Behind the Bastards - How Pat Buchanan, Secret Nazi, Paved The Way For Donald Trump

Episode Date: July 11, 2019

In Episode 73, Robert is joined by Katy Stoll and Cody Johnston to discuss Pat Buchanan.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's surprisingly learning that your family members supported anti-semitic politicians? My me. I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards. This was another trademark.

Terrible opening. Perfect. Perfect. Without a shirt. I'll buy it. The better, the better. My guests are, as with probably the one that came before this week, Cody Johnson and Gettysdow! Yes, it is. We are indeed those people. That's true. Wow, E. In today's episode, working title is Pat Buchanan, my dad's favorite Nazi.

Perfect title. What do you mean working title? No, this is some blue harvest nonsense. No, we're calling it that. I love it. So, how are y'all doing today? The same day that we recorded the episode on free speech grifting. Still will. Slightly more tired, but... A little more tired, but... My dog's at a questionable daycare facility at the moment. We'll see how it goes. I keep thinking about him, but other than that, I'm great.

Yeah, but you know, it's good for character. Yeah, I guess. He's a little dog, and I popped him in, and I was like, great. And I peeked in the window where they popped him in. It's exclusively big dogs, and little Benny was in the corner unhappy. Yeah, just like shocked at what his world has become. I felt like I betrayed him or something. That reminds me of the time that I got dropped off at kindergarten, but it turned out it was actually Brandeis University.

What? It was quite the comedy of errors. Anyway, I wound up being the dean. Congratulations. That's amazing. Big step up from what you were expecting. You've had quite a life. I have had quite a life. So, you guys ready to talk about Patty Cannon?

It's Pat time. Whenever I hear his name, I think it's Pat. Oh boy, and that's especially appropriate, because if there's one thing Pat Buchanan hates, it's the concept of gender ambiguity. Yes. Other than that, what do y'all know about Peabuke? Not that much. Not much. I know I've read some of his work.

His work? Yeah. His name comes up often when reading about the topic of cultural Marxism. Which you do. Which I do. I would probably call him like, not this is the godfather, but the godfather part two of that idea. He's an evangelical type. We'll talk about what he is. Patrick Joseph Buchanan was born on November 2, 1938.

His father was a partner in an accounting firm and his mother was a nurse. He was one of nine children, six brothers, two sisters. He was born in D.C. where his family lived, but his family had most of its roots in Mississippi. Pat's grandfather fought for the Confederacy during that whole deal. I wrote kerfuffle, but I used that in the previous episode. I use it too many times. It's a good word.

I was shocked to realize it's an actual word. Really? Oh, I meant that you were shocked. I was shocked. Pat grew up proud of his confederate roots, and would later join the sons of confederate veterans. Heritage not hate. As a young boy, Buchanan's heroes were right-wing politicians,

Senator Joseph McCarthy and Francisco Franco. Wow. You laughed at the first one. I didn't get to the second one. Did you hear the second one? I laughed over the second one. Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator of Spain. In a 2012 column for the Quad City Times,

Buchanan would write off the carpet bombing of Guernica by Nazi planes supporting Franco as a minor crime compared to the aerial bombings that would come later, which is quite a take. Not a hot take, because it's a century later. Yeah, it's pretty.

That is a take. That is a take a person could have. Not that bad that he annihilated that city from the air, because look at all the worst annihilations of cities from the air. Wow. I never thought about it like that. Thank you for contributing to the intellectual discourse. I never thought about other stuff.

He ends the column by noting, unlike Mussolini, Franco remained a non-belligerent in the World War, returned to US pilots who came down in Spain and agreed to a post-war alliance with the United States. Non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War worked out just fine. Okay, so that makes him okay.

Yeah, just fine. I love all these people, like the problem with Mussolini was that he started a little more aggressive. The problem with Hitler was when he was like globalism. Oh, you're predicting where this is going to go later?

Oh, no! Anyway, yeah, he said the non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War worked out just fine. For reference, the Francoist government is known to have killed at minimum around 110,000 people for crimes such as reading liberal newspapers and not supporting the military coup. Many of those killed were literally flung

from cliffs to their deaths. The actual death toll from Franco's terror may be several hundred thousand, although due to the political nature of all of this, getting accurate death counts is a bit impossible. But I would not describe that as working out just fine.

What if you compare it to other things though? We all have our opinions. I do like to compare things to other things, like the other day, a friend of mine let me drive their car and I was very drunk into a retaining wall.

And it turned out their daughter was in the backseat. And they got very angry about the fact that their car and their daughter are both no longer with us. But! But! Compared to the Holocaust. Not that bad! I was about to get it disgusted with you, but now I think you're good.

Thank you! Compared to the Dresden air raids, I'm responsible. That's a really good way out of things. I am going to use that. Officer, I know it looks bad. I'm here with all this acid and all these firearms. But have you considered comparing it to the Tet Offensive?

Not nearly as bad as the Tet Offensive, huh? Might I cite Serial Murderers? In a C-Span interview with Brian Lamb, Pat Buchanan would later recall, Well, my father was very much an autocratic, very autocratic. As I mentioned right from the beginning on an earlier book, his three political heroes

were Joe McCarthy, General MacArthur, General Francisco Franco of Spain. The Catholic who finished off a communist, he later wrote in his book right from the beginning that he adopted his father's heroes as his own, seeing them as men who were fighters, men who raged war relentlessly against the true enemy.

Anything to value. Waging war relentlessly. The true enemy. The true enemy. It's interesting to me the different, it's that sentence that you both picked up on. It really speaks to the differences in your personality. And our whole dynamic.

Interesting. Everybody's learning a lot. I know I'm feeling judged. We're also all getting a lot of use out of this voice. This is kind of a way to approach discourse. Yeah, fun voice. It makes a point by not actually saying anything. Yeah, just by inflection.

But again, I have to do it. Of course you do. You've got to homes it. Pat was raised as a Catholic, pre-Vatican too, which means he grew up with that old time religion. Elaborate Baroque ceremonies conducted entirely in Ecclesiastic Latin.

One gets the feeling from other things he wrote that he wishes the church had stayed that way. Buchanan graduated college with a degree in journalism and started his working career as an editorial writer with the St. Louis Globe Democrat. He wrote vociferously against trade with Communist Cuba. In 1964, he became a supporter of

Arch-Conservative Barry Goldwater. The man who was the reason psychiatrists are not allowed to weigh in on the mental health of their children. Yeah. In 1966, he was hired as an opposition researcher for the Nixon campaign. He gained the nickname Mr.

Inside for dropping numerous Easter eggs in the Nixon speeches aimed at very far right stalwarts in the party. He was also a big advocate that conservatives should aim to be anti- establishment as a way to gain votes. He coined the term silent majority during a speech he helped write for Nixon

to address hundreds of thousands of protesters in October of 1969. Yeah, very impressed by that. I am very impressed by that. Good for him. Coining phrases that we all know. Look at that. It's a good phrase. Who wouldn't want to be part of a silent majority?

Who wouldn't want to be a part of a silent majority? Two things I love, silence and majorities. Yes. Put them together. You got a movement. That's very quiet. Why? There's a ninja joke in there somewhere, it's not fast enough, so somebody out

there will work it out. You got it. Tweet us your ninja jokes. Your ninja joke about the silent majority? As innate in the Nixon White House, Pap Buchanan was a constant voice against racial integration. The true enemy. Yes, he was talking about the true enemy.

According to the New Republic, in Right from the Beginning, which is a Pap Buchanan book, Buchanan describes how in the early 1960s he wrote editorials slamming the civil rights movement provided by the FBI. Buchanan also argues that the segregated Washington he grew up in, where blacks were disenfranchised,

was a better and more humane city than what it later became. Hearing a lot about that these days, too. About the humanness of human beings being forced to use different waterfronts? How the communities and society was better because of segregation and actually

integrating caused more problems than it addressed and solved. I wonder if any of the people making that argument have ulterior motives. I wonder. I don't. I know they do. It sounds like something based purely in fact in science and studies.

Now, among other things, Pap Buchanan suggested his boss, the president, read an article in The Atlantic by Richard Hearnstein, a co-author of a little book you might have heard of called the bell curve. No, not the bell jar. Don't mistake the two. I do not. Because I do like

to think of Nixon reading Sylvia Plath and himself a good cry. That's kind of fun to think about. Oh, God, I hope he did. This book, we need to cry. Buchanan wrote in a memo to the president. Basically, Hearnstein's article demonstrates that heredity, rather than environment,

determines intelligence and that the more we proceed to provide everyone with a good environment, surely the more heredity will become the dominant factor in their intelligence and thus in their success in social standing. It is almost the iron law of intelligence that is being propounded here. Based on heredity, the importance of this article is difficult

to understate. If correct, then all our efforts and expenditures, not only for compensatory education, but to provide an equal chance at the starting line are guaranteeing that we wind up with the intelligent ones coming in first. And every study we have shows blacks 15 IQ points below whites on the average. Pap Buchanan.

Okay. Is that part of why Nixon started the EPA? Oh, geez. No, I don't think so. Okay. I don't think so. I don't think that's what they're talking about. I think when they talk about environment, they're talking about like the quality of the school. Oh, yeah. No, I know. I know. But like,

there's like... If that's why Nixon created the EPA, that would be a actually shockingly progressive way to look at racist science. Right. Well, then we need to get the toxins out of it. Right. We got to make sure of it. That would be a weird loop for Nixon.

I don't think that's the case though, but I don't know anything about the founding of the EPA. Yeah. I don't want to think part of it was that they were upset with like the liberal consensus that like, yeah, it doesn't matter. We'll have to talk about that at a time when we know what the fuck we're talking about.

Unlike certain professor doctors who just love talking about things they know about. See last episode. See prior to previous episode and people calling themselves neuroscientists. And evolutionary biologists when they're clinical psychologists. Now, so yeah, you might have guessed that Peppy Cannon had some

attitudes towards the intelligence of black people. Seems like it. Seems like it. Yeah. His views on gay people were no more charitable. He believed homosexuality led inevitably to the decay of society. In 1977 he wrote this. Homosexuality then is not some civil right. In a

healthy society, it will be contained, segregated, controlled, and stigmatized, carrying both a legal and social sanction. Strong words, Pat. P. Buk. P. Buck. Let's put him in camps. I mean, this is all proto now.

Everything he's saying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Peppy Cannon is proto now. That's a good way to look at this guy's career. Sounds like a Star Wars name. It does sound like a Star Wars name. It does. Proto now. Proto now. After Nixon resigned in 1974 for reasons that nobody

knows anything about, Buchanan took up a post as a special advisor to Gerald Ford. He continued to write prolific opinion columns and make his voice heard within national politics. Here's a quote from another piece he wrote in 1977. Though Hitler was indeed racist in anti-Semitic

war. Though Hitler. Though Hitler. You know it's not going to go anywhere. It's only because he was a globalist. Yeah. Well, not quite. Not yet. Yeah. Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction would

commit murder and genocide. He was also an individual of great courage. A soldier soldier. A political organizer of the first rank. A leader steeped in the history of Europe who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him. Vomit. What's the point? Why is that worth?

Because he doesn't care that he was a racist. He's a rapist, but he cooks a good steak. You got to give him that. No, I don't got to give him anything. It's because he doesn't. I understand that he was racist and anti-Semitic. I don't care. He was racist. He's like a monster. He did a lot of horrendous things, but at least he was able to

rile everybody up. He was a good soldier, like all the other good soldiers who didn't grow up to be Hitler. My God. He was all of those things, but he was a real man because he waged a relentless war against the enemy. You know, Hitler. The only good speaker. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like, why do you need to... We all know Hitler was... It's one thing to say like, Hitler was a soldier adequately in combat. Hitler was a rousing speaker. It's another thing to like frame it this way where you're like, look, we all talk about the bad parts of Hitler, but let's give

the guy some credit. It's like he's saying like, ah, if this were a different era, he could be one of my heroes. Yeah. Right. It's taking these like statements that you can make and turning them into compliments. Right. Like, why do you need... Why do you feel compelled to compliment Hitler?

You can observe the reality without making it a compliment. Right. It feels like... Yeah, it feels like it's a guy he admires. Yeah. But the Holocaust happened. Right. So he has to acknowledge that there were those things that he actually doesn't really care about.

I mean, this is a phrase and viewpoint you see sort of spread out a lot now these days of like the idea that Hitler was good and right up until like 1933. Yeah. Yeah. There's always a point for the Hitler. Yes. It's like, oh, he was good until

this one date and like then it was all bad. Well, is that... Is that... Maybe the year you're talking about was like being led up to and like maybe a lot of the things that happen like sort of it's just wild. And if you actually have, if you are someone with

like an actual intellectual curiosity and when Hitler went bad, there's a good book called Explaining Hitler with just like his baby picture is like the cover of the book. The whole book is about like, what the fuck happened here? Right, right. That deals with all of the stuff that he's talking about without

compliments. Complimenting fucking Hitler. Yeah. Yeah. I really recommend that book. Yeah. In the mid 1980s Peppy Cannon became a television news commentator working on a show called the Buchanan Braden Program where he argued with a token liberal. It seems to have been the prototype

of Fox's later hit show, Hannity and Combs. Next, according to Blood and Politics by Leonard Zeskin, which another great fucking book. By the mid 1980s he had started waving the banner that became the white nationalism's clarion call in the 21st century. Quote from Buchanan.

The central objection to the present flood of illegals, he wrote in 1984, is that they are not English speaking white people from western Europe. They are Spanish speaking brown and black people from Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean. Buchanan even explicitly posed the question of whether the United States would remain a white nation. Apparently the descendants

of Africans brought in chains, the mestizo population of the southwest and the Chinese laborers and the railroads were either invisible to Buchanan's historical eye or not to be counted as natural citizens of the nation. He also exhibited a nervous disbelief in the charges leveled against those believed to be war criminals. At different times he rose to defend Arthur Randolph,

Carol Linus, Kurt Waldheim, John Dimjanuk and others, those were all SS guys who went on trial. In Dimjanuk's case, Buchanan's skepticism of justice department actions ultimately proved justified in several key points of evidence. Buchanan challenged more than just the rules of evidence used in cases against war criminals

however. As an aide to President Reagan he helped formulate a 1982 trip to the military graves of Bidberg, Germany. At Buchanan's behest, Reagan memorialized the Waffen SS along with ordinary Wehrmacht soldiers setting off international protests at the honoring of Hitler's henchmen. Buchanan added

to the outrage when he claimed that Jews could not have been gassed by diesel engines at the Nazi concentration camp at Treblinka. He was soon publicly and widely accused of giving aid and comfort to those like the Institute for Historical Review that maintained the Holocaust didn't happen. So yeah, we got to some Holocaust denial here. Now, Buchanan's

support for having the president visit Waffen SS graves brought him into conflict with Ili Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, author of Night and chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. Now, Wiesel thought that it was a bad idea for the president to lay wreaths on the graves of war criminals. This deeply pissed off Pat Buchanan. Other

White House staffers report that he kept writing the phrase, succumbing to the pressure of the Jews during his in his notes during a meeting with Wiesel. And again, these are other Republicans being like he kept writing over and over again about the Jews in his meeting with this Holocaust survivor.

He's so furious that he just has scribbled his note out. Like punching holes in his notebook every time he fucking dots a J. Yeah. A gross. Pat. Pat. Chill out. Fucking man. It's Pat. It's Pat. It's Pat.

It's Pat. Boy, so few of our listeners are going to get that joke. You guys just have to go look up it's Pat. You just got to watch, what, 20-some years of Saturday Night Live? There's got to be some clip compilation. Don't worry. It's a reference from 35 years ago. It was a funny

joke when my dad was a kid. Yeah. It's before our time. Let's not age ourselves. Making copies. Keep doing it. Oh boy. Just on that note, I tried to show my little brother in the world a couple of years ago.

Really. Hard to not a fan. Introduce the new generation to Wayne's World. You kind of had to be there. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Speaking of you had to be there, Papukannon also started speaking about what he called a so-called Holocaust survivor syndrome, which according to him involved group fantasies

of martyrdom and heroics. Oh my god. Yeah. Papukannon everybody. Buchanan's big break with the Republican Party would come in the early 1990s when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and President George Bush started beating the drums of war. Now Buchanan was very much an isolationist. He sat down on the McLaughlin Report, then one of

America's most influential political debate shows and complained. There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East. The Israeli Defense Ministry and its Amen corner in the United States. He later added that Israel was pushing America to expend the blood of its children in a proxy war. The Israelis

want this war desperately because they want the United States to destroy the Iraqi war machine. They want us to finish them off. They don't care about our relations with the Arab world. Buchanan called Israel a strategic albatross draped across the neck of the United States. He specifically blamed New York Times editor A.M. Rosenthal, assistant

secretary of defense Richard Perle, columnist Charles Krauthammer, and Henry Kissinger for promoting the Gulf War. You may note that all of those men are Jewish. You may also note that Pat Buchanan's list of people in pushing America towards war with Iraq did not include any Gentiles, like say George H.W. Bush.

Good example. President doing it, peculiar. Buchanan further complained in a column that Americans who would die in Iraq would be kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzalez, and Leroy Brown. Wow.

Excuse me. I'm not kidding you. It's always ended that sentence. Leroy Brown. What? And I want to state right here unequivocally that I reject the idea that Leroy Brown could possibly have been defeated

by the Iraq people. Because in case you are not aware, he was the baddest man in the whole damn town. A matter than old King Kong and meaner than a junkyard dog. I mean, that's who you want. That's who you want going to fight. Bad example, Pat.

Jesus Christ, like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzalez, and Leroy. That's insane. What the fuck, Pat? Jesus Christ. Oh, the baddest man in the whole damn town. Oh, God. I do love Jim Crow's. He just picks like three last names.

It's one of those things where I should be angrier, but this is literally the third reference to Jim Crow's songs that I've managed to work into one of my podcasts. I'm very proud of how many times I get to... You're on a roll. I am on a roll. It's just the same song twice,

and they're both fantastic. They're both just amazing songs. Incredible. Anyway, Buchanan's refusal to hold ranks with his fellow Republicans deeply pissed off other conservatives. William F. Buckley, editor of the National Review, wrote an essay accusing Buchanan of anti-Semitism.

But these charges did not bring an end to Buchanan's career or his political relevance. In fact, thanks to a little fella named David Duke, he was about to become more prominent and influential than ever before. Fuck you. Oh. And there comes David Duke.

There he is, there he is. He shows up every time we're here. You guys need a racist? I'm David Duke. Don't you worry about it. Sometimes I picture these little animated stories when you're telling it to me, and right then I was, and then he popped up.

He just pops right in. I love him so much. He looks like a lizard's ghost these days. Every now and then I remember he was at fucking Charlottesville. God damn it, David Duke. Maybe it's a sign you shouldn't be there. Yeah, David Duke shows up.

David Duke shows up. But you know who is good when they show up? The people who offer services and products. I was going to say that, dang. That's what's good, is the products and services

supporting the show. I got it. It's an ad pivot. The ad pivot. I think we all won with products and services this fine. We do all win. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States

told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. And I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into

a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's most experts. We're also bringing you cinematic, historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler, and I got a lot to say. For one,

my personal history is raw, inspiring, and mind-blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From I Heart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup.

Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow

to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me. About a Soviet astronaut who found

himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart.

And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the I Heart

Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science

in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday.

I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly

convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back!

That was great though. I'm gonna buy them. I'm gonna buy it. What it was, I hope it was something good. Good chance it was dick pills. Or a Microsoft Surface Tablet. Either way, fine products.

I'm gonna take a Microsoft Surface Tablet. Oh man, Surface Books actually. Would I write all the episodes of this show on? Great laptop. I have one. I like one. Now, David Duke could become the Grand Master of the KKK in 1974.

His chief innovation was merging progressive elements of neo-nazism with the old stodgy racist traditions and terrorist habits of the KKK. He's an innovator, Cody. You got a respected innovator. That's the old ideas. You gotta reinvigorate him. This KKK, you got good bones.

But we just gotta do a little overhaul. I just imagine a truck full of Klansmen hitting like a Panther tank. You got Nazis in my Klansmen. You got Klansmen in my Nazis. They say your grandfather's KKK.

Oh Christ. This is KKK and then it's like XXX, triple extreme KKK. Cause that was necessary. Now, Duke came moderate in for me for running a clan border watch and when he left the KKK in 1980 he formed the National Association

for the Advancement of White People. Which was, I mean I don't know if you guys were paying attention but in 1980 rough years for white guys. Yeah, that was bad for white people. It was a rough time. Thank God we moved past those days. In 1989, he was elected as a representative

in the Louisiana House of Representatives winning 51% to 49%. That's too much. So he got elected in Louisiana. According to the Daily Beast, Duke touted himself as a pro-life fiscal conservative, was known as an ex-clan leader.

He eschewed overly racist language and instead pointed to crime in the city, criticizing affirmative action and minority set-asides. See, by X-naying on the racism just a little bit. Not even a lot, just a scoosh. And emphasizing crime and focusing on his desire to shut down

welfare and stop affirmative action, Duke was able to build a surprisingly strong coalition of voters for a guy who had literally marched in public wearing a Nazi uniform. Good for him. Good for him. Duke continued to run for numerous positions during the late 1980s including the U.S. Senate and the presidency. He ran in

1992 as well, opposing President George H.W. Bush from the right as an isolationist, hammering him on taxation and on the Gulf War. Since he'd won hundreds of thousands of votes in Louisiana, he was considered a real threat to Bush's chances, since he was running as a member of the populist party and wouldn't need to drop out after primary season.

Now, Duke's campaign faltered, thankfully, as soon as he left Louisiana, due to his inability to use the Republican Party staff members to aid his campaign that he'd used in Louisiana. And also due to the fact that Americans outside of Louisiana were less tolerant of a neo-Nazi presidential candidate. To try and woo them, Duke focused on

the an American first isolationist policy, urging withdrawal from NAFTA, protective tariffs, and an attack on multiculturalism and immigrant rights. There it is. There it is. And of course, watching from the sidelines was our little buddy, Pat Buchanan. Pat!

Pat, you're back. Pat, you're back. Now, he saw what Duke had managed to build despite the handicap of being a literal Nazi and realized, shit, if I dress this up, I can like, I can take this lady out on the town. Yeah, I can take it a step further. Yeah, I can. Good luck, Pat.

Yeah, good luck. Good luck, Pat. Just like, dress yourself up. Several weeks before Pat announced his own entrance to the campaign, he gave this advice to Republicans. The way to do battle with David Duke is not to go ballistic because Duke as a teenager paraded around in a Nazi costume

to protest William Kunstler during Vietnam or to shout to the heavens that Duke had the same phone number last year as the Ku Klux Klan. Everybody in Med Erie knows that. The way to deal with Mr. Duke is the way the GOP dealt with the far more formidable challenge of George Wallace. Take a hard look at Duke's portfolio

of winning issues and expropriate those not in conflict with GOP principles. That's how you beat the literal fascist is take some ideas from them. If you can't, etc. Deal with ideas. Do what they say. Now, during the Cold War,

America's conservatives had literally been the opposite of isolationists, urging intervention all over the damn world in order to fight communism and make the world safe for, say, fruit companies. After the fall of the USSR, the Republicans found themselves lashed briefly by chaos, unsure of where to swing next.

Buchanan essentially charted a new course for the American right, isolationism. He wrote, I don't know why we're all snapping, but it feels right. It feels right. I love the things we do for this audio medium in which we work.

Gotta keep it snappy. You haven't thrown anything yet today. I have not. I'm not the bottle across the thing. Today being whatever day this airs. I'm going to take a quick break. I've got a closed and mostly empty bottle of Kirkland brand purified water.

And I have my rusty machete, which I made sure was rusty before. Not trusty, rusty. Well, it is trusty and rusty. I'm going to see if I can hit those lights on the roof. Nope. That was a line drive. It did go a lot further. Farther than the can.

Farther than the can. Still water in it. So America first. Very cool. Disagree, but gone. Now, the populist party embraced Buchanan with even more vigor and hope than they'd embraced David Duke. There was widespread fantasy among populists

that Buchanan would leave the Republican party and join them. For reference, the populist party was founded by a fellow named Willis Carto. Have you guys ever heard of Willis Carto? No. We're talking about fascists. We're talking about fascist movement.

There's two branches of it. Two big ol' big ol' briggity branches of it. Now, you got your vanguardists. Those are the guys who want to go all... Those are the guys who want to go all turner-dyres. You were like, what if we just kill people until society collapses and then take over in an orgy of blood and violence?

And then you got your mainstreamers. And those are the people who are like, what if we just convince all white people that being a Nazi is the way to go? Willis Carto was a way to go sort of dudes. Now, Carto was also the founder of a magazine called The Spotlight,

which became America's holocaust denial paper of record. And also its editor was a regular guest on Alex Jones's show during his early days. Big Jim Tucker. Not surprising. According to Blood and Politics, the populists argued that a realignment of the right

was taking place via a melding of populism and national conservatism into a powerful new force. On this point, the populists proved to be essentially correct in their analysis. Among conservatives, Buchanan's opposition to Bush's war plans in the New World Order was not unique.

The significance of Buchanan's transformation should not be lost in the minutiae of petty party politics. He still did not fully embrace a biological determinist view of society, but without any evident intervention by white supremacists, Pat Buchanan was talking and walking, and Buchanan formally announced his candidacy for president, reclaiming the party's right flank

for his own anti-New World Order politics. Just weeks before, Buchanan had urged Republicans to adopt Duke's issues. Buchanan believed Duke's message was middle-class, meritocratic, populist, and nationalist. So which election was this? 93 you said? 92.

Yeah, the election that brought us Bill Clinton. So, Buchanan did well enough to get on the ballot in most American states, and he ran a solid primary campaign. Voters abandoned David Duke and droves to flock to a guy who was basically him but without the baggage of all the swats

because he'd worn. Buchanan drew in America's fascist right while also pulling in disaffected middle Americans by visiting factories and small-town diners and forgotten parts of the country. On February 18th, Buchanan won 37% of the New Hampshire primary, losing to Bush but doing well enough

to continue his campaign. Now, David Duke quit the presidential race in April and failing to win more than 11% in any state, Mississippi, if you're curious. In the wake of this failure, Willis Cartot's spotlight noted that the center of gravity of the white nationalist movement had shifted towards Pat Buchanan. Any hope Duke had

of mounting an effective challenge to George Bush ended with the entrance of Buchanan into the Republican race. Duke endorsed Pat after he withdrew, and Buchanan made the wise move of ignoring this, although like another Republican a while later, he did not repudiate his endorsement either. He won 36% of the vote in Georgia

and 32% in Florida. Buchanan's national support peaked in the low 20s but began to subside in the early summer. By the end of the primaries, he'd accrued nearly 3 million votes in 34 states and raised more than $14 million. He did not win the primary, clearly. But Cartot and his fellow fascists

saw Buchanan's campaign as a major win. Once spotlight op-ed crooned, Buchanan is saying practically to a word what the spotlight has been saying on the big issues for many years. Another thing the spotlight is famous for is the Costa Nile paper of record of the United States. So that's cool.

The big issues. The true enemy. The true enemy, interesting. Like multiculturalism. Also, the David Duke. Isn't Steve Scalise describing himself as David Duke without the baggage? Jesus Christ, did he?

I'm pretty sure he did. That's a nice pitch. That phrase really stuck out to me when you said it. Exactly the same, but people don't know that about me yet. Exactly the same, but I don't own a swatztika that you know of. There are no pictures of me that I'm aware of that have me with a swatztika

as hood. I don't know much about Steve Scalise at all, but I do know a lot about Pappy. Oh good, I love cat. Now, as Buchanan's popularity became clear and clear, resistance from within the Republican Party lessened, and there was a growing consensus that he spoke for a large chunk of the conservative

electorate. One of Buchanan's chief thinkers was a dude named Sam Francis, who got to start writing briefing papers for the Heritage Foundation. In the 1980s he'd started writing for the Washington Times, which was basically a right-wing Washington Post, according to blood and politics. It was Francis' prodigious intellect that

propelled the Buchanan brain trust, and that the vortex of this intellect swirled his conception of middle American radicals. When Francis had written that Buchanan's middle American radicals represented its new social forces, he didn't mean new as in born yesterday. In fact, he had said much the same thing in 1981. By his account,

middle American radicals, or MARS, were the social constituency of what was then known as the new right. At that time, Francis argued that middle American radicals had expressed themselves in a string of movements throughout the 1970s, against school busing for racial integration, against the Equal Rights Amendment, against the ceding

of the Panama Canal, and then finally in electing Ronald Reagan president. MARS were both a social movement and a class, not simply a middle class, and not simply an economic category, but in the broadest sense, a political class. Francis declared that the Buchanan revolution as the emergence of a new

political identity that he believed would come to dominate right wing politics in the future. MARSians, as he called them, were anti- elite, opposed to black civil rights improvements, and in his words, caught in the middle between those whose wealth gives them access to power and those whose militant organization gains special treatment from

the government. Can you see what we're building here? Sound like anything that comes later? Sound... New, necessarily. Yeah, it was... Yeah, it's ringing some bells, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, maybe a little bit.

At the 1992 Republican Party convention, President Bush bowed to the influence of Pat Buchanan by giving him a primetime speaking spot, right before Ronald Reagan. In his speech, Buchanan stated that a culture war within America had replaced the Cold War. My friends, this election is about much more than who gets what.

It is about who we are. It is about what we believe. It is about what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war as critical to the kind of nation we will one day become, as was the Cold War itself.

Cool. Yeah, it is sounding familiar. It is sounding a little familiar. I can't wait. Didn't he say that he paved the way for Donald Trump or something like that? He sure did. Yeah. He sure did. He also sure did. He's not wrong about that.

In 1996, Pat Buchanan ran as a Republican again, this time aimed at unseating Clinton rather than a sitting Republican president. His popularity was immediately shocking to the Republican Party leadership. Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary, handily, by focusing on his desire to stop foreign workers from

entering the United States to undercut American salaries. Buchanan won the highest percentage of New Hampshire voters concerned about jobs in the economy. 60% of his voters described themselves as very conservative and part of the religious right. After Super Tuesday, a poll revealed that 54% of those who considered abortion their

most important issue voted for Buchanan, along with 46% of those who were most concerned with the immigration. Now, Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby, which was basically a pack for racists, and his newsletter, The Spotlight, endorsed Buchanan officially this time. In their

Republican Voters Guide, they noted that the wealthy and powerful American Jewish community, popularly known as the Jewish lobby or the Israeli lobby, does not like Pat Buchanan, and claimed his victory would constitute the greatest political revolution in history. Okay.

So, would have marked a pretty fucked up political revolution. I take issue with the word greatest. Yeah, it's not exactly the language I'd use. Yeah. Buchanan also earned the support of a group called the Council of Conservative Citizens. Have you ever heard

about those guys? No. They're a very far right lobbying group. They have a website that hosts articles, news articles, and including, it's still around this day, and one of the very popular articles, types of articles that they like to host, focus on what they call black on white crime. Yes. And the Council of

Conservative Citizens, interestingly enough, is the website that was cited by Dillon Roof and his manifesto as the thing that radicalized him into shooting up a black church in Charleston. Interesting how these people read things and get radicalized from the sort of...nifty...hyper focused

topics that these people choose to write about. Didn't at one point Breitbart have a black crime tab? They sure did have a black crime tab. They got rid of it after all of the issues. Yeah. Now, Buchanan also teamed up with

Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition. With all these far right voters together, Pat was not able to beat Bob Dole, but he was able to forestole in the Republican Party to harden their anti-abortion stances and add anti-immigrant planks to the platform demanding a change to the 14th Amendment. Bob Dole seeded on these issues, but refused to let

Pat have a good speaking slot at the 1996 convention. So... Brave. Brave of you, Bob. Wait a stick it to him. Thanks, Bob. Stick it to the... probably Nazi. Speaking of dick pills. Speaking of dick pills. Yeah, Bob Dole and me, both of the trailblazers.

Buchanan's eventual caving to the Republican Party bummed out the white nationalists who had helped lead him into prominence. Oh no, they're bummed. Yeah, alas. He let him down. He let his constituents down. I love the idea of like bummed out white nationalists. You hear the

smoothie music. Yeah, just like moping kicking rocks in their clan uniforms. Oh yeah, cool, good. Aw, shucks. Yeah. They'd expected and urged him to walk out of the convention rather than yield to the mainstream free trade-loving, non-concentration camp supporting moderates of the Republican

Party. One Ohio Klansman ruefully lamented, in the history of presidential politics, 1996 will go down as the year that Pap you can and cast away the political opportunity of a lifetime. He raised and spent some 30 million, yet what is there in the end to show for all this?

1996 would prove to be the high-water mark of Pat's presidential ambitions, but it would not be his last major effort to secure the presidency. He ran again in the year 2000, and this time he didn't run as a Republican. Now, younger listeners who haven't spent a lot of time watching old episodes

of The Simpsons may not remember a fun little tyke named Ross Perot, but the rest of us do. Oh, Ross Perot. He is a preposterously rich, very, very tiny man who once owned a large chunk of the city of Dallas in a small mercenary army. He ran for president,

and according to Republican lore, he cost George H.W. Bush his reelection. Now, Perot ran as part of the reform party, which, you know, he founded, yeah, the reform party, yeah, and he did well enough to qualify for federal funding in the 2000 general election. However, Ross Perot decided not to run in 2000,

so suddenly there was an opening for anybody who might want to take up his mantle. Pat Buchanan saw this as an opportunity. He decided to use his good name and prominence in national politics to try and get the job. At a convention in Greenbelt, Maryland, Buchanan told 150 people about his plan to use the reform

party to break up the two-party monopoly. He promised them, if he was elected, at that very moment their New World Order comes crashing down. By mentioning the N.W.O., Buchanan was directly playing towards the militia crowd. People like Tim McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, believed in a secret international

conspiracy that was in the process of taking over the world. The New World Order was also frequently called the Jew World Order, and although Pat never said those words, you can kind of assume they were after him. He felt them. He felt those words. Yeah. During the Greenbelt reform party meeting, Buchanan

posed for a photograph of the representative from his carto's Liberty Lobby, who tried to hand him the latest issue of spotlight. Buchanan told him, allegedly, I've already read it. I've got a copy at my house. Yikes. Yikes. That one hurt. That's... Bad luck.

In order to press his candidacy, Pat Buchanan did what all good wannabe presidents do. He wrote a book, a republic, not an empire. We're going to talk about that book in a little bit, but first... You got it. You nailed it. You got it. Way faster.

Let's get you on Jeopardy, and let's get these products. Only if it's only topics that products and services. Just products, and then the answers are all services. Yeah, you'd run the board. Products for 500. Services. That's just printing money. What is services? What are services? Oh, I'd lose.

Speaking of printing money. And... You viewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic, historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler, and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history

is raw, inspiring, and mind-blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads, or do we just have to do the ads? From I Heart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup.

Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I

traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me. About a Soviet astronaut

who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling

apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole.

My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match, and when there's no science

at all. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever

you get your podcasts. We're back! Hang on. Did you miss us? I missed us. Now, when we left, we were talking about the book that Pat Buchanan wrote to kick off his

campaign, A Republic Not An Empire. Now, A Republic Not An Empire was published by a publishing house you may not have heard of called Ragnary Publishing. Does that name sound familiar? Ragnary? Ragnary Publishing. Well, you guys have heard it once before, but I'm not

surprised that you don't recognize it. We did an episode earlier about the history of the American fascist movement back in the 20s and 30s. We talked about a dude named William Ragnary Sr. who was one of the chief financial backers of the America First Movement, a fascist political campaign in the 1930s aimed at aligning

the United States with Nazi Germany. His son runs Ragnary Publishing and would later go on to fund the National Policy Institute, which of course is where Richard Spencer came to work. I love it! It's all so connected. I love it too.

It's good stuff. Not to be contrarian. I hate it. It's gross. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, according to the New York Times Review of Buchanan's book, Mr. Buchanan's thesis that Hitler offered no physical threat

to the United States as of the late 1940s in the Book of Republic, not an empire, Mr. Buchanan analyzes the history of American foreign policy and questions whether Hitler sought war with the West or was driven to it. Hitler made no overt move to threaten U.S. vital interests after his initial attack across Europe in 1939 and 1940,

Mr. Buchanan writes. In a separate chapter criticizing the power of numerous American ethnic groups over foreign policy, Mr. Buchanan writes after World War II, Jewish influence over foreign policy became almost an obsession with American leaders. Yeah, Pat.

Other people are obsessed. Yeah. God. At one point in the book, Pat writes this, had Britain and France not given the war guarantees to Poland, there might have been Cork, no Blitz, no Vichy, no destruction of the Jewish populations of Europe. What?

If we just let Hitler invade Poland unchecked, there would have been no Holocaust except for the Jews that they instantly started killing as soon as they moved into Poland. Yeah. Did you think that the Holocaust happened because Hitler was mad about the mold?

I think that's what he thinks. Now I'm going to blame, kill all the Jews. I think he thinks of Hitler committing the Holocaust as like a guy hitting his car because it breaks down on him. Yeah.

Come on. I think the other real thing is that he's okay with the killing the Jews. He's not a big thing. Why do people care? It's not his preference. He would have wished they'd have gotten moved to maybe Madagascar. Right, it's the movement.

But only because it looks bad. It's not their platform in 1933, Pat. Tell me what you think. Buchanan's campaign took off like wildfire among fringe political circles. Only stymied slightly by the fact that one of his fundraisers, a British national named Mark Cotterill, was building a network

of Buchanan supporters that included members of the National Alliance, an explicitly neo-Nazi group funded by George Lincoln Rockwell disciple William Pierce, author of the Turner Diaries. Stop it, stop. It's painful. Oh, you just can't keep these Nazis off of him.

Oh, dang it, why are all these Nazis? Covered in Nazis. Is that onion article? Why are all these homosexuals sucking my cock? Oh, Pat. Jesus Christ. Now, Pat Buchanan's wife who ran his campaign

fired Mark along with 20 other volunteers which was meant to prove that the campaign was completely intolerant of racist and fascist but the fact that there were more than 20 of them to fire kind of belies that point. Oh, man. Pat. Now, Buchanan picked it as his running mate,

Azola Foster, a 62-year-old black woman anti-immigrant activist. She became a Republican during the Reagan era and joined the John Birch Society in the mid-1990s. Azola was an outspoken advocate of the Confederate flag which she considered a heritage, saying the war was more about states' rights than anything else.

During her acceptance speech, she promised voters if anybody knows a racist, I do. Pat Buchanan ain't no racist. Oh, girl. If anyone, of all the people, I know a racist. I know a racist. Fun times.

Pat Buchanan himself promised to redefine what it means to be a conservative in America, and it's likely that his promises cause serious worry for George W. Bush and crew. Remember, these folks already accepted as given that Perot's reform party candidacy cost their last Bush an election. They were not about to let that

happen again. Enter Roger Stone and a quirky little fella named Donald Trump. There it is. Yeah. As soon as the reform party is like, we got it. According to NBC News, Trump too

was against NAFTA and spoke of global trade deals as a drain on American jobs, and he was for a strict immigration policy. We have to take care of the people who are here, he said, but he drew a bright line when it came to Buchanan's tone. He seems to be a racist and accused him of cultivating support from the bigoted fringes. On slow days, Trump wrote in an op-ed, he

attacks gays, immigrants, welfare recipients, even Zulus. When cornered, he says he's misunderstood. On a trip to California, between a meeting with reform activists, a paid speech, and a taping of the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Trump visited the Simon Wiesenthal Centers Museum of Tolerance, which sought to shine a light on racism and injustice

around the world. After his tour, Trump told reporters that Buchanan should come here and have a talk with Rabbi Cooper and his staff and talk things out a bit. He added, we must recognize bigotry and prejudice and defeat it wherever it appears. Where'd that guy go? I hate him so much. He's such a piece of shit.

Absolute opportunistic piece of shit. Yeah, no, nothing means anything to him. Nope. Also, like, the idea of like, oh, yeah, Pat Buchanan went to the Museum of Tolerance is like, he's good now. Oh, no, no, this is Donald Trump. No, I know, but I'm saying like, he's like, oh, I think I think Pat should come here. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

The idea that, like, a visit would would solve Pat Buchanan. Yeah, yeah. Going to, rather than him just like, kind of like, trying to hide his crotch from view as he, like, walks through the concentration camp photos. Right. Because he's a fucking Nazi. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that was clear. Now, when questioned about Pat Buchanan's Hitler wasn't all that bad book, Donald Trump said this. Pat says Hitler had no malicious intent towards the United States. Hitler killed 6 million Jews and millions of others. Don't you think it was only a question of time before he got to us? He tackled Europe first and we were next. Pat's amazing.

When asked whether he had read the book Mr. Trump stated, I've seen the phrases we're dealing with. Classic. Oh, that is it. I've seen the phrases. I've seen the phrases. I had to include that line as soon as I read it. It's perfect. Oh, that is

Trump. That's Trump classic right there. Yeah, that's really, really Trump classic. I've seen the phrases. I've seen the phrases we're dealing with. Trump's camp. Sorry, it's just like the phrases we're dealing with. What we're dealing with is such a weird, like, he talks so weird. He talks very weird.

He doesn't understand words. Or he does. Or he does. Yeah. On a very masterful level. Yeah. Who knows? Not me. Trump's campaign was able to take a significant amount of wind out of Pat Buchanan's sales, but it was not enough to stop Pat Buchanan's Reform Party candidacy.

Buchanan made his way onto the ballot in several states, including Florida. In Palm Beach County, a liberal stronghold, he received 3,407 votes on first count. Local Reform Party officials realized at once that this count was completely bogus. Buchanan himself in an interview stated that only 3 to 400 of those votes

were really his, and the rest were misreads. He told an interviewer, the rest I am sure were Gore votes. Florida's Secretary of State and Bush campaign co-chair decided that recounts were not necessary. The Democrats challenged this and the issue was taken to the courts, leading to a final Supreme Court decision to end the recounts.

The 3,000 votes Buchanan himself believed were for Al Gore, went to him instead. This left Bush ahead in Florida by 500 votes. So that's cool. That's... I think we differ on that. I think we do. You mean it's cold, like ice cold. Ice cold. Ice cold. Ice cold.

Ice cold. Ice baby. It's cold. Frozen. Yeah that's... seems dark. Yeah that's a dark path to think about. Yeah. Too much. In a recent Politico article on this life, Pap Buchanan was brand at the Forrest Gump of Politics.

A name which would be abbed if Forrest Gump had a balls-D pistory of anti-Semitism in supporting Nazis. But still, you can't deny that there's something to the idea. For every major swing American politics has taken in my lifetime at least. Pat Buchanan has been there to make sure things break just a little bit worse than they otherwise would have.

This pattern has continued into the Trump era. In January of 2019, USA Today published an article titled, Trump Quotes Pat Buchanan. Full fucking circle. Last week Buchanan wrote an article that implored Trump to declare a national emergency on the southern border, because mass migration from the global south, not climate change, is the real existential crisis of the west. Trump has publicly considered such a declaration as a way to go around congress in order to

secure funding for a wall in the US-Mexico border. On Sunday, the president quoted a portion of Buchanan's post in a pair of tweets. The first said, The Trump portrait of an unsustainable border crisis is dead on, and then listed a number of immigration-related crime statistics. Buchanan did not cite the source of the data, but the context indicated it was from the Trump administration. The southern border, quote, is eventually going to be militarized and defended, or the

United States, as we have known it, is going to cease to exist, and Americans will not go gentle into that good night. The second tweet, quote it. Now, this is interesting to me for a reason without to detail. Buchanan's words, which were quoted by the president, are particularly fascinating in light of the Christchurch shooting that would occur roughly two months later. The shooter's manifesto, titled The Great Replacement, focused around his belief that the white race was being exterminated through immigration from non-white people into majority

white nations. The shooter ended his manifesto by citing the same Dylan Thomas poem that Pat quoted, suggesting his desire that the white race not go gentle into that good night before pumping rounds into dozens and dozens of men, women, and children. Seems like you got it from Pat. Thank you, Pat. Thank you, Pat. Thank you, Pat.

And that's Pat. That's Pat. That was Pat. That was Pat. Not Pat, what I'm about to say, but talking about Al Gore, I always think, God, if he'd won, we'd be so good on climate change right now, we'd be so, we'd have some like. We would have to make such modest and minor changes. Yeah, that's the thing, like, for decades, it's like, you just do this, just do that,

and then it gets worse and worse, and then you got to do more extreme things as time goes by. It's one of those things. When I was a kid, Pat Buchanan was a name I heard a number of times. I don't think my dad was like a huge backer at Pat Buchanan, like he was a pretty mainstream Republican voter, but he liked Pat and cited him as like someone he thought really got it and would be a good candidate. And I don't know how much of Pat Buchanan he actually knew.

I mean, I guess he just heard some sound bites on TV and stuff. Right, this stuff that's more palatable. Yeah, not the. The water down kind of stuff. Cavorting with Nazi's bits. Will your dad listen to this? Oh, yeah, I hope so. Yeah.

Hi, dad. Hi, my dad. I don't think you're a Nazi, but I think you got hoodwinked by one. A lot of people. A lot of people did. A lot of people get hoodwinked. A lot of people get hoodwinked. It's kind of what they do.

It's kind of their goal. Kind of their goal. Yeah. So. Products and services. Awful connections of awful people throughout history. They all know each other. Yeah, they all know each other.

They all agree with each other. Yeah, you could like almost, you really actually really could play like if you're doing like a degrees of George Lincoln Rockwell, you get George Lincoln Rockwell directly to William Pierce to that British guy who was on staff with Pat Buchanan to Pat. There you go. Four degrees from him to Rockwell. Rockwell, not that far. Yeah.

What a fun game. What a fun game. Like you could play. I'm only one degree away from Heinrich Himmler, by the way. Really? I got to shake hands and have an interview with a guy who had been in the Hitler Youth when he was 14 when the war ended and got to meet all of the, because they would regularly do what he would do with little kiddie stitches and stuff, so yeah.

Wow. Well, good for you. That's great. Yeah, yeah. Good for me. Herman Gehring too. You won the game. I won the Nazi game.

Yeah. It's a terrible game that no one should play. Was there a good soldier? Wonderful. Tell me more. What else was good about him? Was he a good soldier? Yeah.

Fine. He did his job while he got awards for it. So we're a lot of men who didn't commit suicide. He got traumatized. He got traumatized, and that's why he did all the things. This is, again, about Jordan Peterson and his views of Hitler. It's one of those things. It's such a messy thing.

It's totally worth discussing. For example, Hitler spent literally four years in the trenches at the very front and was exposed to an enormous amount of artillery fire, and we have now learned in recent years from our soldiers that constant exposure to artillery and explosions causes essentially CTE, the same thing that NFL players get, and like, yeah, there's very good chance that not just Hitler, but a lot of Nazis, most of whom were veterans, may have been impacted in some way on a physical level by the damage done to their brains in the front. That's fascinating.

It's a reasonable thing to talk about and want to explore, absolutely, which doesn't mitigate it, because, again, a lot of people out there with CTE and traumatic brain injuries who don't kill six million Jewish people. Yes, exactly. Compelling point about other people. But it is interesting to take back and study. Yeah, well, it's how you approach it. Again, I'm not going to rant about Jordan Peterson for a long time, but it's framing

things like that that justify the actions as opposed to exploring things that contribute to it and not really looking at where does the ideology come from. Because the people who focus entirely on like, oh, he got brain damage, or he got traumatized in the front in this cause, well, they ignore all that he wrote and said and all the people who knew him or he was in that hostel in Vienna as a homeless young man said about the fact that these little tracks, which are basically like the viral image memes, the fucking 4-chan of its time, these anti-Semitic tracks that would be printed out cheaply by the hundreds and passed around for free on the streets of Vienna, Hitler was obsessed with them and

collected them and talked about them and read them to everybody. And that was probably more of a factor than any potential brain damage from. In talking about putting the infirm or disabled people in camps, I've heard Peterson talk about how like, oh, it was because you know, Hitler had like this weird like OCD and a version to like germs and stuff and then it got worse and worse and worse as time went on. It's like, well, no, it's because they didn't work and contribute to society. Because he thought that it was worth more for Germany to win the war than those people

to exist. Right. You refer to them as useless eaters. Yeah. It's not like, ooh, they're gross. Like, it's approaching it and ignoring other stuff. But he was disgusted by their inability to further his dreams of conquest. Right.

Yeah. Right. It wasn't like this weird like, ooh, I don't like the germs. It's just weird like, it's not, because it's not Holocaust revisionism, but like it's Hitler revisions. It's a form of, yeah. Just justification. Right.

Hitler justificationism. Yeah. Yeah. It's, there's so many, I'm a big study in Hitler fan, there's so many dumb debates that we have about the guy that are deeply frustrating. Like the people who will focus on the minutiae of like, well, we don't have his name on any documents, signing away the Holocaust, so we don't actually know that it was. Unreal.

Makes me crazy. Guys. Come on. What are you doing? Honestly, what do you expect? Well, come on. What is the outcome you want from this conversation? Yeah.

And what do you want me to think of you? Are you, are you, are you looking at World War II and like taking out of it? Yeah. Maybe we weren't quite fair to Hitler. Right. That's the thing, like all these discussions is like, what is the logical conclusion and goal of, of this approach? Yeah.

If you extrapolate it and you go a little farther, like, okay, so you're just like, it's just Hitler apologism and then you're justifying those actions with different justifications and making it seem valid, like it's, it's all gross. Again, what's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? You know what the point is, is it not an ad pivot?

It's time for y'all to plug your plug-up in. To get the heck out of here. Oh yeah, to get out of here. My name's Katie Stoll. Oh, I hated that. That's true. I love your name. Very, no, no, the way I said it, like a cheerleader or like I was slating for a commercial audition.

That's only for actors to care about. I'm Katie Stoll. We have a show, some more news on YouTube. It's true. We've got a podcast, even more news where you get podcasts. That's also true. Cody. My name is Cody Johnston.

You can follow me on Twitter, Dr. Mr. Cody, or some more news, is the Twitter account for that. Also, patreon.com slash some more news if you want to support the show in some way. And I'm Katie Stoll and also Katie Stoll on the Twitter. And I'm not Cody Johnston. It's true. But I might be someday. One day.

If I play my cards. Right. He's gonna wear your skin like a suit. I'm gonna wear your skin like a suit. Ah, you got it. That's why I got the machete. No. Punchline.

No. All right. Well, I'm gonna probably should read the plugs before I do any cutting. BehindTheBastards.com is our website where you can find the sources for this episode. You can find me on Twitter at at Bastards, or I write, okay, you can find this podcast on Twitter and Instagram and at Bastards Pod by T-shirts, cups, stickers, hand grenades at T-Public behind the Bastards. That's it.

That's the show. Cut. I mean, I'm glad I got to know all that stuff before you wear my skin. Waving the knife. Before I wear your skin like a suit. Waving the knife. Right. Like, I would say, I would actually describe this as wildly branching the knife.

I wouldn't earlier, but now, yeah, this is like it's loose in my hand. The poison room is right behind me. Yeah. Like, I could crack the poison room and we would all be in trouble. Way more likely to break into the poison room with that knife than your throwing bagels. I agree. I agree. The throwing, I'm glad I didn't throw the machete because that poison room, we do not

want to crack. Yeah, no. But it keeps the energy up. Not today, poison room. Not today. Not today, poison room. Not today. There's a good chance in the next like nine months or so, but not today.

Yeah. All right. Podcast is over. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them?

He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure, he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass.

And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price?

Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.