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Hey, Robert here. It's been like two months since I had LASIK and I'm still seeing 2020. All I had to do was go in for a consultation, then go in for a maybe 10 minute procedure and then my eyes have been great ever since. You know, I healed up wonderfully. It was very simple, couldn't have been a better experience. So if you want to explore LASIK plus I can't recommend it enough. They have over 20 years experience in the industry and they performed more than two million treatments right now if you want to try getting LASIK plus you can get $1000 off of your surgery when you're treated in September, that's $500. Of per eye, just visitmylasikoffer.com to schedule your free consultation. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried true crime. And if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's breaker handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. If you could completely remove one phrase from your vocabulary, which phrase would you choose? I don't know. Correct answer. No, I meant I don't know which phrase, and the best way to banish I don't know from your life is by cramming your brain full of stuff you should know. Join your host, Josh and Chuck on the Super Popular podcast packed with fascinating discussions on science, history, pop culture and more episodes that ask, was the lost city of Atlantis Real? I don't know. Is birth order important? I don't know. How does pizza work? Well, I do know. Bit about that see? You can know even more, because stuff you should know has over 1500 immensely interesting episodes for your brain to feast on. So what do you say? I don't want to miss the stuff you should know. Podcast you're learning already. Listen to stuff you should know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's parlay VOO in my Francis? I'm Robert Evans. Yeah, this is behind the ********. Well, it's behind the insurrections. It's both. It's like, it's like a it's like bourbon, right? Bourbon is whiskey, but but all whiskey is not bourbon behind the insurrections is behind the ******** but all behind the ******** episodes aren't behind the insurrections episodes. So I dig that. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that's actually that's a great analogy. And then you throw in the Scotch thing and then you're like, wait, isn't? No, got it. I I tried to compare as many things to bourbon as I can. Speaking of bourbon. Not Speaking of bourbon, Speaking of artists. Uh, my guest today, as with the previous what four episodes we've done on this, is Jason Petty, AKA Prop. What's up? What the lick read bourbon tonight for breakfast. For dinner. Prop. How do you feel about France? Uh, wow. Feel carbs. I just think Carter and bread. They do love that. I love French food. French food's delightful. Yeah, I think, I think Harlem Renaissance. That's pretty cool. You know, my patron St is is James Baldwin. So his time out there, yeah. But besides that, I also think y'all don't like Americans. Yeah, which is hard to fault them for what I what I don't like the French for is is appropriating Belgian French fries or Belgian fries and calling. That's what they call them. Also, I think they have a habit of having superfluous letters. And they do have two-minute way too. Like at least 1/3 of the letters in any French word are unnecessary. This is yeah. Yeah, yeah, we're taking France. To task today, but we're not talking about how they use too many letters that that'll be A6 parter. We do at some point today we are talking about French fascism. Yeah, because the French actually have a long history of fascism. Although there's a weird number of French scholars who are arguing that France is uniquely immune to fascism, it's not. And today we're talking about the day that fascists almost took over the French government, February 6th, 1934. Now, all of the stories we've shared so far in this series have borne some similarities to what happened in the US capital on January 6th, 2020, and the events that led up to it. But what happened in France on February 6th, 1934 is by far the most direct comparison to what happened in the US capital on the 6th. I knew nothing about this before I started this series, but it's fascinating. It's ******* wild. Yeah, well, it failed, but also it is just the same damn thing, basically. You know what's crazy is how much the 30s must have sucked, though. They've trashed that. Lot of this stuff happened in the 30s, man. It sucked. As much as I'm gonna guess the twenty 20s are going to suck. Sucky decade? Yeah, yeah, it's great. It's great how the same thing is happening again. Exactly. A century later, pretty much. So the story starts. Our story today starts in many ways with something that happened in the late 1800s. Prop. Have you ever heard of the Dreyfus affair? No. This is very Dreyfus I did when I was before I dropped out of college. The the only thing I ever was able to focus on for more than a semester is a major was was Holocaust studies right? I wanted to when I the only degree ever wanted was a degree in like Holocaust scholarship. And every class on anti-Semitism in the history of the Holocaust is going to start. Or at least. Be front loaded with the story of the Dreyfus affair. And most Americans don't know about this, but it's very famous in France, and it's where the French far right really comes out of. In 1884, a French army captain named Alfred Dreyfus was accused of handing secret documents to the Imperial German military. Now, this was a little over a decade since the Austro the the Franco Prussian War, which is where France lost a bunch of territory to what became Germany. That one. So there's a lot of, like, panic over the Germans, right? Yeah. So. Suddenly it comes out that, like, someone has been handing documents over to the German military. There's a spy in the French military, and everybody focuses on Alfred Dreyfus. He's the immediate suspected culprit because he's Jewish. You know, like, OK, this is starting to sound a little familiar now. Yeah. OK yeah, there's this is, this is a pretty famous moment. Yeah. I feel like, OK, yeah, yeah. I'm like you and celebrity names where I'm like, I think I know this immediately. Anyway, the story becomes. Not, you know, there's a traitor in the fridge. Military. But there's a treacherous Jew giving our military secrets to the Germans, right? Yeah. Now, as I'm sure most of you have guessed, just because this is the show that it is. Dreyfus was innocent. The trial against him was racially motivated and flawed from the get go. And I found a good write up on the trial from the open source educational website E International relations, which highlights just how ****** things were from the jump quote on the morning of Monday the 15th of October, 1894. Captain Alfred. Typhus was summoned to present himself at the French Ministry of War. The commander, Patty Declaim, along with three other inspectors, welcomed Dreyfus and proceeded in asking him to write a peculiar letter dictated by Patty de Clam. This this letter contains sentences from the infamous bordereau, which was a letter written by a French spy found in the dustbin of the German military attache in Paris. The French Ministry of War was searching for the spy, and we're testing various officers that could be suspected of treason. As Dreyfus wrote the letter, he shivered, and the three men scrutinizing his every move. Noticed his trembling, thus deeming it as a sign of culpability? Ohh, he is cold. He shivers. An incontestable sign of his culpability. They might God. He shivered. He's guilty. He called he guilty. See that man? Wow. 11 constant throughout history is people whose job it is to determine whether or not folks are guilty of a crime are always bad at that job. It's not possible. Yes, Dreyfus was immediately arrested for high treason and deported to the prison of. I'm going to try to pronounce it. He was sent to prison. On December 19th he was court martialed in front of a set of anti-Semitic juries who judged him guilty and sentenced him to a degradation and life sentence on the Devil's Isle in French Guiana. She's so pretty, pretty much, you know, a show trial, right? Yeah, that man, that the anti-Semitism man, all the way back from there all the way to they building lasers to shoot from space, they building lasers to shoot from space. And this is a real theory because we'll talk about this later. France did not have much of a history of anti-Semitism before. OK, not nearly as much as a lot of other European countries. So about two years after Dreyfus is convicted, evidence comes out that a completely different, non Jewish French officer had been the spy, and this is good evidence. The guilty man though, was immediately acquitted by a military court because Dreyfus was Jewish and thus must be the guilty party. And Dreyfus was actually when the guy who was guilty was acquitted, they sentenced to Dreyfus for even more crimes that he hadn't committed in the same. Oh my God, it's really bad. Oh my God. Anybody who watched that Ivan, the Terrible docu series on Netflix about the guy that was accused of being the the Nazi? Oh yeah, watch that. Yeah, yeah, Robert, it's up your alley, dude. So yeah, they're like, that's him. I'll never forget his face. He's like, no, it's not. People are bad at remembering things, which is a real problem, like eyewitness accounts and stuff. But there's not even that in this. This is just racism that Dreyfus is being convicted over. Like, it's not even someone thinks they see him doing something. It's just like, well, he's a Jew and he's in the army, so he's got to be the guy passing secrets to the Germans. Got dog now, obviously not all French people felt this way. Oh, sorry, what's that? I was going to say, man, this is going to be a very racist statement, but I mean it as a joke, which is even. I shouldn't have even prefaced it. But I just still think that, like, Dang, man, because I still go, when I look at like, European Jews, I'm just like, but child white people. And I just and it's and it's so funny to me because I'm like, damn y'all got the short end of the stick. You got the worst lottery ever as a white dude that you don't even get to count as a white dude. You have to, I think, accept that in this period of time in Europe, Jewish people aren't white. They are excluded from the benefits of whiteness and the way that, like in the 18 late 1800s Italians. The Irish were in the United States, right? Like just the process of becoming white for a lot of these groups. Yeah, it's so bizarre. I know in the early like, this is the longest script you ever written, so I shouldn't be like. And I I know that, like, you know, stories of when when America was founded, you know, only white people could own land. So you had like, Japanese immigrants standing in front of the Congress being like, Nah, we white too, you know, I'm saying, and just this argument that, like, I am a part of that dog, I just can't imagine. As someone who's. There is no way I could stand in front of any court and convince somebody I'm a white dude. You know what I'm saying? That, like the idea, one, that that's possible and two, that, like, you actually are a white dude. Yeah. And it's nobody's calling you a white dude, you know, I'm saying, like, that's at least the the European Jew. Obviously, Ethiopian Jewish people are clearly now white dudes, you know? Yeah, I mean, and it's it's a factor of. Non whiteness is a scale, right like everyone who is considered non white isn't considered the same yes there, but it it's it's a it's a scale. And in this period of time and a lot of Europe and really not it in in France this had not been the case. But in a lot of Europe Jewish people are not really considered like there had been there there had been within living memory at this point severe restrictions on whether or not Jewish people could own property in parts of Europe. Yeah, it had not been legal like up to the. First World War, almost in like Germany, for Jewish people to be officers in the military, like there were very strong restrictions around it. So it's really, it's hard to almost get your head around because of how significant it is in this. That's the point I'm trying to make, is like, I still can't. I obviously you can't, you can't pull a, you know, a critical race theorist based on a society in the in the 21st century. You can't yank that back to the 17th and think it's going to be the same. Yeah. But at the same time it's still hard to like wrap my mind around the fact that they're like, but not him and I'm like how do you know who you all said it's. I mean it's it's the whole the whole process of a lot of you know it's it's the same way as how most of the kind of colonial procedures that the British carried out in Africa in order to maintain dominance and split up different tribal groups and keep them fighting each other so that they could dominate and exploit them. They they beta tested that in Ireland with with with what. They're effectively tribes and and group tribal groups of Irish. People like that, that there are people, scholars, who will argue that the Irish were the first people to be excluded from whiteness when they were, when the idea of whiteness was being invented, before the slave trade even really existed because like it was there an early colonized people. It's a it's a. Like I said, we'll do a history series about this at some history of whiteness. Yeah. There's a couple of really good books, including one titled the invention of the White race. That's yeah, it's a great book. Yeah, very interesting. Well anyway everything, the Dreyfus, you know, getting tried and then getting reconvicted when this new info comes up, it creates a massive culture war in France in two groups kind of rise up around this. There's the anti Dreyfus cards who are confusingly the ones who think Dreyfus is innocent. OK, yeah. And then there's the Dreyfus Ards who are raging anti semites like the Dreyfus Ards think that that Dreyfus is guilty, the anti Dreyfus. Reds think that he's. Oh yeah. OK. So, yeah, these are for him. It's the opposite of how you'd think it would be. It's opposite day. OK, got it. So Dreyfus is pardoned by the French President and released in 1903. Eventually, just like and and in fairness to France, the weight of kind of cultural opinion is that Dreyfus is guilty. People come around on this and realize that they've done him dirty. So he's released in 1903, and in 1906 a French court formally recognizes his innocence. Now the actual spy and the racist. Officers who conspired against Dreyfus were never punished, and one of the saddest things about the story is how kind of incomprehensibly loyal to the state Alfred Dreyfus is. Because after he gets out of years of being in prison as a spy, he rejoins the French army and fights in World War One. Yeah, he retires as a Lieutenant Colonel and dies in 1935. He goes right back into the military. His team Dreyfus Italian boy. Like, yo, time out, bro. It is hard to get your head around these people don't love you, fam. So I mean, in fairness to him, a lot of folks, there was a huge culture war in his defense. In a lot of cases, a lot of people be like, this is wrong, OK, so all things considered for what is effectively like a a racist. Attack on a Jewish man at multiple levels of the military. The Dreyfus Affair works at about as well as you can expect for Dreyfus, because he is he is vindicated in the end. But because of how much? Because of what kind of like evolves in France around believing Dreyfus is guilty and starting to believe that Jewish people are kind of inherently unloyal to the state supercharges the radical right in France, and it lays the foundations for French sympathy for the Nazis and a hatred of Jewish people that would claim 10s of thousands of lives in World War Two. And I'm gonna quote from that write up in the international relations again, quote before the affair, France had been one of the least anti-Semitic countries in Europe. It in fact had been the country where the most Jews had sought political asylum during the pogroms that took place in Russia during the 1880s. Russian Jews escaped the massacres ordered by the Czar and flee towards the rest, predominantly France. Another event attesting to Frances and non anti-Semitic past was that there was no French delegation at any of the annual congresses of anti-Semitism that took place in Dresden. Yes, there used to be yearly Congresses based on anti-Semitism in Dresden that a bunch of European countries would send delegates to to talk about the dangers of you. But the amount of anti sent like the Holocaust isn't a factor of the Nazis. The Holocaust is a factor of centuries of most of European Christendom. Being like the juicer, dangerous like that's where it comes from. Yeah, just a slow moving train that ended exactly where logically it would end. Yeah it was the result of for hundreds of years. Lots of prominent people being like, we should murder these folks and then they did, you know? Yeah, it's the least surprising thing in the world if you read anything about European history. So yeah, in but in France, though, that's not really the case as much. Obviously there's anti-Semitism in France as the Dreyfus affair shows, but it's not nearly what it was. It was one of the best places in Europe to be Jewish, and there were, as Dreyfus proves, a lot of, very loyal to France Jewish people. So it the anti-Semitism really starts to grow into a serious force in France as a result of the Dreyfus affair. The Dreyfus affair also leads to an explosion in the radical press. For the first time in French history, left and right start launching a series of newspapers and magazines aimed at taking different sides in a violent culture war. At the start, anti Dreyfus hard press outnumbered the Dreyfus hard press by about 12:50 in terms of readership. So the guys who think Dreyfus is innocent, that's the majority of the press at the beginning. But that doesn't stop the. The dry the the Dreyfus Hard press, which are the ones who don't like Dreyfus from publishing a constant stream of ever more lurid lies about a Jewish conspiracy to undermine the military. Now some will argue that the whole reason the Dreyfus affair became a thing was because the press flocked to it, and that it might have disappeared if they hadn't written so much about it, scholar Jean Dennis Brennan wrote. The press became the power of opinion. It amplified the political movements without creating them. For the first time, the press disposed of a powerful influence on French politics. Dramatizing, supporting or denouncing the authorities. Now, this is very familiar to everybody listening right now. It's the same thing that's happened with like, Q Anon, right. This radical press, the, the. And when we talk about radical press in this. The people like mimeographing or whatever their own, like, little newsletters and stuff. It's the same as like memes and **** on Twitter and keep going on. It's like 8 Chan. That's what's happening here. It's still, yeah, it's still just dank memes, OK? And it's it's by the way, this basic process is the same thing that radicalizes Hitler when he's, when he's like homeless, living in Vienna, he starts picking up all of these crudely copied and written. Anti-Semitic tracts that were passed out in mass on the street. That's what convinces him in a lot of ways about the danger of the Jewish menace. It's a lot of the same **** you see on 8 Chan. It's just now what happens online. Then it was like, like zines you would pass out, basically, yeah. I wonder if there's like some sort of psychological study or something that, like lays out what that does to you mentally to see something that's like. Feels clandestine, if you will, cause it's like these like mimeograph things like the quality is terrible so it's so does something in you feel like, oh, this is a secret. That's why it's not all polished and nice. It's like yeah, is there someone, if there's something to that where it's like I'm I'm in, I'm in on something. I know there's psychology about that where you feel like you're in on something everybody else isn't. It hits a certain part of your brain, you know, saying, but I wonder if there's something to do with like how sucky the quality of like yes, things are. Has the same. You know, I, I talk about this a lot. There's this one of the guys behind the Lincoln Project is a fellow named Rick Wilson who is like, I think objectively a bad person. Yeah, but has been historically pretty good at creating certain types of propaganda. He was the guy behind the the Reverend Wright campaign ads during Obama's election. Wow. Yeah, he's that guy. And I interviewed him in 2016 talking about kind of his opinion on Hillary Clinton's campaign ads versus Donald Trump because the the first Trump campaign ads. Really felt like something some teenager had cobbled together on their laptop. And Hillary's ads were like traditional campaign as everyone was. A lot of liberals were making fun of Trump's ads, but they were getting this incredible traction. And the thing he told me was essentially like the the really polished, slick campaign ads don't work nearly as well as the ones that look like they came out of somebody's basement. Because that feels real to people, right? Like it feels more authentic. And I, you know, like, again, he's a very bad person. Yeah, he's not bad at making propaganda. Right. I think about what he told me a lot. Yeah. And that's I think what we kind of what you're seeing here. I think you're exactly right. Yeah. So the Dreyfus affair would prove in the the radical press that kind of comes out of the Dreyfus affair would prove to be the seed of a new militant right wing in France, one that came with its own stabbed in the back myth. Right. We talked about how the stabbed in the back myth in Germany was crucial. Now the right in France is like we lost the Franco Prussian war because the Jews, you know, damn it. And it's it's worth noting that. When the Nazis took over France, they actually had a problem, had serious problems logistically because of how many French people were turning in their Jewish neighbors. They couldn't deal with the sheer number of Jewish people being turned into them. Yeah, it was way more normal to give up your Jewish neighbors to the Nazis than it was to hide them in a lot of Europe. But in France. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Like I have, we talked about so many times, like the the parallels in the in like, Syria and Iraq and Iran, like, and I have, you know, some of my homies. Out there, like, we're trying to explain, like how a caliphate kinda grows. And this is a lot of the, the the thing, too. It's like this. These, like, heavily armed dudes pull up to the house and are like, are you a Christian? And you're like. Uh, Nah. But they are, you know, I'm saying, and it's like, you know, or you down for the caliphate, you down with us. And it's like, well, they, they the ones down there said, it's just like, I just want you to drag my daughter out of my house. So, yeah, them, you know, I'm saying you just turn it down to dude down the street, you know? I'm saying I don't know, but they are, you know, and and it's like a lot of people that signed up. Didn't really sign up. They just, you know, said it's just, I just don't want you to drag my grandma out of the street. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's a factor in it. There's a this is competitively what's going out the when we talk about the Holocaust, that's a complicated factor because a lot of people would claim in their defense later, like after during, like the Nuremberg trial time that they had been forced to carry. These are mainly German soldiers. They had been forced to carry out acts of genocide, and a significant amount of scholarship shows that, like, it's actually was unheard of. For German soldiers to be punished for not engaging in acts of genocide, uh, it was, it was a lot of, a lot of it was just it was a mix of, like, peer pressure and, like, legitimate radicalization. But that's a whole ******* Holocaust is a whole nother story. But this is a part of the story of the Holocaust, though. This is why part of why the the the French people in who are taken by the Nazis are so willing to turn in Jewish neighbors, you know? Yeah. And none of this should be seen as like, kind of ignoring the fact that a lot of French people hid and protected their Jewish neighbors. That actually makes them much more heroic. But that was not the norm, you know? OK. So again, the Dreyfus affair gives birth to the right wing in France and it it it's it's like it leads to this alternative media ecosystem that starts spreading propaganda at A at a huge rate. Now France, obviously World War One comes around and France is one of the Co, Co belligerents in that war and they suffered, you know, terribly as a result. But 1.3 million French soldiers were killed and another million were left permanently disabled, which makes which means that like in that war, France lost as many soldiers dead. The US has lost more than the US has lost in all of its wars put together. Damn. Yeah, it's bad. Yeah, 73% of French soldiers who mobilized for World War One were either killed or wounded. And this is not just include white Frenchmen. This includes a huge number of colonial troops who were brought onto the continent by the French government to make up for the fact that after a while, German machine guns had them running low on white dudes. You know? And one of the stories that's not talked about enough in World War One is how many people from India, people from chunks of Africa from like all over the world, from the Middle East, were brought in to die on the Western Front because like. We own these places and we can make them, you know? Yeah. Beauty of colonialism, you can just yet pull bodies from anywhere. Pull them all from wherever. Yeah. Now, the days and months after World War One's closed brought a wave of revolutions and insurrections across Europe, in Germany and Russia. As we've talked about, all these trauma mad young veterans were major instigators of unrest in what one scholar called the Shatter zones of the empires that died as the wars. Conclusion, Umm, I think is a neat term. Yeah. You know, all these paramilitary organizations start becoming more. Women in Francis spared the worst of this, in part because, you know, they have their stab in the back from the war of 1870, but then they win World War One, which does kind of mean it reduces the the avenues for radicalization, right. People aren't as angry because the war was terrible, but they did win, you know? Yeah, it's not as bad as it is in Germany or, you know, Italy won too, but they kind of got screwed in the victory, you know? So there there's a lot more resentment in those countries. France does have some unrest, though. There's waves of strikes and early 1919. But these didn't really disrupt the status quo. They did, however, terrify French conservatives. This was largely because those conservatives weren't seeing the reality of the strikes themselves, but were instead looking at the violence convulsing Russia as a result of its recent revolution and being like. That's what these people want to bring here, you know? Yeah. So everybody scared or whatever hell happened to Russia. Everybody is. Yeah, it's a huge factor here, you know? Yeah. And you have to acknowledge that, like, we talk a lot about how the people on the left are terrified about what they see happening in France and Germany. People on the right are terrified about what they see happening in Russia. And a lot of. Yeah, again, 9 million people die in that war. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have the Holodomor, which is 5,000,000 Ukrainians being starved as a result of some very ****** ** policies. So, like, they're not like when people are terrified as a result of what's happening in Russia. It's not like, you know, today people being scared of cultural Marxism because, you know, someone wants to talk about. Flavor, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, basically yeah. They have very different. That's a legitimate fear. Yeah. There's they have a leg to stand on right now. Again, they usually still take it to like, well, now we have to just do fascism, which is yeah, it's like, well, bro, yeah, but but it's not quite the same. So the fear of French conservatives were exacerbated by a pattern of progressive social changes that came in the war's wake. The sheer number of men killed and rendered unable to work had to bring more women into the workplace, right? You have a bunch of men who can't take part in capitalism anymore, so you got to bring in women. This brings in expansions and women's rights and a broadening of what was considered acceptable behavior. For the first time, large numbers of French women were both sexually and financially independent of men. And obviously this terrifies conservative of course. Yeah, can't have. I've been making decisions. What's wrong with you? Yeah, they might. They might decide not to make more French babies. Yeah. Which is actually exactly where this leads, because something called the birth rate movement pops up in this period of time. These guys are scared at declining rates of French birth. Now they've started whining in 1871 when Prussia beat France in that war because the French, right before they started blaming Jewish people, blamed the fact that French people, women, weren't having enough babies. Like, that's the thing, like, the right loses a war and they're like, they have to find a scapegoat. Versus the women. You're not making enough babies for us to send into German guns. Yeah, yeah, which is obviously like ridiculous spoil an episode that we're going to drop soon. The reason France loses that war is because they have brass cannons that are basically Napoleonic artillery, and the Germans have modern steel cannons, and that's why France loses in 1871. That's the the real reason. It has nothing to do with birth rate. Yeah. How would it? Yeah, I'm like, I'm even trying to follow your logic. Like what? There's not that many Germans. Yeah, it's not that many of it. What this toddler gonna do y'all say. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But yeah, it does say something about the right wing that they're like, if we'd had more boys to send into their guns, we would have won. Yeah, OK, got it. And then, of course, like, after they, you know, after a decade or so of blaming women, they start blaming Jewish people. So the, the kind of the, the birth rate movement got even more, like gained more traction after World War One because this point, a lot of French dudes had died. So they had a little bit more of a leg to stand on. Like, we need to have more babies because look at how many of our boys. Kill running into guys. You better answer anything. I'm just like, man, I wish these dudes like, what? I'm hearing them just to stab in the back thing and then they had no birth rate. I just wish these kids had, like, Little League baseball at some point to just, like, teach you how to take a loss, man. Just take the loss, bro. You lost none of them. That's the ******* thing. And it's the same ******* thing for like the the Hindenburg and Ludendorf in Germany, where it's like, well, we can't accept that we ****** ** right? It has to be it. Has to be someone else's fault that we lost this war. Yeah, just take the hell, bro. Like, sometimes, you know? Hey, you had a bad day, you know? You just hey, buck up, champ. Like, you just you took the you're lost, all right? Take the hell everybody takes. Hells, yeah, it's like the fat. It's like it's like the American right wing blaming the fact that we lost Vietnam on, like, teenagers protesting. It's like, no, dude, like the ******* Vietnamese kicked your ***. They were better at it than you. Like, this is what happens. Yeah, sometimes you lose. Yeah, usually you lose when you do stupid **** like invade Vietnam, you know, saying yeah, or invade Afghanistan. Should have been over there anyway. Yeah. So anyway, obviously a bunch of members of the birth rate movement get elected to government. They push legislation to encourage childbirth, yada yada. In 1920, a Conservative government is elected and immediately sets to pushing back against what they saw as a rising and sinister communist. Left, they were opposed by the Labour government, which had been swelled by the wars need for heavy industry. During the first six months of conservative power, a series of strikes convulsed both French industry and public services. Still, the start of the 20s was a good time to be a French conservative. The stain of defeat in 1871 had been wiped out by victory over Germany. The new right wing government was seen as being largely composed of heroic veterans, even though this wasn't really true. But the idea was that, like, these guys are all heroes. They're not normal crooked politicians right there. They're men of the trench. Generation. They could be trusted to make hard decisions, to make France great again. OK, so first on the right wing's agenda was, of course, sticking it to the Germans. This defeat. Yeah. The defeated nation did a lot of money to France and reparations, and these were seen not only as spoils of war, but were necessary to revive the French economy because the French had gone badly into debt to the United States in order to continue fighting the war. So they need German reparations to pay off the US, you know? Yeah, my money. Because I owe some money. Yeah, I need my money because. Yeah. Yeah. So when the Germans begged that they couldn't afford to, like, feed their people and pay reparations, the fringe right wing assumed that they were lying and this newly formed network of right wing newspapers and magazines start spreading. Another conspiracy theory. This one is that Germany actually hadn't been all that badly hurt in World War One. They just faked a surrender so that they could rebuild their military and sneak attack Germany, all of their complaints about economic collapse and inflation and starvation. Their lies meant to lower the French into a false sense of security. Yeah, yeah. Is not the case. So the Germans stopped paying reparations because they were literally on the verge of societal collapse, and the French government sends in troops to occupy Germany's industrial heartland. And of course, a big one of the things that happened in this. Is a lot of the troops they send over are like black people from their colonial possessions, which really jump starts. A lot of racism in Germany because, like, you know, nobody ever likes the occupying soldiers. Yeah, nobody. Yeah, nobody wants the messenger. Yeah, exactly. Obviously, it's the one time I feel like in this age or in this era of history where I feel like I have a little more mercy for Germany when they're just like, dog, look, man, we ain't got it, dog. Like, we just ain't got it. Do you know? I'm saying it's like it's your fault. Yeah, don't get me wrong, it's your fault. But you can't squeeze water out of a turnip fan. Yeah, I mean, they're ******* like the thing that they're guilty of in World War One in that era and the reason that like. France and Germany come down so hard on them is like, they're primarily guilty of wanting to do what France and Germany had been doing for two, two or three centuries, you know? Yeah. They wanted an empire. Yeah. They're like, everyone else gets to do it. Why don't we get to do it? Yeah, it's bad to want an empire, obviously, with the chair. The Germans do some really messed up stuff in Namibia, carry out a genocide themselves, like, but also up to World War One and including World War One. If you're looking at like, the number of crimes against humanity committed by Germany versus France or England, not even close. Not even close. Looking closer close, yeah. In 1924, the French Conservatives get their ***** handed to them in a landslide election, and the victors in this election are an alliance between socialists and radicals. Now again, because everything in France is backward, the Socialists were the furthest electorally relevant left wing party, so the Socialists are like as far left, like the Bernie Sanders as far left as you could be in French politics and still get elected. Obviously they're further left than Bernie, but like there, as far left as you can be in France and get elected. The communists hate the Socialists in a lot of cases. As the Communists are further left than that, and they're not really as relevant to the government as a result, the radicals are the exact opposite of what they sound like. The radicals have the same kind of position in France, and this is it, this. As Democrats do. They're the center left, right, OK, the majority left. So the radicals are not radicals and the Socialists are not communists, but they are far left for French politics. Again, everything in France is backward. Yeah, so the radicals and Socialists had worked together in the past. They they were allied in that they all kind of broadly supported human rights, democracy and anti clericalism pushing against like the Catholic Church. But they didn't get along on much else. The radicals were the party of like the petite bourgeoisie, the lower middle class, small business owners and successful peasants. They were big on individualism and self-reliance and of course property ownership as a method of social advancement. The Socialists are socialists. Their partnerships were always awkward. And for one thing, the Socialist Party had a standing rule that none of their deputies were allowed to accept ministerial posts and radical governments because they saw themselves as a Marxist revolutionary party. And if they were seen as working within a liberal government, the communists would eat them alive and suck in their disaffected members. So will they get elected to what is effectively French? Parliament or Congress or whatever. They have deputies, but they won't serve in the government of the radical majority because that would mean compromising the fact that they're Marxist revolutionaries and they'll lose members to the communists then. And the communists hate the Socialists because they're willing to get, like elected at all, basically, and they're willing to work with the radicals. It's very, very complicated and dumb, but it's also like basically what happens between the left all the time, right? You got the the left that wants to actually govern, and you've got the left. That's like, the system is so ****** ** that governing means. Buying into the things that we're fighting against, you know? Yeah. So wow, yeah, despite the fact that actual socialists like weren't taking weren't only take up ministerial jobs and the fact that the left coalition didn't agree on much, the election of this new government which is called the cartel drives the right wing completely ******* and I'm sure Americans can understand what that looked like. The the conservative print media basically calls this stage one of a Communist invasion. The Socialists who the Communists hated were considered to be just the same as the Communists revolutionaries. Sheep's clothing in 1926, the cartel really ****** off the right wing when they approved the Washington Accords, which guaranteed that France would keep repaying her war debt to the United States even if Germany defaulted on their payments to France. At the same time, the cartel brings the Germans into the League of Nations. The cartel in France are like this liberal government is they're trying to rehabilitate Germany because Germany is kind of socialist at this point. So, like, let's bring them back into the national community like we we can't keep ostracizing them as a result of World War One. And part of bringing Germany back in as they negotiate a more reasonable repayment arrangement with Germany that the right wing sees as the left selling out the country in its war. Dead right, Doug, man. So **** dog. Yeah. Do you just. Oh, man, yeah, I'm getting. I feel like I'm feeling itchy on my lower back, man. You know, everyone knows where this is going. Yes, bro. Like, and then and then The thing is this, it's like, in the same way that we call that y'all call Bernie Sanders a radical leftist. I'm like. Talking about Bernie Sanders, talking about stuff that they do in Canada, you know, I'm saying, yeah, the communist bastion of Canada, you know, I'm saying so, like he ain't really radical. He's not really that, you know, I'm saying lightweight, you know, and and when I compare like a party to like, they're the bidens or whatever, I'm not saying they're politics are like, it's like a comparative thing. Like, yeah, I get the scale. I, I totally, I totally following the scale. And I'm saying, yeah, in this scenario is like what they're suggesting is reasonable. They you not going to get. No money. So you're not going to get your money if you kill the Germans. Let's bring them back in and let them rebuild. And we'll eventually get paid if they slower ways, be like this. If we never rehabilitate them. It's the same thing with like, with, like, Prison Reform. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. This, like, it's just going to keep. No, we have to do this. This is reasonable. We're not going to get the result that we both want. So let me just. And you tell me I'm selling you out. OK, bro? That's why I'm getting itchy. Yeah. Yeah. So the years, the cartel. Is in power are basically a constant stream of outrage **** for the now exploding right wing media ecosystem. OK, newspapers like action Francois handed, which means candid gregore and Jesuit partu which means I am everywhere, reach hundreds of thousands and eventually more than a million conservative French readers. The first of these was candid, which had been established in 1865 and from the beginning was both anti democratic and anti-Semitic when communism kind of went viral worldwide. Added a violently anti Communist to its repertoire. Ken Deed was followed by Grimgar, which was named after a French journalist and Jessie Partu was initially not anti-Semitic or right wing. But throughout the 1920s at the direction of its head editor, the paper got more and more extreme. In the late 20s and early 30s it goes all in for Mussolini and it starts to get progressively anti-Semitic until by the late 1930s it was literally just a Nazi magazine. So these are like the big the big names and right wing media candy. And go yeah, yeah, candy gringo. Anyway, so in the early years of the cartel, well, the French left is like, I think objectively being pretty reasonable. The French right wing is losing its entire damn mind. And as we'll again sound familiar to everyone, the right wing reacts to the left having some success by forming a system of violent street fighting gangs so they could beat up their opponents in the streets. She this was, of course, part of a trend in Europe that exploded from 1919 to 1923 or so. We've talked about this. But in the case of Italy and Germany, now again in France there's less unrest and there's less angry veterans who want to tear down to the state because they in that state had won their war. So it takes longer in France for a paramilitary culture to really kick off. One of the most direct causes comes in 1924. As the study France and fascism by Brian Jenkins notes, the right suspicions about revolutionary and anti national nature of the cartel were apparently confirmed in November 1924 when the government sanctioned the internment of the ashes of the socialist. Founding Father Jean Jaray in the pantheon. While socialists and radicals led a courtage to the temple of the Republic, the Conservative Press focused on a communist counter demonstration held in protest at the parliamentary left hijacking of Jaray. The presence of noisy communists in the streets with socialist and radical deputies suggested that the cartel had accepted Bolsheviks into its ranks and the Chamber of Deputies. Right Wing Deputy Pierre Tattinger denounced the revolutionary Saturnalia of the day, which he claimed he had witnessed a true outbreak of revolution. From the international underworld that infects France, Tattinger promised that if the government could not take matters into hand, the leagues of public safety are ready to defend and save our threatened society. Now the leagues are these, these militant organizations, these St organizations. So what happens here is this socialist guy's ashes get brought back to France. This, like founder of the French Socialist Party and the Socialists and the radicals, is kind of a demonstration of left unity. Have a have a ceremony for this, this dead socialist the Communists. Who hate everybody who's not a Communist, have their own rally and they're more extreme, but they're very tiny and they obviously hate the rest of the left. The conservative media looks at just the Communist demonstration, says that's all of them. That's the whole left. They're all like these guys again. It's all the same, right? It's all the same. Nothing changes. Nothing changes. You know this isn't going to change. Me asking you to take a nap. Yep. You know who won't? Radicalized the French, right? Over anti-Semitism based on. Communist demonstrations taken out of context? Yeah man. Hopefully these, uh, these other podcasts, these other podcasts or whatever advertising do that. Yay yay. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month, Mint mobile will give you the best rate. Whether you're buying one or for a family, and it meant family start at 2 lines. 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I don't have to like worry all the time when I'm traveling. Like how many contacts do I have by a go swimming at the lake during the summer? Something I like to do, go to the beach or whatever. I don't have to worry about losing a contact or. You know, bringing swimming glasses or something with me, everything is just easier. And getting it done was easy too, you know. I went in, I had my consultation, they told me I was a good candidate and then I went back in couple of days later. But a Bing bada boom, you know, my eyes were perfect. So LASIK Plus is a leader in laser vision correction in the United States. They have over 20 years in the industry and more than two million treatments performed. If you want to start your LASIK plus journey, you can get $1000 off when treated in September. That's 500 per eye so visitmylasikoffer.com to schedule your free consultation now. Alright, we're back. So this guy. I know you're gonna say that, so yeah, you're using your own family. So this guy appeared tattinger, who will talk about in a bit, is a big advocate of these leagues, these right wing street fighting gangs and he he keeps like for years afterwards he will talk about November 1924, this like 1 Communist rally as and use it as like a whole. The whole reason why the entire left needs to be defeated and a lot of like a huge chunk of Catholics and nationalists in France believe that like based on again this one demonstration, a communist revolution is like right about to happen. Now so frustrated. This was made worse by the fact that the mid 1920s souffrant suffer an economic contraction that, while not as severe as the one experienced by Germany, was pretty bad. Now you mix that in with the declining birth rate. And as Brian Jenkins writes quote, in comparison to the dynamic and youthful regimes abroad, such as Mussolini's Italian fascist state, the Republic did not seem fit for purpose. Sections of the right thus looked for a solution beyond the institutions of the regime to violent extra parliamentary groups known as leagues. So France is having trouble here. And the right, rather than, like, trying to take any accurate stock of things, looks at the propaganda coming out of the Italian fascist state, which is not accurate and is like, see, everything's great in Italy. Why don't we do that? Oh my God. Yeah. Oh my God, dude, it's great. Uh, so the leagues are not quite like the black shirts or the fry core. They're not heavily armed. Most of them are veterans, but they don't have like machine guns generally, and like mass like, they're not private armies. They're groups of combat veterans, generally, who want to like, drink, and fight in the streets against the left. One of the first leagues was founded by that PR Tattinger, and he called them the Jeunesse Patriots or the Young Patriots, and they were initially the youth wing of the League of Patriots, which was a political organization. It's not the same. It's it's, yeah, the young, young Republicans, right. Turning point USA or whatever. Yeah, patriots like up dog, OK. They're all proud boys, you know? Yeah, they're all proud, proud boys. Yeah. So a lot of people on the left recognize the leagues as a threat, and they are. In 1925, one French leftist Luvera noted that since Mussolini's March on Rome, one could no longer so much as walk in the street without wearing a colored shirt. You know, he's talking about like, they've got you've got the black shirts and Rome, the brown shirts in Germany. And now, like, all of our guys have their own shirts, their own colored shirts for each leagues. And he warns that Louvre warns that if these leagues were able to, like, stop fighting each other over petty ******** and could unite under a single charismatic. Leader, the way would be open for what he called the rule of Castor oil and the grenade. There it is, like, basically we've got all these fascists. If they can unify behind one guy, we're in trouble, you know? Yep. There's the Castor oil again. Yeah. It's a real thing in this. Yeah. So in this, the left wing fear was, you know, accurate. Reasonable, but perhaps a bit premature. The French leagues regularly reprinted fascist propaganda and definitely admired the black shirts. But they were also French and if you know anything about France. It's that France kinda hates the idea of other people's cultures coming into France and gaining influence. They are very proud of being French and even French proto fascists, like their Spanish counterparts were kind of didn't like, would argue that they didn't want fascism because fascism before an ideology, right? We we're extreme rightists, but we want our own French version of that. We don't want to, like, steal from Italy. We're France, we're better than Italy. I was like, that's pretty, that's pretty on Brand France. Yeah, it's very on brand for France. That's very France. Yeah. So one scholar named Dobri. Tells this the dilemma of the authoritarian nationalist, which is the fact that nationalists want to be authentically of their nation, because fascism tends to gain power by reacting against purported foreign influence. But at the same time they want to imitate successful authoritarians abroad, and this creates a problem for a lot of fascists. We again we saw the same thing in France. Now the struggle within the French right over this continued through the mid 1920s, while the leagues went through what dobry calls an apprenticeship period to the Fascist international. So the French are. Behind the German and Italian fascists, they're not as as quick. They're kind of learning from them, right? And they're slower on the uptake as a result now because a lot of awful lot of French league members were veterans. The leagues benefited from what became known as the Veterans Mystique, which was a near worship in France of what were called the front generation. People celebrated the trench ocracy, which is like the democracy of the trenches, right? This is huge in Europe. It's not just in France, because in Germany Hitler makes a lot of hay out of the fact that he'd been a corporal. In the trenches, not like an officer or a nobleman, but a normal soldier. Uh, but I think Americans can understand how, like, right wing groups can use veneration of veterans as a way to push their own radical lens, you know? OK. Yeah, Brian Jenkins writes about how one right wing firebrand named Fallaw used the idea of the Pure Trench Warrior quote. Valah warned veterans that the Republicans sabotaged the hard won gains of the war. Only the installation of a fascist and dictatorial combat and state would restore France to the politics of victory. Likewise, the young Patriots leader Tattinger extolled the virtue of the new elite born of war. His group alleged that the cartel had sabotaged the fruits of the war and clipped the wings of victory. These leagues were not. Attracted solely to the veterans supposed moral quantities, only veterans were purported to join the Young Patriots Iron Brigade and the Legions, both elite paramilitary action squads. Now, obviously most veterans don't join the leagues and a lot of them also join Communist veterans organizations. But the worship of veterans and the idea that the sacrifices of 1918 had been betrayed by the leftist leaders of France becomes a popular right wing rally and cry in the mid 20s. Throughout this whole period, the right press continues to gin up a desire for the. Blood of their political opponents. One right wing journalist, politician and St organizer named Charles Morris was jailed in 1925 for threatening to have the Minister of the Interior killed like a dog if police kept harassing the league. Oh my Lord, yeah, there's a couple. Marjorie Taylor Green or whatever her name is the Qanon lady who's talking about that Jewish space later and probably helped carry out an incite. It advised the people that she's the Jew laser. Yeah, that that that Lady. There's like three of her. In France in this. Wow, OK and Maris is kind of one of them now. Maris is an interesting guy. He was born a monarchist and it was is what we would probably call a Catholic fascist today. His earliest political memory was the was the French defeat in the Franco Prussian War which seems to have fueled a lot of his anti left hatred later in life. He became an anti democratic activist in the 1890s and then came the Dreyfus Affair. And of course Morris is a Dreyfus art. He believes that Dreyfus is guilty because he's Jewish and he grows increasingly anti-Semitic after the Dreyfus affair. In 1899, he founds a newspaper, uh, Action Francais, which literally means French action. And yes, it does sound kind of like a ****. His magazine becomes very influential among the French right wing, and Maris uses his influence to, among other things, convince a lot of conservatives that destroying democracy and going full monarchy is the right thing to do. He writes an article in 1899 titled Dictator and King. That's about how we should have a dictator king in France again. Yeah, yeah. You know what? France's problem is not an F kings. You know what? You may remember we had serfdom. Yeah, and puzzle back to that. Let's go back to that. That was amazing. In rickets. In 1905, Mara starts writing articles about how swell it would be for the right wing to create extra legal paramilitary organizations and have them do a coup d'etat. When the leagues rose up, Maris was thrilled, and soon action Francis, or French action, has its own league. When Maris goes to jail for threatening to murder a member of the government, his business partner at the newspaper says this to a gathering of their followers. In 1926, if Morris were wounded or hit, I would at once give orders to have the ministers of the Republic immediately assassinated. So, like the right wing isn't just like dog whistling violence, like we should kill them all, we should kill everyone on the left. Like the American right now? Yeah. Kill them. So what do you so in what? What way do you mean? I mean dead. I mean, we shoot them to death. I mean, we kill them. This is not a symbol. Yeah, yeah, it's wild. And it's the same as what's been what happened ahead of the sixth, you know? Now, obviously Morris and his business partner were not alone in their calls for violence against the left. I'm going to quote from France and fascism here. Such calls to violence often went unheeded, and law and order were not threatened to the extent seen in Germany and Italy. However, low level physical violence was common. Newspaper sellers from rival organizations regularly came to blows in the street, while political meetings were frequently the scene of violence, furthermore. Despite their claims to stand for authority in order, the leagues could fight with the police, too. The French actions created mayhem in the Latin Quarter and beyond, beating political opponents and reveling in confrontations with the police. Meanwhile, a young Patriots leaguer died in March 1926 during fighting with police at a demonstration against the Minister of the Interior, Louis Malvey. So they they these organizations are kind of recruiting and growing because they're fighting with the left and they're fighting with the cops right now. In most of France, the armed paramilitaries start to decline in popularity after 1923, and in France they mostly faded into the background temporarily by 1926 after two years of regular St brawls. They left behind them, in the words of some scholars, a culture of violent rhetoric, uniformed politics and street fighting right, which again, very similar. Violent rhetoric, uniformed politics and street fighting the proud boys. You know, it's proud boys. Yes. Now, this was not the end of violent unrest in France, just to pause, because in 1926 a new Conservative government gets elected and the cartel comes to an end. So that's why the leagues kind of fade after 26 as the Conservatives get elected again. It comes a home game again. OK. Exactly. You know 18 no more. OK, Yep. And the reason the right wins in 1926 is that the left has fractured again. The communists launched a series of attacks against the Socialists, who they call social fascists. Infighting causes the left to temporarily dissolve as meaningful opposition, and this meant the leagues also had a lot less of a reason to exist. Big business had spent the previous four years pumping money into the far right, and they withdraw their financial support after 26, which causes the leagues to collapse. So the leagues are floated by rich businessmen. Who then, like, well, now conservatives are in power again. We don't. We don't want St gangs anymore. Yeah. So the temporary fall of the leagues and the victory of the center right did not mean the fever swamps of far right media ceased operation, and no magazine or newspaper was more influential than French action from a write up in, of all things, the Harvard Crimson quote. It collected within its cells the inheritors of a tradition of nationalist, monarchist and reactionary thought extending back almost 100 years. It was no mere cabal of amoral big businessmen such as supported the so-called committee Franz Algemene and the Ultra. Conservative Grand Press, but a meeting place for distinguished and gifted intellectuals whose disdain for the Republic was wholly disinterested, the result of literary and philosophical predispositions, not any desire to safeguard financial investments. So again, the far right in the in the the period where the left is in control is funded by businessmen who are safeguarding their investments, right? And that's why they want to fight socialists in the street. But the guys propagandizing to the far right are true believers. It's not about money for them, it's about fascism. About the thing. OK, yeah, yeah. So, and Morris being a monarchist is only marginally happier under a Conservative government than liberal one. The king is still gone and he wants a ******* king. So throughout the years of right wing power in France, he continues to advocate for an armed coup as the only way to bring back the monarchy. It would have been easy for people on the left to mistake he and his followers for isolated ***** and a lot of people in the center particularly did. Then the global economy crashed and in France it crashes with the right wing and power. And May of 1932, the left wins again. Their victory is again enabled by the fact that the radicals who are the moderates ally with the Socialists again to avoid splitting the left wing vote. So the left continuously wins in France and Spain and Germany win the the the the Left and the center left are willing to, like, work together electorally, right? Yeah. And the right is obviously enraged and terrified by what was surely a prelude to full on Stalinism. Now. Yeah, I just said that, like the left consistently wins elections in Europe against the right in this. When, you know, they're all willing to work together. The problem with the far left and the center left working together is the same thing that we're seeing now under Biden. Liberals and the left can never get their **** together to agree on anything, and in France, they can't put aside their differences to get a basic aid package together to help people with the depression, which, again, does not sound at all familiar. Yeah, there's my back tingle again. Yeah, yeah. So the Socialists demand direct aid for the unemployed, while the radicals worry about the deficit and think that it's much more important to balance the budget. You know, it's the same exact thing, like, OK, the radicals who are centrists. Their best idea is, of course, austerity cuts in wages for public workers. The intractable debate between the Socialists and the radicals leads to a series of different liberal left governments. Obviously, it's like a parliamentary system, so you can have votes of no confidence. You dissolve the government, you bring in a new government, new ministers. This happens a number of times, and none of these governments are able to actually help people. And the French economy spirals downhill. The right wing correspondingly surges and it unifies behind the thing. The right wing does best, picking up weapons and making death threats to people they disagree with. The leagues that had remained functional after 1926, namely French action, and the Young Patriots see a swell in their membership. They're soon joined by new leaks. In June of 1933 a perfume magnate and fascist named Cotty forms his own paramilitary group which he uses to spread anti Republican authoritarian propaganda and pushes this through the newspaper that he owns. As well, by February of 1934, the perfume guys paramilitary gang Slash newspaper is the most influential and largest fascist movement in France. Are you saying perfume? Yeah, he's a perfume guy. Yeah, like France's most influential fascist gang leader is a perfume dude. Like a guy. Like fragrance. OK, I was big into the fragrance business. Yeah, yeah. This is again, pretty on brand. Pretty on brand. Yeah. Cody's men wore blue shirts and lots of leather and, one has to assume, smelled incredible. You know? Yeah. Sound like they probably looked amazing, too. Yeah, I'm sure they did. Yeah. Yeah. Now, another fascist French guy named Marcel Boucard starts a league called the Francises into September of 1933. Bouchard repeatedly praised foreign fascist governments, and he was famous for making long speeches about the almost sexual love he had for his revolver. Again, another Marjorie Taylor Greene. Right? Like, I'm going to take my clock into Congress kind of guy. It's the same ******* ****. Just the worship of weapons. Yeah, and then of course there's the crawl the few, which is like the cross of fire. This is an organization that had been founded as a Veterans Association for men who had been decorated for bravery in combat. So all of the crowd, a few, the cross of firemen are like not just combat veterans, but men who have been particularly awarded for their courage under fire. So. It's not founded necessarily as a right wing radical militant organization, but it becomes one very quickly. OK? It's leader is a guy named Colonel Laroque, and he holds military style parades and is not afraid to use his men as a political cudgel. And the way they're organized is actually pretty genius. They have, at their height, about half a million officers and NCO's in their membership. And the officers and NCO's are each like put in charge of 10 guys, ten other former soldiers who were of lower ranks, and their job is to get help with those guys. Were those guys using the resources of the league and also control their votes? So the half million or so officers and NCO's and the Cross of Fire control about 5,000,000 votes, they're very politically influential as a result. So these guys are right wing and kind of militant, but they're also very system loyal, right? They're not. We want to overthrow the government there. We want to organize as a political entity in order to dominate the government. Yeah. So Brian Jenkins writes quote in November of 1931 the Colonel and his followers stormed the stage at a meeting on disarmament at Trocadero, bringing an end to the proceedings. Meanwhile the league Shocktroopers called dispose were employed to maintain security at meetings and fight the left in the street. In October 1933 a new manifesto announced a more radically anti parliamentary direction, while the group opened its ranks to non veterans through its volunteers National Auxiliary. So they get, you know, start more system loyal and they get kind of more closer and closer to. Fascism. As time goes on, as 1934 dawned, right wing paramilitaries were as organized and as large as they had ever been in France. The left was too was fighting too much within themselves to the with between themselves to deliver any kind of meaningful aid that might have tamped down on unrest. Meanwhile, the right blamed the global economic collapse on their own leftist and of course the Jews. Yeah, they also are able to look abroad at the propaganda that's being put out by Italy and now Germany and be like look at how good things are going in the fascist. Countries where I assume I have accurate information from we should do that totally. What did they do that we're not doing? Yeah, they're not. We're we're not killing enough leftists, clearly, yeah. And then, as everything in France is about as hot as it could get, what comes to be known as the stavitsky affair bursts onto the front page of every rightist newspaper in France. And I'm going to see how long it takes you to, like, figure out what the most modern parallel to this, to this guy affair, is again alright. Sir Jay Alexander Stavisky was born in Ukraine in 1886, to a Jewish family who'd immigrated to France in 1899. His father was a dentist to Stavisky, however, was a born grifter. While still a teenager, he established himself as a con man. By the mid 1920s, had gotten good at it, making enough money to dress as a rich guy even though he was constantly on the verge of losing everything. Stavisky used his charisma and his ability to trick gullible rich people to keep the cash flowing. France and fascism, writes quote he left a trail of fake companies, counterfeit checks and bonds, and fraudulent share transactions, and following his arrest in July 1926 for stealing and stolen securities, he spent 17 months in the Asante prison while his case awaited trial. Following his release on medical grounds, the hearing of the case against him was repeatedly deferred. 19 postponements and all, leaving Stavisky free to launch a string of further dubious ventures under the alias Sergei Alexander. In 1928, he embarked on a scheme which, though lucrative, would eventually prove his undoing the fraudulent exploitation of municipal pawn shops in Orleans. He extracted 25 million francs from the pawn shop in exchange for fake gemstones, subsequently redeeming the stones with cash derived from the municipal pawn shop he had since launched in Bayonne. This was a much bigger operation, and the credit was financed by issuing bonds well in excess of the value of the articles. Posited cash was then realized to the sale of these fake bonds to banks and insurance companies in the summer of 1933. Having spent lavishly and gambled heavily, Stavisky found himself unable to redeem the bonds and his attempts to win backing for a new operation which he hoped would bail him out yet again. We're soon frustrated. So that's the nature of his con. Yeah. First, it sounded like a pretty good lick, man. He's a good cop, man. For a while. Doesn't work the system. Yeah. So in September of 1933, one of the businesses he caught, an insurance company called. Through judicial inquiry into his business, on December 23rd the director of a pawn shop Stavisky owned broke down. Under questioning, he did not just incriminate his boss, but also a local elected leader from the Radical Party. Stavisky immediately went on the run, fleeing Paris on Christmas Day, and just as quickly the right wing press picks up the story. French action and other newspapers launched a massive campaign to allege that not just the one guy implicated, but a whole host of radical politicians, basically all of them, had been involved in a far reaching financial. Spicy. Since Stavisky was Jewish, you can guess how this folded in with all the fact that all of these papers also had huge **** *** for Hitler and Mussolini. 1 Radical deputy resigned. Another radical, the Minister of the Economy, was found to have encouraged people to purchase junk bonds from Stavisky back in 1932. SO 2 radicals are implicated, like, clearly. So he resigns. And to the right, this proves that all of the other deputies they've been accusing were guilty. To newspaper editors were also found to have been on Stavisky's payroll, which encouraged people to buy. Junk bonds and then these guys are arrested, which feeds into the narrative that liberal press is untrustworthy and part of the Jewish conspiracy. As 1934 dawned, right wing Media could write about nothing else but the Stavisky affair. And then, on the 9th, with public interest at its height, Stavisky himself is cornered by police. At a house in Chewa. He kills himself to avoid capture. So as soon as he kills himself, both the Communist and the far right press leap on the story alleging that Skibisky had not committed suicide. He'd been murdered to cover up his connections to powerful leaders. He's the ******* French, Jeffrey Epstein. He's Epstein. Yeah, he's Epstein. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. Yeah, he's absolutely he doesn't have, like, a network of child prostitutes, but he's a guy who's implicated with a bunch of powerful people in a series of crimes. He goes to jail once he continues. Been in crime implicates more powerful people, and then when he's cornered, kills himself. Yeah. You know, yeah, it's the same thing. It's like, yeah, exact same playbook. Yeah. And and and and and. The best part about the Epstein story was they said the camera glitched. Yeah, and there's there's shady stuff like that with this, right? It's not cameras because it's whatever. It's the same thing. But yeah, not this is and I have that is a one to one, bro. Yeah, it doesn't. Just like with Epstein, it doesn't really matter if he killed himself or was murdered. Same thing with this guy. Matters is that everyone on the far left and the far right is sure that he was murdered in order to protect liberals, right? Or to protect mainstream, I should say center politicians, right? Yeah, yeah. There's way too much at stake. Yeah. You know who won't murder? Jeffrey Yep, you can't, because he already did. But yeah, he's already dead, so we they definitely won't kill him. Definitely won't get products and services that support this podcast. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for. None of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family and. That meant family start at 2 lines. 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So the radical president, where is he there that he's still alive, though, like I feel like your outbreak is. Yeah, I mean, we're not actually prove that, Robert. Not I'm not making any conclusions about Jeffrey Epstein on this podcast. I'm just saying that, like Epstein, this guy Stavisky is said to have killed himself and nobody who's on the left or the right really believes, right? Yeah, there's one definitive thing you could say about Jeffrey Epstein is that I don't care how many dollars you put in before and after his name. He is a pimp. Mr Whiskey is a different kind of pimp. But yeah, just a pimp. Yeah. And this guy is pimpin. Yes. This is a different lick. He's selling different products, same thing anyway. So the radical president, like the OR not President, but like Prime Minister of France, who is again a radical, does his best to ignore the scandal, arguing that it's not a big deal. Like, yeah, the guys who were implicated already got arrested. Like, it's not a big deal. And it might have even been true that, like, the only people implicated had been caught. But that doesn't really matter. Because obviously this becomes a huge conspiracy, and the Prime Minister refuses calls from both the right and from his socialist allies to call for a parliamentary inquiry into the whole situation. This just makes everything worse. Proving to many Frenchmen that there had been a conspiracy, Brian Jenkins writes. What might be called the dialectics of conspiracy thus played a significant role in the escalation of crisis. Stavitsky's death gave decisive impetus to conspiracy theories on the right, and intensified the campaign both in the press and on the street. Meanwhile, the perception on the left that the scandal. Being orchestrated for sinister political purposes led the government to harden its opposite its position and refused to make concessions. This in turn gave the impression that the government was engaged in a cover up and therefore must have something to hide, thereby further reinforcing the rights conspiracy theories. However, in this competitive press environment, it was inevitable that the more radical and scurrilous newspapers that set the pace and tone for others to emulate, it was French action that crystallized public opinion around them and orchestrated the developing affair each day adding fresh names. So it's dossier of suspects and decisively raising the temperature on 7th of January with the headline down with the thieves and an inflammatory appeal to the people of Paris. Most of the conservative press simply followed their lead, albeit in less flamboyant language, which in turn helped legitimize the message. Again, the truth doesn't matter. What matters is the narratives that take off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. From January 9th on, and this is 1934, there were demonstrations and St violence almost every night in Paris. Every week the crowds grew larger. On Saturday, January 27th, the situation was bad enough that the president resigned and the government dissolved. Or the Prime Minister, whatever, resigned in the government dissolved. This was seen as a big victory by the right. But nobody knew what came next. The left are still the elected leaders, right? You dissolve the government. You don't kick out all the deputies who have been elected. You just. Pick a new Prime Minister and new ministers, right? That's what it means. Yeah. And the left is still, like, gets to decide who the new government is, and they bring in a new liberal president, a guy named Deladier. Now, while all this is happening, the Socialists, the only part of the left coalition that has not been horribly tainted by the Stavisky affair, it's radicals that are implicated. The Socialists are not. The radicals need the Socialists both to keep the government from being dissolved and to avoid a deeper investigation into the matter. So, yeah, probably a bunch more radicals were guilty. You know, they really don't want there to be an investigation. So since they had the radicals over a barrel, the Socialists decide to make a demand of their own. Being good leftists. This demand is that the radicals fire the Paris chief of police, Jean Chiappa, because he was a ***** ** **** who sympathized with fascist paramilitary groups. Of course, the far right loves chiapa and they see his sacking and the radical promises that the police will be reformed. So the radicals, in order to keep the government going and avoid an investigation like, well, fire this guy and will completely reform the Paris police. That's the Socialists demand and. The right wing is like, this is like, this is clearly the a precursor to a communist revolution. They're trying to get rid of the police so they can take over the streets and take all of our money, right? Yeah, yeah, dog man. So this starts a ticking clock on the right, because they think that there's this commie plot being carried out and they've only days to act in order to avert it, Larocque Colonel larock of the Cross of Fire declares his paramilitaries to be defenders of public order. One league French Solidarity declares civil war is imminent. While the young Patriots claim the country is in danger, a wholesale purge is being prepared. Newspapers, right wing newspapers run articles about how communist revolutionaries are on the verge of seizing power, Colonel Laroc warns his followers. A government whose sign is the red flag wants to reduce you to slavery. We are threatened with sectarian dictatorship. Nothing that sounds familiar. Like order. Yeah, again, nothing that's ever happened again, nothing in any other country. So frustrating. I know it's terrible. It's just so bad, yes. Elected leaders were also pushing these lights. Philippe Henrio, a deputy from Bordeaux, was a Catholic militant who believed that the Stavisky affair was a Jewish Masonic conspiracy to destroy France on 3 occasions. In January, he took to the rostrum of the Chamber of Deputies to demand right wingers rise up and sweep the Republic. British journalist Alexander Worth was in Paris at the time, and he wrote this in early February. Already on Monday, Paris was full of wild rumours. Troops, it was said, had been brought into Paris. If the demonstrators were to cause trouble, the government would not hesitate to use tanks and machine guns. The work would be entrusted to Moroccan and Senegalese soldiers, who would have no compunction about shooting down their white fellow citizens. And that is by the way, one thing you kind of have to give the French in this. Is that they are kind of the first Western government to have a a significant number of non white citizens. They do that, not that they treat them equally or anything, but like it is a thing that happens in like the 1700s really. But why, yeah. *** **** man. Of course they use them for shock troops, you know? Of course I'm like. I feel like it was about time that one of us say something funny, but it's yeah, I can't. I just. I got nothing because it's just so haunting on the freaking nose. Yeah, it's exactly, it's exactly what's happened, you know? So this prop brings us to February 6th, 1934. The French Government assembles for a vote of confidence in Prime Minister Daladier so a vote on whether or not he's going to keep being the Prime Minister or they're going to dissolve the government again. And I found a French history website, heredity, that describes how things started. Quote in all, hardly more than 30,000 demonstrators, a large majority of them who were ex combatants. Everyone is mobilized on the theme down with thieves and a demand for more. Civility and honesty in the government. At the start. At the call of Lieutenant Colonel de La Rocque, the Cross of fire quickly dispersed as soon as the first clashes with the Mobile Guard occurred. Although it arrived at the end of the afternoon at the gates of the Palais Bourbon, laroque and its veterans refused to occupy it. Their dispersal makes any possibility of overthrowing the regime by force feudal. But on the other side of the sign, around the palace of the Concorde, the demonstration degenerates. Thousands of activists try to March on the Palais Bourbon. The Bourbon Palace, I guess. So what happens here? Is this crowd starts like and and the cross of fire guys are a huge chunk of it starts marching on the gates of the capital and as soon as the police get engaged and the crowd starts fighting with the cops, Colonel laroque calls his men back, but thousands and thousands of other right wing militants continue to surge ahead and keep fighting the cops. And as night falls, the protests go from being just aggressive and violent to being an active attempt to storm the Capitol. Protesters light buses on fire and destroy property, tearing down barricades and barriers as they attempt to breach. The Chamber of Deputies, where Parliament is an active session. The police panic when the crowd starts to break through the barricades and they open fire. Some in the crowd fire back and by the end of it all, as many as 26. We don't have an exact death toll. Some will say 26 people were killed and more than 1500 are injured. Some will say it's more like, you know, 5 to 10 and 1000 injured. But. It's it's everything that happened in the capital on the 6th, except they don't get into side the capital. They don't because the French like order forces just start shooting, like firing into the crowd with rifles. So the riots continue for days, marking what most liberals and leftists would come to see as a coup attempt by the far right. This is probably fair, but it's also true that after the 9th the communists start coming out in force in the streets and do a lot of rioting themselves. And actually, like three or four days after the attempt to storm the capital, a lot of what's happening on the street is being done by the communists. They didn't attempt to breach the Chamber of Deputies, though. The whole affair terrifies everybody, and Prime Minister Daladier resigns on advice from the police and army to avoid further violence for the first time in the history of the Third Republic. Street violence had brought down a French government. The week of February 6th was in fact the most violent period of political unrest in France since the commune of 1871. Not everyone in the right is thrilled by this. Maris, head of French action, seems to have panicked immediately from the Crimson quote. Though he often considered the possibility of the coup in books and in the pages of his movements newspaper, it is doubtful that he ever actually planned a revolution. On the one occasion which fate presented to his grasp, the riots before chamber on February 6th, 1934, he did nothing. Professor Weber calls the 6th of February a victory, lost Morris's hesitation at what seemed the very gates of power. Though this impression was exaggerated was, as Professor Weber says, the moment of truth which showed up the emptiness of almost everyone's position. The parliamentary regime was shown to be a tottering. They're curious structure. The rightist rioters had made their point, but the right itself was exposed as well, exposed as a lot of theorists sorely lacking in the capacity to carry out their dreams. French action had organized publications, public meetings, a party structure that extended through France. But they lacked the will to power. They were incapable of a Munich push, much less to 10 year conspiracy to capture parliamentary power at the moment of reactions, greatest political triumphs in Europe. French fascism collapsed. Wow. Kid doesn't sound familiar at all. Wow. Yeah. No, I've never. And again, ******* Morris here, he's like Alex Jones almost, right. He's this guy who's telling everyone overthrow the government. And then when they start, because Alex Jones is there on the 6th and DC, he ******* leaves as soon as people cross. He's like, no, Sir. Yeah. Wait. Yeah. At first I thought when you was talking about the other dude that ended up being Epstein, I thought it was Jones at first. No, no, no, no. Just like ******* Stavisky. You're Epstein? Yeah, he's definitely Epstein. But at. First, we first started talking. I was like, it's not like a little Alex Jones, but no, that's Maurice is your Alex Jones. Alex Jones. He's just like, oh, wait, I'm not. No. I just wanted to make money telling people to revolt and getting them, like, ginned up. I didn't actually want that to happen. That's scary as hell. Yeah. Y'all. Oh, y'all actually pull triggers. Uh Oh no. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Kurt, you could see Colonel de la Rock kind of in the same light, although you could also argue that he was just very state loyal. Right. Like, he wanted a new government. He was. He wanted less democracy, but he wasn't about to storm the capital. Yeah, so the main outcome of February 6th was that the elected right wing grows closer and closer to the insurrectionary far right. It also unifies the left wing, inspiring a Popular Front in France that takes power after a brief period of conservative rule following the Ladie's fall. The 1936 French Popular Front was at its core an anti fascist political union, and domestically it does a good job of stopping the French far right from capturing power. And this has actually led to a theory in French historiography. That Francis itself immune to fascism in a unique way. The story goes that a mix of France's longstanding Democratic traditions and the fact that it's right wing is split between its own native brands of extremism means the country can't fall into fascism. This is nonsense. I will tell you right now, I think this is ******* ******** and there are a lot of scholars. The book France and Fascism is a very long scholarly treatise on why this is ********. But a lot of French scholars after World War Two will argue this that, like France, is immune to fascism. The reality is that France came very close to falling to fascism on the 6th, and it did fall to fascism in 1940. Now this is by conquest, right? The the Nazis. Fascists don't gain power in France by elections, the Nazis conquer France. But when the Nazis take over, they needed to find a bunch of willing French Frenchmen to run Vichy France. And they find a ton of these guys, a huge and already radicalized group of French fascists who are ready to chip in and. Help out. And most of these guys who run Vichy France and the Nazis take over are people who had been involved with the February 6th insurrection, right? Yeah, exactly. Like a ton of these ******* dude, easy. Yeah. It's crazy that it's the 6th also. Yeah. And it's and it's the same. It's February 6th, right? It's very autistic. Like, when I started reading about this, I was so ******* shocked because I was thinking like, well, you know, if you wanna make find a good comparison to the January 6, there's aspects of the Munich coup. There's. Aspects of of of the of the March on Rome, but like, oh **** no, it's it's it's Feb 61934. That's exactly what happened, yeah. So a lot of French fascists who had been a part of, you know, what happened on the 6th wind up joining the Nazis. Remember Felipe Henrio the the OR Henriette whatever, the right wing deputy who was basically the French qanon Glock Congress person who was like, we need to overthrow the government. While he's in the government under occupation, this guy becomes the voice of radio vishi broadcasting Nazi propaganda to millions of Frenchmen. Pierre Tattinger, who founded one of the first paramilitary leagues, became the President of the Paris Municipal Council under the Nazis. John Chiapa, the fascist cop, was made High Commissioner of the Levant, but thankfully died in a plane crash pretty soon after that when he shot down over Lebanon by the Italians accidentally. Yeah, yeah, Morris celebrated the Nazi victory as a divine surprise. Now, he was not a Nazi because he ******* hated German people, but he hated Jewish people more, and one of his chief complaints about the occupation is that it was too lenient on Jewish people when the Third Reich fell and France was liberated. Maurice. That's arrested and indicted for complicity with the enemy. Based on the pro Nazi articles he published at the start of the war, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Upon his sentencing, Maris is said to have exclaimed. It's dreyfuss's revenge. Oh God. The day he brought it all the way back, yeah, it's it's perfect. It's a perfect circle. Ohh, man. And somebody screenshot of his tweets. Game put him in prison. Yeah, that's exactly what happens, more or less. And that prop is the story of February 6th, 1934 in Paris. All right. Cool ****. Right in Paris. Great time. Sheesh, is everybody feeling? Haunting. Yeah. Yeah. The yeah. I like. And it's. Yeah. Because I didn't have, I didn't know much about this either. So when I was joining the chorus of everybody who's fascinated with history going guys, I'm telling you like this. We've seen this before. I don't know. I know there's no one to one, but we've seen something like this before. This one. I'm like, oh, this is the close. This is the closest to like you said in the beginning. Like, oh, damn, I wasn't even counting this one. Yeah, I know. And it was it was some somebody sent me and I I honestly forget who it was. But somebody like, somebody who I have texted with on signal text said, like, you should look into January 6th, 1934. And I did. And I'm like, Oh my God, yeah, this is the same thing, dude. It's so, so obviously it was a great, a great, you know, episode for are the fascists who failed part of this? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of lessons to take out of this. One of this is that. The right loses when the left and liberals work together electorally. And the other is that when the left and liberals work together electorally, they generally can't agree on enough to do anything that will actually stop the fascists from getting stronger. That was one of my that was one of the biggest lessons I'm learning from. This one is just like, oh, we're so progressive, we're so, well me and my wife call it you're so open minded, you're close minded, you know, I'm saying so like, yeah, I just can't get it together because you're not open minded enough. You know, yeah. And it's, you know, I think it's something a lot could argue that it's largely on the radicals because they have more power in the government and they kind of refuse to do any sort of meaningful aid that could actually have have clamped down on the far right. But also, like, I don't want to like, negate #1 like, the media is a huge part of this, both in the United States and in France, right? This alternate media ecosystem kind of means that, like, maybe even if the radicals had agreed with the Socialists and they put out an effective aid package, would that have been? Enough to overcome the propaganda. And I don't know, nobody does, nobody knows. But yeah, like, I, I forget that there's a modern historian too. It's like we went from the information age to the age of belief to the belief age. You know, I'm saying it's like we've actually switched ages. It's not information, it's belief, you know? So like, and this media circus that we're all in of, like, you know, the closed ecosystem of your, of your confirmation bias means that information don't matter believe to so. But at the end of the day, like, like you said, like one could speculate. I just feel like anyone, anyone votes for somebody that puts food on a table, you know, I'm saying so like it's about it if you put it if, if, if someone's not into the specificities of, of caring for and others, you know, I'm saying like like the way that we think about government and the way that the process, but just as simple as. I need to be able to feed my kids, and you're making this possible. You know, I'm saying in a time that, like, I can't just go get it myself, you know? Then why would I not vote for this? You know, I'm saying, why would I not back this? Like, you know, it could be a check for two grand a month. I think it's great, you know? Yeah. And that's one of the things Della Rock in this cross of fire group, like, they actually do provide aid to other struggling veterans. And that's a big part of their power and why they're able to all get together on stuff. And it's like, yeah, you know, it's it's there's a lot. In these lessons, there's a lot in the stories of just like France and Spain where, like one of the things we see when you compare them to Germany, Italy, is that when the police and the military are more on the side of at least the center and democracy than they are on the side of the right, the right can't gain power through an insurrection. Right. In Germany and Italy, the police and the military are on the side of the fascists. And so the insurrections work, you know, eventually. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in the Munich insurrection is stopped by the police and stuff and. The reason the Spanish Civil War becomes a war is because most of the military and most of the police in Spain don't go with the fascists. Yeah. In France, it's kind of the same thing. Yeah. Which is a lesson. I think there's a lot of. Great lesson. Yeah. Confusing lessons in all of this. Yeah. Another is that regardless of what the far left does, the far right will turn them into everyone who is left of center. Right. The alternative to the boogeyman. Yeah. Yeah. And even if they don't do anything. Lie. It's like the kind of thing where, you know, liberals during the election were like, look at the Umm like all, you know, these Antifa kids breaking all these windows are going to lose us the election to Donald Trump. And it's like, that's actually not what happened because the right are. We're so propagandized that no matter what Antifa did, it wouldn't have if they just marched peacefully in the streets, the propaganda would have, would have made them seem like the coming of a communist revolution. Yeah, what matters is that liberals not buy into it and and and and to work. That's what I feel like we did where you were just like, hey, the defund, the police would have lost his election. Look, man, don't shoot at us, Doc. Like, yeah, you. Yeah. Look, it did listen, you know it did it. Number one. You know, I'm saying you like and as much as we could, unfortunately, it's like, well, Trump fumbling corona, like, is like, really? Yeah, but one is the election, you know? I'm saying so, like, don't look, man. Same team, bro. I'm just trying to tell you this is a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. 10. Yeah, yeah, it's there's a lot, lot to learn. And in our next episode, our penultimate episode, behind the Insurrections. We're going to talk about the business plot. So we're going to be coming back home to the old US USA. Yeah, that's going to be good. That'll be Thursday. But for now, prop, you want to drop some plegables up in this? Yes, this, yes, because I'm so excited because. The pre save link for my first single on the next record is now out. Excellent profit pop.com, yes, and all my socials. Also, there's a new coffee roast called the culture, also available on the website pulled from Ethiopia and like, tasted it myself, met the farmers. This is real stuff. And I will be on hood pot. Dank. Anderson. Anderson, you want some coffee, dog? All you gotta do is DM me, homie. Like you ain't gotta, like, yell like that and I'm telling the truth like you barking at me like I'm lying. And hood politics with props. Shooting out doing that's going cool. You could get on all the, all the, all the podcast sections. And which was funny because, like, just now, one of the predictions were not just now last week, one of the predictions came true and we kind of did a little funny little roast about that. What, the prediction of like, the proud boys being infiltrated. Oh yeah. Yeah. I told you it was infiltrated, guys. Well, it's it's, you know, it's one of the things that's frustrating to me about the proud boys is that, like, Enrique Tarrio was an FBI informant. Yeah, and this is all being taken by a lot of the left to mean that, like, well, the the the proud boys were an FBI up from the beginning. And like, of course, that's not really how it like it. It's this, it's this thing you see, it's the thing that J Edgar Hoover wrote about where, like one of his goals with COINTELPRO was to make the FBI seem so powerful and omnipresent that people would think they were responsible for everything. And it's less that and more that, like, Enrique Tarrio is the kind of person who is immediately going to roll on everybody that he was involved with. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that, that, yeah, that, like goes back to me, like in the left, where I'm like in the same way, I'll be looking at like, a lot of the right wing people. And I'm like, yo, where's your antennas, man? Like, discern this situation you like, that's not what's happening. You feel me and I feel like with this one, that's one of those situations where I'm just like, yo, you you said the whole thing is a FBI front. Like, like, it's come on, man. Your antennas, bro? No, they got a guy. Of course, a bunch of them were talking to the feds. Yeah. They've got, like, yeah, yeah. They saw the same. They saw the same problem as we saw. And they said we better do something about this **** you know? I'm saying we don't want another gang that's like one another gang. Yeah. Yeah. We're the we're the top gang, you know? Yes. But it's better, like, yeah, people will believe what they believe. It's like with Epstein and with Stavitsky, you know? Yeah. You know, maybe killed himself, maybe he didn't. You know he did. He was murdered because he knew. And it's like, you know, ******* a with both Epstein and Stavitsky. You look at the response of the people in power to it, and it's like, yeah, it's pretty *******. Us. You know you don't want his. You do not want his passcode. He don't want that, that if, if, if that fool's phone got hacked, broken into. All the text messages on that. Yeah. No, it's all bad. Yeah. And I mean, it comes back to the fact that one of the reasons why conspiratorial thinking can be so influential and spread so quick and be so hard to fight is that there's a ******** of actual conspiracies happening all the time. That's the problem. You know, I'm saying it's the same thing with, like, we talked about the antivaxxer thing, where it's like, it's not like the medical industry is helping, you know, saying, like, it's not like ******* Purdue Pharmaceuticals. Reputation helps people trust vaccines. You **** you know? I'm saying the Sackler family and **** like, y'all. Crooks? Yeah, I know you're crooks. That said, I don't know nobody that got polio. Hmm. Joe saying so. Yeah. ****. Yeah. Anyway, it's it's it's all great and great. Our next episode will be great too. Let's talk about how you know what else is great. The history Roberts Twitter feed you go follow him at I write. OK. I don't recommend that at all. Stay the **** *** of Twitter. I think it's great. And you've dropped some few gyms. As a matter of fact, I was waiting to this one to talk about the, the talk about the the the Trout Bait shop tweet. That was brilliant. I'm giving you. What was it **** around and? What was what was the top about the the bait shop? Was it? It was **** around and I'll find out. Yeah. Ohh yeah. **** around and find trout. **** around and find trout. I was like, let's go. I like to me I was like, look, that's you caught that. Whatever you want. That's a brilliant. I think we could make a lot of money. That's that's my that's my retirement plan as **** around and find trout. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. Let me tell you why. Because I went one time of my life to. Oh, we talked about this. When I ended up in Wyoming and Montana, fly fishing, just on the most, the most random thing, I just got these friends in different places that allow me to do just white **** right? But it don't have to be white ****. It don't have to be like, what if I like fishing? What if I think rainbow trout is beautiful? It's just uncomfortable to walk into the trout store, the fish store, and look around and just be like, oh, I look like I don't belong here. Like, you made it very clear that I should not be in this place, but if it's called. Look around and find trout. I'm like, uhhh, let's shop there, bro. This food cool. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a radical intersectional bait and tackle shop. Rainbow props delicious and rainbow trout is listen. Oh my gosh, yeah, I'm. I'm like a I'm like a B minus pescatarian. You know, I'm saying, like, I'm basically eat fish, except I live in Boyle Heights, so the tacos are flawless. So I break rules for the tacos, but. Bro, **** around a fine trout. Let's go **** around and find trout. I cosign. That's what y'all have y'all made the T-shirt yet. No, no, no, we have not. But now that it's been in an episode, we can. It needs to be a T-shirt anyway. Anyways, that's that's that episode. Everybody have a nice rest of your day. Yeah, yeah. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. If you could completely remove one phrase from your vocabulary, which phrase would you choose? I don't know. Correct answer. No, I meant I don't know which phrase, and the best way to banish I don't know from your life is by cramming your brain full of stuff you should know. Join your host, Josh and Chuck on the Super Popular podcast packed with fascinating discussions on science, history, pop culture and more episodes that ask, was the lost city of Atlantis Real? I don't know. Is birth order important? I don't know. 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