A Geek History of Time - Episode 337 - The Antifa Is Coming From Inside the House Damian Reads an Army Pamphlet from March 1945 Part VI

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

see people when they click on this they'll see the title so they'll be like poor ed what is that even fucking mean however because it's england that's largely ignored and unstudied. I really wish for the sake of my sense of moral righteousness that I could get away with saying no. He had a goddamn ancestral home and a noble title until Germany became a republic. You know, none of this highfalutin, you know, critical role stuff. So they chewed through my favorite shit.

No, I'm not helping them. I'm going to say that you're getting into another kind of, you know, Mediterranean or psyche archetype kind of thing. Makes sense. Also, trade wins are a thing. Ha ha, just serious.

Like, no, he really has a mat on it. You know, we'll go upon a tangent. As we keep doing. Like, yeah, this is how we fill time. This is a geek history of time. This is a geek history of time. to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylock.

I'm a world history teacher here in Northern California, and I was struggling for a number of days to try to figure out what I was going to do with my classes for the next couple of days.

And I figured out that I gave them, all them, sixth graders and seventh graders, I gave them a review sheet that's, or review packet that's like three pages long that's that's got definitions that's got identifications then has analysis questions and like you know give me give me what these words

mean tell me why these things are important and then you know answer each one of these with like three to four sentences each right huge big thing and i made a very big deal to them that i'm going to be giving you a really big exam really big and um the exam is coming up this coming week and uh each each exam is 10 questions long and it's a multiple choice and um it's it's not really a thing okay so you're is actually the is actually the review sheet you were lying it wasn't really like this is not what passes for really big anymore no no no no no no no this is this is like i have i have have constructed these tests with the highest floor possible if that if that makes sense oh it does and uh and

like you know asking uh one of the questions for my for my sixth graders is uh you know who were the apostles and out of the you know uh possible options available to them uh one of the one of the multiple choice answers is john paul george and wringo uh so like I had fun writing it. And the whole point really is, like, getting them to just, you know, focus on the review packet because, like, you can use this on the big, scary exam. And when I was telling him about it, I had an aide in the room to help a couple of the kids with accommodations. At the end of the period, she came up to me and said, like, are you really giving them this big test?

I said, and I explained it to her, and she just, she laughed. out loud. She was like, okay, yeah, all right. Nice. I said, yeah, you know, I don't want another big test to grade. Are you kidding? No. So, yeah, that's what I'm doing professionally right now is I'm messing with my students professionally to try to get them to take something seriously. How about you? Well, I'm David Harmony. I'm a U.S. history teacher up here in Northern California at the high school level. And I will not share on air. the shit that we're dealing with uh where i work as far as my job goes uh but to say that um existential crises can be very liberating um when i realized that no matter what i do

through the door of passing by virtue of a online credit recovery program that takes all 183 days of my instruction and condenses it down into an easily digestible three day to two week process that involves none of the rigor or thought or accountability of what I do and they still get to pass I realized at that moment moment nothing I do matters in my job and it's me so I was like I'm all alone any choice I make will be filled with anguish and nobody's coming to save me and I felt so good we must imagine Damien happy. Yes.

If nothing that I do, all my efforts, if none of them matter because we're still going to pass kids and they're still not going to know the alphabet when they graduate and all those things, then I have but my conscience to guide me. Consequences do not guide me. And if I have to just follow my conscience, that is a good fucking way to live. so yeah yeah but what I'm going to share with you today is actually much more cheerful than that even though I actually genuinely take comfort in that okay um and that is this on my way upstairs uh I said something to my kids and one of them is like is this your McFoly impression and then

I slipped into a real McFoly impression and I did a really good McFoly impression as I was going upstairs and they both were just like shut off oh it's so good oh that's awesome i loved it so yeah anyway all right when i when i do funny voices my my son my son tells me he didn't he didn't he didn't like that stop daddy stop doing that i'm like why what's what's wrong what's wrong why don't you like this voice what's the problem you know so yeah i haven't i haven't quite got to oh shut up um and i don't think i don't think my wife will allow us to have that that kind of rapport well i'm a single dad so i'm allowed uh but also uh you know it's it's like we had a guest on the show a year or two

back to explain punk music to us jason uh jason bargey and he pointed out the the parents who are obsessed with respect um yeah don't get respect they get compliance yeah so so maybe maybe float that line or like maybe stitch it into some like doilies and cookware uh because there is no doubt that my kids respect me and they tell me go fuck myself all the time yeah but hey you do you yeah um but okay so when like last we talked we were talking about war and peace according to the nazis right this is again from the department of wars pamphlet that they handed out to um soldiers uh or people who are training to be soldiers yeah in march of 1945 okay um and and to clarify if i'm remembering right

this was a pamphlet going out to not necessarily every every income recruit but to their trainers so this is this is going to cadre personnel yeah um okay yeah it uh it was notes for this week's discussions it was you know it's kind of the the why we fight right and it's called fascism uh it's from the army talk orientation fact sheet number 64 okay it was a restricted document so um so yeah when last we left we talked about war in peace, and I talked about some horrible things. So now let's talk about things that America got right all the time, always, starting with race.

And in the background, Ed takes not the first swig of the beer bottle in front of him, but the first one since we started recording. Yes. Yes. Hopefully you've been doing this prophylactically, like me with ibuprofen before a hike. So. So, according to- Not prophylactically enough.

Yeah, according to the document put out by the Department of War to teach soldiers to be why we're fighting. Right. Race. The peoples of fascist nations are led to believe that they are the master race or the heron folk superior to all other peoples and that it is their divine mission to dominate the earth. Fascism created and exploited racial hates to acquire a following to disunite nations and to enslave the peoples of yours. Europe and Asia. Now just real quick, I'm going to repeat that. Fascism created and exploited racial hates to acquire a following. I find that a fascinating analysis. And, you know, there's only so much take the beam out of your own eye that I can give to this document. Yeah. Because I'm looking at it as

an anti-fascist document. However, yeah, yeah. Racism, I think it really gets things wrong here. Because racism gave fertile field to fascism. Oh, yeah, a thousand percent. And I mean, you know, the idea of race in the way that we talk about it now dates back to the 1600s. Yeah. You know, and they're trying to say that, that, like, there's, there's ways that you can try to define, well, you know, what we meant by creative. was like i mean you can you can kind of weasel around that yeah but like you you got you got some splaining to do yeah and and also again i i i largely agree with this document however

this is one of those places where like when you're giving it out to a segregated army yeah yeah like are we are we sure are we sure this is the direction we want to be going And I think they're right to go this direction. But it's like, are we sure this is the approach we want to pursue? And I, again, I think I agree with the approach. I agree with the direction. I disagree with the fact that there's no reflection whatsoever. Yeah.

Yeah. It's just, oh. What, what, what, what, what I'm curious about is when we're, when we're talking about fascism, obviously the, the, the, it's not even. the trope codifier, but the individuals associated with the trope, as it were, the, the trope standard bearer, perhaps, are obviously the National Socialist Party, right? But the true trope codifier was Mussolini, you know, for fascism. Yeah. For fascism. That's what I'm saying. And in Italian fascism, was he targeting

immigrants was he oh yeah there's an Italian soul okay yeah there's an Italian soul okay yeah there's an Italian like the the idea of nationalism is an inherently racist idea and it is a central piece okay to fascism yes okay well yeah because you know we we we don't hear the the strident pitch of you know blood and iron or the extent to which blood and iron becomes a huge... I know what you mean. He talks about... Mussolini does talk about blood a lot.

He talks about Italian blood, Italianness, and stuff like that. I think what you're working your way toward is that the Nazi version of fascism was really hyper-focused on the anti-Semitic aspects of it and the racial aspects of it. And the pseudoscience of Aryans and we're going to get there. that shit. We're going to get there. But the Italian fascists were, that was a key component to their

nationalism, but it was a much more muted tone because the nationalism mattered so much. Okay. Okay. So it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's the difference, I guess, between a pro wrestler who is like John Cena looking. Yeah. and a pro wrestler who is Chris Masters looking and you might not remember Chris Masters but John Sina can fucking go right and he looks amazing and and and let's rewind the clock by 15 years he looked amazing right right and he could fucking go he's there's a reason he called himself the prototype in the beginning um Chris Masters couldn't fucking go but my God he looked better than John Sina muscularly which is hard

to do, right? Yeah. Yeah. It takes a combination of hard work and genetics. Yeah. You know, and Chris

and steroids. But, pharmacology. But so you've got, on the one hand, you've got a wrestler who focuses on the body absolutely and also

can fucking go. And then because that's wrestling and another guy who focused a lot on the muscles. Right. Okay. So, you know,

the Nazis are much more they're hyper-focused on those things. Right. Okay. All right. So fascism created and exploited racial hates to acquire a following, to disunite nations, and to enslave the peoples of Europe and Asia. Quote, the only differences which exist are those between the Nordic humans on one side and the animals, including the non-Nordic humans and the inferior humans on the other side, end quote. Dr. H. Gauch, leading German racial theorist in New Basis of the Racial Sciences, 1933.

So this is the quote that the Department of War uses to explain, here's why the fascists are worth fighting against. Listen to how racist they are. And they're right. And this is, so I'm going to try to thread the needle this way. I am not looking for perfect. I'm not looking for purity. Leave that to them. But would you agree that killing a million people is a awful, horrible, terrible, no good, very bad thing?

an atrocious thing a just unconscionable yes okay pretty easy thing to agree if you could save one of those lives would you have done something good yes therefore killing

99,999000 99 people is less awful than killing a million yes I mean you know you're getting one million and one

you're getting very Catholic legalist here But yeah, well, you should enjoy that. Killing one million and one is also worse than killing one million. Yeah. I think that's the needle that they're threading here successfully. Nazi racism is worse than American racism. Okay. Okay.

Like as as a. And, and Nazi racism is worse than British racism. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah, and that's, that's a bar that needs to be cleared, I think is, I think is, you know, worth, worth mentioning there. But the other part of my brain is, I get what you're saying there, yeah. The other part of my brain is sitting there going like, okay, both racisms come from the

exact same place. So, you know, whether you killed me with a pound of sulfur. Or with three ounces of sulfur. You killed me with sulfur. Yes. At some point, does the number matter? But again, we go back to, you saved a life. That fucking mattered to that person.

Like, so it's just, it's, so this is the conflict that exists in my head when reading this stuff. I have not come to a, oh, God, I don't know how to word this right. I have not come to a conclusion. There we go. Okay. I have not come to a conclusion about how to feel about any of this. well yeah because it's it's it's complicated yeah it's you know beetle geis outshines the star right next to it yeah the Nazis managed to outside outshine british imperialism and american

and american manifest destiny like yeah just they managed to how they did is amazing but like wow yeah yeah okay um this this is this is this is of I think for you and me particularly this is this is part of having to become having to sit in our whiteness yeah and it's an important thing to do but there was a talk I was having with somebody just yesterday about whiteness because he said he asked me because he's he's a person of color he's Filipino um and he said uh you know I'm proud of my Filipino heritage. I'm proud of my Filipino culture and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, cool. He's like, how come you're not proud of your white heritage and culture? I said because white culture is simply like if you define culture by gatherings and the

purposes of those gatherings, the only reasons for white culture gatherings tended to be violence toward other people who weren't white. Yeah. I'm not proud of any of that. I do not claim any of that. And yet that's, and he's like, well, can't you, you know. And then he asks, he's like, well, what is your heritage? I'm like my heritage is white like my ancestors traded their culture for

access you know yeah they were Irish but I was not raised Irish my partner she was raised Irish I was not raised Irish I was not raised German I was not raised with any of these cultures and if I start claiming them I feel like I'm cosplaying and I'm I'm I'm of whiteness I I I come from the tradition of the adhering factor, the cohabulating factor, there we go, the coagulant to white culture is violence against people who aren't white enough. And that's essentially it. Other than that, it's access to everything based on the fear that that created for others. So I get to be the first at the trough because of that. And that's nothing to celebrate or be proud about. And he was like, I have never heard whiteness describe that.

way or white culture described that way i'm like well i'm trying to be honest about it i don't know what other people are doing but like and and so when you talk about sitting with our whiteness it's reckoning with the fact that our culture is one built on the oppression and destruction of everyone else yeah and and i think i think there's also something you know when we when we talk about that there's also something to be said for the damage that it has done to us Yeah. In that you, you were raised without a heritage other than that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely. There was a book that I read from the 1930s. It was an American history textbook, and it got one thing right that other textbooks nowadays don't. And it said that white supremacy hurt white people as well. And it said it like it hurt them just as much as it hurt black people. I disagree there. But the fact that it addressed the harm. the the atrophy yeah uh the stripping away of any any culture other than you benefit from

being an eloy um you know you're right you're absolutely right but and and also i'm going to be quiet about that part for myself i'll go deal with that in therapy i'll go deal with that at home i'm not going to be out there grieving that while other people are marching saying please don't kill us yeah no obviously but yes it does it does do us harm to Yeah, and not as much as everyone else. No, no, not by light years. But, you know, there's there's also the, you know, having, it's funny, having that kind of conversation with a person of color is very different from having that same question come from one of our fellow white people, right? It's like, well, you know, they've got, you know, Filipino pride and they got, you know, black pride and they got Asian pride and whatever.

Like, why can't we have white pride? And that's the direction I've usually encountered the question from. Oh, yeah. That was addressed too in that discussion. Yeah. And my response to that is if the only part of your heritage that you are celebrating is being white, then you have a problem. Because that whiteness is a construct that's built on like you were. saying that's built on hurting other people.

Yeah. You can go and participate in St. Patrick's Day. Mm-hmm. You can go and celebrate Hogmane for New Year's. You can go and, you know, participate in any number of European ethnic festivals. And nobody's going to stop you. And nobody is going to judge you as being bad for that. Right.

But when you decide that, well, you know, the part of the part of that that I'm going to advertise, that I'm going to glorify, is my whiteness? Well, then you're an asshole. Well, and again, because the white identity is constructed on the backs of literally everyone else. And also, if you look at other identities, those were the only things that saved those communities from whiteness. Yeah. Like from white violence. And you have, you know, you mentioned black pride.

black identity in America was was initially put upon them as well by the white folks like as a way to say oh you're you're not part of the white thing so there's a difference between surviving a culture or surviving using your culture versus oppressing using your culture as well yeah and so when people like well black isn't you know the same as like you know your reuben or whatever it's like you're talking grammar now you are not actually talking what what really happened there so yeah and and you're and you're almost certain if you're arguing in a good faith it shows that you don't understand things and you were probably arguing in bad faith yeah and you don't understand things so you don't understand that so you know fuck that noise so speaking of fuck that noise here's dr h gouch his name is herman gouch yes big time motherfucker for the nazis he was a race theorist he loved the Nordic theory so much that he claimed that Italians were half ape

when the fascists don't like the fascists So Okay I want to know did anybody ever actually sit him down and be like Okay so logistically How do you think that happened?

Oh I he would write about that in his book the new basis on racial science. Really? Yeah. So the Italians were half eight, probably because he is associating them with the racist belief that blackness equals primates and Italy is closer to Africa. Therefore,

he wanted to de-Christianize the calendar in Germany, get rid of all of their festivals, and replace them with Nazi-based holidays and organizations. Could you imagine somebody calling for a liberation day? Like, just yeah.

During the war, he kept running a foul of Himmler. Really? Because you're not consistently shitty. There are ways that you're not there. He, his personality was such that, yeah, like, now the interesting thing is he exhibited great physical courage multiple times, too, but he kept getting injured and kept advocating for Germanizing suitably ethnic people. like literally they're now called official Germans like not surprisingly he was a Holocaust denier

during the Eichmann trial in 61 he was named as being a contributor to the ideology that justified the Holocaust because he spoke of subhuman races in comparison to the Nordic races I couldn't find if the new basis of the racial sciences was his book or a publication that he wrote for But if you check for the date, we're looking at Nuremberg Law Times, so 34. Okay. Now, back to the document. In old Russia, under the Tsars, most of the 189 national minorities who lived there were persecuted and oppressed. National languages were forbidden and education was suppressed.

It is generally conceded that today in the Soviet Union, there is no such thing as racial discrimination in theory or in practice. I'm just going to break in here for a second there. Look at how you see why George Orwell created Newspeak and we've always been at war with East Asia and always will be at war. This is the American government who had been super anti-communist. You had the Palmer raids in 21 and 22.

Talking about the biggest acknowledged communist country and that's with scare quotes in the world about how they've gotten rid of racial discrimination and notice who we're leaving out of the discussion. in the United States. It's real, real clever. This is, this isn't clever. Yeah.

So, okay. Unlike Nazi law, which enforces discrimination on racial grounds, racial is in quotes, Soviet law punishes the establishment of direct or indirect privilege for citizens on account of their race or nationality, as well as the advocacy of racial or national exclusiveness, hatred or contempt. Quote, Article 123,

equal rights for citizens of the USSR, irrespective of their nationality or race, in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social, and political life shall be an irrevocable law. Any direct or indirect limitation of these rights, or conversely, any establishment of direct or indirect privileges for citizens on account of their race or nationality, as well as any propagation of racial or national exclusiveness, or hatred and contempt, shall be punished by law end quote chapter 10 the new soviet constitution of 1936 okay so prohibiting people from gaining more privilege because of their race by law which is different than you have less privilege because of your race right right right right right so the new so the new soviet constitution that they're

mentioning was passed and adopted on December 5th 1936 it's also commonly referred to to as the Stalin Constitution. This replaced the 1924 constitution in the Soviet Union, and it really opened up a lot of democratic goals within the Soviet government, at least on paper. It was the document that most Eastern Bloc countries patterned their constitutions on after World War II. It included all kinds of shit that I'd love, the right to work, the right to leisure, the right to health care and protection of that right, the right to rest, old age care, housing, cultural

and educational benefits guaranteed by the government, care of the infirm, most notably gender equality in all aspects of life, including pre-maternity leave, maternity leave, and post-birth leave, work protection for women, state-funded nurseries, kindergarten, maternity homes, literal punishments by law for hate-based crimes and restrictions. All the rights for everyone, no matter their age your economic station or location or social standing or political choices or nationality or race or or or or and and and i mean no wonder people are like oh that's that's that's that there's communism it's right there in their constitution yeah despite all the propaganda this also guaranteed a separation of church and state and freedom of religion including freedom from religion and

Soviet Union now yeah also shortly after the the 1936 Constitution he perched the living fuck out of his party but still well okay so he purged the living fuck out of his party yes and but not for racial reasons no no no no no certainly not but um it it also should be noted that under Stalin and under the the you know USSR are, the church was heavily, you know, freedom of religion was on paper guaranteed, but the church was heavily suppressed. Yes.

So, like, there's a whole lot of high-minded language going on there. You know, after the war, also everything they say about, you know, gender equality went out the window. You know, there was, you know, a very big governmental and societal push to push women back into the home and into motherhood and you know into motherhood yes not into the home okay they still were like oh no we need you working too like but you're absolutely right there were medals handed out for women who had 10 babies or more like yeah but again we talked about this last time they'd lost oh more than a third of

the total deaths of the war yeah I get needing to repopulate like we did it it through different methods. We, we did it through, um, like, magazines telling you how to me and, and, you know, telling women to quit. Like, there, there was a movement there too. Yeah. To, to do that. Oh, yeah. No, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not trying to say that, you know, here, here in the United States, there wasn't a similar, you know, push women. Exactly about this, right? Yeah. You take care of your women by, you know, we take care of our women by making it so they don't have to work. And it's like, we take care of our women, by making it so that they're allowed to work, you know, and it's, yeah, yeah, I would

also find out that, you're right, all of these are high-minded words that exist on paper. Yeah. They don't exist on paper in the United States Constitution. Don't even go that far. No. True. So, I mean, fair. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, that being said, also, I would point out, he purchased a fuck out of his party. They oppressed the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. the religion in Russia. It was mostly Russian Orthodox. Yeah. Who stood in the way of gender equality of who benefited from, who created and promoted ethnic, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I'm not saying that his purges were necessary or good. I am saying they did have the knock on effect and perhaps even the direct focus of we're going to make this shit right and we're going to have to get rid of some of the people who are upholding otherwise. like there's there's a reason why reeducation camps are argued for i'm not saying that they're ever carried out well or that they're ever good but i kind of get it because in america we let those traditionalists just stay in power or in influence and we never get to these things all right i can understand where you're coming from i'm not saying that i'm agreeing with the

omelet that he made but Well, the omelette would have been fine is the scale of the number of eggs broken. Oh, absolutely. This is where I'm. Absolutely. Yeah. No, I, you know, yeah, like, yeah, there are plenty of reasons why. You catch a lot of dolphins in a tune in that if you're not careful.

Yeah. And there's a whole host of reasons why Stalin and Hitler are now neighbors. Yeah, it is, you know, a lot of his body count. Yeah, yeah. But so. Stalin was running up his numbers for better reasons, though. So, like, it's, again, this is. Yeah.

They are. You see that, you see all the problems here. Yeah. Now, back to the document. The purpose of the state. The political fascist state is based on the leader principle, which is in quotes, under which the people must follow blindly the dictates, of a few men. In the Axis countries, the emergence of fascism meant a taking away of self-government.

As fascism grows more powerful, it permits its people less and less liberty and uses more and more violence. The Soviets early believed that a dictatorship, quote, of the proletariat, end quote, was necessary in order to destroy capitalism and set up socialism, and that then the dictatorship should gradually evolve into a democracy as now provided in their constitution. Thus, although they now have a secret police and government-controlled press, their ultimate political ideals are directly opposite to the stated ideals of fascist dictatorship, and their hope is to drop the opportunances of dictatorship in the process of democratic evolution.

I'm just going to break in here. This is that threading of the needle, I think, that is actually important. does it matter to me the ideology of the person who shot me in the head no because i'm still dead yeah but there is something different here well there so um to to bring a theological kind of analogy into it sure the degree or nature of a sin commitment committed in Catholicism is dependent not only on what the action is, but on the motivation and the mindset behind it. Yeah.

If you stole bread because you were hungry, that's different than I stole bread to make it so that guy starved. Yeah. Yes. Yes. It's a very stark example. Yeah. You know, and mental capacity is part of it.

And like, you know, right. Yeah. you know kids if you stole bread but then you put jam on it you know yeah kids committing kids committing sins it's a different thing because they don't have a fully formed conscience yet right now as an example you know and there is something to be said for the idea of well you know okay we've got to do this now so that later you know this is this is not necessary anymore The counter argument is, you know, you're, you're coming to a place where you're saying that the end justifies the means. Mm-hmm.

And that isn't a valid defense in Catholicism. That's not, you know. Which is why all Catholics were conscientious objectors. Oh, yeah, no. Oh. No, I just, no. Yeah. Yeah, it gets, it's, you know, yeah, you know, in individual, individual decisions regarding, you know, conscience and how to handle things and what to do is, there is a, there is definitely a level at which the analogy I'm using totally falls apart.

Yeah. Uh, you know, based on scale. Like, you know, an individual making a decision for themselves is different from, you know, a nation state, right? but you know the the concepts are still applicable yeah you know the the and i i what strikes me is the amount of water the u.s. war department is carrying in these passages for this for Stalin specifically and by extension Beria and the Soviet yeah yeah like well they they do have a secret police but they're they're moving toward democracy now I do think also stated aim right their stated aim is to move toward a democracy where

that's no longer necessary fascist stated aim is a white ethno state like there is a like they're both claiming things out loud to everyone. You could judge the things they're claiming. You can also judge what they're doing. Now, could one side be lying? Yes. Now we get into the Sith always tell the truth and the Jedi always lie. Like, it doesn't make the Sith less evil.

Yeah. Because them using the truth is a tactic, right? And the fascists are telling the truth because they're in power. Yeah. I mean, it just, you know, there's, there's, yeah, there's a lot going on there. So, all right. Uh, da, da, da, da, da, da, okay, fascism treats women as mere breeders, quote, children, kitchen, and church, end quote, was the Nazi slogan for women. The Soviet Union granted political and economic equality to women in an unprecedented degree.

Quote, Article 122, women in the USSR accorded equal rights with men in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, and social and political life. Quote, the realization of these rights of women is insured by affording women equally with men the right to work, payment for work, rest, social insurance, and education, and by state protection of the interest of the mother and the child, pregnancy leave with pay, and the provision of a wide network of maternity homes, nurseries, and, kindergarten. Chapter 10, the new Soviet constitution of 1936. The German school system, once the pride of the German people, degenerated under fascism to an instrument of ignorance and hate. Just sounds like Oklahoma. Between 1932 and 1937, the number of Germans attending universities decreased more than 50%. Before World War I, only 33% of Russians could read or write. Today, illiteracy is almost absent in the Soviet Union. Between 1914 and 1937, the number of Soviet men and women in colleges increased 800 percent. Quote, Article 121, citizens of the USSR have the right to

education. This right is ensured by universal compulsory education elementary education, by education free of charge, including higher education, by a system of state stipends for the overwhelming majority of students in higher schools, by instruction in schools in the native language, and by the organization in factories, state farms, machine tractor stations, and collective farms of free industrial, technical, and agricultural education for the working people. Chapter 10, the new Soviet constitution of 1936. Economic. We have seen that under fascism, the productive energies of Germany, Italy, and Japan

were turned to war preparations under the slogan of, guns instead of butter end quote the communists believe in state ownership of factories farms and all other productive agencies with distribution of the proceeds among the all the workers with distribution of the proceeds among all the workers according to their productivity the russians have great confidence in the future improvement of their lot although the average russian is poor in comparison to american standards russians are now confident that their upward march will be rapidly resumed with the end of the war, the resumption of production for civilian use, and the expansion of the great resources. Conclusion. Our late ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, wrote before the war,

quote, there, the Nazi, persecutions are quite as severe as those of the 16th century. Treatment of people is more arbitrary than it has been since the Middle Ages, end quote. He added prophetically, quote, what is to come of all this, one cannot say German domination of all Europe or another war, end quote. So there's a lot in there. Yeah.

And again, they are comparing realities, they're comparing stated things to each other. And I mean, we also had at the time, the 14th Amendment that said everybody gets due process by law and yet there was no anti-lynching bill. We had at the time

thing that says all people born here were Americans that worked and also at the time that there's ways to nationalize but then there's other acts that say unless you're Asian or unless you're

this kind or this kind or this kind there were laws that were like we didn't mean you either like there were all kinds of things going on like that right? Yeah. You're not seeing that in the Soviet Constitution no so these are

our allies look at how cool they are like that's that's kind of the vibe that I'm getting here and well yeah how they're not fascist well and and it's easier to draw a very clear very stark um compare contrast mm-hmm between the stated name of the national socialist german workers party and you know the common turn you know um they're their stated aims are you know much much more clearly um at odds with one another yeah uh whereas you know we still had not reckoned like we still have not right i don't want to say that like we have yet but you know uh the the original sin of our nation's founding had not really even fully

been acknowledged. Yeah. You know, and so there was, it's much harder since we, since we had a

capitalist system in place, which is, you know, fascism is take capitalism and turbo charge it to aid the people at the top and fuck everybody else.

Right. You know, it's a lot harder to take our, our, society and draw a clear contrast with fascism, whereas you can look at all these stated goals of, you know, the socialist utopia of, of, you know, the common turn and, and, you know, first Lenin and then Stalin and say, you know, look at, look at all of this stuff.

It's much more progressive because it's much more lefty, like, as hard lefty as you can get. And so it's like that that makes this. easier to write it's also important to i think for them that they're distinguishing they're like look we're not saying that fascism has a lock on authoritarianism yeah you know and i think because because they're pointing to the us is are as very authoritarian but they're like but they're the good authoritarians and they're the good ones but i would also point out though america is in the middle of rationing. We had a very authoritarian government

at the time. Well, yeah. It was for a good reason. You know, and so it's like saying, like, we're the good ones. They're the good ones. Know the difference. It kind of reminds me of that document that I, that the War Department also put out. And I'm actually,

I'm going to put us on pause for a second. Okay, back from the pause. I just showed you a document from 1942. How to spot A, and then it's a shortened version of the word Japanese that is then used derogatorily. And it was a comic strip put out by the Department of War for soldiers who are going to serve in the Pacific and it was how to tell the difference between a Chinese person and a Japanese person because we had to flip our racism.

Quite literally. There was a gentleman's agreement in 1905. The Japanese were considered the civilized ones. right Chinese were considered the barbarous ones right and the way that they were drawn

literally flipped after Pearl Harbor right and this to me has that same vibe of here's the difference between these two groups that you think

are completely the same because we've taught you that they're basically completely the same and so here's the difference okay yeah I see that yeah

I think that's why they keep using Soviets. I certainly think that's part of it, yeah. So, yeah. Now, William Edward Dowd, or Dodd, was mentioned in this document, and he was the American ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937. He went to Germany partly because he was seeking a position that would allow him the time

to write a multi-volume book that he was working on. Oh, wow. But he also took his job there seriously. And everyone in the state. Department, including the two men who declined the position prior to it being offered to Dodd, knew how volatile Germany was, and they were hoping that it would stabilize soon. Now, stabilization usually means, you know, authoritarian. A friend of his, a guy named Carl Sandberg, who was the biographer of Abraham Lincoln, said that William Dodd had to keep his moral compass, but

find out what sort of man Hitler was. Okay. So because so many people in the State Department were anti-Semitic, there was some question as to how Dodd would fall. Remember William Phillips, the ambassador to Italy at one point, was super anti-Semitic. Remember I discussed him, I think three or four episodes ago. Yeah. Dodd took the middle path, like any good liberal.

He'd push against anti-Semitism, but only personally, not officially. yeah all right he definitely didn't like their persecution but he also bought into the narrative that the jews were dominating banking and civil service so yes dodds quote of um i'll bring it back there the nazi persecutions are quite as severe are quite as severe as those of the 16th century treatment of people is more arbitrary than it has been since the middle ages yes that's true um and salient but it's not all in good faith either uh dod did refuse to attend the nuremberg rallies every year because he hated nazism yeah because you know it's it's this thing that i've taught my students before you can be anti slavery and also be anti black oh yeah

you can be anti-nazzi and also be anti-semitic you'd be like whoa those guys are fucking crazy like it's it's almost like it's the opposite of what we see now you know yeah oh i agree with their social policy i just don't like their economic policy like you can be anti-semitic and be anti-nazi nowadays it's oh i'm just here for his economic policy yeah you know yep so uh eventually dodd gets replaced and he goes on to predict a good deal of the nazi expansion into europe Dodd seemed to notice that the Jews were canary in the coal mine And that to limit their treatment by the Nazis would actually help put a break on nazism as a system And that's the end of the document after I'm just read the rest of the words that show up on the document

Restricted prepared by army orientation branch information education division ASF. I don't know what the fuck that is Armed services something yeah AG 353 16 January 44 so this is actually prepared a year before it comes out it seems or it was ordered to be prepared yeah probably that's that's reference to the orders that led to yeah creation of the document makes sense U.S. government printing office B98124 so for anybody looking to archive this you can actually just find it I did the only time I couldn't get access to it was when I was at work because

my work banned this document because it's it's a word-based internet filter it's violent it was banned based on violence and I'm like it's the U.S. government talking about why

fascism's bad fix yourself and they didn't well no of course not but good Fucking God, like the whole point of a public education is to fight fascism, but we're going to block this document. I can watch Charles Lindberg give his speech about staying out of the war. No fucking problem. I can't get this document to download at work, so I had to do this at home.

And I don't mind doing it at home because it's good for me to have this anyway. But I wanted to teach a lesson using it. It's one of those few times that this podcast overlaps with like the shit that I do professionally. Yeah. But there you go. That's the entirety of the document. The next one that I was going to read is from Harper's Magazine, from August of 41 by Dorothy Thompson called Who Goes Nazi? But the annotations that I needed to do for it are so long that there's no way that I can do this without driving us like into the road.

Like just. So the next episode. will have Dorothy Thompson's Who Goes Nazi. And maybe it'll also have, there's one more article, I believe, that I included,

called I Want a King by Grace Lumpkin, February of 36, from a magazine called The Fight Against War and Fascism. That might be its own episode as well. But I think this one will need to be just by how it all worked out.

I think this will actually be a good break spot. This will be a short, short episode. but let's face it, our listeners could use the break. So yeah. Yeah. So anyway,

what have you gleaned now that we got to their conclusion? Oh, man. That for different reasons in different places, authoritarianism of any stripe is a constant possibility because it is really easy to justify I need to take control

to do this thing and it is simultaneously easy to say I need somebody else to take control to do this thing whatever that thing is yeah there there is

there is the the urge toward ambition and and the urge toward power for individuals for various reasons

you know the whole thing you mentioned towards the end of the last episode about the interesting background parallels between Stalin and Hitler and the you know psychological study that could be made of

the two men you know points to you know here what are what is the psychology of an authoritarian leader right and then there's been all kinds of ink spilled about what is the psychology of an authoritarian follower

you know of any and every kind and you know know, the, we in the United States in particular and in the West in general, for a very long time, have kind of operated under this assumption that like everything in the universe bends toward democracy. yeah that's that weird hubris that we have yeah well there's there's hubris and there's this you know there's this this this idea that you know um we've somehow at the end of the day like

as a as a species you know ultimately we're going to wind up coming to a place where you know everybody gets a voice right and like it's a natural conclusion Like, like it's, yeah, the natural conclusion is this is where we end up. And, and there is a kind of historical presentism or historical inevitability. Like, we are here and therefore this, this had to have happened. Yeah, it's, it's, um, determinism. Is it, yes, determinism. It's kind of, kind of, a form of determinism.

Yeah. Um, and that's the word I was looking for. So thank you. You know, there's this idea, you know, I've read British kind of satires of the way they teach their history that like, well, you know, and obviously there had to be a Church of England, QED, like, you know, is the same kind of thing. Right. You know, and it's, when you, when you look at a document like this where, you know, we were. a capitalist Democratic Republic

right fighting a war against fascists and our allies were authoritarian socialists essentially yeah I mean you can get into the weeds about you know how you want to define Stalin's Soviet Union

but I'd say that's pretty pretty apt okay and so like we're allied with an authoritarian state against a whole set of authoritarian states right and and and the way we mobilize is highly authoritarian yeah well and and and because of because of the exigencies of war it's like well you know a whole lot of these things that we kind of take for granted

we're going to have to you know suspend yeah you know um and and yet like you and i you and i going over this document throws that all into into unavoidable relief right you know there's no it's very difficult to ignore that that state of affairs

and yet after the war we all went back as a society to this assumption that like well you know eventually you know assuming you know they don't find a way to defeat us in nuclear warfare, you know, eventually we're, we're going to win over, you know, quote, unquote, communism.

Right. You know, collective, collective authoritarianism, whatever you want to call it, you know, and we defeated the fascists. They're not going to come back. And, you know, eventually everything's going to win money. Yeah. You know. They'll come back, but they'll be on our side this time. you know and so the the thing that we have or had depending on how pessimistic you want to be in the present moment

like it just it just reinforces how not inevitable it is yeah to me how undetermined yeah yeah you know and and how how hard we need to work to protect it yep and you know rebuild it and you know reinforce and strengthen all of the things that we and fulfill it yeah yes and and you know root up all of the things that have held it back yep you know all of the things that prevented it from being what the stated ideal has been from the beginning, right? Because, you know, you talk about stated ideals on paper. The stated ideals of the Constitution, the stated ideals of the Declaration of Independence are all pretty awesome, right?

And we have not ever fully fulfilled them. And, you know, that aspirational nature of things is part of what I keep mind when I'm teaching like that's part of you know what I'm what I'm trying to do yeah you know um and yeah I just just hearing it hearing it so starkly starkly illuminated yeah um in in the way that well we can't really talk about ourselves in this document so we're going to talk about our friendly authoritarian allies here and I'm yeah wow well I think that you know in the area of race that was definitely necessary for them to keep cohesion but the other areas i think they did a pretty good job of oh yeah you know putting out you know explaining exactly here's here's why we want

you to fight here's why we've got a draft yeah so so yeah it's it's a it's a very powerful thing to reflect on yeah so all right what do you want to What do you want people to see, hear or read? Well, while we're talking about resisting authoritarian, while we're talking about authoritarianism and resisting authoritarianes and what have you, I'm going to strongly recommend the second season of Andor, which I have not been able to finish. I've not actually gotten very far in at all because I'm the only person in my house interested in watching it.

But, because it's, it's too grim for my wife to handle. Sure. Um, but it is amazingly well acted like, oh my God. Um, and, yeah. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's awesome. It's just an amazing, an amazing piece of media and storytelling. And it is very, very, uh, relevant. Yeah.

so that's that's my recommendation what about you i'm going to recommend two different things one is on netflix there's a series that was called how to become a tyrant uh it's multi-episode and it's really really good so go give that a look it's called how to become a tyrant what i got a kick out of was that um it became the roar shark test for a lot of folks because everybody thought that it was talking about the group they didn't like and it's like no it's not talking about it is talking about authoritarian it is not talking about

you're missing it completely you're arguing a bad faith but go watch it it's good and then the other one is if you can find it anywhere Frank Capra's why we fight there's six different films two four six seven different films

I'm sorry called why we fight and it explains in many ways what this document did, explains two soldiers why we need to do this. So those are the two things I would recommend. Where can people find us? Well, we collectively can be found at wauwbwbwbwbwba. That's our website where you can peruse our archive, find any number of things that we've talked about. And we can be found on the Apple Podcast app, the Amazon podcast app and on Spotify.

Wherever it is that you have found us, please take a moment to give us the five-star review that you know we deserve and make sure to hit the subscribe button. And where can you be found, sir? Let's see. First Friday of every month, you can find me and the Capital Punishment crew

at the Comedy Spot in Sacramento. That's downtown Sacramento. If you go to Satcomodyspot.com, you can find tickets there for Capital Punishment. It's going to be at 9 p.m. on the first Friday of every month. So we're looking at September 5th, October 3rd, November 7th, and December 5th. But come down, get your tickets online, make sure you've got tickets guaranteed, and bring

some money for some merch, because it's a really cool stuff that we're selling. But also, come and check out the puns. Oh, my God. It's been going for more than nine years now. It's amazing. You need to be a part of it. So capital punishment at Sacramento Comedy Spot. Very cool.

All right. Well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s.