Part Two: Bobby Fischer: Chess Nazi
00:00Alphabet 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?
01:21And 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.This is behind the bastards, a podcast about the worst people in all of history, one of whom is in fact, Bill O'Reilly.But we are not talking about Bill O'Reilly today, we are instead talking about Bobby Fisher, chess Nazi.Also featured in the Hilltop Hood song, Cosby's Sweater, which is not about Bill Cosby's crimes, it's actually a reference to Biggie.So it's okay, it's fine, you can enjoy the song.
02:38Mia, how are you doing?Doing okay, we're heading into the downhill stretch of this Friday afternoon and also the downhill stretch of the life of one Bobby Fisher.That's good, I am ready for it to be the downhill stretch of Bobby Fisher's life.Unfortunately it gets really bad before it gets over.It hasn't been good yet.It's only getting worse until it gets better against the end.Okay, well let's roll.Ruin my Friday afternoon please.
03:19When we last left the hero of American chess, Bobby Fisher was the hero of the free world, the chess world champion and also people are just dropping piles of money on him and he refuses to pick any of it up.He does just no promotions.Everyone wants to pay him and he's just like, no.He does do one thing after this and that one offer that he does take is to go play a tournament in the Philippines in 1973.Awesome.This is where Fisher gets into the business he's going to be in for the rest of his life, which is the dictator business.Now, okay, it's important to note that this is the year 1973, right?This is the year after future pod subject Ferdinand Marcos staged his military coup and became a dictator of the Philippines.
04:11He has already tortured people.He's going to torture tens of thousands of people.He's going to inflict a rate of terror on the beleaguered people of the Philippines and Fisher just spends this whole tournament there like hanging out with Marcos and his wife.And he's having a great time.That sounds like one of the worst dinners imaginable.He likes it, apparently.I'm sure he liked it.I'm saying it sounds like one of like the dinner conversation.
04:38Just absolute like trashed here.Oh, God.Yeah, no one has ever.Well, actually, that's not true.They did.They did actually accuse Bobby Fisher of having good taste before he proved them wrong.But it's, you know, he like this is one of the places that like always sort of sticks with Bobby Fisher.Like he likes the Philippines so much that like he's going to move here eventually.
05:05And Fisher's reaction to, you know, the Marcos dictatorship is like this rules.I love it.And eventually the tournament ends.He is back to the U.S.And there's good news and bad news.The good news is that he breaks with the church of God because their doomsday prophecies keep failing.He's literally the only guy to ever do that.He really just was like, OK, world doomsday prophecy number four.
05:31Like none of them are working.So that's the good news.Yeah, he's out of the cult.The bad news is that one of the first things he does when he comes back to California is buy a copy of the protocols of the Edelman's Zion.Oh, good.Yeah, no, that's that's that's great.The great move, Bobby.This is going to send him in some good directions, I think.
05:50Because so far my main problem with this guy is he's not yet keyed in enough on esoteric Nazi propaganda.So the other book that he gets is called Nature's Eternal Religion by Ben Klassen, who is like.Now that's that's actually esoteric.Very good.Oh, yeah, Bobby.Nice work.He's like a weirdo.He's a really fanatical like racist and anti-Semite.
06:13He's one of these guys who was like, like Christianity is actually Jewish.So it's it's it's not like white enough.So we need to be like not Christians.And he he's the founder of OK.So the thing that he found is the World Church of the Creator was concerned in the creativity movement.And they're most famous for producing the mass shooter Ben Smith.And I need to make a note here.This is not the shooter.
06:38The mass shooter named Ben Smith from Portland from last year.This is a completely unrelated mass shooter named Ben Smith from 1999.Look, if you're listening to this podcast and you're also a Ben Smith, your your asses.We got an eye on you, motherfucker.Be careful.Don't do any bad things.Yeah, please, God, we don't need it.We don't need a third Ben.
06:58It was played out after the first time.It was played out before the first time.It's definitely played out before the third time is not the charm.Do not enough enough with the Ben Smith.Anyway, make this just a normal name again.This Ben Smith goes on just like a murderous rampage shooting black Jewish and Asian peoplebefore just like going out like a tiny baby in a car chase.And at this point, Bobby's getting like real weird with anti-Semitism.
07:27He sends his two Jewish friends a copy of a book called The Secret World Government by...Oh, God.I actually...OK, I have confidence I can kind of do this name.Major General Count Cherub Spira Dinovich.Which, by the way, that book...No, that's not a name.I'm sorry.
07:44I'm sorry.You need to walk me through how that fucking thing is spelled because I simply don't believe you.It's C-H-E-R-E-P-DASH-S-P-I-R-I-D-O-V-I-C-H.What kind of fucking...Wait, sorry.What kind of place is this motherfucker from?This guy is a Russian white...A Russian white...
08:05Well, he was originally a Russian admiral and then like a Russian white army admiral.Yeah, yeah.So he's in the fucking pro czarist.See, look, you're not going to hear me stand up for the Bolsheviks all that often, but...My God, did those people suck?Look, any culture that's putting out names like that, you're going to have to line somepeople up in a basement.I'm sorry.
08:31It's the only thing to do with names like that.This is one of those guys who like they absolutely should have shot.He's...No, that's an unacceptable name.Yeah.Well, also, he's like a major guy who's he's basically like an anti-Semitism organizer.Yeah.That sounds right for the white army.
08:48Yeah.So he writes this book about how a Jewish Mongol cabal is running the world.Oh, sure.Yeah.No, that honestly, that's I actually I'm back to having respect for this guy because thatis not one I have heard of every kind of Jewish cabal except for a Jewish Mongol cabal.That's very good.I think I actually...
09:09Okay.My understanding of this is that this is the thing about like...No, it makes sense.There are certain kinds of...Yeah.There's like kinds of Russian nationalists who are like insane about the Mongolian likethe invasions.Well, and there's a big part of especially this era of anti-Semitism.
09:24I mean, it bleeds through to today, but one of the big things Hitler would talk about isthe idea that like all forms of social justice and tolerance are Jewish plots and the Mongolsfor all of their flaws, we're pretty tolerant of other religions, right?That was like a factor in their governance.Like they didn't really care what you believed.Yeah.They did.Okay.
09:46They did lots of genocides, but not because you believed something different.It's their mode of genocide is are you a pastoralist or not?Which is a very different thing from this kind of stuff.I can see someone being like, well, the Mongols were tolerant of other religions and so that'spart of this like Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy to water down, you know, orthodox Christendom.Except he thinks the Mongols are like still like it's a it's a Mongol Jewish.I don't know.He's very weird.
10:14Is it like the Mongol equivalent of the guys who think that the Queen of England stillsecretly rules the world?I don't know.I didn't read this book because I was like, I'm not.I can't.Yeah.I read so much bullshit for this episode.That's like absolutely not.
10:29Look, find a find a Mongol and ask them, are you secretly running the world?I, well, I have family inter-mongolian research, which is not actual Mongolia, but it's prettyclose.I could probably get across the border.I have always wanted to go.I want to go specifically for Nadam, which is like this, this big multi-day everybodygoes to the city, Ulaanbaatar, and they wrestle and do horseback archery and drink heavily.And it sounds like exactly the kind of thing that I want to do.
10:57It sounds like a good fucking rip.Unfortunately, back in things that don't rip, Fisher, like he's just full on like, likeentering his Nazi crank phase.Like he, well, okay, so that book we were talking about, he sends that to like a Jewishcouple who's been his friends since like childhood.And they just stopped talking to him because they're like, Bobby, what the fuck?Yeah.Bobby.
11:25Bobby keeps trying to write books about him and he keeps trying to sue them because he'slike, no one can write about me unless they're me.And everyone's like, that's, that's not how the law works.That's not how writing works, Bobby.Yeah.I'm sorry.Okay.And, you know, the sort of peak of this is in 1975, he's supposed to defend his world
11:43championship, right?And Manila offers five million dollars to host the event as like a PR thing for his old buddyFernand Marcos, and this is, this is still, this is 27 million dollars in today's money,which is like, and in 1975, like that is a, that is a truly terrifying amount of money.Yes.And Bobby is like, no, I will not play this tournament unless you agree to change thefont format of like the championship to this weird format where like, okay, so normallythe way scoring works in chess is if you get a, if you ever draw, both players get half
12:16a point.And if you, and if you win, you get one point and you're trying to get to like a certainnumber of points.Sure.Bobby is like, no, no, no, no.Draws no longer give you any points, you plane on limited number of games to get to10 wins, and if they both are at 9-9, it's like, there's a draw and Fisher keeps beingthe champion.
12:33Okay.And Fide is like, okay, like.Sounds a little stacked in his favor like he was complaining about the Russians being,but all right.Yeah, yeah.And Fide is like, okay, like whatever, fine, like we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll let you dothis.Like the 9-9 thing is kind of a normal thing.
12:50There have been rules previously where like if the score is a tie the world champion keeps being the world champion because they haven't been defeatedOkay, but but Fide is like, okay. We cannot let you play an infinite number of gamesBecause if like you can act you could actually just get an infinite number of games, right?Because chess draws a lot and Fide is like come on manLike we'll cap it at 36 games that that's enough and Fide and Fisher is like, okayyou do this or I'm out andAnd the chess federation is like, okay, he's bluffing, right? He'll come around eventuallyFisher instead of doing that resigns his title
13:26Because he says Fide won't let me defend it. So I'm resigningWhich like that is not what happensIt's not that Fide didn't let you defend your titleIt's you refuse to play unless they stack the rules the way you wanted them to be and then you like resignedhuhIt's very weird and at this pointSo the guy who was supposed to play was Anatoly Karpov who's like of the the famous Casper of Karpov rivalry and Karpov is really pissedBut I don't think you can do about it, right? Like you can't fee can't force Bobby Fisher to play chess. So
13:59Karpov just becomes the world champion because Fisher refuses to show upwellOkay, BobbyGood call. I don't know seems like you're making the right move for your careerYeah, you know at this point with Fisher is busy doing other stuff and by doing other stuffI mean he's turning into like a weird fitness bro guy. OhAwesome. Oh man, is he becoming like a fucking like fucking chest influencer? Like is he is he going?He's doing a reverse Andrew Tate. No, but here's here's the thing that like actually he's just doing an Andrew Tate
14:32No, cuz he's not actually coming in influencehethis next phase of his life is he spends 20 years basically in the wilderness andOh, and not talking to anyone and so well this I support actuallyYeah, also, I think Fisher was actually good at chess unlike Andrew Tate. That's trueYeah, so what one of my thesis of this episode is that Fisher's not actually as good as everyone thinks he is just that nobody hadever seen real chess in the night in like the fucking 1970sLike I will do this rant later, but okay, so here here here is Bobby Fisher
15:06What what he's fucking doing? Well, he's not playing the world championship. He's mostly playing inquote every dayHe'd drink one or two pint glasses of carrot juice one right after anotherDozens of vinyls of vitamin pills Indian herbal medicines Mexican rattlesnake pills lotions and exotic keys were piled on tables and ledges everywhereAll to keep him what he believed was a strict healthful diet and to treat some ailmentsHe had from time to timeUh-huh, so he's taking rattlesnake pill. He also doesn't really think he like won't go to die very very normal manYeah
15:41and it's a so you knowthat he basically like locks himself in his apartment and then what he spends all this time doing is likeLooking over chess games and then yelling about the moves people play so loudly that like people will walk past his apartment andHear someone yelling and be like what the fuck is going on here and the second thing that he's doing andAnd and this is another like kind of famous Fisher story is that he's walking around handing out Nazi pamphletsWhich oh, okay. Yeah, but the thing about this is very this is okayThis is like fully his crank phase right because if he wanted to be like an actual Nazi propagandistHe could have gone to the medias are talking about them
16:19But instead what he's doing is he's literally like like standing on the street corner with pamphlets and then like putting Nazi pamphlets on like people's windshieldswell, I mean IGuess I do prefer thatOh, definitelyVersion of this active not well, okay. Well, we'll get to what he is good at butWell, let's go that he refuses to like take work or like make any money from endorsementsWhich again, everyone is trying to pay him. He just refused to sign contracts at this point because he's so paranoidAnd so this means that he has no money, right?
16:54And he blows through all of his original chest real championship money and in order to like surviveHe starts living off his sister's social security checksHe's doing he's actually doing a reverse Hitler here. Yeah, he has fully turned into like into a California beach bombHe's like moving from rented room to rented room like yeahHe he at one point he moves in with the sister, but like she kicks him out of his house for his anti-semitismWait, so she's she's but wait is he stealing the money from her or is sheShe just doesn't want him in the house. I guess that makes sense. Well cuz like she this is like likeBut basically until this incident where he gets like even tell the end of his life really like his mom still keeps in touch with him
17:38Like they're still talking but they like have an agreement never to talk about politics because Fisher will start ranting aboutAnti-semitic world conspiracies. Yeah, I mean that's normallyYeah, okay, very very. Yeah, I I don't know. I don't know what you do with Bobby Fisher. I'm not gonnaI'm not gonna backseat Bobby Fisher's mom her. She's she's made a lot of mistakes thoughI think we can agree on that. Yeah, I meanI would argue a lot of it isn't her fault like it was like a lot of a lot of what happens to Bobby Fisher is literally justLike do you know how hard it is to raise two children as a single mom who also has she also was working class in likeIn nineteen like nineteen after forty-five. Yeah, yeah, like yeah, it's like it's it's I don't know
18:22She she has a hard time, but she is like an impossible task andI don't know maybe maybe don't let him go to Cuba with the guy we're in the swastika pin, but IDon't know the other thing that's going on this period. I feel like wait. This was Castro Cuba, right?No, that would that was pretty okay. No, this was yeah, this is Batista Cuba. Okay. YeahI feel like Castro Cuba probably wouldn't a lot of guy with a swastika pin in right that has to be one thingThey'd be good effect to be fair to be fair. He did really like Franco. SoYeahWell, you never know you never know. Okay, so the other thing about a Fisher like his one of his other baby
19:01He's he's like from the time he wins the world championship. He becomes absolutely convinced the KGB are trying to kill him andSo he starts walking around with like like basically like belts of potionsThey're supposed to save me for trying to poison him at one point laterHe starts wearing like the modern equivalent of like like a 1600s buff coat. He's wearing this like leather jacketThat's like like five inches thick because he's like if they try to stab meOkay, you know what I was I was worried you were gonna be like yeahHe started walking around with a bunch of guns and this was gonna go in a darkBut potions and leather armor is pretty cool
19:39He is he is kitted out like he's heading to Baldur's GateYeahAs a result of this right he like it gets to the point whereNobody even recognizes him as Bobby Fisher anymoreThere's at one point. There's a very famous story about him where so okayHe's in California. He's like wandering around the streets and there's a there's a robbery nearby andThe cops think that he matches the description of the of the suspectAnd so they arrest him and then they just keep him there because they think he's sketchy
20:14He after this happensHe writes this pamphlet called I was tortured in the Pasadena jailhouse and I'm gonna read a little bit of it because I think it getsAt what's going on in his mind at this point. I was immediately handcuffed in a brutal fashionThe police pushed my hands away way up my back and caused me considerable discomfort and painLater I saw about the metal had torn into the flesh of both my wristsI was put in a police carBut I was unable to move far back enough for them to close the door because there was some kind of hump in the middleOf the back seat after several attempts to shut the door by brutally pushing my right leg with his left leg
20:47The officer finally succeeded in closing the door by pushingMy leg in with the door itself that that sentence has been going on for like a centuryYeah, later. I saw that my right knee had turned black and blue and like he you knowIt like he the stuff he's talking about like he starts he talks about how he was like stripped naked and like forced toSay in an empty cell with no food or water and like a lot of people kind of make fun of thisAnd I think this is absolutely plausibleLike yeah, this is all stuff that like, you know people people who I know have been in jailI've like had cops do this to you because yeah cops
21:21But on the other hand, he's like fully in crank mode nowAnd he's fully convinced that like this entire thing is a setup and it's been like orchestrated by likeWell the Jews because he's unbelievably at Hispanic at this pointHe's convinced that like this whole thing is like a government plotAnd you know the thing about this right is if he'd actually gone to like the New York Times andBeen like hey, I got tortured by the cops. They would have covered it, right?Like he every everyone still wants to talk to himBut instead he's fully he's fully a crank now and he just like publishes his pamphlet with like a thousand dollars of his own money
21:56And like walks around handing out copies like on the street to peopleAnd meanwhile like like and people are people are like just this is like the 1980sThey're still just throwing money at him, right?Like at one point so people were willing to take to spend$10,000 literally just take his picture and he's like no, you know, you can't take a picture meno andYou know, this is this is how he spends the 80sIt's just sort of like another crank like on the street screaming about like Jewish conspiracies
22:27And I think like if he was in 2023, right, I think he actually would have done greatLike he you know, he'd have he'd basically would have been you basically would have been yee, right?He'd have a podcast he'd have like a giant entourage of like people who kind of have their shit togetherbut he were also Nazis but likeYou know part of part of thing about this period is you know the 1980s have the white power movementBut they don't have the kind of like media infrastructure that like someone like Alex Jones or for example. No, they're they're just starting to build itYeah, guys, what year is this again?Well, it's like the whole 1980s. I think yeah, yeah
23:01So you've got guys like Tom Metzger and David Duke and they're building mediaBut most of it is like what you'd call zines and stuff coming out. Yeah stuff like the Liberty Lobby Willis CartoOh, we're gonna get to this out there with yeah a lot more kind of aaSophisticated stuff, but it is it is not they do not have the kind of media reach that they yeahAnd and the other thing about this right like I so it's not clear to me if any of these guys ever tried to contact FisherIt's possible they did but the problem is he's only point of contactWas that Jewish family that he sends all sent all those anti-semitic conspiracies to so no one can actually get in contact with him
23:37Because like his friends to stop talking to him because they were like, okay, you're too much of an anti-semit like I'm Jewish like okayBut eventually in 1990 Boris Spatsky like I don't I don't remember exactly how he didHe fun he finally finds some way to like get in contact with Fisher about doing like a rematch the world championshipWith like 2.5 million dollars on the lineSpassky's original partner like pulls out of this because he realizes that Bobby Fisher was a NaziAnd these were the heady days when like people occasionally would see someone who's a Nazi and be like I'm not gonna work with this guyBut you know who will wait shit. That's oh boyYou know who won't work with Nazis. That's right. That's right. That's right the podcasters who
24:23Advertise the advertisements who podcast on this shitDuring the summer of 2020 some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrationsAnd you know what?They were rightI'm Trevor Aaronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast seriesalphabet boys as the FBISometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy each season will take you inside an undercover investigationIn the first season of alphabet boys
25:00We're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver at the center of this story is a raspy voicedCigar smoking man who drives a silver hearse and inside his hearse with like a lot of gunsHe's a shark and on the good badass wayNasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date the time and then for sureHe was trying to get it to happenListen to alphabet boys on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcastI'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called in syncWhat 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
25:43And when I was there as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild storiesBut there was this one that really stuck with meAbout a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him downIt's 1991 and that man Sergei Krekalev is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earthHis beloved country the Soviet Union is falling apartAnd now he's left defending the Union's last outpostThis is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space313 days that changed the world
26:25Listen to the last soviet on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcastsWhat if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual scienceThe 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 scienceAnd the wrongly convicted pay a horrific priceTwo death sentences and a life without parole my youngest. I was incarcerated two days after her first birthdayI'm Molly Herman join me as we put forensic science on trial to discoverWhat happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSIHow many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize
27:20That this stuff's all bogus. It's all made upListen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcastsWe're back. Wow, that was easily our best pull to advertisingSophie had to drop off because her phone is ringing off the hook from companies that want us to represent them on our showOh, is is is is is is Exxon mobile on the phone? Sophie? Oh, that's a huge get. I'm very excited MiaWe got the Exxon mobile accountYay, very excited Exxon mobiles going green so by I don't know let's say 20 70 or shit. So zeroZero emissions from Exxon everybody get on the Exxon train
28:15We love every single oil rig green. Mm-hmm. This is Exxon's Exxon's goal is no animals harmed by oil spills by2050 and they're gonna make that a reality by nuking the ocean. Wow braveHeroic courageous. Thank you Exxon. Anyway, Mia. Let's continueSo all right last let's Bobby Fisher, right?He people people are refusing to work with him because he's a Nazi. So, okayWhat what what what he what is he saying that people are like this guy's a Nazi?eventually aHe has like a kind of relationship and he's like how old is he in the 90s like
28:54Late 40s has this kind of relationship with like an 18 year old. Yep. And he's gonna do thisOkay, that's not great. That's not ideal to be fair. It's not great to be fair to Bobby FisherI don't I couldn't find any evidence that he actually did anything with anyone underagebutHe he really seems to like like 18 and 19 year olds and at one point one of like this is this woman named Kitalike gets a talking to him andThis this is this is a description of what of what he's sayingThis is still a night this like in like 1990
29:28He told her that the reason he wasn't playing like chess was because the Russians cheat and over the course of future letters and phoneCalls he elaborated on his theory regarding how the games played by Kasparov and Karpov had all been pre-arranged and that he believedThat Kasparov and Karpov were actually agents of the Russian regimeHe asked if she was Jewish everyone who is Soviet and everyone who is Jewish cannot be trusted. He affirmedSo alright on the one hand we got some anti-Semitism hereBut I also wanted there's two other things I want to focus on one is thatOkay, hey, he's still mad about those people drawing in a tournament in 1970. It's now1990 and
30:10to okay, so like that there was kind of collusion going onbetween some of the Soviet grandmasters theKasparov and Karpov games and I cannot emphasize this enough areAbsolutely not being raked. This is nonsenseKasparov and Karpov for people who don't know are like the two best chess cat-cat Karpov basically from by 1975 and thenKasparov comes in in like the mid-80s and these two are the bestIndisputably the best players in the world who aren't named Bobby Fisher for like this entire period andOkay, I actually think Kasparov's better than Fisher was at his height, but Kasparov never gets to play him
30:48Kasparov and Karpov play like a bunch of world championships against each other and they fucking hate each otherIt's not clear to me if any other two players in the entire history of competitive chess have ever hated each other as much asKasparov and Karpov doLike Kasparov like to this day is a Russian dissidentKarpov is like the Soviet Golden Boy as best as I could tell like to this this rivalry starts in the 80sIt is now 2023. They still hate each otherKarpov's now a Putin loyalist at Kasparov's still I guess a Russian dissident like at one pointIt gets the point where in one of the world championship matches both sides have like
31:25Rivaling groups of like hypnotists and mystics in each act like sitting sitting in the room trying to like like hypnotize and counteract the hypnosisIt's it's wild these people just like I cannot emphasize enough how much these people despise each other and how much Bobby Fisher has just likeCompletely gone off the rails. Are you at this whole thing is staged andAnd for Fisher meanwhile is like he's living in his tiny apartment that is just entirely filled with a combination of like books andOf cassette tapes that he recorded of his anti-semitic conspiracy theoriesAnd I tried to track these down and I couldn't find them. I don't know. Maybe they exist somewherebutFrom endgame apparently they were
32:04Materials for quote a book that would prove how the Soviets cheated in chessOh, the other thing he's still mad about is Nixon it turned out actually lied to him when he said he could come to the White House andNever let him go to the White House, which I guess is what you get for trusting Richard NixonYeah, not not not ever gonna be your best bet and he is still mad about this like 20 years laterHe is like incensedHe didn't get to go to the White House, but while this is going on behind the scenesThe cranks are still turning on this sort of like comeback match like Bobby Fisher Boris SpatskyLike world championship rematch thing and eventually they find someone willing to pay five million dollars for a match
32:49That guy's name is oh boy. IJediz Mir VelesovicHe's often just called Gazda Jezda, which is roughly means Jezda the boss who is the president of the judo-scandic bank in what remains of Yugoslavia andIt is at this point in the career of Bobby FisherAs he is about to play his first professional match of chess in almost 20 years in the remains of Yugoslavia that we need to talk about the Bosnian genocide. OhboySoNot not not I'm gonna bet he has fun opinions on on Bosnians. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it's oh boy
33:30soAll right, and before we go any furtherI need to lay out an accusation hereWhich is that I think that most of the chess accounts of Bobby Fisher's actions in this period are at the very least lying to the readers by omissionAnd I think a lot of them are actively engaging in genocide denial by not telling their readers likeWhat is going on in you go in like quote-unquote Yugoslavia because it's not really Yugoslavia at this pointNo, no, no, it's yeah, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, right?Well, and like, you know, and the other thing about this, right?
34:00Is it like the the place to Bobby Fisher like a Serbska and stuff? Yeah. Yeahwell, so it's 1992 and likeTechnically speaking there is a country called Yugoslavia and when people write about this stuff like oh you play in YugoslaviaBut this is this is not like Yugoslavia in the sense of like the state that had existed up until this pointThis is a basically a rump state controlled by genocidal Serbian ethno-nationalists andAnd but but by the time Bobby Fisher gets there and he gets there in late 1992, right?The series the siege of Sarajevo has already begun. There's a bunch of peace protesters have already been gunned down by Serbian militiasThe Yugoslav people's army quote-unquote is just fully under control of the sort of Serbian ethno-nationalist is shelling the city of Sarajevo
34:40And like and the other thing that's important to know about the important to understand about aboutWhen Fisher gets there is that the Bosnian genocide has already started, right?Yeah, but Bosnians Bosnians are already you know being Bosnian Muslims are being routed up and killed by Serbian forcesSerbian militias have already set up concentration camps. Yeah, the sort of like the mass rape of Bosnian women has started andYou know, we are like by the time Fisher is going to this place to do his first public appearance in 20 yearsWe are like well into one of the worst things that happened in Europe in a centuryThat's all Europe have some of the worst things that's ever happened to 200,000 year history of humanityYeah, yeah, it's like by a time that by a time the term and I started like there are already
35:2250,000 people dead in the series of wars that sort of the Serbian ethno-nationalist have waged against sort of Croatia and Bosnia andYou know, okay, like it's just gonna like to get a sort of sense of how bad things are if you're Bosnian, right?soThe Serbian like ethno-nationalists have at this pointThey have taken control of like one of the world's best equipped armies, right?Like Yugoslavia was like a giant army. I mean so for an idea of how goodRelatively competent the Yugoslavian military wasRead Balkan history all the way up to the period where Tito takes over and then read Balkan history for the period where Tito is in
35:59power, yeahThey keep the Balkans for quite a while from going to war and no one else really does thatYeah, and you know and but the problem is again by this point like this the Serbians have just fully taken over that thatYeah, andbut like when when the when the war against when when the Croatians like try to like when the Croatians like leaveYugoslavia because their their alternative is staying in there and being ruled by like Malosevic and these sort of likeLike just absolutelyHero slow it on Malosevic. Yeah. Yeah, like what by a time they start this like the Croatians are literally they are like raiding their own museums and like
36:37Going to film sets trying to find old World War two World War. It's like old World War. God. Why can I not say World War two?I don't know. IWow hacking a fraud just call it WW2. Yeah. Yeah, they're finding old WW2Or the old dub dub dose. That's that's my favorite way to say itYeah, like like they are there they are there like in film setsRecovering weapons that were originally like dropped or like drop to the creation by Tito and the partisans in like 1943 andYou know, okay, so the great if you think the Croatians are in bad shapeThose are the people the Bosnians are buying weapons from
37:11Are the guys reading their own museums for World War two era weapons?So that's gonna go well, yeahYeah, so Bobby Fisher is playing in a chess tournament in a country that has already committed a genocide, right?They are they are already doing it is already started and this entire tournament is being run as a PRUp by Gaza Jezda as this, you know the sort of like statement against like the US and UN likeSanctions against Serbia and like, you know, we're gonna show the world how ridiculous these like oppressive sanctions are and you knowYou can talk about how much good those like sanctions did or didn't doI mean that there's one part of it like doesn't get talked about very much
37:48Which is that so there's a weapons embargo, right? That's imposed on onYugoslavia, but it's also big big because Milosevic pushes for it to get imposed on literally everyoneWhich means that, you know, this weapons embargo is kind of fine for like serve the sort of Serbian army because they already have all these weaponsBut you know the Bosnians can't now like are under sanctions and can't buy weapons anymore and you know, okaySo oh wow so in an effort to stop violence the international communityLimited the group of people who already didn't have guns from getting more guns and then they were victims of a genocideGood thing. That's never happened again. YepOh
38:28God and you know, I mean like part of the other story about this is like the SerbiansReally think and they're right for a lot of the period of time the Shenneth's going onLike they think they get the West on their side because the West will be likeOh, we need them to fight like Islamic extremism. YepAnd you know that famously never led to anything absolutely horrific happening then or laterBut you know the reason I'm talking about all of this is you knowthe the economic sanctions are still sort of wreaking havoc in Serbia andBut bypassing those sanctions are is like one of God's agendas like main jobs
39:01So this guy the guy who's like paying for this tournament, right?It's running like one of the largest banks that like remains and sort of like this like shatteredLike Yugoslavia shell the problem is it's a Ponzi schemeSo he's offering 15% returns on deposits and everyone's like wellLook at look at look at like how connected he is to like the Serbian political classLike would our leaders ever associate with someone crooked? No, this must be fineIt must be that he just get 15% returns because he's not greedy and okay, so that's the part that likeWe can confirm. He was doing is is that he's running this Ponzi scheme. Um
39:41Everything I feel like is really murky. There's there's these like persistent claims that he was smuggling weapons from Israel to the Serbian ArmyUm, yeah, the source of this is a is someone who was the former Serbian minister of defense who like testified against a blow specific at the HagueI I don't know. I think it's possible. I'm not gonna like definitively say it's true because I couldn't confirm it, butWhat what does seem to have been true is that this bank is part of how the Serbian government is avoiding UN sanctionsUm, Melosific very quickly at like the big when you know when we start when he like starts all of these wars, right?He very quickly ceasesLike billions of dollars and foreign deposits in like Serbian banks in order to get a hold of like the value incredibly valuable US dollarsThey contain now. Okay, so it's a little bit of economics. He stuff. You need US dollars to buy things
40:30Yes, we have to be in the form of US dollars on one of the most important things you need to buy with that is oilWhich can like it's very difficult to buy all of us not in US dollarsUm, yeah, and you know, but by getting people to invest like a real American dollars or like German marks in this Ponzi schemeWhich you can either buy things from Germany or used to get like dollars the government's able to bypass the sanctions andThe bank itself at very least once and probably other times seems to have been like directly running oil through the blockadenow just also claims that Melosific like forced him to fund a bunch of paramilitary like death squads andI don't know like the guy's a pathological liarSo who knows if that's true? On the other hand, there are a bunch of death squads in this period that are getting funded by
41:16partially the Serbian government and partially likeIncredibly sketchy source. So who knows he might actually be telling the truth here. It's unclearbut you know, of course, the thing that he's also just stealing an enormous amount of money because again, this is all a Ponzi scheme andAnd hilariously this this whole whole like show match that he's funding is actually like one of the things that brings down his bank becauseSo here's from the Washington PostThe court acted alleging that the bank had failed to make promised payments to private enterprise, which is another bankIncluding those releasing the Svetli Stefan the resort whereJustice staged the opening games of the chess match between Bobby Fisher and Boris Boris Spasky last September
42:00so he like defaults on like hisrent payment for this resort andThe court seizes like a bunch of this sort of oil that he's running through the blockade and at this pointEveryone begins to sort of realize that wait. Hold on. This is a Ponzi schemeand he like flees toI he flees to Israel and then later on is like sentence ten years for like financial crimeSo this is the guy who's running the show matchand
42:30Okay, here's from endgame about sort of what the effect of this show matchesWhen the match's venue was moved to BelgradeSlobodan Milosevic the president of Serbia met Bobby and Spasky and asked to be photographed with the twoHe used the occasion to trumpet his propaganda to the international press quoteThis match is important because it is played while Yugoslavia is under unjustified blockadeThat in its best ways proves that chess and sports cannot be limited by politicsMilosevic was later charged with crimes against humanity by the international criminal tribunal on the Hague and died in prisonHe sure did yeah, but you know the really depressing thing about this is like this PR effort worked
43:11Right there are vast swaths of sort of the international left including like mainstream progressivesYou like wouldn't expect to be you know backing aGenocidal fascist who will to this day hold that like what happened in Yugoslavia was actually like NATO torn apart from being socialistAnd you know like never mind the fact that Milosevic was a career banker who is like he is the guy who like does a bunch of structural adjustmentsRight like he like he became the butcher of the old socialist economy before he became the butcher at BosniaAnd you know never mind that like his turn to like genocide left no nationalism was like what destroyedYugoslavia never mind that like Serbian fascist carry out a genocide novels pulled off another one like there areLike enormous numbers of people who today believe that like what what happens in this war was like Serb resistance to NATO imperialism is like okay like
44:00Yeah, like NATO sucks. Also these people were trying to kill every Muslim in Bosnia and they almost did it andThis PR thing right likeThe other thing about about the Fisher tournament is like the kind of PR they get from thisThis is also a key part of how of how the Serbian regime is able to sort of likeKeep at like keep anyone else from getting involved in this by sort of playing different international powers off each otherso I could get more time to seize land and do the genocide andYou know, okay, so Fisher doesn't careAbout this shit like he's like yeah, fuck it like I'll do I'll do I'll do propaganda for Bolosovic. This is fine
44:36Um, the US tries to stop Fisher from playing the show match. So right before likeHe's about to leaveforFor Belgrade the US Treasury sends him a letter that's likeDo not go it is a violation of the sanctions that we put out. I'm gonna read from the letterViolations of the executive order, which is the sanctions are punishable by civil penalties not exceeding$10,000 per violation and by criminal penalties not exceeding two hundred fifty thousand dollars per individual ten years in prison or bothYou're hereby directed to refrain from engaging in any of the activities described above
45:15And Fisher Fisher's lawyerTells Fisher like don't play this like this is actually gonna go really badly for youAnd Bobby Fisher's like I fuck you like I'm going to I'm going to play this chart a bitThe US government can't tell me what to do. And so, you know, he doesBut, you know, it's sort of classic like Bobby Fisher fashionHe he throws just another giant chest like temper tantrumHis list of demands continue to grow. I mean, that's what he does though. Yeah, every single timeAnd every single time so we'll set up a chess master like Bobby Fisher will be reasonable this time
45:50It's like noYou are not going to be the person that makes Bobby Fisher behave like a noble human being. He's like physically incapable. YeahAnd then this is this is this I don't I don't know. I think this might be the funniest one of these that he doesHis list of demands continue to growJustice strategy of appeasement was to give him whatever he wanted even though the item might not have been mentioned in the contractBobby rejected six tables as inadequate before asking for one from the 1950 chess Olympics andDubrovnik even though even that one had to be slightly altered by a carpenter to satisfy his demandsThe pieces had to have the right Hefton color when he chose the same set that had been played in the Dubrovnik Olympics
46:33He particularly liked the small color contrast dome on the bishops. Hey, which prevented their being confused with pawnsWhich like you are like one of the best chess players ever. How are you getting confused between a bishop and a pawn?Like wait, okay. I don't know baffling. Uh, it's difficult to believe but Bobby rejected one set because the length of the knight's nose was too longThe anti-semitic symbolism was hardly lost on those who heard the complaintOh my god. Oh my god. YeahCome on. Come on man. Don'tYeah, are you fucking calling your chest pieces likeLike
47:13YeahWhat do you even say to that? What do you say to a man who's so racist he's racist?He scrutinizes his chest pieces to see if they have semitic noses likeWhat isWell, apparently you've given five million dollars. I don't know. This is what keeps happening. They just keep just keep giving him moneyISo all right, so he shows up and he plays this matchAnd a shit ton of journalists show up to cover this and literally there were people being herded into concentration camps
47:44Two and a half hours away from where this match is being played, right?And the journalists are likeFuck that like there's a chess match going on and and these people and they never think about the journalist, right?You know, okay. It would have cost them like zero total dollars, right to go cover the genocide that was happeningThey have to pay one thousand dollars to cover the eventAnd while they're covering the event they get some classic Bobby Fisher linesSo there's a thing things he says to the press quoteSoviet communism is basically a mask for Bolshevism, which is a mask for judaism
48:18Okay, I mean that's pretty basic stuff. Yeah, but but the thing it's actually about that, right?It's like, okay, so there's like modern versions of it, right?But like normally they have like the democratic party is a massive bolshevismBut like what do you mean?Soviet communism is a mask for Bolshevism. It's the same thing like yeah. Yeah, it is weirdTo say that Soviet communism is a mask for Bolshevism. I don't even think about that. But yes, that is deeply peculiarIt's like saying these CEOs are disguising themselves as capitalists. Well, they're not reallyThe other thing that's funny about this is like
48:51When you re-serve a Bobby Fisher like you will constantly hear people like screaming about he has 180 IQ and it's likeHe's just saying shit like like he he can't even keep his anti-semitism into like coherent anti-semitic stepsLike a normal Nazi can he's just saying this stuffumHe also pulls like another classic of the anti-semit genre and does the like I'm on an anti-semit because jews are semitesI'm sorry because Arabs are semites and I'm not anti-ArabWhich is like, you know, he's really sort of he's developing the repertoire of what will become like the modern anti-semitic stuffUm, he has another line where he says someone asked him how he's doing in chess and he says
49:30I think I'm doing quite well considering I've been blacklisted for the last 20 years by world jewelryWhich is just likeYeah, you knowHe's just saying this to like a bunch of reporters and then they all immediately forget about thisAnd you know the genocide that is going on two hours away and you knowEveryone's back to just comparing him to Picasso and Mozart and being like, oh my godI can't believe I got a witness like Bobby Fisher playing againAnd and you know, okay, so I think there's two things going on here
49:56One is that like a huge just like this is true of the pressBasically forever is that a huge portion of the press corps are made up of just like absolute hacksWho just don't give a shit and in this case also are just like fervent IslamophobesSo they just you know, don't care about the genocide happening outside the windowAnd the second part about it is that they're sort of like bewitched by this chest, right?And I think like we we have a better perspective on this than they do because you know, this is the year 2023I I have seen god play chess. I have watched alpha zero an AI program likeTara 3600 rated bought a part like tissue paper in a game that like
50:34Only bears like a tenuous resemblance to anything you would call chessRight, like I can log into youtube right now and watch like Magnus Carlson or like ding lead ran on corkLike the sickest shit anyone's ever seenAnd you know and like and part of all these countries like people just better at chess now than they used to be rightAll these people who are like causing who are just like calling Bobby Fisher PicassoIt's like yeah, okay like we we have games of chess that you can look at right nowThat would have made every single one of these people's brains explode like nobody nobody writes about Magnus CarlsonLike he's Picasso even though again Carlson is better than Fisher is like it's basically like indisputably is better than Fisher is
51:10And nobody would cause him this like itIt you know we we no longer have to respect Bobby Fisher's chess. It is the year 2023. My dishwasher can beat himNot a joke actually could my dishwasher has enough computing power and it's a piece of shitBut it has enough computing power to run a program powerful up to beat Bobby Fisherand I'm sick and tired of pretending that likeThat's not true anymore. You know, you know what you know what your dishwasher couldn't dois fuckingTake me on
51:39At warhammer 40,000. That's true. It actually probably 2000 points of orcs versus 2000 points ofWhatever you want to pick. I'll throw your ass down. Come on dishwasher. You can't even paintYou're not going to be able to get three colors in a base on those models. So I went by defaultYou can no because you just you might be able to make that workYeah, but you know, okay like hey back to us. What's happening here, right? Is it even even in the 90s?Right? It's been 20 years as he did this the cold war is basically overbut the sort of mythos of Fisher is like stillpowerful enough that
52:18Like all of these people are just sitting there while the genocide is happening fucking two hours away and are being likeOh, hey, look, it's Bobby Fisher. He's playing all the chess againAnd you know, this this this all is an enormous like PR success for Melosovics is almost PR success for everyone involved in this sort of genocideAnd Bobby Fisher is like, okay, I can I can parlay this into getting a chess career backUm, the problem is that in December of 1992, he gets an indictment from a grand jury for violating the sanctions in the USSo instead of trying to restart a chess career, he's like desperately scrambling across Europe with likeSome members of people who I think are like part of like the Hungarian royal family or something trying to like desperately not get like arrestedFor being a wanted criminal for breaking these sanctions
53:04But you know, who's not a wanted criminal for breaking sanctions?I don't know if we can promise thatYeah, it's absolutelyI'm gonna say roughly 50% of our sponsorsI feel confident that it's somewhere around half of them we can proveHave never been forcedOkay, you know, um, just just roll the adsDuring the summer of 2020 some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations
53:38And you know what?They were rightI'm Trevor Aaronson and I'm hosting a new podcast seriesAlphabet BoysAs the FBI sometimes you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guyEach season will take you inside an undercover investigationIn the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in DenverAt the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse
54:11And inside his hearse was like a lot of gunsHe's a shark and not on the good and bad ass wayIt's a nasty sharkHe was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happenListen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcastsI'm Lance Bass and you may know me from a little band called NSYNCWhat you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to spaceAnd when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories
54:49But there was this one that really stuck with meAbout a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him downIt's 1991 and that man Sergei Krekalev is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earthHis beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apartAnd now he's left defending the Union's last outpostThis is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space313 days that changed the worldListen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts
55:33What 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 scienceAnd the wrongly convicted pay a horrific priceTwo death sentences and a life without paroleMy youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthdayI'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trialTo discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSIHow many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up
56:25Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcastsWe're back! And wow, I really enjoyed those ads for the Hungarian royal familyHey look, the current president of Hungary, not great. Why not have a king again?It went great. The last time Austria-Hungary had a king, everything went swimminglyHe made good decisions and that's why everyone was, they were so happy with their king that they were likeLet's try a completely different series of forms of governmentYeah, it was great. Look, the First World War, as we all know, started in 1939There was no war before that because Austria-Hungary was a great place
57:17Yeah, it's because their king went on vacation. He just wasn't watchingSo, alright, one of the things that, at this point, the press has finally started to notice that Bobby Fischer's an anti-semiteAnd their immediate thing is like, oh, it's because he's mentally illOh, this old, noYeah, like people, there were like chess psychologists brought in to like diagnose himWhat is a chess psychologist? Are they diagnosing him based on how he chesses?Mia, did you make that up?Because that seems like a grift
57:54There are so many chess psychologists in this story. I didn't know this existed until likeI read a lot of chess books, like I played chess for yearsI didn't know chess psychology existed until I opened these booksAnd suddenly there was like 17 chess psychologists trying to figure out if Bobby Fischer's okayNo, no, I get parts of this because like, I think a psychologist could tell a lot of people about how they play Warhammer 40,000For example, Dark Eldar player probably shouldn't be allowed to own gunsReasonableBut you know, okay, like all these people are like
58:28Making a lot of Warhammer jokes for about 6% of the audienceYou know, it's probably higher than that. It's probably like 8%, at leastMaybe 9That seems goodYou know, I think what's happening with this whole sort of Bobby Fischer like mentally ill thing is just likeWell, there's two things. One is that they're treating him in a template of like, oh, there's like the mad geniusWho's like so smart that he like goes insane in the endIt's like, no, like he's not actually that smart A and B
59:01It's not that he's a material, he's just a NaziAnd people just like cannot get over that this person who'd been the like personal hero against the Soviets is likeYou know, if you could just be like a completely run-of-the-mill NaziNot even like a particularly good Nazi propagandist, just like a completely run-of-the-mill Nazi yelling about people on the streetNow, okayThere are a couple of things that Bobby Fischer does later in life that are likeRelatively famous. One of his biggest claims of fame is he invents this game called Fischer Random ChessWhich is this chess variant where like
59:36So Fischer has this theory that like like the reason chess sucks is everyone has to learn openingsWhich is true. You have to learn like a million moves of opening and there's all this theory and it's very annoyingBecause people will just come in like having spent the last like 17 years studying exactly one move orderedAnd so he's like, okay, well, what if we randomize the pieces on the back of the like on the back of the board's locationSo that you can't like plan what you're gonna doAnd this is a very this is supposedly very famously a thing that all you Fisher invented. I'm gonna read this passage from EndgameEventually Bobby shifted his monologues from hatred of Jews to chessHe became angry however when Laszlo showed him a book published in 1910 by the Croatian writer Izildur Gross
01:00:20This book described a variant of chess that seemed to be the forerunner of Fischer Random with the exact same rulesMuttering something about gross being Jewish Bobby went to change the rules of his variation to make it different from grossesHuhSo yeah, he also this is also the period where he starts getting obsessed with like preserving his genius by having a child and like preserving his gene poolSo he starts putting out like ads in the newspaper for like a girlfriendUm, he's yeah, the description of it is I quote they must be one blonde and blue-eyed to young three beautiful for a serious chess playerAnd suddenly this doesn't work for reasons that are in fact incapable. We'll never understand why this failed etc etcUm, he also starts getting like he gets progressively more into like
01:01:18Like he starts reading uh, what's his name?Uh, David L Hogan who's one of like the most worlds most like probably most influential Holocaust deniersAnd you know and but by the end of the 90s he started doing radio interviews againBut the interviews are just like him doing anti-Semitic rantsLike there's there's one where he just like he gets on this interview and it starts and then completely out of nowhereHe just he's like let me say a few words about the Jews and it starts running about the HolocaustAnd he also does the like yeah and the host is like wait aren't you Jewish and Bobby does does the thing again where he was likeI will I will go to the little boys room and like with my dick out and it was just like Bobby man like
01:02:06I mean the title of his episode is so perfectAt least he's consistent you know you gotta respect thatRespect is the wrong wordYeahYeah and this is not even like the most somatic anti-Semitic thing he says in radio and business periodHe also is getting like very very hardcore anti-American but like from from the anti-Semite directionAnd there's a story about so he's in Japan he lives in Japan for a little bitAnd he has a story where he goes to like he goes to a movie theater to like what I forget what the name of the movie is
01:02:40But it's some movie about Pearl Harbor and when when when like Pearl Harbor startsProbably Torah Torah TorahMaybe I don't remember I don't know if it ever said what it was but he like like so thatWhich is also by the way the best Pearl Harbor movieNo seriously it was amazing it was made with both like Japanese and American film crewsIt's a fucking incredible movie yeahYeah check it out yeah it came out in 1970 so I don't knowYeah so he's like he's like so he gets in the part where like they're doing the comic
01:03:13They're doing like the raids on Battleship Row and like he like jumps up and starts clappingAnd he's like everyone else in this theater is like a ram Japanese person like why is this dude clapping at Pearl HarborAnd he's just like incredibly confused why no one else is like sitting there clappingWhat the fuckIt's a whole thing he also there's another thing one of the other things he's obsessed with the end of his life isSo he has this like storage locker that he put like some of his annotated chess games inBut he doesn't he never pays the deposits and so eventually they like still hold his stuffEven so they change the deposits but then the company gets bought by another company and they're like looking through their books
01:03:56They're like okay we have the storage locker full of crap that's not being paid for so we're gonna auction it offAnd Bobby Fisher like someone buys all of the stuff in the box and gives it to himBut for the rest of his life he has this giant rant he goes on anytime someone interviews him about how he got robbedAnd how there were billions of dollars of merchandise in it and how there was like a giant Jewish conspiracyAnd about how like Bill Clinton was secretly Jewish and like was conspiring to take the ship this like holding container from himIt's I don't know it's it's incredibly strangeAnd all of this culminates in this radio interview that he gives in the Philippines on 9-11Like literally this is like like like several hours after the towers have gone down
01:04:44Yeah so I just want to play a little bit of like so you can get a sense of like what Bobby Fisher sounds likeWhen on this this thing that his interview is giving a 9-11 to a Filipino radio stationThis is all wonderful news, it's time for the US to get the head kicked inTo get the time to finish off the US once and for allJust the President Bush I say, just the United StatesThe United States, the Jews, the Jews are criminal people, they mutilate their childrenThey're a murderous criminal, stealing, lying bastardsThey made up the whole of us as a word of truth to them
01:05:18IncreasinglyYeah thatOh, oh boyYeahWellOkay so like BobbyIt's a trip, there's like, there's interesting parts of it which is like you can see we're sort of like a lot of modern American political culture is going likeYou will hear a lot of people say shit that sounds like that right
01:05:36YesHe's just combining it in a kind of weird wayThere's other, so I played like a short movie, there's like this interview is like pretty longThere's like, there's some kind of like, there's kind of this like Trumpian stuff in it tooHe has this whole rant about how like nobody has single-handedly done more for the US than meI really believe thisI mean, man youYeah
01:05:59You played a gameYeah he playedYou moved plastic pieces around the boardAnd like a senior, like two of the most powerful American politicians who have ever lived had to like call you in order to get you to play the gameYeahAnd you know, so the most famous part of it, somehow we like, okay soAs this interview goes on it gets progressively more anti-SemiticAnd he goes on this rant about how he's hoping that like the country will be taken over by the army
01:06:31And they're like, they'll like close all the synagogues down and then like start arresting everyone is Jewish and like executing themYeah a little Q and Oni, sureYeah and you know, this finally does not go well for Bobby FisherAnd I think like, you know, Fisher's kind of Nazism I think isIt's something that kind of could have worked in the modern US, but the problem is like he hasn'tHe's gotten to a point where he just has no ability to sort of like, like quote unquote hide his power levelLike all of the modern American Nazis like believe this shit, it's just that likeYeah
01:07:06They're slightly smarter than he is and don't say it out loudYeahBut you knowHe's a couple of moves behind you might sayYeah, yeah and like but like you know, he's also simultaneously like a bunch of moves ahead rightBecause like if you look at the lines he's taking right, it's like pro-Serbia and the Bosnian genocide like being against the Iraq warBut also being anti-Semitic like these are all coherent political positions in the US after he diesYeah
01:07:31It's just that like he even has a rant about how he like appreciates the cultural purity of Islam because they're not like degenerate and shitWhich like could have been an angry thingYeah, yet another similarity between him and Andrew TateYeah, it's just that like he he just wasn't like good at doing the pressAnd this finally Bobby Fisher like finally after literally decades of him saying shit like thisAnd there's a bunch of other interviews before this that he's given where he says something like thisFinally, you know again, and he said he's saying shit like this like what in a press conference in Belgrade while the genocide is going onAnd nobody cared
01:08:08But he made a mistake which is that he said it on 9-11Yeah, that's not gonna go wellHe is the first person on earth to learn that the line is 9-11RightYeah, right before Gilbert GottfriedYeahHe even beat Gilbert to that fucking punchThat's one of Robert's favorite things to bring out
01:08:30I love Gilbert Gottfried's 9-11 jokesYeah, but like Fisher like okay one of the one of the enduring legacies of this though is when people write about this right likeThe part they're the most horrified about tends to be the celebrating 9-11And they tend to downplay the part where he says he wants every Jew in the US routed up and killed likeYou know because like again it like the thing that he violated was like what's gonna become the sort of sacred tableau of like 9-11But you know and this is finally the moment where like the chess community turns on him he gets kicked out of Fide also they let him back in later onWhich is okay Fide like sureA choice
01:09:13YeahThis is where we get to one of the things that I'm optimistic about the zoomers for because you really can't exaggerate the degree to which 9-11 was a religion for AmericansFor a very like most of the time that I was like an adolescent to a young adult and now zoomer kids will like I don't knowPhotoshop in fucking Burton Ernie as the Twin Towers and like think nothing of it like there is it is it has been desacralized to such an extentBecause of how fucking far we went in the other direction and that's probably necessaryI will say this I like Fisher I think is the is one of the few people who's ever done a 9-11 thing who genuinely deserves to be canceled for itLike it actuallyHe deserved to be canceled a long time before this
01:10:05This is one of these moments he has been saying all of this shit basically for 30 years rightI mean actually 40 years because he gave his first interview where you're talking about like hitting the Jews and like fucking 1966 1962Well rightLook I think I think on behalf of cool zone media and behalf of the United States I'd like to say thank you Osama bin Laden for cancelling getting Bobby Fisher cancelled for all of usThank youOBL yet yet another dub what whatI really like having health insurance so shut the fuck upMia
01:10:42You can't get cancelled for that kind of thing anymore SophieYou can't MiaOkay so you know like you know I think I think a big part about this also was like the fact that everyone put up with this for so long was this was a sighIt was an incredible amount of timeYeahYeahUntil a man from Saudi Arabia stepped up toOh my god
01:11:10I wonder who would win in a bin Laden Bobby Fisher anti-semitism off that would have been aI don't knowPretty pretty pretty pretty pretty closeThat's an Aliens versus Predator situation if I've ever heard oneBut like you know okay like this is like although I guess I might say bin Laden did win soThat's trueYeahHe lived longer than Fisher did so
01:11:35Yeah it'd be like you know okay like Bobby Fisher like this was the US's guy in the Cold War right like he was America's hero like this is this is this is the guy that he is but it's interestingFisher is smart enough to recognize that he was just like nobody actually like cared about him right he was just a sort of like a tool of like like the American Cold War machineBut he's a neo-nazi so the conclusion he draws from this is just like more neo-nazism neo-nazismBut on the other hand after 9-11 the US actually like starts playing to go after him and in 2003 the Justice Department in a move that is defined by the Bush administration's incredibly questionable grasp on legality like revokes Fisher's passport without telling himNow they can't actually do thisIt's funny but notBut yeah like it's you know the Bush administration versus Bobby Fisher is another one of those sort of alien predator things like it's not goodIn 2004 Bobby Fisher is in he's in Japan he's trying to like fly home to the Philippines and he gets arrested
01:12:47Now this is kind of funny in that like Bobby Fisher getting arrested in Japan is like he really went to Japan thinking these guys were like his boys and then they hold him in airport jail which is apparently a thing that existsAnd then move him to a maximum security like immigrant detention facility because he just keeps on like complaining and getting in fights with the guardsAnd okay so like it's like at one point he starts complaining that his soft boiled eggs were actually hard boiled and this leads to him getting into a fight with his prison guardsI mean there is a really big difference thereIt's trueAnd this is you know solidarity on the egg issueYeah and I mean it also like Bobby Fisher is not a good guy right but it's also worth noting that like every single Japanese police officer is at all times too bad days away from likeHoisting the rising sun flag and hunting down every Korean in a three mile radius so this is another they both suck situation
01:13:53Yeah like you said alien predator versus predatorAnd at this point so Bobby is really trying to fight getting extradited to the US because if they send him back to the US the Bush administration will just put his ass in prison for like a decadeAnd so he tries to renounce his US citizenship so he gets deported somewhere else except the problem is in order to renounce your citizenship like formally someone from the embassy has to show up and see you do itAnd the embassy refuses to send anyoneSo Fisher just doesn't ownCan't even renounce your citizenship rightWait I just read where he tries to get asylum oh my godYeah oh it's so good
01:14:31Oh it's so funnySo yeah okay so for the rest of his life right he claims that he's not a US citizen and the US claims that he is still a US citizenAnd so he tries to get asylum and so he tries to get asylum beforeRobert wait for this listI'm waitingI'm waitingI am hereGermany, Cuba, North Korea, Libya, Iran, Venezuela, Switzerland, and Montenegro all of whom are like no fuck off
01:14:56WowLibya wouldn't even take himGaddafi wouldn'tWhen Momar Gaddafi won't take youLike you would haveTo be fair to Bobby Fisher here this is 2003 Momar Gaddafi who's like cozying up to the Bush administrationSo this is the worst time to be gassing GaddafiThis is the worst time
01:15:16But stillAnd North Korea they love taking people in if it'll piss off the United StatesYeah and even they're like I don't know about this guy likeYeah we don't needNorth Korea doesn't need this pressYeahSo alright well while he's in like immigration prisonI don't know how to preface this so I'm just gonna read it
01:15:45Fisher then announced that he was gonna marry Mayoko Watai his longtime companionI could be a pawn sacrifice he said to the pressBut in Chester is such a thing as pawn promotion what a pawn can become a queenBobby's son is my king and I will become his queenOkayI got nothing I don't knowSo they get married and after nine months Bobby's able to assemble like an incredibly elite team of random guys from IcelandAnd because there's only seven people in Iceland like these random guys in Iceland are able to convince the Icelandic parliament to like give him citizenship
01:16:21And so he's able to get like I think a citizenWhat he wound up getting a good one how the fuck did that happenWell here's the thing though he hates IcelandWell okay I guess that's fineThat's one of the better citizenships to haveIt's true yeah that's a good one but I don't knowHe somehow finagles this Icelandic politics is a jokeYou son of a bitch I want Icelandic citizenship
01:16:44Look Iceland if you're out there give me citizenship you'll get all of the benefits of having Robert Evans as a citizenI assure you there's someYeah we will be compiling a list which we'll get after you give him citizenshipOh yeah no we'll have a long list it's gonna you're gonnaEveryone will be doing real well when I'm a citizen I'm gonna bring pride to IcelandSo Bobby on the other hand he hates Iceland he spends the rest of his life just like pissing off all of his friendsAnd by the time he dies in a hospital well okay so he doesn't even want to be taken to a hospitalBut he's like so fucked up that like his like two remaining friends are like okay we're bring to hospital he dies there
01:17:28And by this time he has like very little leftAnd okay this would be the end of the story of Bobby Fisher except three years after he diedSorry?I said it fucking ought to beYeah but it's not because he, the three years after he dies they have to dig up his body to settle a legal fight about who would get all of his moneyWhich I think-How does digging up his body settle that?Well okay so he, there's a whole thing where he was like with several people and I forget which of his like wives kind of
01:18:05Or people he was with like claimed that someone like their son was his sonBut it turned out that that son was actually another person's sonSo they had to dig up his grave to do genetic testingYeah that is the story of Bobby Fisher ChessnazziIt's at least funnyYeah he, I don't know if getting to live out the rest of his life in Iceland is like what he deserved but he was miserable soSometimes that's all you can hope forYeah
01:18:39He died very sadWell that's mostly what I wanted for Bobby was for him to die sad because I don't like himDo you have any pluggables for us Mia?Yeah I do a podcast called Dig it Up in hereWowBrows into itAnd yeah I'm on Twitter at It Me CHR3 and you can find me there doing stuffCool
01:19:03Hell yeahWell that's gonna do it for all of us here at whatever this isThe podcasting emporium of Mr. MagoriumUntil next weekDon't play chessIt involves a cigar smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearseAnd inside his hearse look like a lot of gunsBut are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them?
01:19:56He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happenListen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcastDid you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside MoscowHoping to become the youngest person to go to space?Well I oughta know because I'm Lance BassAnd 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 spaceWith no country to bring him downWith the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world
01:20:41Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcastsWhat 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 priceTwo death sentences and a life without paroleMy youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthdayListen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click any sentence in the transcript to leave one.