Behind the Insurrections - The (French) Capitol Insurrection - Behind the Bastards | iHeart (2025)

Speaker 1 (00:01):
What's Parley Voo and my France says, I'm Robert Bastards
while it's behind the Insurrections. It's both. It's like it's
like it's like Bourbon, right, Bourbon is whiskey, but but
all whiskey is not Bourbon. Behind the Insurrections is behind
the Bastards, but all Behind the Bastards episodes aren't Behind
the Insurrections episodes. So I dig that. Yeah, I mean

(00:25):
I think, I think that's actually that's a great analogy.
And you're throwing the Scotch thing and then you're like, wait,
isn't no, I got it. I try to compare as
many things to Bourbon as I can, speaking of Bourbon,
not speaking of Bourbon, speaking of artists. My guest today,
as with the previous what four episodes we've done on

(00:47):
this uh is Jason Petty a k A prop. What's
so let the lick read Bourbon and night for breakfast
for dinner? Prop? How do you feel about France? Uh?
Uh wow, um, I feel carbs. I just think carter
and bread. They do love that food. Fresh food is delightful. Yeah,

(01:11):
I think I think Harlem Renaissance, that's pretty cool. You know,
my patron saint is is James Baldwin, so it's time
out there. Yeah. Uh. But besides that, I also think, yeah,
I don't like Americans, yeah, which is hard to fault
them for what. I know. What I don't like the
French for is is appropriating Belgian French Fries or Belgian

(01:37):
Fries and calling that sucks that they call them France. Also,
I think they have a habit of having superfluous letters,
and they have way to like at least a third
of the letters in any French word are unnecessary. This
is Yeah, Yeah, we're taking France to task today, but
we're not talking about how they use too many letters
that that'll be a six parter we do at some

(01:59):
point day. We are talking about French fascism. Um, yeah,
because the French actually have a long history of fascism.
Although there's a weird number of French scholars who will
argue that France is uniquely immune to fascism, it's not.
And today we're talking about the day that fascists almost
took over the French government February six, nineteen thirty four. Now,

(02:23):
all of the stories we've shared so far in this
series have borne some similarities to what happened in the U. S.
Capital on January six and the events that led up
to it, But what happened in France on February six,
nineteen thirty four is by far the most direct comparison
to what happened in the U. S. Capital on the six.
I knew nothing about this before I started this series,
but it's fascinating. It's wild. Yeah, well it failed, but

(02:47):
also it is just the same damn thing. Basically. You
know what's crazy is how much the thirties must have sucked.
They've trashed a lot of this stuff happened in the thirties. Man,
it sucked as much as I'm gonna guesses are going
to suck suck a decade. Yeah, um yeah, it's great.

(03:07):
It's great. How the same thing is happening again exactly
a century later. Pretty much. Um So the story starts,
our story today starts in many ways with something that
happened in the late eighteen hundreds. Prop have you ever
heard of the dry Fust affair? No? This is I
I did when I was before I dropped out of college.
The only thing I ever was able to focus on

(03:29):
for more than a semester is a major was was
Holocaust studies? Right? I wanted to when I the the
only degree ever wanted was a degree in like Holocaust scholarship.
And every class on anti Semitism in the history of
the Holocaust is going to start, or at least be
frontloaded with the story of the dry Fust affair. And
most Americans don't know about this, but it's very famous
in France and it's where the French far right really

(03:52):
comes out of. In eighteen eighty four, a French army
captain named Alfred Dreyfuss was accused of handing secret documents
to the Imperial German military. Now this was a little
over a decade since the Austro the Franco Prussian War,
which is where France lost a bunch of territory to
what became Germany. Um that one, so there's a lot
of like panic over the Germans, right, So suddenly it

(04:15):
comes out that like someone has been handing documents over
to the German military. There's a spy in the French military,
and everybody focuses on Alfred Dreyfuss. He's the immediate suspected
culprit because he's Jewish, you know, like, Okay, this is
starting to sound a little familiar. Now, yeah, yeah, this
is this is a pretty famous moment. Yeah, I feel

(04:36):
like okay, yeah, yeah, I'm like you and celebrity names.
I'm like, I think I know this immediately and his
story becomes not you know, there's a trader in the
French military, but there's a treacherous jew giving our military
secrets to the Germans. Right um. Now, as I'm sure
most of you have guessed, just because this is the show,

(04:56):
that it is, Dreyfus was innocent. The trial against him
was racially motive vaded and flawed from the get go,
and I found a good right up on the trial
from the open source educational website e International Relations, which
highlights just how fucked things were from the jump. On
the morning of Monday, the fifteenth of October eight, Captain
Alfred Dreyfuss was summoned to present himself at the French

(05:17):
Ministry of War. The Commander Patty to Come, along with
three other inspectors, welcome Dryfus and proceeded in asking him
to write a peculiar letter dictated by Patty to clam
This letter contains sentences from the infamous Bordereaux, which was
a letter written by a French spy found in the
dustbin of the German military attache in Paris. The French
Ministry of War was searching for the spy, and we're

(05:38):
testing various officers that could be suspected of treason. As
Dreyfus wrote the letter, he shivered, and the three men
scrutinizing his every move noticed his trembling, thus deeming it
as a sign of culpability. He is cold, he shivers,
an incontestable sign of his culpability. The God he's shivered.
He's guilty. Guilty. One constant throughout history is people whose

(06:02):
job it is to determine whether or not folks are
guilty of a crime are always bad at that job.
Not possible, Yes, Dreyfus was immediately arrested for high treason
and deported to the prison of I'm not even going
to try to pronounce it. He was sent to prison.
On December nineteenth, he was court martialed in front of
a set of anti Semitic juries who judged him guilty
and sentenced him to a degradation and life sentence on

(06:24):
the Devil's Aisle in French Guyana, so pretty pretty much
you know, a show trial, right, Yeah, that mant that
the anti Semitism man all the way back from there,
all the way to they build in lasers to shoot
from space. They build in lasers to shoot from space.
And this is a real theory because we'll talk about

(06:46):
this later. France did not have much of a history
of anti Semitism before, not nearly as much as a
lot of other European countries. So about two years after
Dryfus is convicted, evidence comes out that a completely different,
non Jewish French office or had been the spy. And
this is good evidence. The guilty man, though, was immediately
acquitted by a military court because Dreyfus was Jewish and

(07:07):
thus must be the guilty party, and Dryfus was. Actually
when the guy who was guilty was acquitted, they sentenced
to Dryfus for even more crimes that he hadn't committed.
In the Oh my god, it's really bad. Oh my god.
Anybody who watched that ivan the terrible docuseries on Netflix
about the guy that was accused of being the the Nazi.

(07:32):
Oh yeah, watch that, Yeah, Oh Robert, it's up your alley.
It is dude. So yeah, they're like, that's him, I'll
never forget his face. He's like, no, it's not. Yeah,
people are bad at remembering things, which is a real problem,
like eye witness accounts and stuff. But there's not even

(07:52):
that in this. This is just racism that Dryfus is
being convicted over. Like it's not even someone thinks they
see him doing something. Um, it's just like, well, he's
a Jew and he's in the army, so he's got
to be the guy passing secrets to the Germans. Obviously
you felt this way. Oh sorry, what's that problem? Is
gonna say? Man, uh, this is gonna be a very
racist statement, but I mean it as a joke, which

(08:14):
is even I shouldn't have even prefaced it. But I
just still think that, like, dang man, because I still
go when I look at like European Jews, I'm just
like but white people, and I just and it's and
it's so funny to be because I'm like, damn, y'all
got the short end of the state. You got the
worst lottery ever as a white dude that you don't
even get to count as a white dude. You have

(08:36):
to I think accept that in this period of time
in Europe, Jewish people aren't white. They are excluded from
the benefits of whiteness. And the way that like in
the late eighteen hundreds, Italians and Irish were in the
United States, right, like just the process of becoming white
for a lot of these groups. Yeah, it's so bizarre.
I know in the early like this is the longest
script you've ever written, So I shouldn't be at I

(09:00):
I know that, like you know stories of when when
America was founded, you know, only white people could own land.
So you had like Japanese immigrants standing in front of
the Congress being like, nah, we're white too, you know
what I'm saying, And just this argument that like I
am a part of that dog. I just can't imagine
as someone who's there is no way I could stand

(09:23):
in front of any court and convince somebody I'm a
white dude, you know what I'm saying, That like the
idea one that that's possible, and too that like you
actually are a white dude, yeah, and then nobody's calling
you a white dude, you know what I'm saying, Like
that's at least the the European jew obviously Ethiopian Jewish
people are clearly non white dudes, you know, yeah, I mean,

(09:44):
and it's it's a factor of non whiteness is a scale, right,
Like everyone who is considered non white isn't considered the
same um there, but it's it's it's a it's a scale.
And and in this period of time and a lot
of Europe and really not in France this had not
been the case. But in a lot of your Jewish

(10:04):
people are not really considered like because there had been
there there had been within living memory at this point,
severe restrictions on whether or not Jewish people could own
property in parts of Europe. Um, it had not been
legal like up to the First World War, almost in
like Germany, for Jewish people to be officers in the military, like,
there were very strong restrictions around it. So it's really

(10:25):
it's hard to almost get your head around, um, because
of how significant it is in this period. That's the
point I'm trying to make, is like I still can't
obviously you can't. You can't pull a you know, a
critical race. Theori is based on a society in the
in the twenty one century. You can't yank that back
to the seventeen and think it's going to be the same.

(10:47):
But at the same time it's still hard to like
wrap my mind around the fact that they're like but
not him. And I'm like, how do you know you know,
I say it it's um, I mean, it's it's the
whole the whole process of a lot of you know,
it's it's the same way as how most of the
kind of colonial procedures that the British carried out in
Africa in order to maintain dominance and split up different

(11:10):
tribal groups and keep them fighting each other so that
they could dominate and exploit them. They beta test at
that in Ireland with with with what we're effectively tribes
and group tribal groups of Irish people like that that.
There are people scholars who will argue that the Irish
were the first people to be excluded from whiteness when
they were when the idea of whiteness was being invented,
before the slave trade even really existed, because like it

(11:32):
was there an early colonized people. It's a it's a like,
will do a history series about this at something History
of Whiteness. Yeah, there's a couple of really good books,
including one titled The Invention of the White Race. That's yeah,
it's a great book. Yeah, very interesting. So anyway, everything
that dry Us, you know, getting tried and then getting reconvicted,

(11:53):
when this new infro comes up, it creates a massive
culture war in France and two groups kind of rise
up a down this. There's the anti dry Fussards, who
are confusingly the ones who think dry Fuss is innocent, okay,
yeah uh, and then there's the dry Fussards who are
raging anti semites um. Like, the dry Fussards think that

(12:15):
that Dryfus is guilty. The anti dry Fussards think that
he's okay. So it's the opposite of how you'd think
it would be. It's opposite day okay, got it. So
dry Fuss is pardoned by the French president and released
in nineteen o three. Eventually, just like and and in
fairness to France, the weight of kind of cultural opinion
is that Dreyfus is guilty. People come around on this

(12:37):
and realize that they've done him dirty. Um. So he's
released in nineteen o three and in nineteen oh six
of French court formally recognizes his innocence. Now the actual spy,
and the racist officers who conspired against Dryfus were never punished.
And one of the saddest things about the story is
how kind of incomprehensibly loyal to the state Alfred Dryfuss
is because after he gets out of years of being

(12:59):
a prison as a spy, he rejoins the French army
and fights in World War One. Yeah, he retires as
a lieutenant colonel and dies at nineteen thirty five. He
goes right back into the military. Dunboy like bro, it
is hard to get your head around. These people don't
love you fam well, so I mean, in fairness to him,

(13:20):
a lot of folks there was a huge culture war
in his defense in a lot of cases this is wrong.
Um So, all things considered, for what is effectively like
a racist attack on a Jewish man at multiple levels
of the military, the dry Fuss affair works at about

(13:40):
as well as you can expect for drivers because he
is he is vindicated in the end, but because of
how much because of what kind of like evolves in
France around believing dry Us is guilty and starting to
believe that Jewish people are kind of inherently unloyal to
the state uh supercharges the radical right in France, and
it lays the foundations for French sympathy for the Nazis

(14:02):
and a hatred of Jewish people that would claim tens
of thousands of lives in World War Two. And I'm
gonna quote from that rite up in the International Relations
again quote. Before the affair, France had been one of
the least anti Semitic countries in Europe. It in fact
had been the country where the most Jews had sought
political asylum during the pogroms that took place in Russia
during the eighteen eighties. Russian Jews escaped the massacres ordered

(14:24):
by the Czar and flee towards the rest, predominantly France.
Another event attesting to France's non anti Semitic past was
that there was no French delegation at any of the
annual congresses of Anti Semitism that took place in Dressden. Yes,
there used to be yearly congress is based on anti
Semitism and Dressed that a bunch of European countries would
send delegates to to talk about the Danges. You the

(14:47):
amount of anti like the Holocaust, isn't a factor of
the Nazis. The Holocaust is a factor of centuries of
most of European christ and of being like the Jews
are dangerous, Like that's where it comes from. Just a
slow moving beIN that ended exactly where logically it would end. Yeah,
it was the result of for hundreds of years, lots

(15:07):
of prominent people being like, we should murder these folks,
and then they did. You know, it's the least surprising
thing in the world if you read anything about European history.
Um so. Yeah. But in France though, um that that's
not really the case as much. Obviously there's anti Semitism
in France, as the Driver's Affair shows, but it's not
nearly what it was. It was one of the best
places in Europe to be Jewish and there were, as

(15:29):
dry Fus proves, a lot of very loyal to France
Jewish people. Um so, the anti Semmotism really starts to
grow into a serious force in France as a result
of the dry Fust affair. The Driver's Affair also leads
to an explosion in the radical press. For the first
time in French history, Left and right start launching a
series of newspapers and magazines aimed at taking different sides

(15:51):
in a violent culture war. At the start, anti dry
Fussard press outnumbered the dry Fusard press by about ten
to one in terms of readership. So the guy who
think dry fus is innocent, that's the majority of the
press at the beginning. But that doesn't stop the dry
the dry fuss Aard press, which are the ones who
don't like drivers, from publishing a constant stream of ever
more lurid lies about a Jewish conspiracy to undermine the military. Now,

(16:15):
some will argue that the whole reason the dry fust
affair became a thing was because the press flocked to it,
and that it might have disappeared um if they hadn't
written so much about it. Scholar Jen Dennis Brennan wrote,
the press became the power of opinion. It amplified the
political movements without creating them. For the first time, the
press disposed of a powerful influence on French politics, dramatizing, supporting,

(16:37):
or denouncing the authorities. Now this is very familiar to
everybody listening right now. It's the same thing that happened
with like Q and on right, this radical press, the
the and when when we talk about radical press in
this period, the people like mimeographing or whatever their own
like little newsletters and stuff. It's the same as like
memes and shipped on Twitter and went on. It's like
eight chance, that's what's happening. It's still still just dank memes, okay,

(16:59):
and it it's by the way, this basic process is
the same thing that radicalize as Hitler when he's when
he's like homeless living in Vienna, he starts picking up
all of these crudely copied and written anti Semitic tracts
that were passed out in mass on the street. That's
what convinces him in a lot of ways about the
danger of the Jewish menace. It's a lot of the
same ship you see on h Chan. It's just now

(17:20):
what happens online. Then it was like like zines you
would pass out basically, Yeah, I wonder if there's like
some sort of psychological study or something that like lays
out what that does to you mentally to see something
that's like feels clandestine, if you will, because it's like
these like mimiograph things, like the quality is terrible, so

(17:44):
it's so does something in you feel like, oh, this
is a secret that's why it's not all polished and nice.
It's like there's there someone if there's something to that
where it's like I'm I'm in I'm in on something.
I know. There's psychology about that where you feel like
you're in on something everybody else isn't. It hits a
certain party of brain. It's his man, But I wonder
if there's something to do with like how sucky the

(18:05):
quality of like, yes, this is the same. You know.
I talked about this a lot. There's this one of
the guys behind the Lincoln Project as a fellow named
Rick Wilson, who is, like I think, objectively a bad person, um,
but has been historically pretty good at creating certain types
of propaganda. He was the guy behind the Reverend Right
campaign ads during Obama's election. Um, yeah, he's that guy.

(18:28):
And I interviewed him in sixteen talking about kind of
his opinion on Hillary Clinton's campaign ads versus Donald Trump's
because the first Trump campaign ads really felt like something
some teenager had cobbled together on their laptop, and Hillary's
ads were like traditional campaign as and everyone was a
lot of liberals were making fun of Trump's ads, but
they were getting this incredible traction. And the thing he

(18:49):
told me was essentially like the really polished slip campaign
ads don't work nearly as well as the ones that
look like they came out of somebody's basement, because that
feels real to people, right, like, it feels more authentic.
And I, you know, like, again he's a very bad person. Um,
he's not bad at making propagandis. And I think about

(19:09):
what he told me a lot um and that's I think,
what kind of what you're seeing here? I think you're
exactly right. So the dry Fist affair would prove in
the radical press that kind of comes out of the
dry Fist affair would prove to be the seed of
a new militant right wing in France, one that came
with its own stabbed in the back myth right. We
talked about how the stabbed in the back myth in

(19:30):
Germany was crucial now the right in Frances, like we
lost the Franco Prussian War because the Jews, you know,
um damn it. And it's it's worth noting that when
the Nazis took over France, they actually had a problem,
had serious problems logistically because of how many French people
were turning in their Jewish neighbors. They couldn't deal with
the sheer number of Jewish people being turned into them. Yeah,

(19:52):
it was way more normal to give up your Jewish
neighbors to the Nazis than it was to hide them
in a lot of Europe, but in France to yeah,
I know, like I have, we talked about so many times,
like the parallels in the end, like Syria and Rock
and Iran like and I have you know, some of
my homies out there, like we're trying to explain like
how a caliphate kind of grows and this is a

(20:14):
lot of the thing too. It's like this these like
heavily armed dudes pull up to the house and are
like are you a Christian? And you're like, uh, nab
but they are, you know what I'm saying. And it's like,
you know, or you down for the Caliphate? You down
with us? And it's like, uh, well, day's data. Ones
down there said it's just like I just don't want

(20:36):
you to drag my daughter out of my house. So
yeah them, you know what I'm saying, he just turned
it down. The dude down the street, you know what
I'm saying. I don't know what they are, you know.
And and it's like a lot of people that signed
up didn't really sign up. They just you know what
I'm saying, It's just I just don't want you to
drag my grandma out of the street, you know what
I mean. Yeah, that's a factor in it. There's a

(20:57):
this is when we talk about the Holocaust. That's a
complicated factor because a lot of people would claim in
their defense later, like after during the Nuremberg Trial time
that they had been forced to carry These are mainly
German soldiers, they had been forced to carry out acts
of genocide, and a significant amount of scholarship shows that,
like it's actually was unheard of for German soldiers to

(21:19):
be punished for not engaging in acts of genocide. Um,
it was. It was a lot of a lot of
it was just it was a mix of like peer
pressure and like legitimate radicalization. But that's a whole Holocaust
is a whole another story. Um. But this is a
part of the story of the Holocaust. Though. This is
why part of why the French people in who are

(21:39):
taken by the Nazis are so willing to turn in
Jewish neighbors. You know. Um, and none of this should
be seen as like kind of uh ignoring the fact
that a lot of French people hid and protected their
Jewish neighbors. That actually makes them much more heroic. But
that was not the norm, you know. Um. So again,
the dry Fust affair gives birth to the ight wing

(22:00):
in France. Um and it it's it's like it leads
to this alternative media ecosystem that starts spreading propaganda at
a at a huge rate. Um. Now, France, obviously, World
War one comes around and France is one of the
co co belligerents in that war, and they suffered, you know,
terribly as a resulting at one point three million French
soldiers were killed and another million were left permanently disabled.

(22:22):
Which makes which means that like in that war, France
lost as many soldiers dead as the US has lost,
more than the US has lost in all of its
wars put together. Um damn. Yeah, it's bad. Um Yeah.
Seventy of French soldiers who mobilized for World War One
where either killed or wounded. Um. And this is not
just include white frenchmen. This includes a huge number of

(22:43):
colonial troops who were brought onto the continent by the
French government to make up for the fact that after
a while, German machine guns had them running low on
white dudes, you know. Um. And one of the stories
that's not talked about enough in World War One is
how many people from India, people from chunks of Africa,
from like all over the world, from the Middle East
were brought in to die on the Western Front because like,

(23:05):
we own these places and we can make them, you know,
beauty of colonialism. You can just yet pull bodies from anywhere,
pull them all from wherever. Now. The days and months
after World War One's closed brought a wave of revolutions
and insurrections across Europe. In Germany and Russia. As we've
talked about, all these trauma mad young veterans were major
instigators of unrest in what one scholar called the shatter

(23:26):
zones of the empires that died as the war's conclusion um,
which I think it's a neat term. You know, all
these paramilitary organizations start becoming more common, and Frances spared
the worst of this in part because you know, they
have their stab in the back from the War of
eighteen seventy. But then they win World War one, which
does kind of mean it reduces the avenues for radicalization. Right,

(23:48):
people aren't as angry because the war was terrible, but
they did win. You know, it's not as bad as
it is in Germany or you know, Italy one too,
but they kind of got screwed in the victory, you know,
so there there's a lot more resentant in those countries. Um.
France does have some unrest though, there's waves of strikes
in early nineteen nineteen, but these didn't really disrupt the
status quo. They did, however, terrify French conservatives. This was

(24:11):
largely because those conservatives weren't seeing the reality of the
strikes themselves, but were instead looking at the violence convulsing
Russia as a result of its recent revolution and being like,
that's what these people want to bring here, you know. Yeah,
so everybody's scared of whatever hell happened to Russia. Everybody is. Yeah,
it's a huge factor here, you know, and you have

(24:31):
to acknowledge that. Like we talk a lot about how
the people on the left are terrified about what they
see happening in France and Germany. People on the right
are terrified about what they see happening in Russia and
a lot of again, nine million people die in that war.
You have the Holodomor, which is five million Ukrainians being starved.
There's a result of some very fucked up policies. So
like they're not like when people are terrified as a

(24:53):
result of what's happening in Russia. It's not like you know,
today people being scared of cultural Marxism because you know,
someone wants to talk about slavery, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah,
basically they have very different that's a legitimate fear. Yeah,
there's they have a leg to stand on right now. Again,
they usually still take it to like, well now we
have to just do fascism, which is yeah, it's like

(25:15):
well bro, but but it's not quite the same. Um. So,
the fear of French conservatives were exacerbated by a pattern
of progressive social changes that came in the wars wake
the sheer number of men killed and rendered unable to work,
had to bring more women into the workplace. Right, you
have a bunch of men who can't take part in
capitalism anymore, so you got to bring in women. This
brings in expansions and women's rights and a broadening of

(25:37):
what was considered acceptable behavior. For the first time, large
numbers of French women were both sexually and financially independent
of men, and obviously this terrifies conservatives. Yeah, I can't
have women making decisions. Yeah, they might, they might decide
not to make more French babies, which is actually exactly
where this leads because something called the birthrate movement pop

(26:00):
up in this period of time. These guys are scared
at declining rates of French birth. Now, they started winding
in eighteen seventy one when Prussia beat France in that war,
because the French, right before they started blaming Jewish people,
blame the fact that French people women weren't having enough babies,
Like that's the thing, Like the right loses of war
and they're like they have to find a scapegoats. So
first it's the women, You're not making enough babies for

(26:21):
us to send into German guns, which is obviously like ridiculous.
We'll spoil an episode that we're going to drop soon.
The reason France loses that wars because they have brass
cannons that are basically Napoleonic artillery and the Germans have
modern steel cannons, and that's why France loses an eight one.
That's the real reason. It has nothing to do with birthrate.

(26:43):
Um yeah, how would it, like, I'm even trying to
follow your logic, Like, there's not that many Germans. Yeah,
it's not that media of it. What does Toddler gonna
do say exactly? Um? But yeah, it does say something
about the right wing that they're like, if we'd had
more always to send into their guns, we would have won. Yeah, okay, Um.

(27:05):
And then of course, like after they you know, after
a decade or so of blaming women, they start blaming
Jewish people. Uh So the kind of the birthrate movement
got even more like gained more traction after World War
One because at this point a lot of French dudes
had died, so they had a little bit more of
a leg to stand on, like we need to have
more babies because look at how many of our boys

(27:26):
got killed. A better answer think, I'm just like, man,
I always these dudes, like when I'm hearing them, just
the stabbing the back thing. And then then we had
no birthrate. I just wish these kids had like Little
League Baseball at some point to just like teach you
how to take a loss. Man, just take the loss, bro,
you lost none of them. That's the fucking thing. And

(27:46):
it's the same fucking thing for like the Hindenberg and
Ludendorf in Germany, where it's like, well, we can't accept
that we fucked up, right, it has to be it
has to be someone else's fault that we lost this war. Yeah,
just take the l bro. Like sometimes you know, hey,
you had a bad day, you know you just hey,
buck up, champ, like you just you took your lost,

(28:08):
all right, take everybody takes ls. Yeah, it's like the fact.
It's like it's like the American right wing blaming the
fact that we lost Vietnam on like teenagers protesting. It's like, no, dude,
like the Vietnamese kicked your ass. They were better better,
Like this is what happens. Sometimes you lose. Yeah, Usually

(28:29):
you lose when you do stupid shit, you like invade
Vietnam or invade Afghanistan. Should have been anyway. Yeah, So anyway,
obviously a bunch of members of the birth rate movement
get elected to government. They pushed legislation to encourage childbirth, YadA, YadA.
In nineteen twenty, a conservative government is elected and immediately

(28:50):
sets to pushing back against what they saw as a
rising and sinister communist left. They were opposed by the
labor government, which had been swelled by the war's need
for heavy industry. During the first six months of conservative power,
a series of strikes convulsed both French industry and public services. Still,
the start of the twenties was a good time to
be a French Conservative. The stain of defeat in eighteen

(29:11):
seventy one had been wiped out by victory over Germany.
The new right wing government was seen as being largely
composed of herobic veterans, even though this wasn't really true,
but the idea was that like, these guys are all heroes.
They're not normal, crooked politicians right there. They are men
of the Trench generation. They could be trusted to make
hard decisions to make France great again. So first on
the right wings agenda was of course, sticking it to

(29:33):
the Germans. Just defeat. The defeated nations did a lot
of money to France and reparations um and these were
seen not only as spoils of war, but were necessary
to revive the French economy because the French had gone
badly into debt to the United States in order to
continue fighting the war. So they need German reparations to
pay off the US. You know, um uh money because

(29:54):
I owe some money. Yeah, I need my money because yeah.
So when the Germans begged that they couldn't afford to
like feed their people and pay reparations, the French right
wing assumed that they were lying, and this newly formed
network of right wing newspapers in magazine starts spreading another
conspiracy theory. This one is that Germany actually hadn't been
all that badly hurt in World War One. They just

(30:15):
faked a surrender so that they could rebuild their military
and sneak attack Germany. All of their complaints about economic
collapse and inflation and starvation were lies meant to lull
the French into a false sense of security, which yeah,
is not the case. So the Germans stopped paying reparations
because they were literally on the verge of societal collapse,

(30:36):
and the French government sends in troops to occupy Germany's
industrial heartland. And of course a big one of the
things that happened in this period is a lot of
the troops they send over are like black people from
their colonial possessions, which really jump starts a lot of
racism in Germany, um because like, you know, nobody ever
likes the occupying soldiers. Nobody, Yeah, nobody wants the messenger.

(30:58):
Yeah exactly. Umviously, Still one time I feel like in
this age, or in this era of history where I
feel like I have a little more mercy for Germany
when they're just like, dog, we may look, man, we
ain't got it. Dog Like we just I ain't got it,
you know what I'm saying. It's like it's your fault.
Don't get me wrong, it's your fault. But you can't

(31:18):
squeeze water out of a turn up fan. Yeah, I mean,
they're fucking like the thing that they're guilty of in
World War One in that era, and the reason that
like France and Germany come down so hard on them
is like they're primarily guilty of wanting to do what
France and Germany had been doing for two, two or
three centuries. You know, they wanted an empire. They're like,
well everyone else gets to do it. Why don't we
get it's bad to want an empire? Obviously, what the

(31:42):
Germans do some really messed up stuff in the Maybia
carry out a genlside themselves like but also up to
World War One and including World War One, if you're
looking at like the number of crimes against humanity committed
by Germany versus France or England, not even Yeah. In
nineteen twenty four, the French Conservatives get their asses handed

(32:04):
to them in a landslide election, and the victors in
this election are an alliance between socialists and radicals. Now
again because everything in Frances backward, the Socialists were the
furthest electorally relevant left wing party. So the Socialists are
like as far less like the Bernie Sanders, as far
left as you could be in French politics and still
get elected. Obviously they're further left in than Bernie, but

(32:25):
like they're as far left as you can be in
France and get elected. The Communists hate the Socialists in
a lot of cases because the Communists are further left
than that and they're not really as relevant in the
government as a result. The Radicals are the exact opposite
of with the sound like, the Radicals have the same
kind of position in France, and this is at this
period as Democrats do. They're the center left right, the

(32:46):
majority left. Um So, the Radicals are not radicals and
the Socialists are not communists, but they are far left
for French politics. Again, everything in Frances backward. Um So,
the Radicals and Socialists had work together in the past.
Um they were allied, and that they all kind of
broadly supported human rights, democracy and anti clericalism, pushing against

(33:08):
like the Catholic Church. But they didn't get along on
much else. The Radicals were the party of like the
petite bourgeoisie, the lower middle class, small business owners and
successful peasants. They were big on individualism and self reliance
and of course property ownership as a method of social advancement.
The Socialists are socialists. Their partnerships were always awkward, and

(33:29):
for one thing, the Socialist Party had a standing rule
that none of their deputies were allowed to accept ministerial
posts and radical governments because they saw themselves as a
Marxist revolutionary party and if they were seen as working
within a liberal government, the Communists would eat them alive
and suck in their disaffected members. So they get elected
to what is effectively French Parliament or Congress or whatever.

(33:50):
They have deputies, but they won't serve in the government
of the radical majority, because that would mean compromising the
fact that they're Marxist revolutionaries and the lose members to
the communists then, and the communists hate the socialists because
they're willing to get like elected at all, basically, um,
and they're willing to work with the radicals. It's very
very complicated and domb but it's also like basically what
happens between the left all the time. Right, you've got

(34:13):
the left that wants to actually govern, and you've got
the left that's like the system is so fucked up
that governing means buying into the things that we're fighting against,
you know. Yeah. Yeah. Despite the fact that actual socialists
like weren't taking uh weren't willing to take up ministerial jobs,
and the fact that the left coalition didn't agree on much,

(34:35):
the election of this new government, which is called the cartel,
drives the right wing completely bug fuck and I'm sure
Americans can understand what that look like. The conservative print
media basically calls this stage one of a Communist invasion.
The socialists, who the communists hated were considered to be
just the same as the communists revolutionaries and Sheep's clothing

(34:56):
In nineteen twenty six, the Cartel really pisss off the
right way when they approved the Washington Accords, which guaranteed
that France would keep repaying her ward at to the
United States even if Germany defaulted on their payments to France.
At the same time, the Cartel brings the Germans into
the League of Nations. The Cartel in France are like
this liberal government, they're trying to rehabilitate Germany because Germany

(35:18):
is kind of socialist at this point. They're like, let's
bring them back into the national community, like we can't
keep ostracizing them as a result of World War One,
and part of bringing Germany back in as they negotiate
a more reasonable repayment arrangement with Germany that the right
wing sees is the left selling out the country and
it's war dead, right, So yeah, you just oh, man, yeah,

(35:41):
I'm getting I feel like I'm feeling itchy on my back. Man.
You know, everyone knows where this is going, yes, like
and then and then the thing is this, it's like
in the same way that we call that y'all call
Bernie Sanders a radical leftist, I'm like talking about Bernie
Sanders sawing my stuff that they do in Canada. You
don't say, yeah, the communist bastion of Canada, you know

(36:02):
what I'm saying. So like he ain't really radically not
really that you know what I'm saying, lightweight, you know.
And when I compare like a party to like they're
the Bidens or whatever, I'm not saying They're politics are
like it, it's like a comparative thing, like, yeah, I
get the scale. I totally I'm totally following the scale,
and I'm saying, yeah, in this scenario, it's like what
they're suggesting is reasonable. They you're not gonna get your money. Yeah,

(36:28):
you're not gonna get your money if you kill the Germans.
Let's bring them back in and let them rebuild and
will eventually get paid if they slow, please be like
this if we never rehabilitate them. It's the same thing
with like with like prison reform exactly this like it's
just gonna keep No, we have to do this, this
is reasonable. We're not going to get the result that
we both want. So let me just and you talk him.

(36:51):
I'm selling you out, Okay, I'm getting itchy. Yeah. Yeah,
So the years that Cartel is in power are basically
a constant stream of outrage porn for the now exploding
right wing media ecosystem. Okay, newspapers like Action, Francois, Candied
which means Candid, Gringore, and Jsuit Partu which means I
Am Everywhere reach hundreds of thousands and eventually more than

(37:14):
a million conservative French readers. The first of these was Candide,
which had been established in eighteen sixty five and from
the beginning was both anti democratic and anti Semitic. When
Communism kind of went viral worldwide, it added violently anti
communists to its repertoire. Candied was followed by gring Oar,
which was named after a French journalist, and Jesuite Part

(37:35):
two was initially not anti semitic or right wing, but
throughout the nineteen twenties, at the direction of its head editor,
the paper got more and more extreme. In the late
twenties and early thirties, it goes all in from Mussolini
and it starts to get progressively anti semitic, until by
the late nineteen thirties it was literally just a Nazi magazine.
So these are like the big the big names, and

(37:56):
right wing media can yeah, candy Gringo. Anyway, So in
the early years of the cartel, well, the French left is,
like I think, objectively, being pretty reasonable. The French right
wing is losing its entire damn mind. And as will
again sound familiar to everyone, the right wing reacts to
the left having some success by forming a system of

(38:18):
violent street fighting gangs so they could beat up their
opponents in the streets. Um. This was of course part
of a trend in Europe that exploded from nineteen nineteen
to nineteen twenty three or so. We've talked about this
both in the case of Italy and Germany. Now again
in France, there's less unrest and there's less angry veterans
who want to tear down to the state because they
in that state had won their war. So it takes
longer in France for a paramilitary culture to really kick off.

(38:41):
One of the most direct causes comes in nineteen twenty four,
as the study France and Fascism by Brian Jenkins notes,
the right suspicions about revolutionary and anti national nature of
the Cartel were apparently confirmed in November nineteen twenty four,
when the government sanctioned the internment of the ashes of
the socialist founding father ganjare in the pantheon, while socialists

(39:02):
and radicals led a cortage to the Temple of the Republic.
The conservative press focused on a communist counter demonstration held
in protest at the parliamentary left hijacking of j A.
The presence of noisy communists in the streets with socialist
and radical deputy suggested that the cartel had accepted Bolsheviks
into its ranks, and the Chamber of Deputies right wing
deputy Pierre Tattinger denounced the revolutionary saturnalia of the day,

(39:26):
which he claimed he had witnessed a true outbreak of
revolution from the international underworld that infects France. Tattinger promised
that if the government could not take matters into hand,
the leagues of public safety are ready to defend and
save are threatened society. Now the leagues are these, these
militant organizations, the street organizations. So what happens here is

(39:47):
this socialist guy's ashes get brought back to France. It's
like founder of the French Socialist Party and the socialists
and the radicals is kind of a demonstration of left unity.
Have a have a ceremony for this this dead socialist.
The communists who hate everybody who's not a communist have
their own rally, and they're more extreme, but they're very tiny,
and they obviously hate the rest of the left. The

(40:07):
conservative media looks at just the communist demonstration says, that's
all of them, that's the whole left. They're all like
these guys again, it's all the same, nothing changes, nothing changes,
you know, isn't going to change me asking you to
take an ad yep, you know who won't uh radicalize

(40:28):
the French right over anti semitism based on Communist demonstrations
taken out of context? Yeah, man, hopefully these uh, these
other podcasts, these other podcasts or whatever advertising that. All right,

(40:54):
we're back. So this guy, I know you're gonna say that, Yeah,
you got your own so the sky. Pierre Tattinger, who
will talk about in a bit, is a big advocate
of these leagues, these right wing street fighting gangs, and
he keeps like for years afterwards, he will talk about
November nineteen twenty four, this like one communist rally as
and use it as like the whole reason why the

(41:16):
entire left needs to be defeated. Um and a lot
of like a huge chunk of Catholics and nationalists in
France believe that like, based on again this one demonstration,
a communist revolution is like right about to happen. Now.
This was made worse by the fact that the mid
nineteen sufferance suffering economic contraction that, while not as severe

(41:36):
as the one experienced by Germany, was pretty bad. Now
you mix that in with a declining birth rate, and
as Brian Jenkins rights quote, in comparison to the dynamic
and youthful regimes abroad, such as Mussolini's Italian Fascist State,
the Republic did not seem fit for purpose. Sections of
the right thus looked for a solution beyond the institutions
of the regime to violent extra parliamentary groups known as leagues.

(41:59):
So Frances have trouble here, and the right, rather than
like trying to take any accurate stock of things, looks
at the propaganda coming out of the Italian Fascist state,
which is not accurate, and it's like, see, everything is
great in Italy. Why don't we do that? Oh my god, yeah,
oh my god, dude, it's great. Uh So the leagues
are not quite like the black Shirts or the free Corps.

(42:21):
They're not heavily armed. Most of them are veterans, but
they don't have like machine guns generally and like massive
Like they're not private armies. They're groups of combat veterans
generally who want to like drink and fight in the
streets against the left. One of the first leagues was
founded by that Pierre Tattinger, and he called them the
Juness Patriots or the Young Patriots, and they were initially

(42:42):
the youth wing of the League of Patriots, which was
a political organization the same it's it's yeah, the Young Republicans, right,
turn the point USA or whatever. Patriots like, they're all
proud boys, you know, they're all proud, proud boys. So
a lot of people on the left recognize the League's

(43:03):
as a threat um and they are. One French leftist
Louver noted that since Mussolini's March on Rome, one could
no longer so much as walk in the street without
wearing a colored shirt. You know, he's talking about like
they've got you've got the black shirts and Rome the
brown search in Germany, and now like all of our
guys have their own shirts, their own colored shirts for
each league's and he warns that Louver warns that if

(43:24):
these leagues were able to like stop fighting each other
over petty bullshit and could unite under a single charismatic leader,
the way would be open for what he called the
rule of castor Oil and the grenade. So like, basically,
we've got all these fascists. If they could unify behind
one guy, we're in trouble. You know, there's the castor
oil again. Yeah, it's a real thing in this period.

(43:46):
So in this the left wing fear was you know, accurate, reasonable,
but perhaps a bit premature. The French leagues regularly reprinted
fascist brockpaganda and definitely admired the black Shirts, but they
were also French, and if you know anything about France,
it's that France kind of hates the idea of other
people's cultures coming into France and gaining influence. They are
very proud of being French, and even French proto fascists,

(44:09):
like their Spanish counterparts, were kind of didn't like would
argue that they didn't want fascism because fascisms with foreign ideology, right,
we were extreme rightists, but we want our own French
version of that. We don't want to like steal from Italy.
We're France, We're better than that. I was like, that's pretty,
that's pretty on brand France. Yeah, it's very rand France,
very France. Yea. So, one scholar named Dobris calls this

(44:31):
the dilemma of the authoritarian nationalist, which is the fact
that nationalists want to be authentically of their nation because
fascism tends to gain power by reacting against purported foreign influence. Um.
But at the same time they want to imitate successful
authoritarians abroad, and this creates a problem for a lot
of fascists. We again, we saw the same thing in France. Now,
the struggle within the French right over this continued through

(44:53):
the mid nineteen twenties while the Leagues went through what
Dobris calls an apprenticeship period to the Fascist International. So
French Shire behind the German and Italian fascist they're not
as as quick. They're kind of learning from them, right,
and they're slower on the uptake as a result. Um. Now,
because a lot of awful lot of French League members
were veterans, the League's benefited from what became known as

(45:14):
the veterans mystique, which was a near worship in France
of what we're called the Front generation. People celebrated the
trench ocracy, which is like the democracy of the trenches. Right. Um,
this is huge in Europe. It's not just in France,
because in Germany Hitler makes a lot of hay out
of the fact that he'd been a corporal in the trenches,
not like an officer or a nobleman, but a normal soldier. Um.

(45:35):
But I think Americans can understand how like right wing
groups can use veneration of veterans as a way to
push their own radical lens, you know. Um. Yeah. Brian
Jenkins writes about how one right wing fire brand named
The Law used the idea of the pure trench warrior. Quote.
The Law warned veterans that the Republic had sabotaged the

(45:56):
hard won gains of the war. Only the installation of
a fashionist and dictatorial combatant state would restore France to
the politics of victory. Likewise, the Young Patriots leader Tatinger
extolled the virtue of the new elite born of war.
His group alleged that the cartel had sabotaged the fruits
of the war and clipped the wings of victory. These
Leagues were not attracted solely to the veterans supposed moral quantities.

(46:19):
Only veterans were purported to join the Young Patriots Iron
Brigade and the Legions, both elite paramilitary action squads. Now,
obviously most veterans don't join the League's uh, and a
lot of them also joined communist veterans organizations. But the
worship of veterans and the idea that the sacrifices of
nineteen eighteen had been betrayed by the leftist leaders of
France becomes a popular right wing rallying cry in the

(46:42):
mid twenties. Throughout this whole period, the right press continues
to gin up a desire for the blood of their
political opponents. One right wing journalist, politician, and street organizer
named Charles Morris was jailed in nineteen five for threatening
to have the Minister of the Interior killed like a
dog if police kept at harrassing the League. Yeah, there's

(47:03):
a couple Marjorie Taylor Green or whatever her name is,
the Q and on lady who's talking about that Jewish
space later and probably helped carry out and incite and
advice that she's the jew laser. Yeah that that that lady.
There's like three of her in France in this period, okay,
and Mars is kind of one of them. Now, Mars
is an interesting guy. He was born a monarchist and

(47:26):
it is what we would probably call a Catholic fascist today.
His earliest political memory was the was the French defeat
in the Franco Prussian War, which seems to have fueled
a lot of his anti left hatred. Later in life.
He became an anti democratic activist in the eighteen nineties,
and then came the Dreyfus affair, and of course Mars
is a dry Fussard. He believes that Dryfus is guilty
because he's Jewish, and he grows increasingly anti Semitic after

(47:48):
the Dreyfus affair. In eighteen nine, he found a newspaper
Uh Action France, which literally means French Action, and yes
it does sound kind of like a porn. His magazine
becomes very influential among the French right wing, and Marius
uses his influence to, among other things, convince a lot
of conservatives that destroying democracy and going full monarchy is

(48:09):
the right thing to do. He writes an article in
eighteen ninety nine titled dictator and king. That's about how
we should have a dictator king and Franciso. Yeah, yeah,
you know what France's problem is not enough kings. You
know what, you remember we have served them. Yeah, and
peddle back to that. Let's go back to that. That

(48:30):
was amazing, Ricketts. In nineteen o five, Mars starts writing
articles about how swell it would be for the right
wing to create extra legal paramilitary organizations and have them
do a coupaita. When the league's rose up, Mars was thrilled,
and soon Action Francis, or Front the French Action, has
its own league. When Mars goes to jail for threatening

(48:51):
to murder a member of the government, his business partner
at the newspaper says this to a gathering of their
followers in ninety six, if Mars were wounded or hit,
I would once give orders to have the ministers of
the Republic immediately assassinated. So, like, the right wing isn't
just like dog whistling violence, Like we should kill them all,
we should kill everyone on the left. Yes, it's like

(49:13):
like the American right. Now, So what do you so
in what what way do you mean? I mean, I
mean we shoot them today, we kill them. Yeah, yeah,
it's why. And it's the same as what's been had,
what happened ahead of the sixth you know. Now, Obviously,
Maris and his business partner were not alone in their

(49:33):
calls for violence against the Left. I'm gonna quote from
France and fascism here. Such calls to violence often went unheeded,
and law and order were not threatened to the extent.
Scene in Germany and Italy, However, low level physical violence
was common. Newspaper sellers from rival organizations regularly came to
blows in the street, while political meetings were frequently the
scene of violence. Furthermore, despite their claims to stand for

(49:55):
authority in order, the league's could fight with the police
to the French actions create mayhem in the Latin Quarter
and beyond, beating political opponents and reveling in confrontations with
the police. Meanwhile, a young Patriots leaguer died in March
nineteen twenty six during fighting with police at a demonstration
against the Minister of the Interior, Louis Malvi. So they

(50:16):
these organizations are kind of recruiting and growing because they're
fighting with the left and they're fighting with the cops
right now. In most of France, the armed paramilitary start
to decline in popularity after nineteen and in France they
mostly faded into the background temporarily by nineteen twenty six,
after two years of regular street brawls. They left behind them,

(50:37):
in the words of some scholars, a culture of violent rhetoric,
uniformed politics, and street fighting right, which again very similar
violent rhetoric, uniformed politics and street fighting, the proud bol
you know it's proud boy. Um. Now, this was not
the end of violent unrest in France. Just to pause,
because in nineteen six a new Conservative government gets elected

(50:58):
and the cartel comes to an end. So that's why
the League's kind of fade after twenty six is the
Conservatives get elected again. It comes a home game again, okay, exactly, yep.
And the reason the right wins in nineteen is that
the left has fractured again. The Communist launch a series
of attacks against the Socialists, who they call social fascists.

(51:19):
In fighting causes the less to temporarily dissolve as meaningful opposition,
and this meant the League's also had a lot less
of a reason to exist. Big business that's spent the
previous four years pumping money into the far right, and
they withdraw their financial support after twenty six, which causes
the leagues to collapse. So the leagues are floated by
rich businessmen who then like, well, now conservatives are in

(51:40):
power again. We don't we don't want street games anymore. Yeah.
So the temporary fall of the league's and the victory
of the center right did not mean the fever swamps
of far right media ceased operation, and no magazine or
newspaper was more influential than French action from a right
up end of all things. The Harvard Crimson quote it
collected within a sells the inheritors of a tradition of nationalist,

(52:02):
monarchist and reactionary thought extending back almost a hundred years.
It was no mere cabal of a moral big businessman,
such as supported the so called Committee France alec Main
and the ultra conservative Grand Press, but a meeting place
for distinguished and gifted intellectuals whose disdain for the republic
was wholly disinterested, the result of literary and philosophical predispositions,

(52:23):
not any desire to safeguard financial investments. So again, the
far right in the in the period where the left
is in control, is funded by businessmen who are safeguarding
their investments, right, and that's why they want to fight
socialists in the street. But the guy's propagandizing to the
far right are true believers. It's not about money for them.
It's about fascist you know about the thing? Okay, yeah, so,

(52:46):
and Mars being a monarchist is only marginally happier under
a conservative government than liberal one. The king is still
gone and he wants a fucking king. So throughout the
years of right wing power in France, he continues to
advocate for an armed coup is the only way to
bring back the monarchy. It would have been easy for
people in the left and mistake he and his followers
for isolated loons, and a lot of people in the

(53:06):
center particularly did. Then the global economy crashed and in
France it crashes with the right wing and power, and
May of nineteen thirty two the left wins again. Their
victory is again enabled by the fact that the radicals
who are the moderates, ally with the socialists again to
avoid splitting the left wing vote. So left continuously wins
in France and Spain, uh and Germany. When the left

(53:30):
and the center left are willing to like work together
electorally right, um, and the right is obviously enraged and
terrified by what was surely a prelude to full on Stalinism. Now,
I just said that, like the left consistently wins elections
in Europe against the right in this period when you
know they're all willing to work together. The problem with

(53:50):
the far left in the center left working together is
the same thing that we're seeing now under Biden. Liberals
and the left can never get their ship together to
agree on anything. And in France they can't put us
their differences to get a basic aid package together to
help people with the depression, which again does not sound
at all familiar. Yeah there's my back tingle again. Yeah,
so the socialist demand direct aid for the unemployed, while

(54:13):
the radicals worry about the deficit and think that it's
much more important to balance the budget. It's the same
exact thing, okay, the radicals, who are centrists, their best
idea is, of course austerity cuts in wages for public workers.
The intractable debate between the socialists and the radicals leads
to a series of different liberal left governments. Obviously, it's

(54:34):
like a parliamentary system, so you can have votes of
no confidence, you dissolve the government, you bring in a
new government, new ministers. This happens a number of times,
and none of these governments are able to actually help people,
and the French economy spirals downhill. The right wing correspondingly
surges and it unifies behind the thing the right wing
does best, picking up weapons and making death threats to

(54:55):
people they disagree with. The leagues that had remained functional
after nineteen namely innch Action and the Young Patriots, see
a swell in their membership. They're soon joined by new leagues.
In June of nineteen thirty three, a Perfume magnate and
fascist named Cody forms his own paramilitary group, which he
uses to spread anti Republican authoritarian propaganda and pushes this

(55:16):
through the newspaper that he owns as well. By February
of nineteen thirty four, the Perfume Guys paramilitary gang slash
newspaper is the most influential and largest fascist movement in France.
Are you saying Perfume, Yeah, he's a Perfume Guy. Yeah,
Like France's most influential fascist gang leader is a perfume. Dude,
the guy that like fragrance. Okay, I was big into

(55:38):
the fragrance business. Yeah, this is again pretty on brand,
pretty on brand. Cody's men wore blue shirts and lots
of leather, and one has to assume smelled incredible. Yeah,
it sound like they probably looked amazing too. I'm sure
they did. Yeah. Now, another fascist French guy named Marcel
Bouchard starts a league called the Francists in the September

(56:00):
of nineteen thirty three. Bouchard repeatedly praised foreign fascist governments,
and he was famous for making long speeches about the
almost sexual love he had for his revolver um. Again,
another Marjorie Taylor Green right like I'm gonna take my
clock into congress kind of guy's the same fucking ship.
Just the worship of weapons and such. And then of
course there's the Craw the Few, which is like the

(56:21):
Cross of Fire. This is an organization that had been
founded as a veterans association for men who had been
decorated for bravery and combat. So all of the Crawl,
if you, the Cross of firemen are like not just
combat veterans, but men who have been particularly awarded for
their courage under fire. So it's not founded necessarily as
a right wing, radical militant organization, but it becomes one

(56:45):
very quickly. Its leader is a guy named Colonel Laroq,
and he holds military style parades and is not afraid
to use his men as a political cudgel. And the
way their organized is actually pretty genius. They have at
their height about half a million officers and n c
o s and their membership, and the officers and n
c o s are each like put in charge of
ten guys to other former soldiers who were of lower ranks,

(57:06):
and their job is to get help with those guys
for those guys using the resources of the league, and
also control their votes. So the half million or so
officers and n c o s and the Cross of
Fire control about five million votes. They're very politically influential
as a result. So these guys are right wing and
kind of militant, but they're also very system loyal right there.

(57:26):
Not we want to overthrow the government there, We want
to organize as a political entity in order to dominate
the government. So Brian Jenkins rights quote in November of
nineteen thirty one, the colonel and his followers stormed the
stage at a meeting on disarmament at Trucadero, bringing an
end to the proceedings. Meanwhile, the league's shock troopers called Dispose.
We're employed to maintain security at meetings and fight the

(57:49):
left in the street. In October nineteen thirty three, a
new manifesto announced a more radically anti parliamentary direction, while
the group opened its ranks to non veterans through its
volunteers National Auxiliary. So they get, you know, start more
system loyal, and they get kind of more closer and
closer to fascism as time goes on. As nineteen thirty
four dawned, right wing paramilitaries were as organized and as

(58:10):
large as they had ever been in France. The left
was too, was fighting too much within themselves to the
with it between themselves to deliver any kind of meaningful
aid that might have tamped down on unrest. Meanwhile, the
right blamed the global economic collapse on their own leftists
and of course the Jews. Um. Yeah, they also are
able to look abroad at the propaganda that's being put

(58:31):
out by Italy and now Germany and be like, look
at how good things are going in the fascist countries
where I assume I have accurate information from we should
do that. So what did they do that We're not doing. Yeah,
they're not We're we're not killing enough leftists. Yeah. And then,
as everything in France is about as hot as it
could get, what comes to be known as the Stavitsky

(58:53):
affair bursts onto the front page of every rightist newspaper
in France. And I'm gonna see how long it takes
you to like figure out what the most modern parallel
to the Stavisky affair alright. Sergey Alexander Stavisky was born
in Ukraine in eighteen eighty six to a Jewish family
who had immigrated to France in eighteen ninety nine. His
father was a dentist to Stavisky, however, was a born grifter.

(59:15):
While still a teenager, he established himself as a con man.
By the mid nineteen twenties had gotten good at it,
making enough money to dress as a rich guy, even
though he was constantly on the verge of losing everything.
Stavisky used his charisma and his ability to trick guloibal
rich people to keep the cash flowing. France and fascism,
writes quote. He left a trail of fake companies, counterfeit
checks and bonds, and fraudulent share transactions, and following his

(59:37):
arrest in July nineteen twenty six for stealing and stolen securities,
he spent seventeen months in the Lessante prison while his
case awaited trial. Following his release on medical grounds, the
hearing of the case against him was repeatedly deferred nineteen
postponements and all, leaving Stavisky free to launch a string
of further dubious ventures under the alias Sergey Alexander. In
ninety eight, he embarked on a scheme which the lucrative

(59:58):
would eventually prove his undoing, the raudulent exploitation of municipal
pawn shops in Orleans. He extracted twenty five million francs
from the pawn shop in exchange for fake gimstones, subsequently
redeeming the stones with cash derived from the municipal pawn
shop he had since launched in Bay Owned. This was
a much bigger operation, and the credit was financed by
issuing bonds well in excess of the value of the

(01:00:18):
articles deposited. Cash was then realized through the sale of
these fake bonds to banks and insurance companies. In the
summer of nineteen thirty three, having spent lavishly and gambled heavily,
Stavisky found himself unable to redeem the bonds, and his
attempts to win backing for a new operation, which he
hoped would bail him out yet again, were soon frustrated.
That's the nature of his con Yeah. First it sounded

(01:00:39):
like an assets it's pretty good lick man. He is.
He is a commn for a while. Yeah. So in
September of nineteen thirty three, one of the businesses he can't,
an insurance company, called for a judicial inquiry into his business.
On December twenty three, the director of a pawn shop
Stavisky owned broke down under questioning he did not just
incriminate his boss, but also a local elected leader from

(01:01:00):
the Radical Party. Stavisky immediately went on the run, fleeing
Paris on Christmas Day, and just as quickly, the right
wing press picks up the story. French Action and other
newspapers launched a massive campaign to allege that not just
the one guy implicated, but a whole host of radical politicians,
basically all of them, had been involved in a far
reaching financial conspiracy. Since Stavisky was Jewish. You can guess

(01:01:22):
how this folded in with all the fact that all
of these papers also had huge heart ons for Hitler
and Mussolini. One radical deputy resigned. Another radical, the Minister
of the Economy, was found to have encouraged people to
purchase junk bonds from Stavisky back in nineteen thirty two.
So two radicals are implicated like clearly, so he resigns
and to the right this proves that all of the

(01:01:42):
other deputies they've been accused and were guilty to newspaper
editors were also found to have been on Stavisky's payroll
which encouraged people to buy junk bonds. And then these
guys are arrested, which feeds into the narrative that liberal
press is on trustworthy and part of the Jewish conspiracy.
As nineteen thirty four dawned, right wing media could write
about nothing else but the Stavisky affair. And then on

(01:02:02):
the ninth, with public interest at its height, Staviski himself
is cornered by police at a house in Chimoa. He
kills himself to avoid capture. So as soon as he
kills himself, both the communist and the far right press
leap on the story, alleging that Skavinsky had not committed suicide,
he'd been murdered to cover up his connections to powerful leaders.

(01:02:24):
He's the fucking French Jeffrey Epstein. He's Epstein. Yeah, it's
the same thing. It's the same thing. Yeah, he's actually
he doesn't have like a network of child prostitutes, but
he's a guy who's implicated with a bunch of powerful
people in a series of crimes. He goes to jail
once he continues committing crime, implicates more powerful people, and
then when he's cornered, kills himself. You know, it's the

(01:02:47):
same thing. It's like the exact same pook. Yeah, and
and and and and the best part about the Epstein story,
they said to camera glitched. Yeah, and there's there's shady
stuff like that with this right. It's not animals because
it's whatever. It's the same thing. But yeah, is a
one to one bro. Yeah he doesn't. Just like with Epstein,

(01:03:07):
it doesn't really matter if he killed himself or was murdered.
The same thing with this guy. What matters is that
everyone on the far left and the far right is
sure that he was murdered in order to protect liberals
center politicians too much at stake. You know who won't
murder Jeffrey yep, you can't because he already did. But yeah,

(01:03:31):
he's already dead, so they definitely won't kill him, definitely
won't get products and services that support this podcast. So
we're back. So the Radical President that he's still alive, though,
like I feel like your eyebreak is yeah, I mean,
we're not going to actually prove that, Robert, I am not.

(01:03:55):
I'm not making any conclusions about Jeffrey Epstein on this podcast.
I'm just saying that, like Epstein, this guy Stavisky is
said to have killed himself, and nobody who's on the
left or the right really believes there. Yeah, there's one
definitive thing you could say about Jeffrey Epstein is that,
I don't care how many dollars you put it before
and after his name, he is a pimp. Yeah, Stavisky

(01:04:18):
is a different kind of pimp, but to pimp and
this guy is pimp in yes, this is a different lick.
He's selling different products, same thing anyway, So the Radical President,
like the or not president, but like Prime Minister of France,
who is again a radical, does his best to ignore
the scandal, arguing that it's not a big deal. Like, yeah,
the guys who were implicated already got arrested, Like it's

(01:04:39):
not a big deal, um. And it might have even
been true that, like, the only people implicated had been caught,
But that doesn't really matter, um, because obviously this becomes
a huge conspiracy. And the Prime Minister refuses calls from
both the right and from his socialist allies to call
for a parliamentary inquiry into the whole situation. This just
makes everything worse. Proven to many Frenchmen that there had

(01:05:01):
been a conspiracy. Brian Jenkins rights what might be called
the dialectics of conspiracy thus played a significant role in
the escalation of crisis. Stevitsky's death gave decisive impetus to
conspiracy theories on the right and intensified the campaign both
in the press and on the street. Meanwhile, the perception
on the left that the scandal was being orchestrated for
sinister political purposes led the government to harden its opposite

(01:05:22):
its position and refused to make concessions. This, in turn
gave the impression that the government was engaged in a
cover up and therefore must have something to hide, thereby
further reinforcing the rights conspiracy theories. However, in this competitive
press environment, it was inevitable that the more radical and
scurrillious newspapers that set the pace and tone for others
to emulate. It was French Action that crystallized public opinion

(01:05:44):
around them and orchestrated the developing affair each day, adding
fresh names to its dossier of suspects and decisively raising
the temperature on seventh of January with the headline down
with the Thebes and an inflammatory appeal to the people
of Paris. Most of the conservative press simply their lead,
albeit in less flamboyant language, which in turn helped legitimize
the message. Again, the truth doesn't matter. What matters is

(01:06:08):
the narratives that take off. Yeah, yeah, totally. From January
nine on, and this is there were demonstrations and street
violence almost every night in Paris every week. The crowds
grew larger. On Saturday, January the situation was bad enough
that the president resigned and the government dissolved, or the
Prime minister whatever resigned in the government dissolved. This was

(01:06:28):
seen as a big victory by the right, but nobody
knew what came next. The left are still the elected leaders. Right,
you dissolve the government, you don't kick out all the
deputies who have been elected. You just pick a new
prime minister and new ministers. Right, that's what it means.
And the left is still like gets to decide who
the new government is and they bring in a new
Liberal president, a guy named Dlatier. Now, while all this

(01:06:49):
is happening, the socialists the only part of the left
coalition that has not been horribly tainted by the Stavisky affair.
It's radicals that are implicated. The Socialists are not. The
radicals need the socialists both to keep the government from
being dissolved and to avoid a deeper investigation into the matter.
So yeah, probably a bunch more radicals were guilty. You know,
they really don't want there to be an investigation. So

(01:07:10):
since they had the radicals over a barrel, the socialists
decided to make a demand of their own. Being good leftists,
this demand is that the radicals fire the Paris chief
of Police, John Chiapa, because he was a piece of
ship who sympathized with fascist paramilitary groups. Of course, the
far right loves Chiapa and they see his sacking and
the radical promises that the police will be reformed. So

(01:07:30):
the radicals, in order to keep the government going and
avoid an investigation, like, we'll fire this guy and will
completely reform the Paris police. That's the socialists demand, and
the right wing is like this is like, this is
clearly the precursor to a communist revolution. They're trying to
get rid of the police so they can take over
the streets and take all of our money, right, yeah,

(01:07:51):
dog man. So this starts at taking clock on the
right because they think that there's this comedy plot being
carried out and they've only days to act in order
to avert it. Rock Colonel Laroc of the Cross of
Fire declares his paramilitaries to be defenders of public order.
One League French Solidarity declares civil war is imminent, while
the Young Patriots claim the country is in danger. A

(01:08:12):
wholesale purge is being prepared newspapers. Right wing newspapers run
articles about how communist revolutionaries are on the verge of
seizing power. Colonel Larroc warns his followers a government whose
signs the red flag wants to reduce you to slavery.
We are threatened with sectarian dictatorship. Nothing that sounds familiar. Yeah, again,

(01:08:34):
nothing that's ever happened. Again, nothing in any of this
is so frustrating. I know, it's terrible. Yes, So elected
leaders were also pushing these lines. Philip Henrio, a deputy
from Bordeaux, was a Catholic militant who believed that the
Stavisky affair was a Jewish Masonic conspiracy to destroy France.

(01:08:56):
On three occasions in January, he took to the rostrum
of the Chamber of Deputies to man right wingers rise
up and sweep the republic. British journalist Alexander Worth was
in Paris at the time, and he wrote this in
early February. Already on Monday, Paris was full of wild rumors. Troops,
it was said, had been brought into Paris. If the
demonstrators were to cause trouble, the government would not hesitate

(01:09:17):
to use tanks and machine guns. The work would be
entrusted to Moroccan and Senegalese soldiers who would have no
compunction about shooting down their white fellow citizens. And it is,
by the way, one thing you kind of have to
give the French in this period is that they are
kind of the first Western government to have a significant
number of non white citizens. They do that, not that

(01:09:37):
they treat them equally or anything, but like it is
a thing that happens in the dreds. Really. Um, but
why God damn man. Of course they used them for
shock troops, you know. Of course, I'm like, I feel
like it was about time that one of us say
something funny. But it's yeah, I can't. I just got

(01:09:58):
nothing because it's just so on the freaking nose. It's
exactly all. It's exactly what's happened, you know. So this
prop brings us to February sixth, nineteen thirty four. The
French government assembles for a vote of confidence and Prime
Minister Daladier so a vote on whether or not he's
going to keep being the prime minister or they're going

(01:10:20):
to dissolve the government again. Uh. And I found a
French history website Heredity that describes how things started, quote
and all hardly more than thirty thousand demonstrators, a large
majority of them who were ex combatants. Everyone is mobilized
on the theme down with thebes and a demand for
more civility and honesty in the government at the start,
at the call of Lieutenant Colonel de lar Roc, the

(01:10:42):
Cross of Fire quickly dispersed as soon as the first
clashes with the mobile guard occurred. Although it arrived at
the end of the afternoon at the gates of the
Palais Bourbonne Larent and its veterans refused to occupy it.
Their dispersal makes any possibility of overthrowing the regime by
force feudal. But on the other side of the sign
around the Palace of the Concord, demonstration degenerates. Thousands of
activists try to march on the Palais Bourbon, the Bourbon Palace.

(01:11:05):
I guess, So what happens here is this crowd starts
like and and the cross the fire guys are a
huge chunk of it, starts marching on the gates of
the capitol, and as soon as the police get engaged in,
the crowd starts fighting with the cops. Colonel Laroc calls
his men back, but thousands and thousands of other right
wing militants continue to surge ahead and keep fighting the cops,

(01:11:26):
and as night falls, the protests go from being just
aggressive and violent to being an active attempt to storm
the capital. Protesters light busses on fire and destroy property,
tearing down barricades and barriers as they attempt to breach
the Chamber of Deputies, where Parliament is an active session.
The police panic when the crowd starts to break through
the barricades and they open fire. Some in the crowd

(01:11:48):
fire back, and by the end of it all as
many as twenty six. But we don't have an exact
death told. Some will say twenty six people were killed
and more than fifteen hundred are injured. Some will say
it's more like, you know, five to ten and a
thousand injured. But it's it's everything that happened in the
capital in the sixth except they don't get intoside the
capital because the French like order forces just start shooting,

(01:12:10):
like firing into the crowd with what rifles um. So
the riots continue for days, marking what most liberals and
leftists would come to see as a coup attempt by
the far right. This is probably fair, but it's also
true that after the ninth the communists start coming out
and force in the streets and do a lot of
rioting themselves, and actually like three or four days after
the attempt to storm the capital. A lot of what's

(01:12:31):
happening on the street is being done by the communists.
They didn't attempt to breach the Chamber of Deputies, though
the whole affair terrifies everybody, and Prime Minister d Lattier
resigns on advice from the police and army to avoid
further violence. For the first time in the history of
the Third Republic, street violence had brought down a French government.
The week of February sixth was, in fact the most

(01:12:51):
violent period of political unrest in France since the Commune
of eighteen seventy one. Not everyone in the right is
thrilled by this. Mars had of French action seems to
have panicked immediately from the Crimson quote. Though he often
considered the possibility of the coup in books and in
the pages of his movement's newspaper, it is doubtful that
he ever actually planned a revolution. On the one occasion

(01:13:12):
which fate presented to his grasp, the riots before Chamber
on February sixty four, he did nothing. Professor Webber calls
the sixth of February a victory lost. Maris's hesitation at
what seemed the very gates of power, though this impression
was exaggerated, was, as Professor Webber says, the moment of truth,
which showed up the emptiness of almost everyone's position. The

(01:13:32):
parliamentary regime was shown to be a tottering, precarious structure.
The righteous rioters had made their point, but the right
itself was exposed as well, exposed as a lot of theorists,
sorely lacking in the capacity to carry out their dreams.
French Action had organized publications, public meetings, a party structure
that extended through France, but they lacked the will to power.

(01:13:53):
They were incapable of a Munich push, much less to
ten year conspiracy to capture parliamentary power. At the moment
of Action's greatest political triumphs in Europe, French fascism collapsed. Wow,
it doesn't sound familiar at all. Yeah, no, I've never
and again fucking um mars here he's like Alex Jones

(01:14:13):
almost right. He's this guy who's telling everyone overthrow the government,
and then when they start, because Alex Jones is there
on the sixth and DC, he fucking leaves as soon
as people crossing. He's like, sir, yeah, wait. Yeah. At
first I thought when you was talking about the other
dude that ended up being Epstein, I thought it was
Jones at first. No, no, no, no, that's like your Epstein. Yeah,
he's definitely Epstein. But at first, when we first started talking,

(01:14:36):
I was like, it's sound like a little Alex Jones.
But no, that's Mars. Is your Alex Jones. And he's
just like, oh wait, I'm not. Oh no, I just
wanted to make money telling people to the volt and
getting them like jinned up. I didn't actually want that
to happen. That's scary as hell. Yeah, y'all, y'all actually
pulled triggers. Oh no, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Um and Kurt,
you can see Colonel de Larroc kind of in the

(01:14:58):
same light, although you could also argue that he was
very state loyal, right like he wanted a new government.
He was, he wanted less democracy, but he wasn't about
to storm the capital. Um. So the main outcome of
February six was that the elected right wing grows closer
and closer to the insurrectionary far right. It also unifies
the left wing, inspiring a popular front in France that

(01:15:19):
takes power after a brief period of conservative rule falling
Daladier's fall. The nineteen thirty six French Popular Front was
at its core and anti fascist political union, and domestically
it does a good job of stopping the French far
right from capturing power. And this has actually led to
a theory in French historiography that France's itself immune to
fascism in a unique way. Um. The story goes that

(01:15:42):
a mix of France's long standing democratic traditions and the
fact that it's right wing is split between its own
native brands of extremism means the country can't fall into fascism.
This is nonsense, I will tell you right now. I
think this is sucking bullshit. Um. And there are a
lot of scholars. The book France and Fascism is a
very long scholarly treatise Why this is bullshit? Um. But

(01:16:02):
a lot of French scholars after World War Two will
argue this that like France is immune to fascism. Um.
The reality is that France came very close to falling
to fascism on the sixth and it did fall to
fascism in now. This is by conquest, right. The Nazis,
the fascist don't gain power in France by elections. The
Nazis conquered France. But when the Nazis take over, they

(01:16:24):
needed to find a bunch of willing frenchmen to run
VIC France. And they find a ton of these guys,
a huge and already radicalized group of French fascists who
are ready to chip in and help out. And most
of these guys who run VIC France from the Nazis
takeover are people who had been involved with the February
six insurrection, right, yeah, exactly, like a ton of these dudes. Yeah,

(01:16:46):
it's crazy that it's the six. Also, yeah, it's it's
the it's February six, right, it's very auntic. Like when
I started reading about this, I was so fucking shocked
because I was thinking, like, well, you know, if you
want to find a good comparison to the January six,
there's aspects of the Munich coup, there's aspects of of
of the of the March on Rome, but like, oh, ship, no,

(01:17:08):
it's it's it's feb six four, that's exactly what happens. Um,
So a lot of French fascists who had been a
part of you know, what happened on the sixth wind
up joining the Nazis. Remember Philippe Henrio, the Henriotte whatever,
the right wing deputy who was basically the French q
and on Glock congress person who was like, we need
to overthrow the government. While he's in the government under occupation,

(01:17:31):
this guy becomes the voice of Radio Vishi, broadcasting Nazi
propaganda to millions of Frenchmen. Pierre Tattinger, who founded one
of the first paramilitary leagues, became the president of the
Paris Municipal Council under the Nazis. Jan Chiapa, the fascist cop,
was made high Commissioner of the Lavant, but thankfully died
in a plane crash pretty soon after that when he
shot down over Lebanon by the Italian's accidentally. Yeah, Mars

(01:17:58):
celebrated the Nazi victory as a vine surprise. Now, he
was not a Nazi because he fucking hated German people,
but he hated Jewish people more, and one of his
chief complaints about the occupation is that it was too
lenient on Jewish people. When the Third Reich fell and
France was liberated, Marius was arrested and indicted for complicity
with the enemy based on the pro Nazi articles he

(01:18:19):
published at the start of the war. He was sentenced
to life imprisonment. Upon his sentencing, mars Is said to
have exclaimed, it's dreyfus Is revenge. Oh god, he brought
it all the way back. It's perfect. It's a perfect circerfict.
Oh man, and somebody screenshot of his tweets. Yeah, that's

(01:18:43):
exactly what happens, more or less, and that prop is
the story of February six, nineteen thirty four in Paris.
All right, great time ever my one word haunting? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I like and yeah. Because I didn't have I didn't

(01:19:07):
know much about this either. So when I was joining
the chorus of everybody who's fascinated with history, going, guys,
I'm telling you like this, we've seen this before. I
don't know. I know there's no one to one, but
we've seen something like this before. This one. I'm like, oh,
this is the clothes. This is the closest too. Like

(01:19:29):
you said in the beginning, I'm like, oh damn, I
wasn't even counting this one. Yeah it was. It was
some somebody sent me, and I honestly forget who it was,
but somebody like somebody who I have texted with on
signal text said like, you should look into January six,
nineteen thirty four, and I did, and I'm like, oh
my god, this is the same thing. So obviously it

(01:19:51):
was a great, a great you know episode for are
the fascists who failed part of this? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And there's a lot of lessons to take out of this.
One of this is that the right loses when the
left and liberals work together electorally, and other is that
when the left and liberals work together electorally, they generally
can't agree on enough to do anything that will actually
stop the fascists from getting stronger. Um. That was one

(01:20:15):
of my that was one of the biggest lessons I'm
learning about this. One is just like, oh, we're so progressive,
we're so well. Me and my wife call it. You're
so open minded, you're clothes minded, you know what I'm saying.
So like you just can't get it together because you're
not open minded enough, you know. Yeah, And it's you know,
I think a lot could argue that it's largely on

(01:20:37):
the radicals because they have more power in the government
and they kind of refused to do any sort of
meaningful aid that could actually um have have clamped down
on the far right. But also, like I don't want
to like Negate number one, Like the media is a
huge part of this, both in the United States and
in France. Right, this alternate media ecosystem kind of means
that like maybe even if the radicals had agreed with

(01:20:58):
the socialists and they put out an effective package, would
that have been enough to overcome the propaganda? And I
don't know, nobody does, Nobody knows, but yeah, like I
forget that there's a modern historian too. It's like we've
went from the information age to the age of belief
to the belief age, you know what I'm saying. It's
like we've actually switched ages. It's not information, it's belief,
you know. So like and this media circus that we're

(01:21:20):
all in of, like you know, the closed ecosystem of
your of your confirmation bias means that information don't matter
belief do so. But at the end of the day,
like like you said, like one could speculate, I just
feel like anyone, anyone votes for somebody that puts food
on a table, you know what I'm saying. So, like
I said, if you put if someone's not into the

(01:21:44):
specificities of of caring for and the others. You know
what I'm saying, like like the way that we think
about government and the way that the process, but just
as simple as I need to be able to feed
my kids, and you're making this possible, you know what
I'm saying, in a time that like I can't just
go get it myself, you know, then why would I

(01:22:05):
not vote for this? You know what I'm saying, Why
would I not back this? I don't you know, it
could be a check for two grand a month. I
think it's great, you know. Yeah, And that's one of
the things do l rock in this Cross a Fire group,
Like they actually do provide aid to other struggling veterans,
and that's a big part of their power and why
they're able to all get together on stuff. And it's like, yeah,
you know, it's it's there's a lot in these lessons.

(01:22:26):
There's a lot in the stories of just like France
and Spain, where like one of the things we see
when you compare them to Germany Italy is that when
the police and the military are more on the side
of at least the center and democracy than they are
on the side of the right. The right can't gain
power through an insurrection. Right in Germany and Italy, the
police and the military are on the side of the fascists,

(01:22:47):
and so the insurrections work, um, you know eventually yeah, yeah,
I mean in the Munich insurrection is stopped by the
police and stuff. And like the reason the Spanish Civil
War becomes a war is because most of the military
and most of the police in Spain don't go with
the fascists. In France. It's kind of the same thing. Um,
which is a lesson. I think there's a it's a

(01:23:08):
great lesson. Yeah, confusing lessons in all of this. Yeah. Um.
Another is that regardless of what the far left does,
the far right will turn them into everyone who is
left of center right yeah, yeah, And even if they
don't do anything, they'll lie. It's like the kind of
thing where you know, liberals during the election, we're like,

(01:23:30):
look at the like all what you know, these anti
for kids breaking all these windows are going to lose
us the election to Donald Trump. And it's like, that's
actually not what happened, because the right are we're so propaganda.
Is that no matter what Antifa did, it wouldn't have
if they just marched peacefully in the streets. The propaganda
would have would have made them seem like the coming
of a communist revolution. Um. What matters is that liberals

(01:23:53):
not buy into it. And and then I did where
you were just like, hey, the fund the police would
have lost is election. Look, man, don't shoot at us.
Doc Like, yeah, look it didn't you know, it did
hit number one, you know what I'm saying, you like,
and as much as we could, unfortunately it's like, well
Trump fumbling Corona. Like it's like really, yeah, you know

(01:24:18):
what I'm saying, So like, don't look man, same team, bro.
I'm just trying to tell you this is a good idea.
Yeah yeah, man, yeah, yeah, it's there's a lot, a
lot to learn. And next episode, our penultimate episode, Behind
the Insurrections, we're gonna talk about the business plot. Um.

(01:24:40):
So we're gonna be coming back home to the old
U s U s A. Yeah, that's gonna be good.
That'll be Thursday. Um, But for now, prop you wanna
drop some plug dobles? Yes, yes, this, yes, because I'm
so excited because the pre save link for my first
single on the next rec it is now out excellent

(01:25:02):
profit pop dot com. Yes, and all my socials. Also
there's a new coffee roast called the Culture also available
on the website. Uh, pulled from Ethiopia and like tasted
it myself, met the farmers. This is real stuff. Uh.
And I will be on Hood pot Dank Anderson. You

(01:25:24):
want some coffee, dog. All you gotta do is DM
me ho me like you ain't gotta like yell like that.
And I'm telling the truth like you're barking at me
like I'm lying. Uh. And Hood Politics with props uh
shooting out doing that's going cool. You could get on
all the all the all the podcast sections, and which

(01:25:45):
was funny because like just now one of the predictions,
we're not just now. Last week one of the predictions
came true. Uh and we kind of did a little
funny little roast about that was the prediction of like
the Proud Boys being infiltrated to Oldjohn was infiltrated. Guys. Well,
it's it's you know, it's one of the things that's
frustrating to be about the Proud Boys is that like

(01:26:06):
Enrique Terrio was an FBI informant um and this is
being taken by a lot of the left to mean
that like, well, the the Proud Boys were an FBI
op from the beginning, and like, of course that's not
really how it like, it's this it's this thing, you see.
It's the thing that j Edgar Hoover wrote about where
like one of his goals with co Intel Pro was
to make the FBI seems so powerful and omnipresent that

(01:26:26):
people would think they were responsible for everything. Um, And
it's less that and more that like Enrique Tario is
the kind of person who is immediately going to roll
on everybody that he was involved with. Um yeah, yeah,
yeah that that that yeah, that like goes back to
me like in the left, where I'm like, in the
same way, I'll be looking at like a lot of

(01:26:47):
the right wing people and I'm like, yo, where's Joe
Antenna's man, like discerned this situation? You Like, that's not
what's happening, you feel me? And I feel like with
this one, that's one of those situations to where I'm
just like, yeah, you're saying a whole thing as an
FBI front, Like like it's come on, man, we got
is bro. No, they got a guy. Of course, a
bunch of them were talking to the FEDS. Yeah, they

(01:27:08):
got like, yeah, they saw the same they saw the
same problem as we saw. And he said, we better
do something about ship. You know what I'm saying. We
don't want another gang that's like another gang. Yeah, we're
we're the top gang, you know, yes, um, But it's
like people will believe what they believe. It's like with
Epstein and with Stevitsky. You know, yeah, you know, maybe

(01:27:29):
he killed himself, maybe he didn't. You know, he did
was murdered because he knew. And it's like, you know,
fucking a with both Epstein and Stevitsky. You look at
the response of the people in power to it, and
it's like, yeah, it's pretty fucking suss. You know, you
don't want his you do not want his pass code,
you don't want that. If if that bull's phone got hacked,
broken into all the text messages on that, yeah, it's

(01:27:51):
all bad. Yeah. And I mean it comes back to
the fact that one of the reasons why conspiratorial thinking
can be so influential and spread so quick, can be
so hard to fight, is that there's a funk lot
of actual conspiracy is happening all the time. It's the problem,
you know what I'm saying. It's the same thing with
like we talked about the anti Baxter thing where it's
like it's not like the medical industry is helping, you
know what I'm saying, Like it's not perdue pharmaceuticals reputation

(01:28:14):
helps people trust vaccine. You know what I'm saying. The
Sackler family and ship like, y'all crooks. I know you're crooks.
That's said. I don't know nobody that got polio. Mm hmm,
you know what I'm saying. So yeah, yeah, anyway, it's
it's it's all great and our next episode will be
great too. Let's talk about how what the history Robert's

(01:28:39):
Twitter feed? You can follow him that I write, I
don't recommend that at all. Stay the off of Twitter.
I think it's great. And you dropped some few gyms recently.
As a matter of fact, I was waiting at this
when to talk about the to talk about the trout
bait shop tweet that was brilliant. I'm giving you what
was it funk around? And what was what was it

(01:29:01):
about the debate shop? Was it it was sunk around?
And I'll find out yeah, oh yeah, sunk around and
find trout, around and find trout. I was like, let's go.
I like to me, I was like, look, that's you
caught that. Whatever you want. That's a brilliant I think
we can make a lot of money. That's that's my

(01:29:23):
that's my retirement plan. It's funk around and find trout.
It's brilliant. It's brilliant. Let me tell you why, because
I went one time in my life too. Uh oh.
We talked about before when I ended up in Wyoming
and wantanna fly fishing. Just on the most the most
random thing. I just got these friends in different places
that allow me to do just white ship, right. But

(01:29:45):
it don't have to be white ship. It don't have
to be like what if I like fishing, what if
I think rainbow trout is beautiful. It's just uncomfortable to
walk into the trout store, the fish store and look
around and just be like, oh, I look like I
don't belong here, Like you made it very clear that
I should not be in this place. But if it's
called around and find trout, I'm like, oh, let's shop there.

(01:30:08):
Bro this fool cool. It's a it's a it's a
radical intersectional bait and tackle shop. Rainbow Trout is delicious
and Rainbow Trout listen. Oh my gosh, yeah, I'm I'm like,
I'm like a B minus pestytarian, you know what I'm saying.
Like I basically eat fish, except I live in boiled Heights,
so the tacos are flawless. So I break rules for

(01:30:30):
the tacos. But bro talk around and find Trout. Let's
go around and find Trout. Y'all have y'all made the
T shirt yet? Oh no, no we have not, but
now that it's been in an episode, we can. It
needs to be a T shirt anyway. Anyways, that's that's

(01:30:50):
the episode. That nice. Rest of your day. Yeah yeah,