Part Two: The Birth of American Fascism

Robert is joined again by Katy Stoll and Cody Johnston to continue discussing how fascism started in America. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey, everybody, this is behind the Bastards. I'm Robert Evans.
I'm here with Cody Johnston and Katie Stole. And Cody
is furious because something that happened on the literally got
the smoke coming out of his ears so mad. He's
really angry, and there's nothing I can do about it.
There's nothing to do about it because someone was blatantly

(00:21):
wrong online on the internet and they said it and
they said people support it, and I'm so on the internet.
You know what's healthy? This awesome? Good for your heart.
I find that the best way through this is just
to keep reopening wounds and then putting some salt in

(00:42):
it and then talking about it and really focusing on it.
That's good. Have you tried numbing yourself with drugs and alcohol?
Super good? That's what you think. It's all part of that.
That's the next step. Once it's unbearably painful, you consume
whatever you need to get through the next twelve Right.
I always get like these emails and like DM so,

(01:03):
like hey, great show of the show, but like, how
do you keep saying like, yeah, we did, what are
you talking about? I'm never not high? How do you relax?
I don't. I mean, I do drugs and rewatch Community
for the fifth time because it makes me feel like
the world drama in the background I'm I'm listening to

(01:24):
I have to admit I've never read Harry Potter, and
I am listening to them. That sounds soothing and so
that I can't wait to get back in my car
and listen to it. It's nice, It's nice. What Happens
to the Gang Jim dail Treasure Optimistic Fiction Star Trek
the Next Generation. Yeah, you don't think too much about

(01:46):
what's happening now, and the fact that when they rebooted,
it's probably just going to be a card punching pieces
rather than choosing to use his words instead of weaponry
because diplomacy and compassion. Perhaps, like that eisode where like
there's this space monster that kills a couple hundred people,
but then they're like, oh, it's just hungry. We can
find a way to like make sure it doesn't kill

(02:06):
anymore people without killing it, because it's better to not
kill things, even if they've done wrong, if they don't
know that what they've done was wrong, because they're an animal.
Sometimes not killing better. What concept, Yeah, let's talk about
Nazis in America again. Yeah, okay, So when we just
left off, people had rallied at Madison Square Garden to

(02:29):
support the German American Boon. A hundred thousand anti fascists
had shown up outside. They had fought with the police,
the largest display a force in NYPD history, to protect
the fascistis. And then the fascist had beaten the ship
out of a Jewish boy who would run on stage
when Fritz Kuhn was directly attacking the Jewish race to applaus.

(02:50):
Riotous cheers, joyful glee. That's unfamiliar. So we're all caught
up up to speed. Now we're all back up to
speed about what happened two days ago on this podcasts Now,
there are numerous accounts of police failing to intervene against
violent fascist mobs throughout the nineteen thirties. In ninety three,
after the first pro Nazi rallies in Los Angeles, a
World War One veteran named Leon Lewis started a grassroots

(03:12):
undercover spying operation. Along with several other disabled veterans, They
joined various fascist groups, including the Silver Shirts, in order
to report on their operations. When Lewis went to the
police to talk about what he had seen the Silver
Shirts planning, which was, you know, the overthrow of the
democratically like the government, the extermination of several races, the
enslavement of black When he went to the l A
p D with this no throw to the l A.

(03:34):
Times quote, not only were the police unconcerned, but they
were sympathetic to the Nazi Silver Shirts. I have records
of Leon Lewis going to Los Angeles Police Chief Jim
two Gun Davis and telling him, look, I'm not just
some amateur. I was actually a captain. I did some
intelligence in the army. I have these veterans with me,
and we have uncovered a plot to seize the armories

(03:55):
here where all the ammunition is and weapons. We know
they are actively buying guns in San Diego and they're
planning to take over the city government and take over
the armory. And he brought all of this to police
Chief Davis, and Davis cut him off two minutes into
Lewis's spiel and said stop Hitler was only doing what
he had to do to save Germany. And in fact,
there was right, and the real problems aren't the Nazis
and fascist walking around the streets of l A. The

(04:16):
real problem is in Boil Heights where all those communists
are still so much. What he didn't say but was clear,
is that as far as police Chief to Gun Davis
was concerned, every Communist was a Jew and every Jew
was a Communist. Right. Well, we learned that last episode.
He did learn that last episode. Two gun Davis to

(04:39):
guns for Nazis. I know, I know where both those
guns are pointed at anyone who's not white standing near
Jim two gun Davis. Heck, he worked hard for those
two guns. There was a time when he was one
gun Davis and it did not have the I can
tell you where that one gun was pointed. In April
of let's than two months after the German American Boons

(05:02):
Madison Square Garden rally, a group of several hundred anti
fascists attacked the newsboys distributing Father Coughlin's newspaper. Christian Front
members rushed out to fight them, and the NYPD basically
sat out and did nothing while they beat the anti fascists.
Some people said this was because most cops were Irish
American and the Christian Front was a Catholic priest. Fascist militia.

(05:22):
Maybe now. That same year at the Roper Center for
Public Opinion reported that only thirty nine percent of Americans
agreed that Jews deserved equal rights. Ten percent of them
believe the government should deport Jewish Americans. So that's that's fun.
So if you were a random observer in nineteen thirty nine,
the fact that the fascists lost big in nineteen thirty
six might not have been all of that comforting. In fact,

(05:44):
it really looked at the time like fascism was only
growing stronger in the Land of the Free. After his
defeat nineteen thirty eight, failed congressional candidate John wyn Rod
started actively working with Father Coughlin. They find their strategies
together and tried to focus more on non intervention than
explicit fascist politics. Quote from Hitler's American Friends. Coughlin argued

(06:05):
that the war was a clash of competing capitalist interests,
not a fight to save Europe from the barbarism of
Nazi domination. He praised Hitler openly and attacked Roosevelt win
Rod's message was similar. Less than a month before Pearl Harbor,
he was still arguing that that European war was raging
because quote a reaction has developed in the Old World
against Jewish communism and Jewish capitalism. International Jewry is in
a state of great perplexity, and so what happens that

(06:27):
we have an administration at Washington which is pro communist
and Jewish dominated. During this time, FDR was refusing to
take in Jewish refugees from Europe so as to not
anger American voters, but jew which dominated. In July, Christian
Front violence hit a fever pitch. Coughlin was forced to
tell his listeners that he was quote neither the organizer
nor the sponsor of the Christian Front, and moreover, that

(06:48):
it is not becoming for me to identify myself with
this organization or any other organization. At the same time,
Father Coughlin started showing up at German American Bond meetings
and having his boy's hand out copies of his newsletter
at their gathering as well. There were rumors that the
two groups might soon merge. So except for that, yeah,
the reality, thankfully is that the German American Boond was

(07:10):
on the verge of collapse. At the start of nineteen
thirty nine, Fritz Kuhn had announced that every state besides
Louisiana had at least one booned office, but the MSG
rally would prove to be the buns undoing. See. Fritz
had essentially crowdfunded the rally Here we go again, and
about fourteen thousand dollars of the money he'd raised just
sort of disappeared. New York City Mayor LaGuardia had basically
given the rally is okay out of the hope that

(07:31):
once Americans saw fascis them up close, they decided it
was ridiculous and terrible and rejected. LaGuardia was furious at
the violence at the rally, especially the violence done to
the young man who had rushed on stage. LaGuardia ordered
an investigation into the boone's finances and found evidence that
Kuhn had embezzled Fritz. Kuhne was arrested and charged. Simultaneously,
kun was subpoenaed by the D's Committee. Think of the

(07:51):
D's Committee as a precursor to McCarthy's House on an
American Activities Committee. It was a House on an American
Activities Committee, but it was both looking at fascists and commune.
This during the period prior to World War Two, So
and On an interesting note, a nineteen year old girl
testified right after Coon that the German American Boone's summer
camps were quote rife with homosexuality. Interesting point, yeah, Now.

(08:13):
The trial revealed that Kuhn had spent a large chunk
of the embezzled money on his mistress, including the equivalent
of twelve thousand, two thousand, eighteen dollars on long distance charges.
He also spent sixty six dollars in nineteen thirties dollars
on a doctor's bill for a former Miss American contestant
he'd been dating, which I'm guessing was for Kun was

(08:33):
convicted in December, kicked out of the bund and sent
to Sing Sing Prison, the most whimsically named prison. Certainly
it's really fun right, full of butterflies sing. It can't
be that bad, can't be that bad. It's the words
sing twice. I love singing. How could double singing be bad?
Excited for singing? Look, it's the sing prison. So the

(08:56):
German American Booned continued in Kuhn's absence, and the of
thousands of fascists it had nurtured were still out there,
but the organization itself declined sharply after this point. Nineteen
thirty nine was also the year of Pelly, and his
Silver Shirts would be brought to heal. Midway through the year,
an employee of Pelly's was found to be attempting to
infiltrate the D's Committee. A summons was issued for Pelly
in nineteen thirty nine, and he went on the run

(09:17):
rather than testify. He spent his fall running away from
the law, writing articles that he published in his newsletter
about his flight from the authorities. He also sued the
D's Committee for three point one five million dollars, claiming
it was defamation to describe him as a racketeer. In October,
Pelly missed a parole hearing in North Carolina. Acas. Remember
he'd been arrested for defrauding the people, of course, yeah.
A judge ordered an investigation into Silver Legion business in

(09:39):
the state, which led to their national headquarters being searched
by the police. And then in January of nineteen forty,
things got weird. Democratic Congressman Frank Hook introduced letters to
Congress that looked like they were between D's and Pelly
secretly allying in order to attack unionists and leftist organizers.
The letters were later proven to be forgeries, but Hook
refused to concede that he had been tricked until the

(09:59):
d Jay looked into it. Now. While this was uncoiling,
Pelly headed to Washington, d C. Walked into the Dice
Committee proceedings and turned himself in. He was questioned under
oath about the letters and denied writing them. He wouldn't
wind up jailed until nineteen forty one, but Pelly grew
increasingly irrelevant after this point, as Merce fled the Silver
Shirts after this period. So you've got the German American
booned in you know, nineteen forties collapses, and the Silver

(10:22):
Shirts have collapsed. And like these first sort of fascist
organizations that had entered after the rise of the fascists
and Europe decline into irrelevance in nineteen forty, it's a
good time to the good time to fascist decline in relevance.
This is not the end of now. On January seventh,
nineteen forty, Father Coughlin told his radio listeners that he

(10:42):
kind of started to think that democracy might be a
worse political system than having a dictatorship. He claimed the
democracy quote has failed so long to function advantageously for
the nation. That next week, Jack Grew Hoover led an
FBI raid that arrested eighteen members of the Brooklyn chapter
of the Christian Front. According to The New York Times,
this sell of fascist terrorists had planned quote the overthrow
of the government of the United States. Most of the

(11:04):
eighteen men were veterans or National guardsmen, and they'd stockpiled rifles, handguns, explosives,
and thousands of pounds of ammunition. In his press conference
on the matter, Hoover said, quote, Plans were discussed for
the wholesale sabotage and blowing up of these institutions so
that a dictatorship could be set up here, similar to
the Hitler dictatorship in Germany, seizing the reins of government
in this country as Hitler did in Germany. Their scheme

(11:25):
was to spread a rain of terrorism so that the
authorities would become thoroughly demoralized. Weird, nothing like that. Familiar
would be like if someone mailed a bunch of bombs
to a bunch of lawmakers. Something like that. It sounds
like not happen in real life, No, no, now. Hoover
also noted that the group wanted to eradicate all Jews
in the United States. It seems pretty clear that these

(11:47):
guys were nuts. Even back then, the NYPD was equipped
to handle eighteen dudes, but it still caused to stir.
Coughlin had to disavow both the would be revolutionaries and
the Christian Front. He claimed he only ever supported the
creation of a Christian in Front, so he had nothing
to do with the Christians that was attacking people and
planning the violent overthrow of the United States government. A

(12:10):
and the It's a critical difference. These fucking fake news
liberals trying to smear Father Coughlin. He wanted a Christian Front,
not the group coincidentally called Christian Front, twisting all these
words sad sad Now reporters were later able to find
several articles of Coughlin's newsletter where he had talked glowingly

(12:30):
by name about the guy who had planned the terror campaign.
Of course, of course, in February of nineteen thirty nine,
a gallop Pole revealed twenty three percent of respondents thought
that these committee should focus on quote Nazi activities, thought
it should focus on the Communist threat, but thirty percent
thought it ought to focus instead on war propaganda. These

(12:50):
people weren't exclusively talking about German war propaganda. A February
ninety one Fortune magazine survey found that thirty three percent
of American survey believed advocates of sending aid to Britain
were propagandists. So this is an important nuance here. In
August of nineteen forty, Galloped asked Americans if they thought
Hitler would invade the United States that Britain fell under
Nazi Jack Boots. Opinion was evenly split, with believing the

(13:13):
Nazis would invade the United States and forty five percent disagreeing.
In October of nineteen forty, a year before the US
entered World War Two, only eleven percent of Americans when
the U S Forces used to protect Great Britain. While
most Americans supported sending aid to Britain, fifty seven percent
of those who did said they supported sending aid because
they thought it would keep the U. S out of
World War two. This suited the Nazis just fine. During

(13:36):
this entire period, Nazi propaganda continued to virtually ignore grassroots
American fascism and focused instead on spreading propaganda to keep
US neutral. Here's how Hitler's American friends describes it. Quote.
The entire German objective was to sew enough confusion and
discord that the American people would grow weary and simply
want to check out of world events. The Nazis and

(13:57):
their supporters jumped on this task with enthusiasm. Washington newspaper
correspondent David Lawrence reported in nineteen forty that the city
was full of Nazi propaganda that had been quote planted
here and there in those academic circles, isolationist quarters, or
political precincts. Were almost any argument opposing the president's policy
would be seized upon his valid the Nazis, he stated, quote, No,

(14:17):
they were America, interesting, weird. I could see parallels there,
maybe a couple of countries just trying to sew discord
without any particular role of than that, because they just
want just making stuff up. Man, just like you're just
like for you're forcing. I know it's not none of
it sounds familiar. I love talking about stuff that never

(14:38):
happened again, never happened again, thank god, thank god. Now,
the Nazis did not need to do much to stoke
anti Jewish sentiment among Americans. Of Americans survey believed Jews
should be treated equally, claimed Jewish people were somehow different
from Anglo Americans. Uh and tim percent of course supported deportation.
Of course. So in nineteen forty an election year, unpopular

(15:00):
right wing anthem was refuge Jews go home, because there
were all these refugees from the Nazis. They called him
Refugews said they ought to be sent back to die
like a thing that never happened, Like yeah, like who
would want to take refugees murder? During the war, you

(15:22):
know about the extent, it was pretty common knowledge. Actually,
it was pretty common now at this point. There were
concentration camps. The death camps did not exist at this point.
That wasn't until forty two and after that really got going. Well.
They existed, but they weren't doing like there were camps.
But there's a difference between concentration camps and deaths. The
concentration camps were up, there were no exterminations. That did

(15:43):
start in forty one with the invasion of Russia, but
it wasn't centers. It was like Einstatz group in units
wiping out Jewish populations and what had been Russia. But
it was very well known the persecution of Jewish people,
the fact that many of them had been put into camps,
the increasing laws like that was all common. So cool
on cool. But just like Jewish people, communists, socialists, social democrats, homosexuals,

(16:10):
handicapped people, just put them all and put them all
around them up, round them up. Yeah. So uh. In
nineteen forty one, we've got the silver Shirts, the Boone
and Father Coughlin all out of the picture or fading
in relevance. They flew too close to the sun, revealed
their power level too early. Modern Nazis would say, but
fascism in America was not quite willing to give up

(16:32):
the ghost. Good are you going to go get her?
That's the thing about it. Never quit, you know, yeah,
you know, you just keep going. You just keep your
mind too. You can accomplish it. You pull them up
by those bootstrap, your jack bootstraps. So the real problem
that fascism had had up to this point in America

(16:52):
is that all of its most prominent speakers had focused
too much on the Jewish question. Americans were pretty anti Semitic,
but most people's anti emotism wasn't violent. You can be
an anti Semittin. I believe in extermination or whatever. Yeah,
rights prejudice, and it's not like I'm yeah. So there
was also the example of Nazi Germany doing really messed

(17:13):
up things to Jewish people as an example like how
bad it could get. And so a lot of Americans
who were anti Semitics still didn't want that. But it
turned out that the best way to make Americans really
embraced fascism was to tie it to isolationism. Entered the
America First Committee. Yea. It began in law school classrooms
at Yale. Robert Douglas Stewart Yale, this has not been

(17:38):
a good year of pr for you turning out just
the best people the best. So Robert Douglas Stewart Jr.
Son of the vice chairman of Quaker Oats, started holding
meetings with a couple of dozen other law students. We
talked about the worsening foreign war, Roosevelt's decision to run
for a third term, and how they might impact the
course of American politics to keep their nation out of

(18:01):
the war and put an end to roosevelt Socialist New
Deal policies, both equally important. Now, the goal of America
First then was to unify the anti interventionalist right with
the actual fastest right. Basically, anyone who didn't like Roosevelt
could coagulate around keeping America out of the war. After
the war, American fascist philosopher Lawrence Dennis said, quote, the

(18:21):
anti intervention or then so called isolation cause was basically
anti New Deal. It was against America getting into the
war only because the New Dealers seemed to be using
American intervention in the war as essentially a New Deal strategy.
The America Firsters or anti war factors were not really
pacifist or anti war. They were anti New Deal and
that made them anti war in that period in situation,

(18:41):
it's very important distinction here. We're against war. We're against
this war because we like the Nazis. Yeah, maybe fight
the communist you want. You want a war with the Communists,
we can. We're on war. Did you guys know that
all the Communists are Jews and atheists. That's some solid science.

(19:05):
This is a bad time for I had, but you know,
I love washing the taste of the horrific history of
American fascism out of my mouth. With the fine products
and services advertised on this show sold I could use

(19:27):
some products and or services run I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
well here they are and we're back and we're talking
about Nazi well fascists, yeah right, right right right, not
fast hashtag not all fascists. Let's start that. Let's get going.

(19:57):
So a number of major corporate leaders act the America
First Committee. The most prominent of them was J. C. Hormel,
the meat packing impresario whose company gave the world spam
that name. You're going to really enjoy this one. Cody
rich ass cloth magnate. William Regnery was another major financial
backer of America First. Does his name McNary sounds familiar

(20:19):
to you? William Rignery the second His son would go
on to fund the National Policy Institute, the fascist thing
tank run by Richard Spencer. That's good, we made it
the first connection today. Mine Robert E. Wood, chairman of

(20:42):
Sears Roebuck, was also a member. Henry Ford was for
a well to kick him off because the anti Semitism
he was just too far. I'll see ironic in a
moment now. The America First Committee would not truly reach
its maximum audience until they found their charismatic leader, the
only possible handed it for the role of American fure
Charles Lindbergh now born in n two. Charles Lindbergh had

(21:07):
been an air mail pilot until nine, when, at age
twenty five, he flew from New York to Paris and
was the very first human being to complete this thirty
three hour journey. He was one of the most famous
men in the world in nineteen thirty two when his
child was kidnapped and probably accidentally murdered. Lindbergh was young, handsome, rich, sympathetic,
and when he started giving speeches for the America First Movement,

(21:32):
people listened. In August nineteen forty, immediately after the Dunkirk evacuation,
Lindbergh stated quote, I believe that no outside influence could
solve the problems of European nations or bring them lasting peace.
They must work out their destiny as we must work
out ours. In the past, we have dealt with a
Europe dominated by England and France. In the future we

(21:54):
may have to deal with a Europe dominated by Germany.
You remember how when we vine and the problems of
European nations and Europe is still a war rived hell
hold today? Did you miss that? You think I may
have missed that did you miss that? It was just
in Europe. It seems like maybe American intervention actually kind

(22:16):
of worked out there. I don't know. I think we
just went to the places where in Russian we made
sure we went to only the places at were you
stayed away from the war zones in France. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
So Lindberg's was great. It turns out when you kill
all the fascists, you can hive. Yeah. So thanks for that, Russia. Yeah,

(22:42):
so it's back. They went a little bit overboard, but
it's like, thank you, but don't let that go to
your head, you know. Yeah, but not that grateful. Yeah. Well,
well I'm grateful for that, but I'm pretty grateful for
the eight million Nazi soldiers they killed. I meant, you know,
big picture, Yeah, you get it. Yeah, continue with. The

(23:04):
story was a mixed bag, but mostly good. So Lindbergh
called Great Britain a war agitator and said, quote, it
is perfectly understandable that Britain, once the United States in
the war on her side, England, is now in a
desperate position. Her population is not large enough and her
armies not strong enough to invade the continent of Europe
and win the war she declared against Germany. He warned

(23:33):
his audience that America had been left with the debts
from World War One, and then he claimed, quote, if
it were not for her, hope that she can make
us responsible for the war financially. I believe England would
have negotiated a peace in Europe many months ago, and
we'll be better off doing so, found reasoning. But you guys,
see the brilliance there. Rather than advocating for dictatorship like
Coughlin and Smith and the Silver Shirts had done, or

(23:55):
advocating on behalf of Germany like the Bund had done,
Lindberg attacked Great Britain. Thanks to Hollywood. Today, English accents
are kind of like the that's like your your cheat
code for making someone see incredible. Find like a British
guy get Antony Hopkins to say, and we're like, yeah,
he's smart, incredible right. But starting in the fifteenth century,
the most prominent international stereotype of the English is that
they were all goddamn liars because they lied to everyone

(24:18):
about everything for three d years in order to conquer
the world. There was even a very common slur for
them in the day Perfidious Albion it arose in the
seventeen It's a beautiful slur. I mean it sounds like
a spell in Hary Potter. That it arose in the
seventeen hundreds as a French accusation I believe of English
dishonesty towards foreigners, because the British screw the French show

(24:39):
for a French screw the no one's nice or now.
It picked up in use during the Boer War of
eight nineteen hundred because of the concentration camps and genocide
of the board people. And if you listen to a
lot of Irish music, the particularly turn of the twentieth
century Irish political ballads, you will run into the phrase regularly.
The song Foggy Do, which is best cover, was done

(24:59):
by Senet O'Connor, was written sometime in nineteen nineteen after
the nineteen sixteen East Rebellion, and it has probably the
most artistic use of the term when talking about the
first shots of the Irish Rebellion of nineteen sixteen. Oh
the night fell black and the rifles crack made perfidious
albion reel. Now this is important because at this time
in America, population about a hundred or so a million,

(25:20):
about twenty to thirty million Scottish, Irish and German descended people,
all of whom are very rightfully primed to think England's
lying about fucking anything. This is a smart play by
Charles Lindbergh. Don't love it, but get it worked. It works,
It's not it's not a dumb move, and it proved
to be a more effective strategy than calling for outright dictatorship.

(25:42):
So within like a couple of months, there were eight
hundred thousand Americans that had joined America verst You've got
like a million people who have signed on this movement
in a matter of months, the most like years to
take fiftulation. Yeah, that's like a percent of the population
in the course of a couple of months, just because
Lindbergh pops onto this train and it's building for this
whole time that we're talking about here. So this thing

(26:04):
is wildly popular. Now. Thank god, the British were spying
on us and this instant. We needed some spying on
some real bad stuff is going on. They put together
a dossier on the America First movement and what it
meant to the British government at this point, their whole
foreign policy was, in essence, get the Americans to help

(26:24):
the Nazis are going to take over Europe. So these
spies were terrified of America. First, they called it a
fundamentally American movement conducted on American lines, and the most
effective weapon at the disposal of the enemy for the
purpose of keeping the United States out of the war. Essentially,
Britain is the guy who cried wolf, but with conquering
in the other world and a violent, nightmarish regime. But

(26:45):
then they suddenly become less shitty, like ten years before.
These other guys are even worse. The wait, no, wait, wait,
wait for real. A couple hundred years ago we called
forty million Indians in a wildliers bonsible capitalistic venture. But
we're not that now. When we know, I'm like, oh god,

(27:06):
colonies and stuff. We were so we're so sorry, we really,
really really sorry. But these German lads, so the British
saw through these seemingly reasonable, respectable facade of America first,

(27:27):
and they said, these British spies wrote, it is the
raw material of American fascism. The present tactics and methods
of action of each movement reveal it as the American
fifth column, sewing racial hatred and a sentuating internal division.
This is the effect of its activity, and whether the
process is conscious or unconscious is irrelevant. So British Intelligence
divide the membership of America first into six categories. I

(27:48):
think you'll find this pretty interesting, y'all. Number one big
businessmen in Chicago, which is called the most important group.
Number two Republicans and leaders of the opposition to the
New Deal. Number three that pacifism of Quakers, intellectuals and
liberal philanthropists. Number four extreme left wing opposition to the
Roosevelt administration, including labor leader John L. Lewis and his

(28:09):
daughter who was also a prominent labor leader. Number five
the anti Semitic fascism of retired general the next Serviceman.
And number six emotional mothers. One of the big things
of this is they would bring on gold Star mothers
who lost their kids in World War One to say
we're we want to save American mothers and sons. This
is some very intelligent manipulation, really smart, really had their

(28:29):
act together. Now. Back in seven, Lindberg had been put
forward by a young Republican group as a potential member
of the GOP steering Committee. These young men were worried
that the Republican Party was quote hopelessly reactionary and an
incubator of fascism. Pretty pretty remarkable. It must have really

(28:54):
surprised these young Republicans when Charles Lindberg started hanging out
with the Nazis. He visited s Germany three times while
the Viewer was in power. The second time was in
nineteen thirty eight, immediately after Christal knocked uh the Night
of Broken Glass, when Nazis took the streets and burnt
down synagogues, broke Jewish people, murdered people. It was horrible, right,
He's there like the night after, and he writes in

(29:17):
his diary, quote, I do not understand these riots on
the part of the Germans. It seems so contrary to
their sense of order and their intelligence. In other ways,
they undoubtedly had a difficult Jewish problem, But why is
it so necessary to handle it unreasonably? My admiration for
the Germans is constantly being dashed against some rocks such
as this. What is the object in this persecution of

(29:37):
the Jews? My god, there's a lot going on in
that paragraph. You've got so much. They have a Jewish
problem obviously, but taking it violently. Why can't we have
some sort of like non violent sort of like ethnic cleansing,
but like not the non cleansing. I can't speak, can't

(30:01):
say it ten times, probably a good thing. He can't
say that. It's like my mouth shut down, just stopped
not letting those words out. So in nineteen forty one,
Lindbergh really stepped up his activism for America. First, he
started traveling around the country giving speeches, setting himself up
as the clear candidate in nineteen forty four and making

(30:23):
every argument he could for American neutrality. Until then, one
poll showed twenty six percent of Americans wanted to see
him given some high government office. Here's a quote from
Hitler's American friends. Throughout the spring, Lindbergh spoke to standing
room only venues, attacking Roosevelt an urging full American neutrality.
The President himself soon became convinced that Lindburg was a
fascist with dictatorial designs, and in late April, Roosevelt launched

(30:45):
a direct attack by comparing him to Southern sympathizing copperheads
during the Civil War and defeatists in George Washington's Army
at Valley Forge, Lindbergh, outraged, resigned his commission in the
Army Air Corps. Reserve crowds that his rallies continued to grow,
and in late May he packed Madison Square Garden with
more than twenty thousand people. Thousands more or listened on
loud speakers in the streets. The presence of BOOND members,

(31:06):
various Anti Semites, and other extremists was widely reported in
the press, including groups of Italian fascists and the Silver Shirts,
but the publicity was far from completely positive. Life magazine
observed that the audience had burst into deafening cheers for
even the smallest aspects of lindburg speech, including when he
mopped his brow with a handkerchief. An unnamed Lindberg associate
was quoted as referring to the phenomenon as fewer worship

(31:28):
the more Charles Lindberg spoke, the clear it became that
he was a goddamn racist. He stated that he worried
white America would be replaced by quote a pressing sea
of yellow, black and brown, and stated that if he
had to choose, he'd prefer his country alley with Nazi
Germany rather than Soviet Russia replacement. You say, yeah, weird,

(31:48):
new phrase. Weird. How a group of people in America
has been consistently worried about that for almost a century
now and it still hasn't. Yeah, white people still doing fine. Weird. Yeah,
it's weird that happened. It's coming, It's coming, It's coming.
It's coming. Why it's coming, It's coming, It's coming. So surely,
surely this is the year for the white genocide, the

(32:10):
hashtag by genocide. So some of Lendbergh's growing fascism probably
had to do with the friendship that he had made
with French surgeon and scientist Alexis Carrol. This that's where
things going in to direction. You guys are not Did
you predict that he was simultaneously while running for American
fear working on a project to become immortal with a
fascist French doctor prepared. I wasn't prepared. I wouldn't have predicted,

(32:34):
but I am not surprised. Now. Alexis Karl was a
Nobel Prize winner who had figured out how to transplant
human blood vessels, which is great. But he'd learned how
to do that because he wanted to turn the human
body and to quote, a machine with constantly reparable or
replaceable parts, so that rich white people, and only rich
white people, would live forever. Carol was a fascist and
a eugenicist who believed the planet was incumbent with people

(32:56):
who should be dead. So science. Lindbergh was a eugenicist too,
and since he was an engineer, he and Carol started
working on a pump designed to keep human organs alive
outside of their body. They actually invented it, and it's
a useful medical device, of course. Yeah. And of course
during their hours of close collaboration together, Carol ranted regularly

(33:18):
about the Jews and extolled the benefits of fascism. In
September nineteen forty one, Charles Lindbergh gave a speech in
Des Moines. Let read a couple of segments out of
this bad Boy nineteen timber Here's Charles Lucky Lindy quote.

(33:41):
National Post showed that when England and France declared war
on Germany and nineteen thirty nine, less than ten percent
of our population favorite a similar course for America. But
there were various groups of people here and abroad whose
interests and beliefs necessitated the involvement of the United States
in the war. I shall point out some of these
groups tonight and outline them methods of procedure. And doing this,
I must speak with the utmost frankness, for in order
to counteract their efforts, we must know exactly who they are.

(34:03):
The three most important groups who have been pressing this
country towards war are the British, the Jewish, and the
Roosevelt administration. He then went on to elaborate, no person
with a sense of dignity of mankind can condone the
persecution of the Jewish race in Germany, but no person
of honesty and vision can look at their pro war
policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such
a policy, both for us and for them. Instead of

(34:25):
agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should
be opposing it in every possible way, for they will
be among the first to feel its consequences. Tolerance is
a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows
that it cannot survive war and devastations. A few far
sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention,
but the majorities still do not. Their greatest danger to

(34:47):
this country lies in the large ownership and influence in
our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government.
But also great performance. There goes the tolerant left wanting
to go to war with Nazi Germany. I just think
everyone should be allowed to speak and execute. It's pretty

(35:12):
incredibly believable, but super believable. Oh boy. Yeah. Also, don't
trust media or the movies because they're Jewish owned. Also,
it's worth noting that the last big public speech Hitler
gave before invading Poland, he stated that if the Jews
succeeded in, in his words, drawing the world into another war,
they'd be the first to suffer, which is exactly the

(35:34):
phrasing Lindbergh used a year later in this speech that's bonkers.
That speech that Hitler give is generally given as the
most direct evidence we have that he had planned the
Holocaust ahead of time, because again he didn't keep his
name tied to stuff. But like he's very clearly yeah
laying it out said almost the same thing. Oh my god,

(35:55):
and it's like for war. Yeah, yeah, the Jews that
let themselves get rounded murder there and who in Hollywood
at this time we're refusing to criticize Nazi Germany and
most of their movies because they were scared it would
whip up anti Jewish paranoia, which seems a lot more reasonable.

(36:16):
When you hear this ship, We're like, yeah, I get
why you were scared, right, yeah, all this, I mean
all the reactionary stuff like okay, yeah, you say that,
then you push people to the yeah. Yeah. Lindberg advised
Americans who got angry at news stories of horrific Nazi
atrocities to quote ask who owns and who influences the newspaper,
the news, picture, and radio. There was a great deal

(36:38):
of backlash to Lindberg's openly blaming the Jews as a
collective for trying to force America into a war. A
poll conducted that same month found at seventy four percent
of Americans agreed that Nazi Germany needed to be destroyed
in order for the US to remain free and democratic.
The vast majority of Americans were consistent they would oppose
any suppression campaign aimed at Jewish Americans, but mose statistics
do not tell the whole story. Already, a survey taken

(37:01):
about people's intentions for the nineteen forty two midterm elections.
The last such survey before Pearl Harbor found that respondents
planned to vote Democrat, Republican, and eight percent Keep out
of War. This means if the Republicans and the Keep
out of War Party had allied, they could have potentially
won in forty two and presumably again forty four. And

(37:22):
it is worth noting that Wilkie, the Republican who had
run against Roosevelt during this after the des Moines speech,
basically said if Americans cannot deal with the current global
catastrophe without turning to racial hatred, we don't deserve to
have a democracy. The Republican speaking out vociferously against fascism
right after this speech, that's something we need. Yes, America

(37:48):
First very well could have won several seats in Congress,
and that could have you know, this is the kind
of thing that at this point in September there was
a good chance that Charles Lindberg could have become president.
Call it kept rolling. But then on December seventh, nineteen
forty one, the Empire of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the
US gotten to the war, and America First dissolved as
an organization. In December, Charles Lindberg even wound up flying

(38:11):
a few combat missions in the Pacific. World War two
went the way it did, and for the most part,
Americans forgot that a domestic fascist movement had ever once
earned the support of hundreds of thousands of American voters.
Most Americans, at least Vice President Henry A. Wallace never forgot,
and in nineteen forty four, when Hitler's Third Reich was
on its last legs, he wrote a description of American
fascism that is just as relevant eighty years later as

(38:34):
it was then. Quote. The American fascists are most easily
recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their
newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every
crack in the common front against fascism. They use every
opportunity to impune democracy. Their final objective, towards which all
their deceit is directed, is to capture political power, so that,

(38:54):
using the power of the state and the power of
the markets simultaneously, they may keep the common man in
eternal subject Asian. I hate it. It's a real bummer.
Now there's a fun coded to the story, though, y'all
remember Lawrence Dennis. He had a secret, the intellectual founder

(39:17):
of American fascism had a secret that nobody knew at
the time. Spill the gossip. Now, you remember how he
was described as swarthy? Yeah, because he was a black
guy secretly secretly what. Yes, he had been born in
eighteen ninety two and the heavily segregated South. But since
he was able to pass for white at a certain point,
he decided to live his life that way because of

(39:38):
the obvious and massive benefits. Gerald Horne, who wrote a
book about Dennis called The Color of Fascism, doesn't know
if Dennis's wife even knew he wasn't white. His daughter
was never told. Now I found a good Guardian article
about this, and it includes a heartbreaking quote from Walter White,
a former head of the Double A CP in the
late nineteen quote, every year, approximately twelve thousand white skin

(40:00):
negroes disappear, people whose absence cannot be explained by death
or immigration, Men and women who have decided that they
will be happier and more successful if they flee from
the prescription and humiliation which the American Color Line imposes
on them. The article also included a quote from Horn
trying to explain exactly why a black man in the
nineteen forties would line himself up with fascism. Quote, well,

(40:20):
you could see why he would think it was inevitable.
Fascism was a far greater threat to the US than communism,
ever was. Dennis had no faith in the white working class.
So if you believe it's going to happen, you have
one of two choices. You can fight against it, or
you can ride the wave. He decided to ride the wave,
and that was hard boiled cynicism and coldly calculating. M M.

(40:42):
You don't even know what to do with it. That's
how it started. That's how it started. I know how
to feel about it. I don't know what to do.
I know what to do with it. Yeah. I feel
like a lot of people should hear a lot of
a lot of the quotes that have been said that
have been read today. Yeah, yeah, if only would yeah

(41:02):
she send this to people should know about I mean,
I obviously have a vested interest in people listening to this.
I would like it if people would share this. Yeah, yeah,
I'll share it, thank you. Yeah. I could use some
products and services to wash the taste of it. Out
of my mouth. Yeah, it's just the kind of stuff that,
like everything lines up so frustratingly perfectly in a way

(41:26):
that kind of makes you feel like you're going insane. Yeah,
it makes it feel crazy, you know, Like I feel
that more and more because the polarization is obviously growing, Yeah,
and the people in power are fueling it and uh
supporting it and using it to manipulate people. And then
they're supposedly intellectual people who are riding that wave and

(41:47):
totally ignore everything in a way that Yeah, it makes
you feel kind of crazy. Absolutely. I mean for a
long time. I'm more used to it now, but then
sanity it feels deeper, like more chaotical, a bad nightmare
or something. But at the very beginning, especially, there were
so many times I would be like, it's not me right,
I'm not wrong, and that's yeah, you see this, and

(42:12):
it's there's something very telling and very telling about America
and the fact that the first fascist intellectual we have
was not a guy who was wildly dedicated to the
principles of fascism, because he was not. Dennis's attitude was
always this is inevitable, and this is probably better than
the other one. And the reason he thought it was
better than the other one probably is because he was, like,

(42:33):
I know white people in America, they're going to choose
fascism before they choose communism. So I want to get
on the right side of the ship so I don't
get murdered. Right, It's not necessarily this one's better than
the other. It's just this one is more likely because
of where we are, because I know how Yeah. Yeah,
and he's not wrong. He was not wrong. Yeah, I
think yeah, I mean I think we see that a lot.

(42:55):
And like I said, like I see this in conversation
sometimes where it's like, oh, you literally would choose that
instead of the other, or even like like you choose
that instead of democracy if you could, Yeah, because you
haven't heard all these quotes that are literally exactly exactly
how you're thinking is exactly. It's it's so on the nose.
We like oftentimes joke about like, oh, it's like watching

(43:18):
a TV show that's poorly written there like oh, we're
all in a simulation. But that does have and I think,
a negative effect on people's psyche, and it really does
make you feel like, how can you be a prominent
figure that has a huge audience and influence over people,
sometimes with like a national audience and millions of people

(43:39):
watching you or listening to you, where you blatantly ignore
facts and you push this kind of thing and frame
it in a way that forces people to either ignore
this stuff or not know about it, and like protect
this knowledge in this history that illustrates what we're experience
literally as precious as life itself, because it represents millions

(44:00):
of lost lives when people did not heed the warning
signs the last time this all happened. Yeah, that's still
a thing that shocks me. Continue to grapple with I
can see missing the warning signs the first time this happens,
or like just for the general population, like, oh, I
didn't know I was going along. You can't anymore. You
can't say that this isn't happening. You can't say that

(44:23):
it doesn't have potentially disastrous Well, it is happening. And
if the only media you watches Fox and when the
Proud Boys are beating up gay people in the streets,
their headline is an he brought a sword ken and
it was a fake sword that he was using to
reenact the execution of a socialist politician in Japan by

(44:44):
a fascist there it is. That's the stuff at the
Metropolitan Republican Club of New York, and like it makes
you feel crazy, and it kind of makes you feel
helpless of like your like not kind of like you're
shouting into a void and the people aren't thing too
literally just like what you just said, because they're making
money and they want more cool stuff. That's the been

(45:05):
Shapiro's and the fucking like idealogues who aren't fascists but
pushed people towards fascism, the Tucker Carlson's and whatnot. It's
just about money. Yeah, And you could see there was
like a half a minute there in the middle of
all this where Glenn Beck had an opportunity to like
be like, oh, I have aired terrible. I see what
I did, I see what I did. What kind of
started and then decided to make money again. Of course

(45:28):
the money is good. Yeah, it's not. It's lucrative to
pretend to be not a grifter here. Well, if there's
one thing America has always been better at than anyone
else in history, it is a goddamn grift. We are
the fucking grifter kings of the word. Absolutely, I mean,
that's why we got the president we got. Yeah, you're

(45:50):
the guy. We're the fucking grifter nation and you're the
king of grifters. You did it, even though, really, if
we wanted to elect the king of grifters, we would
have elected out Round Hubbard, who would have been sure,
maybe not a better president, but a different one, a
different one. Different. He would spend a lot of money
in our navy, I can tell you that much. Oh yeah, yeah,
get out with international water waters now, all right, unbelievable.

(46:20):
Oh god, check us out, check us out. We got
some more news on YouTube. Check out our Patreon, our podcast,
even more news on all the podcast things, Twitter, some
more news. My individual one is Dr Mr Cody D
R M I S T E R C or do
you want I have to spell it out because you
can be doctor just really like CT you know you

(46:42):
never know. Yeah, you hit yourself to that wagon and
now you gotta stick with it. Can't change those can't
change it. And uh what he said, because I do
those things with him and except I have my own
Twitter and it's my name, Katie Stole. There was a
lot of eloquence on displaying both readier shows are called
even more news and some more news, and we recommend

(47:06):
you checking out. Do check out some more news and
some news, even more news, even more, even more news.
So many titles to keep tracking. I have a show too.
I've forgotten the title, but you know what you clicked
on it, so listen to the next one when it
happens next week. You can find us on the internet
at behind the Bastards dot com. You can find us

(47:27):
on Twitter at ad bastards pod or Instagram at the
same thing that I said before, but for Instagram and
on Twitter it could have just said ad Bastards pot again.
But then I did. You can find me at I right,
okay on Twitter buy a shirt from te Public so
that I can fill a bunker. Yeah, not like, but
I'm stockpile rations, guys, Yeah, stockpile a number of things. Stockpiling.

(47:53):
We got all these millionaire stockpiling stuff and all these
like kind of crazy folk stockpiling stuff. Let's all a
couple of months of perishable food. That's not crazy, that's
not that crazy person thing to do. And doune a
bunch of reasons it could be useful to have a
couple months of food. Well, you also got a prep
for that big one. Sure big quake keeps some water
on hand, both of those. Maybe everything's melting. Everything melting. Guys,

(48:16):
be scared, be angry, and then be best. I was
gonna say, drink to relieve the stress. But there are
other drugs. There's a lot of great drugs out there.
A lot of America is really bullish on opiates. Seems
like there's no downside to that drugs. I haven't I
haven't read any of the reporting on this. It may

(48:37):
I can tell it has something that happened with that.
I'm so sorry. This is a real letdown. Guy. Now,
this was the letdown, not everything the past two hours.
I just thought if there was one thing I could trust,
it was Perdu Pharmaceuticals. And oh yeah, that's another episode.
I think that's heart breaking. Well maybe I'll research that,

(49:01):
look into that until next week when we will be
talking about god knows what else but something terrible and
someone terrible. I'm Robert Evans. This has been behind the bastards,
and I love about a four week percent of you
h