Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Alfredo Stroessner: The Luckiest Dictator

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

Robert is joined again by James Stout to continue to discuss Alfredo Stroessner. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet feel like a nightclub. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the story of MySpace.

I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of MySpace on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. This season, we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you. Each week, you'll hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's engaged in a conspiracy against all civilization? My Catholic Church! This is

Behind the Bastards, a podcast that focuses on the evils of the false pope in Rome. We are, of course, devotees of the anti-pope Novatian who carried out a righteous rebellion against the power of Pope Cornelius in the mid-200s. God rest his soul. James, what's the chief thing you've learned from the anti-pope Novation? I don't know. His input on her and skincare has been really important to me. Yeah. He had a lot to say about that in the Latin language, which he was the first Roman theologian to use. I'm just learning about him now on Wikipedia. I don't know why I went with this as the introduction for the episode. Nobody knows, Robert. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. But you know what? This is now a podcast

dedicated to the anti-pope Novation who lived from 280 to 258. Wow. Yeah. Well, it's a big change from our last episode, which was, of course, dedicated to a dead groundhog. That's right. That's right. They have a lot in common, the anti-pope and that groundhog that built Blasio dropped the anti-pope on his brain as well. Just an incredible piece of information you gave us, James. Yeah. I'm going to make one more request from the artists to our fans, which is like a Roman style relief, like the ceiling of the Vatican. That's like anti-pope Novation and that fucking groundhog holding hands in the sky. Do it as a mural. Find a building. It doesn't matter who owns it. Draw that as a mural and we will send you a t-shirt.

Let those two kings be the symbol of our next revolution. Hand in paw. The anti-pope writing into battle on a dead groundhog. Finally, de Blasio will get his comeuppance. So speaking of Bill de Blasio, the first official Nazi party outside of Germany was formed in Paraguay in 1927 under a mango tree in the capital. While Forster, that anti-Semitic philosopher we talked about last time, had been a miserable failure in his goal of creating an Aryan sanctuary, his published writings traveled across the world and became kind of a bleeding light for several generations of German anti-Semites. One of these anti-Semites was a guy you might have heard of named Adolf Hitler. He comes across Forster's readings as a young man and he reveres

them so much that when he comes to power, he sends a bunch of German soil over to Paraguay so that local Nazis can cover Forster's grave. He also allegedly sends along a tombstone plaque with the words, the place where the father of Nazism lies and scribed upon it. And now there's, yeah. We have any lists in Paraguay. That's a great thing to tag. Yeah, that would be a nice thing to destroy. Yeah, there is some groundhog on it. Yeah, groundhog that fucker. Give it the old Bill de Blasio treatment and drop it. Now, there is debate over whether or not Hitler is the person who sent this plaque, but the plaque does exist. British historian Ben MacIntyre is one of the people who

considers it likely that Hitler would have said this. Obviously, that doesn't mean that he was like the only ideological father of Nazism. Hitler could be a flatterer when he wanted to be, but it is kind of beyond arguing that Hitler was a fan of this guy and that Forster influenced his attitudes. As a result of all this, it is perhaps not surprising that Nazism held an allure to some segments of the Paraguayan populace. The nation's first national police director named his son Adolfo and demanded police cadets wear swastikas on their uniforms. This is a post-1945 swastika, right? No, no, no. These are pre-45. Okay, post-33. Okay, still probably a poor decision. Yeah. Did he then say it's just a Buddhist symbol, bro? Yeah. It means peace. It's holding time.

Yeah. Now, Paraguay, also speaking of bad decisions, sided with the Nazis in World War II initially. So they kind of switched their allegiances midway through the war when it's like, you know what? Look, Paraguay's got a history of being on the wrong side of wars. We don't want to risk that this time. And obviously also like, it doesn't really matter what side of World War II Paraguay was on. They are a landlocked country in South America. They're not going to play a role in the fighting. The government though, the Paraguayan government does switch their allegiances right before the end. It is worth noting that the Paraguay and Nazi party refuses to give up the ghost until 1946. So Paraguay's Nazi party lasts longer than the original one. That's great. At

least later. Yeah. Well done, Dan. After the war, this tiny landlocked nation seemed like an enticing new home to dozens of former SS men and other fascist war criminals. Paraguay already had a modest German speaking population based around Mennonite colonists. But it was also full of, and this kind of made it less desirable, it was also a place where a lot of white Russian officers had fled. Some of whom had helped out in the Chaco War. These guys, some of them didn't like the fascists. Some of them were also very sympathetic to the Nazis because like, you know, Stalin and the white Russians, not a great mix. So on the whole, this fucking white Russians end up everywhere. I've recently been on a kick about reading

about white Russians in the Spanish Civil War, who end up all over the international brigades. Yeah. And a lot of these guys are czarists. A lot of these guys are fascists. A lot of these guys are the kinds of czarists that are basically fascists. In any case, it's a nice place to be a Nazi after World War Two, Paraguay. So Nazis start filtering in there. A lot of them settle with Mennonites. At least one Mennonite community adopts a pro-Nazi school curricula for its children as a result of this. Oh, God. Yeah. Don't speak that shit into reality, because Roy DeSantis will be all over it. Yeah. Fucking Mennonites. Jesus. Others simply took Nazi money. To be fair, if they'd all been Mennonites, and we probably wouldn't have had

quite so many issues with them. No, no. Technologically speaking. Yeah. They, I mean, they already mostly did shit on horseback anyway, as illustrated in probably the best scene of Band of Brothers. God, that show did a lot right. There's this great scene where a bunch of American soldiers are writing in after kind of the Nazi regime collapses, and they see all these German POWs hauling shit on horses while they're on the back of a jeep, and they're like, fucking horses. You thought you could win this war, and you've got fucking horses. What's wrong with you people? It's very funny. So yeah, these Nazis start winding up all over the fucking place, and they decide like, you know what, Paraguay would be great for, is a smuggling base for Odessa,

the organization of former SS men who helped each other smuggle themselves into other countries in order to avoid prosecution for doing a Holocaust. Now, some of my sources will argue that like, Stresner was the kind of guy who wasn't really ideologically committed to much of anything other than being in power. But that's also essentially the ideology of a lot of surviving Nazi officials. So Stresner and the Nazis got along pretty well. And there are some allegations, most notably from Alec Shumotov, that Stresner was at least Nazi curious. Shumotov basically claims that in his early life, Stresner had little contact with Germans in Paraguay, but that this changed in his 30s. And he kind of became a Germanophile, you know, getting in touch with his

dad's people. I'm going to quote from Vanity Farraghan here. One of Stresner's German buddies was Hans Rudell, a flying ace in the Luftwaffe who flew more missions than anyone, destroyed a cruiser, a battleship, 519 Russian tanks, was shot down twice, lost his right leg below the calf, but continued to excel at tennis and water skiing, was the idol of the post-war German right, the embodiment of Aryan perfection. Hitler created a special medal with him, the Knight's Cross with golden oak leaves. After the war, he tried out planes for the Argentinian government. And when Perón fell in 1955, was given asylum by his friend Stresner. When Argentina was no longer safe for ex-Nazis. Rudell went to Paraguay as well,

and worked in the Ferreta Paraguay and on Suncion, selling BMWs, telephones, cement, and iron. He also worked for Odessa. So he's like a BMW dealer who's smuggling the Waffen SS out of Europe and into Argentina. It's like the forest gump of Nazis here. He just beats up all the high points. It's an Eastern front, fucking Argentina. Yeah, he's all over the fucking place, in addition to selling used cars. Yeah, so he's gonna have a side hustle. Stresner and Rudell become fast friends, and working with Rudell, Stresner sets up a system whereby new passports and visas can be sold for an exorbitant price of which he got to cut two old Nazis. And one of the Nazis who takes advantage of this very forgiving Paraguay and

government policy is another fella you might have heard of, Dr. Joseph Mengele. So... Oh, good. Glad he's... God, that bus just showed up. Good, yeah, great. So I was looking forward to that. It's Friday afternoon. Yeah, so if you're not up on your Mengele, the kind of cliffs notes of this guy is that he's a doctor at Auschwitz who performs fatal experiments on 1,500 sets of twin children. He did inject colored eye into the eyes of toddlers, colored dye into the eyes of toddlers who were twins to see if it affected the other twin. It was nonsense. It was crazy nonsense. That's Dr. Joseph Mengele. He's a terrible person. We will cover him at some point. He's one of those guys like

Durlewanger, who he's not like... Mengele himself is not the most fascinating individual, so a lot of it's just kind of a list of horrible war crimes. But we'll get him one of these days. I know the subreddits crying out for Mengele, and eventually I am going to show them why they don't want what they think they want. No one's gonna have a good time with this episode. It is weird. The people are demanding Mengele. Got a lot of Mengele stands in the audience who can't wait to get their Mengele quick you out. Got a Mengele pill. Nope. That was a mistake. Let's move it on. Let's move it on. So Mengele, one report from a German Paraguay and who was in country at the time says that Mengele in 1959 made a living in Paraguay as a salesman for a manure spreading business.

Post-war Nazi careers are always like so weird. Why did they make them do shit if you're just fucking like put them in a hotel or something? Like these comedy fucking jobs. Yeah, no, they're making money. The guy who claimed this told Alec Schumatoff, I didn't know he was a doctor and we talked about business and never the war. I figured he didn't want to talk about it. He probably did. I see him in the fucked up saying he'd love to talk about it. Probably didn't want to talk about the war. Whatever. So some reports do allege that Stressner and Mengele were close friends also and knew each other well. I have not come across any convincing evidence of this, but it's almost certain that Mengele traveled

through and spent time in Paraguay. He gets citizenship at one point in time. So it's certainly possible that he and Stressner had a degree of social interactions together. Now, that's all pretty bad, James. When you are smuggling Dr. Joseph Mengele at a safety, that's a bad thing to do. That's high up on the list of least forgivable things. And I'm very pro-smuggling, but not if you're smuggling Nazis. You know, fentanyl, totally fine. Old electronics that you stole from people's cars. Great. Catalytic converters. Excellent. Yeah, copper. I saw some guys get some chopper today. I was really proud of them. Exactly. We need the smuggling community to come together against smuggling Joseph Mengele places. Look, not even once, folks. Not even once.

Anyway, the government's tolerance of Nazis led the fairly small Paraguay and Jewish population to have some awkward experiences after World War Two. And this is where things get very weird, James. This is a really odd little story I've got for you. I found a peculiar but unique account of life in Stressner's Paraguay written by a person who at the time was a young boy named Michael Cain. Now, not that Michael Cain. This Michael Cain is basically a fascist. Right. This is so weird. I found this in this guy's blog. He's just writing about his time as a little boy in Stressner's Paraguay. He grew up in the UK in a peace church called the Bruderhof, which was part of a network of pacifist and a Baptist religious communities that had started

spreading out from Germany in 1920. Now, Michael's like three, I think, in 1941, when his family has to flee the UK, when the war breaks out, the UK puts Germans in concentration camps. Now, nicer ones than the German concentration camps, it must be said. But that's why his family leaves. They're like, this is not, it seems like maybe being German in the UK in 1941 is an ideal. We might want to bounce. So unless you're the monarch, of course, in which case. Yeah, unless you are the monarch. So his family flees the UK for the only country that will accept their peace church during the war years, which is Paraguay. Michael's recollections are on his website, and I have not looked into the Bruderhof a lot. It is again, it's like a pacifist and a Baptist network of

religious communities. Michael claims that he suffered terrible sexual abuse and paints a picture of the Bruderhof and Paraguay as a cult. It's entirely possible this is true. It would not be out of line with a lot of similar movements. I have no particular reason to doubt him on this. We will be using Michael's account today because it provides some context on how German Jewish and the German Nazi diaspora communicated, which is an interesting thing, right? That you have these Jewish people who have fled to Paraguay and these Nazis who have fled to Paraguay. And because they're all German, they wind up like involved with each other sometimes and awkward. That would be, and again, Michael, he is writing as an adult about his experiences as

a child in this like expat community. This same bar, he's talking about like a bar that he was brought to as a kid for like a business deal. This same bar used to be owned by Schurzel. His real name was Emil Wolf, a German Jew, and his place was used for years by Nazis and Jews who were all involved in business and all of them good friends. As a 14-year-old, the Bruderhof put me to work in a sunsion where they bought a new house in Vugizio Moreno. They rented a large house in Indepincia, Nassiana, two doors down from Wolf. I went to Schurzel's bar with Alfred, a brother from the Bruderhof, who wanted a drink of beer but had no money. But I did, so he went together. Soon, Schurzel approached me for some business and would turn to products that the Bruderhof

was selling. That's how I became a good friend of Schurzel. With Jews, the key to a good friendship is money. When I came round... Oh, dear. Oh, boy. Oh, no. Do we want to keep reading, Robert? Yeah, one last sentence. When I came round to Schurzel's with wooden articles, he called me Weinachman, and I called him Saujud. Now, I looked these nicknames up because I was like, what kind of nicknames do basically a Nazi boy and a Jewish boy come up with for each other? Weinachman basically means Santa Claus. The Jewish guy is calling him Santa Claus, right? I think because he's buying him a beer. And Saujud, that nickname, which is this kid's nickname for his Jewish friend, comes from the term Juden-Sau, which is a medieval racial

caricature that depicts Jewish children suckling at the teats of the pig. It is a racial slur. So, his friend is like, hey, Santa Claus. And he's like, hey, slur? Like, hey, racial slur, buddy. Awkward. Look, I would love to find, I haven't found really any other accounts of the complicated interactions of the Jewish Trieste for a German community in Paraguay and the Nazi. I assume this happened in places like Argentina, too. It's a fascinating topic. I would love to read more on the matter. Hopefully, I'll find something else at some point. I just kind of accidentally stumbled into this. The shit that people will put on the internet without being forced to. Like, you could not send me to Guantanamo Bay if I had been giving my friends

slur nicknames and get it out of me. But this guy just apparently popped it out on the internet for the world to see. I mean, this guy, I don't entirely know what's happening with the fascist Michael Cain, but his blog is a real one. Yeah, there was a time when we were blogging and it's a powerful thing, a powerful insight into the brain. Speaking of fascist Michael Cain, do you know what the non-fascist Michael Cain loves? Blowing the doors off, thanks. Is that a thing that Michael Cain did a lot of? The Michael Cain, isn't it? And what's it called? He's in a lot of stuff. He's Michael Cain. Yeah. I mean, he was in the Batman movies. He's Alfred. I think so.

Does he blow the doors off of something? I don't know. In the Italian job, is that? Oh, yeah, I think that is Michael Cain. That's a lot of stuff in the Italian job. I had a moment there, I was worried. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, this is good Michael Cain content. This is an episode rich with Michael Cain. Anyway, that was a bit of a digression, but I just found it too interesting to not include. No, fascinating. This must have happened in a lot of other countries, too. This like the German Jewish diaspora and the German Nazi diaspora having some forms of interaction with each other. I would love to read more about that. I just don't know. I haven't I haven't run into much else, but yeah, it's a whole whole thing.

And it gives you an idea of the kind of peculiar bedfellows that exist under Stresner's regime. The main reason that I found Michael's story, though, is that it provides a rare direct personal account of the man that Alfredo Stresner trusted to maintain his secret torture police who were his primary instrument of maintaining power. And this man was named Pastor Miliciades Coronel. Born in August of 1919, Coronel worked for the education and culture ministry. When Stresner came to power, he was like part of the Department of Education. And then Stresner's like, no, no, you seem like more of a torture guy to me. I'm going to put you in charge of my tortured my torture department. Coronel was noted to be an obsessive bureaucrat.

He loves paperwork. Part of what we know so much about this guy is every arrest and every torture that they do is documented. Every surveilled dissident is recorded and filed away. But he's not just a paperwork guy. He likes to get down there and get his hands dirty. In 1975, when his forces arrested the secretary of the Paraguayan Communist Party, Pastor Coronel had him dismembered by chainsaw while he watched. That is, yeah, we don't come into enough chainsaw killings in this show, but there we go. That's, that's a, it's always good to break new ground when it comes to like state violence. Yeah, no, it's nice. He's like a Robert Rodriguez villain, this guy. So Coronel is a dedicated student of torture. He practiced it himself, but he was also a

keen admirer of the world's greatest torture experts at the time, which was the US police. Now we know that the FBI sent him friendly letters as well as books on law enforcement, like the director of the FBI is like sending this guy like textbooks to be like, here you go, this will help you make your torture police. Don't worry, we know all about it. We also know that through Operation Condor, the FBI kept abreast of whenever Paraguay and dissidents would pop up and surrounding countries that had right-wing dictatorships allied with the US, which at this point was all of Paraguay's neighbors. This brings me to the 1958 story of Gladys Sanderman and Augustine Guiborow. They were physicians in the Capitol who refused to

falsify an autopsy report to claim a victim of Coronel's police had died of natural causes. Instead, Dr. Sanderman took the corpse to a class in her medical school and performed the autopsy in front of her students so that there would be people who knew what had happened to this man. It was just the only thing she could think of to do to make sure that the truth got out. Like, if I write anything about this, they will purge it. So I am going to autopsy this murder victim in front of my students so they see what our government's doing. Very sensibly, she and her husband fled the country for Brazil. Now, they're in Brazil for a little while before the Brazilian military seizes power. And so then they have to flee

Brazil and the next place they move, Argentina, falls to a US-backed military dictatorship in 1976. This gives you an idea of how tough it is to be any kind of dissident in South America at this time. They're running as fast as they can, always just ahead of the next US-backed military coup. And I'm going to quote from The New York Times here. Hours after the coup, the Argentine police abducted Dr. Sanderman and tortured her at the Escuela Mecaniza in Buenos Aires. Dr. Sanderman said she was bound and plunged into a bathtub of vomit and excrement. They accused me of killing a patient in my office, Dr. Sanderman said, calling the charge a total lie. Then the police falsely accused her of selling drugs, she said.

A week later, Dr. Sanderman's husband was abducted and tortured as well. Dr. Sanderman landed at the emboscada camp for political prisoners in Paraguay, where she treated more than 400 fellow prisoners from several South American countries, including women whose husbands had been executed and their children. The women, she said, had been imprisoned to silence them. Dr. Sanderman and her husband were eventually given asylum in Germany in 1997, after the German government pressed Argentina to bring about their release. The fate of Dr. Goybrew, who also refused to white-watch torture, remained a mystery until the archives were opened. In 1977, he was kidnapped from a street in

Messiones, an Argentine town where he had gone to escape the stressor regime. And, you know, he's executed by the regime. He's killed once he gets back. We have some personal accounts of Pastor Coronel's torture tactics as well. Senator Carlos Levy Rufinelli was the leader of the Liberal Party, a controlled opposition party stressed and are allowed to exist to provide the illusion of democracy. And even though this was he, you know, he's letting this guy basically live to be controlled, or to be opposition, he still arrests him 19 times and has him tortured six times. That guy, that is a bold dude. Just keep coming back for more.

He is a brave man. And I'm going to quote from him now talking about his experiences under Coronel's torturers. Most of the time, I did not know what they wanted. They did not even know what they wanted. But when they put the needles under your fingernails, you tell them anything. You denounce everybody. And then they say, see, you were lying to us all the time. Now, I found an even more detailed and horrific account of Pastor Coronel's jails in a BBC article by Simon Watts. Almata came to the attention of the secret police in the early 1970s when he and his wife, Celestina, were working as teachers in a school where they had set up on the outskirts of Ansoncian. Their politics were left-wing and they campaigned for better salaries

and working conditions for teachers and for changes to the curriculum. One evening, the secret police came for him. After 30 days of interrogation, Almata was officially classified as an intellectual terrorist and an ignoramus. He was sent to the infamous emboscada open air prison where he was held for three years. Celestina died shortly after Almata's arrest and what the police said was a suicide. Almata has always believed she died because police played her recordings of him being tortured. The telephone was used as an instrument of psychological torture, he says. For eight days, they made her listen systematically to everything that happened to me. Then they sent her my bloodied clothing. Finally, they called her one night and said, the subversive teacher is dead,

come and get his body. She died of a heart attack, he says. She died of grief. And again, all of this is based on teachings that the FBI handed down to Coronel and his police. They sent trainers, the CIA sent trainers, like US cops taught Coronel's cops how to do all this. None of this was separate from American politics in Latin America at the time. Yeah, there are people alive today whose taxes helped to pay for that. So that's great. Anyway, to the FBI agents listening, I hope you enjoyed this proud recitation of your history here. What a glorious institution. What's up, y'all? This is Questlove and, you know, at QLS, I get to hang out with my friends, Sugar Steve, Laia, Vontigolo, Unpaid Bill. And we,

you know, at Questlove Supreme like the nerd out and do deep dives with musicians and actors and politicians and journalists. We give you the stories behind all your favorite artists and creatives that you have never heard. I'm talking about stories behind their life journeys and their works of art. I love QLS because of the QLS Team Supreme. They're like a second family to me. You're a fan of deep diving into music, everything, all monacking your musical history, and learning things about hip hop artists and things you never thought. Then you're a lot like me, but you're also a fan of Questlove Supreme. One of the things I love the most about this show is that we get to learn from the masters. I look at being on this show as my graduate

program in music. Listen to Questlove Supreme on the iHeart Radio app. Have a podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. This case has all the markings of a ritualistic occult murder. The Manowar Caves. Well, I say the Lord works in mysterious ways. A brand new immersive fiction podcast. Well, he ain't got nothing on the devil. Part psychological thriller, part supernatural horror. The truth? Sometimes it's revealed in the intersection of facts. Sometimes it's hidden to the lore. Starring Westworld's Jonathan Tucker and Eddie Kethegge from Twilight. I wouldn't go digging around, stirring up trouble if I was you. Tune in to uncover what happened when three boys entered a Tennessee cave, but only one returned. This is the exact spot where we found the potty's

jewelry. The Manowar Caves. M-A-N-T-A-W-A-U-K. A production of iHeart Radio, Blumhouse Television, and Psychopia Pictures. Every minute I remain in Manowar County, the thicker the fall gets. Listen to the Manowar Caves now on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the podcasts. Hi, I'm Rosie O'Donnell, and I've got a new podcast called Onward with me, Rosie O'Donnell on iHeart. I'm 60 years old now, believe that? Yes, it's the truth. So I figure two-thirds of my life are done, zero to 30, 30 to 60, and now I'm in the 60 to 90 if I'm lucky. Mostly, this part of my life is just about moving forward. And I thought, what a wonderful way to do it with the podcast that I can sit down here in my home, with people I love and admire,

people I've worked with, people I've gotten to be friends with, and some family friends that feel like the real deal. Like who, you might ask? Natasha Leon, Jennifer Lewis, Ricky Lake, Fran Drescher, Sharon Glass, Kathy Griffin, Cameron Mannheim. The list goes on and on. Listen to Onward with Rosie O'Donnell, a proud part of the outspoken podcast network on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So thanks to those now open archives. We also know that Stresner, after he took power, a U.S. military colonel named Robert Terry, T-H-E-I-R-R-Y, he lived in Texas, actually came to Paraguay to put together a lot of the basic structure of Stresner's police state as part

of a broader U.S. plan to crack down on left-wing organizing in the entire region. The FBI handled a lot of the grunt work. On one occasion, a dissident from Pinochet's regime in Chile fled to Paraguay. He was arrested and interrogated by Coronel's men. They then called up the FBI, who interrogated Chilean relatives of the dissident who were living in the United States, and then handed that information to Pinochet, who disappeared the dissident once he'd been handed over. This is the way things worked in Latin America, much of it. Clarence Kelly, who was head of the FBI at the time, sent Coronel a Christmas letter wishing him, quote, a truly joyous Christmas and a new year filled with all the good things you so richly

deserve. Good guys. Good guys. Now, earlier, I read you a quote from that weird Michael Caine guys blog. I decided to highlight some of this kind of a Nazi's recollections because, as a child, he lived near Pastor Coronel, and he spent time with the man. And there's not a lot of context on this guy. So he's some of, like, the only evidence I've found about what Stresner's chief torture was like as a person. And this is kind of interesting. On this day, I first met Pastor Coronel. He was about five years older than me. His uncle Don, or rather, Mayor Coronel, owned a neighboring Estancia ranch to the Bruderhof. His Estancia was called San Martin. In Paraguay, landowners like to give themselves military titles for importance, hence the Mayor

title. Mayor Coronel habitually carried a gun. He must have read the little bread book by Chairman Mao, where on it says, page 48, the power of the people comes out of the barrel of a gun. For this reason, he was highly respected or feared, pitting on your language. It was him who let me shoot his Colt 45 revolver for the first time in my life. The recoil hurt my thumb. This made all the Paraguayan onlookers laugh really loud. This kind of prose is really a gift to the internet. It's amazing. You legitimately never know what this fuck is going to come up with next. This man is fascinating. Just a stream of consciousness. It's unedited. It's one of those little gifts that you come across when you're doing a deep enough dive

that's just like, no one would put this in a scholarly, because I can't verify any of this, but I'm not not going to put it in a podcast. It's just too incredible. It's a hidden gem of the... This guy now is commenting on Facebook shit about how he... Powerfully divorced vibe. Yeah, I'm not surprised that Michael Cain grew up to be the most divorced man on the internet. Yes. I hate his children. Oh, perfect. Yes. Give it all to me, James. That's what I love the internet for. This is a true goal.

So back to Paraguay. It has always been pretty deeply fucked from an economic justice point of view. Today, it actually has, fun fact, James, the most unequal land distribution of any nation on earth. 90% of its land is owned by 12,000 people. Now, Jesus Christ. That's not great. This state of affairs actually started because of the War of the Triple Alliance, which left most Paraguayans dead in their land up for grabs, right? There's a lot of land that there's no one alive left. And in the wake of that calamity, the next dictators basically sold everything that wasn't nailed down all these dead people's land to fund rebuilding and to fund themselves. And during this period, 32 firms purchased almost half of the country. One Spanish businessman

purchased 7 million hectares, which is more than a full Ireland of private property. Yeah, that's too much land for a person to have. Yeah, you know what needs so much. What is he doing with it all? There's a brisk debate to be had about the extent to private property. No one should be able to own an Ireland. No, that's too much. The consequences of this led directly to a situation where all wealth in Paraguay was determined by land ownership because land gave one the ability to exploit minerals or other natural resources or at least charge rent. When Stresner came to power, the first person he killed was a government official tasked with carrying out a land reform policy to remedy this inequality. That is the first guy he has murdered

is this guy doing the land reform. Great. And yeah, I'm going to quote next from an article in EarthSite. As part of these clientelist networks, Stresner divided what remained of public land among his allies. 8 million hectares were given away or sold at negligible prices to army generals and Colorado grandees. This land was ostensibly destined for small scale farmers as part of a program of agrarian reform. And so has come to be known as las tieras malhabidas, the ill gotten lands. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. It's a good story. It's great. Yeah. Yeah. No problems there at all. He started off on a great note, didn't he? Yeah. Yeah. So this leads to a pretty long running series of massacres of what are called campesinos who are tenant farmers attempting to

protest for land reform. For Stresner, this also forms a crucial part of the network of bribery and other way looking that powers his dictatorship. To get military officers on his side, he hands out high level positions in state monopolies or land. And then he also has Pastor Coronel's secret police stand aside and ignore the illegal trade in contraband so that they can make a shitload of money smuggling stuff into the country. Peter Lambert writes of this contraband often quoted as the price of peace and involving the vast majority of officials through their control of the frontier zones guaranteed the complicity of the military establishment and the maintenance of a lucrative status quo. And the words of Eduardo Galliano, the generals fill their pockets and hatch no

plots. So basically, he kills the guy who is responsible for redistributing land to the peasants. He takes all this land. He gives it to his generals, particularly land on the borders, which they then use in order to carry out like basically create smuggling networks, right, to bring products in that are not taxed. And this is fucked up. It's a mixed bag for much of the population. Because one thing this does is that you can actually get a lot of shit cheaper in Paraguay than you can in like the US where it's being made, like TVs are cheaper there and shit for a while, because it's like no taxes. And everyone in the government understands part of why we don't we're not dealing with any uprisings right now is that like people get cheap TVs and

the money from those cheap TVs bribes the generals not to upset the apple cart, you know, it's a pretty intelligent system. It's evil, but it's smart, right? Right. How are you funding your your state, though, if people aren't paying taxes and well, a lot of people aren't paying taxes. You do have like a shit. I mean, I mean, honestly, James is the CIA, right? Like he's getting eventually tens of millions of dollars from the United States. It's a perfect system. What if the CIA could fund civic programs here to rebuild roads and bridges? Don't even think about it, Robert. No, dropping in CIA agents to like clean up that part in that town in Ohio that the train just knew torturing the dude who runs Norfolk seven. Yeah, backing a dictator in

Ohio, but then also cleaning up the land. It's a mixed bag in Ohio. Yeah, half the population has been tortured to death, but the sea is cleaner now. The sea. It's Ohio. What am I saying? Yeah, the Ohio ocean. Yeah, the the Ohio ocean, we call it. It's where the landmarks come from. We've talked a good amount about the torture and murder stressors, chief attack dog, pastor. And by the way, pastor is not like a religious term. It's like, I think, sorry, pastor is what I should be saying. But you know me in pronunciations. It's his first name is pastor. Pastor Coronel carried out. But what's perhaps more interesting is how relatively rarely he needed to do this. The early years of the stressor regime established such a baseline of terror

that Paraguay and civil society was comprehensively beaten down. And it had been pretty beaten down earlier, right? So kind of what happens after he takes power is most people are like, yeah, man, he sucks, but we're not dealing with the Civil War every year. And like, you know, the corruption at least means cheap TV. So why don't we just give up on politics, right? Like that's kind of that's how Lambert Lambert. That's how Lambert kind of describes what happens to the people. And he calls this the institutionalization of repression and defines that as a demobilization of civil society due to a perception that politics is only the domain of soldiers and the leaders who control them. Yeah, yeah, you don't have like civil society is like non state actors who make

demands of the state. Like what the fuck is the point in making demands of the state when yeah, either it changed every five minutes or it kills you. Exactly. And I'm going to read another quote from Lambert here that makes this point. To a large extent, the regime succeeded in not only demobilizing the but depoliticizing civil society, destroying not only the organizational ability of the opposition, but more importantly, the capacity to question, to analyze and to criticize the repression and co option and co option of nascent opposition led to an apparent acceptance of the status quo, a cynicism toward politics, a disinterest in what was seen as an area reserved for elites and prohibited to the masses. And to be fair, the stability that stressner

brings with him makes it easy for the people who aren't being targeted by the government to feel this way. Regular people are benefiting from this situation in a lot of ways. And the 1970s see an economic explosion as Paraguay finally recovers from both the Chaco war and its decades of instability. For a while, it has the highest growth rate of any South American country. And a lot of this is due to the fact that there's a joint Brazilian Paraguayan project to create a massive hydroelectric dam in a typo. Today, I believe the typo dam is still the most productive hydroelectric power project on the planet. Like it's a pretty good idea to have this dam there. You know, not that that's up to stress, everybody green lights it and massive corruption ensures that

Paraguayan industry like this is part of the province that like this is a great thing to have in your country like this incredibly productive power dam. They have a contract basically with Brazil where they split the power 50 50 and Brazil like funds the construction. But because of massive corruption, none of the 50% of a typo's power that's supposed to go to Paraguay actually goes towards, you know, building an industrial base or doing anything to improve the economy. So the project temporarily brings an economic boom because so many Paraguayans are working on it, but they're not going to actually use the resources that it generates to improve the economy in any meaningful way, which is going to be a problem for everybody in a little bit

here. Paraguay's boom years are also helped by regular infusions of cash from the United States and the IMF to the eventual tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. In exchange, Stresner keeps Paraguay as a compliant and stress free part of Operation Condor. The CIA never needs to send in Black Ops teams to the country or fund paramilitary death squads. There's no grinding left wing insurgency that threatens the stability of the government. The fact that Stresner was generally good for US policy aims and the undeniable fact that life under his rule was at least more stable than life under previous dictators led some in the international community to call him a good dictator. George Landau, a US ambassador to the country called Alfredo benign as dictatorships

go. Oh god, there it is. Yeah, I'm sure I'm sure the teachers being soaked in shit and then murdered are. Yeah, this is benign basically as dictatorships go. Yeah, television's cheap. What are you going to do? It's nice. One of the things fucking George Landau says is that, well, you know, political prisoners in Paraguay generally get out of prison alive as long as they have powerful friends. No, yeah, great. That's good. We're good. Yeah, thank you. I was I was worried we were complicit in nightmarish evil again. But you know what? It's good. We're fine. Shining city on a hill shit as always. The United States. I am at the ghost of George Washington speaking on a mountain above DC. Yeah, we will build a nation where political prisoners sometimes get out of prison

if their friends are powerful. That's one of the things they didn't put on my becoming an American test. Mm hmm. No, that's one of those like little quotes they write in your passport book. I'm sure. You know what else winds up written in your passport book? Is it corporations? Yeah, I mean, kind of. Yeah. How many pies of gold you've bought? If you have enough gold, you don't even need a passport, Sophie. You know what? Innovative. I like it. Thank you. What's up, y'all? This is Questlove and, you know, at QLS, I get to hang out with my friends. Sugar Steve, Laia, Vontigolo, Unpaid Bill, and we, you know, at Questlove Supreme,

like the nerd out and do deep dives with musicians and actors and politicians and journalists. We give you the stories behind all your favorite artists and creatives that you have never heard. I'm talking about stories behind their life journeys and their works of art. I love QLS because of the QLS team Supreme. They're like a second family to me. Your fan is deep diving into music, everything, all monacking your musical history and learning things about hip hop artists and things you never thought. Then you're a lot like me, but you're also a fan of Questlove Supreme. One of the things I love the most about this show is that we get to learn from the masters. I look at being on this show as my graduate program in music.

Listen to Questlove Supreme on the iHeartRadio app, at the podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. This case has all the markings of a ritualistic, a cult murder. The Manowar Caves. Well, I say the Lord works in mysterious ways. A brand new immersive fiction podcast. Well, he ain't got nothing on the devil. Part psychological thriller, part supernatural horror.

The truth? Sometimes it's revealed in the intersection of facts, sometimes it's hidden to the lore. Starring Westworld's Jonathan Tucker and Eddie Cthigge from Twilight. I wouldn't go digging around, stirring up trouble if I was you. Tune in to uncover what happened when three boys entered a Tennessee cave, but only one returned. This is the exact spot where we found the bodies, Julie. The Manowar Caves. M-A-N-T-A-W-A-U-K.

A production of iHeartRadio, Blumhouse Television, and Psychopia Pictures. Every minute I remain in Manowar County, the thick of the fog gets. Listen to the Manowar Caves now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hi, I'm Rosie O'Donnell and I've got a new podcast called Onward with me, Rosie O'Donnell on iHeart. I'm 60 years old now, believe that? Yes, it's the truth. So I figure two-thirds of my life are done, zero to 30, 30 to 60.

And now I'm in the 60 to 90 if I'm lucky. Mostly this part of my life is just about moving forward. And I thought, what a wonderful way to do it with the podcast that I can sit down here in my home, with people I love and admire, people I've worked with, people I've gotten to be friends with, and some family friends that feel like the real deal. Like who, you might ask? Natasha Leone, Jennifer Lewis, Ricky Lake, Fran Drescher, Sharon Glass, Kathy Griffin, Cameron Mannheim. The list goes on and on. Listen to Onward with Rosie O'Donnell, a proud part of the outspoken podcast network on the

iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, we're back. We're all having a good time. Everybody's happy. The story's happy. Yeah, so George Landau, our good friend, the US ambassador to Paraguay for a while, claims that Stresner repeatedly complained in the late 70s that he was tired of ruling, and that he wanted to retire to a life of fishing and hunting, but that Paraguay needed him. Landau claimed, he believed, as most dictators do, that he was absolutely irreplaceable. He talked himself into a sense of duty. Now, that's horse shit. Sorry. Where's he writing this? Like, is he just like doing op-ed?

Yeah, like Assuncion. Yeah, he's like, I think this is like, yeah, while he's probably like I think he leaves in 79. Yeah. So I believe that, and other sources I found will argue, that Stresner basically gets addicted to total power, and it kind of loses the ability to conceive of anyone else making decisions about his country. It is interesting to read accounts like Landau's by Americans who talk to Stresner during this period, because like everyone in Paraguay, like all of the people in his cabinet, every other leader, has to treat him as kind of a cross between like God and the devil, because his whim can destroy their lives, right? So no one can talk to him honestly, but American soldiers and diplomats like are safe, right?

Like you can actually have a conversation with Stresner, because like, he's not, he's not going to fuck up the money, right? He's not an idiot. So taking this into account, I found a letter to the editor of National Review by a former U.S. soldier who traveled to Paraguay for work during Stresner's time in office that I found really interesting. In very good English, he said, I am President Alfredo Stresner, and I would like to thank you for showing us your aircraft. Since I am in my country, custom requires that I continue this conversation in Spanish with my interpreter, which he did. His interpreter was far less fluent in English than the leader.

We gave him a tour of the airplane and answered all his questions about it. Then he philosophized for a few minutes. We never understood why. The remark that has struck with me to this day was, I am sure you have heard that I am a dictator. That is true, but I am a benevolent dictator, which my country needs. We are a backward country and my people are not ready for democracy. We wisely made no comment on the remark, and shortly after we launched for a return flight to the canal zone. Jesus Christ. Yeah, and it's interesting because this guy is, he's literally writing the editor of National Review. I'm going to assume this serviceman is pretty conservative, but he ends his letter by noting, we knew very well even then there was

nothing benevolent about Stresner's dictatorship, which is honestly, which is more honest than George Landau was willing to be. Yeah, this guy's not cut out for career in foreign service. No, no, no. Imagine your leg showing him your aeroplane, just being like, oh, I'm glad that we're sharing our military assets with this piece of shit, boomer. I feel good about my service today. Yeah, I signed up to defend this country. God willing. As the 1980s dawned, Alfredo's power was at its apparent height from the New York Times. President Stresner was never one for understatement. His name, written in neon, flashed nightly over the Asuncion cityscape during his reign. And his face was plastered.

I love that. He's a man of the times. He's adopted neon. Yeah, he's ready for the Reagan years. His face was plastered daily in the newspapers and on television. He was known for turning up in his powder blue military uniform every Thursday at the General Staff headquarters of the armed forces. John Venecur, writing in the New York Times magazine in 1984, offered this snapshot of Paraguay as its army goose stepped down the boulevards to celebrate General Stresner's 30 years in power. A continual state of siege over the entire period that literally places the president above the law, people with occasionally uncontrollable urges to fall into rivers or jump from planes with their arms and legs bound, serenades in front of the presidential palace

featuring the ever popular forward my general and congratulations, my great friend, foreign thieves, brutes and madmen hidden at a price, an economy administered so corruptly it is officially explained away as the cost of peace. A United Nations voting record on so-called key issues more favorable to the United States than any other ally, a party newspaper that prints six four-page color pictures of the general every day. Jesus Christ. What a great country. Things are going well. What a powerful image. Anytime you've got goose stepping military and anyone in power for 30 years, I should set up some alarm bells. Yeah. Now appearances can be deceiving, James, because when the construction of the Itaipu dam stopped in 1981, that just so happened to occur

at the same time as a global collapse in the value of cotton and soybean, which were Paraguay's two biggest crops. So because due to rampant corruption, none of this power generated by Itaipu is being used to like help them create a better industrial base. Paraguay's economy takes a long walk off a short pier at this point in time. The balance of payments and deficit for Paraguay gets so bad that Stresner is finally forced to abandon his fixed rate for the currency. Inflation rises sharply and with it comes the first stirrings of resistance to his regime. Now, in addition to the fact that the economy has taken a shit, Stresner's an old man at this point. His health troubles him and he's forced to hand over more and more control to his underlings

like Pastor Coronel, who begins actively scheming to replace him. To cope with the stress, Alfredo increasingly gravitates to the only hobby that makes it all better. James, what do you do when you're stressed out? How do you chill out? I go for bike rides, I go climbing, I camp. Are those his favorite activities too? I make spoons and then what is spoon? That's interesting. Those are all great hobbies, James. Alfredo takes a slightly different route. He gets really involved in child sex trafficking. Oh, okay. Yep. I'm going to read a quote from kind of spooning to the kind of spooning I enjoy. Oh, boy. I'm going to quote from Alex Schumann from Vanity Fair. Stresner was no doubt aware of the inevitable waning of his powers

and his solution to the problem seems to have been schoolgirls. Oh, no. They were his elixir. Maybe he thought that the intercambio de hormonas would keep him young. He wasn't alone in his predilection for this therapy. His friend Perone, who liked boys as well, consoled himself with a 14-year-old after the death of Evita. In the opinion of Stresner's family surgeon Manuel Rivera, there was nothing abnormal about an old man having a soft spot for nymphets. This is an article from the 80s in Vanity Fair, so the writer's a bastard too. Look, let's not be wrong here. Wow. Youth is contagious, he told me. Trujillo crossed the streets of Santo Domingo looking for girls. Bocasa cruised the streets of Bangui. Stresner cruised the streets of Assuncion.

It went with a turf. The girls were Don Alfredo's draw de signure. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Yeah. Yeah. It's not very good. Alex Shumatoff is a prestige magazine journalist writing in the 1980s, so he's a kind of gross guy in some ways. Yes, he's got an extreme fucking creep. Oh, I don't even start it, James. Oh, god. Here's Alex again. Give me more of his pay-on to pedophilia. It is hard not to notice the schoolgirls, slender tan mestiza beauties budding in their white uniforms who pour into the streets of Assuncion at noon. After a long morning, Stresner would park near one of the schools and watch them come out. When he had made his pick, his aides would find

out who the girl was and approach the parents with an offer of cash or real estate. If all else failed, the girl was kidnapped and given an injection that made her more cooperative. If she got pregnant, she was sent to the best hospital and treated by the best doctors. How many children the tyrannosaur produced is unknown, but there are thought to be many. I am feeling physically unwell. So that's fucked up. This is obviously if you are this guy reporting for a huge magazine on this, this is critical stuff to report on. You don't need to describe how attractive the schoolgirls are, Alex. That's bad. That makes me think you're a monster too. You know that story. Wildly inappropriate. Terrible. Wow. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Good stuff.

One of the people procuring children for the dictator was Colonel Leopoldo Perrier, who scoured the countryside for eight to 12-year-old peasant girls and brought, yeah, yep, he made me very young and he would bring them to safe houses and suburban like neighborhoods that had playgrounds so that they would be amused while they waited for the general. That's like the worst detail. Yeah, but fucking hell. If you're going to slide for your girlfriends, like, yeah, you're doing it wrong. I'm going to read another very rough two sentences from that Vanity Fair article. I'm bracing. One of Stressner's conquests was the 15-year-old daughter of the head of the national cement industry. As part of the seductions, she and her brother

got a trip to Disney World. Oh, man. Good hell. That is, that is tough. That is rough. Yeah. This story was first broken by Jack Anderson in the Washington Post in 1977, who I'm fair. From what I recall of his article, does not write anything creepy about these children. Yeah. He like bases his article off of an interview he conducted with a woman named Melina Ashwell. And Melina is the daughter of a Paraguayan official stationed in Washington, DC, who tells him that two years earlier in 75, back in the capital, they'd been having lunch with a colleague when they were called over to the mansion next door, where they saw the unconscious bodies of two eight-year-old girls and one nine-year-old girl who were both bleeding

between their legs. Ashwell called the police, but they had like the police show up, but they leave immediately because somebody points out that the house is owned by Colonel Perrier. The house is apparently a brothel frequented by the dictator himself. And she calls like, you know, once the police leave, she calls a local journalist and tries to give him the story before she goes to the post. But the journalist she tells this all to, the Paraguayan journalist, gets arrested for communism and a raid of his house turns up the text of her interview. So she gets tortured for three days. She's only saved because her dad is influential. When Anderson publishes this story, we'll start turning in the Carter White

House. And thankfully, Carter is not unwilling to back dictators as he does in El Salvador during this period of time. But this is far too much for for Jimmy Carter. And the United States cuts aid to Stressner's dictatorship. Now, Reagan winds up in the office very shortly thereafter. And Reagan's like, Oh, we have no problem supporting a pedophile. We're totally fine. Yeah, Reagan switches that policy right back. They do lose out on money during this period where the economy is also in the shitter and that creates problems that weaken Stressner's regime, right? It's one of the things that contributes to the weakening of his regime. By 1982, Campesinos who lost their job or in 1982, Campesinos who'd

lost their jobs when the dam was finished, started to protest again for land reform. This got in the way of the dreams of Stressner's cabinet members and military officers. Villages were declared centers of delinquency and subversion and forcibly evacuated. The peasantry began to desert Stressner as a result. By the late 1980s, the general was sick enough that he could no longer fully control his regime. He'd hoped one of his sons would take over for him, but one of them was an alcoholic and the other was gay. And neither of them had the wherewithal to politic their way through Stressner's cabinet. On February 3rd, General Andres Rodriguez, a close relative of the dictator by marriage, executed a violent coup

against Stressner. There's an eight hour gunfight. Stressner barely gets away in like a limousine from the gunfight, but like there's enough resistance that like he is able to escape and keep his own life, but his troops are not able to stop the soldiers loyal to Rodriguez from taking the capital. By the way, Rodriguez is married to his his daughter. It's like his son in law, too. So cool. Stressner is able to negotiate the safe, a safe surrender of power. And he and his household are granted, you know, the ability to leave the country. So he survives losing power, which is again, rules for 35 years, gets out alive. Very rare story in the annals of dictatorships. He had initially hoped to land in Florida because he

owned several houses in Florida. The traditional resting place of retired dictators. He feared, though, being tried for his crimes. And so when the right wing military government of Brazil offered him sanctuary, he took it. He spent the last 17 years of his life there, living in comfort until the age of 93. Jesus. Yeah. Wow. A terrible, terrible monster. He didn't die by his crimes. Yeah. I was really rooting for Rodriguez that too. Yeah. Yeah. It would have been good if he'd gotten the old Mussolini. Yeah. Yeah. We'd have loved to see that. Yeah. Or if they did him like Gaddafi. But yeah. No, put him up as a fucking pinata for eight-year-old girls, too.

Alas. He lives out his life on the beaches of Brazil. So, you know, that's a good story. Yeah. In many ways, not. But it is a story. That's undeniable. You know what else is undeniable, James? How brutal the ending of this fucking podcast was? Yeah. Well, that was fucking terrible, Romney. I really did back load. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. That fucking Disneyland shit is, oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty rough. You said some really horrible things on my podcast. I read some really horrible things. Wow. Yeah. That was next level, dark. I'm glad you gave like a slight warning to people because that's just yeah. Yeah. That was some particularly dark shit. That is some particularly dark shit.

James? Robert? Do you have anything to plug? Yeah. Yeah. Now that we've talked about child sexual abuse, let's, you know, we've got another podcast in which we much more rarely talk about child sex abuse, which, you know, so if that's something you don't want to hear about, you can listen to it could happen here. It's sometimes with me, sometimes with Robert and Sophie. We're going to put that in our vulture right up. We'll go soaring up the rankings. Yeah. Soaring. Randy discusses child sex abuse. Yeah. So yeah, the thing we won't talk about. I would like to plug the concept of hugging a nice friendly animal like a dog or a cat. Yeah. And definitely not a fill. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he's probably decayed at this point.

He's been dropped. Thanks to. Yeah. Yeah. If you're going to hug an animal, like, you know, really make sure you're in a stable stance. Make sure the animal wants to hug you back. Yeah. Yeah. Don't kidnap animals. And don't let your animal anywhere near filled. I mean, build a blasphia. Build a blasphia adopted it posthumously and it's now filled a blasphia. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, he simply had to at that point. But yeah. Robert. He was paid for its funeral. You have a book that people can buy. I do. It's called After the Revolution. You can find it at AK Press's website or like Amazon or like bookstores. You go to a bookstore and you could be like, I would like After the

Revolution by Robert Evans. And if they say no, whatever weapon you're carrying, you know, you can just whip that out and, and, you know, create a hostage situation until you get a copy of my book. Or you could repress it at your local library. Yeah. All of these are equally valid options. My brain is on that photo of build a blasphia dropping filled the ground. It's very funny. Very funny. Oh man. All right. This is over. I've recorded way too long. Goodbye. We're going to go pour one out for Phil. We'll pour one out for Phil, but bye. Bye. Bye. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeart Radio App,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet feel like a nightclub. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. My name is Joanne McNeil.

On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the story of MySpace. I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of MySpace on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I am Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. This season, we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you. Each week, you'll hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.