A Geek History of Time - Episode 180 - V the Leftist Allegory Turned Fascist Dogwhistle Part II Fixed

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

And we begin with good days, sir. Geeks come in all shapes and sizes, and that they come into all kinds of things. I was thinking more about the satanic panic. Buy the scholar Gary Guy-Gak's. Well, wait, hold on. I said good days, sir. Not defending Roman slavery by any stretch. No, but that's bad.

Let him vote. Fuck off. When historians, and especially British historians, want to get cute, it's in there. OK. It is not worth the journey. 1.0-1.1 2.0-1.1 2.0-1.1 2.0-1.1

2.0-1.1 This is the peak history of time. I'm a rock and roll bids group, and we teach her at Warren fuzzy, similarly, love to do it. I'm a rock and roll bids group, and we teach her at Warren fuzzy, similarly, love to do it. I'm a rock and roll bids group, and we teach her at Warren fuzzy, similarly, love to do it. And I am emphasized the Warren fuzzy, because there's a mention in that last episode, because, kind of, it's failed. That was a part of the parents' background, and the difference and teaching sixth graders and seventh graders. And I am now coming to terms with the fact that I am very,

very happy teaching sixth graders as a group. Like I'm really happy with the students I'm teaching because they're still little kid enough that I can get away with messing with their heads because they're still little kid enough that I can get away with messing with their heads in a way that it's harder to do with seven graders, which is way too much fun. Number one.

And number two, they're just sweeter. They're still kids. Now the part of teaching sixth grade that I don't like so much is the seventh grade curriculum is basically my dream curriculum. It's like oh hey, oh yeah. What part of world history is Ed like a total madman about. Follow through all the shiny. That would be, yeah. Followed Rome through the early modern period up until the French Revolution. Like, oh, okay, that's my jam. Like, there we go. We're good.

And in the middle of that, by the way, we're going to talk about how geography affects. Culture, and we're going to spend a shit ton of time, you know, introducing kids to the idea of primary and secondary sources And is this reliable and like let's have fucking arguments about these things and like oh my god, right And then I'm in the sixth grade curriculum Which is not that no it's it's from the beginning of you know what you could do those Point out to them from the beginning of time. Yeah, you could do those point to the beginning from the beginning of time. Yeah, you could point out to them though that it's all about beer.

And I think you'd have fun with that. Once you have a currency once, yeah, next year, I can start doing that. You can talk about fermentation and how you have to wait around. And yeah, you got to sit around for a while. Yeah, that, you know what? That's, that's a whole, that's a whole angle that I'm going to have to hit on. But yeah, so I have now spent the last three days of my teaching life, which I will never get back, working with, with three periods of sixth graders on how to navigate an atlas in the front of their textbook. And here's the thing, I'm going to have to spend at least three more days because if I don't,

the rest of this year is going to be a goddamn nightmare. Like, I am going to be so fucking frustrated so many times. If I have to like spoon feed them for the rest of the year that no, no, where this is China, China is in Asia. Like I'm, so now I'm going to have to spend three days finishing the coaching on this. And if you ever want to think of a thankless task, like, okay, thankless is the wrong word, because eventually this is going to pay off into something. But a feels like it's Cicifian task. It is getting 10, 11 year olds to look closely enough at a printed map.

To, for example, find where Patagonia is in the world. That was one of the questions I gave them. Which continent is Patagonia on? And we've talked about physical versus political maps. Patagonia is a physical feature, I mean, speaking very broadly. It's a physical region, It's not a country. So you're going to want to use the physical map.

Right. Look for it. You're going to have to look like you're really going to have to look because the print is small. But then figure out which continent it's on. Tell me that's all I need to find out. Right. Oh my God. I am a herod man. Like the amount, the amount of, okay, I'm going to give you all a hint.

If a continent does not touch the southern hemisphere, on that continent. And like, and that still was not like they still were struggling. And I I don't know. One hand part of me was like, oh my god, just like seriously scan the fucking apps. On the other hand, part of me was like, I really should be trying to find a way to coach them on this. But I really don't know how to do it with that spoon feeding them a fucking answer. Like, what do I do? Oh, I've got a suggestion for that when you're ready. Okay. Yeah. I mean, off, off out of out of here. Cause up to you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't, I don't want to take any more time away from what we're, what we're talking about. But like, that's what I've been struggling with the last three days. So if I sound a little

bit aggrate, that's what I've been doing. And that's me. And who are you? And what have you been up to? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I am a, this is the last year I'm doing it. Latin teacher as well as a US history teacher. I love how you keep coming up with ways to say that different thing. Well, yeah. And it's, yeah.

It's on hospice and it should have been, it's on a respirator and a ventilator and all the things. And yeah, I mean, it should have been, it's on a respirator and a ventilator and all the things. And yeah, I mean, it should have, it should have been put out to pass your a while back. But you know, it's public education. So equity, but yeah, I'm up here in the Northern California at the high school level doing that. The thing that I have to say is that I went to my own kids back to school night, oh,

talked last week about your back to school night. I was a my own kids back to school night. Oh, last week about your back to school night, I was back to school night. My daughter's teacher told a dad joke to which my daughter, I find this out at back to school night. I walk in. I'm Damien Harmony, you know, and, you know, where's my daughter? She's like, Oh, your Julie is dead. Yes, I am. And she said, um, you know, like, you know, I told a dad joke today to your daughter, uh, and or to the class and your daughter just did this. She put her, you know, I think we can hear that over the microphone.

Yeah. I heard it. Yeah. So she, she had Paul, then she's like, oh, my God. Like you were, you were just as bad as my dad. You are going to meet him tonight. Um, so, and she said, yeah, so you, you, you're, I'm like my dad, you are going to meet him tonight. So, and she said, yeah, so you, you're, I'm like, oh, I do it professionally. Hashtag and dad goals. Right.

I'm like, come on. But I said, I do it professionally, and she kind of laughed, I'm like, no, I'm serious. It pays for Christmas. I run a pun tournament for capital punishment. It's been going six years. It's the longest running pun tournament in the world, which is actually true,

because we've been going the entire time. Nice. Yeah. And we are international. So, this is true. Yeah. So I said that and she's like, are you serious? I was like, yeah, she's like, I said, yes,

I will email you the flyer. It's fine. So. Cool. Building your audience. One fellow punster at a time. And then to just drive the point home, I was like, well, where's my daughter sitting?

And my daughter was right next to me. And I said, where are you sitting? And she says to me, oh, you have to find it. I was like, okay, well, kids all drew their own like self-portraits Okay, and then I I scanned the room and I just went to to the desk and she's like how'd you know from all the way over there I said you're the only child your age reading Warren peace and it's on top of your desk There you go out out. Yeah, you're reading habits. You're reading habits betray you.

Totally. Oh, you will be pleased. My son is seventh grader. You will be pleased also at the same back to school night. Yeah. The social science teacher told me, oh, William got a perfect score in his condensed quiz. I was like, yeah, well, his love of

trains would absolutely do that for him. So yeah, that would that would certainly help. That points in that direction. And and can I just say I admire your son deeply. Yeah, like he's goals in so many ways. And this is just one of them. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, very cool I am I feel a little better Hearing that knowing that somebody seventh grader Because oh my god, Bill freighter Robert and your kids his face now. I you know what I will yeah totally will yeah So all right, so so we last time we talked V, right? Yeah. And I ended with the really quick run through the plot that took still 15, 20 minutes because it's a galloping a galloping run through

the plot that took forever because holy crap. Yeah. What was interesting to me about it was that the Kenneth Johnson's ideology filtered into what he had written so clearly. He names it can't happen here as a massive influence, like in interviews today. But Johnson immediately turns it into spacious fascists because that's what Tartikov needed. And in all his interviews, there wasn't a specific thing that he was pointing to, though he did draw a few aspects of what was happening in the early 80s for some of what happened in the miniseries. So what I mean there is that normally, you know, our zeitgeist absolutely feeds into what we're doing, he already came with a ideology that he was trying to push.

But the trappings of the 80s certainly filtered in, but it wasn't he looked around and then found in ideology. It was he came with the baggage. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He was definitely writing from a specific point of view and an understanding conceptually and actually of the menace of fascism. But the dude didn't name much at all from the early 80s and Reagan represented one hellibus

shift right word that Kenneth Johnson just kind of ignored. Well, yeah, I actually, you know, thinking about that, because in episode three, you know, the same time as Reagan, of course, was Thatcher. Yep. And in British science fiction, and particularly, amongst the people who are responsible for Warhammer 40K, you know, Thatcher was like, oh my God, this is the fascist be all end all. Now, you know, I wonder if part of the difference between them and Johnson might

have been the fact that Britain was more centralized, more centralized economy had more industries that were being managed in a more farther left kind of way to begin with. Like they, they already had the National Health Service. They already had, you know, they had the post work in census that was, okay, you know, they were far more in a middle ground between, you know, total laissez-faire capitalism and socialist,

you know, democratic socialism. Yeah, I think you got something there. Even though Nixon says we're all Kenzians now, yeah. You know, that American Kenzianism versus British Kenzianism is clearly different. Very. You know, American Kenzianism is we're going to pump money into the economy. It's not, we're going to nationalize things. Yeah, that's a really good point. You know, but also say that they were also a lot closer to the Nazis physically. Yes.

Yes. And so there was more of a specter there and they're subconscious. They have shit that's bombed out that's still on display. We don't. No, we never did. Which was why neutrality was a powerful hurt. We have a real hurtment in this country.

But that's literally it. But number one, that's literally it. Number one, and number two, there are some emotional resonances involved in Pearl Harbor. As somebody who wrote about literally past Arizona five days a week for two years, going to school as a kid, there are some emotional resonances that are very powerfully different.

Yeah. London got bombed. Like, and had to rebuild. And powerfully different. Yeah London got bombed like and had to rebuild and had to rebuild Yeah, and that's and that's the biggest city in the United Kingdom and that is civilian targets that is That is that is very different from You know, we have a lot of military personnel who are still entombed in ships in the bottom of Pearl Harbor. And there are parts of this air force base where they have not corned down the buildings or filled in the bullet holes from the attack.

I think some of that's we always, we also have so much more room for things so that we can have large memorials. Yeah, population density, yeah. I mean, certainly that's part of it, but I think there's a very big difference between, you know, the Japanese army and Japanese naval air force, you know, blew up a fleet of military sailors. Yeah. Versus the Germans came in and just flattened everything. you know, blew up a fleet of military sailors. Yep.

Versus the Germans came in and just flattened everything. Yeah, people had to hide. You know, people had to hide underground. Right. There's a very different kind of effect that has on the memory of those events. And we as a country have always wanted to lionize and glorify our war dead. Yeah. You know, forever since the revolution.

And for the Brits, no, the Nazis just like killed fucking everybody. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so there's a more immediate kind of peril to that in their international psychology. Yeah, I agree. And this is all armchair psychologizing. But, you know, and so I think the fact that Reagan to Americans didn't come across

as the blatant right wing authoritarian threat that for some Britain, for many Britain's thatcher was. You know, I think I think is a matter of degree and a matter of lived experience during World War 2. I also think effectively it didn't matter because you're well, you know, both reigned for roughly the same amount of time. Granted, that's true. Yeah. Now, I think there's some other reasons why, you know, Johnson, Kenneth Johnson, isn't

specifically calling out Reaganism or anything. Okay. Number one, he's not Alan Moore. And I think that can't be understated in us. That can't. Yeah. Number two else is. Yeah. So there's that.

Yeah. So number two, he might not have really felt it as he was living somewhere comfortably as a writer. I mean, I don't think he was making really good mailbox money yet, but he also didn't speak at all of suffering personally and economically either in any of his interviews. He wasn't like I was a starving writer. Third, he works in Hollywood and he has to deal with producers. So getting specific about their patron saint of union busting might be a no no. Okay, you know, yeah, that makes sense.

But I'm more than happy to point some stuff out because because we're, you know, it's not like he didn't put stuff in there. So we'll go from the least to the most obvious. Okay. So first, right after the title card that states, quote, to the heroism of the resistance fighters past, present, in future, this work is respectfully dedicated. That shows up.

The very first scene that we see is Michael Donovan as a cameraman covering a journalist while he interviews a rebel during the Salvadoran Civil War. The rebel says, quote, these wounds are nothing, see, compared to all the wounds that they've inflicted on our country, but we're gonna, we're gonna fight them till we win. You got that. We're gonna fight till El Salvador is free. So it's not a made up country. It's a real place.

And then Donovan affirms that he got it on camera. And right after that, they're attacked by a couple helicopters. They stand bravely against them. And Donovan ends up getting chased in a truck by the helicopter, which he continues to film almost defiantly. And then the helicopter flees in the face of the visitor ship. So that's your first scene. That's your in May the Array thing, you know, like it's right there, right? So yeah, real quick. Sure. Clarify for me. Uh-huh. The resistance in El Salvador. Okay. Was leftist, or were they counted, or were they anti-communist?

Funny that you asked. I remember the El Salvador. Right. Well, I'm about to get into the history of El Salvador in conflict. Okay, well, there to get into the history of the Salvadoran conflict. Okay. Well, there we go. All right. So why is he picking El Salvador as the starting point for this? Well, like you said, it was in the news. But in the late 1800s, coffee was king in El Salvador. And it was in over, like how to put this, it was more than 90% of their economy in the 1800s,

the late 1800s. Well, because colonialism high. And most of that went to the top 2% of the of the country's population. So you've got a very sharp divide between the halves and the other 98% cases. Okay. In such a situation, depending on exports, if you have a great depression worldwide, that could make things much worse. Now, given the amount of changes that happened politically in the 1930s, you could see that the

candles burning quickly on both ends. Fascism is really popular to those with money and the power to pay people to use guns to keep them in power with money. And socialism would be really popular with the other 90% of the country. What? I'm sorry, 98. Well, I'm thinking you could hire 8% to shoot at the other 90%. Oh, okay, fair. Yeah, fair enough. Uh, so, or at least with a lot of the indigenous people who'd suffered tremendous abuse by those on top and the, uh, and the peasants who've been kept in povish going into the Great Depression,

that would only make things more stark, and they formed the Central American Socialist Party, which quickly led to an uprising of the peasants against the government in 1932. One really important leader in this effort was a man named Augustine, I'm sorry, Augustine Farabundo, Marti Rodriguez, or Farabundo Marti for short, or Marti. There's an accent on the eye.

I'm a marti. Marti. Okay. Okay. He was the son of a farmer from Teo Tepeque. Teo Tepeque. Uh, Tepeque. Sorry, the Latin is just going to fuck you.

Yeah, I know. I know. I know. Yeah. Teo Tepeque, who, who,, who he was the son of a farmer, and he himself went to university, but he dropped out to fight for the rights of the people because he'd learned in college and likely before

that the structure of the government and economy in Salvador was immensely exploitative. So, see? Well, yeah, oh, yeah, well, yeah. Reading ground, you know. Yeah, yeah, leftist. Yes, paradise. Yeah, so he renounced it. He renounced the government and in by 1920 he was getting arrested and exiled by those in power

for rising up with students to oppose the system. Of course, when you exile someone of a peasant background in the 1920s for speaking against exploitative governmental and economical policies They're going to come back and with a lot more theory than they left with so in 1925 Sorry, I'm sorry. I just picture them coming back with a backpack full of books. Yeah, I had it under the art series and like a strap of yeah So books. Yeah, I had it under the arm. Like, and like a strap of, of, yeah. Uh, so, I got papers at all. Look at these these. Sorry. And yeah, no, it's fine. He comes back in 25. And marti is a member of the international organization called the all America anti-imperialist league, dedicated to teaching Marxism and Leninism to peasants so that they could liberate themselves and join a world

revolution in the 1920s. Because world revolution was like the thing. Yeah. Yeah. There were a lot of people getting fucked. Yeah. You know, like it sounds pretty good. And not in the way they want to be.

Yeah. Yeah. And now this gets marty excited or I'm sorry, not excited, getting fucked. Um, no, it gets him exiled again in 1930, but not before he gets nominated for president. Well, because that's the pattern. Right. And of course, he loses that election because he's not around yeah. Being an absentia the whole time. And given that the government in 1931 had a vested interest in making sure that someone with such leanings and policy choices didn't get elected, this time he comes back with friends though. And their movement was cut short by the

government and the military. And from there, Marti helps to organize the peasants into a Marcus Carilla army, which was exacerbated by yet another fall in the price of coffee world. Why? They took on the newly stepped up vice president, turned military dictator Maximelio Hernandez Martinez, who had 30,000 peasants massacred 10 days later. What 30 Thousand this was something called the Lamatanza the slaughter Because Lamatanza is Spanish for the Matanza and yes, and scholars scholars are in some agreement about that But also they they agree that it should be called the slaughter so 30 I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm still getting over the numbers

Wow, okay, well, it's because 30, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm still getting over the numbers. Wow. Okay. Well, it's because of the uprising, the peasant and indigenous uprising in 1932, specifically the indigenous people called the PIPL. And so, now officially it lasted for five months. It really was done by the 10th day with so many dead. Okay. The insurgents maybe killed a total of 100 people. It's probably closer to 50, but let's give them credit for 100. Either way, this feels very armdermony to me. a hundred. Either way, this feels very armdermony to me. Among those killed during La Matanza was Francisco Sanchez and Feliziano Amma, both of whom were hanged. School children were forced to attend the lynching of Amma. And it might be Amma, I didn't, the accent didn't copy over.

The slaughter was affected in several ways. Obviously, the hunt and kill efforts for the army, putting down an insurrection, right? But also, anyone found in possession of a machete as that was the most common weapon amongst the papilla. And then anyone found to have indigenous features. So think of these as concentric circles. After machete, it's, do you look indigenous? This is how you get to 30,000. However, you could, if you had indigenous features, you could present documents proclaiming your innocence to the army. If your paperwork was in order and you were found to have indigenous features, you were killed in groups of 50 in front of the wall of the church

It's much more weight. Yeah, wait wait wait wait wait wait If your paperwork was in order. Yep, then you were grouped So what you say is the racist genocide against the people yes Others had yeah, yeah, others had to dig mass graves and then they were shot into the mass graves. If you own the house, your suspect and you were suspected as being guilty, it was burnt and then you were killed. Now right after La Matanza was officially over, the legislature passed a law that gave

immediate amnesty to anyone who participated in the killing in order to quote, restore order, repress, persecute, punish, and capture those accused of the crime of rebellion this year. Yeah. Now, it, it, it takes a lot to render me speechless, but wow. I'm there. Yeah. Like, well, after this, after this, marty was captured. He was tried and he was executed in short order during the Lama Tanza. His last day was February 1st, 1932. The effort didn't stop in 32, however, more, it set the policy that led to almost totally wiping out the papille. Lama T it set the policy that led to almost totally wiping

out the papille. Lama-Tanza set the tone for the next 50 plus years for the government. Now all of that is to set you up for understanding what exactly the FMLN was, the Fadarbundo Marti Nazionale Liberation Front. They were named after him. Hmm. So from 32 to 69, the military dictatorships rotated around, of course, squashing the peasantry to varying degrees, middle working and peasant class people, all began to grow louder and louder over the next 40 years. And then that gets us to July 14, 1969. See Honduras and El Salvador started a war over a football game.

Yes. Yeah. I remember this. Yes. Now it was called the football war. It was called the 100 Years War. Really, it wasn't over football. It was over land reform policies in Honduras and population and wealth issues in El Salvador

because of those issues over 300,000 people migrated to Honduras. So you can see why Honduras is a lot larger than El Salvador, but it has like half of its population. They're still gonna be upset that 300,000 people have crossed their borders. Yeah. And at that time, Honduras was all corporate it up,

like United Fruit Company level of corporate it up. The US intelligence state department as part owners of corporations corporate it up, like that kind of shit. Three years earlier, the United Fruit Company, which I ate client state, corporate it up. Yeah, okay. Three years earlier, the United Fruit Company, which owns 10% of Honduras's land, 10%

on the one hand that's staggering. On the other hand, there's a part of me surprised it's that low. Well, they had interest in other places too. No, okay. It could also be a certain 10% you know, like the part that has all the fruit. Yeah. Anyway, the UFC, the United Fruit Company, joined together with many other large corporations and companies and created the Federation, National, the Agri-Cultores y Ganaderos de Honduras or Finas for short. Shockingly, this group was anti-campusino. Campusinos are the tenant farmers, anti-peasant and anti-salvatore and migrant. Fenog pressured the president of Honduras to go fuck them all over in order to protect the wealthy landowners and owners in Honduras.

So you've got a lot of tension between these two countries, essentially, dicking over poor people for the benefit of rich people and foreign ultra-rich people. This meant taking a lot of land for much of the decade, in the 1960s, from Salvadorans, squatters, immigrants, migrants, and gave it to native Hondurans, which makes sense, it's Honduran land, but this was unclaimed land previously. So then what the hell? First, Salvadorans who were married to Hondurans were especially screwed Because sorry, you don't get this land anymore Second all the other Salvadorans were screwed and this also meant mass deportations and expulsion from Honduras back into the overly fucked El Salvador with half the land

and twice the people. Yeah. And because FIFA makes everything worse, the two countries were playing. Thank you, John Oliver. These two countries were playing in a two game 1969 qualifier for the World Cup in 1970. Right. Right. Okay. There was a great amount of violence in each capital city when a match was held there.

The Hondurans won when they are in Honduras. The El Salvadorans won when they were in El Salvador. This means that it's tied and you need a third game. That would be in Mexico City. El Salvador's government dissolved diplomatic everything with the Hondurans after the second game because Honduras's government deported nearly 12,000 Salvadorans and had done nothing to secure the safety of other Salvadorans during the riots in their capital

during their game. Okay, so there's a lot of back and forth. Yeah. And there's a lot of back and forth Air Force fighting interestingly with the dictator of Nicaragua giving ammunition to the Honduran government. Mostly like literally ammunition like bullets and rockets. Yeah. What reate. And it's interesting because I think this is the only war that I could find where it was 1940s American aircraft fighting against 1940s American aircraft. Really? Yeah. Because that's what their air forces were made of. Well, I mean, okay, the 1960s and land America that makes sense.

I mean, you say 1940s American aircraft, are we talking about corsairs or war hawks or like like corsairs must hang that kind of stuff. Oh shit. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. See, as a aviation guy, I have to look this up. Yeah. Okay. But they're also bombing the shit out of each other's populations. Yeah. I'm going to have to I'm gonna, I'm still, Nicaragua was giving... Supplying the ammunition to Honduras. Yeah. Yeah. Because they also had some kind of

reg against El Salvador or... Or they were allied more with Honduras. Okay. And Nicaragua was their interests aligned more with Honduras' because they were owned by the same corporate masters. Yep. Right. Meanwhile, the Salvadoran army, which had a lot of practice against its own peasantry for the last 40 years, was marching successfully toward the Honduran capital. This caused Honduras' government to ask the OAS to

intervene and call for a truce and a ceasefire and an eventual peace. The OAS is the organization of the American states. Once the OAS threatened economic sanctions to Salvadoran army finally withdrew from Honduras. While El Salvador seemed to have come out of the other side of this short war with a victory, the economic and social pressure brought about by the fighting. With the new influx of 300,000 of their own citizens back into their country, the damage trade between the two countries and the governments on we and inability to tend to these folks caused problems in El Salvador that would worsen by quite a bit over

the next 10 years. The military came out stronger, but politics skewed more corrupt in the shadow of that. The military endorsed party, the PCN, the National Coalition party, won in a very corrupted election in 1972. Resultingly, the Fuerzas Populores de Liberación, Farabundo Martí, began fighting in opposition. So the FLMN. Okay. Other leftist Marxists and Leninist groups also sprung up as well. So that gets us to 1973. Do you remember what the big issue in 1973 was?

Was it an oil crisis? Yes. And that of course causes food prices to rise, which of course hurts the poor more and gives more moral backing to the groups that are fighting against a clearly corrupted government. In 1977, there's more corrupt elections and the government brought in paramilitary and military groups to gun down the protesters in San Salvador in numbers around 1500 or so. So 1500 people get killed by the government troops. President general, which that's always a good sign. You have a president general.

So let me, we both play Mac warrior. That's like so very merit it hurts. Yeah. Yeah. So Carlos who marathor Romero also, the use specifically of paramilitary privatized death squads in the countryside because why not go all in? By 1979, the amount of people that the government was killing was enough that the Catholic church denounced the El Salvadoran government who in turn repressed the priests.

Eventually, yes, General Carlos Humberto Romero was put down in a coup in October of 79, which really were the United States because is this communism? The coup was a military dictatorship coup of a different striped in Romero's, but a military dictatorship all the same. That said, Jimmy Carter, the humanitarian that he is and the US State Department Proped the hell out of him because what if the communists came? Because Cold War right by the time that Ronald Reagan comes into office in January of 1981 He's more than quadrupled the US spending to support El Salvador

one, he's more than quadrupled the US spending to support El Salvador. Up or he did, he, that's one of the first things he did, up to a billion a year by 1984. And because everyone at the top of these coups were military folks who were allied with rich folks, you can imagine a lot of competing interests that were exactly the same. Make sure that you protect our holdings of land and we, and we pay you this, this group was called the revolutionary government junta and it's been my experience that anytime you have a government body called revolutionary anything they're not and certainly not in a good way if they are yeah the J.R.G. was no different they wanted to stay in power however they were a bit too warm and fuzzy for American interests and for

the ultra-rightist interest in El Salvador. The, uh, what were they called the Revolutionary Government, junta, the J.R.G. wanted to redistribute land to peasants on cooperative farms and to nationalize a lot of the growing. Obviously, this doesn't sit well with the, uh, private owners, the top 0.1% who owned 77% of the land at the time. Oh, Jesus Christ. Oh, the Salvadoran army, along with several wealthy elites who helped fund them, set up attack and death swads, stepped up their killings and got ready to go to war with this new unreasonable government. The US backed the rightist because that was the only way to stop the communist from

taking over the Salvadoran J.R.G. that had been weakened by the rightists. Yeah. This, this, this is more complicated than a Japanese soap opera. Yeah. Like, oh my God. Yeah. Now, this includes helping them stop union strikes in Nelson. Now, this includes helping them stop union strikes in else and student demonstrations and helping kidnap

important leaders on the left. Oh, because of course. Of course, that's all of that. Like, because in for a penny, in for a pound, yeah, yeah, it's ghosts than aliens. Like, I mean, it's all of a piece. Like, we got it. Oh, God damn it.

Of course, the government began to respond to rightist military folks by attacking the citizens because they feared a leftist takeover, which would obviously be emboldened by the rightist weakening the government and their attempt to stop the leftists. So everybody is beating the shit out of Charlie Brown because they're worried that Lucy will take power.

Yeah, because Charlie Brown is the only one who is not directly allied to anybody. And oh, my God, we got to keep him from lying with everybody because fuck Linus. And fuck Sally, because Schroeder and Lucy are worried about getting power and don't get me started on violet. So now, we don't get me started on violet. Um, so now, pig pen. We don't even want to like, right? Not even bring him in. Well, he's already been exterminated. Uh, okay. Right. Yeah. Oh my God. So now both sides have death squads and it's 1980. And by this point, the

composinos, the peasants and the indigenous people of El Salvador have seen nearly 50 years of generational violence against them in the name of not letting the communist win, which is mostly a smoke screen so that whoever's in charge can continue to enrich themselves. Rinsen repeat, and by this point, they say, well, why the hell not? And they form the FM LN in the name of Marti, which sees a fair amount of success in the face of such suppression. Oh, you're going to accuse us of being leftist. Let's give that a shot because y'all been giving us a lot of shots. So some of this is due to the sense. Which we all use right now. Yeah. God. Less it. Okay. Now, some of this is due to the sense of piety that people have about liberation. And some of it is due to not having much to lose, given that they're the target of attacks, regardless

of what they do or don't do. And quickly, several villages and neighborhoods become FMLN zones, which leads to the government bombing the shit out of them, killing plenty, and not changing the pieces on the board at all. In February 1980, Archbishop Cesar Romero, a total badass whose story does not get told enough, he makes it very public what's going on and he wraps it all up in the fact that he's a priest. He called on the Salvadoran soldiers not to follow orders to murder people in March of

1980. So he's saying, don't kill people. So of course he gets killed during mass the next day by people in March of 1980. So you say, don't kill people. So of course he gets killed during mass the next day by the last hour of military. And Role, Julia, plays him in a biopic. Yes. Yes. And yeah, no,

and a figure who deserves an awful lot more attention historically and speaking as a Catholic, I think it says less than positive things about the church that they have not found a way to canonize his ass yet. Yeah. I do not disagree. I mean, yeah. Yeah.

You know, and the thing was he was a man of books. He absolutely was not considered to be any kind of a liberation Theologist or anything. He was a quiet read your books Catholic You know a man of letters, you know, and then and then he's like I can't I can't not speak on this Please don't kill people and then don't don't kill innocent people. This shouldn't be something I have to tell you Yeah, now at his funeral sniper shot 42 of his mourners. Oh, Jesus. Right. See what happens when you stop me one sentence short. You see what happens. I'm sorry. Yeah, it's fine. It just, yeah, you, yeah, you, uh, now you have to deal with the consequences of knowing that.

Now it only gets worse from here. Uh, by 1982 and 1983, there's an attempt of the FM LN. To the FM LN tries to get a ceasefire, bring together all the sides to organize, but Ronald Reagan said that this would lead to a communist dictatorship. So no. Then there's a long insurgency by the FMLN against the government and the rightist death squads and it's largely a battle between the landed elites with the military and their employee versus a small band of resistance fighters who refused to See their country to such people. Their politics are nominal and certainly something

that had an appeal. But largely, it's resistance against power in that same amount of time, the FMLN carried out deliberate and organized sabotage missions that fucked the Air Force for a while. They cut it nearly in half with their sabotage and we're talking close to a thousand arson's and sabotage attacks in a single year. Oh wow. Yeah. Yeah. FMLN even occupied major citiesage attacks in a single year. Oh wow. Really? Yeah. Yeah, that's a nice whole thing. Yeah.

That's a nice whole thing. Yeah. Even occupied major cities at different times in the year. And they were obvious and they weren't going anywhere. The government that Reagan supported continued killing civilians by the hundreds in response to this. This is Shades of Lama-Tanza. Just as V was hitting the air, the government was killing Union leaders.

And it would take until 1997 to recognize peace throughout the country to the point where the truth commissions could actually be set up. And this is the war that Johnson's mini-series starts out with. He clearly is watching and reading the news and he represents this very struggle in the opening scene of V. But it feels more that it's a timely thing that fits in with his dichotomy of unyielding resistance versus military overwhelming superiority rather than here's fascists and here's communists. To the heroism of the resistance fighters past, present, and future, this work is respectfully dedicated. This is the present. These are the resistance fighters that he's talking about and he shows them in the first scene. Wow. Okay. Johnson was highlighting a very real conflict to service

the conceptual point that he was making, but he was far more interested in using old symbolism to point loudly to the idea of fascism, and it can't happen here. Far less about American intervention and collaboration in El Salvador, despite his featuring it in the first scene. In essence, as often happens with our authors, Johnson fell over backward in the same way that John Carpenter did with they live. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting how his framing of that and his particular lens on that reveals a very significant level of privilege. It does. Yeah. Like it's like it's really easy for him as a an American specifically an American sci-fi writer. Yeah. Yeah. An American television writer. He didn't want to be pigeonholed as an SF writer. But yeah, as an American, as an American writer of entertainment, who was living

comfortably enough that as you said in our last episode, you never talked about any kind of financial struggle, right? He was in a position to view these folks in a non-ideological lens, you know, that they were resisting against our when it was like, okay, no, we are, we are literally dirt for farmers who have been oppressed forever by feudal overlords. You know, it's an interesting, I mean, looking at it from a meta level this many years later, it's an interesting study in, well, in paradigm, and in separation from what it is that you're writing about.

Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah. Yeah, while you were expressing what a complete and utter shit show that was. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, you know, I was thinking, okay, so, so the FMLN were, were ideologically leftist.

Meanwhile, at the same time, there was a leftist resistance fighting in El Salvador in Nicaragua, which had been funneling my Honduras. Oh, we're gonna get to that. In the Honduran War. We're gonna get to that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

The Contra is in the San Nistas. Yes. Yes. Was the kind of reversal of that? Yeah, because you had a, well, you had what happened in Guatemala and what happened in Chile. It's happening in Nicaragua.

You had a legally elected government that was too far left for some people and they started attacking it. Yeah, so yeah, but we'll get to that, don't worry. There's plenty more V to go around. Jesus. Now, both Carpenter and Johnson had a perspective that they were writing from Carpenter was specifically

critiquing the Reagan era, if you recall, episode 150 and 151. Yes. Johnson was specifically avoiding present politics, though using them as a backdrop and going with his, it can't happen here, themes, though he did so by co-opting a whole bunch of history. Let's look now to the scientists in the mini-series who are being delegitimized while they're following a leader or while following a leader who wants to take over other places to harvest their resources. Okay. At one point, Donovan asks Martin, Martin is the fifth columnist. Says, how did someone like that get to be your leader anyway? And Martin

responds, charisma, circumstances, promises, not enough of us spoke out to question him until it was too late. It happens on your planet, doesn't it? Oh, Al. On July 29th, 1921, Hitler became chairman of his party and renamed it the NSDAP. Do largely to his ability to make rousing speeches. On April 1st, 1924, Hitler turned his trial for the failed insurrection into a platform to get his ideas out there. And though he spends the rest of the year in a really soft jail, he's gotten his message out and has others carrying out plenty of brutalizing violence, largely attacking leftists whom Europe seems to really not mind getting killed.

In 1928, the NSDAP only gets about 3% of the vote in the Reichstag, very easy to ignore a small political arm. In 1930, January 23rd, William Frick became the first Nazi to hold a position of any note whatsoever in the German government when he became the minister of the interior for Thuringia, a thoroughly unimportant province in German history. I know because I guess what is it? Thuringia. Oh, correct. Yes. Okay. Which I looked it up, ain't nothing happened there of much note. July 16th, 1930, Heinrich Bruning. It's got an umu out over the you, who's in charge of the right-leaning coalition of

the Reichstag. He's unable to secure the votes necessary to put forward his deflationary budget in the face of the worldwide depression, which is hitting Germany harder than most owing to the Treaty of Versailles. So he invokes Article 48, Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution states, quote, If public security in order are seriously disturbed or endangered within the German Reich, the president of the Reich may take measures necessary for the restoration, intervening if need be

with the assistance of the armed forces. For this purpose, he may suspend for a while, in whole or in part, the fundamental rights provided in articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153. It's a super dangerous precedent 114, 115, 117, 118, 113, 123, 124, and 153. It's a super dangerous precedent that nobody is super clear on yet. And at that point, nobody really saw the Nazis or ate off Hitler as a threat.

On September 14th, 1931, the unemployment rate in Germany is painfully rising, which allows Hitler and the Nazis to make promises due to those circumstances and grow to 18.4% of the Reichstag, making it the second largest party in the Reichstag. October 1931, writers suggest another coalition that includes Nazis. Hitler agrees. By this point, Thompson had interviewed and warned the world about Hitler.

But nobody's listening. January 1932, industrialists reach out to Hitler because they think he'd be a good ally that they can control. April 10, 1932, Hindenburg beats Hitler on the second ballot, but Hitler came in a strong second on both ballots. April 13th, 1932, burning banned the essay from marching. May 30th, 1932, burning was forced to resign as president of the government and a bit of a problem with a conflict of interest and his whole cabinet resigned in protest to his not pushing forward. It's fun and complex, but it's too long for this podcast, at least this episode. Anyway, Hindenburg becomes president and appoints von Popen chancellor. June 16th, 1932, the essay ban was lifted. They can now march in the streets again.

In August 31st, 1932, Gering, another Nazi is president of the Reichstag and will eventually help to push von Popen out. December 2, 1932, von Popen is forced out as chancellor, general Kurt von Schleser is a super-rightist and he becomes chancellor. January 30, 1933, von Popen maneuver is von Schleser out and convinces Hindenburg that Hitler should be chancellor and himself vice chancellor, That way they can control Hitler, like we're on either side of him and get the industrialists on their side because they support Hitler because they could control him. Luckily, after that, everyone listened to Thompson and put a stop to all of it and everything went great afterwards. Fuck you. I know. August, August, 2nd, 1934 Hitler merges the president and chancellor positions and has

already had the backing of the enabling act that made him dictator for four years. I'm sure that Donovan speaking to his mom, quote, you always said it couldn't happen here. Then one day we woke up and we were living in a fascist state and quote, is totally irrelevant to what I've just listed and nothing like it was said at all to anyone in Germany at the time. Oh, yeah, no. I mean, obviously. So that's the leader. Now let's talk about the uniforms. The youth brigade that Daniel Bernstein joins in V specifically gives him a brown uniform. This is not accidental. That's your SA connection right there, the brown shirts.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like I said, I'm going from least to most obvious, right? Yeah. It's going to get real easy here. In December 1934, the German government passed the law against malicious attacks on state and property. It outlawed, quote, malicious rabble-rousing remarks or those indicating base mentality. Wasn't there something about like, hey, you can't desecrate statues during the summer of 2020? Yeah. Yeah. So this this law also said, quote, whoever purposefully makes or circulates a statement of a factual nature, which is untrue or grossly exaggerated, or which may seriously harm the welfare of the Reich or of a state, or the reputation of the national government or of a state government, or of parties or organizations supporting these governments is to be punished provided that no more severe punishment is decreed in other regulations.

With the statement or with imprisonment of up to two years, and if he makes or spreads a statement publicly with imprisonment of not less than three months. If serious damage to the Reich or state has resulted from this deed, penal servitude may be imposed. Whoever commits an act through negligence will be punished with imprisonment of up to three months or by fine. Wow. Yeah. Okay. imprisonment of up to three months or by fine. Wow. Yeah. Okay.

Alphonse Heck, who was later interviewed about his activity in the Hitler youth, said of his father's railings against the government to his own parents. In front of Alphonse, he says, quote, in retrospect, I think it was the last time my father railed against the regime in front of me. He wasn't much of a drinker, but when he had a few too many, he had a tendency to shout down everyone else, not a small feat amongst the men in my family. You mark my words, mother, he yelled, that God damned Australian house painter is going to kill us all before he's through conquering the world. And then his baleful eye fell on me.

They are going to bury you in this goddamn monkey suit, the Hitler youth uniform. My boy Alphonse's grandmother chided her son because she had a very real fear that her grandson would turn in her son. Quote, why don't you leave him alone? Do Dummer Nahr, which is German for you stupid fool. And watch your mouth. You want to end up in the KZ, which is the concentration camps. Alphons later mused, quote, my grandmother had every reason to warn him about talking loosely for his classification as politically unverliable. Surely would have sent him to a KZ had anyone reported his remarks, even within the family. But there were also

two of our farm hands at the table, and Hans, the younger of the two, had recently announced his decision to apply for party membership. He had ambitions to attend an agricultural school and knew full well that party membership would help him get in. Perhaps luckily for my father, Hans was getting pretty drunk himself, although I doubt he would have reported my father had he been stoned sober. Despite the fact that I later attained a high rank in the Hitler youth, which required me to be a specially vigilant, I never considered my father to be dangerous to our new order.

I merely thought him a fool who had long since been left behind. Wow. Daniel absolutely uses his newfound power to attain prestige within the visitor's organization and among other kids. But his grandfather, who lived through the Holocaust, repudiates him harshly when Daniel says that he'll use his position to force Robin to marry him under threat of turning them into the visitors for being a family of scientists. And after Daniel's parents are questioned and tortured and returned home, their grandfather is now dead. They live in fear of saying anything that

Daniel will inform on. The uniforms that the visitors use. Yeah. Yeah. So there's your essay. There's your Hitler youth. The uniforms that the visitors use are, well, they're uniforms, right? They're almost entirely the same shade of red that we see George Von Trapp ripping up in the sound of music. the same shade of red that we see George Von Trapp ripping up in the sound of music. I'm sorry, Georg. And they definitely cut a nice triangular figure. But the calf length boots, the cap, the belts and the chevrons that denote rank coming from the neck down the old leaks in a more pronounced version of the ribbons of recognition that German troops would wear on the Varmacht, they're all jet black. So I don't realize that parallel to the Varmacht uniform. Oh, yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. And so is there gun, which is an example of a blueger, but it's science.

So their gun is also a blueger like, but it's a little more sciencey. And the insignia they use is black on red. I'll try to describe it and then I'll find you a picture. A thin black rounded rectangle going north to south rounded on both ends. A small space between that and a horizontal rectangle of the same kind, but half is long that extends from the northernmost spot eastward. Same from the southernmost spot westward, and so if you measure the width and the length,

they'd be pretty close to the same. Then starting directly above the southern horizontal half line, there's a simple solid black dot. It's diameter is the same width as the horizontal line. You have the same size dot starting below the northern half line. So based on that description, and I'm sure you could be looking it up right now. Oh yeah. Yeah. So based on that description and I'm sure you could be looking it up right now. Oh yeah. Yeah. So based on that, I don't need to look it up. I remember it. Oh, okay. So based on that and I will show you just really quick, um, be insignia. Um, based on these two things, there we go. So based on all of that description and what I've just shown you, and I had to pause it

because I didn't want people to hear me clicking and clacking, what does it look like? It looks like a goddamn spastika. You know, I mean, like there's no buzz. It is, it has a bare minimum level of plausible deniability. No, wait. Like they're not going to get sued by the Nazi party for product infringement. Yeah, well, yeah, that's not going to happen. And because this is Hollywood and the Almighty Dollar, they can still show the film and that insignia in Germany.

Good point. Good point. Which, you know, it's interesting, you know, growing up building model airplanes as a kid. Mm-hmm. Oh, they always had to build. German cross, they'd ever had the Schwatsikas. Yeah, I remember none of the aircraft models none of the none of the

transfers that you use ever had Not seeing signal on them because then you couldn't sell the kid in Germany right So this would satisfy that right yeah, so now let's get on to the scientists. I keep promising a scientist. Here's the scientists. On April 8th, 1933, the German student union published the 12 feces, calling for a pure German language and a pure German culture achieved only through burning and cleansing the literature of Jewish intellectualism, which bridges the gap from science through literature through Marxism and attacks on anything not considered hella straight enough.

The very first things burnt were actually an attack on the Institute for Sexual Viscenne Shaft. This institute, I can't believe I can say that word, but if you give me the word for eggs in French, I'm fucked. Loves. Eves. Eves. Eves. What is your problem? Like, that'm fucked. Lufs. Yeah. Lufs. If what?

What is your problem? I like it out because I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to pronounce the, the VES when you add the S to the VE. So I think it ends up being. Whereas one is sort of. Yeah. It's just so. But sexual abuse and soft. No problem.

You can. Yeah. Well, yeah. So anyway, this had been the leading source of academic and medical research in Europe and the US and possibly the world on the issues of gender, trans identity and whatnot. By burning these 20,000 books and journals from the Institute's library, the German student union entirely with the support of Gerbels and the Ministry of Poppaganda destroyed unique studies and works on intersectionality, homosexual, transgender and other related topics.

Oh, it's set back, study of sexual identity and sexuality like a century. I mean, decades at least. No, I'd literally the next sentence was how much they said it back by. So good. Yeah. It's also very likely that Dora Richter, the very first known and documented transgender woman who underwent gender confirmation surgery, was killed during this burning. Although some reports have it that she was arrested afterward and died in custody, either

way, attacks on transgender folks were at the van of the Nazi attack on marginalized groups, which led specifically to eliminating the people who could have and would have called out what the Nazis were doing as they were doing it. The following literatures were also outlawed in Nazi Germany, making critiques by such folks all but impossible. They got rid of porn, all books degrading German purity, pop literature, that was Tubaoujwa, Tussue Proficial, Tussille, any writing that was damaging to the folk, literature that was too decadent, anything on sex that focused on individual pleasure rather than duty, anything that advocated bloodless, constructivist or decadent art, anything egalitarian, anything that advocated bloodless, constructivist, or decadent art, anything egalitarian, anything

that history doesn't center, doesn't center the German folk, and its exceptionalism, as well as exceptional leaders. Any history that explains history through a study of the masses, no liberal literature, no democratic literature, no pacifist literature, anything that is about the Vimar Republic, anything Marxist, anything communist, anything Bolshevik, anything that denies racial structuralism that sets the Aryans at the top, anything written by traders, anything written by foreigners who think that they can attack Germany through literature, and anything by any Jewish author no matter what the field. This led to the burning of over 80% of the school libraries and 75% of the scientific libraries in Poland after they conquered

Jesus Age crymany. Yeah, now I'm going to date this podcast a little bit. There is a Middle school in Texas that is named after a guy who learned how to read in his late 90s See his name is George Dawson. George Dawson middle school just banned his autobiography from the middle school library that bears his name. Yeah. Yeah. So luckily it can't happen here. Now combine this with the Hitler youth and you have a national policy enacted that is specifically aimed at encouraging brutality against those deemed not of the folk, especially

Jews. You also had the burning of the Reichstag blamed on Communists, which was quickly accreted to include anybody, Jewish. To be one was to be the other, therefore any conspiracy imagined or discovered by Communists was also a Jewish plot. This exiled many writers, many artists and many people who are important to this podcast, scientists from V quote, and actually before I get into this, because I'm going to quote to a bunch of dialogue

that talks about this. There is anything that you wanted to reflect on in everything that I just brought up? Just it hearing all of this and hearing the litany of, okay, let's talk about all the shit that the Nazis wanted to burn. And let's talk about, you know, Dawson's own autobiography, being banned from the library of the school named for him. Mm-hmm. It just, it, it, it, wrinkles me on such a deep, deep level Yeah.

That these people, the people who support this shit, when I say these people, that people who support this shit, when I say these people, that's who I'm talking about, people who support these things, the people who are in support of destruction of writing and art and knowledge of whatever kind they find offensive. These kinds of people are the ones who then want to turn around and call you and me and and anybody with a more inclusive outlook on the world. They want to call us fragile. They

want to call us snowflakes. They want to make a big, huge deal about, oh, did I hurt your liberal feelings? Like, no, mother fucker. I don't care. You just pissed me off because you're an ignorant mother fucker. No, you're the fragile one. You're the one who can't have anybody talking about their own goddamn identity without you feeling threatened. Yeah, you banned a book that you were never going to read in the first place. Yeah, you you're functionally fucking illiterate. Like, and you're bringing everybody else down to your level by, let's leave.

Try to bring everybody else. Yeah. Just, it is, it is probably the thing that makes me the angriest about that movement, about that, that, that urge, I don't know what I call it a movement that urge within specifically American politics, but politics in general, in any in any population you're going to have these people. The thing that makes me that angriest about them is that they want to project their weakness and their fear on everybody else. And it's like, could

you please just look at a goddamn mirror? No, no, no, you're the one who's terrified of literally everyone else in the goddamn world. Yep. You know, like, and we have these motherfuckers showing up to try to try to protest against a drag queen story hour at libraries. Right. Like, okay, look, if I want to take my kid to the library to have a story read to them by a drag queen, explain to me how you're threatened by that. Like, how does that fucking hurt you unless you are so desperately insecure? Well, they're not going to claim that they're threatened by it, though. That's the thing. Like, I think you're begging the question, quite honestly. They're claiming that they are the guardians of purity and of children.

Okay. So fuck off. purity and of children. Okay. My kid. Fuck off. Yeah. Now, see you're weak because you, you disagree with them. And I think that's the, okay, then I'll prove that I'll prove how not weak I am by hitting you over the head with a fucking two by four. You're redneck mother fucking. Yeah.

But you won't. Fuck because you're there with your kid. No, you know what? And you don't have a two by four. And you can't afford to stay in jail. They're using the rules of society and politeness against you. That's what they do until they run the entire public square. So yeah.

So what? Yeah. All right. No, I, I know. So I've won the TV series V. Here's. No, I know. Okay. No. I wish. From the TV series V. Here's here's the dialogue. The quote, the world was shocked today when Nobel Prize winner Dr. Morris Jankowski of the Brussels Biomedical Institute in Belgium held press conference today or to reveal the existence of an international conspiracy against

the visitors. And then it goes to Jankowski. It came to my attention when Dr. Rudolf Metz in California asked to speak with me on what he called urgent confidential manners. Other colleagues of mine are also being approached by scientists, primarily biomedical and anthropological scientists. From many nations who are apparently a part of this insidious conspiracy, their plans quite simply are to seize control of several motherships belonging to the visitors.

They tried hard to convince me that this was to protect the human race or to keep such powers from the military on our planet. I do believe, however, that their motivation is by far more personal. Then Jankowski signed his statement, listing those he claims tried to bring him into this conspiracy. When word began to spread of the Nian Kowski statement, the international scope revealed itself as scores of scientists around the world came forward to admit that they had been approached or actually confessed that they were part of the

conspiracy. Seeing here is Dr. Jacques Duvier, Duvier, Duvier, Duvier, whatever. Yeah. It's for all say they don't know how to spell right there. Yeah, they're the problem not me Yeah, their language has been around far longer than I but yeah No, it's yeah, Dr. Jacques de Vouville also a Nobel laureate physician and leading biochemist in France Who is detained by the Suret a and has confessed to his involvement naming other scientists as his co-conspirators Then after the news there's a specific scene of a scientist who works with Julie and Ben. Ben is the brother of Elias that I talked about last week, two biologists who joined the resistance later, having his office searched. It's a lie. It's a vicious lie.

You don't need to warrant search my files. There's nothing. You'll find nothing. What's that? No, I never saw that. No, it's not true. I don't know how this got here. It's a lie. I tell you. you cut back to the news while Robin Maxwell's dad the scientist who lives next door to David is discussing the several of his friends who are missing uh, and so you hear and many other scientists and he says they they simply they've simply vanish which Which some think lens credence to the charges brought against them. Christine Walsh, press secretary for visitor supreme commander John had this to stay. So as Christine is the journalist who is now fully co-opted,

the visitors were shocked to learn of this conspiracy and fearful of the chaos which could possibly result. Not only would their own needs be impaired, but all the benefits they plan to share with us could be in danger. Scientific seminars planned for next week will be postponed. Then you cut to the Birkowitz family watching TV. And because it's still too early to determine how many scientists are involved, the UN has agreed to visit requests that all scientists and their family members must register their whereabouts with local authorities.

Computers will be used to verify their registration, and then you cut to Abraham, the grandfather, talking to a friend who says, quote, Abraham, don't get so wound up. Nothing's going to happen to you or your family. They're not doctors or biologists or even scientists. You're not involved. Anyway, it's going to pass. And he says, that's what I said in 1938 back in Berlin. But this is different. Is it? And then it literally cuts to his grandson, David, walking with a visitor wearing his new brown uniform. And then back to the news, the Supreme Commander wants to make it clear that while he's sure all scientists all over aren't hard of this conspiracy, it's difficult to ascertain which of them may not be. While police

have scoured scientific files for facts on the conspiracy, startling evidence is being found that many scientists have actually had major breakthroughs in research, which they've suppressed. Senate Medical Affairs Committee Chairman Raymond Burke had this to say. And then he says, yes indeed, I do have evidence that revolutionary cancer treatments do exist, and have existed for some time, along with many other breakthroughs, which apparently our scientific friends kept quiet about and haven't shared with us. Why would they do that? I won't speculate, except to say that there's a lot of money to be made in research grants. Okay. Yeah. No. Okay. So this, this, this, this big pharma has been keeping this from us. They're all shills. And there's a lot of dates all the way back. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and it's a politician saying it to gain political support. He's seeing a crisis and he's seeing where he can grift. And on top of that, you hear all these scientists who are coming forward and saying, yeah, I was part of the conspiracy. Or I mean, you've got this kangaroo thing going on, right? So then there's a few scenes showing that people are turning their backs on the scientists.

They're spurning them. They're canceling plans because they don't want to be seen with the scientist. A girl comes home from school having gotten into a fight because someone called her dad a dirty scientist. And among the first who join the resistance in VR as a result, scientists and journalists and clergy and criminals. And I just want to make sure that we have this list down. Scientists, journalists, clergy and criminals.

Okay. This very much apes the makeup of plenty of resistance and partisan movements during World War II in Europe. Many intellectuals took up the cause of resistance and partisanship. Militaristically so in Western Europe, whereas in Eastern Europe it was largely underground, supply and information chains that fed necessary information to Eastern European partisan groups. Still, the makeup was similar. Clergy, criminals, intellectuals, and journalists. And if you look at the number of ghetto and concentration camp-uprisings, the networks that existed before and after them, the amount of ex-patriots who came back and fought and died

against the Nazis who occupied their homeland, it's easy to see that such resistance as that, as well as what we saw in the Salvadoran Civil War starting in 79, was definitely something that Johnson would pull for him for his writings. Johnson didn't want to make this a science fiction miniseries because he feared being pigeonholed, but when the network was thirsty to make money off the post-ET craze, and the post-Empire Strikes Back craze, he realized he could tell the same story just with aliens instead of actual Nazis. And he didn't seem to have a specifically positive ideology though. He was more conceptual in his approach, despite the miniseries releasing on Mayday.

That seems to be more of a coincidence than anything else. Yeah. And again, it got a 40 share for the two nights that is on. It was huge, and NBC actually got more eyes on their network than CBS or ABC for those two nights that is on. It was huge and NBC actually got more eyes on their network than CBS or ABC for those two nights, which was unthinkable and NBC prior to that show. Wow. Yeah. I'm gonna stop there because next episode is gonna be about the next mini series they made based on this. Yeah, because they did make it because the success of this they were like, fuck, let's do it again.

Yeah, well, of course, but there's gonna be a lot of differences too. Oh, well, yeah, this is the only one that Michael Johnson had an actual creative hand in. Oh, yeah. Now he helped pick the writing team for the next one, but we'll get into what happened. But yeah, wow. But yeah, I mean, you see this, like it's very clear he's writing from a point of view and he's writing from an ideology and he's pulling in stuff, but it's not like he, like I said, he's falling over backward on it, right? Well, he's he's

His his motivation is very very very specific. Mm-hmm. And it's only ideological to the extent that it is anti authoritarian right In anti It is anti-fascist. Yeah, it is anti-fascist. But he doesn't make the connection between fascists and right wing politics. Right. Right. You know, the vast, the vast plane of right wing politics is somehow separated by the Gulf of apathy from the peninsula of fascism.

Like, yeah. Well, I would also say, like the only time. Are you in this artificial kind of separation there? Yeah, the only time you see a politician doing something is when he's hopping on a bandwagon of things, there's no politician sitting there going, we could use this. This is true.

There's nothing like that. If there was something like that, I'd be like, okay, he's calling out right wing stuff. But no, there's nothing like that. If there was something like that, I'd be like, okay, he's calling out right wing stuff, but no, there's nothing like that. Well, and I think part of that is this is 1983. Sure. This is the height of Reaganite America because this is 83, so this is before Iran Contra breaks. This is before there was a kind of.

This is after he gets shot. This is after he gets shot. So he's so he's at that. He's not a strike breaker. He's he's the charming daughtering old man. Yeah, he's he's writing high on a wave of his popularity. True. And so he and the Republican party because they're getting some of his reflected glory. Oh yeah. You can't vilify them. Right. Like in his own head, I mean, I don't know what Johnson's,

you know, political leanings were, but I mean, even in his own head, even if he was, you know, a Democrat, you know, at that time, nobody was, nobody was, you know, connecting the dots between, you know, Reagan and, yeah, I mean, it's not like Reagan premise system. Right. It's not like he wasn't a fucking monster, but he still got 49 out of 50 states in the 1984 election.

Yeah. Yeah. you know, damn. You know, he, he, he, the connection in the popular consciousness in the majority culture of the United States did not, did not see Reagan as some kind of hyper right wing terrifying fascist kind of figure. Right. Right. The way that Alan Moore saw yeah. Yeah. Like I mentioned in our last episode. By the way, she's immensely popular after an assassination attempt goes wrong. Yes. And she she and right Ronnie run and and they run and gun for roughly the same amount of time. Oh, yeah No, they and they were and they were buddy buddy. Yeah, you know

And ideologically they were deeply buddy buddy You know, it it was It's debatable about whether it was the Reagan Revolution or the Thattarite revolution brought across the Atlantic like you know sure um and the Reagan Revolution or the Thattarite Revolution brought across the Atlantic. Like, you know, sure. And so, so, I mean, Johnson not drawing any kind of parallel to right wing American politics, well, everybody was right wing in the United States at the time. Yeah, that's exactly true. It was just that was the wallpaper. And if you were calling out anything in the Reagan administration as being a violation of human rights or being the fact that we were supporting effectively fascists in Latin America. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, we got to, you know,

we were difficult choices have to be made because, you know, the Soviets and the Cold War, you know, the fact that we were in this in this binary conflict with the USSR gave so much cover to so much right wing bullshit in terms of to so much you know, fantasy policy. Yeah, in terms of military policy and foreign aid. Like, you know, it's in retrospect, it's mind-boggling. And so, I mean, of course, he didn't hold that out because he was a mainstream American writer, is strictly true. Very true. And so he wouldn't. But who really liked it can't happen here. Yeah, but who but who but who but who looked at his own his own experiences as you mentioned his own experiences with his father growing up,

the thing is there was still a recognizable dividing line between holy shit. This is crazy bon, white supremacist stupidity. And well, you know, Reaganomics, right, right, right, you know, and we're not there anymore. And so for us, it's a lot easier to look at this and go, you know, this, this was the path. The one was the path leading to the other one. Right. You know, and but at the time, that connection was farther apart. Oh, yeah. You know, both both effectively and in the popular imagination. So yeah, falling over backwards or just like completely overlooking the roads connecting

the two points to each other. You know, it's the opening the fridge and not finding the milk when it's standing right in front of you. I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't feel attacked by that at all. It's the having a perfect, perfect ceiling for plaid and just not doing it. Oh, screw you. No.

Do we? All righty. Well, that's what you've gleaned. Is there anything you want people to read? I'm going to cripple quadruple. I don't know how many times I've recommended it now, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna, uh, one more time, uh, recommend, uh, two gun witch by friend of the showbishop, O'Connell. Okay. Because it's a, it's a goddamn fun read. And yeah, I'm here for it. So find it, check it out. Yeah, it's, it's, it's an excellent book.

How about you? What are you reading right now? I'm going to recommend actually two things. One, you can find V. I don't know if it's you have to rent it or not because I'm a little spoke because I have prime. But you can find the original mini series both on Tubi, which I know you can do for free. And I think on prime for free, but do the ones for free. So that is what I'm gonna recommend mostly, but also because we were talking Nazis so much, I would like to also recommend another book

and it's called, I've recommended this before, as a please go order this, but now mine has come, and I've started reading it, it's called All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days by Rebecca Donner. It's the true story of the American woman at the heart of the German resistance to Hitler. So there's this woman from South Dakota, and she's living in Germany, translating stuff like that.

She joins a resistance and she is moving documents back and forth and she's helping fight Hitler from within. In 1943, she gets captured by the Gestapo. And she gets sentenced to six years of hard labor in a concentration camp. Hitler steps in and goes, no, no, no, no, no, no. Behead her tomorrow. She is the only woman ever having, only American woman ever having been ordered executed by Hitler.

And she died. So it's written by her great niece. Whoa. Yeah. So I say read that shit. Uh, so yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm. I blown away. Oh crap. Okay. Anybody want to find you online?

Where should they look? Um, I can be Hold on. Wrap. Okay. Anybody want to find you online? Where should they look? I can be found on TikTok at Mr. underscore playlock on Twitter. I can be found at eH playlock. We can be found on Twitter. You can hit us up on the tweet machine. If we've said something wrong, if we've gotten something factually incorrect, you can you can hit us up on the tweet machine if we've said something wrong if we've gotten something factually incorrect or if you just want to argue with us and that is the hill you're going to die on. We can be found at geek history time on Twitter.

And our website of course is www a smorgasbord. If you don't like baked potatoes, you can try the green beans or vice versa, whatever. I won't judge. Personally, I'd go for the prime rib, that's just me. And then our, you are listening to our podcast right now so you clearly have found us somewhere. But we can be found on the podcast app for Apple and we can be found on Stitcher. And so wherever you have found us please take the time to subscribe and like and give us the five star review that you know we deserve. And you, sir, where can you be found?

Uh, let's see. The harmony to H is in the middle on Twitter and Instagram, probably the easiest places to find me. Also, if you are in the Sacramento area within 60 miles and you want to come down to Luna's cafe on either, let's see, I think this is going to drop after, but just in case, October 7th, November 4th or December 2nd, I will be there with my crew capital punishment running our pun tournament for over six years now. Justine Lopez has now joined us, stepping us up to the next level, and it's going to be an amazing show, bring proof of vaccination as well as $10 and come check out an amazing show. So that's where you

can find me. So for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s. you