A Geek History of Time - Episode 335 - The Antifa Is Coming From Inside the House Damian Reads an Army Pamphlet from March 1945 Part IV

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

We were saying that we were going to get into the movies. Yeah, and I'm only going to get into a few of them, because there were way too goddamn many for me to really be interested in telling you this clone version or this clone version in the early studio system. It's a good metric to know in a story art, where should I be? Or there's beast, I should step over here. Yeah. At some point, at some point, I'm going to have to sit down with you, like, and force you, like, pump you full of coffee and be like, no, okay, look.

And are swiftly and brutally put down by the minute men who use bayonets to get their point across. Well done there. I'm good, Damien. And I'm also glad that I got your name right this time. I apologize for that one TikTok video. Men of this generation wound up serving a whole lot of them as a percentage of people. population because of the war, because of a whole lot of other stuff. Oh, yeah.

And actually, in his case, it was pre-war, but, but, you know. I was joking. Did he seriously join the American Navy? He did. Fucking. Yeah. This is a geek history of time. Where we connect murdery to the real world.

My name is Ed Blaylock. I'm a world history teacher here in Northern Korn. California. And just two days ago, I got an email that very, very much excited me. The sword, the fencing sword that I ordered back several months ago is ready to be shipped to me fully a month earlier than I had expected it. And it's coming. from Slovakia, from a company named Siggy Forge, and they sent me a photo, like, proof of life, like, we have, we have your sword, pay the other half of the invoice, you know, if you want to get it, you know. And, and it's just, it's so pretty. It's, it's so pretty. And I'm

so excited. Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm looking forward to the confirmation that it is being shipped. and then I don't know how long I'm going to have to wait before it actually shows up on my door and I have been doing some very interesting and niche kind of web searches to try to find out what current tariff policy is in regard to Slovakia and specifically items like swords being ships from that part of the world which is very niche I recognize but yeah

I'm super stoked and very very excited and I can't wait to have it in my palsyed little hands how about you what are you up to and how are you? I'm Damien Harmony

I am a U.S. history teacher up here in Northern California it's it's I mean if you ever want to see the difference between me and in you I a while back had a Shaleli

shipped my house yeah so because what if i can't get downstairs to the quarter staff um or what if you know those quarters and i knock some knees so i again your preferred weapon versus my preferred weapon well yeah um i mean but like i i would i would certainly not uh uh sneeze at at a shalele um Because that's that that would be foolish because that's that's that's that's a hardwood stick right there So cool, but my my daughter recently had a dental surgery had so the thing happens sometimes is that a kid's baby teeth Do not detach enough that the adult teeth can push down. Yeah, and that's that's what happens some there's like subduction that happens sometimes there's a number of reasons why but short version is um that

she had two of them yanked and so she is so much like her dad because it wasn't the dental surgery that had her scared it was the period of time between when they put the drugs in you and when you go out the complete total lack of control that you have yeah and that and so i went back there with her her mom and i were both there and uh you know i i went back there with her because i was like you know whoever you want totally fine no ego involved she she had me come back and i was like dude i totally get where you're coming from this is like the most frightening concept to me as well i've never had general anesthesia um and so yeah i'm 47 year old never had general um never been put under i've had a ton of locals like but never never general and

And so I was back there, and she was so, like, she was stressed by it, right? Yeah. Tears are streaming down her face, but I totally get, like, this is just how she does. And so they had to put the nitrous on her. Well, she was holding her breath. So I started telling my jokes and doing stuff like that to the point where she sighed in irritation. And that, of course, draws in. Yeah.

And that brought her heart rate down. And then she was forced to laugh at your shit. Right. Which had to infuriate her Which would help her get over to the fear Right But also would help her breathe in more And the doctors and the surgeons

They're like amazed at my ability To do jad jokes and stuff like that I'm like oh this is all just to make her sigh And frustration Because then I know she'll breathe it in And so anyway And as you're saying that she had to be looking at you You're like I fucking hate you

Oh yeah yeah And then you know the glassy eye start happening and I interacted with her a little bit more just to double check and she was fine all as well um but I absolutely understand that feeling and I told her today uh like I was like you know I have friends that are big fans of drugs and the very thing that you and I fear the most is the thing they love the most about the drugs if when the tab hits the tongue and they swallow it and then it's when is it going to kick in I said that's some of my friends favorite time. Never mind, the drugs, part, like the impact. It's that, that period of time. And she's

like, that is insane. I'm like, I know. So I don't think my child, I don't get it either. Yeah. I don't think my child will end up with any kind of drug addiction problems because she's as uptight as I am about these kinds of things. So anyway. Well, yeah. Yeah. So. So. So. So. When last we talked, we were talking about the popular appeal of homegrown fascists and how if they promote it as Americanism and hyper patriotism and they draped themselves with the American flag, I think it was a quote, they attempt to carry out their program in the name of democracy, even though it's the exact opposite of it, they can in fact destroy democracy. and that's the thing that you know um echo said about fascists was that they the machismo aspect of it it's one of the 14 parts um he said that the machismo is such that uh or i think it's hatred of the weak um where it's um you if you're a fascist you necessarily logically hate the people that you rule because they were weak enough to let you take them over it's such a snake eating its own tail. Wow. Wow.

Now, I want you to think about that because you teach middle schoolers and I teach high schoolers, all of whom are in danger of like listening to influencers online. The belief that sexual contact is something you can game out of a woman. and then you call her a slut for doing it with you or for you or to you or allowing you to do it, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Is that same disdain? Oh, a thousand percent.

Yeah. It's part of the reason why the Venn diagram of, you know, pickup artist types and in cells. Yes. And even though like there are, there are. are apparently like in self-actions who are rabidly anti-pickup artist like they hate each other

but like it's because they're successful they're getting what I wanted you know it's it's yeah it's all it's a shit show but they are they they are both

in their own circles that are almost completely completely merged yes with the circle of of fascism you know yes like like what like what you talked about in the last episode talking about purity culture being you know a very short very steep pipeline yeah you know into fascist ideology any kind of um um muchismo yeah kind of culture uh because it is a form of purity culture it's like being a real

man, you know, or, or, you know, feminity culture on the other side, for that matter, you know, any of these people that are so, so tied up in, you know, truly being a fill in the blank, you know, are going to be vulnerable to getting, getting sucked into fascist ideology, yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. 100%. so yeah that's that's where we were before and then the the pamphlet from again the Department of war that they put out to soldiers this is just for the reset just in case there's three other episodes before this or four actually other episodes before this um or five fuck I don't remember anyway it's a fair amount it's late I don't remember check the label um but the point is um it's a Department of War document that was put out in March of 45 before anybody knew the war was going to be over before was it four months before Trinity Project exploded the first

atomic bomb two months before the end of the war in Europe like we didn't know that was happening or we knew it was closing to a draw I mean Dumbart and Oaks happened there were plans for victory but like you don't quite know when it's going to happen so remember that people at the time were preparing soldiers for a long fucking fight. Like the assumption was that the war with Japan would last longer and it would take probably

until 47 or 48. Right. And they were requisitioning a million body bags in preparation for what they thought was going to be the necessary invasion of the Japanese home island. And the rule of thumb is if you requisition a million body bags, you expect at least

least double that number and injured yeah so that's three million people who are forever changed by that war you know that was the assumption um fDR doesn't die until april 12th i i believe it's april 12th of 1945 like he's still alive so all that shit's still happening in fact while this this pamphlet was printed out printed out there was an ongoing trial looking into the activities of a senator who had now died in a plane crash and two representatives in the United States House of Reps

Congress House of Reps who were aiding and abetting the Nazis so and that was still ongoing it hadn't been called for a mistrial yet due to the death of the judge so all this shit's happening right so

there's my reset from last time yeah so here's the pamphlet it is part of basic training for American soldiers in March of 45. How to stop it, it being fascism. Question, how can we prevent fascism from developing in the United States? The only way to prevent fascism from getting a hold in America is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace security.

Lots of things can happen inside of people when they are unemployed or hungry. They become frightened, angry. desperate, confused. Many in their misery seek to find somebody to blame. They look for a scapegoat as a way out. Fascism is always ready to provide one. In its bid for power, it is ready to drive wedges that will disunite the people and weaken the nation. It supplies the scapegoat, Catholics, Jews, Negroes, labor unions, big business, any group upon which the insecure and unemployed can be brought to pin the blame for their misfortune. We all know that many serious problems will face us when the war is over.

If there is a period of economic stress, it will create tensions among our people, including us as returning veterans. And I'm just going to break in real quick. I love that it's using the word us as returning veterans because, again, it's talking to privates in training. So when you come back as a veteran, look out for this shit. After all, remember, the Free Corps is like what made up the beginning. of the essay, right?

Yeah. So, the resentment may be directed against minorities, especially if undemocratic organizations with power and money can direct our emotions and thinking along these lines. Man, these guys are a bunch of soy boy leftist cucks. Right? Man, 1945 was just like a hotbed of calming activity.

Oh, my God. What are these guys? Why do these guys hate innovators? Thank you. Thank you. Why do they hate job creation so much? Exactly. Like, you know, they are clearly, you know what?

They're an un-American organization. Yeah, clearly. Who printed this again? Oh, yeah. The Department of War. Yeah. By the way, I keep saying Department of War so that people know. It turned into the Department of Defense shortly after World War II.

was over. Yeah, it was probably a massive reorganization. Yeah, but I mean, it, I always love that it was the Department of War until we stopped declaring war because we haven't declared war since 1941. Yep. We've carried out things that we, military actions all over the world. For some reason, don't call war because that would involve going to Congress and actually getting them to foot the bill and and asking them to declare it. And apparently after 1941, that's not what we do. Well, there's that. And then on another level, there's also the fact that, you know, for the next 40 years after this, 45 years after this happened,

we had and meshed ourselves in every kind of international military agreement. Yep. And the minute we declared war, there would be the question of, does this trigger this clause or not? Right. And we were staring across whatever political divide, whatever you want to call a political divide at the USSR, who had formed their own set of international, you know, alliances. Yeah. Yeah, to create that land buffer we talked about last episode. By the way, I want to correct myself real quick.

The Department of Defense wasn't created until 1949, but the Department of War was dissolved in December or in September of 1947, which means that it got split up into the Department of the Army, Department of the Air Force, Department of the Navy. Yeah, and then all three of them got recombined into the DOD in 49. 49, yeah. So, yeah. Anyway, go on. And they've never gotten along since, no matter, no matter how hard the civilian portion of the government has made them wear the get-along shirt. They remember when they each had their own cabinet level position and God damn it, they miss it, which is not the point I was about to try to make. Um, but, uh, you know, we, we had NATO and Cito for a while, and all these other other

pacts that we signed and the Soviets had theirs. And if we actually declared war on anybody, like anybody, there was the open question of whether that could lead to World War III. Right. Um, and, and so, I mean, yes, there is the. tendency toward the imperial presidency and the well we're just not going to call it a war because that would be politically

inexpedient and I'm certainly not disagreeing even though there were two drafts yeah yeah even though yeah and yeah even though there was you know how many how many years

were we fighting in Vietnam it depends on when you define the fighting you could say that America had been involved in the Vietnam War for Independence since 1948 forward when Truman didn't get the memo because the Department of Defense kept him from getting it because plausible deniability is fun. Or you could say it was when Eisenhower sent advisors to the French. You could say it's when Kennedy sent advisors to the South Vietnamese government. You could say it's when the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was passed.

It really depends on, it's kind of one of those. Do you want to measure from the top or from below the balls? Yeah. Like, you know, where, how, how, like, how are you going to measure when we were involved? Because you could also, you could say, oh, well, let's just go to the Vietnam War Memorial. They're adding new names every, every time they get them. but I believe the earliest name on there was from the early 1950s. I think you're right.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's, it's, it's multiple, it's multiple factors at play. Yeah. But yeah, we, we decided that, well, you know, we're not, we're not going to have a department of war anymore. Yeah. You know, we're going to have a department of defense. which is

I don't want to call it Orwellian double speak It is euphemistic I mean it's hardcore yes I'm sorry yeah euphemistic is the word that Yeah was not coming out of my brain It is it is heavily euphemistic Because the second it gets told

The Department of Defense we entered into wars That I'm going to call them wars that were undeclared and were wars of aggression on our part. Whereas, prior to that, when we were the Department of War, the previous two wars that we had declared were actually defensive wars. Yes. I mean, you could argue that World War I was not necessarily a defensive war, but there were attacks made upon American civilians and citizens that got us more and more close to it.

But World War II, absolutely it was. was after a belligerence was visited upon us. Yeah. So, yeah, so it's just always funny to me. But anyway, so when I talk about the Department of War, I'm talking about the DOD. I'm talking about what would eventually become the Pentagon, but right now those things don't exist. So it's the Department of War. So back to it.

The fascist doctrine of hate fulfills a triple mission. By creating disunity, it weakens democracy. By getting men to hate rather than to think, it prevents men from seeking the real. cause and a democratic solution to the problem. By fake promises of jobs and security, fascism then tries to lure men to its program as the way out of insecurity. Only by democratically solving the economic problems of our day can there be any certainty that fascism won't happen here. That is our job as citizens. Citizenship in a democracy is more than a ballot dropped in a box on Election Day. It's a 365 days a year job requiring the active participation and best

judgment of every citizen in the affairs of his community, his nation, and his country's relation with the world. Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance. It makes headway when people are apathetic or cynical about their government, when they think of it as something far removed from them and beyond their personal concern. The erection of a traffic light on your block is important to your safety and the safety of your children. The erection of a world organization to safeguard peace and world security is just as important to our personal security. Both must be the concern of every citizen. Freedom, like peace and security, cannot be maintained in isolation. It involves being alert and on guard against the infringements not only of our own

freedom, but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened. What is what's this globalist shit? Right. Like, like, what are you talking about international organizations for peace? That sounds like American weakness to me. Yeah, dude.

Yeah. Yeah. So the part about if we permit discrimination prejudice or hate to rob any one of his democratic rights or our own freedom and all democracy is threatened, I want to unpack that a little bit. If we permit all these things, and I mean, the double V campaign certainly was an effort toward this, right? On February 7th, 1942, literally 12 days before, oh, you brought up an orange kitty. I did. Wow. He is a big fucking orange kitty.

Yeah. This is the tax he has to pay. So on February 12th, 1942, literally 12 days before executive order 9066, where we took away the rights of 125,000. Yeah. Yeah. A plan made by the army. The same army that put out this pamphlet. Yeah.

Anyway, the Pittsburgh Courier, under the still new leadership of a man named Ira Lewis, began publishing the double V insignia on its masthead announcing quote democracy double victory at home abroad as its slogan uh lewis later would go on to help to integrate baseball it was an immensely popular newspaper already and this drove readership numbers up even more having the double V on its masthead giving voice to those who had felt conflicted about fighting for a country that has had a history of oppression of their own people, black folks. In October of 1942, the Pittsburgh Courier ran a survey about whether its readers supported the double fee campaign.

88% of its readers said they did. Good. And this paper was especially popular amongst black sailors and black soldiers. The most TLDR version I can come up with is the double V campaign was like this. The entire United States has to live up to the promises listed in the Constitution. when it comes to black citizens' rights, and for its military service members who were black, and, quote, an elimination of the ban, which prevents loyal and patriotic Negro Americans from full participation in the defense industries of the country, end quote. Wow. This meant that the defense industries would have to give the same consideration to black workers as they gave to others.

And this also meant that a desegregation of the armed forces in housing, training groups, support groups, battle groups, and so forth was necessary. The same would have to be true for the disbursement of military equipment. Roosevelt had previously told black editors and journalists to tone down their rhetoric for the good of the country during a war with fascists, and their response was the double V. now yeah I know Ed is holding up the letter V but backward because in Britain yeah

so what I love about this is a couple different things yeah a couple different things number one he's like for the good of the country we're fighting fascism we don't have time for respecting people's rights and they're like no and number two if you know your history

it actually isn't Roosevelt who desegregates the military no it's Truman who does it in I want to say 48 or 52 48 okay off the top of my head 48 sure

with a different executive order so it doesn't get done and yet you have many black soldiers and many black sailors who who serve very honorably and serve with loyalty

to the country that has not agreed to fulfill the promise that it already made it is some of the worst bad faith this is Damien talking now it is some of the worst bad faith to say we're fighting fascism and also we're keeping our apartheid state yeah and

just just to clarify it was July 26th, 1948. Thank you. Executive Order 9981. 9981. There we go. Double V was so effective that it permeated the black community

in a multitude of ways. Victory Gardens became double V gardens. There was a double V hairstyle for women also called victory roles. Really? Yeah, feel free to look that up if you want.

There were beauty pageants, recycling drives, Dances, war bond drives, baseball games, all with double V as a focus. It was a major part of the black community in civic action in the 1940s. None of this, of course, would stop J. Edgar Hoover from associating the double V campaign with treason, but, you know, and he investigated it as a disloyal group, but no credible charges were brought. However, it did have a cooling effect on journalists who felt the need to self-censor as well. So now, back to the pamphlet. What is true of America is true of the world. The germ of fascism cannot be quarantined in a Munich brown house or a balcony in Rome.

If we want to make certain that fascism does not come to America, we must make certain that it does not thrive anywhere in the world. What's interesting to me as I'm listening to that. is that fascism being used as a rationale for internationalism. Yes.

You know, we have to, we have to be internationalists in order to prevent fascism arising. Yes. That same argument. A threat to liberty anywhere. Yeah. That same argument

is also pointed at communism. Yeah. Domino theory. Yeah, and is the reason for, and I'm forgetting the name of it, we sent a fuck ton of money to Europe. The Marshall Plan. Marshall Plan. Thank you. You know, we don't want either one of them.

We need. Yep. We just had to spend all this time and blood and treasure putting this one down and we're terrified of this other one. Right. But then also, we're going to fund the fascists in Greece with the Truman Doctrine. With the Truman Doctrine. We're going to back fascism fucking everywhere. It's how quickly we forget.

But in 1945, we were dead set against that shit. Yeah. Now, it mentioned a Munich Brownhouse, and I want to dig into that a bit. The Munich Brownhouse was the mansion known previously as the Palais Barlow. or palais barlo palae fucking christ um it's the french

yeah but it's a german place it had been built for karl freer von lobsbeck back in 1828 i will never get tired of hearing you try to sound out german names anyway carry on

yeah uh carl freer von lotzbeck pardon me back in 1828 in 1930 because the uh Nazi headquarters had grown too small, the widow, Elizabeth Stephanie Barlow, sold the mansion to Franz Xavier Schwarz, the treasurer for the Nazi party for about 800,000 marks, which I think is roughly the price of bread. Actually, hyperinflation was, I don't know what it was then, but I'm sure eggs were very expensive and they needed, you know, to deport people to make that different.

To fix that problem. Yeah. Anyway, industrialist Fritz Theson. provided the funds for renovation, which meant that Paul Ludwig Troost, one of Hitler's favorite architects, got to convert it from a home into an office building. Hitler had a big hand in decorating it, making its accoutreement a direct reflection of his ideology and his hatred for all things modern. It was in his office, in this building, that Hitler kept a life-sized portrait of

Henry Ford He also Hitler had a bust of Mussolini, at least at first, as well as the blood banner that had been carried at the head of the beer hall poached in this office. Yeah, okay. Yeah.

In October of 1943, an allied bombing raid destroyed it, reducing it almost entirely to rubble. Couldn't have happened to a nicer building. Right. Now, in December of 2005, the Bavarian government built the, oh my God, the NS Documentation Centrum. Documentation Centrum? Yeah.

Or, easier to pronounce, the NSD-O-K-U, N-Z-Doku, N-U, and Z-Doku. Okay. the National Socialism Documentation the National Socialism Documentation Center okay it was declared The cornerstone of it was on that site the cornerstone of it was laid in March of 2012 And it was open to the public as a museum that was dedicated to teaching the people Of Munich teaching the people about the build up and consequences of the Nazis similar to how how they use the old SSH quarters in Berlin, which is now known as a topography of terror.

Right. Because Munich is where Nazism really started. Yes. So that's the place that they're talking about. Now, back to the document. Next week, have we the manpower for the job ahead? AIDS for discussion leaders. And then it's a list of questions.

Okay. So a short 5 to 10 minute introductory talk by the discussion leader is recommended Suggested points A, we're at war because of fascism B, many Americans are vague about the meaning of fascism, many doubt the horrible

things we hear about places like Dackow and Maidenack. C, what is fascism? D, fascism is a dictatorship the opposite of democracy. E, fascism is an authoritarian government by the few. F. Fascists stay in power by force, by propaganda based on ideas of

blood and race, and the glories of war, and by false promises of security. Because of the importance of supplemental material, supplementary material, the outline for discussion is omitted this week. So I just break in here. There are plenty of discussions that are being had. You're not just rucksacking. You're not just going, you know, it's not like what we see in Biloxi Blues. Right. There are classes that people take. There is indoctrination that's happening. I'm not going to pretend that this is not also part of the indoctrination, but I agree with this one.

It's, why are we giving you a rifle? Why have we drafted you away from your family? Why are you going to fucking die and possibly kill people, or vice versa? Or vice versa. Here's why, right? Supplementary materials. Now, by the way, I don't know if this was read to every private in basic training. but there is something especially perverse about like the guys of the 101st and the 442nd having to read this

yes and and you know the black panthers the 750 767th tank Italian like there's something really really perverse about the he I would be living up to it aspect of it and then read this for those this is cool for white boys from Iowa I am all in favor of this pamphlet, quite honestly, but I cannot help but acknowledge the amount of people who are left out except that we need their bodies. Yeah, and I would be willing to bet. I'm just, I'm going to go on a limb here.

And I'm going to say based on the fact that this is before forces were integrated. Yeah. I'm going to bet. that anybody who was shipping off to join the 442nd or any of the other units that you mentioned. Yeah. They were probably in their own platoons. And they, yeah, they probably had different trainings. Yeah.

And this particular training may have been something that the officers in charge of them may have looked at and gone, you know what? I don't think we need this one. We're going to, we're going to be a conditioning day. Yeah, that's entirely likely. We're going to do, we're going to do some more grenade training or. Which is even more awful, because now you're hiding the thing that's talking about. Yeah. But you're also preventing a possible mutiny.

True. Very, very true. You know, I'm sorry. You want me to, you want me to have a discussion with you about authoritarianism. yeah how's about you have that conversation with my mother and my younger siblings at mansenar right you know hey my brother got shipped off to tully lake um yeah yeah like oh hey uh i'm in the army now uh i'd just like to point out that 12000 dock workers in mobile alabama rioted rather than work next to my dad in the shipyards yeah for the boats that are going to carry my ass across like yeah and and this being 45 um you know there's also uh uh fort oh shit it's here in northern california it's in the bay area you're talking the port chicago yeah port chagos yeah i i have i have extended family who we're port chicago like yeah

really assholes yeah so all these things are are also happening at once This is not like America's shining moment, by no means is growth even in any way. So, supplementary material are the number one, are the stories, or I'm sorry, Roman numeral one, are the stories of German fascist cruelties true? Genocide, death camps. One of the most diabolical weapons used by the Nazi fascist is technically referred to as genocide from the Greek genos for race and the Latin side for killing. in access ruled occupied countries by uh in and this is the name of the article access rule in

occupying access rule in occupied countries by raphael lemkin published by the carnegie endowment for international peace 1944 it means simply war against whole peoples including innocent non-combatants and women and children the idea behind it is to wipe out or cripple for generations entire racial groups and nations. It aims to disintegrate political and social institutions, culture, language, national feelings, religion, and economic existence, as well as wholesale murder of individuals. By weakening enemies, it is designed to win the peace even if the war is lost. See Army Talk No. 49. That's another pamphlet. Maidenack

This is a mention of one of the death camps Middeneck Quote I have just seen the most terrible place on the face of the earth the German concentration camp at Maidenek which was a veritable river rouge

for the production of death which in which it was estimated by Soviet and Polish authorities that as many as 1,500,000 persons from nearly every country in Europe were killed in the last three years this is the place that must be seen to be believed

I have been present at numerous atrocity investigations in the Soviet Union, but never have I been confronted with such complete evidence, clearly establishing every allegation made by those investigating German crimes. After inspection of Midenach, I am now prepared to believe any story of German atrocities, no matter how savage, cruel, and depraved. W.H. Lawrence, New York Times, August 30, 1944. So they're quoting the New York Times of August the previous year. So there's some terms to break down there.

Raphael Lempkin, for instance, was a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent who was able to escape and invaded Poland in September of 39. At one point, he was actually caught between the invaders, both the Soviet Union and the Nazi regime, as he fled north. He ended up traveling through Lithuania up to Sweden. Now, he made it out, but he lost 49 relatives to the Nazi efforts at genocide. He coined the term genocide in his writings, possibly first included in his article Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. He wrote that in 1941, but it was delayed in publication until 1944. Lemkin documented the German occupation of various countries and especially Poland. And in this, he described the way by which the Nazis mapped out their mass killings eventually called genocide of Jews and other ethnic

groups which of course started with the dehumanizing of them and demonizing of them saying that they don't deserve due process etc etc this was never they'll never hold down a job they'll never fall in love yeah yeah they are a drain on us they are not the productive people they're getting the way of productivity um point to one who raped somebody you know that kind of thing this was a informed in large part by his observation of actually of the Ottoman Empire's genocide against the Armenians about

30 years earlier and how they had no check on them internationally to stop killing off an entire ethnic group within their own borders he argued that his in his book Lemkin argued that Hitler's main goal was not occupation

in conquest those were the means by which he Hitler aimed to restructing the ethnic and demographic realities of Europe itself to fit his own ideology. Lemkin was a lawyer, and he focused on the laws that were passed, the policies that were enacted, and how they were enforced rather than focusing on the violations of the obviously outdated Hague Convention of 1907. That didn't prevent the Armenian genocide, and so he's looking at the ways that it was carried out. Now, at the time of this pamphlet in March of 1945, that's about as far as it went. Lemkin was teaching classes at Duke University and at the

War Department School of Military Government, starting in 1942. And Lemkin served as a consultant to the U.S. Board of Economic Warfare and Foreign Economic Administration concurrent with this pamphlet. Now, after the war ended, Lemkin joined Robert Jackson's legal team. You know who Robert Jackson is, yeah? Vigly. Yeah, the chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. Right. Okay.

His name is so basic that I totally get like, you know, I know five Robert Jackson's. Yeah. Jackson or a Lempkin helped to guide Jackson, but ultimately found that the lack of international legal definition of genocide to be a limiting aspect to the trials. So very often the way that it's brought across. is that the Nuremberg trials were really groundbreaking because how do you convict somebody of a crime that has never been imagined? Yeah.

Right? It's so odious that is there a way that you could do it? And you get into, you know, legal theories and stuff like that. And as such, he thought that the Lempkin thought that the Nuremberg trials did not serve complete justice. And for the rest of his career and his life, Lempkin pushed hard to create a broad definition of genocide so that you... United Nations somewhat narrow and watered down version would be strong enough to prevent future

Hitler's. In December of 1948, the United States would adopt the genocide convention and used a lot of his work to inform it. However, for him, this was still too narrow. And Rwanda would later prove that to be true, as it turns out that you could carry out acts of genocide without actually carrying out a genocide. Boy. Yeah. Yeah. Now, they also mentioned the River Rouge, right? Mm-hmm. This was the famous Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan. It was built starting in 1917, and the first things that it made were actually anti-submarine boats for the war effort during World War I.

Oh. So while Ford did go across to try to do peace and blame the Jews and the bankers and the banker Jews and stuff like that, he also came back and was like, well, we're going to make money off of this. Well, I mean, duh. Yeah. Now, after World War I was over, the River Rouge plant pivoted back to cars and tractors. Interestingly, the Rouge River, the Rouge River, which one is spelled R-O-U-G-E? Rouge. Okay. The Rouge River. So, how do you spell rogue? R-O-G-U-E.

Oh, and you know what? Autocorrect fucked me up both ways. Pretty sure it's the Rouge River. Yeah. Pretty sure it probably is, yeah. So interestingly, the Rouge River plant produced most of the parts for the Model T, but the actual assembly of those parts into a car was actually done in a place called Highland Park. And this was the heart of the assembly line model that Ford came up with. Do you remember the Battle of the Overpass in 1937?

Yeah. Where the union organizers were attacked by more than 40 Ford security men and broke Richard Meriwether's back. Yeah. That was right here at the Rouge River. Okay. It led, that led to the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board. I know this because of the district I work in. Not naming names, but throwing shade.

They pursued a case against Ford, which began their actual real move toward allowing the 90,000 workers at the plant to unionize. And what the Army doesn't speak to in this pamphlet is, Henry Ford's connection to the Nazis and Hitler's love of him. Although they do mention the place where his picture is and they do mention the river, I wonder if it's somebody like me just getting in there going, I'm going to mention these things. You're going to make the fucking connection. Yeah.

Yeah. But and and you know, Hitler drew a ton of inspiration from Henry Ford. And again, the pamphlet doesn't say, but if you know, you fucking know. like these the the the the munich house and the rouge river are within a paragraph of each other oh yeah i just you know yeah now they also mentioned w h lawrence in this packet and he was a famous new york times journalist at the time um and he reported uh uh from the major hot spots of the war of world war two he reported from okinawa guam japan poland among others um Lawrence was among the First correspondence from the West who actually visited the Ketan Forest,

which he was invited to in January 45 while they, by the Soviets who were trying to cover it up. Huh. Yeah. He also reported there was no radioactivity in Hiroshima after the war ended, so there's that too. Yeah. So now, Roman numeral two. Are democracy and fascism diametrically opposed? just again I love that they're bringing this shit up like they're like words matter definitions

matter if you value this thing you can't support this other thing pick one so okay roman numeral number two uh are democracy and fascism diametrically opposed quote the proposed new order is the very opposite of a united states of europe of a united states of europe of a united States of Asia. It is not a government based on the consent of the governed. It is not a union of ordinary self-respecting men and women to protect themselves and their freedom and their dignity from oppression. It is an unholy alliance of power and pelf to dominate and enslave the human race. That was by President Roosevelt, December 29, 1940. Quote, to sum up, I see two diametrically opposed principles. The principles

of democracy which wherever it is allowed practical effect is the principle of destruction and the principle of authority of personality which i would call the principle of achievement adolf hitler january 27th 42 yeah they they each uh make a pretty compelling case from from their own sides and both are saying these are entirely opposite and mutually like what's the word we're they can't exist at the same time. Usually exclusive. Yeah, that. Yeah.

Is it true that powerful financial and military interests supported the German and Italian fascists? This is as close as it gets to doing what I wanted it to do. Ford. God damn it. Name names. Name names. I'm picturing, for some reason, I'm picturing heavy metal, the 1980, whatever it was movie, the one scene, stern, stern, I'm coming for you.

Only I'm picturing you, shouting Ford, Ford, I'm coming for you. God, I really do want to go visit, like, Michigan and find his grave. with a with the full bladder yeah well I was going to say yeah with a thermos full of coffee

yeah and hang out yeah have a picnic um all right prince thesein the wealthiest of the German industrialists

admitted giving the Nazis funds as early as 1928 I'm just going to back in here for a second rich people Love funding fascists. They're sometimes the earliest adopters. I just want to point that out because they're giving their heart to the fascists and their heart is money.

In his book, I Paid Hitler, written after leaving Germany, he wrote, quote, It was during the last years preceding the Nazi seizure of power that the big industrial corporations began to make their contributions. All in all, the amounts given by heavy industry to the Nazis may be estimated at 2 million marks a year. It must be understood, however, that this includes only the voluntary gifts. Of Italy, Sumner Wells, former Undersecretary of State, writes that, quote, especially the reactionary elements and larger banking and industrial interests, welcome the dictatorship of Mussolini, end quote. okay yeah i feel like i just farted in a church

you know yeah some things you just let hang in there yeah all right so let's talk about summer sumner wells real quick you talk about a man who made enemies in oddly high places using his dick you got sumner wells um After meeting with FDR, who was a family friend of Wells's, after graduating from Harvard, Wells went into the Foreign Service. Ambassadors, diplomacy, that kind of shit. He started off in Tokyo, but then specialized more in Latin America where the United States was constantly interfering. Wells oversaw the withdrawal of U.S. forces while still maintaining the investments of overseas investors in the Dominican Republic's debt. he was also sent by President Coolidge in 1924 so remember he's friends with FDR when FDR still had the use of his legs when FDR was still the undersecretary of the Navy shit like that okay right so he's sent by president coolidge in 1924 this is Sumner Wells to the hunt to Honduras to act as a mediator there because their government had disintegrated and there were two sides vying for control he helped to broker provisional government for Honduras to get

its feet under it. The next year, his dick got him in trouble for the first time. Coolidge didn't like that. Didn't like the fact that he, that Wells had married the divorce wife of Senator Pete Gary of Rhode Island because Gary was a good friend of

Calvin Coolidge's. So, because Wells was fucking Pete Gary's ex-wife, Coolidge ended Wells' diplomatic career right there in 1925. Yeah, well, Coolidge always was a prick. Yeah, silent, but yeah.

Yeah. To his credit, Wells spent his retirement writing a history of the Dominican Republic and criticizing United States foreign policy of always interfering. However, as Roosevelt came to power and Wells donated to his campaign and had experience, Wells soon found himself as the ambassador to Cuba under the Roosevelt administration. Now, I don't want to get too into the weeds. on what he did in his short time in Cuba,

but he was only there from April to December of 33. But he definitely acted in America's best interest and stuck to the Platt Amendment, where they should do diplomacy and not armed intervention wherever possible. Welles was made undersecretary of state in 1937, and in 1938, he opposed the British increase of their own emigration quota

to enable more than 60,000 Jews to emigrate to the United States. He opposed this. Yeah. So that's 60,000 Jews who couldn't come to the United States because of his opposition. Now, that would actually cause the U.S. to increase their quota as well. And since the 1924 immigration law froze numbers based on who could come from where. Britain was a place from which a bunch of immigrants could come, which means if you're trying to escape Nazi Germany and you're Jewish, you could go up to Britain.

And then Britain would be like, yeah, you could go for. from here over to the United States, but Wells was like, oh, I smell a rat. And I mean that literally because of the propaganda and all that kind of shit. Wells claimed that he opposed the increase of German Jews because they were German, not British, and because doing so would, quote,

merely produce a Jewish problem in the countries increasing the quota, end quote. I'm going to need some definition there, sir, of what exactly is a Jewish problem? Yeah. To me, it's that they're being genocided and needing a place to go. Yeah, but I don't think that's what he means. No, not so much. Now, Wells' biggest problem, it seemed, though, was a rivalry with Cordell Hull who hated Wells,

but could do nothing about it because FDR and Wells were buddies. However, because Wells was also closeted bisexual, he was vulnerable. In Alabama, he got ripped on barbiturates and tried to solicit two Pullman porters. Oh, no. Hull heard about this, and then the chain is long but ridiculous, so here's where it gets fun. Hull got a former ambassador named William Bullitt, who negotiated with Lennon on behalf of the Paris Peace Conference in Versailles. to tell Senator Owen Brewster of Maine. Owen Brewster of Maine was a good friend of Joe McCarthy

and hated Howard Hughes, oddly enough. That's the guy that Alan Alda played an aviator, by the way. Yeah. Anyway, the Owen Brewster. Alan Alda didn't play Howard Hughes. But okay, so that's who Alan Alda played. So when you watch the aviator, now you've got a little bit of context there. Anyway, Brewster then told Stiles Bridges,

a senator from New Hampshire who was also friends with, okay, so let me just go again. Hull hears that Wells tried to engage two Pullman guys in sex when he was in Alabama, high on barbiturates. Right. Cordell Hall, Secretary of State. Right.

Cordell Hull gets a former ambassador, William Bullitt, to talk to Senator Owen Brewster of Maine. Brewster then told Stiles Bridges, a senator from New Hampshire who is also friends with Joe McCarthy and who'd lost the Republican primary to Wendell Wilkie in 1940. The Stiles Bridges would later blackmail Wyoming Senator Lester C. Hunt in

1954 to get him to not run for office and retire immediately from the Senate or have his own son. Hunt's son exposed as a homosexual. This was all part of a plan to get rid of the Wyoming Republican governor, to get the Republican governor of Wyoming to appoint a Republican to Hunt's seat and shift the balance in the Senate to the Republicans. Hunt committed suicide in his capital office instead. Oh, wow.

The final senator that he told was Burton Kendall Wheeler, a senator from Montana, who was an isolation. and a non-interventionist, but stopped short of being in America Firster. But Burton Kendall Wheeler's wife was the chair on the National Committee of the America First Group and the D.C. Chapter Treasurer. So it sounds like he was avoiding it more out of busyness than ideology, to be honest. Yeah. Wheeler also led an investigation into the interventionist who were in motion, who were in the motion picture industry, which came across as hyper anti-Semitic probably because

it absolutely was Wheeler also opposed Lendlisse. Interestingly Wheeler was also very critical of internment because it violated the four freedoms that Roosevelt had pointed out. Huh. So

Brewster, remember him, Alan Alda, Brewster gave the information to FDR critic Arthur Bernard Crock, who was a journalist who was a good friend of Joseph Kennedy who was the Treasury Secretary and a Pulitzer Prize correspondence winner

whose son fought in the Spanish Civil War on behalf of Franco. No. Anyhow, all of them knew that Wells had solicited sex and wanted to make it public, but then J. Edgar Hoover came in and says, no, we're not going to release the file on Wells, which led to the threat of a public Senate hearing.

Wells then tendered his resignation on August 19, 43, which FDR accepted, albeit reluctantly, because he knew that Wells was a good man. FDR then blamed Bullitt, especially, the former ambassador, and he claimed that Wells had resigned due to his wife's poor health. Cordell Hull then had no rivals, became the top dog in the diplomatic front, and Wells had also become one of the chief authors of the Atlantic Charter in August of 1941, which was when the U.S. and the UK set out their war goals. for the US once the US would enter the war Wells had also drafted

the original UN charter and encouraged Jewish settlement in Palestine as early as 1944 while calling for an end of colonialism Internal consistency is not a strength I mean he's he's living a closeted life

it's going to squeak out in all kinds of fucked up ways powerful man at a time where being queer in any way is an economic death sentence but anyway that's when of Summer Wells Sumner Wells the Undersecretary of State

the former undersecretary of state he was calling out that Mussolini was funded by major fucking bankers and corporations but then he lost his job because he got ripped on barbiturates and all these other people yeah now number four roman numeral number four must fascism expand or explode quote fascism believes neither in the possibility nor in the utility of perpetual peace war alone brings up brings up to their highest tension all human energies and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it for

fascism the tendency to empire that is to say the expansion of nations is a manifestation of vitality. Its opposite staying at home is a sign of decadence Benito Mussolini 1932 Yeah well

Quote them right It's you know Well fascists don't do this well let's see what the guy who wrote Fascism said Yeah let's let's look at the father of the movement shall we? Yeah. Yeah. This you? You know? Yeah. Roman numeral five, what is a scapegoat? Quote, any animal or person to whom sins, evils, ill luck, etc., is ceremonially attached. The victim then being sacrificed or driven out as symbolic of dispelling the evils. Hence, a person or thing being

blamed for others, Webster's International Dictionary. So, scapegoating, I'm just going to read these two paragraphs from Jeff Schullenberger's November 30th and 2016 article in the new inquiry titled The Scapegoating Machine. Now, this is from 2016, but I think it will help us to contextualize what's going on in 1945. Okay. Interestingly, what's fascinating about this article is that it has a picture of Hulk Hogan ripping off his shirt from his second title run on it.

Oh. And it's absolutely is tied to Gawker in our Hulk Hogan episodes. Oh, okay. Quote, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel, whose support for Trump earned him a place on the transition team, is a former student of the most significant theorists of scapegoating, the late literary scholar and anthropologist of religion,

René Gerard. Gerard built an ambitious theory around the claim that scapegoating pervades social life in an included form and plays a foundational role religion and politics. For Gerard, the task of modern thought is to reveal and overcome the scape mechanism, to diffuse its immense potency by explaining

its operation. Conversely, Teal's political agenda and successful career in setting up the new pillars of our social world bear the unmistakable trace of someone who believes in the salvationary power of scapegoating as a positive project.

Okay. It goes on. Sacrificing in this account is symbolically enriched scapegoating, sacrificial rituals, and the system of taboo and prohibition that supplemented them, provided cultures with a mechanism for preventing the antagonisms that regularly threaten human social life. Much of Gerard's published work is taken up with revealing the veiled presence of scapegoating in a wide array of religious texts and rituals. His analyses range from the ancient Greek literature and philosophy to Jewish and Christian scriptures and from the Hindu Vedas to African, Polynesian, and Native American religious orders. The basic thesis of his major writings is that religion is paradoxically a violent means of controlling humanity's violence. With regard to the modern West, Gerard elaborates a revised version of the secularization

thesis associated with Max Weber and Emil Durkheim. He correlates the rise of techno-scientific rationality and secular governance with the decline of the sacred as an organizing principle of culture. But he also detects the residues of sacrificial religion everywhere, especially in the regular resurgence of violent scapegoating in the modern world. For Gerard, the decline of sacrifice offers the possibility of transcending the scapegoat mechanism, which he presents as an unequivocably desirable form of progress. But at the same time, he claims that the demise of the sacred poses dangers, since religion has been the primary form of regulating violence, its displacement raises the possibility of an uncontained apocalyptic violence, as well as a panicked return to the most violent forms of religion. All in all, though, Gerard's accounts of the modern world are less in depth and more ambiguous than his works on ancient religions, leaving the significance of his theory. for the present scene open to diverse, even opposed interpretations. Okay.

Peter Teales is one such interpretation. Although his book, zero to one, avoids mentioning Gerard directly, it draws heavily from his theory of memetic desire and contains important clues about how Teal understands the contemporary significance of scapegoating. One of the central arguments of the book is its critique. of the illusory horizontal mode of progress in contrast with the vertical progress of technological innovation. Teal writes, quote, horizontal progress is globalization, taking things that work somewhere and making them work everywhere, end quote. In other words, Teal defines globalization

as a memetic process that spreads through imitation. China, India, and other developing nations copy innovations originating elsewhere, thereby producing goods at a fraction of the cost. This is what he calls one-to-end progress, which drives most growth today in contrast with zero-to-one progress that he insists is what we most need. Okay. Okay. So it is less important to disseminate the technology and the wealth that we already have. right than it is to make numbers get bigger yes if numbers get bigger i win yes i have bigger number i win yes yeah um when you listen to teal's argument against democracy

based on the development of the iPhone of all fucking things this makes an awful lot of sense it really does um have you know what what which which speech presentation whatever you want to call it of his i'm referring to is this the one where he talks about how we only could have created the iphone with a hierarchical structure yeah yeah that that democracy uh you know prevents prevents us from from making progress because you have to get input from everybody and right you know people who you know

basically the little people prevent progress right and they exist only to produce the progress that you have thought up yeah it is it is absolutely

like listening to him like I didn't recognize his name like he kept coming up you know during during the election when people were talking about project 2025 and all of that stuff and everyone was talking about this is all you know peter teal and him you know being the guy who made our current vice president right and like okay he's a tech bro was was about what i knew and then i heard him you know recording of him giving this this presentation i was like oh my god this is textbook example of somebody who's really smart at one thing assuming they're really smart about every Yeah, and being a complete Ignoramus. Yes, and also being completely fucking morally bankrupt. Yeah, he's like morality in a lot of ways. Yeah, so yeah, and he, he would probably take that as a compliment. Well, one of, one of two things. Either he would take that as a compliment, or, uh, he would, um, become, uh, uh, very indignant. And he would, uh, uh, uh, very indignant. And he would argue that well no he's he's you know coming from a higher moral position because he's looking at the bigger picture it's like no motherfucker you're not only i can see this yeah i'm the only one smart

of this is the problem i have with tony stark yeah well they're both techno-fascists yeah realistically yes yeah um peter teal came up a lot in our hulk hogan episodes remember because he was one footing the bill to kill gawker yeah because after all a free press is democratic and democracy is antithetical to technological innovation. Yeah. What a brick. Yeah. Anyway, it's interesting that Peter Thiel

comes up big time with scapegoating when scapegoating is used to justify fascism because we would be progressing but for these people who are not embodying the essence of our nation the essence of our nation is being a bunch of litigious squabbling no no no the essence of our nation is being Italian or it's because Mussolini or it's being German that's the

essence and anybody who lacks that essence is scapegoated they are in the way of our progress you are keeping us from making our soil fertile well yeah and and I get that that's that's the the fascist statement yeah i'm i'm just simply saying no no as a historian that is not born out by the fucking evidence oh yeah well there's you know fascism does not draw on history yeah well history is a liberal yeah well no it claims to it claims to draw on history but it doesn't draw on like academic history it draws on it draws on tradition it does not drawing history. Okay, fair.

History is a modern invention. We don't mind technology. We mind modernism. Yeah. All right. So, Roman numeral 6, and I love this one. What is the difference between communism and fascism? Aren't they essentially the same?

In any discussion of fascism, there will be some who will argue that there are strong similarities between fascism and communism. Under both systems, there is neither freedom of speech, nor of the press, as we know it. Both forms of government permit only one political party. Both have a secret police. But beyond this, there are important and fundamental differences in philosophy, aims, purposes, and methods. Again, this is the United States Department of War telling you that there are significant differences between communism and fascism.

Well, number one, in March of 1945, only one of them is really the enemy. Good point. Number two, anybody in the Pentagon who's looking five years forward is like part of what we need everybody to understand is know your enemy. We know they're going to be our enemy and we need to be able to understand who they really are. Now, I would point a couple things there to push back on number two. Number one, Pentagon doesn't exist yet. Actually, no, the Pentagon was, the Pentagon began construction in 1941. The building was completed in 1943.

No. Yeah. Wow. I thought it was 48 to 53. No. Oh, wow. Started construction prior to us entering the war in 41. Okay.

I stand very corrected there. The other point, though. What they just described was authoritarianism. They described authoritarian fascism and authoritarian communism. Yes. What they also did was they ignored American authoritarianism because we were very authoritarian during World War II. We rationed.

This is true. We had a secret police. J. Edgar Hoover ran it. It caught Nazis. We had all the same shit that they're talking about. We didn't have a single party. That's true. Although who was in charge of Congress and the executive office, that whole fucking time.

We effectively had a single party, but yeah, but it was not officially. Like, it did not make illegal all the other parties. That's absolutely true. Yeah. But, like, pretty much everything else is like, that's us too, guy. But also, they're still saying, like, while those things exist, and I do disagree with their labeling of authoritarianism, painting it with the brush of communism. and fascism like it's it's authoritarianism that you're describing you could have saved that paragraph where you could cut it out you know you could be like these were these things are

authoritarianism and and some people will take both um but they do still say beyond this there are important and fundamental differences in philosophy aims purposes and methods yeah I'm still gobsmacked that the Pentagon was as early as it was when I swear it was a Cold War thing In their systematic destruction of all opposing groups, Hitler and Mussolini had the communists first on their list. Among the early opponents of fascism, the communists were in the forefront. Let us take three fundamental concepts, war and peace, race, and the purpose of the state, and see how these two systems stack up. Since the Soviet Union is associated in most minds with communism and is the only working example, references frequently made to Soviet practice in the comparison with these with characteristic

fascist practice i i think i think our data set is flawed i'm also not part of the department of war in 1945 okay yeah so but i i take great issue i don't think there is a working example of communism there is a working example of authoritarian stalinism those are not the same thing Yeah. Trotsky would agree with me if he didn't have a nice pick in his head. Yes. War and peace. We have seen how, by its economic and political structure, fascism means war. Fascism, whether in Germany or Japan or Italy, has never been secretive about its glorification of war and its aims of world conquest.

With the conquest of Ethiopia, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Manchuria, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, fascism came close to achieving its goal. This was one time when fascism meant to make good its promise. I'm going to focus on the first few, but you're going to get the idea as we go along with all the others. So I did not go all in on all of them. I kind of skimmed the rock across the pond on a few of them.

um although i spent a lot of time in belgium um and honestly i think actually this is a good place to stop um okay in the next episode it will be almost entirely given over to this list okay um but i didn't like how we uh separated out the uh the the the guys that they listed as traders to their um across two episodes so i i'm learning from that mistake here okay um so we're gonna this is gonna be a short episode, but yeah, I don't think I might. But so, other than the Pentagon being earlier than it is, what have you gleaned? That really bakes your noodle. I'm shocked. Like, I'm usually off by a couple years with things. I usually am, right? Yeah. We're talking totally different eras. Yeah. Like, it's like me going like, well, the jet engine was developed in 1970. Damien, it was

the 1940s. What? Wait, huh? Yeah. Yeah. I, I,

I, the extent to which there was a lot of time and effort put into this being part of the

indoctrination. that the troops were going through, um, fills me with a certain level of regret because I wish we as a nation had been able to figure out how to make this explanation of what fascism is a part of high school curriculum. um you know and and making making it a point to include definitions and explanations of okay when somebody talks about

fascism when somebody talks about authoritarianism when somebody talks about communism when somebody talks about socialism like having those actually be defined yeah like like Like making it so that's part of our national cultural literacy, you know, as understanding that, okay, well, you know, you could, you could say that there are elements of the United Kingdom's post-war economy that are socialist, right? You know, you could say that, you know, and just explaining that. okay look this this is this is what this actually means and this is what this actually means and by the way here are the things to look out for yeah because various groups

for various reasons obviously fascist among them are are going to try to make arguments without wanting to cop to the label and and if you understand understand what makes someone an authoritarian right you'll be able to recognize it you know by the by the by the way they walk yeah you know you'll be able to you'll be able to spot oh hey you're actually a fascist yeah or you're a populist or you're an authority yeah like knowing what these fucking words mean and not blending them yeah allows you to see when people do yeah or when people misuse them yeah like if you knew what a genocide was you would not be saying that Rwanda wasn't a genocide or that acts of jane you wouldn't have accepted when they said acts of genocide are being committed yeah yeah yeah you know um yeah just just the fact that when we were in the war

we had the energy to make sure that every 18, 19-year-old doughboy got taught this. Yeah. But then the war ended. And we didn't put in the effort to make sure that every high school senior learned it. You know what I mean? I do. I, okay, so I lecture on fascism if I can ever get to it in my, in my class.

Yeah. And one of the things I liken it to is, um, because Echo said that, um, it's 14 things that make for fascism, but you don't need all of them. You only need the presence of one around which fascism will coagulate. Yeah. Um, and so I always liken it to a bacteria. Yeah. Uh, or a bacterial affection.

You have here. Right. And, and here's the thing. the thing that fights bacteria is antibacterials right or what's the word? Antibiotics Yeah If you only take the antibiotics

Until your symptoms subside Yeah You've strengthened You've actually strengthened the surviving bacteria We only We never took the full course of antibiotics As far as fascism goes Yeah

And we are We are seeing We have seen for the last 80 years we've seen flare-ups quite a bit yep so yeah

I agree with you so yeah that's my right now that's my takeaway okay so yeah all right

well what's you recommended for people to consume Frank Capro why we fight oh nice the film yes okay yes you know there was a documentary that came out in like oh two oh three no it had to be like oh five oh six and it was also called why we fight and it was a revisitation of that by a bunch of retired people uh from the military and uh statesmen and stuff

like that about iraq oh um so just a heads up when you're looking for why we fight don't grab the 2006 one look at the frank Capra one yeah yeah the black and white Frank Capra one yeah um what what I have been uh regularly struck by

about why we fight specifically is that Capra saw a triumph of the will by Reefinstall yeah Lenny Reefenstall yeah and was

absolutely fucking horrified apparently like to the core of his being he was like this is this is incredibly powerful and it's so fucking evil so we need our own counter program we need yeah and that was that was that was that was the moment where he was like that was that was where why we fight that was when why we fight was born well and as I recall was he the one that was in charge of the group or was he one of the six like there were or five got five directors went over and i think because there's a documentary called four came back i think yeah um but was he in charge of that group or was he just a part of that group i think he was a part of that guy don't believe he was the one in charge i could entirely be wrong if anybody out there in our audience knows throw it in there

feel free to throw it in there and correct us but i i think he was he was part of the expedition whatever you want to call it uh but yeah he he was just he was blown away by the by the emotional impact of triumph of the will and was simultaneously fucking horrified yeah how it was being used and was like fuck that okay yeah you know so uh yeah i've i since we're since we're talking about this pamphlet, I'm going to also say another really great tool which was shown

to people and again this was shown to them when they got overseas. It was shown to them a number of times. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, definitely check it out. Nice. How about you? I'm going to recommend two books, but they're both

very short. One is by, well, they're both by George Orwell. One is called Why I Write. and the other one is called Fascism and Democracy I think they're a tandem set I think you should read them both It's on the fucking name

So like you know It's it's really good stuff Like really really good stuff And because of one of the things This pamphlet said in here Was that like you don't just go to the ballot box One day out of 365 Yeah you're always engaging

And I think the why I right, really speaks to the always engaging part. And then the fascism and democracy is because I think it's good for us to read what non-Americans say about these two institutions. It helps us set our compass a little better. Yeah, no, full agree. Yeah. All right.

Well, where can we be found? We collectively can be found at our website. at wababababwobah.gehistorytime.com. Also, we can be found on the Amazon podcast app, the Apple podcast app, and on Spotify. You have found us one of these places. Wherever it was, please take the time to subscribe and give us the five-star review that you know we deserve.

And, sir, where can you be found on your own? Well, you can find me with the crew of capital punishment, and the crew has changed. Emily Sude is now with us. Mark has gone off to college as of this publication and Emily Sude has come in and taken over as host and referee.

She's a phenomenal dynamo of energy and quick wit. But you should come see us on September 5th, October 3rd, and November 7th at the comedy spot. So that's capital punishment. myself, Justine Lopez, and Emily sued as the Constance, and we keep having just really good guests on.

So again, September 5th, October 3rd, and November 7th. Buy your tickets online, satcomitistot.com. Go to the calendar section and buy your ticket in advance, $15. It's going to be really good money, well spent. And, yeah, you've got to come see the show. So there you go. Yeah. Very cool.

For a geek history of time, I'm Demon Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, keep rolling twice.