

like the I don't think it's a good idea

1:02:41

for people to know how quickly they came close

1:02:43

they came to overthrowing us. Yeah,

1:02:46

yeah, you shouldn't notice. Yeah, And and FDR

1:02:48

probably sits down with these rich guys and it's like, look,

1:02:51

we can hang you and it'll be ugly

1:02:53

for everybody, Like there will be consequence, it will

1:02:55

suck for me, Like listen, or

1:02:57

you shut the funk up and let me do the new you

1:03:00

know, I love it man, the brand. Listen, this

1:03:02

is a bad this is bad for everybody. Everybody

1:03:04

loses. I'm gonna cut your head off.

1:03:08

But like, let's just I

1:03:10

love it. Good job. A yeah, I mean it was probably

1:03:12

I don't know. I'm not gonna say it was the right thing. I think it would

1:03:14

have been better to prosecute these guys, but totally

1:03:17

he's in a rough position. He does what it seems

1:03:19

like the best thing to do at the time. Now, based

1:03:22

on her research, Sally Denton believes

1:03:24

that hadn't Smedley Butler gone along with the plot,

1:03:26

it would have succeeded, and he might

1:03:28

have been the only person capable of leading that

1:03:30

fascist coup who also would have refused

1:03:33

to do it. It is hard to overstate how

1:03:35

lucky we are that he was the man they

1:03:37

went to write, like the one

1:03:39

guy who had that kind of respect

1:03:42

among veterans who had that kind of talent.

1:03:45

And that kind of experience, and also

1:03:47

doesn't give a funk about money, right, like

1:03:50

the perfect yes, the perfect combo. Yeah

1:03:53

yeah, because he could if he even

1:03:56

wanted it and and cared about money,

1:03:58

He could even extort these Yeah yeah

1:04:00

he could. And I'm saying, they're promisingly, we'll take care

1:04:02

of your family, your kids are never damn

1:04:05

right. You're gonna take care of my family, Joe, say,

1:04:07

take care of my neighbor's family, and to take care of my children,

1:04:10

eight children. You're gonna take care of us until

1:04:12

the twenties. But he instead

1:04:15

decides, the thing

1:04:17

that I swore an oath for was to defend democracy,

1:04:21

and that's what I'm going to fucking

1:04:23

do. Um And for

1:04:25

his part, the business plot seems to have been the final

1:04:27

straw in Butler's radicalization. He

1:04:30

realizes, after having been these

1:04:32

rich guys trying to use him as a pond, that that's all he'd

1:04:34

been doing his entire career as a soldier. He'd

1:04:36

been upon a mambage uh. In nineteen

1:04:39

thirty six, he votes for the socialist presidential

1:04:41

candidate UM. In nineteen

1:04:43

thirty five, he publishes a short book based

1:04:45

on a series of speeches he delivered. He starts

1:04:48

traveling around the country delivering speeches,

1:04:50

a speech titled war is a racket,

1:04:53

and I'm going to read you a summary. Butler wrote of

1:04:55

his own book that kind of explains where

1:04:57

this goes. War is a

1:04:59

racket, always has been. It is possibly

1:05:01

the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely

1:05:03

the most vicious. It is the only one

1:05:06

international in scope. It is the only

1:05:08

one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars

1:05:10

and the losses in lives. A racket

1:05:12

is best described, I believe, as something

1:05:15

that is not what it seems to the majority

1:05:17

of the people. Only a small inside

1:05:19

group knows what it is about. It is conducted

1:05:21

for the benefit of the very few, at the expense

1:05:24

of the very many. Out of war, a few

1:05:26

people make huge fortunes. And

1:05:30

he's there's a lot of good quote from Butler

1:05:33

in general. That is good when

1:05:35

he say the losses

1:05:37

are in lives, but the profits are in dollars.

1:05:40

Yeah, God, yeah,

1:05:42

God, that's a bar and he is

1:05:45

truly unsparing. Another quote

1:05:48

is that I love our boys were sent

1:05:50

off to die with beautiful ideals

1:05:52

painted in front of them. No one told

1:05:54

them that dollars and cents were the real reason

1:05:57

they were marching off to kill and die. Got

1:06:00

dog, Dude, I have a homeboy,

1:06:03

the musician. He's a friend, but he's an incredible

1:06:05

rappers Ames Bamboo, Yeah from Filipino.

1:06:07

Dude. U uh, well, he's from l A. He

1:06:10

lives in the Bay. His wife, Rocky Rivera

1:06:12

both amazing artists. Uh, their whole

1:06:14

label beat Rock. There all these like left

1:06:17

wing guerrilla warfare like super

1:06:20

revolutionary dudes. But he

1:06:22

was he was an l A dude, got in trouble

1:06:25

with the law and then, you know, like

1:06:27

any other brown kid, you go to

1:06:29

the military to try to like you know, get

1:06:31

out of jail and kind

1:06:33

of the same scenario. He came out of that so

1:06:36

radicalized, so ready

1:06:38

to be like this is all

1:06:41

bull and I

1:06:43

would never send another child. You know, I'm saying. He's

1:06:45

not at all a pacifist, Don't get me wrong. Like the

1:06:47

brother got a collection of like ancient island

1:06:50

weapons, let alone guns, you know what

1:06:52

I'm saying. So he ain't no pacifists. But he's

1:06:54

like, I'm not dying for someone

1:06:57

else's pockets.

1:06:59

Yeah, Like yeah, this is crazy.

1:07:02

Yeah. And and Butler, Butler is that Butler's

1:07:04

not a fashion or not a not a pacifist,

1:07:07

and he's not anti military. He loves

1:07:09

the military, he hates what it's used

1:07:11

for, and he when he's delivering these speeches,

1:07:13

he's trying to get Americans on board with a complete

1:07:16

reformation of the military. Um.

1:07:18

He believes that it should only ever be defensive

1:07:20

in nature, and in order to make it that, he

1:07:23

thinks the Navy should be limited to operating

1:07:25

within two hundred miles of the coastline and

1:07:27

the Army restricted from ever leaving the confines

1:07:29

of the continental United States. Um.

1:07:32

Yeah. Now that same

1:07:34

year, Yeah, Yeah, that he's

1:07:36

he's trying to like, he thinks

1:07:39

we need a military. It just we have to find a

1:07:41

way to stop bankers from being able to use

1:07:43

it to fight wars for profit.

1:07:46

That's the problem. Um. In

1:07:49

that same year, nineteen thirty five, Butler gives

1:07:51

an interview to common Sense magazine

1:07:53

where he tells the nation quote,

1:07:56

I spent thirty three years and four

1:07:59

months in active terry service, and during

1:08:01

that period, I spent most of my time as

1:08:03

a high class muscle man for big business,

1:08:05

for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I

1:08:08

was a racketeer. A gangster for capitalism.

1:08:12

I remember that quote. Remember that quote from the

1:08:14

Police one. Yeah, he was just

1:08:16

like, man, I'm just a goon. I was

1:08:18

just a goon. Yeah, just muscle,

1:08:21

just a moon and man, this needs

1:08:23

to be in dog I wish there's

1:08:25

a reason it's not in your history textbooks,

1:08:27

you know, every history book.

1:08:30

You know what I'm saying, because yeah,

1:08:32

because the reality is we don't have. Like I

1:08:34

was as you were talking, I was like, do

1:08:37

is there any figure

1:08:40

in America now that could

1:08:42

do that? And I'm like, I don't

1:08:44

know, only the imaginary

1:08:46

one. Like who's the movie The American Sniper?

1:08:49

Was that movie? Yeah? Yeah? That yeah, Yeah,

1:08:52

that dude's imaginary. The

1:08:55

real the real person that he was was like

1:08:57

a lunatic, like dangerous, like

1:09:00

er and a liar. Yeah yeah,

1:09:02

and he couldn't lead a fascist insurrection. Yeah,

1:09:04

you know what I'm saying. But like if if, if

1:09:07

the guy that that was

1:09:09

portrayed was a real person, and maybe, but

1:09:11

we ain't got one in real life, you know what I'm saying. But

1:09:14

the one that did exist came out of the other

1:09:16

end, going Yo, these wars

1:09:18

were crap and I

1:09:21

was just out there getting y'all's bags, and this is

1:09:24

ridiculous. I was a fucking gangster.

1:09:27

Got He spent the rest

1:09:29

of his life giving speeches and trying to radicalize

1:09:31

veterans and mourning in public

1:09:34

that he and his comrades had only ever

1:09:36

fought for, in his words, the benefit

1:09:38

of millionaires and billionaires. He

1:09:40

insisted that he had named names to

1:09:42

the committee, that he had, that he had given the names

1:09:45

of the people involved, but that those names

1:09:47

had been removed from his testimony before it

1:09:49

was made public. In a radio of an interview,

1:09:51

he insisted, like most committees, it

1:09:53

has slaughtered the little and allowed the big to

1:09:56

escape. The big shots weren't even called

1:09:58

to testify. Yeah,

1:10:02

if that ain't the Straights, broy

1:10:04

it's very And it's not for nothing

1:10:06

that he names himself as a gangster.

1:10:09

You know, he recognizes, Like it's

1:10:11

exactly why ye know what I'm saying, the little the little

1:10:13

cornerboy doing fifteen years, you

1:10:16

know what I'm saying, But nobody go to the You know

1:10:18

what I'm saying, that the Russian

1:10:20

oligarch that got him fifteen bricks, you

1:10:22

know what I'm saying, Like he's living nice in the

1:10:24

Hollywood Hills. They don't even he's not even in

1:10:26

the testimony. You know what I'm saying. That's

1:10:29

crazy, And it's fucking one

1:10:31

of the things that is because there's so much that's a bummer

1:10:33

about this story, right that they just get away with it.

1:10:35

But there is there's hope in it too, And

1:10:38

and the hope, I think is in the story of Smedley Butler,

1:10:40

this guy who could not have been a

1:10:42

more dedicated soldier of imperialism

1:10:45

and realizes he was wrong

1:10:48

and spends the rest of his life fighting

1:10:51

against you. You can't, you can't. You know, there's

1:10:53

no time machine. You can't go back and undo

1:10:56

what you did to freaking Haiti and Costa

1:10:58

Rica and banana walls. You can't go

1:11:01

back and redo that. But I

1:11:04

can do the best, my best to pay it forward.

1:11:06

That's good man, Yeah, it's it is. It's

1:11:08

a real story of redemption,

1:11:10

of redemption and of a man who was had.

1:11:13

You gotta respect the amount of self knowledge

1:11:15

to be able to admit I spent thirty three fucking

1:11:17

years as a gangster. My friends died

1:11:21

in a gang wharf over money, you know,

1:11:23

like overt even ours. But

1:11:25

we don't even get to collect Big Sean

1:11:28

on it. Last record was like, dude, John

1:11:30

dying over street corners you don't even own,

1:11:33

like and it's like, yeah that like that where you just

1:11:35

like, we don't even oh we don't even own these projects.

1:11:38

We'll own these property. Dang, that's crazy.

1:11:41

Yeah, anyway,

1:11:44

that's the business plot. So

1:11:47

it happened here. It happened here.

1:11:49

Uh and the only reason it didn't happen all

1:11:51

the way is that there happened to be one really

1:11:54

good man in the middle of it. Dang,

1:11:57

that is crazy. Yeah, So

1:12:00

thanks Smedley Butler, Right,

1:12:03

we appreciate you one good

1:12:06

dude. Yeah,

1:12:10

And I will say I think that's maybe another one of the

1:12:12

optimistic things to take out of it is that it is

1:12:14

a story of sometimes

1:12:17

a single person with

1:12:19

the right who is willing to make

1:12:21

a moral stand can be the difference

1:12:24

between calamity

1:12:26

um and and and not

1:12:30

calamity. You know. Yeah, wow,

1:12:35

anyway, proper, you got

1:12:37

some plug doubles to plug as we as we roll out

1:12:39

of behind the insurrections. This

1:12:42

has been You can't say

1:12:44

a pleasure, can you, but

1:12:49

it was. I enjoy

1:12:52

every time I get to like work

1:12:55

with you all, and here about the most horrible things

1:12:57

in the world. They're always just They're a great time

1:12:59

in my day, although it takes me like an hour to recoup

1:13:01

after we do this. Um, but

1:13:04

yeah, thank you so much again for having me

1:13:06

prop hit pop dot com. Uh if

1:13:08

this as of the day

1:13:11

that you're hearing this, um,

1:13:14

which is Thursday, right is Thursday

1:13:16

one? Yeah, I will be dropping

1:13:19

new music the next day Friday morning, new

1:13:21

video, new music. So uh

1:13:23

please go to proper pop dot com. You can

1:13:25

subscribe to the YouTube, get on Spotify

1:13:28

of a ton of new music. Um a

1:13:31

new coffee drop into uh yeah,

1:13:34

prop hitpop dot com. I gotta get you a bean

1:13:36

man. Yeah you do. Yeah, you dotta get

1:13:38

you on poor Gummi Fridays to man. You're

1:13:40

not on Instagram? Well, yeah, I do

1:13:43

have an Instagram. I only follow one guy

1:13:45

so far, and he's the guy who's making knives for me.

1:13:47

You have an Instagram. I feel betrayed.

1:13:50

I wanted to look at knives. I mean,

1:13:52

I forgive that part, but but

1:13:54

I could I could add I could have coffee and

1:13:57

knives be my Instagram things. What about Sophie

1:13:59

and Anderson and I

1:14:01

get I talked to you on signal. This

1:14:04

is true, this is heartful. But

1:14:06

I feel you. I feel you. Either way,

1:14:08

We're going to figure it out. Yes, I do.

1:14:11

You're a fun follow. Wait, maybe

1:14:13

you could log into the Bastards pods Instagram

1:14:15

and I've never posted or whatever it is you do on

1:14:17

Instagram. Do you post? Yeah?

1:14:20

You post? Yeah, I

1:14:24

could ask you. All right, Well, don't

1:14:26

find me on anyway Gram because I'm not going to tell

1:14:28

any action there. You'll find me prop on Instagram,

1:14:31

no one else. I will find it. Yes, um,

1:14:35

and yeah we'll we'll be back

1:14:37

next week for something

1:14:39

different. Um, it'll be fun. Uh

1:14:42

in a little bit of a break, and then we'll probably

1:14:44

get back to talking about genocides pretty soon.

1:14:47

Won't be long genocide

1:14:50

every month. That's the behind the Bastards promise.

1:14:53

That is our promise. I

1:14:55

have a good one. Byewses