The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1188: 'Shooting the Bolsheviks' w/ Aaron from Timeline Earth

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

63 MinutesPG-13Aaron is one of the hosts of Timeline Earth.Pete invited Aaron to come on the show to read and comment on Bertrand M. Patenaude's article, "Shooting the Bolsheviks."Timeline Earth PodcastShooting the BolsheviksPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on Twitter

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Subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. If you want to support this show and get the episodes early and add free, head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support. I want to explain something right now. if you support me through Substack or Patreon, you have access to an RSS feed that you can plug into any podcatcher, including Apple, and you'll be able to listen to the episodes through there.

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So thank you for the support. Head on over to freeman Beyond the Wall.com forward slash support and do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Peking Yenna show. Aaron, what's going on, man? How's it going, man? Thanks for having me back. Of course, of course.

I can't remember who shared this article with me. I reached out to a friend I'm like, did you? No, it wasn't me. But yeah, I finally got a chance to, got around to reading it yesterday. And I was like, oh, this is wild. This is an insane story put out by, an article that's, you know, the Hoover Institution, which is, you know, we think Normiland, we think, you know, just like Beltway kind of thing. But it's just nuts, man. So I asked you to come on and read it. What did you think when you read it? You know, I don't know as much as I should about the interwar period. But from this article, I went into a rabbit hole about just how utterly insane and chaotic the entirety of your era.

up was from 1919 to 1939. Yeah. Yeah, I was a buddy that I reached out to yesterday for a little help on this and a little background. He just told me he's like, I think the phrase he used was shit show. He's like, it was just a shit show. Yeah, I mean, the perfect storm of what do you need?

What are the best ingredients for? mass scale violence, but, you know, not, not technically a war. All right. Well, I'm going to start reading this. And, I mean, there's going to be plenty of places to take breaks in this because it's just, it's wild. I'm happy that the people listening to this are going to hear this because these aren't the kind of stories you normally hear. You know, you normally hear this straight kind of politics. Oh, policy.

And it's like, oh, oh, what the hell is this? All right. So it's titled Shooting the Bolsheviks. Amid the ruins of the Great War, an American camera crew filmed a shocking sight. The role of Celluloid has taken a strange trip through history by Bertrand M. Pottenu. All right, here we go. In the late afternoon of May 26, 1919, in a field about 30 miles outside of Riga, outside Riga, Latvia, a squad of nine German riflemen executed 18 Latvian Bolsheviks.

The prisoners were shot in groups of three, each victim receiving one bullet to the chest, and two to the head before toppling backwards into a freshly dug grave. Quoting, it was German efficiency at its best, wrote, U.S. Army Captain Hal Foreman, an American relief worker who witnessed the execution. What kind of relief worker? What kind of relief worker says that? I think relief workers were a lot more based back then. You there?

Sorry. Yeah, just a passive observer. Probably non-ideological. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Captain Foreman was one of a dozen Americans whose presence on the scene may have influenced the operations of the firing squad that day. If so, this was because one of their number, Lieutenant Frank Johnson, happened to be a newsreel cameraman. His camera recorded the scene for the ages,

the reading of the death sentence, the removal of the prisoner's boots, and the business-like procedure of the German soldiers. In its day, Johnson's celluloid was one of the most sensational film sequences ever shot. Even today, after decades of atrocities recorded on film and tape, the choreographed dispatch of the 18 Bolsheviks is a spellbinder. That piece of film is today housed at the Hoover Archives as part of the Herman Axel Bank Motion Picture Film Collection. The irony is that, at its first showing in New York in 1920, Johnson's film sequence was associated with the name of Herbert Hoover.

After the armistice of November 11, 1918, my birthday, not year, Hoover had joined President Woodrow Wilson and the other U.S. diplomats serving in Paris with the American mission to negotiate the peace. Among Hoover's several roles as head of the American Relief Administration, at that time a U.S. government agency, he had the enormous job of coordinating American food delivery throughout Central and Southeastern Europe and the Near East. The delivery of food was complicated by the persistence of military hostilities in the scramble for territory that once belonged to the German, Russian, Austrian, and Ottoman empires. Yes.

Like you said, a shit show. Poof. You now have a hundred new countries. In its day, this was one of the most sensational film sequences ever shot. A chief concern of the Allied diplomats in Paris was that Bolshevism would fill a vacuum left by the withdrawal of the German military from the Baltic region. The Allies thus arranged for surrendered German troops to remain in place and help prevent the Russian Bolshevik infection from spreading.

In the words of the official ARA history written shortly afterwards, Bolshevism was the supreme peril, not Germany. Bolshevism was still uncontrolled and threatened the world. Germany, though still a danger, was beaten and could be controlled. at whatever cost it must be seen that Bolshevism did not break through these barrier states. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't just the Allies' interest. It was also the German interest. What I gathered from my research was that, you know, these Free Corps were primarily motivated by anti-Bulshivism.

But when you start getting into the context of the Baltic states, there was still this national sentiment that Germany still needs to be in a position of influence for that region. Because remember during that time, this is before all the Germans got summarily executed or marched out. All right. Moving on. Turmoil in the Baltics. Latvia became the key battleground of this contest in the spring of 1919. Latvia had belonged to the Russian Empire until it fell to German invaders after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.

Then came a brief period of independence in the wake of the German surrender in November 1918, followed in January 1919 by the establishment of a Soviet government in Riga, the capital, whose residents were subject to a furious red terror. There proved to be no shortage of German soldiers on the scene to help stem the red tide. They included a free corps unit that had been stationed in Riga until the red advance, new volunteers recruited from Germany by means of vague, promises of land in the Baltic and remnants of the German 8th Army. These units came together as the Iron Division under the command of General Rudiger von der Goltz. This force was supplemented by the

Baltic Landersvair, a formation dominated by Baltic Germans. The Germans were successful in their effort to drive out the Red Forces, yet in the process they chased the Latvian provisional government from its seat in the port city of Libao today, Liyapaja, Leopaha, in the Baltic. And after Riga fell to the Iron Division on May 23, 1919,

the city became the scene of a white terror that rivaled its predecessor in savagery. Yeah, I guess for a short time, that Free Corps actually affected a coup of the Latvian government. It didn't last long. But, I mean, for all intents and purposes, they had control of the Latvian state for, you know, a couple months, it sounds like. It's crazy to think about.

At whatever cost, it must be seen that Bolshevism did not break through these barrier states. Hoover's American relief workers demobilized officers who had served with the American Expeditionary Force were poised to enter the scene on the heels of anti-Bulshevik forces and help restore a semblance. of normal life. These Americans were scandalized by the behavior and attitudes of the German soldiers who were quick to say that while they might have lost the war on the Western Front, they had won the war in the East. True. Yeah.

The objective of the German forces, the Americans concluded, was the establishment of German supremacy in the Baltic, the gateway to Russia. What would have been if they would have allowed that? Well, we might have been able to avoid a major world war. Discover five-star luxury at Trump Dunebeg. Unwind in our luxurious spa. Savor sumptuous farm-fresh dining. Relax in our exquisite accommodations.

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From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. Later after their Baltic adventure had come to an end and they had been forced to return to Germany empty-handed, these German freebooters would claim that they had been stabbed in the back by the Weimar government. For the time being, however, they were doing a considerable amount of shooting in the head in check. the victims numbered in the thousands with the heaviest toll in Riga.

The Germans classified their prey as Bolsheviks. But while this label was no doubt accurate in some cases, as often as not, it was applied indiscriminately to target uncooperative Latvians. Yeah. So what I also learned was that in 1919, Latvian nationalists rose up. and their goal was to orient Latvia to be more of a agricultural economy and more of a like an agricultural nation. And at first, they accepted help from the German Free Corps because they also didn't like the Bolsheviks. but later on after the coup, those nationalists ended up turning their guns on the Bolsheviks

at the same time that the Allies were pressuring the Weimar government to wrangle all the free corps. Theodore of the Macabre the Americans gained admissions to the execution near Riga on May 26th for the price of a pack of cigarettes. Yep, nothing's changed. At least that is a story told by cameraman Lieutenant Johnson. Other testimony supports his statement that the German officer in charge obliged the Americans by moving up the time of the execution so as to catch the afternoon light. That is macab. Yep, got to get some good cinematography.

The Latvian soldiers went to their deaths dressed in their military uniforms, minus their boots, because at the time, shoes were as coveted as. cigarettes. It is unclear whether the prisoners understood before the death sentence was read out that they were to be shot. Johnson observed that none of them ever had seen a motion picture camera before and they stared at us uncertain and bewildered as to whether we had brought a new form of sudden death or not. I have a picture here. I'll just describe it for those listening. It says three barefoot men face an improvised firing squad in Latvia in May 1919, moments before being shot to death and toppling into their grave. The stunning footage recorded by the American Newsreel cameraman

accompanying a German occupation force was to make an appearance in 20th century politics, history, and in a grotesque way, entertainment. One of the doomed men in Johnson's film, however, appears undaunted by the proceedings. Order to lie in his stomach like his comrades, he nonetheless lifts his head and laughs at the camera. His laughter seems to be an act of defiance, or perhaps he had lost his grip in the face of looming death. In fact, this particular prisoner literally dies laughing, as Captain Menard Hamilton noted in his description of the execution. When all was ready, the officer called the name of the first detail. The men named immediately jumped to their feet and ran to the hole, took a look at their grave, turned, and, and, and,

faced a firing squad and stood to attention. No bandages over their eyes, nothing. They just trotted into place like boys lining up for a Virginia reel. And the first one actually looked as executioners in the eye, threw back his head and laughed. Hmm. Man. Yeah.

A striking detail visible on the screen, but unmentioned that eyewitness accounts, is the performance of several of the victim's hats, which, at the moment the bullets hit their mark, are launched several feet skywards before descending into the open grave after their owners. This, yeah. This as well as the laughing Bolshevik's hysteria

literally on the edge of the grave gives the sequence to feel of slapstick, an impression enhanced by the unnaturally fast speed of the 35-millimeter film. Such thoughts may have run through the mind of the cameraman who, as the head of a film production company in New York City had some theatrical experience. I've taken lots of executions, he told Captain Hamilton once the performance was over,

but they have always got up and walked away afterward. Yet Johnson's final shot, a look down at the tangle of victims in their mass grave, leaves no doubt that these Latvian extras would be unavailable for any future performance. There proved to be no shortage of German soldiers on the scene to help stem the red tide. The U.S. Army officers who arrived to administer the delivery of food relief sounded the alarm to their superiors in Paris about what Johnson called the ruthless advances of the Hun. In order to clinch their case, they rushed Johnson's execution film to the peace conference where it was screened for the assembled diplomats. By several accounts, the scenes of the German firing squad in action helped persuade the peacemakers to order the immediate withdrawal of the German troops from the Baltic. Yep. There you go. Stabbed in the back.

Yep. There's a picture here of Herbert Hoover. It says Herbert Hoover, shown in his Paris office in 1919, coordinated heroic food deliveries to ravage Europe during the, during and after the Great War. Later, he followed up by leading efforts to feed the lands convulsed by the Russian Revolution and Civil War. His work for Hungary relief made Hoover widely popular, both in Europe and the United States, led to a proposal for a documentary film showcase to showcase American benevolence and perhaps burnish Hoover's political prospects. The Latvian firing squad sequence would play an unanticipated role in that movie. And I will remind everybody that this was written by, this is on the Hoover Institute's website. That's right. Yeah.

He did nothing wrong. Ever. Johnson, a motion picture man with a flair for self-promotion, later boasted in a story he wrote for the Hearst newspapers that, thanks to its Paris screening, his Latvian horror film had proved to be a deciding factor in the deliberations of the greatest legislative body of modern times. Never was a more amazing motion picture performance given, nor will such a one ever be possible again. In Johnson's telling, President Wilson, watching in disbelief as the Latvian soldiers are laid low, turns white with revulsion. Rising to his feet, he voices outrage at the manifestation of German brutality and gratitude to the Americans who captured it on film. Quote, the gentleman of motion pictures have rendered a service to humanity. Yeah, I mean, that's the best propaganda you could possibly add for any future use if Germany, you know, gets first.

And it's your, it's your motivation for everything that you're going, you're getting ready to do. It's just one of those things you can show people. It's like, we should cut their rations down to 400 calories a day. Look at these animals. The Paris Peace Conference was only the first noteworthy performance of Johnson's notorious film sequence. The following year it came to the big screen as part of the documentary film Starvation. A nearly two-hour compilation of footage shot by a variety of American newsreel cameramen, accompanying American relief officials throughout Central and Eastern Europe in those chaotic months after the armistice.

Starvation was set to premiere at the Manhattan Opera House on January 9, 1920, and then be distributed to theaters across the country. The impresario behind the film was ARA Publicity Chief George Barr Baker, a former magazine editor and longtime associate of Herbert Hoover's, who had arranged to send the motion picture men into the field alongside the American relief workers. Starvation, as the uplifting story of America's post-war benevolence, would feature images of American relief ships steaming in support on the Baltic and Black Seas, long lines of emaciated children and adults waiting to receive their food,

children being fed in soup kitchens, and the obligatory scenes of the worst-case children suffering from severe hunger-related disease. My reading of Blockade by Anna Eisenmanger, a diary of a middle class, Austrian housewife is, yeah, everyone should read that or go listen to my reading of it. And you'll, that'll help. It goes alongside this. I mean, how selective were our release, do you know anything about that, like how selective we were, as far as what countries or what areas or what ethnicities we prioritized or deprioritized?

Well, it definitely seems like Vienna was targeted and Austria was targeted specifically. Because when you think about it, when you think about Weimar, okay, there were a lot, there was, it was horrific. But it seems like food was available. The problem was people just couldn't buy it. So they had to do whatever they could do. Austria seemed to be a different story. Austria seemed to be, and please, somebody can, somebody is going to correct me on this about how horrible it was in Germany and the big cities.

But most of my reading is what was happening in Austria at the time. And it seemed like they were specifically targeted to starve. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. None of the doomed men who had seen and stared at, none of the doomed men had seen a motion picture camera before and they stared at us uncertain to bewildered as to whether, okay, they're just repeating from the last section. Starvation's subtitle was the camera drama of a hungry world, yet the film's true villain was Bolshevism,

which Baker identified as the twin brother of Starvel. Starvation. That's serious. This is sounding good. Thus, among the heartwarming images of American relief, room was found for Johnson's Latvia execution sequence, as well as a chilling episode captured on film by one of Baker's team of cameramen in the Russian city of Peskov, where a white Russian army general arranged for the public hanging of three Bolshevik spies for the camera.

The fact that alleged Bolsheviks were on the receiving end of this violence and not its perpetrators could easily be accommodated. The implicit message of starvation was that whatever the Bolshevik element is allowed to gain, that wherever the Bolshevik element is allowed to gain a foothold. Atrocity begets atrocity. As Baker wrote, you know, it seems like naive, wishful thinking that the audience watching that would come to that conclusion. Discover five-star luxury at Trump-Dunbeg. Unwind in our luxurious spa. Savour sumptuous farm-fresh dining. Relax in our exquisite accommodations.

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They can even re-gift or donate to a good cause. Make your awards more rewarding Visit optionscar.org.E. Today. I mean, especially when you consider that so many of them, even in the United States, were already being, especially if you're in cities, or already being fed Bolshevik propaganda. Yeah, like, you know, where this film is being shown.

Yeah. The fact that alleged Bolsheviks were on the receiving end of the violence and not as perpetrators could easily be accommodated. The implicit message of Starvation was, atrocity against atrocity, yada yada. As Baker wrote to Hoover two weeks before the film's premiere, the definite value of the picture is that it is the first anti-Bolshevik document possessing any potential strength with the masses.

No normal mother who sees it would be likely to tolerate talk of direct action in her home. That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. There's a picture here. It says weeks after the armist of 1918, President Woodrow Wilson arrives in Paris where French President Raymond I think it's point a point carre escorts him past cheering thongs

the victorious allies then set to work crafting the peace treaty at Versailles Wilson viewed the Latvian execution sequence while in Paris according to the American who shot the film Wilson was appalled he condemned German militarism yada yada yada yada yeah not even the president of the United States receive the intended message. Yeah.

And it just goes and it just goes to show that who can be propagandized. But these are just, you know, these are men. And, you know, I mean, I think of Trump today. I mean, who buys propaganda easier than Trump does? I mean, think about it. it. Really think about it. A man, a man motivated entirely by gut feeling. George H. Nash, who as Herbert Hoover's biographer, had tracked Baker's public relations activities and his close association with Hoover, considers it likely that this was, in effect, a Hoover

campaign film designed by Baker to advance Hoover's presidential prospects in 1920. Hoover, who had recently returned from Paris to Washington was a rising political star. There was much speculation that he would become a presidential candidate in 1920, and even though he was serving in Woodrow Wilson's Democratic administration, both major political parties were taking him seriously as a potential candidate. None of this was lost on Baker, who figured that Hoover's endorsement of starvation would be a win-win, serving to promote a film that would publicize Hoover's post-war statesmanship and humanitarianism. On December 30th, 1919, Baker cabled Hoover to ask that he allow his name to appear prominently

in the announcement for the film, although Hoover himself made only two brief appearances on the screen. They actually have a picture here of that announcement, the handbill announcing the film, the camera drama of Hungry World, and there's a picture. who is that? Herman Axelbank Hmm. Was an avid chronicler

of the end of Imperial Russia and the dawn of the Soviet Union. Film enthusiasts who launched his career as an office boy for Goldwynn pictures. Axelbank sent camera crews to Russia to film Lenin, Trotsky, and key moments of the post-revolutionary year and collected older footage of the war

and the Romanov's. Zard to Lenin, 1937, assembled much of that footage. including the Latvian execution sequence into what became Axel Bank's only serious documentary project, Axel Bank's impressive collection resides in the Hoover archives. So he used that same footage in a chronicle of the rise of the Soviet Union? Mm-hmm.

Hmm. Metro-Goldwyn-Win mayor. Uh-huh. Yeah. It's amazing how the footage like this because of how it's portrayed. I haven't seen the footage. I'm sure if we search, we can find it. How it could be used in so many different ways for so many different levels of propaganda.

Yeah. I mean, I watch it and I think good, but, you know, anybody else could watch it and think that's terrible. And it's all ideological. Yeah. Edgar Rickard, another who. confidant associated with American food relief was skeptical, warned that Baker's film, far from giving a boost to Hoover in the ARA, might well boomerang. As record reason, one picture of children's feeding is just like another, no matter in

what country it may have been taken. And the only films which have come over, particularly Lieutenant Johnson's film, are so filled up with Bolshevist outrages and atrocities of the Germans that we could not possibly stand for them. Ricard was also sensitive to the mood of the American people in an election year. From now until November of next year, the entire country will be completely swamped in a presidential election. He observed, which meant that the American public was turning inward, especially at a time of deepening economic recession. Quoting, the whole country is absolutely and thoroughly sick of the European war and has settled down to a definite fight on domestic problems.

which are very serious. Hmm. Sounds familiar. If it meant to be uplifting, starvation clearly failed. The film left one cold with an unamiliorated terror when you wrote. Baker won the argument, and Hoover's name appeared in large print on the opening night announcement for starvation. The premiere on January 9th, 1920, was preceded by an aggressive publicity campaign carefully coordinated by Baker. His preparations paid off as the chief movie review outlets of the day all came through in the way he had hoped. Variety praised a film as a record of America's work of humanity and also a stirring object lesson

why America should not permit the radical element to obtain a hold and overthrow any of the present governmental institutions. According to photo play, the picture is calculated to make you want to help feed the starving nations. it very likely will. Moving Picture World applauded the film for bringing to vivid life the story of how America erected a bulwark of food to stem the tide of the Bolsheviki. Yeah. I mean, it's very reminiscent to where we were, I don't know, five years ago. You know, like them trying to lay the rhetorical groundwork as to why we can't let

why we can't let this this new generation radicalize you know we need to give them we need we need to give them Gibbs we need to give them you know except it wasn't even like that it was like they wanted to give they wanted to give us like people like us young white males or whatever you want to identify yourself as um everything that we didn't ask for in the hopes that we we wouldn't radicalize. What's interesting is, I don't know if you saw the numbers recently, but the, I think it's among young evangelicals, less than 50% support the state of Israel. Yeah, I did see that.

That's trending in the right direction. I've also seen things about the type of person that is going to seminary right now. is very conservative very conservative very traditionalist overwhelmingly so something like 80 plus percent of seminarians within the last 10 years so you know i hate the term pendulum yeah one in four catholic churches is going to be ltm in like 10 years yep yeah air grid operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the Northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans.

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fees, it's easy to use and totally flexible. They can even re-gift or donate to a good cause. Make your awards more rewarding. Visit optionscard.I.E. today. These in similar reviews may have cheered Baker, but he knew better because he had been at Starvation's premiere and had seen for himself the depressing effect the film had produced on its audience. People were shocked by what they saw on the screen, but not in the way Baker and the filmmakers had intended. So what do you do? If they are looking at it one way, you go their way. You turn in their direction. The reviewer for the New York Times, echoing a complaint.

of many others in attendance, noted that while the many scenes of American Mercy were heartwarming, the film unhappily and irreverently dragged in ghastly executions of Bolsheviki by German firing squads and even more excruciating hangings of Bolsheviki for some unnamed crimes by some unnamed enemy. Such scenes left one cold with an unamiliorated terror. Yeah, I mean, miscalculation. Well, think about it. I mean,

how, how would you know what was going on in Russia? Yeah. No, I mean, motion picture films like the newsreels before a movie, uh, were pretty much how people got information aside from the radio.

You know, how they, how they got visual news. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there weren't who, who was traveling there to see what was, yeah. Yeah.

Baker recognized that the Times review was correct and that he and the film, his film, the film producers had miscalculated. Concerned about having associated Hoover's name with what was shaping up to be a serious flop, Baker could take comfort in one sentence in the Times review. These pictures, photographed through the assistance of Herbert Hoover, give no internal evidence of having passed under his eye in their final form. more consolation came in the form of variety's only reservation about the film as a picture it may be propaganda for the coming boom to secure the presidential presidential nomination for herbert hoover but there is so little of hoover in the picture that it is propaganda for him if it is propaganda for him it is of the most subtle sort just that everything up to the damage control was completely incompetent but the damage control just seems so good.

There's a picture here and it says in an inspired bit of editing for Zar to Lenin, the laughing Bolshevik, the condemned prisoner who faced death with bizarre levity, is among the last group of three to be shot, enabling the editor Max Eastman to

heighten the tension as each trio is executed. The Red Soldier is still laughing, Eastman in tones as to prisoner taunting his executioners. makes his exit. The distance between Hoover and starvation in the public mind was just about the only good news that Baker could report in his letter to Hoover of January 13th, four days and eight performances

after the premiere. By then, the film had been recut and shortened, and it's run in New York's schedule to end within a few days. I said that I would not get you into trouble, a chase and Baker wrote to Hoover. I have not done so. The enclosed clippings indicate that the public has not led to believe that you have any interest in the film. Only that your name was in big block letters. Would this, I mean, in your opinion, would you consider this to be memetic?

I know it's a micro scale, but it has a memetic quality to it. as much as you can in a print medium, as much as you can with newspapers and, you know, let's face it, I mean, back in those days, even normal people read the newspapers, regular, everyday people. The question is, is how, you know, how quickly you can swing and turn the narrative on its time. apparently you know the movies put out with a narrative in mind if they don't pick up on that narrative

well what do you do you have to figure and if the if people don't pick up on that narrative and they have the opposite narrative and the opposite narrative is horror oh what do you do well obviously you're going to have to either

pull it hope people forget about it or you apparently you're what's going to happen is what ends up happening is is this footage is used on multiple occasions for multiple purposes. Yeah, that's where I get the memetic idea. Yeah, that's the memetic part of it,

is that you can, wow. It can adapt it, infinitely adaptable. The footage lives on. Starvation never made it beyond New York City. It didn't have to. It didn't have to. It just has to take root in New York City, especially considering that's where most of the people financing the Bolsheviks lived.

What an unfortunate premier location. Starvation never made it beyond New York City. No print of the film survives, although Johnson's execution sequence was salvaged eventually landed in the Hoover Archives. It may not be the first execution ever captured on film, but it may well be the oldest surviving such footage. It has appeared in numerous documentary films about World War I

and the Russian Revolution over the years, often improperly identified as visual evidence of white-slaughtering reds during the Russian Civil War. It can be whatever you needed to be. I mean, seriously. there is no doubt due in large part to Max Eastman, the socialist writer and former associate of Leon Trotsky, who, in editing the 1937 documentary from film Zardelennon, identified the executioners as soldiers of the white Russian army under Admiral Alexander Colchek.

Totally accidental. Eastman also contrived to heighten. the drama of the sequence by manipulating the images. Instead of taking his place among the first trio of victims, the laughing Bolshevik, after nine of his comrades have been shot dead, is shown looking up from the ground and cackling in what is meant to be a spine-tingling cutaway shot. Thanks to the editor's handiwork, the laughing Bolshevik exits last, taunting his executioners to the end.

As narrator Eastman in tones, the red soldier is still last. laughing. Thank you, Mr. Eastman. Yes. I mean, brilliant. Yeah. Baker, together with Rickard, would help get Herbert Hoover elected to the White House in 1928. By then, he had recovered from the considerable financial loss he took as a result of starvation, a total of nearly $11,000.

He never recovered his enthusiasm for movie making as he, he never recovered. wrote a New York State tax auditor a few years after his cinematic debacle. My advice to a young man about to risk money and a motion picture is no. And that's it. A short little article that I cannot remember who shared with me. But when I read it, I was like, oh, this has everything in it. I mean, this is what, 2,000 words, less than 2,000 words? And there's so much in it.

If history, you have not only history, but you have a look at how propaganda was being used at the time, a look into just how this fucked up, you know, the mid-war years were. How just who knew. And when you When you're at the mercy of filmmakers and newspaper men and propagandists and you can't do, you know how people put stuff on Twitter all the time

and like within, within 15 minutes somebody could be debunking. I'm going to be like, yeah, this is no, no, sorry. Nice try, but no. Yeah, I mean, this is, this is literally makes it halfway around the world before the truth comes out. It's, it's a good contrast, too.

I mean, you see the ideological battle playing out in Europe with executions and just mass violence, chaos. And then you see the ideological battle in the United States, which was untouched by the war, playing out in much more subtle, much more, I guess, cerebral ways. Well, I think in many ways this can play as a propaganda piece at home, too,

because a lot of men did not come back from Europe. And by showing something like this and just showing the brutality of everything that went on there and starvation, things like that, you can actually sell to widows and to orphans that, you know, they died for something. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. As terrible as the, you know, this one piece of film is, you know, that can be a selling point, too.

Look, we know, these are the people we were dealing with. These are the people we went over there. This is part of the remnant that's left over. And also, thinking about it, it's the perfect, it's the perfect setting the stage of what comes, you know, 20 years later. Yeah, as far as, you know, we know now that the German Free Corps, for the most part, were motivated by national sympathies. And then a lot of them eventually ended up in the, in the German high command, if not, you know, just the Nazi party in general. So, I mean, it couldn't have worked out better for those particular film producers. Well, another thing that's interesting is a book that a buddy of mine referred me to about this was about the interwar years is how so many, like, there were people in the Free Corps who were former communists.

and they were like going back and forth. They were ideology. It seems like ideology was only useful to some in that they were going to have power and they were going to be able to control. Yeah. And each free core seemed like its own little incubator, like reading up on it. There were multiple free corps. They had multiple different, you know, they were in different places.

they were fighting different, different enemies. But each one was, you know, you had like some monarchist leaning ones. You had some, obviously, some nationalist ones. Some were motivated mostly by just anti-Bolshevism. Each one was like its own little incubator. It was pretty wild. Yeah. And it really did seem like it was like how was nationalism going to win?

was Bolshevism going to win, you know, which would be globalism was going to win, was, you know, the, I mean, beyond nationalism, you know, caring for your own people, like an ethno, like more of an ethno kind of, you know, more of an ethno kind of, looking for the word I can't, but you know what I'm talking about. Yeah. So when you have, you know, that's why people, people are like, oh, well, why did they call themselves socialists? So, well, obviously, they were socialist. They were national socialist. They were leftists because they called themselves socialist. People were calling themselves all sorts of shit back then. Yeah.

It was just what was, you know, I think, I think Thomas has said, basically, if you didn't call yourself a socialist in the 20s and you were a revolutionary group, no one was taking you seriously. Yeah. it seems like okay what is the next sentence out of their mouth after they describe themselves as socialist yeah yeah we can go to go down that rabbit hole and thomas and i have gone that rabbit hole yeah times of um you know people are like oh well you know and what it always once you like explain that to people or show you know like in 1938 what you know what adolph says that socialism was how he described it. And you're like, okay, so what do you disagree with here?

So, well, that's not what he meant. That's not what I asked you. Yeah. Taking these words on their face, what do you disagree with here? And what I can tell you is, there are a lot of people who will not answer that question. Well, it's exactly the same as showing them a speech by Vladimir Putin when he explains, you know, his motivations for why. he does why he's doing what he's doing right now. I mean, show me something that you disagree.

Like, what is he saying that is unreasonable? If you're capable of empathizing with Russia's position, which you should empathize with all country's positions, what is he saying that paints him as this madman lunatic hell-bent on rolling over Europe? And they won't even look at those speeches. Well, you can't trust anything because he's crazy. Well, okay, you're just not a serious person. If we had given or if it just came down to it through a series of treaties or any kind of strife,

if the northern half of Washington state had been surrendered to Canada or Canada took it or something. And it's all Americans living there, but they're living in part of Canada now. And Canada started killing them, like targeted bombings and things like that. and there was a president who was like, well, those are our people. And, you know, we do have interests up there. We like the Seattle area. Yeah. And we're going to take it.

You know, we think it would be beneficial for us to have it. And we went in there and we invaded it to stop the killing and also take back what was ours. What's the problem there? There's so, there's about a hundred other things you could add in there to make your point, you know, even, even more crystal clear than the Russia-Ukraine analogy. But people just refuse to refuse to empathize because Putin bad, pootler bad. Yeah. I mean, we really have gotten to the point where, Yeah, I say this a lot, and I'm sure people are sick of hearing me say it is, I think, one of the biggest problems that we have.

And I think we may be getting back to this, but is the average person, and especially the average male, has never been punched in the mouth. Yeah, yep. I think we need to take a look at maybe reexamining what the word free speech means. Yeah. I know we spent the last like 15 years on a free speech propaganda kick. And now that we have it, I think it's time to move on to the next step. Yeah. I mean, honestly, the worst part of this post-war consensus is that there's really only one country in the world that's allowed to take land.

That's the whole history of the fucking world. is you your neighbor has something that you want and if you're stronger than them you take it are people going to die yeah okay that's this is our fucking history this is who we are this is who we still are we just suppressed it and you can't you know and if you're like well fuck you you know it's like i mean i don't particularly like what's going on with bomb and the hoothies and everything because I know the only reason they're bombing the Houthis is for Israel. And I consider Israel to be our ultimate enemy. You know, the Zionism is the number one enemy.

Yeah. But, I mean, I understand why they're doing it. Oh, yeah. I may, I might do it too if I was president. The fuck knows. Well, I mean, it wasn't until fairly recently where I kind of realized, I realized probably through, actually, I think it was through one of your episodes that one of the primary motivating factors as to why we support Israel with all this money and arms and propaganda is that if we don't, then they'll start a nuclear war. So we better pay up or they're going to get antsy and then they're going to start launching nukes.

I mean, that is quite a relationship dynamic. Yeah, I mean, in the post-war era, you have a bunch of countries that have nukes, and they have treaties, and they have inspections. There's one country that's not allowed, that has nukes, that we're not even sure how many it is, and they don't have to sign any treaties, and they threaten to use them all the time.

Why do we put up with Cutter? It just doesn't bode well when any country, any, any nuclear country doesn't have a no-first strike policy. I know that that's bullshit, but it just, you know, at least have the decency to lie about it. Like, sure, we're not going to, we have a no-first strike policy. Okay, at least we know that you're, you know, somewhat sane, somewhat in line with the first world. I mean, we know it's bullshit, but come on. Make us feel good. India and Pakistan hate each other.

India and Pakistan have nukes. Yes. And I have to assume that we control both of them, because the fact that they haven't blown each other off the map yet, it makes no sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

God, that would be amazing. Well, I mean India is Once you start going down The India rabbit hole You're just like Can we can they just stay there? I mean, I just

I don't want one to leave Like one I don't care They're going to cure cancer Let them sell it to us They don't have to come here Oh It's a that

What is his name? Giant something Giant Bandari Yep Watching his watching his speech at the property and freedom. That's brutal, man. It's brutal.

Just having it all laid out to you as to why exactly they are completely incompatible. It's jarring. And then going out into the world and like seeing them. Well, I mean, and I've said this over and over again, I'm sure people are sick of it. The one thing that he said in that episode that not everybody picked up on, but the people who did pick up on it shook them. He said, Americans haven't met the average Indian yet. Yeah.

Yep. I mean, that should shake you to your core. And anyone who tried. My brother went to India with a mission. And I don't know what area he was in, but he ended up, he's. stayed, he was there a couple weeks, was absolutely horrified at the conditions, but he ended up having to get basically medevac to the, to the closest embassy, because he got dengue fever and like almost died.

Like he, they had to, it took him like three days to get to the hospital in Hawaii to finally get the treatment that he needs. And he was like on death's doorstep. And the worst part of it is, if somebody here. in the United States falls ill, even if you don't know them, you're doing everything that you possibly can to help them. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yep. And the attitude there is, well, if he dies, he does, he does. Yeah. Somebody better come clean them up. Yeah, no one's going to have a sense of urgency about it. No, life is cheap. It's like that in most of those countries. Life is cheap.

you know that's like the whole bugman thing they're just bugman that's how they think about themselves oh man that's just that's fucking brutal man i think we need infinity of them yeah yeah well i mean there's so much better workers than you and i yeah yep they make the line go up let them in you know i think back to my days in um you know working working working when I worked a regular job and all of the promotions that I turned down. Because I was just like, I'm just happy where I am, man. I was like, I don't want any more happy with the money I'm making. I don't want any more responsibility.

I don't want to be on call 24-7, stuff like that. I don't want that. And because we don't do that, they may import somebody who will. Yeah, exactly. What I see happening is this aversion to, you know, the Protestant work ethic. Like, that's for suckers, you know, we're Americans, we don't, we shouldn't have to work like 50, 60 hour weeks. And they're absolutely correct.

On a 40-hour work week on a, on a regular job, you should be able to, in a functioning country, and a society that actually gives a shit about its people, they should be taken care of on a 40-hour work week. That should be like the baseline. You know, let's say a two- or three-bedroom ranch. You should be able to do that. A decent car. It's when you, but it's when you get into that 50, 60-hour work weeks

of actually doing work, actually being productive, you know, actually, actually, I don't know, directing production. and being accountable, that's when you should be able to be compensated more than, say, the two or three-beder marriage. And I don't know, like a lot of people that I like, they don't, I don't know what they think about that. It's like, it's for stockers. And that's, that's an Indian attitude. Did I lose you?

Ramas, I was muted. Ramaswani would say, oh, they'll come here and they'll work 80 hours a week. First of all, no one is fucking working. I mean, the amount of people that are working 80 hours a week is, please stop. But yeah, I mean, it's, oh, well, because Americans don't want, we shouldn't have to, man. You know, it's like, no, it shouldn't have to. There was a fucking time before, you know, infinity printing money that, you know, like, I remember reading these stories about how, like, black family. in Detroit in like 1958,

1959, the dad was working at like Ford or Dodge or somewhere like that. And it was, he owned the house. He had a car, his family, and they were doing perfectly fine. Yeah. It was,

they could do that. We could do that. That's the baseline. But it's like, okay, so what, what happened between now, between then and now? A hostish. Depending on who you talk to.

Yeah. I mean, back when I was a libertarian, I would have said, well, it's the money. And to a certain degree, it is. But it's also the culture. Yeah, it's definitely the money, but it's also the culture. And I'm not even, I'm not taught, I just use, I just use a black family just to show that that's, that was the baseline. It was like, you know, a black family who had just hadn't moved, their family hadn't moved from the south for, hadn't been in the south and hadn't been in the north. and hadn't been in the north very long, could do that.

But white families, American families, heritage American families, why can't they do that anymore? Yeah. Yep. Yeah, I mean, I grew, I was always taught that when you're at work, you work. I mean, have fun, bullshit, make friends, whatever. But like, you're there to produce. So you have a baseline of 40 hours a week to produce.

that should be able to get you, you know, that two or three bedroom ranch with a decent car and, you know, maybe date night on Friday and have a couple kids. And, you know, when you start getting into that 50, 60 hour work week, upper management, lower director level, then you can get like the four or five bedroom colonial on the cul-de-sac, you know, with the Chevy Suburban and have three or four kids. And like that should be the baseline for that. It's just, I don't know. Call me crazy. Maybe I'm just a, maybe I'm a work cuck. I don't know. You just,

when you talk about stuff like that, people just want, oh, you're just a commie. You want, you want everything handed to you. No, want to work 40 hours and fucking go home.

I will admit that like, yeah, I am probably a workaholic. I enjoy my job. I enjoy the people. I enjoy, seeing the fruits of my my efforts um you also have an owner you also have a not an ownership stake but you have a sharing stake so let's that's yeah it's a little oh no it's i i have a i mean i have an

ownership stake too and uh you know that's that's like also my retirement so i am heavily motivated to you know maybe spend a couple more hours a week than than a wage guy yeah yeah All right. Tell everybody where they can find you. You could find me on X.com at BTWA underscore returns. Cool. And timeline Earth, every week, right? Every single week without fail. And if people want to get in touch with you in DMs, they have to know the code word, right? Ask around. You'll find out. People will be more than happy to call you the password.

Was that it? Yeah. That's it. No, feel free to DM me. You know, my whole shtick is that I know that I'm retarded. I'm not,

I'm not an intellectual. I don't have time to read books. So I come on Pete's show and I end up learning more, more with you in this last hour than I have, you know, in the last year trying to learn things on my own. Well. And there are many such cases like me.

Well, yeah, you know, that's what that's what we're trying to do here. People ask me all the time. They're like, if you're going to talk about a subject, why don't you have an expert on? No. It's like, yeah, I mean, I can't have experts on. Sure, they'll come on the show. But yeah, it's like, how do you have a discussion with an expert? How do you, how do you flesh out new ideas?

Like, if you were to, you know, the expert knows what he knows. and if you want to be like, oh, you know, well, this is what I see in it. And do you see this in it? 99% of the time the person can be like, I don't see that. All right, let's wrap it up. All right, man. Have a good night. Thanks, man.