Part Two: Bobby Fischer: Chess Nazi

Mia Wong is once again joined by Robert Evans to finish the story of Bobby Fischer.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Fuck it, We'll do it live. We'll do it live.
I'm Bill O'Riley and this is the O'Reilly Factor podcast.
What Sophie, remember beverage in man if I spill it
during this, I'm gonna be really mad at you. Well,
everyone's mad at Bill O'Riley because he speaks the truth, Sophie,

(00:24):
I'm mad at you. Well, that's fair. This is Behind
the Bastards, a podcast about the worst people in all
of history, one of whom is in fact, Bill O'Riley. Um.
But we are we are not talking about Bill O'Riley today.
We are instead talking about Bobby Fisher. Chess Nazi Um

(00:44):
also featured in the Hilltop Hood song Cosby Sweater, which
is not about Bill Cosby's crimes. It's actually a reference
to Biggie. So it's okay, it's fine, you can enjoy
the song. Mia. How are you doing doing? Okay, We're
we're we're heading into the downhill stretch of this this

(01:06):
Friday afternoon, and also the downhill stretch of the life
of one Bobby Fisher. So it's good, that's good. I
am ready for it to be the downhill stretch of
Bobby Fisher's life. Unfortunately, it gets really bad before it
gets over. So it hasn't been good yet, so it's
gonna have we we it's only getting worse out. Okay,

(01:30):
well let's uh, let's right ruin my Friday afternoon please,
So all right, when when when we last left, when
we last left, the hero of American chess, Bobby Fisher
was the hero of the free world, the chess World champion.
And also like people are just like like just just

(01:50):
dropping piles of money on him, and he refuses to
pick any of it up. He does just no promotions.
Everyone wants to pay him and he's just like no,
he does do one thing after this, and that one
that one offer that he does take is to go
play a tournament in the Philippines in nineteen seventy three,
and this is where Fisher gets into the business he's

(02:12):
going to be in for the rest of his life,
which is the dictator business. Now, okay, it's important to
note that this is the year nineteen seventy three, right,
this is the year after future pod subject Ferdinand Marcos
Stages military comb became a dictator of the Philippines. Uh.
He is about to torture while, but he has a
right torture people. He's going to torture tens of thousands

(02:33):
of people. He's going to inflict a rate of terror
or the beleaguer people of the Philippines. And Fisher just
spends this whole tournament there like hanging out with Marcos
and his wife. And that sounds like that sounds like
one of the worst dinners imaginable. Apparently, I'm sure he
liked it. I'm saying it sounds like one of like

(02:54):
the dinner conversation. Um just just absolute like trashed here.
Oh god, yeah, no one is ever well, actually that's
not true. They did. They did actually accused Bobby Fisher
of having good taste before he proved them wrong. But
it's you know, he he like this is one of
the places that like always sort of sticks with Bobby Fisher,

(03:17):
like he he he likes the Philippines so much that
like he's gonna mooove here eventually. And Fisher's reaction to
you know, the markets statorships like this rules, I love it,
um And eventually look at Chterman ends he is back
to the US, and there's good news and bad news.
The good news is that he breaks with the Church
of God because their doomsday prophecies keep failing. He's literally

(03:43):
the only guy to ever Yeah, it really just is like, okay, world,
the prophecy number four, like none of them are working.
So he gets So that's the good news. Yeah, he's
out of the cult. The bad news is that one
of the first things he does when he comes back
to California is buy a copy of the Protocols of
the elms Ion. Oh good, Yeah, no, that's that's that's

(04:03):
that's great. The great move body. This is going to
send him in some good directions, I think, because so
far my main problem with this guy is he's not
yet key Din enough on esoteric Nazi propagand Okay, so
the other book that he gets is called Nature's Eternal
Religion by Ben Klassen. Who Now that's that's that's actually esoteric.

(04:24):
Very good. Yeah, he's like a weirdo. He's a really
fanatical like racist nanti Semma. He's one of these guys
who was like, like Christianity is actually Jewish, so it's
it's it's not like white enough, so he needs to
be like not Christians. And he's even he's the founder
of Okay, So the thing that he founds is the

(04:45):
World Church of the Creator, which concerns in the creativity movement,
and they're they're most famous for producing the mass shooter
Ben Smith. And I need to make a note here.
This is not the shooter named the mass shooter named
Ben Smith from Portland from last year. This is a
completely unrelated mass shooting in Ben Smith from Look, if
you're listening to this podcast and you're also a Ben Smith,

(05:06):
your asses, we got an eye on you, motherfucker, be careful.
Don't do any bad things. Yeah, please God, we don't
need we don't need a third bend. It was played
out after the first time, It was played out before
the first time. One the third time is not the charm.
Do not enough enough with the Ben Smith anyway, it

(05:28):
makes Smith just a normal name again. This this Ben
Smith goes on just like a murderous rampage, shooting black,
Jewish and Asian people before just like going out like
a tiny baby in a car chase. And at this one.
But Bobby is getting like real weird with nanti Semitism.
He sends this to Jewish friends, a copy of a
book called The Secret World Government by Oh God. Actually Okay,

(05:53):
I have confidence I can kind of do this name
major General, Count Chirrup Spira Danovich, which, by the way, no,
that's not a name. I'm sorry, I'm sorry you you
need to walk me through how that fucking thing is spelled,
because I simply don't believe it's c H E R
E P dash s P I r I d O

(06:14):
v I c H What kind of fucking what sorry?
What kind of places this motherfucker from? This? This this,
this guy is a Russian white, Russian white will he
was originally a Russian admiral and then like a Russian
white army. Yeah, yeah, he's so he's in the fucking prosarist. Yeah. Look,
you're not gonna hear me stand up for the Bolsheviks
all that often, but oh my god, that those people suck.

(06:39):
Like my look, anyone any any culture that's putting out
names like that, you're gonna have to line some people
up in a basement. I'm sorry. It's the only thing
to do with names like that. This is one of
those guys who like they absolutely should have shot he's not.
He's like unacceptable name. Yeah. Well, also he's like he's
like a major guy who's he's he's basically like an

(07:02):
anti Semitism organizer. So that sounds right for the White army. Yeah.
So so he writes this book about how a Jewish
Mongol cabal is running the world. Oh sure, yeah, no,
they now that honestly. That that's I actually, I'm back
to having respect for this guy, because that is not
one I have heard of every kind of Jewish cabal

(07:22):
except for a Jewish Mongol cabal. That's very good, I think,
I actually I I okay, my, my, my. My understanding
of this is that this this is the thing about
like there are certain kinds of Yeah, there's a like
kinds of Russian nationalists who are like insane about the Mongolia,
like the invasions, and there's I mean a big, a
big part of especially this era of anti I mean

(07:42):
it it bleeds through to today. But one of the
big things Hitler would talk about is the idea that
like all forms of social justice and tolerance are Jewish
plots and the Mongols, for all of their flaws, we're
pretty tolerant of other religions rights like that. That was
like a factor in their governance, like they didn't really care. Yeah,
I mean you believed yeah they okay, like they did

(08:04):
of genocides, but not because it's their their motive genocides.
Are you a pastoralist or not? Which is a different,
a very different thing from and stuff. I can see
someone being like, well, the Mongols were tolerant of other religions,
and uh so that's part of this, like Judeo Bolshevik
conspiracy to water down Orthodox Christendom because he thinks the

(08:27):
Mongols are like still like, it's a it's a it's
a Mongol Jewish. I don't know if he's he's very weird.
It's like the Mongol equivalent of the guys who think
that the Queen of England still secretly rules the world.
I I don't know. I I didn't read this book
because I was like, I'm not I can't. I have
I read so much bullshit for this Episode's like absolutely not.

(08:48):
Find a find a Mongol and ask them are you
secretly running the world? I? Well, I have family intermo.
Do your own research. It's not an actual Mongolia, but
it's pretty close. I could probably get across the border.
I have always wanted to go. I want to go
specifically for Nadam, which is like this this big multi
day everybody goes to the city Ulan Batar and they

(09:09):
wrestle and do horseback archery and drink heavily, and it
sounds like exactly the kind of thing that I want
to do. Yeah, sounds like unfortunately back and things that
don't rip Fisher like he's just full on, like like
Entry's Nazi crank phase. Like he well, okay, so I

(09:32):
point out that book you were talking about. He sends
that to like a Jewish couple who's been his friends
since like childhood, and they just stopped talking to him
because they're like, Bobby, what the fuck. He also like
people keep trying to write books about him, and he
keeps trying to sue them because he's like, no one
can write about me unless they're me. And everyone's like,
that's that's not how the law works, That's not how

(09:53):
writing works, Bobby. Yeah, sorry, okay. And you know the
sort of peak of this is in any in seventy five,
He's supposed to defend his world championship, right, and Manila
offers five million dollars to host the events like a
pr thing for his old buddy, for Marcos, and this
is this is still this is twenty seven million dollars

(10:14):
in today's money, which is like and in the night
seventy five, Like that is a that is a truly
terrifying amount of money. And Bobby is like, no, I
will not play this tournament unless you agree to change
the format of like the championship to this weird format
where like, okay, so normally the way scoring works in
chess is if you get to if you have a draw,
both players get half a point and if you and

(10:36):
if you win, you get one point. And you're trying
to get to like a certain number of points. Bobby
is like, no, no, no draws, no longer give you
any points. You play an unlimited number of games, you
get the ten wins, and if they both are at
nine nine, it's like there's a draw. And Fisher keeps
being the champion and is like okay, like it sounds
a little stacked in his favor, like he was complaining

(10:57):
about the Russians being yeah, yeah, and and Fiene is
like okay, like whatever, fine, like well we'll we'll, we'll
let you do this, like thing is kind of a
normal There have been rules previously where like if the
score is a tie, the world champion keeps being the
world champion because they haven't been defeated. But but Feene
is like, okay, we cannot let you play an infinite

(11:20):
number of games, because if like you can act, you
could actually just get an infinite number of games, right,
because chess draws a lot, and Fine is like, come on, man, like,
well we'll cap it at thirty six games that that's enough,
and Fee and Fisher is like, okay, you do this
or I'm out, and the chess federations like, okay, he's bluffing, right,
he'll come around eventually. Fisher, instead of doing that, resigns

(11:42):
his title because he says FIDE won't let me defend it,
so I'm resigning, which like that he's not what happens Like,
it's not the Fee didn't let you defend your title,
it's you refuse to play unless they stacked the rules
the way you wanted them to be, and then you
like resigned. Huh. It's very weird. And at this point,

(12:05):
so the guy he was supposed to play was Anatoly Karpov,
who's like of the famous castro of Carpov rivalry, and
car Pov is really pissed. But there's something you can
do about it, right, Like, you can't. He can't force
Bobby Fisher to play chess. So Karpov just becomes the
world champion because Fisher refuses to show up. Well, okay, Bobby,

(12:26):
good call. I don't think it seems like you're making
the right move for your career. Yeah, you know at
this point with Fisher is busy doing other stuff. And
by doing other stuff, I mean he's turning into like
a weird fitness bro guy. Awesome. Oh man, is he
becoming like a fucking like fucking chest influencer? Like is
he is he going He's doing He's doing the reverse

(12:47):
Andrew Tate. No. But okan, here's here's the thing that like,
actually he's just doing and Andrew Tate no, because he's
not actually becoming an influence. He this next phase of
his life is he spends twenty years basically in the
wilderness and not talking to anyone, and so well this
I support actually yeah, reappearance, which is actually good at chess,
unlike Andrew Tape. That's true. Although one of my thesis

(13:13):
of this episodes that Fisher is not actually as good
as everyone thinks. He is, just that nobody had ever
seen real chess in the night in like the nineteen seventies.
Like I will do this rant later, but okay, so here, here, here,
here is Bobby Fisher. What he's fucking doing? Well, he's
not playing the World Championship, peop'll see playing. In quote,
every day he drink one or two pint glasses of
carrot juice, one right after another. Dozens of bottles of

(13:36):
vitamin pills, Indian herbal medicines, Mexican rattlesnake pills, lotions, and
exotic keys were piled on tables and ledges everywhere, all
to keep him on what he believed was a strict,
healthful diet and to treat some ailments he had from
time to time. Uh huh, So he's taking rattlesnake pill.
He also this is the other thing he likes, very

(13:57):
very normal man. And so you know he basically like
locked himself in his apartment and what he spends all
his time doing is like looking over chess games and
then yelling about the most people play so loudly that
like people will walk past his apartment and here's someone
yelling and be like, what the fund is going on here?
And The second thing that he's doing, and and this

(14:20):
is another kind of famous Fisher story, is that he's
walking around handing out Nazi pamphlets, which okay, yeah, but
but the thing about this is very and this this
is okay, this is like fully his crank face, right,
because if he wanted to be like an actual Nazi propagandist,
he could have gone to the media that are talking
about them. But instead, what he's doing is he's literally
like like standing on the street corner with pamphlets and

(14:42):
then like putting Nazi pamplets on like people's windshields. Well,
I mean, I guess I do prefer that. Oh, definitely,
he's not a dove not well, okay, well we'll get
to what he is good at. But while this is going,
he refuses to like take work or like make any
money from endorsements, which again everyone's trying to pay him.

(15:05):
He just refused to sign contracts at this point because
he's so paranoid um And so this means that he
has no money, right, and he blows through all of
his original Chess World Championship money, and in order to
like survive, he starts living off his sister's social security
checks he like he's doing he's actually doing a reverse

(15:28):
Hitler here. Yeah, she has fully turned into like at
a California beach bump. He's like like moving from rented
room to rented room, like he he At one point
he moves in with his sister, but like she kicks
him out of his house for zanti Semitism. Wait, so
she's she's but the wait is he's stealing the money
from her she wanted. She just doesn't want him in
the house. I guess that makes sense because like she

(15:50):
this is like like but basically until this incident where
he gets like even till the end of his life,
really like his mom still keeps in touch with him,
like they're still talking, but they like have an agree
and never talked about politics because Fisher will start ranting
about anti Semitic will conspiracies. Yeah, I mean that's normally Yeah, okay,
very very Yeah. I don't know, I don't know what

(16:13):
you do with Bobby Fisher. I'm not gonna I'm not
gonna back Bobby Fisher's mom. Her, she's she's made a
lot of mistakes, though, I think we can agree on that. Yeah,
I mean I would argue a lot of it isn't
her fault, like it was like a lot of a
lot of what happens to Bobby Fisher is literally just like,
do you know how hard it is to raise two
children as a single mom who also has also was

(16:33):
working class in like nineteen nineteen, Like yeah, it's like
it's it's I don't know. She she she has a
hard time, but she has like an impossible task and
I don't know, maybe maybe don't let him go to
Cuba with the guy were in the swastika pin But
I don't know the other thing that's going on this period.

(16:54):
I feel like this was Castro Cuba, right, No, that
that was that was prey was Yeah, this is Batista Cuba. Okay,
that makes it. I feel like Castro Cuba probably wouldn't
let a guy with a swastika pin in, right, that
has to be one thing to to be fair, to
be fair, he did really like Franco, So yeah, you

(17:15):
never know, you never know, Okay, so did the everything
a body? Fisher like one of his other he's like
he's just like from the time he wins the World Championship,
he becomes absolutely convinced the kids are trying to kill him,
and so he starts walking around with like like basically
like belts of potions they're supposed to save him, trying
to poison him. At one point later, she starts wearing

(17:35):
like the modern equivalent of like like a six hundred
buff coat. He's wearing this like leather jacket that's like
like five inches thick, because he's like, if I try
to stab me, will stop. He's okay, I was. I
was worried you were going to be like, yeah, he
started walking them with a bunch of guns and this
was going to go in a doctor. But potions and

(17:56):
leather armor is pretty cool. He is. He has kidded
out like he's heading the Balder's Gate. Yeah, it's yeah,
Like as a result of this, right, he like it
gets to the point where nobody even recognizes him as
Bobby Fisher anymore. Um, there's at one point there's a
very famous story about him where so okay, he's in California.

(18:17):
He's like wandering around the streets and there's a there's
a robbery nearby, and the cops think that he matches
the description of the of the suspect, so they arrest
him and then they just keep him there because I
think he's sketchy, and he after this happens, he writes
this pamphlet called I was tortured in the Pasadena jail House,

(18:38):
And I'm going to read a little bit of it
because I think it gets at what's going on in
his mind. At this point, I was immediately handcuffed in
a brutal fashion. The police pushed my hands away way
up my back and caused me considerable discomfort and pain. Later,
I saw that the metal had torn into the flush
of both my wrists. I was put in a police car,
but it was unable to move far back enough for
them to close the door because there was some kind

(19:00):
of hump in the middle of the back seat. After
several attempts to shut the door by brutally pushing my
right leg with his left leg, the officer finally seceeded
in closing the door by pushing my leg in with
the door itself. That that sentence has been going on
for like a century. Yeah. Later I saw them my
right knee head turned black and blue, and like, you know,

(19:21):
like he the stuff he's talking about. Like he starts talking.
He talks about how he was like stripped naked and
like forced to say, in an empty cell with no
food or water, and like a lot of people kind
of make fun of this, and I think it's absolutely plausible,
Like this is all stuff that like you know people
people who I know have been in jail of like
had cops do this to you? Because cops. But on
the other hand, he's like fully in crank but mode

(19:43):
now and he's fully convinced that like this entire thing
is a setup and it's been like orchestrated by like
well the Jews, because he's unbelievably he's metic at this point.
He's convinced that like this whole thing is like a
government plot. And you know, this is the thing about this,
right is if he'd actually gone to like the New
at times and been like, hey, I got tortured by

(20:03):
the cops, they would have covered it, right, Like he
every everyone still wants to talk to him, but instead
he's fully he's fully a crank now and he just
like publishes his pamphlet with like a thousand dollars of
his own money and like walks around handing out copies
like on the street to people. And meanwhile, like like

(20:23):
and people are people are like just this is like
the nine eighties, they're still just throwing money at him, right,
Like at one point, so people were willing to take
to spend ten thou dollars literally just take his picture
and he's like, no, no, you can't take a picture.
You know, and you know that this is this is
how he spends the eighties is just sort of like
another crank, like on the street, screaming about like Jewish conspiracies.

(20:46):
And I think like if he was in twenty three, right,
I think he actually would have done great like he
you know, he he basically would have been He basically
would have been ye. Right, you have a podcast, you
have like a giant entourage of like people who kind
of have their ship together when he were also Nazis.
But like, you know, part of part of thinking about
this period is, you know, the nineteen eighties have the
white power movement, but they don't have the kind of

(21:08):
like media infrastructure that like someone like Alex Jones or
for example, happen. No, they're they're just starting to build it.
You got guys, what years this again? Uh? Well, it's
it's it's it's like the whole nineteen eighties. I think, Yeah,
so you've got guys like Tom Metzger and David Duke,
and they're building media, but most of it is like
what you'd call zenes and stuff coming at you have

(21:28):
stuff like the Liberty Lobby, Willis Carto. We're gonna get
to this out there with a lot more kind of
a sophisticated stuff, but it is it is not. They
do not have the kind of media reach that they yeah,
and and the other thing about this world like, so
it's not clear to be if any of these guys
ever tried to contact Fisher. Um. It's possible they did,
but the problem is he's only port of contact was

(21:51):
that Jewish family that he sends sent all the anti
sebody conpiracies too, so no one can actually get in
contact with him because like his friends to stop talking
to him because they were like, Okay, you're too much
of an anti Semite, like I'm Jewish, Like okay. But eventually,
in Spasky, like I don't I remember exactly how he did,
he he finally finds some way to like get in

(22:12):
contact with Fisher about doing like a rematch the World
championship with like two point five million dollars on the line.
Um Spasky's original partner like pulls out of this because
he realizes that Bobby Fisher was a Nazi and these
were the heavy days when like people occasionally would see
someone who's a Nazi and be like, I'm not going
to work with this guy. But you know who will

(22:33):
wait wait ship, that's oh boy, Um, you know who
won't work with Nazis. That's right, that's right, that's right.
The podcasters who advertise the advertisements who podcast on this ship. Ah,
we're back. Wow. That was easily our best pull the advertising. Uh,

(22:57):
Sophie had to drop off because her phone is ringing
off the hook from companies that want us to represent
them on our show. Oh is is is x on
Mobile on the phone, Sophie. Oh that's a huge get.
I'm very excited. Mia, We we got the x on
mobile account. Um, yeah, very excited. X on Mobiles going

(23:19):
green so by I don't know, let's say seventy years ship,
so zero zero emissions from x on. Everybody get on
the x on train, every single oil rig green x
XNS goal is no animals harmed by oil spills by

(23:42):
and they're going to make that a reality by nuking
the ocean. Wow, brave, heroic, courageous, Thank you x In anyway, Mia,
let's continue. So all right, when the last let's Bobby Fisher, right,
he people people are refusing to work with him because
he's a Nazi. So okay, what what what? What do you?
What is he saying that people are like, this guy's

(24:02):
a Nazi. Eventually a he has like a kind of relationship.
He's like, how old is he in the nineties, like
late forties, has this kind of relationship with like an
eighteen year old and he's gonna do this like that.
To be fair, it's not great to be fair to

(24:23):
Bobby Fisher. I don't I couldn't find any evidence that
he actually did anything with anyone underage, but he really
seems to like like eighteen and nineteen year olds. Um.
And at one point one of like this, this woman
named Kita like gets a talking to him and uh,
this this is this is a description of what of
what he's saying. This is still a night just like

(24:43):
in like nineteen he told her that the reason he
wasn't playing like chess was because the Russians cheat, and
over the course of future letters and phone calls, he
elaborated on his theory regarding how the game's played by
Kasparov and Karpov had all been pre arranged, and that
he believed that Kasparov and Karpov react the Asians of
the Russian regime. He asked if she was Jewish, everyone

(25:04):
who was Soviet and everyone who is Jewish cannot be trusted,
he affirmed, So, all right, on the one hand, we
we we got some menti Semitism here um. But I
also I also wanted there's two other things I want
to focus on. One is that okay, ay, he's still
mad about those people drawing in a tournament in nineteen
seventy It's now nineteen ninety and two. Okay, so like

(25:28):
there was kind of collusion going on between some of
the Soviet grandmasters the Kasparov and Karpov games, and I
kind of emphasize this enough. Are absolutely not being rapped,
This is nonsense. Castrov and Karpov, for people who don't know,
are like the two best chess Cat Cat Karpov basically
from by nine seventy five, and then Castrov comes in

(25:49):
in like the mid eighties, and these two are the best,
indisputedly the best players in the world. Who aren't Nam
Bobby Fisher for like this entire period, And okay, I
actually think cast rows better than Fisher, wasn't his height,
but castrovver never gets to play him. Um, cast raph
and Karpov played like a bunch of World championships against
each other, and they fucking hate each other. It's not

(26:11):
clear to me if any other two players in the
entire history of competitive chests have ever hated each other
as much as Casparov and Karpov do. Uh Like, Kasparov
like to this day, is a Russian dissident. Karpov is
like the Soviet Golden Boys, as best as I could tell,
Like to this, this rivalry starts in the eighties. It
is now three they still hate each other. Um Karpov

(26:32):
is now a Putin loyalist at Kasparov's still I guess
the Russian dissident. Like at one point, it gets the
point where in one of the World Championship matches both
sides have like rivaling groups of like hypnotists and mystics
and each like sitting sitting in the room trying to
like like hypnotize and counteract the hypnosis. It's it's wild
these people just like I kind of amazize enough how

(26:53):
much these people just spy each other, and how much
Bobby Fisher has just like completely gone off the rails
are doing at this whole thing is staged. And for
Fisher meanwhile, is like he's living in his tiny apartment
that is just entirely filled with a combination of like
books and of cassette tapes that he recorded of his
anti Semitic conspiracy theories. And I tried to track these

(27:13):
down and I couldn't find them. I don't know, maybe
they exist somewhere, but um from Endgame, apparently they were
materials for quote a book that would prove how the
Soviets cheated in Chess. Now. And the other thing he's
still mad about is Nixon. It turned out actually lied
to him when he said he'd come to the White
House and never let him go to the White House,
which I guess is what you get for trusting Richard Nixon. Yeah,

(27:37):
not not, not ever, gonna be your best bet. And
he is still mad about this, like twenty years later,
he is like incensed you get to go to the
White House. But while all of this is going on
behind the scenes, that the Cranks are still turning on
this sort of like comeback match like Bobby Fisher Boris Spassky,

(27:59):
like World Champion jab rematch thing, and eventually they find
someone willing to pay five million dollars from a match.
That guy's name is oh boy, I I Jeddah's mere
velis Vic. He's often just called Gazda Jesda, which is
roughly means Jesda the boss who is the president of
the Judo Scanning Bank and what remains of Yugoslavia. And

(28:23):
it is at this point in the career of Bobby Fisher,
as he is about to play his first professional match
of chess in almost twenty years in the remains of Yugoslavia,
that we need to talk about the Bosnian genocide. Oh boy, yeah,
not not not. I'm gonna I'm gonna bet he has
fun opinions on on Bosnian's Yeah, oh yeah, it's oh boy.

(28:47):
So all right, before we go any further, I need
to lay out an accusation here, which is that I
think that most of the chess accounts of Bobby Fisher's
actions in this period are at the very least lying
to the readers by omission. And I think a lot
of them are a definitely engaging in genocide denial by
not telling their readers, like what he's going on in
you like quote unquote Yugoslavia because it's Poslavia at this point. No, No,

(29:08):
it's yeah, Serbia and Bosnia and Hena right, um, well,
and and like you know, and the other thing about this,
right is it like the place that yeah, well, so
it's set two and like technically speaking, there is a
country called Yugoslavia. And when when people write about this
stuff like, oh, you're playing Yugoslavia, but this is this
is not like Yugoslavia in the sense of like the

(29:30):
state that had existed up until this point. This is
a basically a rump state controlled by genocidal Serbian ethno nationalists.
And but by the time Bobby Fisher gets there, and
he gets there in late next nty two, right, the
siege of Sarajevo has already begun. There's a bunch of
peace protesters have already been gunned down by Serbian militias. Uh,
the Yugoslav People's RB quote unquote is just fully under

(29:52):
control of the sort of Serbiano nationalists. Is shelling the
city of Sarajevo, and like, and the other thing that's
important to know about important to understand about out when
Fisher gets there, is that the Bosnian genocide has already started,
right but Bossians Bosnians are already you know, being Bossian
Muslims are being routed up and killed by Serbian forces.
Serbian militias have a ready setup concentration camps that the

(30:13):
sort of like the mass rape of Bossian women has started.
And you know, we are like by the time Fisher
is going to this place to to do his first
public appearance in twenty years, we are like well into
one of the worst things to happen in Europe in
a century that saw Europe have some of the worst
things that's ever happened to two d thousand year history
of humanity. And yeah, and so like by the time

(30:35):
that by the time the term and has started, like
there are already fifty thousand people dead in the series
of wars that sort of the Serbian ethno nationalists have
waged against Croatia and Bosnia. And you know, okay, like
so you get like to get a sort of sense
of how bad things are if you're Bosnian. Right, So
the Serbian like ether nationalists have at this point, they
have taken control of like one of the world's best

(30:58):
equipped armies, right, like you go, Slavia was like a
giant arms I mean. For an idea of how good
relatively competent the Yugoslavian military was, read Balkan history all
the way up to the period where Tito takes over,
and then read Balkan history for the period where Tito
was in power, Like yeah, they keep the Balkans for

(31:19):
quite a while from going to war and no one
else really does that. Yeah, and you know, and and
but the problem is again by this point, like does
the serpients have just fully taken over that that way?
And like when when when the when the war against
when when the creations like trying to like when the
creations like leave Yugoslavia because their their alternative is staying
in there and being ruled by like Milosavik and these

(31:40):
sort of like like just absolutely yeah, yeah, Like by
the time they start this, like the creations are literally
they are like rating their own museums and like going
to film sets trying to find old world rule two
World wards, old World War God, why can I not
say World War two cheese Wow hacking a fraud, just

(32:02):
call it w W two. Yeah. Yeah, they're they're finding
old w W. That's that's my favorite way to say it. Yeah,
like like they are, they're they're they're like in film
sets recovering weapons that were originally like dropped, like dropping
the creation by Tito and the Partisans in nine And
you know, okay, so the create If you think the
creations are in bad shape, those are the people the

(32:24):
Bosnians are buying weapons from. Are the guys raiding their
own museums for World War two errow weapons? Ah, so
that's gonna go well yeah, yeah, So Balie Fisher is
playing in a chess tournament in a country that has
already committed a genocide. Right there, they are, they're already
doing it. It has already started, and this entire tournament
is being run as a pr by Gaza Jesda as

(32:47):
this you know, the sort of like statement against like
the U S and U N like UH sanctions against
Serbia and like, you know, we're gonna show the world
how ridiculous these like oppressive sanctions are. And you know,
you can talk about how much good like Sanctius did
or didn't do. I mean, there's one part of it
don't like doesn't get talked about very much, which is
that so there's a weapons in Bargo, right that's imposed

(33:07):
on on Yugoslavia, but it's also Milita. It pushes for
it to get imposed on literally everyone, which means that
you know, this represent Bargo is kind of find for like,
serve the Serbian army because they already have all these weapons.
But you know, the Bosnians can't now like our under
sanctions and can't buy weapons anymore, and you know, okay,

(33:28):
so so in in an effort to stop violence, the
international community limited the group of people who already didn't
have guns from getting more guns, and then they were
victims of a genocide. Good thing that's never happened again, yep,
oh god. And you know, and like part part of
the other story about this is like the Serbians really think,

(33:49):
and they're right for a lot of the period of
time is going on, like they think they can get
the West under side, because the West will be like, oh,
we need them to fight like Islamic extremism. And you
know that famously never led to anything absolutely horrific happening.
Uh then or later. But you know the reason I'm
talking about all of this is, you know, the economic
sanctions are still sort of reaching havoc in Serbia, and

(34:12):
but bypassing those sanctions are is like one of gozags
like main jobs. So this guy, the guy who's like
paying for this tournament, right, is running like one of
the largest banks that like remains in sort of like
this like shattered like Yugoslavia shell. The problem is it's
a ponzi scheme um. So he's offering fifteen percent returns

(34:33):
on deposits. Everyone's like, well, look at look, look like
how connected he is to like the Serbian political class,
Like would our leaders ever associate with someone crooked? No,
this must be fine. It must be that he can
just get returns because he's not greedy. And Okay, So
that's the part that like we can confirm he was doing,
is is that he's running this ponzi scheme um. Everything

(34:57):
I feel like it is really murky. There's there's the
like persistent claims that he was smuggling weapons from Israel
to the Serbian army. Um. Yeah, the source of this
is is someone who was the former Serbian Minister of Defense,
who like testified against BLOCIFIC at the Hague. I don't know,
I think it's possible. I I'm not gonna like definitively
say it's true, because I couldn't confirm it. But what

(35:22):
what does seem to have been true is that this
bank is part of how the Serbian government is avoiding
UN sanctions. Um melosivic very quickly like the when you know,
when when we start start, when he starts all of
these wars, right, he very quickly seizes like billions of
dollars in foreign deposits in like Serbian banks, in order
to get ahold of the value incredibly valuable U s
dollars they contain. Now, okay, so a little bit of

(35:42):
economics and stuff. You need U s dollars to buy things.
You typically have to be in the four of US dollars.
One of the most important things you need to buy
with that is oil um, which can like it's very
difficult to buy all of us not in U S
dollars um and you know, but by getting people to
invest like a real American dollars or like German marks
in this ponzi scheme, which you can either buy things

(36:03):
from Germany, you're used to get like dollars, the government's
able to bypass the sanctions, and the bank itself at
very least once and probably other times seems to have
been like directly running oil through the blockade. Now just
to also claims that milosa Vic like forced him to
fund a bunch of paramilitary like death squads, and I
don't know, like the guy's a pathological liar, so who

(36:27):
knows that that's true. On the other hand, there are
a bunch of death squads in this period that are
getting funded by partially the Serbian government and partially like
incredible sketchy story, So who knows he might actually be
telling the truth here. It's unclear. But you know, of
course the thing that he's also just stealing an enormous
amount of money, because again this is all a POSEI scheme.
And hilariously, this this whole whole like show match that

(36:51):
he's funding is actually like one of the things that
brings down his bank. Because so she just from the
Washington Post the court act it alleging that the bank
had failed to make promise payments to Private Enterprise, which
is another bank, including those for leasing this sevet Ley
Stephen the resort where Jalstis staged the opening games of

(37:11):
the chess match between Bobby Fisher and Boris Boris Spasky
last September. So he like defaults on like his rent
payment for this resort, and the court seeses like a
bunch of this sort of oil that he was running
through the blockade. And at this point everyone begins to
sort of realize that, wait, hold on, this is a
Ponzi scheme, and he he like flees to uh he

(37:36):
he flees to Israel. And then later on it is
like sentences tend used for like financial crime, so that
this is the guy who's running the show match. Um,
and okay, here here's from endgame about sort of what
the effect of this show matches. When the match's venue
was moved to Belgrade, Slabadel Milosovic, the president of Serbia,
met Bobby and Spassky and asked to be photographed with

(37:58):
the two. He used the Asian to trumpet is propaganda
to the international press, quote, this match is important because
it has played well. Yugoslavia is under unjustified blockade that
in its best ways proves that chess and sports cannot
be limited by politics. Melosavik was later charged with crimes
against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague

(38:18):
and died in prison. He sure did. Yeah, but you know,
the really depressing thing about this is like this pr
effort worked, Right, there are vast swas so sort of
the international left, including like mainstream progressives you like wouldn't
expect to be, you know, backing a genocidal fascist who
will to this day hold that like what happened to

(38:40):
Yugoslavia was actually like NATO tow and apart from being socialist.
And you know, like never mind the fact that Milosivik
was a career banker who is like he is the
guy who like does a bunch of structural adjustments, right,
like he like he became the butcher of the old
social economy before he became the butcher of Bosnia. And
you know, never mind that like his turn to like
genocidal ethno nationalism is like what the destroyed Yugoslavia. Never

(39:02):
mind that like Serbian fascist carry out a genocide and
I was pulled off another one. Like there are like
enormous numbers of people who today believe that, like what
what happened in this war was like Serb resistance and
NATO imperialism is like okay, like yeah, like NATO sucks. Also,
these people were trying to kill every Muslim in Bosnia
and they almost did it. And this pr thing right,

(39:23):
like the other thing about about the Fisher tournaments, like
the kind of pryamis this is also a key part
of how of how the Serbian regime is able to
sort of like keep like keep anyone else from getting
involved in this by sort of playing different international powers
off each other so I could get more time to
seize land and do the genocide. And you know, okay,

(39:44):
So Fisher doesn't care about this ship, like he's like, yeah,
fuck it, like I'll I'll do I'll do Popaganti for blows.
This is fine. Um, the US tries to stop Fisher
from playing the show match. So right before like he's
about to leave for uh for Belgrade, the US Treasury
sends him a letter that's like, do not go. It

(40:07):
is a violation of the sanctions that we put out.
I'm going to read from the letter violations of the
Executive Order, which is the sections are punishable by civil
penalties not exceeding ten tho dollars per violation and by
criminal penalties not exceeding two or dollars per individual, ten
years in prison, or both. You're hereby directed to refrain
from engaging in any of the activities described above, and Fisher.

(40:32):
Fisher's lawyer tells Fisher like, don't play this, like this
is actually gonna go really badly for you, and Bobby
Fishers like that, fuck you, like I'm going to I'm
going to play this charter, but the US government can't
tell me what to do, and so, you know he does,
but you know it is in sort of classic like
Bobby Fisher fashioned. Um. He he throws just another giant
chess like temper tantrum, his list of demands, continuing to

(40:55):
create yeah, every single time, every single time, like so consistent, yea,
and every single time so will sets up a chess batter.
They're like, Bobby Fisher will be reasonable those times, like no, no,
you're you are not going to be the person that
make Bobby Fisher behave like a noble human being. He's
like physically yeah, and then this is this is this

(41:16):
I don't I don't know. I think this might be
the funniest one of these that he does. His list
of demands continued to grow. Justice strategy of appeasement was
to give him whatever he wanted, even though the item
might not have been mentioned in the contract. Bobby rejected
six tables as inadequate before asking for one from the
nineteen fifty Chess Olympics and Dubrovnik. Even even that one

(41:38):
had to be slightly altered by a carpenter to satisfy
his demands. The pieces had to have the right hefton
color when he shows the same set that had been
played in the Dubrovnik Olympics. He particularly liked the small
color contrast dome on the bishop's head, which prevented their
being confused with ponds, which like, you're like one of
the best chess players, Ever, how are you getting confused

(41:59):
between a bishop in a pawn? Like what? Okay, I
don't know, Baffle, It's difficult to believe. But Bobby rejected
one set because the length of the Night's nose was
too long. The anti Semitic symbolism was hardly lost on
those who heard the complaint. Oh my god, oh my god. Yeah,

(42:19):
come on, come on, man, don't yeah fucking calling your
chest pieces Like yeah, what do you? What do you
even say? To that, what do you say to a
man who's so racist? He's racist? He scrutinizes his chest
pieces to see if they have Semitic noses, Like what

(42:42):
is well, giving five million dollars, I don't know if
this is what keeps happening. They just ken't just keep
giving him money. So all right, So he shows up
and he plays this match, and a ship tone of
journalist show up to cover this, and literally there were
people being herded into concentration two and a half hours
away from where this match is being played, right, and

(43:04):
the sort of like funk that, like there's a chess
match going on and these people and they never think
about the journalists, right, you know, Okay, it would have
cost them like zero total dollars right to go cover
the gender side that was happening. They have to pay
one thousand dollars to cover the event. And while they're
covering the event, they get some classic Bobby Fisher lines.

(43:25):
So there's the thing things he says to the press. Quote,
Soviet communism is basically a mask for Bolshevism, which is
a mask for Judaism. Okay, I mean that's pretty basic stuff. Yeah,
But but the thing that tarts about the right. It's like, okay,
so there's like modern versions of it, right, but like
normally they have like the Democratic parties and mask bullshist,
But like, what do you mean Soviet communism is a

(43:45):
mask for Bolshevism. It's the same thing, like, yeah, yeah,
it is weird to say that Soviet Communism is a
mask for Bolshevists. I don't even think about that, but yes,
that is deeply peculiar. He hasn't like saying these eos
are disguising themselves as capitalists. Well they're not really. The

(44:05):
other thing is funny about this is like when when
you Rea sa boy fish, like you will constantly hear
people like screaming about how he has a hundred and
eight i Q and it's like he's just saying ship
like like he can't even keep his anti Semitism into
like coherent anti Semitic steps like a normal Nazi can.
He's just saying this stuff. Um. He also pulls like

(44:27):
another classic of the anti Semite genre and does the
like I'm not an anti Semite because Jews are Semites,
and I'm sorry because Arabs are Semites and I'm not
anti Arab, which is like, you know, he he's really
so he's developing the repertoire of what will become like
the modern anti Semitic stuff. Um, he has another lion bree.
He says. Someone asked him how he's doing in chess,
and he says, I think I'm doing quite well considering

(44:47):
I've been blacklisted for the last twenty years by World Jewelry,
which is just like, you know, he's just saying this
to like a bunch of reporters, and then they all
immediately forget about this, and you know, the genocide that
is going on two hour is away, and you know,
everyone's back to just comparing him to Picasso and Mozart
and being like, oh my god, I can't believe I
got a witness like Bobby Fisher playing again. And you know, okay,

(45:10):
So I think there's two things going on here. One
is that like a huge just like this is true
of the press basically forever, is that a huge portion
of the press corps are made up of just like
absolute hacks who just don't give a ship and in
this case also just like perfect islamophobes, so they just
you know, don't care about the genocide happening outside the window.
And the second part about it is that they're sort

(45:32):
of like bewitched by this chess, right, and I think,
like we we have a better perspective on this than
they do, because you know, this is the year I
have seen god played chess. I have watched ALFA zero
and AI program like tear a thirty six hundred rated
bought apart like tissue paper in a game that like
only bears like a tenuous resemblance to anything you would

(45:53):
called chess. Right, Like, I can log into YouTube right
now and watch like Magnus carlsoner like dingly it rand
on cork like the six shif anyone's ever seen, and
you know, and like and part of all these countries,
like people just better at chess now than they used
to be, right, all these people who are like causing,
who are just like calling belly Fisher Pacassa. It's like, yeah, okay,
like we we we have games of chess, so you

(46:14):
can look at right now that would have made every
single one of these people's brains explode. Like no nobody
nobody writes about Magnus Carlson like he's Picasso, even though
again Carlson is is better than Fisher is like it's
it's basically like indisputedly is better than Fisher is, and
nobody calls him this like we we we no longer
have to respect Bubby Fisher's chest. It is the year three.
My dishwasher can beat him, not a joke, Actually could

(46:37):
My My dishwasher has enough computing power. And it's a
piece of ship, but it has enough computing power to
run a program powerful love to beat Bobby Fisher. And
I'm sick and tired of pretending that, like that's not
true anymore. And you know, you know, you know what
your dishwasher couldn't do. It's fucking take me on at
at warhammer. That's true. It actually probably points of orcs

(47:00):
versus two thousand points of whatever you want to pick.
I'll throw your ass down. Come on, dishwasher, you can't
even paint. You're not gonna be able to get three
colors in a base on those models. So I win
by default. Dishwasher, you can because because you you just
you might be able to make that work. Yeah, but

(47:21):
you know, okay, like back to what's happening here, right,
is even even in the nineties, right, it's been twenty
years as he did this. The Cold War is basically over,
but the sort of mythos of Fisher is like still
powerful enough that like all of these people are are
just sitting there while the genocide is happening two hours
away and are being like, oh hey, look it's Bobby Fisher.
He's playing all the chess again. And you know this, this,

(47:44):
this all is an enormous like pr success for militia
Vick is almost pr success for everyone involved in this
or genocide, and Bobby Fishers like, okay, I can I
can parlay this into getting a chess car beer back. Um.
The problem is that in December of two he gets
an indictment from a grand jury for violating the sanctions
in the US. So instead of trying to rechart a

(48:07):
chef's career, he's like desperately scrambling across Europe with like
some members of people who I think are like part
of like the Hungarian royal family or something, trying to
like desperately not get like arrested for being a wanted
criminal for breaking these sanctions. But you know who's not
a wanted criminal for breaking sanctions. I don't know if

(48:28):
we can promise that it's roughly fifty percent of our sponsors.
I feel confident that it's somewhere around half of them
we can prove have never been forced. Okay, you know, um,
just just roll the ads. We're back. Uh and wow,

(48:52):
I really enjoyed those ads for the Hungarian royal family. Uh. Hey, look,
the current president of Hungary not great. Why not have
a king again? It went great the last time Austro
Hungary had a king, everything went swimmingly. He made good
decisions and that's why everyone was. They were so happy

(49:15):
with their king that they were like, let's try a
completely different series of forms of government. Yeah, it was great. Look, look,
the First World War, as we all know, started, there
was no war before that. Every every because because Austro
Hungary was it was it was Yeah, it's because their
king went on vacation. He just wasn't watching. Yeah. So

(49:36):
all right. Well one of the one of the things
that so okay at this point, like the press, the
press is finally started to notice that bebby Fishers and
anti semit and their immediate thing is like, oh, it's
because he's mentally ill. Yeah, like people like that. They
were they were like chess psychologists brought in too, like

(49:57):
diagnose him? What is the chess psychology? Just how do
you are they are they diagnosing him based on how
he chesses did that? Because that seems like a shift,
that seems like there were so many chess psychologists in
this story. It is I didn't I didn't know this
existed until, like I, I read a lot of chess books.
Like I, I played chess for years. I didn't know

(50:18):
chess psychology existed until I opened these books, and suddenly
there was like seventeen chess psychologists trying to figure out
I probably Fisher is okay, no, no, it's I. I
get parts of this because, like I think a psychologist
could tell a lot of people about how they play Warhammer.
For example, Dark Elder player probably shouldn't be allowed to
own guns. Reasonable, but you know, okay, like all these

(50:41):
people are like making a lot of Warhammer jokes for
about about six percent of the audience. You know, it's
probably higher for that, it's probably like eight percent at
least maybe nine that that seems good, you know, And
like I I think what's happening with this whole short
brobably Fisher like mentally ill thing is just that like, well,

(51:01):
these two things. One is that they're they're they're treating
him in the template of like, oh, there's like the
like the mad genius who's like so smart that he
like like goes insane in the end. It's like no,
like he's not actually that smart. A and B Like
he he's like it's not that he's man deal, he's
just a Nazi. And people just like cannot get over
that this person who had been the like personal hero

(51:23):
against the Soviets is like, you know, if you could
just be like a completely run of the mill Nazi,
not even like a particularly good Nazi propagandist, just like
a completely run of the mill Nazi yelling about people
on the street. Now, okay, there are a couple of
things that Bobby Fisher does later in life that are
like relatively famous. One of his biggest claims of fames

(51:45):
is he invents this game called Fisher Random Chess, which
is his chest variant were like the Fish. Fisher has
this theory that like, like the recent Chess sucks, everyone
has to learn openings, which is true, you have to
learn like a million moons of opening And there's all
this theory and it's very annoying because people someone will
just come in like having spent the last like seventeen
years studying exactly one move order. And so he's like, okay,

(52:08):
well what what what if he randomized the pieces on
the back of the like on the back of the
board's location, so that you can't like plan what you're
gonna do. Um, And this is a very this is supposedly,
very famously a thing that Value Fisher invented. I'm gonna
read this passage from Endgame. Eventually Bobby shifted his monologues
from hatred of Jews to chess. He became angry, however,

(52:29):
when Laslow showed him a book published in nineteen ten
by the Croatian writer ezeld Or Gross. This book described
a variat of chess that seemed to be the forerunner
of Fisher random with the exact same rules. Muttering something
about Gross being Jewish, Bobby went to change the rules
of his variation to make it different from Grosses. So yeah,

(52:51):
he also this is also the period where he starts
getting obsessed with like preserving his genius by having a
child and like preserving his gene pool. So he starts
putting out like ads in the newspaper for like a girlfriend. Um,
he's there's description of its quote they must be one
blonde and blue eyed, two young, three beautiful, and four

(53:14):
a serious chess player. And stunningly this doesn't work for
reasons that are in fact in cape like well, we'll
never understand why this failed, etcetera, etcetera. Um, he also
starts getting like he gets progressively more into like like
he he starts reading what's his name, David L. Hogan,

(53:37):
who's one of like the most world's mold like probably
most influential Holocaust deniers, and you know, and but by
by by the end of the nineties, he started doing
radio interviews again. But the interviews are just like him
doing anti Semitic rants. Like there's there's one where he
just like he he gets on this interview and it

(53:58):
starts and then copletely out of nowhere, she just he's like,
let me say a few words about the Jews, and
it starts ranking about the Holocaust, and you know, and
she also does the like yeah, and the host is like, wait,
aren't you Jewish? And Bobby does does the thing again
where he was like, I will I will go to
the little boy's room and like with my dick out
and it was just like Bobby Man, like I mean

(54:22):
is the title of his episode. At least he's consistent.
At least he's consistent. You know, you got to respect
that respect is the wrong word. Yeah. Yeah, And this
is not even like the most semitic anti Semitic thing
he says in Radio Interess. In his proo, he also
is getting like very very hardcore anti American, but like
from the from the anti Semiti direction. And there's a

(54:44):
story about so he's in Japan. He lives in Japan
for a little bit, and he has a story where
he goes to like he goes to a movie theater
to like walk. I forget what the name of the
movie is, but it's it's it's some movie about Pearl
Harbor and when when when when like Pearl Harbor starts
like maybe I don't remember, I don't know if it
ever said what it was, but he like like so

(55:06):
that which is also, by the way, the best Pearl
Harbor movie. No, seriously, it was amazing. It was made
with both like Japanese and American film cruise. It's a
incredible movie. Yeah, yeah, check it out. Yeah, it came
out in yeah, so you might. But he's like, so
you guess the part where like they're they're doing the

(55:26):
comic they're doing like the raids on Battleship Row, and
like he he like jumps up and starts clapping, and
he's like every everyone else in the theater is like
a ram Japanese pirs, like why is this dude clapping
at Pearl Harbor And he's just like incredibly confused. Why
no one else it's like sitting there clapping. It's it's

(55:49):
it's it's the whole thing. She also there's another thing,
what do you every thing. He's obsessed with the end
of his life. So he has this like storage locker
that he put like some it was annotated chess games in,
but he doesn't He never pays the deposits, and so
eventually they like still hold his stuff even until they
changes the deposits. But then the company gets brought by
another company. They're like looking through their books, You're like, Okay,

(56:11):
we have the storage locker full of crap that's not
being paid for, so we're gonna auction it off. And
Bobby Fisher like someone someone buys all of the stuff
in the box and gives it to him. But for
the rest of his life he he has this giant
rant he goes on anytime someone interviews him about how
he got robbed and how the rebellions of dollars and
merchandise in it, and how there was like a giant
Jewish conspiracy, and about how like Bill Clinton was secretly

(56:34):
Jewish and like was conspiring to take the ship that's
like like holding container from him. It's I don't know,
it's it's incredibly strange and and all of this culminates
in this radio interview that he gives in the Philippines
on nine eleven. Like literally this is like like like

(56:56):
several hours after the towers have gone down. So I
just want to play a little bit of like you
can get a sense of like what Bobby Fisher sounds
like when on this this thing that his interview is
giving a nine eleven to a Filipino radio stations are
wonderful time for them in the US to get that
kick in say the Jews, the Jews are a criminal people. Thing.

(57:23):
You don't get children, criminal ying factors they made up.
He was increasingly yeah that oh oh boy, yeah, okay,
So like it's a trip. There's like you there's interesting
parts of it which like you can see where sort

(57:44):
of like a like a lot of modern American political
culture is going like that. You will hear a lot
of people say ship that sounds like that, right, Like
he's just combining it in a kind of weird way. Um,
there's other things I saw I played like a there's
like this interview is like pretty long. He there's just
something like there's kind of this like Trumpian stuff in
it too. He has this whole rants about like nobody

(58:05):
has single handedly done more for the U S than me.
I really believe this. I mean, man, you yeah, like
you played it. You played a game. You played a
move plastic pieces around the board like like like senior
like the like like two of the most powerful American
politicians who have ever lived had to like call you

(58:27):
in order to get you to play the game. And
you know, so the most famous part of and somehow
we like Okay. So as this interview goes on, it
gets progressively more anti semitic, and he goes on this
rant about how he's hoping that like the country will
be taken over by the army and they're like the
they'll like close all the synagogues down and then like

(58:49):
start arresting everyone is Jewish and like executing them. Yeah yeah,
and and you know this, this finally does not go
well for Bobby Fisher. And I think, like you know Fisher,
Fisher's kind of Nazism, I think is it's something that
kind of could have worked in the modern US. But

(59:10):
the problem is, like he hasn't. He's gotten to a
point where she just has no ability to sort of
like like quote unquote hide his power over like all
the modern American Nazis believe this ship. It's just that
like they're they're slightly smarter than he Isn't don't say
it out loud, but you know, he's a couple of
moves behind. You might say, yeah, yeah, and like but
like but you know, he's also he's also simultaneously like

(59:31):
a bunch of moves ahead, right, because if you look
at the lines that he's taking, right, it's like pro
Serbia and the Bosnian genocide, like being against the Iraq
war but also being anti Semitic, Like these are all
coherent political positions in the US. After he dies, it's
just that, like he even has a rant about how
he like like appreciates the cultural purity of Islam because
they're not like degenerating ship, which like could have been

(59:52):
a ye, yet another similarity between Yeah, it's just that
like he he just wasn't like good at doing the
press and this finally Bobby Fisher, like finally after literally
decades of him saying ship like this. And there's a
bunch of other interviews before this that he's given where
he says stuff like this, like finally, you know again

(01:00:16):
and he said he's saying ship like this, like in
a press conference in Belgrade. Well, the genocide is going
on and nobody cared. But he made a mistake, which
is that he said it on nine eleven and yeah,
that's not going to go well. And he he is
the first person on earth to learn that the line
is nine eleven, right right before, right before Gilbert Godfried. Yeah,

(01:00:37):
he even gave that's what Robert's favorite thinks. I I
love Gilbert Godfried's nine eleven jokes. It's yeah, but like
Fisher like, Okay, well, what are the what are the
enduring legacies of this story? When people write about this, right,
like the part they're the most horrified about tends to

(01:01:00):
be the celebrating nine eleven, and they tend to downplay
the part where he says he wants every jew in
the US round it up and killed, like you know,
because like again it's like the thing that he violated
was like what's going to become the sort of sacred
tableau of like nine eleven. But you know, and this
is this is finally the moment where like the chess
community turns on him. He gets kicked out of Fidel,

(01:01:20):
so they let him back in later on, which is okay,
feed a like sure choice, yeah, but like you know,
like yeah, this is this is where we get to
one of the things that I'm I'm optimistic about the
Zoomers for because you really can't exaggerate the degree to
which nine eleven was a religion for Americans for a

(01:01:42):
very like most of the time that I was like,
uh an adolescent um to young adult, and now Zoomer
kids will like, I don't know, photoshop in fucking Burton
Ernie as the tip twin Towers and like think nothing
of it, Like there is it is has been desacralized
to such an extent because of how fucking far we

(01:02:04):
went in the other direction, and that's probably an accessary.
I will say this, I like Fisher, I think is
the is one of the few people who's ever done
and I leventhing who genuinely deserves to be canceled for it,
like it actually deserved to be canceled a long time
before this. This is what she has been saying all
of this ship basically for thirty years, right, I mean

(01:02:25):
actually forty years because he gave his first interview. Were
you talking about like hitting the Jews and like fucking
nineteen sixty six? Look, I think I think on behalf
of cool zone media, in behalf of the United States,
I'd like to say, thank you Osama bin Laden for
canceling getting Bobby Fisher canceled for all of us. Thank you,

(01:02:47):
Yet yet another dub. What what I really like having
health insurance? So shut up. Yeah, you can't get canceled
for that kind of thing anymore, Sophie, you can't, Okay,
So you know it's like you know, I I think
I think a big part about this also was like

(01:03:08):
the fact that everyone put up with this for so long,
was this was a side I think sort of incredible
amount of times. Yeah, people were like this is a
period where it's a man from Saudi Arabia stepped up
to this is this isn't I wonder who would win
in a bin Laden Bobby Fisher anti Semitism off. That

(01:03:29):
would have been a I don't know, pretty pretty pretty
pretty pretty clear that that's an aliens versus predator situation
I've ever heard one, But like, you know, okay, like
like this is like like I guess I might say
Laden did win, so that's true. Yeah, he he lived
longer than Fisher did, so yeah, I'd be like, you know, okay,

(01:03:50):
like like Bobbie Fisher like this was the US is
guy in the could room, where like he he was
America's hero, and like this is this is this is
the guy that he is. But it's interesting Fisher is
smart enough to recognize that he was just like nobody
actually cared about him, right, he was just a sort
of like a tool of like like the American Cold
War machine. But he's a neo Nazi. So the conclusion

(01:04:12):
he draws from this is just like more neo Nazium
the Nazism. But on the other hands, after nine eleven,
the US actually like starts playing to go after him
and in two thousand three of the Justice Department, in
a move that is defined by the Bush administrations and
incredibly questionable grasp on legality, like revokes Fisher's passport without

(01:04:35):
telling him. Now, they can't actually do this. It's funny,
but yeah, like you know, the Bush administration versus Bobby
Fisher is another one of those sort of alien predator things,
like it's not good. Um. In two tho four, Bobby
Fisher is in he's in Japan. He's trying to like

(01:04:58):
fly home to the Philippe and he gets arrested. Now,
this is kind of funny in that like Bobby Fisher
getting rested in Japan is like he he like he
really went to Japan thinking these guys were like his boys.
And then they hold him an airport jail, which is
apparently a thing that exists, and then move him to
a maximum security like immigrant attention facility because he just

(01:05:21):
keeps on like complaining and getting in fights with the
guards and okay, so like yeah, like it's it's like
at one point he starts complaining that his soft boiled
a's were actually hard boiled and this this this leads
to him getting into a fight with his prison guards. Um, Like,
I mean, I mean there's a really big difference there,

(01:05:43):
that's true. I'm like, and then this is like, you know,
solidarity on the egg issue. Yeah, I mean it also
like Bobbie Fisher is not a good guy, right, But
it's also worth noting that like every single Japanese police
officer is at all times two bad days away from
like horse in the Rising Sun flag and hunting down
every Korean in a three mile radius. So this this

(01:06:04):
is another they both suck situation. Yeah, like you said,
alien predator versus predator. And at this point, so Bobby
like is really trying to fight getting extradited into the
US because if they send it back to the US,
the Bush administration will just put his ass in prison
for like a decade. And so she tries to renounce

(01:06:25):
his US citizenship so he gets to put in somewhere else.
Except the problem is to renounce your citizenship like formally,
someone from the embassy has to show up and see
you do it, and the EMPISSOE refuses to send anyone.
So just hand even and renounce your citizenship, right just
read very tries to get asylum. Oh my god, so funny.

(01:06:47):
So yeah, okay, so so for the rest of his life. Right.
He claims that he's not a US citizen, and the
U s citizen, and the US claims that he is
still a US citizen. So she tries to get asylum
and wait, wait for this, wait, it's I I am here. Germany, Cuba,
North Korea, Libya, Iran, Venezuela, Switzerland, and Montenegro, all of

(01:07:08):
whom are like, no funk off, wow, Olibya wouldn't even
take him when Momar Kadafi won't take you, like you
you fair to be fair to bout your fishing here.
This is two thousand three more Margaret Daffi, who's like
posing up to the Bush administration. So this is this
is the worst time to business, is the worst time.

(01:07:30):
But he is also but still it's it's North Korea.
They love taking people and if it they'll piss off
the United States. Yeah, and even they're like, I don't
know about this guy, Like we don't need Korea doesn't
need this press, you know. So all right, and well,

(01:07:51):
while he's in like immigration prison, I don't know how
to preface this, so I'm just gonna read it. Fisher
then announced that he was gonna marry Mayoko what Tai,
his longtime companion. I could be a pawn sacrifice, he
said to the press. But in Chester is such a
thing as pawn promotion when a pawn could become a queen.

(01:08:11):
Bobby Son is my king, and I will become his queen.
I got nothing. I don't know he So they get
married and after nine months, but Bobby is able to
assemble like an incredibly elite team of random guys from Iceland.
And because there's only seven people in Icelands, like these
random guys in Iceland were able to convince the Icelandic

(01:08:33):
parliament to like give him citizenship, and so he's able
to get like I think what he wound up getting
a good one? How the fund did that happen? Well,
here's the thing, though, he hates Iceland. Well, okay, I
guess that's that'sships to true. Yeah, that's a good one.
But I don't know. He's some help and angles. This
Icelandic politics is a joke a bit didn't look Iceland.

(01:09:00):
If you're out there, give me citizenship. You'll get all
of the benefits of having Robert Evans as a citizen.
I I assure you there's some Yeah, we will. We
will be compiling a list which will get after you
give him citizenship. Oh yeah, no, we'll have a long list.
It's gonna You're gonna everyone will be doing real well

(01:09:21):
when I'm a citizen. I'm gonna bring pride to Iceland.
So Bobby, the other hand, he hate he hates Iceland.
He spends the rest of his life just like pissing
off all of his friends. And by by the time
he dies in a hospital. Okay, so he doesn't even
want to be taken to a hospital, but he's like
so fucked up that like his like two remaining friends
are like, okay, we'll bring drops will he dies there

(01:09:42):
and by this time he has like very little left
and okay, this would be the end of the story
of Bobby Fisher, except three years after he died. Sorry
I said it fucking ought to be. Yeah, but it's not,
because he three years after he dies, they have to
dig up his body to settle a egle fight about
who would get all his money, which I think that

(01:10:08):
well because okay, so he does the whole thing where
he was like with several people and I forget which
of his like wives kind of or people he was
with like claimed that someone like their son was his son,
but it turned out that that son was actually another
person's son. So I had to do that. They had

(01:10:29):
to dig up his grave. Well, yeah, that is that
that That is the story of Bobby Fisher Chestnut least
it is. Yeah, he I don't I don't know if
getting to live out the rest of his life in
Iceland is like what he deserved. But he was miserable,
so sometimes that's all you can hope for. Yeah, he

(01:10:53):
died very sad. Well that's that's mostly what I wanted
for Bobby, was for him to die sad because don't
like him. Do you have any plug a bus for us? Mia? Yeah,
I I do a podcast called take It Happen Here
And yeah I'm I'm on Twitter at a c h
R three and you can find me. They're doing stuff

(01:11:17):
cool hell Yeah, Well that's gonna do it for all
of us here at whatever. This is the podcasting emporium
of Mr magorium Um until next week. Don't Play Chess.

(01:11:38):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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