Part One: How The Liberal Media Helped Fascism Win

Robert sits down with best pal Michael Swaim to discuss the great liberal media organizations of Italy, Germany and the U.S. in the 1920s and 30s, and how they failed utterly to stop Mussolini and Hitler.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media what recording a video? Uh? And also audio?
My Michael Swain, our guest for today's podcast, Welcome to
Behind the Bastards. Michael, how are you?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
How are you doing? Great? Buddy? No sinking, no clapping,
the magic of just starting.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Just starting right into it, you know, walls, walls and
balls together.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Last, Yeah, look at their asses because we're there, buddy.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
That's right. That's the only thing we are, is there? Michael?
You use OBS to record video. OBS is a program
that people who are using video for purposes like this use.
And what I've been thinking about it because you just
had a little issue with it and we're like, my
obs isn't isn't you know? Is flaring up or something.
It sounds like a disease, like an old person disease,

(00:54):
like I got, I got my obs is fucked to
hell and back, folks.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
I was thinking to sit down. Yeah, hey, when I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Oh right, Michael, we're talking about Nazis. Nazis the Holocaust
bunch of a bunch of stuff that's less fun than
the house a bunch.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah. The East India Company was awesome because it was
like some Dan Carlin ship. This was horrible.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Oh, it is it is going to be horrible anyway,
cold open done, We're back, Michael. I technically like a
little it's not I mean, it's about Nazis, but it's
not just about Nazis. This episode is a script I

(01:46):
originally wrote about a year and a half. Two years ago,
I got asked to go speak at Oxford Student Union,
which was great, lovely people. Grateful to the fellow who
invited me and set it up. Grateful to the the
Leftist club, the beleaguered Leftist club at Oxford who met
with me, very nice people.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Two questions, Sorry, did you wear shoes? I did? I?
Did you bring a machete?

Speaker 1 (02:10):
No, you're not, Michael.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
You cannot bring them achetty to the UK.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
They do not take kindly to any They're making kitchen
knives now that have blunt tips, so you can't stab
someone with them.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Oh yeah, I saw the safety kitchen knives.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah yeah, yeah, that would not have gone over well.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
But no.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
We tried to record it there and the between, like
the moving around a bunch and the actual size. Anyway,
the recording got fucked up, and then we recorded it again,
and the recording got fucked up again. When we had
another guest in, but it wound out being good because,
as you might be aware, I mean good's the wrong word.

(02:52):
But as you're aware, there have been a massive series
of horrific war crimes that have been committed very recently.
So I got to update this episode in a relevant
way because what's happening in Gaza is deeply relevant to
what we're talking about here, because these episodes are about
how the media responded to the rise of the Nazis

(03:12):
and the Holocaust in the nineteen thirties and forties, and
it's overall kind of a story about how particularly the
liberal media and multiple countries failed universally across the world
in its attempt to deal with and stop the rise
of fascism. And that's a worthwhile story because a lot

(03:37):
of the same families here in the US, a lot
of the same families who directed American media in particular
and failing to report properly on the Nazis, are still
running the most influential media outlets, and they're still failing
in the same ways. And I think this is useful
history for people to have. So, Michael, are you ready

(03:59):
to learn about how the liberal media is essentially incapable
of confronting fascism in a direct and meaningful.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Way or something. You have to not already think that.
But also I'm just reeling from the implication that I
was a backup guest on this topic. That's all I
can really focus on. So let's let's do the Nazis
thne we tried.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
We recorded this last a year ago, but I I
after October seventh and everything that's happened since then, I
had to like rewrite.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
No statute of limitation on my.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Feelings, Michael, this is one of my best strips, Roberts.
I worked really hard on this, bro.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
This sounds amazing, It sounds fascinating. Don't let me stop.
You were my top draft pick.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
I mean, we were originally going to do a different
episode with you, but we had to wind up pushing
it a week so sure we had someone else on
the apartheid.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, so I'm golden.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Look, this is just that's just how it's going to happen, Okay.
On February seventeenth, twenty seventeen, The Washington Post, one of
the ussay's chief papers of record, changed their slogan to
democracy dies in darkness. If you can remember that this
was right at the start of the Trump era. Everybody
was like real, you know, the whole resist thing was

(05:20):
real gung ho, and I think they were playing into that, right,
let's get the let's get the libs really fired up
to enjoy and pay money for our content. By acting
like we're we're the last bulwark against the rise of
fascism in America.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
It sounds like some Emperor Palpatine is somehow backshit.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
It does. It's absolutely a George Lucas slide. Yeah, it
was updated in there. And also it's just not true.
Democracy doesn't die in darkness. Democracy dies because you have
like a million different multicolored lights all shooting into everyone's
eyes at the same time. It's like a fucking club floor, right,
Like that's how democracy dies. Everyone is too disorient to

(06:00):
realize what's happening. Anyway, this new slogan was updated and
their online mast had immediately and added to print copies
of the paper a week later, and the reaction was mixed.
A writer for Pro Publica called it awesome at south
By Southwest. A few weeks later, New York Times executive
editor Dean Baca compared it mockingly to an ad for

(06:20):
the next Batman movie. And we're not mostly going to
be nice to the Times in this episode, but I
think back actually got that very correct. That does sound
like a like a Nolan Batman line.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Now.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
Fears that the US was lurching towards a new authoritarian
crisis brought with them a surge of new paid subscribers
to both The Post and The Times. Ag Solzberger, publisher
of the New York Times, used some of that money
to run a commercial at the twenty seventeen Academy Awards,
wanting the nation's most connected celebrities. The truth is more
important now than ever now. Both slogans depict a view

(06:57):
of legacy media that news media executive is want to
push of a battle of an embattled forth estate that's
the bulwark against fascism and corruption. Very little evidence supports
the claim that our media institutions have ever worked this way.
The twenty first century has seen an unprecedented global expansion
in news media, and yet Freedom House, a DC based

(07:18):
nonprofit that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, calculates that
over the last sixteen years, the number of people living
in societies that are considered free has declined by more
than twenty five percent, which is like a pretty startling number.
I would say of unfree people, although you know what
is freedom? I'm not free? You know. I think RFK

(07:41):
Junior would agree with miss I'm not free. Road killed
in every state, you know? So what use is liberty
if I can't eat, if I can't scrape a deer
carcass off the higher or Utah? What, Sophie?

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Look a car in every garage, a turkey in every pot,
and a worm in every brain. And amserves that.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Look, are you going to say that if we all
had brain worms this country would vote worse? Because I
don't know that.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
I think we're already rocking a sixty forty on that, brother.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, yeah, I do think a significant portion in this
country has parasites.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
Said they're prase toxoplasms.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah. Yeah. So the decline in people living in free
countries is initially sharpest in what they referred to as
authoritarian states like Belarus in Syria, but in recent years
it has increasingly impacted nations with long stable democratic traditions.
These countries also happen to have the largest and most
active news media sectors. Editors from prestigious publications like The Times.

(08:43):
In the Post talk a lot about the importance of objectivity, right,
in other words, not being a journalist like me, you know,
who repeatedly is open about the fact that I think
the Republican Party needs to be burnt to the ground.
But Gallup continue used to register American trust in the
media at or near record lows. Twenty twenty two was

(09:05):
the first time that the percentage of Americans with no
trust at all in the media was higher than the
percentage with a great deal or fair amount of trust combined. So,
whatever you want to say about the value of objectivity,
I think the fact suggests that all of the focus
our legacy media has on being quote unquote objective has
led to a situation in which absolutely no one trusts them.

(09:29):
So I don't know, Well, it seems like you're also
doing a good job.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
Definitely coming from a filmmaking background, it's like an old
saw that there is no objective way to make any
kind of film, documentary or not, because you are a
human filtering things through your perceptive process and making art
is a sequence of decisions, so you can't not do that.
So in a way, it's more effective and transparent to

(09:56):
be alied. Yeah, I'm coming from this place. Here's what
I've always Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Yeah, I agree with Werner Herzog on this. We're not
flies on the wall. We should we should aspire to
be the hornets that sting, you know, like that's the
actual purpose.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
I just I broke with him ever since he refused
to show us that bare footage show us.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
I want to watch that man die. Yeah, that's that's
a great reaction to Timothy Treadwell's life story, which we
should have been able to see.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Why not?

Speaker 1 (10:31):
Yeah, So these facts, you know that this obsession with
objectivity has at least coincided with a collapse in trust
in the news media are not divorced from the actions
of the editors and publishers of these great legacy companies.
Roughly a year after The Post changed their slogan you know,

(10:52):
democracy dies in darkness, they accepted an editorial from recip
Type Airdwin, the authoritarian leader of Turkey who currently imprisons
more journalists than any other world leader. This is relevant
because his op ed bore the title Saudi Arabia still
has many questions to answer about Jamal Koshovii's killing and

(11:12):
yes they do, but you shouldn't be the one saying it.
The guy, the guy who kills and imprisons more journalists
than anyone, shouldn't be complaining about the murder of a journalist. Yeah, yeah, Like,
what are we doing running this ad? Was there no
one else who could write that story?

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Was there nobody else? Well, there were three spider men,
but they were busy pointing at each other.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
The Times, obviously, during the same period, has continued to
run a blistering series of irresponsibly sourced articles on transgender healthcare,
which has helped to fuel a right wing eliminationist crusade
against trans people. We're Both Glad, a queer advocacy organization,
and several thousand New York Times contributors wrote letters complaining
about this management dismissed their concerns they weren't being objective enough.

(12:09):
Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger did make a personal statement
when one of his reporters was allegedly spit on over
this issue. The murder of Brionna Gay, a transgender sixteen
year old in the UK, did not merit any direct
comment from Sulzburger. You know, I think it's worth kind
of looking at it like that none of these claims

(12:31):
about like, well, we have to be objective, you know,
it's people. It's important for us to remain trustworthy. They're
never consistent about it. Right, There's certain things we can
we'll try to be objective about. But you know, when
there's an opinion that the people who own the paper have,
that's going to be the paper's opinion, and we're just
going to pretend like that's objectivity. And this is the

(12:53):
reality that you find when you analyze the responses of
the liberal press in Wymer Germany, in pre Mussolini Italy,
and in the United States in the twenties and thirties.
It's kind of sobering how direct the comparisons are, because
rather than being opponents to fascism, these publications were at
best ineffectual witnesses to disaster and at worst enablers of

(13:16):
that disaster. We're going to talk about a lot of
different newspapers and how they fucked up, but we're going
to start in Italy in the period from World War
one's end in nineteen eighteen to Mussolini's March on Rome
near the end of nineteen twenty two. This is generally
broken up by historians into two eras. You've got the
Red Years, which saw powerful working class movements arise and

(13:38):
try to do revolutionary activity, and then you've got the
Black Years, which saw a fascist counter movement boil up
in response and eventually seize power. Error At Goachman from
Princeton has done the most accessible analysis of how liberal
newspapers and pundits responded in both of these periods, and
Goachman primarily analyzes Les Stampa, which was the most influential

(14:00):
newspaper for like social democrat Italians right the kind of
progressive left, and also Italian Illustration, which was a weekly
paper that kind of was more geared towards the middle
class center right. In modern US terms, Lestampa is something
like the New Republic or maybe jacomin An Italian Illustration
is like The Times or the Post. The Red Years

(14:23):
were characterized by two large scale attempts at a general strike,
the first of which occurred in nineteen nineteen and was
centered around protesting the involvement of Allied governments in the
Russian Civil War. Neither paper supported the strike, claiming a
general solidarity with labor, but complaining that the strike would
destroy Italy's collective wealth. And we're not talking about like

(14:44):
an open ended like with the writer's strike right where
it is scary because it's like we don't know when
this is going to end. We don't know how long.
You know, people are going to have to be out
of work. You know it's necessary, but it's a frightening
thing to contemplate. This was a two day strike meant
to sort of a like we're trying to make a statement, right,
but none of the papers were willing to endorse even

(15:06):
something that limited. They Lestampa argued that it would have
damaging effects on the national economy and quote would be
a disaster for all bourgeoisie and proletarian alike. And again
we're talking two days here, like you can't you can't
go without this for two days.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Did they have an argument for how the proletariat would
suffer beyond will punish you.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
No, not at all, just that like this two day
strike would be so devastating to the economy because proletariat Yeah, okay, yeah,
you know Italy in the nineteen thirties, just the thing,
or in nineteen twenties, things are moving so quickly economically,
you know, it's the New York of the Mediterranean right.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
I can't throw brakes on this grave train. Things are
moving too fast in there. You can't.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, we got a lot of boss to to move.
Care for a long.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Tomato sauce, But that's a whole different thing.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
So Meanwhile, Italian illustrations coverage focused more on fears about
communism in Russia and connections between like Italian socialists and
their Russian and Hungarian counterparts. Lestampa, with its more working
class readership, focused on the disruption of the strike, and
Italian illustration attacked the strike movement for its purported ties
to radicals who were, like oftentimes fighting in the East

(16:28):
actively because the Russian Civil War is still going on.
In September of nineteen twenty, the Federation of Metallurgical Workers
or FIOM, ceased negotiations with factory management after being refused
a new wage agreement. To avoid a strike and the
economic consequences of a strike, workers occupied factories and defended
them from their employers with armed red guards. This is

(16:50):
a very cool chapter of Italian politics, right, Like these
laborers take control of their places of business and put
up armed guards in order to like fight it out
with the cops and the fascists if they try to
take them back. Now. Writers for Italian Illustration were immediately
dismissive of this movement. They described the laborers who occupied

(17:11):
the factories they worked in as little boys playing shopkeeper, grocer,
salesman and sailor, which is like this is always what
they did. Was like, well these these left Yeah, well
they're they're taking over docs too. Okay, sure you get
to day, like you look at the campus protests, you

(17:32):
get a lot off. Like these little kids don't understand
the world. You know, they're playing and being adults, they
don't really get it. But in this case it's like, well,
these guys are literally the ones who work in the factories,
Like they're not little boys playing as like whatever. They
do this job for a living. That's why they've taken
the factories, the.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
Means of production. I believe I've heard somewhere.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
Yeah, yeah, it's just it's wild. It's wild how consistent
the attacks are, but also how utterly divorced from reality,
especially in this period they were. Now, the occupations were
portrayed as a fundamentally childish thing, evidence of the quote
infancy of a naive new society that mimicked the toils
of grown up society. And again, these are the grown

(18:16):
ups who were toiling. I don't know how this is mimicry.
These are the men working in those factories.

Speaker 2 (18:23):
By definition, you are a writer, which I do for
a living, and it's sad in a factory.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
I can tell you what are you talking about? Yeah? Yeah.
The occupations sparked a violent reaction from Italy's far right
street movement. Fascist gang attacks on workers and occupied factories
grew increasingly common, alongside police raids. This created a sense
of constant paranoia within the Red Guards, as Mussolini's Squadristi's

(18:53):
took to carrying out what they call putative expeditions against
labor organizations. Historian Angelo Hasket describes them as treating the
murder of workers as sport. Now, despite this hideous situation,
Lestampa and Italian illustration were united in treating the fascist
violence as secondary to the problem of organized labor. Red Guards,

(19:15):
they argued, had provoked gunfights with the fascists by their
very existence, right, you can't blame the fascists for wanting
to attack them. The fact that they existed were trying
to defend themselves, justifies them being attacked, right.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
Well, they're just taking it a priori of like, surely
we all agree it's always right to enforce the status
quo and return to normalcy, yes, or like yeah, that
goes without saying. And you're like, well, we are actually
trying to alter some of we wanted.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
We wanted to change things in a way that was possible.
Well you're evil for that, right Zaly And it's I mean,
it is really that direct. Liberal columnist Renato Simoni wrote
a column in which he argued that the real victims
in this situation in which communists and socialists were being
murdered like lit on fire, shot to death in their

(20:08):
own factories, wrote yes, yes, Renado, somebody is like, the
real victims here are middle class liberals who have to
deal with disruption.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
Yeah, they're traffic, dude. They there were twenty five minutes
late to work because of these kids. These kids are
just doing this as a fan. You know, they just.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
Love getting shot to death by fascists, you know. For
the one actual line from this column is oh, how
tragic is the life of the poor bourgeoisie in Italy.
You can't like, you couldn't you couldn't even make fun
of it, while.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
The subtext is quite literally let the meat cake like, yeah,
let's historical echo of it.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah, yeah, I hope, I hope when the war got on,
his house got hit by a bomb. I'll say that much.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
While this was going on, liberal papers treated Mussolini's rise
as concerning and the fascists is problematic, but also less
of a direct threat than the excesses of the far left.
A degree of fear may also have stopped larger publications
from taking a more active role in the struggle for
the reigns of Italy's government. During the first half of
nineteen twenty one, fascists destroyed seventeen left wing newspapers and

(21:25):
printing presses. Again, they are literally just killing journalists and
destroying peace by piece. The free press in Italy, and
the free press in Italy, the liberal free press in Italy,
the press that has the largest circulation, is largely being like, well,
you got to understand why they're doing it. You know,
there's a lot of economic you know, what's the disenfranchisement.

(21:49):
You know among this population, they're anger. We have to
understand their anger. Right, It's very familiar bullshit, but it's
interesting to see it happen while the fascists are actively
killing the media. In the summer of nineteen twenty one,
various left wing armed groups and leftist war veterans formed
a united militia to combat the fascists, the Rditi del Popolo.

(22:12):
Now we noted day that these people were organizing a
defense against Mussolini during basically the last moment in which
any defense would have been possible. And I want to
read a paragraph here from Goachman's piece. Lestampa's coverage of
the Rdidi del Popolo's demonstration in Rome aimed to delegitimize
the newly formed worker's self defense group, doing so in
a manner reminiscent of the paper's condemnation of the Red

(22:35):
Guards that were active during the factory occupations of September
nineteen twenty. La Stampa emphasized the combativeness of some of
the workers who were present. For example, the Royal Guards
had no choice but to arrest the most quarrelsome and
hot headed of the demonstrators. Additionally, while describing instances of
violence involving a young man struck with a blow to

(22:55):
the head falling to the ground, or a manual laborer
struck with his hand on his bloody head. The newspaper
employed the passive voice and thus obscured the direct agency
of the policeman and the fascist SQUADRISTI in the events.
You can't write that fascists hurt somebody, just like you
can't write that cops hurt somebody. Someone simply got hurt,
you know. Yeah, and we'll talk some more about this

(23:21):
trend that absolutely doesn't persist to the present day. But
you know what does persist the present day?

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Michael, I could guess, but I don't want to steal
your thunder and revenue.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
So you take it capitalism, sweet lady, Capitalism, Michael still
with us. You know, she's our nurse maid, She's our
lover in a lot of ways, you know, our only friend.
Some would argue, not me, but some. Anyway, here's ads Ah,

(23:57):
we're back, Michael. Does your sole feel refreshed from hearing
about Chumba Casino? The good news?

Speaker 2 (24:05):
It feels capitalized, and you take that as whatever emotional
charge you want to.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
Yeah, I love gambling.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
I love capital Yeah, I love how you get things started.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah. Yeah. Fascism is flooding into Italy in nineteen twenty one,
right and yet you know, the media, as laborers try
to organize to fight against it, can only kind of
use the passive voice to describe the violence of Mussolini's
Black Shirts as they slowly take power or pretty quickly

(24:43):
take power. And it's interesting to me, like how consistent
this denial of agency to some people and this apportioning
of blame to others is still to this day And
right as I finalized this article, which is like a
year ago now, The Atlantic published a pretty reckless article

(25:04):
about the dangerous new anarchist movement in the United States,
and I think is a good example of this. Among
other things, the article made lurid reference to the shooting
of an armed fascist gang member, a Proud Boy, in
Portland by an anarchist named Michael Reinol, and claimed that
the police had later been forced to shoot Rhinel in
self defense. Which is interesting to me because evidence, significant

(25:27):
documentation of that shooting proved that Rainel never fired at
officers when he was shot dozens of times, like he
was not brandishing a weapon. They came in and they
assassinated him. And part of how we know they assassinated
him is that President Trump bragged about having his federal
ass assassinate this guy. He got up on stage and said,

(25:47):
I had them kill this man. But you don't have
to report on that if you're the Atlantic, right, because
like that's not going to sound objective, you know, if
you talk about the fact that this guy was probably
murdered before he could have his day in court. I
don't know, it's just it's good. It's good to see

(26:07):
the same thing repeatedly happening.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Well, yeah, propaganda's equally what you omit, right, what's wild
to me to see in the present is again capitalism.
The twenty four hour news cycle that we know is
now algorithm driven and hit driven, which I'm totally part of,
but yeah, pop culture sense. But with news, it's gotten

(26:30):
to the point where they don't report anymore that Trump
says fucking insane stuff, no, because they're like everyone knows
that already. That doesn't pull clicks because it's established and
it's like yeah, but it bears repeating.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
It's like you be covering it, Well, what's the same thing?
I you know, I I rarely say, like the libs
have a point about you know, this this major thing,
but they when they got angry that like there was
all this focus on Biden being too old to be
president and not any focus on how Trump is clearly

(27:08):
also slipping right, he is not the man he was
in twenty sixteen. Like, that's a fair point. It's it's
kind of fucked up that they just pretended he was
not also sundowning.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Right, And it's not even the agenda. I mean, in
some cases it is, but I believe in most cases
the reporters are not going, I'm a Trumper, so I'll
omit this information as a propagandic syop. They're going, the
Trump stuff's all. The Biden stuff's new. I'm trying to
write stuff that hits. That's it.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
I also think I think they don't like Biden. Biden's
administration is kind of famously strangling media access in a
way that makes it harder to get out stories, whereas
with Trump it's always really easy to get stories, right.
So I do think there's a degree of like, we're
just kind of pissed that this guy is hard or

(28:00):
for us to monetize. I think that is the issue
for us.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
But the Turkish guy was murdering them and they love it.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
They they love more than getting Oh my god, great
stuff anyway. You know, Michael, one of the promises we
make here at Cool Zone to all of our employees
is that if you are murdered by the Saudi government,
we're not going to then hire another dictator to make

(28:27):
a podcast about how that was wrong.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
You know, I think I get the analogy there, and yeah,
I appreciate it. Yeah, we do that in a blood oath.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
Yeah yeah, yeah, not our blood. You know, we found
some of the Actually I was going to.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
Say, is that the class of blood over the palm. No,
because that's not enough blood.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
It's it's more of a carry situation. Michael, we talk
immens from blood. Then well, look a different scene, a
different scene. I think. I think, honestly, as an American,
it's my right to not tell our employees where the blood.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
Came from, gotcha.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
Yeah, I think I think it's very important fact that. Yeah,
I did email him the truth so you can keep
a secret, right, Yes, Edward, you seem like E really
the guy to do this. So the main thing that
the Italian liberal press is guilty of in this period

(29:26):
is treating radical left wing organizing as if it's outside
of acceptable lines fundamentally right, while treating the fascists and
their violence as understandable, as normal and maybe even inevitable.
Lestampa wrote had a call published a column in which
they blamed anarchists and communists for arming themselves, which had
forced the black Shirts to arm themselves. This, they promised,

(29:51):
the fascists would happily hand over their guns if the
Rdidi del Popolo had not given quote fascism a motive
to cry provocation. These fascists are just aching to give
up their weapons. But you mean all leftists armed yourself,
and now they can't like? What an insane thing to write.
In nineteen twenties Italy like by late nineteen twenty one,

(30:17):
much of the liberal media class saw protests in organizing
by workers as the primary cause of fascist violence. This
resulted in what historian Angelo Taska called filo fascism on
behalf of many middle class liberals. We can see this
in the reaction of writers for Italian Illustration to the
August nineteen twenty two general strike, and their eyes the

(30:39):
economic disruption justified right wing violence, which provoked a broad
and immediate consensus in public opinion for the fascists. The
paper glowingly celebrated black shirts replaced workers on train platforms
and public services. Renado Simoni wrote that the failed protests
of nineteen twenty two enabled fascism to demons straight. It's merits. Wow,

(31:02):
these fascists are killing reporters, but they sure caad work
a train platform.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
But also there's scabs, but also they'll cross the picket line.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
Yeah, it's also it's such a it's such a direct
it's imports so directly to like, well, of course people
are murdering protesters who block roads. They have to get
to work, right, Like, it doesn't nothing, none of this
ever changes, you know, this attitude that like some things
are worth killing people over, and it's not you know,

(31:34):
self defense. Uh, it's stuff like I might be late
to my job, right, that's worth But if if someone
on the left were to kill a fascist and self defense,
that's unjust. But somebody murdering a group of people for
standing in a road, well that's understandable. You got to
get where they're coming from here, you know.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
And we've seen time and again the human mind is
so malleable for yeah, better and worse, you can. Yeah,
it's there's just Big Brother hits so often where it's
like no, literally the opposite of that, what do you like? Insane?
What's going on? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (32:11):
Good stuff. Historians like Adrian Lyttleton will argue that sympathy
to fascist names was a common reaction for liberal papers
reporting on the chaos of the early nineteen twenties. This
doesn't mean that there weren't liberal papers that oppose the
fascists as consistently as left wing papers, but it does
mean that many of the more influential writers in the
center left showed what you could call a bias towards normalcy,

(32:35):
one that could accommodate fascist violence but could not accommodate
organized labor, right. And it's you still get this today, right,
not just for organized labor. There's a lot of folks
in the liberal media who can accommodate Israeli violence, right,
but cannot accommodate any sort of fair discussion about protests

(32:56):
against that violence, for example. And there's a you know,
when I think about that, I think about The New
York Times recently published an op edd by Brett Stevens
in May of twenty twenty four titled A thank You
Note to the Campus protesters. In it, Brett argued, you know,
kind of snarkily I get that many, if not most,
of you see yourselves as dedicated idealists who want to

(33:19):
end suffering for Palestinians, champion equality, and oppose all forms
of bigotry. There are ways you could do that without
making common cause with people who hate Jews, want to
kill us and often do. Supporting a two state solution
would be one such way. Insisting that Palestinians deserve better
leaders than Hamas is another. Building bridges with Israelis is
a third. And it's like, yeah, man, I agree, Palestinians

(33:43):
deserve better leaders than Hamas, but that's not really the
immediate issue. The immediate issue is all of the people
being killed.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
Right, You very carefully said things where you're like, yeah,
that's also technically true.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
How do you expect them to vote right now? Brett? Right, Like,
who's gonna hold that election at the moment the polling places.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
We'll do this totally. It's totally the same mechanic as
a guy who's like, well, you know, the thirteen percent
of the people in America invested in the stock markets,
line went up this month, and yeah, bitch, I can't
afford ham sandwich, so I don't care about.

Speaker 1 (34:21):
That, And the whole thing about like, yeah, there's some
college students and other protesters who've like waved ha Moss flags.
Do I like that? I don't like any flags, right, argument,
I'm not a flag guy. But again, that's not the issue.
If the if the people, if you could point to
a guy waving a flag and be like, and he
also killed seven thousand children, I would say, then yes,

(34:41):
this is a serious issue. Right.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
That's the thing is how do you not see it
in the same bucket? Is Ultimately the argument against the
protesters is always you're burning a flag, which to me
is kind of violent. Y, it could escalate to violence,
and you're like violence, I just saw a guy carrying
his decap potato baby, Yeah, what is the what are
you talking about? And it is?

Speaker 1 (35:05):
But that is you've hit upon it because like what
Brett and a lot of the leadership cadre at the
Times are doing, it's the same as what a lot
of these Italian journalists did. They equated rudeness and disruption
of like transit and stuff to the to slaughters to murder, right,
like those things are equal. Right, Brett is saying a

(35:26):
college student being rude is actually more dangerous than city
with the children murder and a guy waving a Hamas
flag and the slaughter of thirty thousand small children equally problematic.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
They both make me wildly uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
I would say that a dude being kind of a
dick at a protest is less of a problem than
burning thousands of children alive. We can get a little
more context into the thoughts and decisions of the kind
of newsmen who made these sort of decisions. Right, we
can normalize the fascists, but not the left. By pivoting
over to Weimar, Germany and the Olstein publishing house. Olstein

(36:11):
pub was founded in eighteen seventy seven, which is seven
years after the birth of the German state, by Leopold Olstein,
the son of a paper merchant. By the time the
Weimar years rolled around, Olstein was the biggest name in
German print media. They put out newspapers, magazine and books,
a dizzying array of what we now call content. The
Olsteins were a politically progressive Jewish family, and as a result,

(36:35):
much of what they published was reflexively liberal in its outlook.
They were obviously an early target for the Nazis, who
described them as when the Nazis talked about Jewish press.
Like if you've ever seen a Hitler speech or read
anything where the Nazis are talking about the Jewish press
in Germany, they're talking about Olstein, right, That's not like
a broad general just a broad general term. They are

(36:57):
specifically referring to Olstein because it is the biggest publishing
house in the country. The Nazi tracked the press as
a Jewish instrument of power, published in nineteen twenty, focused
an entire chapter just on Olstein. German communists hated Olstein's
two for different reasons. Like most publishing empires, Olstein made
its money from ads. Consumer culture was a new concept

(37:20):
in post war Germany, and Olstein cheered it on with
publications like Tempo, which devoted large illustrated sections to which
products people should buy to make the most of their weekends,
which were also a new concept. As a result, it's
not surprising that most Olstein papers reflected a political allegiance
broadly tied to the German Democratic Party or DDP, which

(37:42):
had helped to write the Weimar Constitution. The one major
break Olstein had with the DDP was over the value
of unionizing corporate spokesman emphasized the positive relations between management
and labor at Olstein, and one of Olstein's owners noted
that we think that liked these good relations be ruined
if you unionize, right, it'll separate us from each other.

(38:04):
Anytime you hear that from your boss, you know you're
about to get rat fucked. Great, great stuff.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
I was at a company that will not be named,
but if you know my history, I've only been at
two companies, so you could figure it out. But they
were like, man, it's what a hard job. They hired
an executive who didn't work at that company, So it's
a guy you've never who's this guy? We don't know,
this guy whose job was to do a little spiel

(38:31):
and spin that like it would be in your best
interest to not talk about unionizing, like we've been hearing
a lot about it. Could you guys not use the
word union or talk about union or forming a union?

Speaker 1 (38:45):
Yeah, so weird. He just does that, like hey, kids,
sits down backwards on the shair job.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
And we found out wheater he goes from company to
company doing that. There's enough demand for that?

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Yeah, no, of course, because they they don't understand that,
Like why people want to unionize, like I do. Think
there's a degree to which they're baffled that people would
want more money than they have. It's it's it's I
don't know, crazy rich people. Brainworms, right, which are worse

(39:17):
than I think the RFK junior brainworms? Those are honest,
god fearing brainworms, right, not the kind that money gives you.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
What? Speaking of god fearing brain worms, you know who.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
Doesn't have brain worms? The sponsors of our podcast.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
The eponymous Lisa of Mattress fame.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
Yeah, wait, who's that?

Speaker 2 (39:41):
Oh? That was the one all the pods pushed Lisa Mattresses?

Speaker 1 (39:45):
Is Lisa one of the Mattresses? I just I remember?
Does two different mattress company ads at this point? I'll
take another. We should in bed right? Yeah, ah, we're back.
I just bought a bed, Michael, you bought a bed.

(40:08):
You know, we're all we're all bedding it out. You know,
why don't you buy a bed? Listener, then come back
to the podcast, laying down on your bed, delivered to
you in a suspiciously small package that then kind of
inflates when you open it and you ask yourself, are
there like weird chemicals in this that makes this possible.
This doesn't seem like it should be a thing that

(40:30):
a bed can do. But then you stop thinking about it,
just like you stopped thinking about what all the plastics
in your water bottle?

Speaker 2 (40:38):
Will you inevitably transition to, hey, remember those little dinosaur
sponges and the pills that expanded and right, making those
that a chemical thing the rabbit hole?

Speaker 1 (40:49):
Yeah, yeah, it's just not worth thinking about what it
is forgetting to.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
Use coupon code, old and Stalenstein whatever it.

Speaker 1 (40:59):
So. Ostein publications fell into a version of the same
trap that befell La Stampa, claiming support for organized labor,
except for when it actually organized. Meanwhile, it was hesitant
initially to report on the Nazis, do in part to
a fear of feeding in the Nazi myths of Jewish
control of the media. Right because we are a Jewish

(41:20):
owned publishing house. We can't report on Nazi violence against
the Jews because people will think we're not being objective, right, Like,
that's how deep the brain worms go about this kind
of thinking. And I will say, for the Ostein family,
it's a little more understandable than it's going to be
when the same thing happens in the US because they

(41:40):
are also worried. Well, this could actually direct some real
violence to me, right, although I think a more rational
person would have said, well, but the Nazis are going
to direct violence against you guys no matter what, so
you might as well try to make people aware of it. Now,
conservative mass media did not suffer from the same problem.

(42:02):
The august Scherrel company, purchased by Alfred Hugenberg in nineteen sixteen,
owned one of the largest papers in Berlin, as well
as one of Germany's first newswire services. Hugenberg was also
a far right political activist and politician. He is the
Andrew Breitbart of his day, and he felt no compunction
against using his papers to espouse an anti democratic agenda. Now,

(42:24):
he was not anti Semitic in a way that rose
above the background level of the era right unlikely, he
was not motivated by it like the Nazis were, but
he was willing to work with Adolf Hitler to further
his own ends, so the two started collaborating after the
death of Chancellor Gustav Stressmann in nineteen twenty nine. This
was after an election in which the German National Party

(42:45):
had lost a bunch of seats. He was willing to
work with Hitler and use his papers to try and
launder their reputation to more mainstream German conservatives. Meanwhile, Ostein,
the largest liberal publishing house in the country, refused to
embrace anything beyond tech support for us. You know, this
kind of vague concept of democracy. Right. The Nazis were

(43:06):
depicted in Olstein publications as something to be mocked and scorned,
but not as a serious threat to the future of
the system. Right, we'll make fun of him a little bit,
but like he's a clown. There's no way, right, Franz Olstein,
who yes, yeah, same same thing, right, that's how they

(43:27):
fees you in Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's it's
remarkable how directly it grafts onto what we've seen. Franz Olstein,
who was one of the few mainstream journalists to spend
real one on one time with Hitler in this period,
described him as a poor fanatic, a pitiful man. It
was impossible, in Olstein's eyes that such a man could

(43:48):
actually threaten German democracy. Right, this guy's too much of
a clown to be a real danger.

Speaker 2 (43:53):
Well, I mean, doctor Seuss is dunking on him left
and right. He's no threat to us.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
Yeah, exactly. This caused serious debate. Heinz Olstein actually yelled
at the editorial department for mocking the NSDAP. He wanted
them treated like a serious party. So did Karl Yodicki,
an assistant to Olstein's GM, who wrote a white paper
arguing the Nazis were quote quote a movement for political
freedom and economic justice. So not only are like, on

(44:22):
one hand, you've got the people who are like, well,
these guys are just clowns, and then at the end
you've got folks who are like, no, they're not clowns.
There were real movement with real issues, and we should
we should fairly discuss the issues that the Nazis are
bringing up. As a liberal publisher, Olstein opposed the party's
anti democratic politics, but Yodicki warned against them getting caught
up in quote the politics of petty details. And what

(44:44):
did Yodicky mean by petty details reporting on us quote
assaults of evil Nazis on peaceful protesters. Right, we can't
get caught up in the politics of who are the
Nazis murdering? Who are they beating in the streets. How
many folks are they assassedascinating? Right, That's that's got to
get you know. You don't want to get bogged down
on that stuff. We have to discuss the bigger issues,

(45:06):
like what do they think about the economy? Sick?

Speaker 2 (45:10):
Always the economy, Always the economy.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
That's what really matters, Not the fact that they are
murdering journalists, Like that's not really a big deal to us,
you know. The assassination, the beatings of Jewish people in
the street, not really a problem. You know. Let's talk
about what they have to say about inflation now. The very,
very best investigation I have found into this period of
German media is the book Modern Modernity by Yoachen Hung.

(45:36):
It focuses on the Olstein Company and one of its
most popular papers, Tempo Hung Rights Quote. To be able
to compete with Nazi propaganda, the Olstein papers had to
change their tune, Yodicki claimed. Instead of touting lofty ideals
of individual freedom and democracy, they had to follow a
resurgent patriotism which strongly emphasized the welfare of the whole

(45:57):
community instead of the individual, and worked with ations instead
of reason and skepticism. As this was the only way
to gain influence with the masses. The temporary curtailing of
civic rights and democracy was inevitable in this time of crisis,
he argued, shouldered with their daily struggle, the people did
not care much for the luxury of freedom at the
moment anyway. As he showed in a later memorandum, Yodocky

(46:21):
was clearly fascinated by the Nazis. The core principle of
the movement, he argued, was a return to universally accepted,
non debatable, unchangeable forms of life instead of general relativity.
So you've got this guy who is working for this
paper owned by a Jewish family that is ostensibly liberal,

(46:42):
who is one of the people making calls there, and
he's kind of obsessed with the Nazis in a positive way,
Like he has gotten enraptured by how different they seem
and how exciting they are to report on, right, And
he's focusing.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
Not a hate group, revitalizing Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
Yeah, And he's interested so interested in reporting on what
they claim to believe that he's like, we can't report
on the violence they're doing. That's not fair, right, That's
that's missing the point of the Nazis right, They're not
about the violence, They're about the economics. Yodicki argued that
the Nazi movement's simplicity was what gave it the ability

(47:25):
to grab hold of and guide the masses. Their primitive
slogans of hate and vengeance were more effective than the
wonky policy arguments of the German State Party. Who Ostein
had earlier backed the company's pivot away from directly criticizing
Nazi violence called caused Gersam Schlolm, a Berlin born Jewish
philosopher and writer, to call Ostein one of the most

(47:46):
dishonest and misleading media companies in Germany. As Hitler neared
power in thirty one and thirty two, Olstein pivoted to
position itself as loyal to the political machine of Paul
von Hindenberg. Their hope was that he would maintain a
semblance of democratic civil society in the face of Hitler's rise. Right,
that Hindenberg, this old man who's committed to the system,

(48:09):
he'll protect us from Hitler. Right. This was a bad
call in hindsight, and also an obviously bad call at
the time. Now there were journalists and papers who published
serious exposes on Nazi crimes. In the nineteen twenty eight
election season, social democratic papers published stories claiming Hitler had
been bribed by Mussolini in exchange for ending the German

(48:32):
claim to South Tyrol when he took power. Hitler sued
over the matter, and the libel case ground forward until
nineteen thirty two, the subject of heavy reporting all the while. Likewise,
when Hans Litten subpoened Hitler over the stabbing of two
workers by SA men and questioned him on the stand
about incitements to violence in Nazi propaganda, reporters dutifully brought

(48:54):
the trial to millions of German living rooms. It didn't matter.
Kurt Trukolski, one of Weimar's most influential journalists, noted morosely
the prestige of large democratic newspapers or artists, and of
liberal associations, in fact, bears no relation to their actual power.
Kurt saw them as functionally toothless, and the face of

(49:15):
what he called the power of reaction always there and
working more skillfully and above all less respectfully. And I again,
that's exactly how it feels today, right, You know, things
have changed in the last couple of weeks to some extent,
but I think we've all felt that feeling of like, Okay,
so everyone in any position of like cultural influence claims

(49:40):
to be against the rise of fascism in this country,
and that has done absolutely nothing to like make it
less popular. It doesn't hurt them at all. It seems
to be completely toothless. And these respectable people who are
in traditional positions of cultural influence, they just have no
ability to confront the fascists on their own turth because

(50:03):
the fascists are willing to like they're not. They have
no need to be respectful, right, they have no need
to follow the rules.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
They also appeal to fear, which is such a primal
nmvator for us, just as animals. I highly recommend a
documentary called Century of the Self, which is about how
Freud's brother, I believe y essentially cousin was. I mean, people,
you just described someone who discovered this, so people independently
discover it. But he's the godfather of modern advertising in

(50:32):
a sense for discovering that, like, oh, emotion, don't explain
why the product is good, Just make them feel like
they're a piece of shit if they don't have this thing.
It's so easy to control people this way, and it's
like every time someone discovers that it's the beginning of
the end. That's a big problem. Like that's not good.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
It's an atom bomb that keeps getting forgotten and rediscovered,
and so yeah, exactly, it's great stuff. Now my opinion
about this because I spent a lot of the last
three or four years in particular, as like Biden's chances
grew more dire and the far right kind of got
more mask off about like you just had more of

(51:14):
their influencers saying we're we're about to end democracy.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
Huzzah. Right, yeah, it's a rollback, Like sorry, you just
briefly touched on trans rights, and it's like they're statistically speaker,
so few trans people. It's so obviously a tip of
a rollback. It's like we're testing whether we can say
gay people are bad. Obviously we're doing that, like this we.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
Want to kill them too, but like, well, we got
to start with the smaller group that has less power.
It is easier to marginalize, right because gay people actually
like have a lot of cultural power. But at this point, right, yeah,
uh you know, and it's when it comes to like
how ought the media report on stuff like this, right,

(51:58):
because Tukoski, the point he's making is that, like well,
the legacy media is bound by rules that hamstring them
from fighting these people because they feel they have to
treat them respectfully, and you can't get across the damage
to danger of them if you do it that way. Right,
My contention is that fascism is a mortal threat to journalism,

(52:19):
right if you are a journalist, like any creature when
it's life is threatened, has the right to defend itself.
And if you are a journalist dealing with fascism rising
in your country, I would argue it is not rational
to be fair to them, right, Your job should be
trying to destroy them, you know, And I think back

(52:41):
when I think about this and how you want, like
what kind of weapons work? Right? If traditional straight reporting
and objectivity, like if literal facts do not beat these people,
and they never do, it doesn't matter that the fascists lie,
You are not going to fact check them away. It
has never happened and it will never happen. Now, ask
forward to today when a Twitter account with seventeen hundred

(53:03):
followers made a post claiming that jd Vance, one of
our country's most prominent fascists had written about fucking a
couch in his book He'll Billy Elegy, because no.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
One actually it's in the book.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
No, look at, no one read that book, so nobody
checked it, right, Like people pretended to read it, but
it's it's dog shit right, So because of that, like
people just weren't interested in checking it. The li went
incredibly viral, with an even number of people believing that JD.
Vance had literally fucked a couch, and also an even

(53:37):
number just understanding the joke, which is that Vance is
the Again, it gets to a truth about Vance, which
is that he is the kind of weirdo who would
fuck a couch. When VP candidate Tim Walls referenced the
couch fucking in his own way during his inaugural speech
on the campaign trail, the same media organs a number
of them who have all failed to hinder the growth

(53:57):
of authoritarian politics in the US erupted outrage. Right, you know,
democrats shouldn't go low. It's bad to lie, you know
in this way. Well this is also yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
I mean it's not an AI episode, so I won't.
But this also speaks to like, because I don't trust
mainstream media, and I get all my news online. Online
is also a wild West where you're like, maybe an
Ai wrote that, so you kind of absorb your news
that you think is factual a with a grain of
salt and b through like a cloud of data points.

(54:29):
So I still don't know. I understand the couch thing
is false. Did he search for dolphin porn? Are you
up on the definitive answer on that?

Speaker 1 (54:38):
I think he may have just been looking for He
may have an explanation I saw that seems at least
equally plausible. Is that because because folks, if you're not
aware of this, he posted like a video of a
dolphin molesting a woman, which is actually a thing that
happens pretty frequently. Dolphins are do not uncommon. They're sexually
assault human beings. Dolphins are capable of rape, like they

(55:01):
know what they're doing. Uh. Anyway, whatever, it's enough of
my anti dolphin dolphin aside, we have to take it out.
Yeah no, so uh he posts this video of a
woman getting like molested by a dolphin and is like, boy,
the internet's sure a fucked up place or something like that, right,
and Democrats, Yeah, searched for women plus dolphins basically, and

(55:26):
folks like, was he just searching for dolphin porn? I
think it's also plausible that like he was just scrolling
through found this on his feed, you know, moved past
it because sh it was happening, and then was trying
to find it later and used to.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
Liked this of it all.

Speaker 1 (55:41):
Yes, yes, it's the same as the couch thing, right,
and that like, well, it does kind of seem plausible
that this guy would be looking for dolphin porn, right yea,
And that's why this that's why, and it's hurt him.
This is damaged. And you've seen like some of the
fascists who are on his I'd try to like launch
a campaign to argue that that Walls or to like

(56:05):
try They've tried to do the same thing with Tim
Walls by like spreading rumors that he drinks horsecom or something,
but like Tim Walls doesn't seem like he drinks horsecom right.
Jd Vance seems like a couch fucker who watches dolphin porn.
So it's somebody that's just not gonna work.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
Like Trump. Trump knows this because he's fairly good at it.
It doesn't always work, but there's something about vibe that
makes an insulting nickname stick or not stick.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
You know. Yeah, And for the record, if you were
to try the same thing with Trump, it wouldn't work
because Trump doesn't seem like a guy who like even
searches for a porn right, Like, he's just not that
kind of You would need a different set of tactics
with him. But this works on Vance.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
No, but you like he sexually assaulted a woman and
paid her off, You're like, right, I'm.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
Definitely for sure that does seem like him. And when
it comes to the folks who are concerned about the
danger to our national political environment, if we if we
accept things like what Walls did referencing this lie about Vance,
I don't know, we can't get any lower at this point,
Folks like, there's there's no bottom that we're going to

(57:14):
sync to by actually using some of the weapons these
people do and fighting on the same playing field. It's
like someone it's like if a guy comes up to
you in the street with a crowbar and start swinging
and you pick up another crowbar, and then someone else
is like, hey, man, you're being just as bad as
him by picking up that crowbars. No, you want to

(57:35):
you want a crowbar. If a guy is swinging a
crowbar at you, you want to at least have the
same grade of weapon that that.

Speaker 2 (57:42):
Motherfuckers got in a vacuum. The idea of beating someone
with a crowbar is it's really nice. Yeah, there's we're
not in a vacuum.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
Brother, he attacked you with the crowbar. First hit him
in the face.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
But that doesn't I feel like whenever you say you
got to bring up proportionality, because then people use that
to go right, this guy set foot on my property,
so I murdered his family. Or these people took hostages,
so we're going to genocide them real quick. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
I think the difference is if you're doing it to
literally the people doing it to you, and JD. Vance
is spreading lies about trans people. Jd. Vance has talked
repeatedly that he doesn't think women should be able to
hold elected office, right he is, like, when you're dealing
with that guy, like we're not saying I think this

(58:29):
random Trump supporter is a couch fucker, you know, like
this is extremely targeted and there's I don't really see
there being any splash damage here. That's that's to an
unfair degree, and I don't know. I'm glad that there
are people in the media and people within kind of
the liberal political establishment who clearly finally understand this, because

(58:52):
I had really identified with Tukolski's exhaustion and hopelessness right over,
Like why doesn't anyone know how to fight these people?
Right now? I will say some of you know, if
you're looking, if you want to like fairly sort of
discuss why to Kolski was writing the way he was.

(59:12):
It's also because he had this belief, like a lot
of media elites did, that every German outside of Berlin
was a philistine, right, like all of these people, like
the regular people are too dumb to understand what the
Nazis are doing, which.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
I I knowzies are playing for d chest. Dude, I'm
just saying.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
Yeah, I think what I think Actually, what you saw
with Walls is a lot better, Like it's a lot
smarter than not just like what has been being been
done before, but like what a guy like tou Kolski
would have said, where you're you're not treating the audience
as dumb, You're not trying to manipulate them. You're telling
a joke and you're trusting that they will understand the

(59:52):
joke right in a way, also.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Going where the cultures going in the sense that way
back when, right when they first tell the debates, we
started getting the rhetoric of like I kind of want
a president that i'd like to have a beer with
or hang out with, and then people end up voting
that way, and then presidents start going fuck high art
or being a leader. I'm gonna be on between two
ferns because that's where votes are. People think that's funny

(01:00:17):
and endearing. So yeah, I think they're just going wherever
they can to get the attention they so desperately crave.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
Yeah, which you know we all do to some extent.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
Michael, Oh, absolutely, I know them.

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
I know that attention is my sunlight. You know I'm
a wilted career without it. Yeah, really, yes, yes, Sophie obviously.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
Well dude, and you're one of this show is one
of the premier voices pointing stuff out that you're unable
to change.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
Yeah. I can't do anything about this, but somebody, but
it sucks. Yeah. Now I want to say again, because
we're coming down so hard on the German media. During
this period, there were a lot of journalists who strove
to activate people and who were trying to meet the
Nazis on their level and fight them. One of them
was one of my very favorite people in history, an

(01:01:08):
American columnist named Dorothy Thompson. Thompson is one of the best,
one of the great journalists of all time, one of
the great anti fascist journalists of all time, and she
wrote that Nazism was quote a repudiation of the history
of Western man of reason, humanism, and a Christian ethic.
Thompson joined members of the Foreign Press Corps like William Shier,

(01:01:29):
who had began to see warning the world about Hitler
as a moral imperative. And Shyer is you know, he's
one of these guys if you read through, because he's
the author of the Rise and Fall of the Third
Reich Right. If you read him today, you will note
that he is wildly homophobic, massively homophobic, like a real
bigot in that regard. But he is also a committed

(01:01:50):
anti fascist, and he would later report on the annexation
of Austria submit at substantial personal risk. The men who
ran Olstein took a different tactic to keep Hindenberg happy.
They began to run articles supporting the military and rearmament.
They stopped their support of liberal democratic parties, and they
hired a man named Hans Schaeffer, the former State secretary,

(01:02:11):
to reform their coverage of the Nazis. That a Schaeffer's credit.
His stated goal managing the paper was to turn it
into a weapon of resistance to the Nazis, which sounds good,
but here's how he thought he was going to do that.
So his idea was that like, well, if we just
let Hitler get into power, then he's going to have
to govern and the gridlock of the Viymar system is

(01:02:33):
just going to wear him down to a nub. So
Schaefer supported and made sure his column is supported the
attempts of the von Poppen and von Schleicher governments to
create a coalition with the Nazis, because he was like,
once they have to govern, that'll destroy them, and we
the Ostein papers will have a valuable role to play
as the loyal, critical opposition. You know, we'll make it

(01:02:55):
clear how incompetent they are, and that will gradually lead to.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
Their toward smartness.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
Yeah, we'll just we're going to if people just see
how bad they are at govern it. Surely we'll be
able to vote them out, which is like, yeah, they're
not going to let you vote again, brother.

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
Surely, once the man, Surely, once they drive off the
cliff and kill us all, it'll be like I told
you so, don't do that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
Yeah, I'll think that's how this is going to end.
So yeah, real miscalculation. Now, Schaeffer did see himself as
protecting democracy, even though he had to support an authoritarian
government to do so. As a result, in nineteen thirty two,
he directed Tempo Olstein's most popular publication to devote more
and more page space to the street fighting between Nazis

(01:03:44):
and their opponents. Both sides were presented as functional equals,
since they both ignored the laws of the state. A
New Year's Eve nineteen thirty two, Tempo published a political
cartoon that embodied the fundamentally naive way it depicted German society.
The tune showed a tired woman mother Germany, tucking her
problem children into bed and hoping that they'd get along

(01:04:08):
next year. And the problem children are there's like hanging
on the posters of the bed. There's like a Nazi helmet,
and there's like an iron front cap and a communist hat.
So it's like all of these people are you know,
there's quarreling in the streets, but they're just like little
kids wrestling or whatever, you know, And soon the lollby
countryman again and things will be okay. Yeah, yeah, you

(01:04:32):
really got your fingers on the pulse there. In the
decades since Hitler's rise to power, different historians have posited
a variety of suspicions as to why the Viymar press
failed so miserably as a guardian of democracy. Kurt Kozick,
who published an exhaustive three volume study on the German
press in nineteen seventy two, blamed a lack of internal
freedom at news publications. The financial needs of owners who

(01:04:55):
profited by selling ads always came before quality reporting. Modris Eckstein's,
who authored a study on the German democratic press titled
Limits of Reason, broadly agreed with this conclusion, and nothing
illustrates this fact more clearly than the way the Olstein
publications responded to the rise of the Nazis in the
early thirties. This was the last time liberal resistance to

(01:05:16):
Hitler might have won the day, and it was inarguably
the last opportunity to try. But the popularity of the
Nazis and the success with which they demonized their most
firm and opposition communists and street fighting socialist meant fervent
opposition had a cost too high for any capitalist entity
to bear. So Olstein's papers lurched away from reporting on
politics and plunged further into encouraging consumption. Their answer was,

(01:05:40):
we've got to fix the economy to stop the Nazis,
So we've got to get people buying stuff again, right,
going on vacation again, And I'm going to read a
quote from Moderate Modernity writing about the July nineteen thirty
two issue of Tempo. The header of each issue of
the promotional magazine usually carried short aphorisms or motivation sayings,

(01:06:00):
and this issue declared that everybody has to buy as
much as they can afford, an appeal that turned consumption
into almost a national duty. When the von Poppen government
announced an investment program to inject life into the stagnating
economy in nineteen thirty two, Paul Elsberg, editor in chief
of Olstein's Central Business Desk, lauded the move and prophesied

(01:06:21):
a considerable strengthening of purchasing power in the near future.
So in the last year before Hitler took power, the
major liberal press organ of the country is being like,
what y'all have to do to stop this is buy right, like,
get in there and support the economy. That's goin to
fix everything.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
Well, it allow incentivized people to vote right, right.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
Right, right, Well, they're saying you're voting by spending money.
That's the voting that really matters. Right, Yeah, Now, this
is the last year before Hitler takes power. And instead
of reporting on what the Nazis are doing with Hindenberg
and the conservative parties or even like suggest the building
of a popular front between the left and the center
and you know, social democratic parties, Tempo urged readers to

(01:07:08):
build a front of all optimists fighting against the fear
of consumption. Right, don't build a united you know, political
front against fascism. Build a front of optimists to want
to spend money.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
Let's get Kristinsky out here. Let's do some good news
for Kidnea's sake.

Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is very much the Yeah, let's
let's get the good news.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
My brain is ruined by the internet, so I can
only think in terms of memes. But it's this is fine.
It's the dog sitting in the flaming building.

Speaker 1 (01:07:38):
Yeah yeah, spend some money and you won't notice the flames.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Now it's interesting. Tempo didn't just try to do ads
speak here. They tried to assemble a street movement around
capitalist consumption publishing tear out flyers for readers to send
their clients at work. They were urged to set an
example for their neighbors by spending more money themselves. This
was the only thing that could say Germany from darkness.
Spending creates jobs. Jobs create income which will be spent

(01:08:05):
on your products. So fight with us for a healthy
consumer optimism and start in your own interest with yourself. Now,
nothing that happened, the fact that the economy fell apart,
that like purchasing power did not increase. None of this
stopped Tempo's management from pushing this vision of consumption. Instead,
they added advice on weaponry to their technology. Everybody needs

(01:08:28):
column advertising concealed truncheons for readers to fight off robbers with. Now,
when I was a kid reading about the rise of
the third Reichen School, every textbook that mentioned the subject
featured nearly identical photos of these huge piles or reel
barrows of Deutsche marks to emphasize how bad the inflation
was and y our Germany. I was led to believe
that pick people picked Hitler because he promised them away

(01:08:50):
out And the reality, of course, is that most Germans
never chose Hitler in an open election. His success was
based as much on trickery and corruption as electoral victory.
But the Great Depression did play a role, and I
think mainstream histories of this period tend to underemphasize how
much of what happened was the result of failure by
liberal messaging rather than hit larry and brainwashing. The Nazis

(01:09:12):
and the Communists both saw their popularity increase in this period,
while the German liberal parties bled voters, and this is
because both Nazis and Communists offered voters visions right different visions,
but visions nonetheless of a way forward that was not
simply let's keep doing the same thing that obviously doesn't work.

(01:09:32):
Tempo as the most popular liberal magazine in the country,
showcases this failure. It told readers there is but one
way to fight the crisis. Buying. Women were depicted not
as the noble wellsprings of the German race, or as
equal beings, but as economic engines, praised for the money
they spent. Just one day after the parliamentary elections in

(01:09:53):
late nineteen thirty two, Tempo ran an ad that captioned
a photo of a woman in line at the store
with the words women must continue voting right. The vote
that matters from women is where you spend your money.
So the brief boone and boom and travel that Tempo
had helped push in the late twenties had collapsed by
this point, and the magazine just kind of responded by

(01:10:14):
lying about the situation, predicting that late summer nineteen thirty
two is going to be the sunny holiday season that
Germans need to like get their minds off the domestic situation.
One of their regular columns was written by a character
named Hans Einfach, which means basically John everyman in German.
A few days after the July election, with the Nazis
working their way into the halls of power, Hans published

(01:10:37):
a column on political violence. He described it as silly,
a shame on both sides, and made a few lighthearted
jokes at the expense of the Nazis. Then, as Yuchen
Hung writes, he described the decision to spend money on
a holiday despite not being able to afford it as
the necessary defiance of the economic situation. Finally, at summer,

(01:10:57):
many people are sitting at home at the moment, contemplated
if they can afford a few days of holiday. I
have come to the conclusion that I can't afford it,
and that's exactly why I will go on a holiday.
We just have to afford it. It's such a such
like a baffling death drive. That's like, we're going to
try to get people to buy vacations. As the economy

(01:11:19):
falls apart and they, like Hitler comes into power, the
most important thing we can do is get people to
spend money they don't have.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
It's also interesting that it's not for self care. That
it's explicitly like we do things where we go, oh,
you're having a baby, that's wonderful. Give me ten thousand
dollars for a bunch of bullshit please, Yeah, we cover
it with something, you know. It's like the idea of
pamper yourself. You deserve it. Like in this crazy life
where we're all oppressed by capitalism, come spend more money

(01:11:50):
because you deserve it. It's interesting to hear them be
like spend money, to spend money, Like just give us money.

Speaker 1 (01:11:58):
Yeah, it's all that these Oldstein papers are doing is
telling people to spend money and putting their faith in
Paul von Hindenberg, who like because he's you know, they've
gone from we're like, we're progressive. You know, we're looking
at the future too. Well, this old man will moderate
the Nazis, right, be alive forever right in Tempo's every

(01:12:23):
man columns, at the same time, tended to portray anyone
who was like on the left as unhinged. Right, the
ideal voter was level headed, slow and steady, like Hindenburg
hung rights. Tempo's Voice of the common man often compared
the hostile climate of Weimar's political sphere to everyday situations
such as a squabbling family or life in a tenement house,

(01:12:43):
with the extremists being portrayed as weward sons or annoying neighbors,
but ultimately part of the community who could be tamed
and integrated. Clearly, the aim of such articles was to
create a sense of normality and uncertain times among Tempo's audience.
And to give them a model to follow. In other
parts of the paper, however, the value of rationality had
lost its allure. The lax morals of the rational girls

(01:13:05):
of the nineteen twenties, Frau Christine argued in one of
her columns had given men a twisted idea of sexuality
and had ultimately lowered their respect for women. It's it's
remarkable just how consistent that is too, Like we're dealing
the same, Like JD. Vance is a big part of this, Like, well,
women leaders have been a disaster, you know, women who
won't have kids, who just want to like live for
their own you know, pleasure and enjoyment are evil. They're

(01:13:28):
degenerate psychopaths, right, Like it's it's all the same shit,
you know. Yeah, yeah, good stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
I've heard that. I've encountered that argument of surprisingly off
and the well, Like why would they have wombs if
they weren't supposed to only function in that context? If
that's all they are support for a right, they were happier,
it's more natural for them to just care for kids.
Yeah yeah, And it's like, when's the last time you
went into the woods and killed a fucking small road

(01:13:58):
with your bare hands. Shut up. We do society now,
we do what we want, like we make pizza and
we have careers. Fu.

Speaker 1 (01:14:06):
Yeah, yeah, we filter our water instead of regularly ourselves today.

Speaker 2 (01:14:12):
Aren't supposed to do. If you're just like your body
does this, shut up.

Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
I'm an advocate of doing more of that stuff. Every
time I get on like the Conspiracy Internet, I further
reinforced my belief that, like, we should put lithium back
in the water, right, Like, sure, it could really help.

Speaker 2 (01:14:30):
That might be our way out of mercury. Mercury in
my hat, brim Man, why not.

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
Yeah, yeah, let's let's do it. So you know, Michael,
we are all broadly familiar of what happened to German
democracy after nineteen thirty three. Right, none of none of
the none of this like buying stuff didn't work, This
idea that like just vote for moderates didn't work. The
Nazis took over right Ostein, and all publishers with Jewish
owners were nationalized and arianized by the Nazi state. It

(01:14:59):
is interesting to that the Nazis kept the name Ostein.
They were pragmatic enough to see it as a good
business decision, and uh, you know that is what we're
covering today. We're going to on Thursday talk about the
United States finally, but Michael, first, let's talk about you.
Let's talk about Let's talk about the Small Beans network.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
Sure. Oh boy, Oh I get a double plug. I
didn't know i'd get to spiel both episodes all right.

Speaker 1 (01:15:26):
In German they would call that a doppel plugin. I
don't know if that's true.

Speaker 2 (01:15:31):
Who cares, He's just ends the episode. I'll try to
be quick, but I really mean it this time. This
is maybe the most important player in my life. So
if you've liked me on Cracked, or even if you
happen to have encountered any of my fiction before, I
finally finished a novel that I've been working on since

(01:15:51):
I was fourteen. It's an epic fantasy sci fi memoir.
I'll just describe it as like Carlan Ellison meets Vonnegut
meets Douglas Adams. Robert Brockway called it hilarious, heartbreaking shit
like that. I think it's really really good. It has
my whole heart and soul in it. And I just
released the audiobook version so you can hear that on

(01:16:14):
the Small Beans Free feed by just searching small Beans
or the name of the novel, which is called The Climb,
or if you're already sold, you can head to patreon
dot com slash Smallbeans slash Shop where you can get
the physical version or a PDF or the audiobook. Check
it out.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
Michael, I gotta tell you, I deeply love the uh
the image in my head of Vonnegut and Harlan Ellison
and Douglas Adams meeting, because I imagine Vonnegut and Douglas
Adams would have a great time and Harlan Ellison is
just going to be the most.

Speaker 2 (01:16:52):
Miserable man still fucking hate each other.

Speaker 1 (01:16:55):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (01:16:56):
Yeah, that's a real Calvin COOLIDG Hubert Humphreys. Yeah, they
might be like, sir, I respect your fiction, Please get
the fuck out.

Speaker 1 (01:17:06):
Yeah, I do not want to talk to you to Hell.
Good stuff anyway. Well that's going to do it for
us at whatever podcast this is until next time, go
to Hell. I love you.

Speaker 2 (01:17:22):
Do you want to plug on the audio version that
we have YouTube now, Robert?

Speaker 1 (01:17:26):
No, of course not, Sophie. Why would I do that?

Speaker 2 (01:17:28):
Do you want to do your job now? Did you
stop recording? No?

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
Of course not, Sophie. You know, Sophie, I made a
decision on my own to pivot to video recently. This
is me telling you, actually, yeah, I decided unilaterally to
do that, and I let you make a decision. Yeah.

(01:17:54):
It was a horrible mistake, Sophie. I don't know why
you listen to me about these things. I'm always wrong anyway.
Everyone enjoy our new videos or not.

Speaker 2 (01:18:08):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.