0:01

What's Parley Voo and

0:03

my France says, I'm Robert

0:07

Bastards while it's behind the Insurrections.

0:10

It's both. It's like it's like it's

0:12

like Bourbon, right, Bourbon is whiskey,

0:14

but but all whiskey is not Bourbon. Behind

0:17

the Insurrections is behind the Bastards,

0:19

but all Behind the Bastards episodes aren't Behind

0:21

the Insurrections episodes. So I

0:24

dig that. Yeah, I mean I think, I think

0:26

that's actually that's a great

0:29

analogy. And you're throwing the

0:31

Scotch thing and then you're like, wait, isn't no,

0:35

I got it. I try to compare as many

0:37

things to Bourbon as I can, speaking

0:39

of Bourbon, not speaking of Bourbon,

0:41

speaking of artists. My

0:44

guest today, as with the previous what four

0:46

episodes we've done on this uh is Jason

0:48

Petty a k A prop. What's

0:51

so let the lick read Bourbon and night for

0:53

breakfast for dinner? Prop? How

0:56

do you feel about France? Uh?

1:00

Uh wow, um,

1:03

I feel carbs. I

1:05

just think carter and bread. They

1:07

do love that food. Fresh food

1:09

is delightful. Yeah, I think

1:12

I think Harlem Renaissance, that's

1:15

pretty cool. You know, my patron

1:17

saint is is James Baldwin, so

1:19

it's time out there. Yeah.

1:22

Uh. But besides that,

1:24

I also think, yeah, I don't

1:26

like Americans, yeah,

1:28

which is hard to fault them for what. I

1:30

know. What I don't like the French for is is

1:33

appropriating Belgian French

1:35

Fries or Belgian Fries and calling

1:37

that sucks that they call them France. Also, I think

1:40

they have a habit of having superfluous

1:43

letters, and they have way to

1:45

like at least a third of the letters in any

1:47

French word are unnecessary. This is

1:49

Yeah, Yeah,

1:52

we're taking France to task today,

1:54

but we're not talking about how they use too many

1:56

letters that that'll be a six parter we

1:58

do at some point day. We are

2:00

talking about French

2:03

fascism. Um,

2:05

yeah, because the French actually

2:07

have a long history of fascism. Although

2:09

there's a weird number of French scholars who will argue

2:12

that France is uniquely immune to fascism,

2:14

it's not. And today we're talking about

2:16

the day that fascists almost took over the French

2:19

government February six, nineteen

2:22

thirty four. Now, all of

2:24

the stories we've shared so far in this series

2:26

have borne some similarities to what happened

2:28

in the U. S. Capital on January six and

2:31

the events that led up to it, But what happened

2:33

in France on February six, nineteen

2:35

thirty four is by far the most direct

2:37

comparison to what happened in the U. S. Capital

2:40

on the six. I knew nothing about this before

2:42

I started this series, but it's fascinating.

2:44

It's wild. Yeah,

2:46

well it failed, but also it is just the

2:48

same damn thing. Basically. You know what's

2:50

crazy is how much the thirties

2:53

must have sucked. They've trashed

2:55

a lot of this stuff happened in the thirties.

2:57

Man, it sucked as

2:59

much as I'm gonna guesses

3:01

are going to suck suck

3:04

a decade. Yeah, um

3:06

yeah, it's great. It's great. How the

3:09

same thing is happening again exactly a century

3:11

later. Pretty much. Um

3:14

So the story starts, our story today

3:16

starts in many ways with something that happened in the late

3:18

eighteen hundreds. Prop have you ever heard of the dry

3:20

Fust affair? No? This

3:22

is I I did

3:25

when I was before I dropped out of college. The

3:27

only thing I ever was able to focus

3:29

on for more than a semester is a major was was

3:32

Holocaust studies? Right? I wanted to when

3:34

I the the only degree ever wanted was a

3:36

degree in like Holocaust scholarship. And

3:39

every class on anti Semitism in the

3:41

history of the Holocaust is going to start,

3:43

or at least be frontloaded with

3:45

the story of the dry Fust affair. And most Americans

3:48

don't know about this, but it's very famous in France and it's

3:50

where the French far right really comes

3:52

out of. In eighteen eighty four,

3:54

a French army captain named Alfred

3:56

Dreyfuss was accused of handing secret

3:58

documents to the Imperial German military.

4:01

Now this was a little over a decade since the Austro

4:04

the Franco Prussian War, which is where

4:06

France lost a bunch of territory to what

4:09

became Germany. Um that one, so

4:11

there's a lot of like panic over the Germans,

4:13

right, So suddenly

4:15

it comes out that like someone has been handing

4:17

documents over to the German military. There's a

4:20

spy in the French military, and everybody

4:22

focuses on Alfred Dreyfuss. He's the immediate

4:24

suspected culprit because he's Jewish,

4:27

you know, like, Okay,

4:29

this is starting to sound a little familiar. Now, yeah,

4:33

yeah, this is this is a pretty famous moment.

4:35

Yeah, I feel like okay, yeah, yeah, I'm

4:37

like you and celebrity names. I'm

4:39

like, I think I know this immediately

4:43

and his story becomes not you

4:45

know, there's a trader in the French military,

4:48

but there's a treacherous jew giving

4:50

our military secrets to the Germans. Right

4:53

um. Now, as I'm sure most of you have guessed,

4:55

just because this is the show, that it is, Dreyfus was

4:57

innocent. The trial against him was racially motive

5:00

vaded and flawed from the get go, and I found

5:02

a good right up on the trial from the open source

5:04

educational website e International Relations,

5:07

which highlights just how fucked things were from

5:09

the jump. On

5:11

the morning of Monday, the fifteenth of October eight,

5:14

Captain Alfred Dreyfuss was summoned to present

5:16

himself at the French Ministry of War. The

5:18

Commander Patty to Come, along with

5:21

three other inspectors, welcome Dryfus and proceeded

5:23

in asking him to write a peculiar letter dictated

5:25

by Patty to clam This

5:28

letter contains sentences from the infamous

5:30

Bordereaux, which was a letter written by a French

5:32

spy found in the dustbin of the German military

5:34

attache in Paris. The French Ministry

5:36

of War was searching for the spy, and we're testing

5:38

various officers that could be suspected of treason.

5:41

As Dreyfus wrote the letter, he shivered, and the

5:43

three men scrutinizing his every move noticed

5:46

his trembling, thus deeming it as a sign

5:48

of culpability. He is cold,

5:50

he shivers, an incontestable sign

5:53

of his culpability. The God he's

5:55

shivered. He's guilty. Guilty.

6:00

One constant throughout history is people whose

6:02

job it is to determine whether or not folks are

6:04

guilty of a crime are always bad at that job.

6:07

Not possible, Yes, Dreyfus

6:10

was immediately arrested for high treason and

6:12

deported to the prison of I'm not even going

6:14

to try to pronounce it. He was sent to prison. On

6:16

December nineteenth, he was court martialed in front

6:18

of a set of anti Semitic juries who

6:20

judged him guilty and sentenced him to a degradation

6:23

and life sentence on the Devil's Aisle in

6:25

French Guyana, so pretty

6:29

pretty much you know, a show trial, right, Yeah,

6:31

that mant that the anti

6:34

Semitism man all the way back from

6:36

there, all the way to they build in

6:39

lasers to shoot from space. They build

6:41

in lasers to shoot from space. And this is

6:43

a real theory because

6:45

we'll talk about this later. France did

6:47

not have much of a history of anti Semitism

6:49

before, not nearly as much as a lot

6:51

of other European countries. So about two years

6:53

after Dryfus is convicted, evidence

6:56

comes out that a completely different, non

6:58

Jewish French office or had been the spy.

7:01

And this is good evidence. The guilty

7:03

man, though, was immediately acquitted by a military

7:05

court because Dreyfus was Jewish and thus

7:08

must be the guilty party, and Dryfus was.

7:10

Actually when the guy who was guilty was acquitted,

7:12

they sentenced to Dryfus for even more crimes

7:15

that he hadn't committed. In the Oh

7:18

my god, it's really bad. Oh

7:21

my god. Anybody who watched that ivan

7:24

the terrible docuseries on

7:26

Netflix about the guy that was accused

7:28

of being the the Nazi.

7:32

Oh yeah, watch that, Yeah, Oh

7:37

Robert, it's up your alley.

7:39

It is dude. So yeah, they're

7:41

like, that's him, I'll never forget his face. He's

7:44

like, no, it's not. Yeah,

7:46

people are bad at remembering

7:49

things, which is a real problem, like eye witness accounts

7:51

and stuff. But there's not even that in this. This

7:53

is just racism that Dryfus is being

7:55

convicted over. Like it's not even someone thinks

7:57

they see him doing something. Um,

8:00

it's just like, well, he's a Jew and he's in the army,

8:02

so he's got to be the guy passing secrets to

8:04

the Germans. Obviously

8:07

you felt this way. Oh sorry, what's that problem?

8:09

Is gonna say? Man, uh, this is

8:11

gonna be a very racist statement, but I mean it as a joke,

8:14

which is even I shouldn't have even prefaced

8:16

it. But I just still think that, like,

8:18

dang man, because I still go when

8:20

I look at like European

8:22

Jews, I'm just like but white

8:24

people, and I just and it's and

8:27

it's so funny to be because I'm like, damn, y'all got

8:29

the short end of the state. You got the

8:31

worst lottery ever as a white dude

8:33

that you don't even get to count as a white dude. You

8:35

have to I think accept that in this

8:38

period of time in Europe, Jewish people

8:40

aren't white. They are excluded from

8:42

the benefits of whiteness. And the way that like in

8:44

the late eighteen hundreds, Italians and

8:46

Irish were in the United States, right, like just

8:49

the process of becoming white for a lot

8:51

of these groups. Yeah, it's so bizarre.

8:53

I know in the early like this is the longest

8:55

script you've ever written, So I shouldn't be at I

9:00

I know that, like you know stories of

9:02

when when America was founded, you know, only

9:05

white people could own land. So you had like Japanese

9:08

immigrants standing in front of the Congress being

9:10

like, nah, we're white too, you

9:12

know what I'm saying, And just this argument that

9:14

like I am a part of that dog.

9:17

I just can't imagine as

9:20

someone who's there

9:22

is no way I could stand in front of any court and

9:24

convince somebody I'm a white dude, you know what I'm

9:26

saying, That like the idea

9:28

one that that's possible, and too that like

9:30

you actually are a white dude, yeah,

9:33

and then nobody's calling you a white dude, you know

9:35

what I'm saying, Like that's at least the

9:38

the European jew obviously Ethiopian

9:40

Jewish people are clearly non white dudes,

9:43

you know, yeah, I mean, and it's it's a factor

9:45

of non

9:47

whiteness is a scale,

9:50

right, Like everyone who is considered non white

9:52

isn't considered the same um

9:55

there, but it's it's it's a it's a scale.

9:57

And and in this period of time and a lot of

9:59

Europe and really not in France

10:02

this had not been the case. But in a lot of your Jewish

10:04

people are not really considered like because there

10:06

had been there there had been within

10:08

living memory at this point, severe restrictions

10:11

on whether or not Jewish people could own property in

10:13

parts of Europe. Um, it had not been

10:15

legal like up to the First World War, almost

10:18

in like Germany, for Jewish people to be officers in

10:20

the military, like, there were very strong restrictions

10:22

around it. So it's really it's

10:25

hard to almost get your head around, um, because

10:28

of how significant it is in this period.

10:30

That's the point I'm trying to make, is like I still

10:32

can't obviously you can't. You

10:34

can't pull a you

10:37

know, a critical race. Theori is based on a

10:39

society in the in

10:41

the twenty one century. You can't yank

10:43

that back to the seventeen and think

10:45

it's going to be the same. But at

10:47

the same time it's still hard to like wrap my mind

10:50

around the fact that they're like but not

10:52

him. And I'm like, how do you know you

10:55

know, I say it it's um, I mean, it's

10:57

it's the whole the whole process of a

10:59

lot of you know, it's

11:01

it's the same way as how most of the kind

11:03

of colonial procedures that the

11:05

British carried out in Africa in

11:07

order to maintain dominance and split up

11:10

different tribal groups and keep them fighting

11:12

each other so that they could dominate and exploit them. They

11:15

beta test at that in Ireland with

11:17

with with what we're effectively tribes and group

11:19

tribal groups of Irish people like that that.

11:21

There are people scholars who will argue that the Irish

11:24

were the first people to be excluded

11:26

from whiteness when they were when the idea

11:28

of whiteness was being invented, before the slave

11:30

trade even really existed, because like it was there

11:33

an early colonized people. It's a it's a like,

11:36

will do a history series

11:38

about this at something History of Whiteness. Yeah,

11:40

there's a couple of really good books, including one

11:42

titled The Invention of the White Race. That's yeah,

11:45

it's a great book. Yeah, very interesting.

11:47

So anyway, everything

11:50

that dry Us, you know, getting tried and then

11:52

getting reconvicted, when this new infro

11:54

comes up, it creates a massive culture

11:56

war in France and two groups

11:58

kind of rise up a down this. There's the

12:01

anti dry Fussards, who are confusingly

12:03

the ones who think dry Fuss is innocent, okay,

12:07

yeah uh, and then there's the

12:10

dry Fussards who are raging

12:12

anti semites um. Like, the

12:14

dry Fussards think that that Dryfus

12:16

is guilty. The anti dry Fussards think that

12:18

he's okay. So it's

12:21

the opposite of how you'd think it would be. It's opposite

12:23

day okay, got it. So dry Fuss

12:25

is pardoned by the French president and released

12:28

in nineteen o three. Eventually, just

12:30

like and and in fairness to France, the weight

12:32

of kind of cultural opinion

12:35

is that Dreyfus is guilty. People come around

12:37

on this and realize that they've done him dirty.

12:39

Um. So he's released in nineteen o three

12:42

and in nineteen oh six of French court formally

12:44

recognizes his innocence. Now the

12:46

actual spy, and the racist officers

12:49

who conspired against Dryfus were never

12:51

punished. And one of the saddest things about

12:53

the story is how kind of incomprehensibly

12:55

loyal to the state Alfred Dryfuss is because

12:58

after he gets out of years of being a prison

13:00

as a spy, he rejoins the French

13:02

army and fights in World War One. Yeah,

13:05

he retires as a lieutenant colonel and

13:07

dies at nineteen thirty five. He goes right back into

13:09

the military. Dunboy

13:12

like bro, it is

13:14

hard to get your head around. These

13:16

people don't love you fam well,

13:18

so I mean, in fairness to him, a lot of folks

13:20

there was a huge culture war in his defense

13:23

in a lot of cases this

13:25

is wrong. Um

13:27

So, all things considered, for

13:30

what is effectively like a racist

13:35

attack on a Jewish man

13:37

at multiple levels of the military, the

13:39

dry Fuss affair works at about as well as you can

13:41

expect for drivers because he is he is vindicated

13:44

in the end, but because of

13:46

how much because of what kind of like

13:48

evolves in France around believing

13:51

dry Us is guilty and starting to believe that Jewish

13:53

people are kind of inherently unloyal

13:55

to the state uh supercharges

13:58

the radical right in France, and it lays the

14:00

foundations for French sympathy for the Nazis

14:02

and a hatred of Jewish people that would claim tens

14:05

of thousands of lives in World War Two. And I'm

14:07

gonna quote from that rite up in the International Relations

14:09

again quote. Before the affair,

14:11

France had been one of the least anti Semitic

14:13

countries in Europe. It in fact had been the country

14:16

where the most Jews had sought political asylum

14:18

during the pogroms that took place in Russia during

14:20

the eighteen eighties. Russian Jews

14:23

escaped the massacres ordered by the Czar and

14:25

flee towards the rest, predominantly France.

14:28

Another event attesting to France's non anti

14:30

Semitic past was that there was no French

14:32

delegation at any of the annual congresses

14:34

of Anti Semitism that took place in Dressden.

14:37

Yes, there used to be yearly congress is

14:39

based on anti Semitism and Dressed that

14:41

a bunch of European countries would send delegates

14:44

to to talk about the Danges. You the

14:47

amount of anti like the Holocaust,

14:49

isn't a factor of the Nazis. The Holocaust

14:51

is a factor of centuries of most of

14:53

European christ and of being like the Jews are dangerous,

14:56

Like that's where it comes from. Just

14:58

a slow moving beIN that

15:01

ended exactly where logically

15:03

it would end. Yeah, it was the result

15:05

of for hundreds of years, lots of prominent

15:08

people being like, we should murder these folks, and

15:10

then they did. You know, it's the least

15:12

surprising thing in the world if you read anything

15:14

about European history. Um

15:17

so. Yeah. But in France though, um

15:20

that that's not really the case as much.

15:22

Obviously there's anti Semitism in France, as the Driver's

15:24

Affair shows, but it's not nearly what it was. It was

15:26

one of the best places in Europe to be Jewish

15:28

and there were, as dry Fus proves, a lot of

15:31

very loyal to France Jewish people. Um

15:34

so, the anti Semmotism really starts

15:36

to grow into a serious force in France as

15:39

a result of the dry Fust affair. The

15:41

Driver's Affair also leads to an explosion

15:43

in the radical press. For the first time

15:45

in French history, Left and right start

15:47

launching a series of newspapers and magazines

15:50

aimed at taking different sides in a violent

15:52

culture war. At the start, anti

15:54

dry Fussard press outnumbered the dry Fusard

15:56

press by about ten to one in terms of

15:58

readership. So the guy who think dry fus

16:00

is innocent, that's the majority of the press at the beginning.

16:03

But that doesn't stop the dry

16:06

the dry fuss Aard press, which are the ones

16:08

who don't like drivers, from publishing a constant

16:10

stream of ever more lurid lies about a Jewish

16:12

conspiracy to undermine the military.

16:15

Now, some will argue that the whole reason the dry

16:17

fust affair became a thing was because the press

16:19

flocked to it, and that it might have disappeared

16:22

um if they hadn't written so much about it.

16:24

Scholar Jen Dennis Brennan wrote, the

16:27

press became the power of opinion. It

16:29

amplified the political movements without creating

16:31

them. For the first time, the press disposed

16:33

of a powerful influence on French politics, dramatizing,

16:36

supporting, or denouncing the authorities.

16:39

Now this is very familiar to everybody listening right

16:42

now. It's the same thing that happened with like Q and on right,

16:44

this radical press, the the and

16:46

when when we talk about radical press in this

16:48

period, the people like mimeographing or whatever

16:50

their own like little newsletters and stuff. It's

16:52

the same as like memes and shipped on Twitter and went

16:55

on. It's like eight chance, that's what's happening. It's

16:57

still still just dank memes, okay,

16:59

and it it's by the way, this basic process

17:02

is the same thing that radicalize as Hitler when he's

17:04

when he's like homeless living in Vienna, he starts picking

17:06

up all of these crudely copied

17:08

and written anti Semitic tracts

17:11

that were passed out in mass on the street. That's

17:13

what convinces him in a lot of

17:15

ways about the danger of the Jewish menace. It's

17:17

a lot of the same ship you see on h Chan. It's

17:20

just now what happens online. Then it was

17:22

like like zines you would pass out basically,

17:24

Yeah, I wonder if there's like some sort of

17:27

psychological study or something

17:29

that like lays

17:32

out what that does

17:34

to you mentally to see something that's like feels

17:38

clandestine, if you will, because it's like

17:40

these like mimiograph things, like the

17:42

quality is terrible, so it's so

17:44

does something in you feel like, oh, this is a

17:47

secret that's why it's not all polished and nice.

17:49

It's like there's there someone if there's

17:51

something to that where it's like I'm I'm in I'm

17:53

in on something. I know. There's psychology

17:56

about that where you feel like you're in on something everybody

17:58

else isn't. It hits

18:00

a certain party of brain. It's his

18:02

man, But I wonder if there's something to do with like how

18:04

sucky the quality of like, yes, this

18:07

is the same. You know. I talked about this a

18:09

lot. There's this one of the guys behind

18:11

the Lincoln Project as a fellow named Rick Wilson,

18:14

who is, like I think, objectively

18:16

a bad person, um, but has been

18:18

historically pretty good at creating certain types

18:20

of propaganda. He was the guy behind the

18:23

Reverend Right campaign ads during Obama's

18:25

election. Um, yeah, he's

18:27

that guy. And I interviewed him in sixteen

18:30

talking about kind of his opinion

18:32

on Hillary Clinton's campaign ads versus

18:35

Donald Trump's because the first Trump campaign

18:37

ads really felt like something some teenager

18:39

had cobbled together on their laptop, and

18:41

Hillary's ads were like traditional campaign as and

18:43

everyone was a lot of liberals were making

18:46

fun of Trump's ads, but they were getting this incredible

18:48

traction. And the thing he told me was essentially

18:50

like the really polished

18:53

slip campaign ads don't work nearly as well

18:55

as the ones that look like they came out of somebody's basement,

18:57

because that feels real to people, right,

19:00

like, it feels more authentic. And I, you

19:02

know, like, again he's a very

19:04

bad person. Um, he's not bad

19:07

at making propagandis. And I think

19:09

about what he told me a lot um

19:12

and that's I think, what kind of what you're seeing here?

19:14

I think you're exactly right. So

19:17

the dry Fist affair would prove in the radical

19:19

press that kind of comes out of the dry Fist affair

19:22

would prove to be the seed of a new

19:24

militant right wing in France, one

19:26

that came with its own stabbed in the back myth right.

19:28

We talked about how the stabbed in the back myth in Germany

19:30

was crucial now the right in Frances,

19:32

like we lost the Franco Prussian War because

19:34

the Jews, you know, um

19:37

damn it. And it's it's worth noting that when

19:39

the Nazis took over France, they

19:41

actually had a problem, had serious

19:43

problems logistically because of

19:45

how many French people were turning in

19:48

their Jewish neighbors. They couldn't deal with the sheer

19:50

number of Jewish people being turned into them. Yeah,

19:52

it was way more normal to give up

19:54

your Jewish neighbors to the Nazis than it was

19:57

to hide them in a lot of Europe, but in

19:59

France to yeah, I know,

20:01

like I have, we talked about so many

20:03

times, like the parallels in the end, like Syria

20:05

and Rock and Iran like and I

20:07

have you know, some of my homies out

20:10

there, like we're trying to explain like

20:12

how a caliphate kind of grows and

20:14

this is a lot of the thing too.

20:16

It's like this these like heavily

20:19

armed dudes pull up to the house and are like

20:21

are you a Christian? And you're like,

20:25

uh, nab but they are, you

20:27

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

20:29

or you down for the Caliphate? You down with us? And

20:31

it's like, uh, well, day's data.

20:34

Ones down there said it's just like I just don't want you

20:36

to drag my daughter out of my house. So

20:38

yeah them, you know what I'm saying,

20:41

he just turned it down. The dude down the street, you know what I'm

20:43

saying. I don't know what they are, you know. And and

20:45

it's like a lot of people that signed up

20:48

didn't really sign up. They just

20:50

you know what I'm saying, It's just I just don't want you to drag my

20:52

grandma out of the street, you know what I mean. Yeah,

20:55

that's a factor in it. There's a this

20:57

is when we

20:59

talk about the Holocaust. That's a complicated factor

21:01

because a lot of people would claim in their

21:03

defense later, like after during

21:06

the Nuremberg Trial time that they had

21:08

been forced to carry These are mainly German soldiers,

21:10

they had been forced to carry out acts of genocide,

21:13

and a significant amount of scholarship shows

21:15

that, like it's actually was unheard

21:18

of for German soldiers to be punished for not

21:20

engaging in acts of genocide. Um,

21:23

it was. It was a lot of a lot of it was just it was a mix

21:25

of like peer pressure and like legitimate radicalization.

21:28

But that's a whole Holocaust is

21:30

a whole another story. Um.

21:32

But this is a part of the story of the Holocaust. Though.

21:34

This is why part of why the French

21:38

people in who are taken by the Nazis

21:40

are so willing to turn in Jewish neighbors. You know. Um,

21:44

and none of this should be seen as like kind

21:46

of uh ignoring the fact

21:48

that a lot of French people hid and protected their

21:50

Jewish neighbors. That actually makes them much more heroic.

21:53

But that was not the norm, you know. Um.

21:56

So again, the dry Fust affair gives birth

21:59

to the ight wing in

22:01

France. Um and it

22:03

it's it's like it leads to

22:05

this alternative media ecosystem that starts

22:07

spreading propaganda at a at a huge

22:09

rate. Um. Now, France, obviously,

22:12

World War one comes around and France is one of the co

22:14

co belligerents in that war, and they suffered,

22:16

you know, terribly as a resulting at one point three

22:18

million French soldiers were killed and another

22:21

million were left permanently disabled. Which

22:23

makes which means that like in that war, France

22:25

lost as many soldiers dead as the US has

22:27

lost, more than the US has lost in all

22:29

of its wars put together. Um

22:31

damn. Yeah, it's bad. Um

22:34

Yeah. Seventy of French

22:37

soldiers who mobilized for World War One where

22:39

either killed or wounded. Um. And

22:41

this is not just include white frenchmen. This includes a

22:43

huge number of colonial troops who were brought

22:45

onto the continent by the French government to

22:47

make up for the fact that after a while, German

22:49

machine guns had them running low on white dudes, you

22:51

know. Um. And one of the stories

22:54

that's not talked about enough in World War One is how many

22:56

people from India, people from chunks of Africa,

22:58

from like all over the world, from

23:00

the Middle East were brought in to die

23:02

on the Western Front because like, we

23:05

own these places and we can make them, you know,

23:08

beauty of colonialism. You can just yet pull bodies

23:10

from anywhere, pull them all from wherever. Now.

23:13

The days and months after World War One's

23:15

closed brought a wave of revolutions and insurrections

23:18

across Europe. In Germany and Russia. As we've

23:20

talked about, all these trauma mad young veterans

23:22

were major instigators of unrest in what one

23:24

scholar called the shatter zones of

23:27

the empires that died as the war's conclusion

23:30

um, which I think it's a neat term. You

23:32

know, all these paramilitary organizations start becoming

23:35

more common, and Frances spared the worst

23:37

of this in part because you know, they have their stab

23:39

in the back from the War of eighteen seventy.

23:41

But then they win World War one, which does

23:44

kind of mean it reduces the

23:46

avenues for radicalization. Right, people aren't

23:48

as angry because the war was terrible, but they did

23:50

win. You know, it's not as

23:52

bad as it is in Germany or you know, Italy

23:54

one too, but they kind of got screwed in the victory,

23:57

you know, so there there's a lot more

23:59

resentant in those countries. Um.

24:02

France does have some unrest though, there's waves of strikes

24:04

in early nineteen nineteen, but these didn't really

24:06

disrupt the status quo. They did, however,

24:08

terrify French conservatives. This was

24:11

largely because those conservatives weren't seeing

24:13

the reality of the strikes themselves, but were instead

24:15

looking at the violence convulsing Russia as

24:17

a result of its recent revolution and

24:19

being like, that's what these

24:21

people want to bring here, you know. Yeah,

24:24

so everybody's scared of whatever hell happened

24:26

to Russia. Everybody is. Yeah, it's a huge

24:29

factor here, you know, and

24:31

you have to acknowledge that. Like we

24:33

talk a lot about how the people on the left are terrified

24:36

about what they see happening in France and Germany. People

24:38

on the right are terrified about what they see happening in

24:40

Russia and a lot of again, nine million people

24:42

die in that war. You have the

24:44

Holodomor, which is five million Ukrainians

24:47

being starved. There's a result of some very fucked

24:49

up policies. So like they're not

24:51

like when people are terrified as a result of what's

24:53

happening in Russia. It's not like you

24:55

know, today people being scared of cultural

24:58

Marxism because you know, someone

25:00

wants to talk about slavery, you know, yeah, yeah,

25:03

yeah, basically they have very different

25:05

that's a legitimate fear. Yeah, there's

25:07

they have a leg to stand on right now.

25:09

Again, they usually still take it

25:11

to like, well now we have to just do fascism,

25:14

which is yeah, it's like well bro, but

25:16

but it's not quite the same. Um.

25:19

So, the fear of French conservatives

25:21

were exacerbated by a pattern of progressive

25:23

social changes that came in the wars wake the

25:25

sheer number of men killed and rendered unable

25:27

to work, had to bring more women into the workplace.

25:29

Right, you have a bunch of men who can't take

25:32

part in capitalism anymore, so you got to bring in

25:34

women. This brings in expansions and women's

25:36

rights and a broadening of what was considered acceptable

25:38

behavior. For the first time, large

25:41

numbers of French women were both sexually and

25:43

financially independent of men, and

25:45

obviously this terrifies conservatives.

25:48

Yeah, I can't have women making decisions.

25:51

Yeah, they might, they might decide not to make

25:54

more French babies, which

25:56

is actually exactly where this leads because something

25:58

called the birthrate movement pop up

26:00

in this period of time. These guys are

26:02

scared at declining rates of French

26:04

birth. Now, they started winding in eighteen

26:06

seventy one when Prussia beat France in that

26:08

war, because the French, right before they started

26:11

blaming Jewish people, blame the fact that

26:13

French people women weren't having enough babies,

26:15

Like that's the thing, Like the right loses of war

26:17

and they're like they have to find a scapegoats. So first

26:19

it's the women, You're not making enough babies for us

26:21

to send into German guns, which

26:25

is obviously like ridiculous. We'll

26:27

spoil an episode that we're going to drop soon. The

26:29

reason France loses that wars because they

26:32

have brass cannons that are basically Napoleonic

26:34

artillery and the Germans have modern steel

26:36

cannons, and that's why France loses an eight one.

26:39

That's the real reason. It has nothing to do

26:41

with birthrate. Um

26:43

yeah, how would it, like, I'm even

26:45

trying to follow your logic, Like, there's not that many

26:48

Germans. Yeah, it's not that media of it. What does

26:50

Toddler gonna do say

26:52

exactly? Um?

26:56

But yeah, it does say something about the right wing

26:58

that they're like, if we'd had more always to send

27:00

into their guns, we would have won. Yeah,

27:03

okay, Um.

27:05

And then of course, like after they you know, after

27:08

a decade or so of blaming women, they start blaming

27:11

Jewish people. Uh So the

27:13

kind of the birthrate movement got even

27:16

more like gained more

27:18

traction after World War One because at this point a

27:20

lot of French dudes had died, so they had a little bit more

27:22

of a leg to stand on, like we need to have more babies

27:24

because look at how many of our boys got killed. A

27:27

better answer think, I'm just like, man,

27:29

I always these dudes, like when I'm hearing

27:32

them, just the stabbing the back thing. And then then

27:34

we had no birthrate. I just wish these kids had

27:36

like Little League Baseball at

27:38

some point to just like teach you how

27:40

to take a loss. Man, just take

27:42

the loss, bro, you lost none

27:45

of them. That's the fucking thing. And it's the same

27:47

fucking thing for like the Hindenberg

27:49

and Ludendorf in Germany, where it's

27:52

like, well, we can't accept that we

27:54

fucked up, right, it has to be it has to

27:56

be someone else's fault that we lost this war. Yeah,

27:59

just take the l bro. Like sometimes you

28:01

know, hey, you had a bad day,

28:04

you know you just hey, buck up, champ,

28:06

like you just you took your lost, all right, take

28:09

everybody takes ls. Yeah, it's like the fact.

28:11

It's like it's like the American right wing blaming

28:14

the fact that we lost Vietnam on like

28:16

teenagers protesting. It's like, no, dude,

28:19

like the Vietnamese kicked your ass. They

28:21

were better better,

28:25

Like this is what happens. Sometimes you

28:27

lose. Yeah, Usually you

28:29

lose when you do stupid shit, you

28:31

like invade Vietnam

28:34

or invade Afghanistan. Should

28:37

have been anyway. Yeah,

28:40

So anyway, obviously a bunch of

28:42

members of the birth rate movement get elected to government. They

28:44

pushed legislation to encourage childbirth, YadA,

28:46

YadA. In nineteen twenty, a conservative

28:49

government is elected and immediately sets to pushing

28:51

back against what they saw as a rising and

28:53

sinister communist left. They

28:55

were opposed by the labor government, which had

28:57

been swelled by the war's need for heavy industry.

29:00

During the first six months of conservative power,

29:02

a series of strikes convulsed both French industry

29:05

and public services. Still,

29:07

the start of the twenties was a good time to be a French Conservative.

29:10

The stain of defeat in eighteen seventy one

29:12

had been wiped out by victory over Germany. The

29:14

new right wing government was seen as being largely

29:16

composed of herobic veterans, even though this wasn't

29:19

really true, but the idea was that like, these

29:21

guys are all heroes. They're not normal, crooked

29:23

politicians right there. They are men of

29:25

the Trench generation. They could be trusted to make

29:27

hard decisions to make France great again.

29:30

So first on the right wings agenda

29:32

was of course, sticking it to the Germans.

29:34

Just defeat. The defeated nations did

29:36

a lot of money to France and reparations um

29:39

and these were seen not only as spoils of war, but

29:41

were necessary to revive the French economy

29:43

because the French had gone badly into debt to the United

29:45

States in order to continue fighting the war.

29:47

So they need German reparations to pay

29:50

off the US. You know, um

29:53

uh money because I owe

29:55

some money. Yeah, I need my money because

29:57

yeah. So when the Germans

29:59

begged that they couldn't afford to like feed their

30:01

people and pay reparations, the French

30:03

right wing assumed that they were lying, and

30:05

this newly formed network of right wing newspapers

30:08

in magazine starts spreading another conspiracy

30:10

theory. This one is that Germany actually hadn't

30:12

been all that badly hurt in World War One. They

30:15

just faked a surrender so that they could rebuild

30:17

their military and sneak attack Germany.

30:19

All of their complaints about economic collapse

30:21

and inflation and starvation were lies

30:24

meant to lull the French into a false sense of security,

30:27

which yeah, is not

30:30

the case. So the Germans

30:32

stopped paying reparations because they were literally

30:34

on the verge of societal collapse, and the French

30:36

government sends in troops to occupy Germany's

30:39

industrial heartland. And of course a

30:41

big one of the things that happened in this period is

30:43

a lot of the troops they send over are like black

30:45

people from their colonial possessions,

30:47

which really jump starts a lot

30:49

of racism in Germany, um

30:52

because like, you know, nobody ever likes the occupying

30:54

soldiers. Nobody, Yeah, nobody

30:56

wants the messenger. Yeah exactly.

30:59

Umviously, Still one time I

31:01

feel like in this age, or in this

31:03

era of history where I feel like I have a little

31:05

more mercy for Germany when

31:08

they're just like, dog, we may look, man, we

31:11

ain't got it. Dog Like we just I

31:13

ain't got it, you know what I'm saying. It's like it's your

31:15

fault. Don't get me wrong, it's your fault.

31:18

But you can't squeeze water out of a turn up fan.

31:20

Yeah, I mean, they're fucking like the

31:22

thing that they're guilty of in World War

31:25

One in that era, and the reason that like

31:28

France and Germany come down so hard on them is

31:30

like they're primarily guilty of wanting to do what France

31:32

and Germany had been doing for two, two or three centuries.

31:34

You know, they wanted an empire. They're

31:36

like, well everyone else gets to do it. Why don't we get it's

31:40

bad to want an empire? Obviously, what the

31:42

Germans do some really messed up stuff in the Maybia carry

31:44

out a genlside themselves like but

31:47

also up to World War One and including

31:49

World War One, if you're looking at like the number

31:52

of crimes against humanity committed by Germany

31:54

versus France or England, not

31:56

even Yeah.

32:01

In nineteen twenty four, the French Conservatives

32:03

get their asses handed to them in a landslide

32:05

election, and the victors in this election are an

32:07

alliance between socialists and radicals.

32:10

Now again because

32:12

everything in Frances backward, the Socialists

32:14

were the furthest electorally relevant

32:17

left wing party. So the Socialists are like

32:19

as far less like the Bernie Sanders, as far left

32:21

as you could be in French politics and still get

32:23

elected. Obviously they're further left in than Bernie, but like

32:25

they're as far left as you can be in France and

32:28

get elected. The Communists hate

32:30

the Socialists in a lot of cases because the Communists

32:32

are further left than that and they're not really as relevant

32:34

in the government as a result. The Radicals

32:37

are the exact opposite of with the sound like, the Radicals

32:39

have the same kind of position in France, and this is

32:42

at this period as Democrats do. They're

32:44

the center left right, the majority

32:46

left. Um

32:49

So, the Radicals are not radicals and the

32:51

Socialists are not communists, but they

32:53

are far left for French politics. Again,

32:55

everything in Frances backward. Um

32:58

So, the Radicals and Socialists had work together

33:00

in the past. Um they

33:02

were allied, and that they all kind of broadly supported

33:05

human rights, democracy and anti

33:07

clericalism, pushing against like the Catholic

33:09

Church. But they didn't get along on much

33:11

else. The Radicals were the party of like

33:13

the petite bourgeoisie, the lower middle class,

33:16

small business owners and successful peasants.

33:18

They were big on individualism and self reliance

33:21

and of course property ownership as a method

33:23

of social advancement. The Socialists

33:25

are socialists. Their partnerships

33:28

were always awkward, and for one thing, the Socialist

33:30

Party had a standing rule that none of their deputies

33:32

were allowed to accept ministerial posts

33:34

and radical governments because they saw themselves

33:37

as a Marxist revolutionary party and

33:39

if they were seen as working within a liberal government,

33:41

the Communists would eat them alive and suck in their

33:44

disaffected members. So they

33:46

get elected to what is effectively

33:48

French Parliament or Congress or whatever. They

33:51

have deputies, but they won't serve in the government

33:53

of the radical majority, because that would mean

33:55

compromising the fact that they're Marxist revolutionaries

33:58

and the lose members to the communists then, and

34:00

the communists hate the socialists because they're willing

34:02

to get like elected at all, basically, um,

34:04

and they're willing to work with the radicals. It's very

34:07

very complicated and domb but it's also like basically

34:09

what happens between the left all

34:11

the time. Right, you've got the left that

34:13

wants to actually govern, and you've got the left

34:16

that's like the system is so fucked

34:18

up that governing means buying

34:21

into the things that we're fighting against, you know. Yeah.

34:25

Yeah. Despite the fact that actual

34:28

socialists like weren't

34:30

taking uh weren't willing to take up ministerial

34:32

jobs, and the fact that the left coalition didn't agree

34:34

on much, the election of this new government,

34:37

which is called the cartel, drives

34:39

the right wing completely bug fuck

34:41

and I'm sure Americans can understand what that look like.

34:43

The conservative print media basically calls

34:46

this stage one of a Communist invasion.

34:48

The socialists, who the communists

34:50

hated were considered to be just the same

34:52

as the communists revolutionaries and Sheep's

34:55

clothing In nineteen twenty

34:57

six, the Cartel really pisss off the

34:59

right way when they approved the Washington Accords,

35:02

which guaranteed that France would keep repaying

35:04

her ward at to the United States even

35:06

if Germany defaulted on their payments to

35:08

France. At the same time, the Cartel

35:10

brings the Germans into the League of Nations.

35:12

The Cartel in France are like this liberal

35:15

government, they're trying to rehabilitate

35:17

Germany because Germany is kind of socialist

35:19

at this point. They're like, let's bring them back into the national

35:21

community, like we can't keep

35:23

ostracizing them as a result of World War One,

35:26

and part of bringing Germany back in as they negotiate

35:28

a more reasonable repayment arrangement

35:30

with Germany that the right wing sees is

35:32

the left selling out the country and it's war

35:34

dead, right, So

35:38

yeah, you just oh,

35:40

man, yeah, I'm getting I feel like I'm

35:43

feeling itchy on my back. Man. You

35:45

know, everyone knows where this is going, yes,

35:48

like and then and then the thing is this, it's

35:50

like in the same way that we call

35:52

that y'all call Bernie Sanders a radical

35:55

leftist, I'm like talking about Bernie Sanders

35:57

sawing my stuff that they do in Canada.

35:59

You don't say, yeah, the communist bastion

36:01

of Canada, you know what I'm saying. So like

36:04

he ain't really radically not

36:06

really that you know what I'm saying, lightweight, you know.

36:08

And when I compare like a party

36:11

to like they're the Bidens or whatever, I'm not saying

36:13

They're politics are like it, it's like a comparative

36:15

thing, like, yeah, I get the scale. I totally

36:17

I'm totally following the scale, and I'm saying, yeah,

36:20

in this scenario, it's like what they're

36:22

suggesting is reasonable.

36:25

They you're not gonna get your money. Yeah,

36:28

you're not gonna get your money if you kill the Germans.

36:30

Let's bring them back in and let them rebuild

36:32

and will eventually get paid if they slow,

36:34

please be like this if we never rehabilitate

36:37

them. It's the same thing with like with like

36:39

prison reform exactly this

36:41

like it's just gonna keep No, we have

36:44

to do this, this is reasonable. We're

36:46

not going to get the result that we both want.

36:48

So let me just and you talk

36:51

him. I'm selling you out, Okay, I'm

36:53

getting itchy. Yeah. Yeah, So

36:56

the years that Cartel is in power are basically

36:58

a constant stream of outrage porn for the

37:00

now exploding right wing media ecosystem.

37:03

Okay, newspapers like Action, Francois,

37:06

Candied which means Candid, Gringore,

37:09

and Jsuit Partu which means I

37:11

Am Everywhere reach hundreds of thousands

37:13

and eventually more than a million conservative

37:15

French readers. The first

37:17

of these was Candide, which had been established

37:19

in eighteen sixty five and from the beginning

37:22

was both anti democratic and anti

37:24

Semitic. When Communism kind of

37:26

went viral worldwide, it added violently

37:28

anti communists to its repertoire. Candied

37:31

was followed by gring Oar, which was named after

37:33

a French journalist, and Jesuite

37:35

Part two was initially

37:37

not anti semitic or right wing, but throughout

37:39

the nineteen twenties, at the direction of its head editor,

37:42

the paper got more and more extreme. In

37:44

the late twenties and early thirties, it goes all

37:46

in from Mussolini and it starts to get progressively

37:48

anti semitic, until by the late nineteen thirties

37:51

it was literally just a Nazi magazine. So

37:53

these are like the big the big names,

37:56

and right wing media can yeah,

38:00

candy Gringo. Anyway,

38:02

So in the early years of the cartel, well,

38:04

the French left is, like I think, objectively,

38:06

being pretty reasonable. The French right

38:08

wing is losing its entire damn mind.

38:11

And as will again sound familiar to

38:13

everyone, the right wing reacts to the

38:15

left having some success by forming

38:17

a system of violent street fighting gangs

38:19

so they could beat up their opponents in the streets.

38:22

Um. This was of course part of a trend in Europe

38:24

that exploded from nineteen nineteen to nineteen

38:26

twenty three or so. We've talked about this both in the case

38:28

of Italy and Germany. Now again in France,

38:31

there's less unrest and there's less angry veterans

38:33

who want to tear down to the state because they in

38:35

that state had won their war. So it takes

38:37

longer in France for a paramilitary culture

38:40

to really kick off. One of the most direct

38:42

causes comes in nineteen twenty four, as

38:44

the study France and Fascism by Brian

38:46

Jenkins notes, the right suspicions

38:49

about revolutionary and anti national

38:51

nature of the Cartel were apparently confirmed

38:53

in November nineteen twenty four, when the government

38:56

sanctioned the internment of the ashes of

38:58

the socialist founding father ganjare

39:00

in the pantheon, while socialists and

39:02

radicals led a cortage to the Temple of the Republic.

39:05

The conservative press focused on a communist

39:07

counter demonstration held in protest

39:10

at the parliamentary left hijacking

39:12

of j A. The presence of noisy

39:14

communists in the streets with socialist and radical

39:16

deputy suggested that the cartel had accepted

39:19

Bolsheviks into its ranks, and the Chamber

39:21

of Deputies right wing deputy Pierre Tattinger

39:23

denounced the revolutionary saturnalia

39:26

of the day, which he claimed he had witnessed a

39:28

true outbreak of revolution from the international

39:31

underworld that infects France. Tattinger

39:33

promised that if the government could not take matters into

39:35

hand, the leagues of public safety are

39:37

ready to defend and save are threatened society.

39:41

Now the leagues are these, these militant

39:43

organizations, the street organizations. So what happens

39:45

here is this socialist

39:47

guy's ashes get brought back to France. It's

39:49

like founder of the French Socialist Party and the socialists

39:52

and the radicals is kind of a demonstration of left unity.

39:55

Have a have a ceremony for this

39:57

this dead socialist. The

39:59

communists who hate everybody who's not

40:01

a communist have their own rally, and

40:03

they're more extreme, but they're very tiny, and they

40:05

obviously hate the rest of the left. The conservative

40:08

media looks at just the communist demonstration

40:10

says, that's all of them, that's the whole left. They're all

40:12

like these guys again, it's

40:14

all the same, nothing

40:17

changes, nothing changes,

40:19

you know, isn't going to change me asking

40:21

you to take an ad yep, you

40:24

know who won't uh

40:27

radicalize the French right

40:30

over anti semitism based on

40:35

Communist demonstrations taken out of

40:37

context? Yeah, man, hopefully

40:39

these uh, these other podcasts,

40:42

these other podcasts or whatever advertising

40:45

that. All

40:54

right, we're back. So this guy, I know you're gonna say

40:56

that, Yeah, you got your own so

40:59

the sky. Pierre Tattinger, who will

41:01

talk about in a bit, is a big advocate

41:04

of these leagues, these right wing street fighting gangs,

41:06

and he keeps like for years

41:09

afterwards, he will talk about November nineteen

41:11

twenty four, this like one communist rally

41:14

as and use it as like the whole reason

41:16

why the entire left needs to be defeated.

41:18

Um and a lot of like a huge

41:21

chunk of Catholics and nationalists in France

41:23

believe that like, based on again this

41:25

one demonstration, a communist

41:27

revolution is like right about to happen.

41:30

Now. This was made worse by the

41:32

fact that the mid nineteen sufferance suffering

41:34

economic contraction that, while not as severe

41:36

as the one experienced by Germany, was pretty

41:39

bad. Now you mix that in with a declining

41:41

birth rate, and as Brian Jenkins rights

41:43

quote, in comparison to the dynamic and

41:45

youthful regimes abroad, such as Mussolini's

41:47

Italian Fascist State, the Republic

41:49

did not seem fit for purpose. Sections

41:52

of the right thus looked for a solution beyond

41:54

the institutions of the regime to violent

41:56

extra parliamentary groups known as leagues.

41:59

So Frances have trouble here, and the

42:01

right, rather than like trying to take any

42:03

accurate stock of things, looks at the propaganda

42:05

coming out of the Italian Fascist state, which is not

42:07

accurate, and it's like, see, everything is great

42:09

in Italy. Why don't we do that? Oh

42:11

my god, yeah, oh

42:14

my god, dude, it's great. Uh

42:17

So the leagues are not quite like the black Shirts

42:20

or the free Corps. They're not heavily armed. Most

42:22

of them are veterans, but they don't have like machine guns

42:24

generally and like massive Like they're not private

42:27

armies. They're groups of combat veterans

42:29

generally who want to like drink and

42:31

fight in the streets against the left. One

42:34

of the first leagues was founded by that Pierre

42:36

Tattinger, and he called them the Juness

42:39

Patriots or the Young Patriots, and

42:41

they were initially the youth wing of the League

42:43

of Patriots, which was a political organization

42:46

the same it's it's yeah,

42:49

the Young Republicans, right, turn the

42:51

point USA or whatever. Patriots like,

42:54

they're all proud boys, you know, they're all proud,

42:57

proud boys. So

43:01

a lot of people on the left recognize the

43:03

League's as a threat um and they are. One

43:06

French leftist Louver noted that since

43:08

Mussolini's March on Rome, one could no longer

43:11

so much as walk in the street without wearing a colored

43:13

shirt. You know, he's talking about like they've got you've got the

43:15

black shirts and Rome the brown search in Germany,

43:17

and now like all of our guys have their own shirts, their

43:20

own colored shirts for each league's

43:22

and he warns that Louver warns that

43:24

if these leagues were able to like stop

43:26

fighting each other over petty bullshit and could unite

43:29

under a single charismatic leader, the

43:31

way would be open for what he called the

43:33

rule of castor Oil and the grenade.

43:36

So like, basically, we've got all these fascists. If they could

43:38

unify behind one guy, we're in trouble. You know,

43:41

there's the castor oil again. Yeah,

43:44

it's a real thing in this period. So

43:47

in this the left wing fear was

43:49

you know, accurate, reasonable, but perhaps a bit

43:51

premature. The French leagues regularly

43:54

reprinted fascist brockpaganda and definitely

43:56

admired the black Shirts, but they were also

43:58

French, and if you know anything about France,

44:00

it's that France kind of hates the idea of other

44:02

people's cultures coming into France and gaining

44:05

influence. They are very proud of

44:07

being French, and even French proto fascists,

44:09

like their Spanish counterparts, were kind

44:12

of didn't like would argue that they didn't want

44:14

fascism because fascisms with foreign ideology,

44:16

right, we were extreme rightists, but we want our own

44:18

French version of that. We don't want to like steal from Italy.

44:21

We're France, We're better than that. I was like, that's pretty,

44:23

that's pretty on brand France. Yeah, it's very

44:25

rand France, very France. Yea.

44:28

So, one scholar named Dobris

44:30

calls this the dilemma of the authoritarian

44:33

nationalist, which is the fact that nationalists

44:35

want to be authentically of their nation

44:38

because fascism tends to gain power by reacting

44:40

against purported foreign influence. Um.

44:43

But at the same time they want to imitate successful

44:45

authoritarians abroad, and this creates a problem for

44:47

a lot of fascists. We again, we saw the same thing in France.

44:50

Now, the struggle within the French right over

44:52

this continued through the mid nineteen twenties

44:54

while the Leagues went through what Dobris calls an

44:56

apprenticeship period to the Fascist International.

44:59

So French Shire behind the German

45:01

and Italian fascist they're not as as quick.

45:04

They're kind of learning from them, right, and they're

45:06

slower on the uptake as a result. Um.

45:09

Now, because a lot of awful lot of French League

45:11

members were veterans, the League's benefited from

45:13

what became known as the veterans mystique,

45:16

which was a near worship in France of

45:18

what we're called the Front generation. People

45:20

celebrated the trench ocracy, which is like

45:22

the democracy of the trenches. Right. Um,

45:25

this is huge in Europe. It's not just in France,

45:27

because in Germany Hitler makes a lot of hay out

45:29

of the fact that he'd been a corporal in the trenches,

45:31

not like an officer or a nobleman, but a normal

45:34

soldier. Um. But I think Americans can

45:36

understand how like right wing groups

45:38

can use veneration of veterans

45:40

as a way to push their own

45:43

radical lens, you know. Um.

45:46

Yeah. Brian Jenkins writes about how one

45:48

right wing fire brand named The Law used

45:50

the idea of the pure trench warrior. Quote.

45:53

The Law warned veterans that the Republic had sabotaged

45:56

the hard won gains of the war. Only

45:58

the installation of a fashionist and dictatorial

46:01

combatant state would restore France

46:03

to the politics of victory. Likewise,

46:05

the Young Patriots leader Tatinger extolled

46:07

the virtue of the new elite born of war. His

46:10

group alleged that the cartel had sabotaged

46:12

the fruits of the war and clipped the wings of victory.

46:15

These Leagues were not attracted solely to

46:17

the veterans supposed moral quantities. Only

46:20

veterans were purported to join the Young Patriots

46:22

Iron Brigade and the Legions,

46:24

both elite paramilitary action squads.

46:27

Now, obviously most veterans don't join the League's

46:30

uh, and a lot of them also joined communist veterans

46:32

organizations. But the worship

46:34

of veterans and the idea that the sacrifices

46:36

of nineteen eighteen had been betrayed by the leftist

46:39

leaders of France becomes a popular right

46:41

wing rallying cry in the mid twenties. Throughout

46:44

this whole period, the right press continues

46:46

to gin up a desire for the blood of their political

46:48

opponents. One right wing journalist,

46:50

politician, and street organizer named Charles

46:53

Morris was jailed in nineteen five

46:55

for threatening to have the Minister of the Interior

46:58

killed like a dog if police kept

47:00

at harrassing the League. Yeah,

47:03

there's a couple Marjorie Taylor Green

47:05

or whatever her name is, the Q and on lady who's talking about

47:07

that Jewish space later and probably

47:10

helped carry out and incite and advice

47:13

that she's the jew laser. Yeah

47:15

that that that lady. There's like three of

47:17

her in France in this period, okay,

47:21

and Mars is kind of one of them. Now, Mars

47:23

is an interesting guy. He was born a monarchist

47:25

and it is what we would probably call a Catholic

47:28

fascist today. His earliest

47:30

political memory was the was the French

47:32

defeat in the Franco Prussian War, which seems

47:34

to have fueled a lot of his anti left hatred.

47:37

Later in life. He became an anti democratic

47:39

activist in the eighteen nineties, and then came

47:41

the Dreyfus affair, and of course Mars is a dry

47:43

Fussard. He believes that Dryfus is guilty

47:45

because he's Jewish, and he grows increasingly

47:47

anti Semitic after the Dreyfus affair. In

47:50

eighteen nine, he found a newspaper

47:53

Uh Action France, which

47:55

literally means French Action, and yes it

47:57

does sound kind of like a porn. His magazine

48:00

becomes very influential among the French right

48:02

wing, and Marius uses his influence to, among

48:04

other things, convince a lot of conservatives

48:06

that destroying democracy and going full

48:08

monarchy is the right thing to do. He

48:11

writes an article in eighteen ninety nine titled

48:13

dictator and king. That's about how we

48:15

should have a dictator king and Franciso. Yeah,

48:19

yeah, you know what France's problem

48:21

is not enough kings. You know what,

48:25

you remember we have served them.

48:28

Yeah, and peddle back to that. Let's go back

48:30

to that. That was amazing, Ricketts.

48:33

In nineteen o five, Mars starts

48:35

writing articles about how swell it would be

48:37

for the right wing to create extra legal paramilitary

48:39

organizations and have them do a coupaita. When

48:42

the league's rose up, Mars was thrilled,

48:45

and soon Action Francis, or Front

48:47

the French Action, has its own league.

48:49

When Mars goes to jail for threatening to murder

48:51

a member of the government, his business partner at

48:53

the newspaper says this to a gathering of their

48:55

followers in ninety six, if

48:58

Mars were wounded or hit, I would once

49:00

give orders to have the ministers of the Republic

49:02

immediately assassinated. So,

49:04

like, the right wing isn't just like dog

49:07

whistling violence, Like we should kill them all,

49:09

we should kill everyone on the left. Yes,

49:12

it's like like the American right.

49:14

Now, So what do you so

49:16

in what what way do you mean? I mean,

49:19

I mean we shoot them today, we

49:22

kill them.

49:25

Yeah, yeah, it's why. And it's

49:27

the same as what's been had, what happened ahead of the

49:29

sixth you know. Now, Obviously, Maris

49:31

and his business partner were not alone in their

49:33

calls for violence against the Left. I'm gonna quote

49:36

from France and fascism here. Such

49:38

calls to violence often went unheeded, and

49:40

law and order were not threatened to the extent.

49:42

Scene in Germany and Italy, However, low

49:44

level physical violence was common. Newspaper

49:47

sellers from rival organizations regularly

49:49

came to blows in the street, while political meetings

49:51

were frequently the scene of violence. Furthermore,

49:54

despite their claims to stand for authority in order,

49:56

the league's could fight with the police to the

49:58

French actions create mayhem in

50:00

the Latin Quarter and beyond, beating political

50:03

opponents and reveling in confrontations with

50:05

the police. Meanwhile, a young Patriots

50:07

leaguer died in March nineteen twenty six during

50:09

fighting with police at a demonstration against the Minister

50:12

of the Interior, Louis Malvi. So

50:16

they these organizations are kind of recruiting

50:18

and growing because they're fighting with the left and they're

50:20

fighting with the cops right now.

50:23

In most of France, the armed paramilitary

50:26

start to decline in popularity after nineteen

50:29

and in France they mostly faded into the

50:31

background temporarily by nineteen

50:33

twenty six, after two years of regular

50:35

street brawls. They left behind

50:37

them, in the words of some scholars, a culture

50:40

of violent rhetoric, uniformed politics,

50:42

and street fighting right, which again very

50:44

similar violent rhetoric, uniformed

50:47

politics and street fighting, the proud bol you know it's

50:49

proud boy. Um. Now,

50:51

this was not the end of violent unrest in France.

50:54

Just to pause, because in nineteen six

50:56

a new Conservative government gets elected and

50:58

the cartel comes to an end. So that's why

51:00

the League's kind of fade after twenty six

51:02

is the Conservatives get elected again. It

51:04

comes a home game again, okay,

51:07

exactly, yep.

51:10

And the reason the right wins in nineteen is

51:13

that the left has fractured again. The Communist

51:15

launch a series of attacks against the Socialists,

51:17

who they call social fascists. In

51:19

fighting causes the less to temporarily dissolve

51:22

as meaningful opposition, and this meant

51:24

the League's also had a lot less of a reason to exist.

51:27

Big business that's spent the previous four years pumping

51:29

money into the far right, and they withdraw

51:31

their financial support after twenty six, which

51:33

causes the leagues to collapse. So the leagues are

51:36

floated by rich businessmen who

51:38

then like, well, now conservatives are in power again.

51:40

We don't we don't want street games anymore. Yeah.

51:43

So the temporary fall of the league's

51:45

and the victory of the center right did not mean

51:47

the fever swamps of far right media ceased

51:50

operation, and no magazine

51:52

or newspaper was more influential than French

51:54

action from a right up end of all things.

51:57

The Harvard Crimson quote it

51:59

collected within a sells the inheritors

52:01

of a tradition of nationalist, monarchist and

52:03

reactionary thought extending back almost

52:05

a hundred years. It was no mere cabal

52:07

of a moral big businessman, such as supported

52:10

the so called Committee France alec

52:12

Main and the ultra conservative Grand Press,

52:14

but a meeting place for distinguished and gifted intellectuals

52:17

whose disdain for the republic was wholly disinterested,

52:19

the result of literary and philosophical

52:22

predispositions, not any desire

52:24

to safeguard financial investments.

52:26

So again, the far right in the in

52:28

the period where the left is in control, is

52:30

funded by businessmen who are

52:32

safeguarding their investments, right, and that's

52:34

why they want to fight socialists in the street. But

52:37

the guy's propagandizing to the far right

52:39

are true believers. It's not about money for them.

52:41

It's about fascist you

52:43

know about the thing? Okay, yeah, so,

52:46

and Mars being a monarchist

52:48

is only marginally happier under a conservative

52:50

government than liberal one. The king is still

52:52

gone and he wants a fucking king. So

52:54

throughout the years of right wing power in France, he continues

52:57

to advocate for an armed coup is the only

52:59

way to bring back the monarchy. It would

53:01

have been easy for people in the left and mistake he and

53:03

his followers for isolated loons,

53:05

and a lot of people in the center particularly

53:08

did. Then the global economy

53:10

crashed and in France it crashes with

53:12

the right wing and power, and May of nineteen

53:14

thirty two the left wins again. Their victory

53:17

is again enabled by the fact that the radicals

53:19

who are the moderates, ally with

53:21

the socialists again to avoid splitting the left

53:23

wing vote. So left continuously wins in

53:25

France and Spain, uh and Germany.

53:28

When the left and the

53:30

center left are willing to like work together

53:32

electorally right, um,

53:35

and the right is obviously enraged and terrified

53:38

by what was surely a prelude to full on Stalinism.

53:40

Now, I just said that, like the left

53:43

consistently wins elections in Europe

53:45

against the right in this period when

53:47

you know they're all willing to work together. The

53:49

problem with the far left in the center left

53:51

working together is the same thing that we're seeing now

53:54

under Biden. Liberals and the left can

53:56

never get their ship together to agree on anything.

53:58

And in France they can't put us their differences

54:00

to get a basic aid package together to

54:02

help people with the depression, which again does not sound

54:04

at all familiar. Yeah

54:07

there's my back tingle again. Yeah,

54:10

so the socialist demand direct aid

54:12

for the unemployed, while the radicals worry

54:14

about the deficit and think that it's much more important

54:16

to balance the budget. It's

54:19

the same exact thing, okay,

54:22

the radicals, who are centrists, their best

54:25

idea is, of course austerity cuts

54:27

in wages for public workers. The intractable

54:29

debate between the socialists and the radicals

54:31

leads to a series of different liberal left governments.

54:34

Obviously, it's like a parliamentary system, so you can have votes

54:36

of no confidence, you dissolve the government,

54:38

you bring in a new government, new ministers. This

54:40

happens a number of times, and none of these governments

54:42

are able to actually help people, and the

54:44

French economy spirals downhill. The

54:47

right wing correspondingly surges

54:49

and it unifies behind the thing the right wing

54:52

does best, picking up weapons and making

54:54

death threats to people they disagree with. The

54:56

leagues that had remained functional after nineteen

54:59

namely innch Action and the Young Patriots,

55:01

see a swell in their membership. They're

55:04

soon joined by new leagues. In June

55:06

of nineteen thirty three, a Perfume magnate

55:08

and fascist named Cody forms his own

55:10

paramilitary group, which he uses to

55:12

spread anti Republican authoritarian propaganda

55:15

and pushes this through the newspaper that he owns as

55:17

well. By February of nineteen thirty

55:20

four, the Perfume Guys paramilitary

55:22

gang slash newspaper is the most influential

55:24

and largest fascist movement in France. Are

55:26

you saying Perfume, Yeah, he's a

55:29

Perfume Guy. Yeah, Like

55:31

France's most influential fascist gang

55:33

leader is a perfume. Dude, the guy that like

55:35

fragrance. Okay, I was

55:38

big into the fragrance business. Yeah, this is

55:40

again pretty on brand, pretty on brand.

55:43

Cody's men wore blue shirts and lots of leather,

55:45

and one has to assume smelled incredible.

55:48

Yeah, it sound like they probably looked amazing too.

55:51

I'm sure they did. Yeah. Now,

55:54

another fascist French guy named Marcel

55:56

Bouchard starts a league called the Francists

55:59

in the September of nineteen thirty three.

56:01

Bouchard repeatedly praised foreign fascist

56:03

governments, and he was famous for making long

56:05

speeches about the almost sexual love he had

56:08

for his revolver um. Again,

56:11

another Marjorie Taylor Green right like I'm

56:13

gonna take my clock into congress kind of guy's

56:15

the same fucking ship. Just the worship of weapons

56:18

and such. And then of course

56:20

there's the Craw the Few, which is like the Cross

56:22

of Fire. This is an organization that had

56:24

been founded as a veterans association

56:26

for men who had been decorated for bravery

56:28

and combat. So all of the Crawl, if you, the

56:30

Cross of firemen are like not just

56:33

combat veterans, but men who have been particularly

56:35

awarded for their courage under fire. So

56:40

it's not founded necessarily as a right

56:42

wing, radical militant organization, but

56:44

it becomes one very quickly. Its leader

56:46

is a guy named Colonel Laroq, and he holds

56:48

military style parades and is not afraid

56:50

to use his men as a political cudgel. And the way

56:53

their organized is actually pretty genius. They have at their

56:55

height about half a million officers

56:57

and n c o s and their membership, and

56:59

the officers and n c o s are each like

57:01

put in charge of ten guys to other

57:04

former soldiers who were of lower ranks, and

57:06

their job is to get help

57:08

with those guys for those guys using the resources

57:11

of the league, and also control their votes.

57:14

So the half million or so officers and n c o

57:16

s and the Cross of Fire control about five

57:18

million votes. They're very politically influential

57:20

as a result. So these guys are right

57:23

wing and kind of militant, but they're

57:25

also very system loyal right there. Not we want

57:27

to overthrow the government there, We want to organize

57:29

as a political entity in order to dominate the

57:31

government. So

57:34

Brian Jenkins rights quote in November

57:36

of nineteen thirty one, the colonel and his followers

57:38

stormed the stage at a meeting on disarmament

57:40

at Trucadero, bringing an end to the

57:42

proceedings. Meanwhile, the league's shock

57:44

troopers called Dispose. We're employed

57:47

to maintain security at meetings and fight the left

57:49

in the street. In October nineteen thirty

57:51

three, a new manifesto announced a more radically

57:53

anti parliamentary direction, while the group opened

57:56

its ranks to non veterans through its volunteers

57:58

National Auxiliary. So they

58:00

get, you know, start more system loyal, and they get kind

58:02

of more closer and closer to fascism as

58:04

time goes on. As nineteen thirty

58:07

four dawned, right wing paramilitaries

58:09

were as organized and as large as they

58:11

had ever been in France. The left was

58:13

too, was fighting too much within themselves

58:15

to the with it between themselves to deliver

58:17

any kind of meaningful aid that might have tamped down

58:19

on unrest. Meanwhile, the right blamed

58:21

the global economic collapse on their own leftists

58:24

and of course the Jews. Um.

58:26

Yeah, they also are

58:29

able to look abroad at the propaganda that's

58:31

being put out by Italy and now Germany and be

58:33

like, look at how good things are going in the fascist

58:35

countries where I assume I have accurate information

58:37

from we should do that. So what

58:40

did they do that We're not doing. Yeah, they're

58:42

not We're we're not killing enough leftists.

58:45

Yeah. And

58:47

then, as everything in France is about as

58:49

hot as it could get, what comes to be known

58:52

as the Stavitsky affair bursts onto

58:54

the front page of every rightist newspaper

58:56

in France. And I'm gonna see how long it

58:58

takes you to like figure out what the

59:00

most modern parallel to the Stavisky affair

59:03

alright. Sergey Alexander Stavisky

59:06

was born in Ukraine in eighteen eighty six to a

59:08

Jewish family who had immigrated to France in eighteen

59:10

ninety nine. His father was a dentist

59:12

to Stavisky, however, was a born grifter.

59:15

While still a teenager, he established himself

59:17

as a con man. By the mid nineteen twenties

59:19

had gotten good at it, making enough money to dress

59:21

as a rich guy, even though he was constantly on the verge

59:23

of losing everything. Stavisky used

59:25

his charisma and his ability to trick guloibal rich

59:28

people to keep the cash flowing. France

59:30

and fascism, writes quote. He left

59:32

a trail of fake companies, counterfeit checks

59:34

and bonds, and fraudulent share transactions,

59:36

and following his arrest in July nineteen twenty

59:38

six for stealing and stolen securities, he

59:40

spent seventeen months in the Lessante prison

59:42

while his case awaited trial. Following his

59:44

release on medical grounds, the hearing of the case against

59:47

him was repeatedly deferred nineteen postponements

59:49

and all, leaving Stavisky free to launch a string

59:51

of further dubious ventures under the alias Sergey

59:54

Alexander. In ninety eight, he

59:56

embarked on a scheme which the lucrative would

59:58

eventually prove his undoing, the raudulent

1:00:00

exploitation of municipal pawn shops

1:00:02

in Orleans. He extracted twenty

1:00:04

five million francs from the pawn shop in exchange

1:00:07

for fake gimstones, subsequently redeeming

1:00:09

the stones with cash derived from the municipal pawn

1:00:11

shop he had since launched in Bay Owned. This was

1:00:13

a much bigger operation, and the credit was financed

1:00:16

by issuing bonds well in excess of the value

1:00:18

of the articles deposited. Cash was then

1:00:20

realized through the sale of these fake bonds to

1:00:22

banks and insurance companies. In the summer

1:00:24

of nineteen thirty three, having spent lavishly

1:00:27

and gambled heavily, Stavisky found himself

1:00:29

unable to redeem the bonds, and his attempts to

1:00:31

win backing for a new operation, which he hoped

1:00:33

would bail him out yet again, were soon frustrated.

1:00:36

That's the nature of his con Yeah. First

1:00:38

it sounded like an assets it's pretty good

1:00:40

lick man. He is. He is a commn for a

1:00:42

while. Yeah. So

1:00:45

in September of nineteen thirty three, one of the businesses

1:00:47

he can't, an insurance company, called for a judicial

1:00:50

inquiry into his business. On December twenty

1:00:52

three, the director of a pawn shop Stavisky

1:00:54

owned broke down under questioning he

1:00:56

did not just incriminate his boss, but

1:00:58

also a local elected leader from the Radical

1:01:01

Party. Stavisky immediately went

1:01:03

on the run, fleeing Paris on Christmas

1:01:05

Day, and just as quickly, the right wing press

1:01:07

picks up the story. French Action and other

1:01:09

newspapers launched a massive campaign to

1:01:11

allege that not just the one guy implicated,

1:01:14

but a whole host of radical politicians, basically

1:01:16

all of them, had been involved in a far reaching

1:01:19

financial conspiracy. Since Stavisky

1:01:21

was Jewish. You can guess how this folded in

1:01:23

with all the fact that all of these papers also had huge

1:01:25

heart ons for Hitler and Mussolini. One

1:01:27

radical deputy resigned. Another radical,

1:01:30

the Minister of the Economy, was found

1:01:32

to have encouraged people to purchase junk bonds

1:01:34

from Stavisky back in nineteen thirty two.

1:01:36

So two radicals are implicated like clearly,

1:01:39

so he resigns and to the right this proves

1:01:41

that all of the other deputies they've been accused and

1:01:44

were guilty to newspaper editors

1:01:46

were also found to have been on Stavisky's payroll

1:01:48

which encouraged people to buy junk bonds.

1:01:50

And then these guys are arrested, which feeds into the narrative

1:01:53

that liberal press is on trustworthy and part

1:01:55

of the Jewish conspiracy. As

1:01:57

nineteen thirty four dawned, right wing media

1:01:59

could write about nothing else but the Stavisky affair.

1:02:01

And then on the ninth, with public

1:02:04

interest at its height, Staviski himself

1:02:06

is cornered by police at a house in Chimoa. He

1:02:08

kills himself to avoid capture.

1:02:11

So as soon as he kills himself,

1:02:14

both the communist and the far right press

1:02:16

leap on the story, alleging that Skavinsky

1:02:18

had not committed suicide, he'd

1:02:20

been murdered to cover up his connections to powerful

1:02:23

leaders. He's the fucking French

1:02:25

Jeffrey Epstein. He's Epstein. Yeah,

1:02:28

it's the same thing. It's the same

1:02:30

thing. Yeah, he's actually he doesn't have like a network

1:02:33

of child prostitutes, but he's a

1:02:35

guy who's implicated with a bunch of powerful

1:02:37

people in a series of crimes. He

1:02:39

goes to jail once he continues committing

1:02:42

crime, implicates more powerful people, and then

1:02:44

when he's cornered, kills himself. You

1:02:46

know, it's the same thing. It's

1:02:48

like the exact same pook. Yeah,

1:02:51

and and and and and the best part about the Epstein

1:02:54

story, they said to camera glitched. Yeah,

1:02:57

and there's there's shady stuff like that with this

1:02:59

right. It's not animals because it's whatever. It's

1:03:01

the same thing. But yeah, is

1:03:04

a one to one bro. Yeah he doesn't.

1:03:06

Just like with Epstein, it doesn't really matter

1:03:09

if he killed himself or was murdered. The same

1:03:11

thing with this guy. What matters is that everyone

1:03:13

on the far left and the far right is sure

1:03:15

that he was murdered in order to protect liberals

1:03:20

center politicians

1:03:23

too much at stake. You know who

1:03:25

won't murder Jeffrey

1:03:28

yep, you can't because he already did.

1:03:31

But yeah, he's already dead, so they definitely

1:03:33

won't kill him, definitely won't get products and

1:03:35

services that support this podcast. So

1:03:43

we're back. So the Radical

1:03:45

President that he's still alive, though,

1:03:47

like I feel like your eyebreak is yeah,

1:03:50

I mean, we're not going to actually prove that, Robert,

1:03:53

I am not. I'm not making

1:03:55

any conclusions about Jeffrey Epstein on this podcast.

1:03:58

I'm just saying that, like Epstein, this

1:04:00

guy Stavisky is said

1:04:02

to have killed himself, and nobody

1:04:04

who's on the left or the right really believes

1:04:06

there. Yeah, there's one definitive thing you could

1:04:08

say about Jeffrey Epstein is that,

1:04:11

I don't care how many dollars you put it before

1:04:13

and after his name, he is a pimp.

1:04:16

Yeah, Stavisky is a different kind of pimp,

1:04:19

but to pimp and this guy

1:04:21

is pimp in yes, this

1:04:23

is a different lick. He's selling different products, same

1:04:25

thing anyway, So the Radical

1:04:27

President, like the or not president, but like Prime

1:04:30

Minister of France, who is again a radical,

1:04:32

does his best to ignore the scandal, arguing

1:04:34

that it's not a big deal. Like, yeah, the guys

1:04:36

who were implicated already got arrested,

1:04:38

Like it's not a big deal, um.

1:04:41

And it might have even been true

1:04:43

that, like, the only people implicated had been

1:04:45

caught, But that doesn't really matter, um,

1:04:48

because obviously this becomes a huge conspiracy.

1:04:50

And the Prime Minister refuses calls

1:04:52

from both the right and from his socialist allies

1:04:54

to call for a parliamentary inquiry into the whole

1:04:57

situation. This just makes everything

1:04:59

worse. Proven to many Frenchmen that there had

1:05:01

been a conspiracy. Brian Jenkins

1:05:03

rights what might be called the dialectics

1:05:05

of conspiracy thus played a significant role

1:05:07

in the escalation of crisis. Stevitsky's

1:05:09

death gave decisive impetus to conspiracy

1:05:11

theories on the right and intensified the campaign

1:05:14

both in the press and on the street. Meanwhile,

1:05:16

the perception on the left that the scandal was being orchestrated

1:05:18

for sinister political purposes led

1:05:20

the government to harden its opposite its position

1:05:23

and refused to make concessions. This, in

1:05:25

turn gave the impression that the government was engaged

1:05:27

in a cover up and therefore must have something to

1:05:29

hide, thereby further reinforcing the rights

1:05:31

conspiracy theories. However,

1:05:33

in this competitive press environment, it was inevitable

1:05:36

that the more radical and scurrillious newspapers

1:05:38

that set the pace and tone for others to emulate.

1:05:41

It was French Action that crystallized

1:05:43

public opinion around them and orchestrated the developing

1:05:46

affair each day, adding fresh names

1:05:48

to its dossier of suspects and decisively

1:05:50

raising the temperature on seventh of January

1:05:52

with the headline down with the Thebes

1:05:55

and an inflammatory appeal to the people

1:05:57

of Paris. Most of the conservative

1:05:59

press simply their lead, albeit in less

1:06:01

flamboyant language, which in turn helped legitimize

1:06:03

the message. Again,

1:06:06

the truth doesn't matter. What matters is the narratives

1:06:09

that take off. Yeah, yeah, totally. From

1:06:11

January nine on, and this is there

1:06:14

were demonstrations and street violence almost

1:06:16

every night in Paris every week. The crowds

1:06:19

grew larger. On Saturday, January

1:06:21

the situation was bad enough that the president resigned

1:06:24

and the government dissolved, or the Prime

1:06:26

minister whatever resigned in the government dissolved. This

1:06:28

was seen as a big victory by the right, but nobody

1:06:30

knew what came next. The left are

1:06:32

still the elected leaders. Right, you

1:06:35

dissolve the government, you don't kick out all the deputies who

1:06:37

have been elected. You just pick

1:06:39

a new prime minister and new ministers. Right, that's

1:06:41

what it means. And the left is still like

1:06:43

gets to decide who the new government is and they

1:06:45

bring in a new Liberal president, a guy named Dlatier.

1:06:48

Now, while all this is happening, the socialists

1:06:50

the only part of the left coalition that has not been

1:06:53

horribly tainted by the Stavisky affair.

1:06:55

It's radicals that are implicated. The Socialists

1:06:57

are not. The radicals need

1:06:59

the socialists both to keep the government from being

1:07:01

dissolved and to avoid a deeper investigation

1:07:03

into the matter. So yeah, probably a bunch more radicals

1:07:06

were guilty. You know, they really don't want there

1:07:08

to be an investigation. So since

1:07:10

they had the radicals over a barrel, the socialists

1:07:12

decided to make a demand of their own. Being

1:07:14

good leftists, this demand is that the

1:07:17

radicals fire the Paris chief of Police,

1:07:19

John Chiapa, because he was a piece of ship

1:07:21

who sympathized with fascist paramilitary groups.

1:07:24

Of course, the far right loves Chiapa

1:07:26

and they see his sacking and the radical promises

1:07:29

that the police will be reformed. So the radicals,

1:07:31

in order to keep the government going and avoid an investigation,

1:07:34

like, we'll fire this guy and will completely reform

1:07:36

the Paris police. That's the socialists

1:07:38

demand, and the right wing is like

1:07:40

this is like, this is clearly the precursor

1:07:43

to a communist revolution. They're trying to get

1:07:45

rid of the police so they can take over the streets

1:07:47

and take all of our money, right, yeah,

1:07:51

dog man. So this starts at taking

1:07:54

clock on the right because they think that there's this comedy

1:07:56

plot being carried out and they've only days to act

1:07:58

in order to avert it. Rock Colonel

1:08:00

Laroc of the Cross of Fire declares

1:08:03

his paramilitaries to be defenders of

1:08:05

public order. One League French

1:08:07

Solidarity declares civil war is

1:08:09

imminent, while the Young Patriots claim

1:08:11

the country is in danger. A wholesale purge

1:08:14

is being prepared newspapers. Right

1:08:16

wing newspapers run articles about how communist

1:08:18

revolutionaries are on the verge of seizing power.

1:08:21

Colonel Larroc warns his followers

1:08:23

a government whose signs the red flag wants

1:08:25

to reduce you to slavery. We are threatened

1:08:28

with sectarian dictatorship. Nothing

1:08:31

that sounds familiar. Yeah,

1:08:34

again, nothing that's ever happened. Again, nothing

1:08:36

in any of this is

1:08:38

so frustrating. I know, it's terrible.

1:08:42

Yes, So elected

1:08:45

leaders were also pushing these lines. Philip

1:08:48

Henrio, a deputy from Bordeaux, was

1:08:50

a Catholic militant who believed that the Stavisky

1:08:52

affair was a Jewish Masonic conspiracy

1:08:54

to destroy France. On three occasions

1:08:57

in January, he took to the rostrum of the Chamber

1:08:59

of Deputies to man right wingers rise

1:09:01

up and sweep the republic. British

1:09:04

journalist Alexander Worth was in Paris at the

1:09:06

time, and he wrote this in early February.

1:09:09

Already on Monday, Paris was full of wild

1:09:11

rumors. Troops, it was said, had been brought into

1:09:13

Paris. If the demonstrators were to cause trouble,

1:09:15

the government would not hesitate to use tanks and

1:09:17

machine guns. The work would be entrusted

1:09:19

to Moroccan and Senegalese soldiers who

1:09:22

would have no compunction about shooting down their white

1:09:24

fellow citizens. And

1:09:27

it is, by the way, one thing you kind of have to give the French in

1:09:29

this period is that they are kind of the first

1:09:32

Western government to have a significant

1:09:34

number of non white citizens. They do

1:09:36

that, not that they treat them equally

1:09:39

or anything, but like it is a thing that happens in the

1:09:41

dreds. Really. Um,

1:09:44

but why God damn

1:09:46

man. Of course they used them

1:09:48

for shock troops, you know. Of course, I'm like,

1:09:52

I feel like it was about time that one

1:09:54

of us say something funny. But it's yeah,

1:09:57

I can't. I just got nothing because it's

1:09:59

just so on the

1:10:01

freaking nose. It's exactly

1:10:04

all. It's exactly what's happened, you

1:10:06

know. So this

1:10:08

prop brings us to February sixth,

1:10:11

nineteen thirty four. The

1:10:13

French government assembles for a vote of confidence

1:10:16

and Prime Minister Daladier so a vote on whether

1:10:18

or not he's going to keep being the prime minister or they're

1:10:20

going to dissolve the government again. Uh.

1:10:22

And I found a French history website Heredity

1:10:25

that describes how things started, quote

1:10:27

and all hardly more than thirty thousand demonstrators,

1:10:30

a large majority of them who were ex combatants.

1:10:32

Everyone is mobilized on the theme down

1:10:34

with thebes and a demand for

1:10:37

more civility and honesty in the government at

1:10:39

the start, at the call of Lieutenant Colonel de lar

1:10:41

Roc, the Cross of Fire quickly dispersed

1:10:43

as soon as the first clashes with the mobile guard

1:10:45

occurred. Although it arrived at the end of

1:10:47

the afternoon at the gates of the Palais Bourbonne

1:10:50

Larent and its veterans refused to occupy

1:10:52

it. Their dispersal makes any possibility

1:10:54

of overthrowing the regime by force feudal. But

1:10:56

on the other side of the sign around the Palace of

1:10:58

the Concord, demonstration degenerates.

1:11:01

Thousands of activists try to march on the Palais

1:11:03

Bourbon, the Bourbon Palace. I guess, So

1:11:06

what happens here is this crowd starts

1:11:09

like and and the cross the fire guys are

1:11:11

a huge chunk of it, starts marching on the

1:11:13

gates of the capitol, and as soon as the police

1:11:15

get engaged in, the crowd starts fighting with the

1:11:17

cops. Colonel Laroc calls his

1:11:19

men back, but thousands and thousands

1:11:22

of other right wing militants continue to surge

1:11:24

ahead and keep fighting the cops, and as

1:11:26

night falls, the protests go from

1:11:28

being just aggressive and violent to being

1:11:30

an active attempt to storm the capital.

1:11:33

Protesters light busses on fire and destroy

1:11:35

property, tearing down barricades and barriers

1:11:37

as they attempt to breach the Chamber of Deputies,

1:11:40

where Parliament is an active session. The

1:11:42

police panic when the crowd starts

1:11:44

to break through the barricades and they open

1:11:46

fire. Some in the crowd fire back,

1:11:49

and by the end of it all as many as

1:11:51

twenty six. But we don't have an exact death told. Some

1:11:53

will say twenty six people were killed and more

1:11:55

than fifteen hundred are injured. Some will say it's

1:11:57

more like, you know, five to ten and a thousand

1:11:59

injured. But it's

1:12:01

it's everything that happened in the capital in the sixth

1:12:04

except they don't get intoside the capital

1:12:06

because the French like order

1:12:09

forces just start shooting, like firing

1:12:11

into the crowd with what rifles um.

1:12:14

So the riots continue for days,

1:12:16

marking what most liberals and leftists would come

1:12:18

to see as a coup attempt by the far right.

1:12:21

This is probably fair, but it's also true that after the

1:12:23

ninth the communists start coming out and force in the

1:12:25

streets and do a lot of rioting themselves, and actually

1:12:27

like three or four days after the

1:12:29

attempt to storm the capital. A lot of what's happening

1:12:32

on the street is being done by the communists. They

1:12:34

didn't attempt to breach the Chamber of Deputies, though

1:12:36

the whole affair terrifies everybody, and Prime

1:12:39

Minister d Lattier resigns on advice from

1:12:41

the police and army to avoid further violence.

1:12:43

For the first time in the history of the Third Republic,

1:12:46

street violence had brought down a French

1:12:48

government. The week of February sixth

1:12:50

was, in fact the most violent period of political

1:12:53

unrest in France since the Commune of eighteen seventy

1:12:55

one. Not everyone in the right is thrilled

1:12:57

by this. Mars had of French action

1:13:00

seems to have panicked immediately from

1:13:02

the Crimson quote. Though

1:13:04

he often considered the possibility of the coup in

1:13:06

books and in the pages of his movement's newspaper,

1:13:09

it is doubtful that he ever actually planned a revolution.

1:13:11

On the one occasion which fate presented to his grasp,

1:13:14

the riots before Chamber on February sixty

1:13:17

four, he did nothing. Professor Webber

1:13:19

calls the sixth of February a victory lost.

1:13:22

Maris's hesitation at what seemed the very

1:13:24

gates of power, though this impression was exaggerated,

1:13:27

was, as Professor Webber says, the moment

1:13:29

of truth, which showed up the emptiness of

1:13:31

almost everyone's position. The parliamentary

1:13:33

regime was shown to be a tottering, precarious

1:13:36

structure. The righteous rioters had made

1:13:38

their point, but the right itself was exposed

1:13:40

as well, exposed as a lot of theorists,

1:13:42

sorely lacking in the capacity to carry

1:13:45

out their dreams. French Action

1:13:47

had organized publications, public meetings, a

1:13:49

party structure that extended through France,

1:13:52

but they lacked the will to power. They

1:13:54

were incapable of a Munich push, much

1:13:56

less to ten year conspiracy to capture parliamentary

1:13:58

power. At the moment of Action's greatest

1:14:00

political triumphs in Europe, French fascism

1:14:03

collapsed. Wow,

1:14:06

it doesn't sound familiar at all. Yeah,

1:14:09

no, I've never and again fucking

1:14:12

um mars here he's like Alex Jones almost

1:14:14

right. He's this guy who's telling everyone overthrow

1:14:16

the government, and then when they start, because Alex Jones

1:14:19

is there on the sixth and DC, he fucking leaves

1:14:21

as soon as people crossing. He's like, sir,

1:14:23

yeah, wait. Yeah. At first I thought

1:14:25

when you was talking about the other dude that ended up being Epstein,

1:14:28

I thought it was Jones at first. No, no,

1:14:30

no, no, that's like your

1:14:32

Epstein. Yeah, he's definitely

1:14:34

Epstein. But at first, when we first started talking, I

1:14:36

was like, it's sound like a little Alex Jones. But no, that's

1:14:39

Mars. Is your Alex Jones.

1:14:41

And he's just like, oh wait, I'm not. Oh no,

1:14:43

I just wanted to make money telling people

1:14:46

to the volt and getting them like jinned up. I

1:14:48

didn't actually want that to happen. That's scary

1:14:50

as hell. Yeah, y'all, y'all actually

1:14:52

pulled triggers. Oh no, yeah,

1:14:54

yeah, yeah yeah. Um and Kurt, you can see Colonel

1:14:57

de Larroc kind of in the same light, although you could

1:14:59

also argue that he was very state loyal, right

1:15:01

like he wanted a new government. He was, he wanted

1:15:03

less democracy, but he wasn't about to storm

1:15:05

the capital. Um.

1:15:08

So the main outcome of February six

1:15:10

was that the elected right wing grows

1:15:12

closer and closer to the insurrectionary

1:15:14

far right. It also unifies the

1:15:16

left wing, inspiring a popular front in

1:15:19

France that takes power after a brief period

1:15:21

of conservative rule falling Daladier's fall. The

1:15:23

nineteen thirty six French Popular Front was

1:15:25

at its core and anti fascist political

1:15:28

union, and domestically it does a

1:15:30

good job of stopping the French far right from

1:15:32

capturing power. And this has actually

1:15:34

led to a theory in French historiography

1:15:37

that France's itself immune to

1:15:39

fascism in a unique way. Um.

1:15:41

The story goes that a mix of France's long

1:15:43

standing democratic traditions and the fact that it's right

1:15:45

wing is split between its own native brands

1:15:47

of extremism means the country can't

1:15:49

fall into fascism. This is nonsense,

1:15:51

I will tell you right now. I think this is sucking bullshit.

1:15:54

Um. And there are a lot of scholars. The book

1:15:56

France and Fascism is a very long

1:15:59

scholarly treatise Why this is bullshit? Um.

1:16:02

But a lot of French scholars after World War

1:16:04

Two will argue this that like France is immune to

1:16:06

fascism. Um. The reality is that

1:16:08

France came very close to falling to fascism

1:16:10

on the sixth and it did fall to fascism in

1:16:13

now. This is by conquest, right.

1:16:17

The Nazis, the fascist don't gain power in France

1:16:19

by elections. The Nazis conquered France.

1:16:22

But when the Nazis take over, they needed

1:16:24

to find a bunch of willing frenchmen to

1:16:26

run VIC France. And they find a ton

1:16:28

of these guys, a huge and already

1:16:31

radicalized group of French fascists who are ready

1:16:33

to chip in and help out. And most of

1:16:35

these guys who run VIC France from the Nazis

1:16:37

takeover are people who had been involved

1:16:40

with the February six insurrection, right,

1:16:43

yeah, exactly, like a ton of these dudes.

1:16:46

Yeah, it's crazy that it's the six. Also,

1:16:49

yeah, it's it's the it's

1:16:51

February six, right, it's

1:16:54

very auntic. Like when

1:16:56

I started reading about this, I was so fucking

1:16:58

shocked because I was thinking, like, well, you know, if you want to

1:17:00

find a good comparison to the January six, there's aspects

1:17:03

of the Munich coup, there's aspects of of

1:17:06

of the of the March on Rome, but like, oh,

1:17:08

ship, no, it's it's it's feb six four,

1:17:11

that's exactly what happens. Um,

1:17:14

So a lot of French fascists

1:17:17

who had been a part of you know, what happened on the sixth

1:17:19

wind up joining the Nazis. Remember Philippe

1:17:21

Henrio, the Henriotte whatever, the

1:17:23

right wing deputy who was basically the French q

1:17:26

and on Glock congress person who was like, we need

1:17:28

to overthrow the government. While he's in the government

1:17:30

under occupation, this guy becomes

1:17:32

the voice of Radio Vishi, broadcasting

1:17:35

Nazi propaganda to millions of Frenchmen.

1:17:37

Pierre Tattinger, who founded one of the first paramilitary

1:17:40

leagues, became the president of the Paris Municipal

1:17:42

Council under the Nazis. Jan Chiapa,

1:17:45

the fascist cop, was made high Commissioner

1:17:47

of the Lavant, but thankfully died in a plane crash

1:17:49

pretty soon after that when he shot down over

1:17:52

Lebanon by the Italian's accidentally.

1:17:56

Yeah, Mars celebrated

1:17:58

the Nazi victory as a vine surprise.

1:18:01

Now, he was not a Nazi because he fucking

1:18:03

hated German people, but he hated Jewish

1:18:06

people more, and one of his chief complaints

1:18:08

about the occupation is that it was too lenient

1:18:10

on Jewish people. When the Third Reich

1:18:12

fell and France was liberated, Marius

1:18:15

was arrested and indicted for complicity

1:18:17

with the enemy based on the pro Nazi articles

1:18:19

he published at the start of the war. He was

1:18:21

sentenced to life imprisonment. Upon

1:18:24

his sentencing, mars Is said to have exclaimed,

1:18:27

it's dreyfus Is revenge. Oh

1:18:29

god, he

1:18:32

brought it all the way back. It's

1:18:35

perfect. It's a perfect circerfict. Oh

1:18:38

man, and somebody screenshot

1:18:40

of his tweets.

1:18:43

Yeah, that's exactly what happens, more

1:18:45

or less, and that prop

1:18:47

is the story of February six, nineteen

1:18:50

thirty four in Paris. All

1:18:52

right, great

1:18:55

time ever

1:18:58

my one word haunting? Yeah,

1:19:02

yeah, yeah, I like and

1:19:05

yeah. Because I didn't have I didn't know much about

1:19:08

this either. So when

1:19:10

I was joining the chorus of everybody who's

1:19:13

fascinated with history, going, guys,

1:19:15

I'm telling you like this,

1:19:18

we've seen this before. I don't know. I

1:19:20

know there's no one to one, but we've

1:19:22

seen something like this before. This

1:19:24

one. I'm like, oh, this is the clothes. This is

1:19:27

the closest too. Like you said

1:19:29

in the beginning, I'm like, oh damn, I wasn't even counting

1:19:31

this one. Yeah it

1:19:33

was. It was some somebody sent me,

1:19:36

and I honestly forget who it was, but somebody like somebody

1:19:38

who I have texted with on signal text

1:19:41

said like, you should look into January six, nineteen

1:19:43

thirty four, and I did, and I'm like, oh

1:19:45

my god, this is the same

1:19:47

thing. So

1:19:51

obviously it was a great, a great you know

1:19:54

episode for are the fascists who failed

1:19:56

part of this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's

1:19:58

a lot of lessons to take out of this. One of this is that the

1:20:01

right loses when the left and liberals

1:20:03

work together electorally, and other

1:20:05

is that when the left and liberals work together electorally,

1:20:08

they generally can't agree on enough to do

1:20:10

anything that will actually stop the fascists from

1:20:12

getting stronger. Um.

1:20:14

That was one of my that was one of the biggest lessons

1:20:17

I'm learning about this. One is just like, oh,

1:20:20

we're so progressive, we're

1:20:22

so well. Me and my wife call it. You're so open

1:20:24

minded, you're clothes minded, you know what I'm saying.

1:20:27

So like you just can't get it together

1:20:29

because you're not open minded enough, you

1:20:31

know. Yeah, And it's you

1:20:33

know, I think a lot could argue

1:20:35

that it's largely on the radicals

1:20:38

because they have more power in the government and they kind

1:20:40

of refused to do any sort of meaningful

1:20:42

aid that could actually um

1:20:44

have have clamped down on the

1:20:47

far right. But also, like I don't

1:20:49

want to like Negate number one, Like the media is a

1:20:51

huge part of this, both in the United States and in France.

1:20:53

Right, this alternate media ecosystem kind

1:20:55

of means that like maybe even if the radicals had

1:20:57

agreed with the socialists and they put out an effective

1:21:00

package, would that have been enough to overcome

1:21:02

the propaganda? And I don't know, nobody does, Nobody

1:21:04

knows, but yeah, like I forget that there's

1:21:07

a modern historian too. It's like we've went from

1:21:09

the information age to the

1:21:11

age of belief to the belief

1:21:13

age, you know what I'm saying. It's like we've actually

1:21:15

switched ages. It's not information, it's belief,

1:21:17

you know. So like and this media circus

1:21:20

that we're all in of, like

1:21:22

you know, the closed ecosystem of your of

1:21:24

your confirmation bias means that information

1:21:26

don't matter belief do so. But

1:21:29

at the end of the day, like like you said, like one

1:21:31

could speculate, I just feel like anyone,

1:21:35

anyone votes for somebody that puts food on

1:21:37

a table, you know what I'm saying. So, like

1:21:39

I said, if you put if

1:21:42

someone's not into the

1:21:44

specificities of of caring for

1:21:47

and the others. You know what I'm saying, like

1:21:49

like the way that we think about government

1:21:51

and the way that the process, but just as simple as

1:21:55

I need to be able to feed my kids, and

1:21:57

you're making this possible, you know what I'm saying,

1:21:59

in a time that like I can't just

1:22:01

go get it myself, you know, then

1:22:04

why would I not vote for this? You know what

1:22:06

I'm saying, Why would I not back this? I don't you

1:22:09

know, it could be a check for

1:22:11

two grand a month. I think it's great, you know. Yeah,

1:22:13

And that's one of the things do l rock in this Cross

1:22:15

a Fire group, Like they actually do provide

1:22:17

aid to other struggling veterans,

1:22:20

and that's a big part of their power and why they're able to all

1:22:22

get together on stuff. And it's like, yeah, you know,

1:22:24

it's it's there's a lot in these lessons.

1:22:26

There's a lot in the stories of just like France and Spain,

1:22:29

where like one of the things we see when you compare them

1:22:31

to Germany Italy is that when

1:22:33

the police and the military are more

1:22:35

on the side of at least the center

1:22:37

and democracy than they are on the side of the right.

1:22:40

The right can't gain power through an insurrection.

1:22:43

Right in Germany and Italy, the police

1:22:45

and the military are on the side of the fascists,

1:22:47

and so the insurrections work, um,

1:22:50

you know eventually yeah,

1:22:52

yeah, I mean in the Munich insurrection is stopped

1:22:54

by the police and stuff. And like the reason the

1:22:56

Spanish Civil War becomes a war is because most

1:22:58

of the military and most of the police in Spain

1:23:01

don't go with the fascists. In France.

1:23:03

It's kind of the same thing. Um,

1:23:06

which is a lesson. I think there's a it's a great

1:23:08

lesson. Yeah, confusing lessons

1:23:10

in all of this. Yeah. Um.

1:23:13

Another is that regardless of

1:23:15

what the far left does, the far

1:23:17

right will turn them into

1:23:20

everyone who is left of center

1:23:22

right yeah, yeah,

1:23:24

And even if they don't do anything, they'll lie. It's like

1:23:26

the kind of thing where you know, liberals

1:23:29

during the election, we're like, look at the like

1:23:32

all what you know, these anti for kids breaking all these

1:23:34

windows are going to lose us the election to Donald

1:23:36

Trump. And it's like, that's actually not what happened, because

1:23:40

the right are we're so propaganda.

1:23:42

Is that no matter what Antifa did, it wouldn't

1:23:44

have if they just marched peacefully in the streets.

1:23:46

The propaganda would have would have made them seem

1:23:49

like the coming of a communist revolution. Um.

1:23:51

What matters is that liberals not buy

1:23:53

into it. And and then I

1:23:57

did where you were just like, hey, the fund

1:23:59

the police would have lost is election. Look, man, don't shoot

1:24:01

at us. Doc Like, yeah,

1:24:03

look it didn't you know, it did

1:24:05

hit number one, you know what I'm saying, you

1:24:07

like, and as much as we could, unfortunately

1:24:11

it's like, well Trump fumbling

1:24:13

Corona. Like it's like really, yeah,

1:24:17

you know what I'm saying, So like, don't look man,

1:24:20

same team, bro. I'm just trying to tell you

1:24:23

this is a good idea. Yeah yeah,

1:24:26

man, yeah,

1:24:29

yeah, it's there's a lot, a lot to

1:24:31

learn. And next episode, our

1:24:35

penultimate episode, Behind the Insurrections,

1:24:38

we're gonna talk about the business plot. Um.

1:24:40

So we're gonna be coming back home to the old U s

1:24:43

U s A. Yeah, that's gonna be

1:24:45

good. That'll be Thursday. Um,

1:24:48

But for now, prop you wanna drop

1:24:50

some plug dobles? Yes, yes,

1:24:52

this, yes, because I'm so excited

1:24:55

because the pre save

1:24:57

link for my first single on the next

1:24:59

rec it is now out excellent

1:25:02

profit pop dot com. Yes, and

1:25:04

all my socials. Also there's a new coffee

1:25:06

roast called the Culture also

1:25:09

available on the website. Uh, pulled

1:25:11

from Ethiopia and like

1:25:13

tasted it myself, met the

1:25:16

farmers. This is real stuff. Uh.

1:25:19

And I will be on

1:25:21

Hood pot Dank Anderson.

1:25:24

You want some coffee, dog. All you gotta do is DM me ho

1:25:27

me like you ain't gotta like yell like that. And

1:25:29

I'm telling the truth like you're barking at

1:25:31

me like I'm lying. Uh. And

1:25:35

Hood Politics with props uh shooting

1:25:38

out doing that's going cool. You could

1:25:41

get on all the all the all

1:25:43

the podcast sections, and which

1:25:45

was funny because like just now one

1:25:47

of the predictions, we're not just now. Last

1:25:50

week one of the predictions came true. Uh

1:25:52

and we kind of did a little funny little roast about

1:25:55

that was the prediction of like the

1:25:57

Proud Boys being infiltrated to

1:26:00

Oldjohn was infiltrated. Guys. Well,

1:26:02

it's it's you know, it's one of the things that's frustrating

1:26:04

to be about the Proud Boys is that like Enrique Terrio

1:26:07

was an FBI informant um

1:26:09

and this is being taken by a lot of the left

1:26:12

to mean that like, well, the the Proud Boys

1:26:14

were an FBI op from the beginning, and like, of

1:26:16

course that's not really how it like, it's this

1:26:18

it's this thing, you see. It's the thing that j Edgar Hoover

1:26:21

wrote about where like one of his goals with co Intel

1:26:23

Pro was to make the FBI seems so

1:26:25

powerful and omnipresent that people would think they

1:26:27

were responsible for everything. Um,

1:26:30

And it's less that and more that like Enrique

1:26:32

Tario is the kind of person who

1:26:35

is immediately going to roll

1:26:37

on everybody that he was involved with. Um

1:26:40

yeah, yeah, yeah that that that

1:26:42

yeah, that like goes back to

1:26:44

me like in the left, where I'm like, in the same

1:26:46

way, I'll be looking at like a lot of the right wing people

1:26:48

and I'm like, yo, where's Joe Antenna's man, like discerned

1:26:51

this situation? You Like, that's not what's happening,

1:26:53

you feel me? And I feel like with this one, that's one of

1:26:55

those situations to where I'm just like, yeah, you're

1:26:58

saying a whole thing as an FBI front,

1:27:00

Like like it's come on, man,

1:27:03

we got is bro. No, they got

1:27:05

a guy. Of course, a bunch of them were talking

1:27:07

to the FEDS. Yeah, they got like, yeah,

1:27:10

they saw the same they saw the same problem as

1:27:12

we saw. And he said, we better

1:27:14

do something about ship. You know what I'm saying. We don't

1:27:16

want another gang that's like another gang.

1:27:18

Yeah, we're we're the top gang, you know, yes,

1:27:21

um, But it's like people

1:27:23

will believe what they believe. It's like with Epstein

1:27:26

and with Stevitsky. You know, yeah, you

1:27:28

know, maybe he killed himself, maybe

1:27:30

he didn't. You know, he did was murdered

1:27:33

because he knew. And it's like, you know, fucking a with

1:27:35

both Epstein and Stevitsky. You look at the response

1:27:38

of the people in power to it, and it's like, yeah, it's pretty

1:27:40

fucking suss. You know, you don't want his

1:27:42

you do not want his pass code, you

1:27:44

don't want that. If if that bull's

1:27:46

phone got hacked, broken into all

1:27:49

the text messages on that, yeah, it's all

1:27:51

bad. Yeah. And I mean it comes

1:27:53

back to the fact that one of the reasons why conspiratorial

1:27:56

thinking can be so influential and spread so

1:27:58

quick, can be so hard to fight, is that there's a funk

1:28:00

lot of actual conspiracy is happening all the time.

1:28:03

It's the problem, you know what I'm saying. It's

1:28:05

the same thing with like we talked about the anti Baxter

1:28:07

thing where it's like it's not like the medical industry

1:28:09

is helping, you know what I'm saying, Like it's not

1:28:12

perdue pharmaceuticals reputation helps

1:28:14

people trust vaccine. You know

1:28:17

what I'm saying. The Sackler family and ship like, y'all

1:28:19

crooks. I know you're crooks.

1:28:22

That's said. I don't know nobody that got

1:28:24

polio. Mm hmm, you

1:28:26

know what I'm saying. So yeah, yeah,

1:28:29

anyway, it's it's it's all great and

1:28:33

our next episode will be great too. Let's

1:28:35

talk about how what the

1:28:38

history Robert's Twitter feed? You can

1:28:40

follow him that I write, I don't

1:28:42

recommend that at all. Stay the off

1:28:44

of Twitter. I think it's great. And you

1:28:46

dropped some few gyms recently. As a matter of fact, I was waiting

1:28:48

at this when to talk about the to

1:28:51

talk about the trout bait shop

1:28:54

tweet that was brilliant. I'm

1:28:56

giving you what was it funk

1:28:58

around? And what

1:29:01

was what was it about the debate shop? Was

1:29:03

it it was sunk

1:29:05

around? And I'll find out yeah,

1:29:07

oh yeah, sunk around and find trout, around

1:29:10

and find trout. I was like, let's

1:29:13

go. I like to me, I was like,

1:29:15

look, that's you caught

1:29:17

that. Whatever you want. That's a brilliant

1:29:20

I think we can make a lot of money. That's

1:29:23

that's my that's my retirement plan. It's

1:29:25

funk around and find trout. It's brilliant.

1:29:27

It's brilliant. Let me tell you why, because I

1:29:30

went one time in my life too.

1:29:33

Uh oh. We talked about before when I ended up in Wyoming

1:29:35

and wantanna fly fishing. Just on the

1:29:37

most the most random thing. I just

1:29:39

got these friends in different places that allow me

1:29:41

to do just white ship, right.

1:29:44

But it don't have to be white

1:29:46

ship. It don't have to be like

1:29:49

what if I like fishing, what if I think

1:29:51

rainbow trout is beautiful. It's just uncomfortable

1:29:54

to walk into the trout store, the fish

1:29:56

store and look around and just be like, oh,

1:29:58

I look like I don't belong here, Like you made

1:30:01

it very clear that I should not be in

1:30:03

this place. But if it's called around

1:30:05

and find trout, I'm like, oh, let's

1:30:07

shop there. Bro this fool cool. It's

1:30:09

a it's a it's a radical intersectional

1:30:12

bait and tackle shop. Rainbow

1:30:16

Trout is delicious and Rainbow Trout

1:30:19

listen. Oh my gosh, yeah, I'm I'm like,

1:30:21

I'm like a B minus pestytarian, you

1:30:24

know what I'm saying. Like I basically eat fish,

1:30:26

except I live in boiled Heights, so the tacos are

1:30:28

flawless. So I break rules for the

1:30:30

tacos. But bro

1:30:33

talk around and find Trout. Let's go around

1:30:36

and find Trout. Y'all

1:30:39

have y'all made the T shirt yet? Oh

1:30:42

no, no we have not, but now that it's

1:30:44

been in an episode, we can. It

1:30:46

needs to be a T shirt anyway.

1:30:49

Anyways, that's that's the episode.

1:30:51

That nice. Rest

1:30:53

of your day. Yeah

1:30:56

yeah,