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Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her social discoveries on chimpanzees. So four whole months, the chimps ran away from me. I mean, they take one look at this peculiar wide ape and disappear into the vegetation. In wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts, sisters of the Underground is a podcast about fearless Dominican women who stood up against the brutal dictator Kapal Trujillo. He needs to be stopped. We've been silent and complacent for far too long. I am Daniel Ramirez, and as a Dominicana myself, I am proud to be narrating this true story that is often left out of the history books through your has blood on his hands. Listen to sisters of the underground wherever you get your podcasts. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tik T.O.K. You maybe even heard the rumors, your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we hear at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions, sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research. With you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. What's anti-Semitic? My organic farming. I'm Robert Evans, a host of behind the ********. This was yet another trademark, unbelievably bad introduction. My guest with me for part two of our series on Rudolf Steiner. As with part one, Chris Crofton. Hey, how are you? I'm good, man. How are you? Glad to be back? I'm good. I'm doing good. I'm drinking some cold brew coffee and still got this. Sinus thing that I've had, but I think I'm going to have it for life. Probably, yeah, because of bad **** I did when I was a ghost. Well, your ghost, you know, I mean, your ghost knew that. The lessons you gain from this sinus infection in critically development as a person. Yeah, nothing that I'm bald with them. I'm bald too. Can you imagine what should I did when I was a ghost? I can remember, I can remember the deep satisfaction I had sitting in Mosul and watching air strikes hit apartment buildings and seeing little kids stream out of them. Just blood pouring down their faces and going. I'm glad their ghosts made the choice to go through this. Yeah. That was a smart decision for those ghosts. Those kids are going to learn some lessons. I went to one. I go to those Rudolph Steiner Dr what are they called again? Anthroposophists. Yeah. And I was like, I have a sinus infection. And he was like, what do you expect? And then I was good. I had to pay him 50 bucks. Gave you some crayons, though. Yeah. You know how you behaved. Do you know how you behaved in the 14th century? And I was like, yeah, I don't know. You were a **** ****. Yep. So you're. Yeah, you're you're, of course, you're bald and have a sinus infection. So. We're talking Rudolf Steiner now. Rudolf Steiner obviously still has huge numbers of admirers and followers in the world today. Some of those people maintain a website called Waldorf answers that looks as if it was coded and last updated around 2003. And immediately after I wrote that line, I actually browsed over to the chunk of the site where I could find out when it was started, and I found out that it was actually opened in 2004. So. I'm just pretty good at guessing when websites were made as all I'm all I'm talking about. Uh, so here's what they have to say about anthroposophy quote. Waldorf education was developed by Rudolf Steiner 1861 to 1925 at the beginning of the 20th century. It is based on Steiner's broader philosophy and teachings called Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy holds that the human being is fundamentally a spiritual being and that all human beings deserve respect is the embodiment of their spiritual nature. This view is carried into Waldorf education is striving to develop in each child. They're innate talents and abilities. Oloff schools operate in a nondiscriminatory way, without regard to race, gender, ethnicity, religion or national origin. Some of the ideas in Waldorf education and anthroposophy are complex and require a degree of goodwill on behalf of the reader to grasp. So goodwill? Yeah. Yeah. You gotta really, you gotta really have some goodwill to ignore the racism. That's a funny way to put it. What? That is a funny way to put almost taking a while to think of that one. Yeah, that was a long meeting. How do we, how do we phrase our leader was basically a Nazi, you know, Frank Luntz's? No, he's the Republican guy that's made a zillion dollars off of naming, you know, social programs, entitlements. And Ohio. And he named, you know, enhanced interrogation and he's in charge of, like, language for the Republicans. Well, he is a fortune. I mean, I gotta say, he's nailing it. Yeah. He's very punchable face. What's interesting. Go ahead. Yeah. No, I just. I was going to say he's nailing it. Like the CIA was nailing those men's testicles to their wooden chairs in the enhanced interrogation. Yeah, that's, that's the that's so the kind of people that come up with like, how are we gonna say. Like, you know, you should you should read this and and not be freaked out by the racism. Like what? What? You know goodwill. Well, we get goodwill. Read it with goodwill. Like, read it like an ******* again. Once I get my friends dangerously drunk on Everclear at the end of the night and they wake up in horrible pain, I told them it's going to take some good will on their behalf to forgive me for poisoning them. And it does. And just real quick. Here's something in terms of behind the ********. I would definitely ******* classify Frank Luntz as a ******* and a friend of mine. He's, you know, he's made a zillion dollars off of, like, rebranding. Social but the thing that makes me the maddest is social programs being called entitlements. I mean, I just can't believe how why liberals got on board with calling him entitlements, but probably because they're not really liberal, added politics. And they're not really liberals either. But he hired my friend to play at his party. Frank Luntz. Frank Luntz has a full-sized diner, an actual diner built on his property. Like a fantasy diner, like a whole you with a working soda gun and everything. Jesus Christ. And he had he had like a. He had like a. He's a so much money. He has a replica of a diner in his yard. Anyway, he wants to live that scene from the first back to the future movie every day of his life, right? And nobody came to this party. Nobody came. He had like 1000. Raiders in a million he has no friends. Well, yeah, why would you be? That guy's that's behind the ********? The ********? Yeah. End up all alone. With all their **** and all their ******* theories, yeah, now, so we just talked about how in the Waldorf answers site they they really point out that, like Waldorf schools are nondiscriminatory, they don't take into account race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or national origin. And here's where I point out that if you Google Rudolf Steiner, anti-Semitism, you will find yourself presented with a return from this website and a page titled Rudolf Steiner, an active opponent of anti-Semitism. That title is all in big capital letters and it purports to be a study of the man's life and writing that proves that Steiner battled against anti-Semitism his entire life, the website notes. In the 1890s Steiner vehemently argued against the outrageous excesses of the anti Semites and condemned the anti-Semitic brutes as enemies of the human rights as it convinced liberal, whose position coincided with that of reform Jewry. He actively supported the integration and full legal and social status of the Jews in Europe in 1888, he wrote. The Jews need Europe and Europe needs the Jews. Against the anti-Semitic propaganda of hatred he set his ideal one should only value mutual actions between individuals. It is completely uninteresting if one is a Jew or a German that is so simple that one is almost stupid saying it. How stupid does one then not have to be to say the opposite? So it goes on like that for quite a while, quoting very real things that Steiner wrote or said arguing against anti-Semitism. The essay would probably be very convincing evidence of the fact that Rudolf Steiner was not an anti Semite if it weren't for the fact that, number one, there's almost nothing in there about statements made by Steiner after 1900 and #2 people who aren't anti-Semitic rarely need entire web pages devoted to how not anti-Semitic they are. You don't run into that for, say, Georgia O'Keeffe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thankfully, our old friend Peter Stoudenmire of Marquette University put together a detailed breakdown of Rudolph's ideas about the Jews, titled Rudolf Steiner and the Jewish question. It's a very nuanced piece, and I'm sure that the Waldorf people would describe it as a hit piece, but I don't think it takes that tone at all. Stoudenmire acknowledges that Steiner's views of the Jews changed significantly over the course of his published career quote in the overall arc of Steiner's intellectual development. His attitude towards Jews moved from an unreflective embrace of anti-Semitic prejudices to public denunciation of the excesses of organized anti-Semitism to an elaborate racial theory of cosmic evolution in which anti-Semitic themes played a prominent role. So he was an anti Semite who had a creative. History to his anti-Semitism. Who is this Stoudenmire man? Stoudmire is a professor at Marquette University of German History who has done most of the writing that I found on Rudolph Steiner. He's, like, the expert on Rudolf Steiner. So the people of the Waldorf school do not like this stoudmire, man. They're not gonna be fans of this studmire. No, they're like, would you shut up? Yeah. Stop reading the things that our Guru wrote. Yeah. Yeah. You're making them look bad. You need to have more good will. Ah, that's it. Yeah. You're not reading it right. You're not using enough goodwill. So prior to about 19, ******* insane. God, yeah, it's it's Batty. Now, I want you to remember in the the Waldorf answers section, one of the things they say is that he wanted greater integration of of Jewish people with Germans, right. He wanted more integration, which sounds nice. If you just think of the term integration the way it was used when, say, we moved away from segregation in the United States, yeah, that's not what Steiner means if you're going to get into most of your ******* time or any of your time talking about. Let's put it this way if you. If you spend a lot of your time talking about Jews. There's something wrong with you. If you specifically, if you're talking about the Jews, if you're a white guy, why are you talking about the Jews all the time? And why is anybody talking about just talk about why don't you talk about what you had for breakfast? Why don't you stop talking about the Jews? Why? And Rudolph Steiner talked about the Jews a lot. Yeah. I mean that's The thing is like the the the people defending Steiner. It's like, well then why did he talk so much about the ******* Jews? He's not Jewish, so why is he talking about Jews so much? Well, that's what we're going to get into. So. Prior to 1902, uh, it's fair to say that Rudolf Steiner's anti-Semitism was not out of line with mainstream anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria, Hungary. During his Pan German nationalist. He was no more racist than the average person and he would probably less racist than the average American. He was no more racist than the average person of goodwill. Yeah, yeah, you well, you gotta you gotta be fair about that. Like people believed all sorts of crazy **** about the Jews as a matter of course back then. There's literally there's still, to this day, churches. Europe with like reliefs of Jewish babies suckling at the utters of a pig. Like that's a thing that's on ancient medieval churches. So like you grow up in that there's a base level line of anti-Semitism, then I can't judge you for more than you judge everyone in the society for, right. So there's like you have to in order to, for me to like really harp on you specifically as an anti Semite. If you came up in Germany and Austria, Hungary, during this. You have to go to another level of anti-Semitism. Mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in the early 1900s, Steiner **** got weird and decidedly more hateful and extreme because, and yeah, we're going to spend a while talking about that. Steiner spent most of his life as what you would call an assimilationist, which is what they talk about, and that in that Waldorf answers part where he wanted to see integration. But what this meant in Steiner's context is he wanted to see Jewish people assimilated into German culture. Now, this is better than wanting to kill them all, but he'd still sought the elimination of Judaism like that. Was his goal. He wrote that he hoped quote jewelry as a people would simply cease to exist. He didn't want this to happen by them being killed. He just wanted them absorbed into German society and the whole culture and religion to to die? Yeah, that was his goal. ******* settlers that wanted to make a Native Americans go to Christian schools and just exactly make white people out of them. Exactly. You can say it's better than like the literal Nazi policy of gassing them to death, but like not a lot better, right? No, same. Yeah, motivated by the same ideas. And you can also see how, like, that could easily turn into the other thing, given a couple of bad years. Yeah, yeah. Now, Steiner considered himself, quote, German by descent and racial affiliation, and he was offended by the idea that Jewish people considered themselves Jews as well as Germans. He thought that represented a fundamental conflict of interest and made it impossible for Jewish people to truly be loyal to Germany. This is silly, but I'd like to remind you that when JFK was elected, a whole lot of Americans. We're worried he'd be loyal to the Pope rather than the United States. So. Everybody's dumb is the point. In 1890, Steiner wrote an article on stylistic corruption in the press in which he blamed Jewish journalists for using, quote, Jewish vernacular idioms and other expressions mocking the German language. Why didn't he? Why didn't he just read them with goodwill? Yeah, he didn't. Yeah. I'm not gonna let this job. I'm still blown away by this goodwill thing. I'm not going to stop saying it's ******* amazing. In 1886, he wrote an article in which he called Jews a people whose religion does not recognize freedom of the spirit. He believed Jewish people had no ability to appreciate the religion of love that was Christianity, God. In 1888, he wrote extensive defenses of a book homunculus by Austrian author Robert Hammerling. Homunculus was, of course, a work of profound anti-Semitism, chronicling what Hammerling viewed as the Jewish drive to conquer the entire world. Hemmerling thought Zionism, which was the desire of some Jewish people to immigrate to Palestine. He believed that was part of a scheme, to quote found a new Kingdom of Israel destined to encompass the whole world eventually. Y'all remember when Israel conquered the world? Uh, if you're a racist, you do now. Rudolph loved this book. He called critics of it oversensitive Jews who couldn't make an objective judgment of the work. This is Steiner quote. It certainly cannot be denied that jewelry today still behaves as a close totality, and that it has frequently intervened in the development of our current state of affairs in a way that is anything but favorable to European ideas of culture. But jewelry as such, has long since outlived. This time it has no more justification within the modern life of peoples, and the fact that it continues to exist is a mistake of world history whose consequences are unavoidable. We do not mean the form of the Jewish religion alone, but above all the spirit of Jewry, the Jewish way of thinking. Now what's what's the charitable reading of that? I mean, it's just so ******* nicely and just these people you can't. This ******* one dude decides that. A whole ******* culture needs to go away because that's what he thinks sitting in his ******* chair and his stupid study or whatever. I mean, it's just so arrogant. It's it's just the height of. It's it's incredible that that that someone would sit and say like, oh, a whole culture needs to go away because I just, I'm tired of it or I don't like it. And it's it's, you know, it's particularly frustrating and particularly offensive because Steiner directed his anti-Semitic his desire for assimilation was focused primarily towards the Jewish people in his area, Viennese Jews, which of all the Jewish communities in Europe Austria's Jewish population had done the most to integrate themselves in the mainstream society is a general rule. The most patriotic people in Austria and in a lot of like German speaking areas, were Jewish Germans during World War One. They served at a disproportionately high rate. Both the Austro Hungarian and the German militaries. So the fact that Steiner targeted these Jewish people in particular suggests that he was really, really, really ******* anti-Semitic because, like, he wasn't just going after, like, the like, obviously they wouldn't be OK either. But he wasn't focusing on like, Jewish refugees from Russia or whatever, and, like, harping on them because they spoke a different language. He was looking at people who were identical to everyone else, but wearing yamakas and, like, furious about that. So, like. He's not just an anti Semite, he's like a Gold Star ******* anti Semite like he's he's particularly ******* racist and one of the most racist places that's ever existed. That's important to note. So in the late 1890s Steiner became intellectually taken by the writing of individualist anti religious thinkers like Max Stirner. As a result, he focused more on the Jewish religion and Zionism. Now, if you'll remember that Waldorf answers defensive Steiner. They called him an opponent of anti-Semitism. And claimed that he railed against it. When they make those claims, they pull out quotes like this from Steiner. anti-Semitism is not only a danger to Jews, it is also a danger to non Jews. anti-Semitism, and with it racism, is a symptom of spiritual decay. It is a symptom of a cultural disease. Therefore it is a duty of everyone to fight against it in all areas as energetically as possible. And that is something Steiner really said. Here's another thing Steiner really said. Actual anti-Semitism is not the cause of this Jewish hypersensitivity, but rather the false image of the anti Jewish movement invented by overwrought imaginations. Anyone who has dealt with Jews knows how deep runs. The tendency to create such an image, even among the best of their nation's mistrust towards non Jews, has completely taken over their souls. So Steiner saying that anti-Semitism is bad and in, you know, evidence of ignorance. But he's also saying that anti-Semitism is, for the most part, a fake problem invented by Jewish people to justify their persecution complex. Which sounds really familiar to something some people say about racism today, like, oh, it's bad to be racist against, you know, black people or Native Americans or Hispanics. But really, most of the time when those people see racism, they're just being oversensitive. Like, like, I'm tired of *******. Right wing Internet right there. Yeah. Right wing Internet or right wing people in general are just like, ohh, the Liberals just love saying racist. Yeah, it's not because racism is terrible. Yeah, it's not because they're racist. They just can't stop saying that because they just the other this hysterical about race. And it has nothing to do with the fact that we're all actively acting like racists. No, it has everything. They're just they're just looking for racist fact, like if racism is at the same level it's always been, which is fine. And charitably read our racism. Like, if they did, they wouldn't have a problem with it. Yeah, I mean, I just saw it last night after the debates, like something like the the Democrat. I mean, the Republicans saying like that the Liberals can't stop talking about racism. Like, that's their that's their thing. It's just yeah, it's a fake problem. Yeah. From oversensitive people of color. Yeah, and, you know, Steiner was the kind of guy his defenders will always pull out. He has a bunch of quotes about anti-Semitism being bad, and they'll always pull out those quotes where he rails against particularly organized anti-Semitism. And you know, he did say those things, but the the write ups of him that quote them ignore quotes like this, which is also from Rudolf Steiner. I consider the anti Semites to be a harmless people. The best of them are like children. They want something to blame for their woes. Much worse than the anti Semites are the heartless leaders of the Jews who are tired of Europe, herzel and Nordau. They exaggerate an unpleasant childishness into a world historical trend. They pretend that a harmless squabble is a terrible roar of cannons. They are seducers and tempters of their people. Again, saying this about 20 years before the Holocaust, it's just a gaslighting. And and that's yeah. I mean like there was no, you know, that's a modern expression, but the idea is it's what what Trump does, too. He says something racist and then says that he didn't say it or that it was taken wrong. And you just keep flip flopping. You keep saying something horrible and then saying that people took it wrong. And then you say something horrible again and then and then somehow you end up like you're, I don't know, it's like you introduce. Wow this is so complicated. But like you introduce like. You start the the problem and then it becomes a problem and then you say that that I don't know how to just. I can't do it. I can't. I I had it. I had it and I lost it. But but just the idea that basically you you caused this situation and then you accuse everybody else of being oversensitive to it and and and then use that as part of your proof that the race you're talking about is is somehow flawed. Like look at them flipping out like, you know what I mean? Like that's kind. I'm not saying. I'm just saying. I didn't say anything that bad, but they're just, they're nature is to flip out too much, which is a flaw, like, which is a way to be racist. Like, look at them. They can't take anything. Like, not like a white person. I could take as much **** as possible, but these Jews flip out about everything. Watch this, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's it's a very subtle and insidious way of of, of of continuing the racism to say that they are overly sensitive. Yeah, and there's a bunch of Steiner quotes that basically follow the pattern of anti-Semitism is bad, but here's what the Jews do. Yeah, like, why it's, you know, these people can't take any criticism because they're Jews. Hmm. Now, for the sake of fairness, I have to point out repeatedly that everybody was anti-Semitic in Germany at this time. Pretty much everybody. It was in the air and literally chiseled into the stone walls of churches. Winston Churchill is famous today among Israelis for being one of the greatest advocates that nation has ever had. He was an intense and outspoken. Supporter of Israel and of course a staunch foe of the Nazis. In February of 1920, Churchill wrote an article for the Illustrated Sunday Herald titled Zionism versus Bolshevism. Quote this movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus, Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky, Bela Kun, Rosa Luxemburg, and Emma Goldman, this worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of Arrested Development, of envious malevolence, and of impossible equality has been steadily growing. So Winston Churchill, who again uh is considered to be one of the great patrons of of the Israeli nation in the 20s, was saying stuff that was essentially directly in line with Nazi theories about like the Jewish people is behind socialism and the Bolshevik revolution, which is the same **** Steiner saying. So my point in bringing this up is the fact that Steiner believed this **** during the late 1800s and early 1900s definitely qualifies him as anti-Semitic, but it doesn't mean he was or would have been a Nazi if he'd lived long enough. There were people who believed similar things to this, and when the Nazis came along were able to recognize Nazi propaganda as insane and evil and work against the Holocaust like Winston Churchill. For all of his flaws, once the Nazis started saying the same **** he likes, step back from that so. We can't necessarily say that Rudolf Steiner would have gone to bed with the Nazis, especially since he died in 1925, but we can look at what his followers did once the Nazis came to power. And Speaking of the Nazis coming to power, Chris? Yes, it's time for an ad transition. I don't know why that's a bad ad transition to make that that's not a good one. Oh boy. Oh boy. I have. I have made an error. Speaking of Hitler's unique brand of esoteric anti Semite. Nope. That's not the right way either. Who? ****. Let me help you. Yeah. Now a word from our sponsor. Which is not a Nazi. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on tick tock. You maybe even heard the rumors, your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes their answers. That people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you. For the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know. Now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. His unspeakable crimes and the incompetence or unwillingness of the police to stop him brought the entire country of Belgium to the brink of revolution. Just December. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio this is la Monstra. A story of abomination and conspiracy that led to the demise of the entire institution of Belgian federal police and rattled the foundations of its government. The story about the man who simply become known as La Monstre. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up you guys? It's your girl Betty who here? And you know this about me. It has always been very important to me to stand out and be authentically me, not only with my music, but my style and my vibe. And JBL really gets that. They know your headphones and speakers should look as original as the music you're listening to, or in my case, making. That's why I'm obsessed with my JBL headphones and speakers that help me reflect who I really am, from true wireless headphones to pulsing party boxes. Ohh yeah, party boxes guys. JBL has a wide and colourful range of products that help me feel myself when I wanna vibe my way. I literally record this entire podcast on my favorite JBL headphones. They are absolutely incredible. So JBL wants us all to listen on our terms living in the moment. Our moment unfiltered. The JBL podcast at jbl.com. We're back. What I love about a is that they aren't naziism. Oh boy, we're going to lose some money from this. It's difficult to to transition from this sort of subject matter into light hearted. You know, whatever happens. I don't know what sponsors you have, but put you know something that delivers a candy bars. Yeah, they're not, they're not Nazis. I should note that several times, but you know who were Nazis? Many of Rudolf Steiner's followers. Yeah, ****. Rudolf Steiner. This guy, man. Someone needed to put him to bed. He thought he talked too much. He wrote too much. This man needed to have his coffee taken away. Yeah, he's one of those guys. Like his whole life isn't that interesting. It's just he had all these crazy ideas and people followed them and a lot of problems have been solved. So I have nice ideas. Like I have nice ideas, but I also have clinical depression. So I don't. I don't write 17 papers a day about my nice ideas. But then there are these non depressed ********. Who are idiots who have boundless energy to write 5000 racist treatises every ******* week? OK, well, but maybe if you would spend more time reading the Ghost Library that lives in space, you would have more ideas to write about too, right? I'm too tired to make up **** like that. You got to visit the ghost. You got to have a defective brain to that has like, you have to be dumb and like, really? Really, really. Not depressed and just get out of bed every morning and just start ******* jabbering about nonsense. I mean, that's the kind of people they had. Endless energy. That ******** with endless energy is what ruins everything. Trump's an example. The guys up, born around, around all day just saying ****. I mean, the guy's got a lot of energy. Much energy. This goes into my theory that you shouldn't stop rich people from developing problematic drug addictions. I think that's true. Yeah, if you you should just let them. If, if if Rudolf Steiner at age 19 had actually been doing a **** load of opium. And had died at age 25. No, no. This would be a problem, right? Yeah. It's a shame. It's a shame. Hashtag give opiates to rich kids. Yeah. Like let's say someone gives some opiates to Ben Shapiro. Ben Shapiro? Yeah. Boy, he's an example of one of these guys. Like, it's just like, shut the **** **. Never had a real job. Way too much energy. Just set your alarm later. ******* oxy. Sleep in one day, Shapiro. Now, after 1902, when Steiner joined the Theosophical Society, he became inculcated with Madame Blavatsky's ideas about the mythical Aryan race. After this point, the idea of root races and Arianism took an increasingly central role in his developing philosophy. The Theosophical Society was not an explicitly anti-Semitic organization Jewish people were allowed to join, but an awful lot of their beliefs sound like straight up Nazi propaganda. In a book called The Key to Theosophy, Madame Blavatsky wrote quote if the root of mankind. One then there must also be one truth which finds expression in all the various religions except in the Jewish. All religions are cool, except Jewish people, which does I mean for Europeans in the late 1800s that's woker than most. Umm, she wasn't like Europeans should own India? I guess so, yeah. Yeah. Now Blavatsky viewed the Jew as the almost mythical antithesis to the Arian, the opposite of the spiritual and progressive ubermensch. If this sounds exactly like Nazi racial theory, that's because it essentially is now. Chris, I'm going to guess you've heard of the Tula society, you know I have not. It's spelled fool society. Like the top racks that people have on their 4 wheel drive cars. THL. Yeah, I still really not. I I I'm not familiar. I mean, I'm not exactly sure what it is. Well, if you've if you've read your Hellboy comics or played a lot of Wolfenstein games where there's like, Nazis doing dark occult magic and stuff, the actual historical root of all of those myths is the Thule Society of the Tula Society. I've read about the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They they're they're pretty famous Nazi, more famous stuff. But yeah, exactly. This is the root of that. And the the Tula Society was a real occult. Society. And they financially supported a little group you might have heard about called the Deutsche Arbeiter Partei, which became the Nazi party back before. You know, Hitler actually joined. Now, Hitler himself was never a member of the Tula Society, but many influential Nazis were guys like Hans Frank, who ran Poland for the Reich, Rudolf Hess, the deputy Fuhrer, and Dietrich Eckart, who actually founded the original Nazi party, the Tula societies. Impact gets exaggerated often, but they did. Provide the core members of the early Nazi movement, and these people held the same esoteric anti-Semitic beliefs about the eternal struggle of Aryans and Jews as the Theosophical Society did. Which makes sense, because both groups were closely tied together. Many members of the Tula society were adherents of Madame Blavatsky's teachings, so the tool of society is like they they have events with the Theosophical Society. They have members in common. A lot of their teachings are based on Madame Blavatsky's writings, and the Thula Society becomes the sort of. Intellectual and spiritual center of the early Nazi movement. And of course, Rudolf Steiner was a hugely influential part of the development of the Theosophical Society. Yeah, it's hard to trace out how many Nazi ideas are directly descendant of of Steiners, and how many are just sort of a lot of people thinking about similar things. But he had a big influence on the Theosophical Society, and the Theosophical Society was like one of the strained carriers for the Nazi disease. So that's where we're going to here. So while it wouldn't be accurate. Say that anthroposophy inspired the development of Naziism. It is accurate to say that anthroposophy and Nazism share common ideological origins. They are at least first cousins. It is true that Steiner was a loud critic of organized anti-Semitism. His writing on the subject was mostly limited to the period right around when he first got involved in the Theosophical Society. Once he left in 1912 and founded Anthroposophy, he progressed towards racial beliefs that were basically identical to where Hitler and his friends wound up. I'm going to quote one last time. From Professor Stoudenmire's piece on Steiner and the Jewish question Kuwait. In Steiner's eyes, racial exclusiveness was the hallmark of Jewish identity. He accused Jews of national egoism, along with materialism, abstract thinking and an obstinate refusal of progress and a remarkable about face from his 1900 and 1901 writings. By 1905 Steiner was complaining to his future wife about the corrosive and totally materialistic consequences of the continuing Semitic influence within the Arian epoch. Sounds like this, but his wife was having a lot of fun. Your wife was like, tell me more that he was great in bed. But let me tell you about the Jews. Yeah. God, she must have been having a blast. Yeah, that's that's that was like, yeah. Could you please stop talking about the Jews? Yeah, I'm trying to come and this is really making it Jewish. Why do you talk so much about them? I mean, I think one thing history tells us is that literally nobody in central Europe made a woman orgasm in the early part of the 20th century. Ohh no. I've thought about part of the problem, man. Like, I don't know why I've pictured Hitler's parents ******* but I have. Because we all seen pictures of their the two of them. And I just was imagining. Like, not. Only did like that poor woman his mother have the worst sex imaginable with this ******* cartoon mustache of a husband who probably, like was smoking cigars while he was having sex with her. Then on top of that, they have they give birth to the biggest monster in world history. I mean, it's unbelievable. I mean, she didn't like the journey of Hitler's mother, I think is a. Is something worth? I don't know. I just think about it cause it's like **** she probably was just, I mean there was just no upside to any of it. She didn't enjoy the sex she gave birth to like the history's greatest monster. Ohh yeah it's a bad, it's a bad tale. Yeah we do have a fun 2 parter of this show about Hitler's sex life and everything we know about how the fewer **** Oh my God, he probably mailed one sperm to like via post like he probably had his sperm delivered via like horseback to and had a dumb person that gave a bronze ear. Now I'm gonna finish that quote about, yeah, the continuing Semitic influence within the area and epoch. Yes, this tendency continued throughout Steiner's final anthroposophical. Even after his organizational break with mainstream Theosophy in 1913 and in 1918 lecture on spectres of the Old Testament and the nationalism of the present. For example, he strongly associated the Jews with a social element that is anti social as regards the whole of humanity, and insisted that Jewish culture was a folk culture, not an individualized culture of humanity. So he gets way more racist after his break with a theosophist society. Now this brings us to the question. What happened to Steiner's followers once the Nazis took power? Well, the Waldorf schools and the modern day Anthroposophists will like to point out that they too were oppressed under the Nazis. That Waldorf answers site I referenced earlier has a page titled Anthroposophy in the time of Nazi Germany. Quote, Anthroposophists belonged to the many groups of people who were persecuted under the Nazi regime. Hitler's own disdaining remarks regarding Rudolf Steiner. Any anthroposophists appeared as early as 1921. By the spring of 1933, articles criticizing the movement began appearing more frequently in national socialist newspapers. But the summer of that year, Steiner's books were banned from public libraries in Bavaria, and study groups and branches of the General Anthroposophical Society, along with other cultural organizations, were ordered to submit to national socialistic leadership. Now Waldorf answers will point out that the Anthroposophical Society was banned in November of 1935 after the extensive lobbying of Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. This is in fact true, but like all anthroposophists defenses of these kinds of charges, they leave out quite a bit of contextualizing information. So I'm going to quote now from anthroposophy and Ecofascism quote. Immediately after the Nazi movement attained state power in early 1933, the leaders of organized anthroposophy took the initiative in extending their support to the new government. In June of that year at Danish newspaper asked Gunther Washmuth, secretary of the International Anthroposophic Society in Switzerland, about anthroposophy's attitude. With the Nazi regime, he replied. We can't complain. We've been treated with the utmost consideration and have complete freedom to promote our doctrine. Speaking for anthroposophists generally, wachsmuth went on to express his sympathy and admiration for National socialism. Wachsmuth, one of three top officers at Anthroposophy's World Headquarters in Dornoch, was hardly alone in Steiner's followers and his vocal support for the Hitler dictatorship. The homeopathic physician Hans Rocher, for example, proudly proclaimed himself just as much an anthroposophists as a national socialist. In 1934, the German Anthroposophic Society sent Hitler an official letter pointing out anthroposophy's compatibility with national socialist values and emphasizing Steiners Arian origins and his Pro German activism. The exception, of course, was Jewish. Members of anthroposophists organizations. They were forced under pressure from the state to leave these institutions. There is no record of their Gentile anthroposophists comrades protesting this racial exclusion, much less putting up any internal resistance to it. In fact, some anthroposophists, like the law professor Ernst von Hippel endorsed the expulsion of Jews from German universities. So couple I was just thinking about something like so the the post World War One period for Germany was similar. In a way to the post 911, post Iraq War period we're in now in the United States in the sense that the narrative has been shattered. Like the narrative that Germany was this ascendant, power was shattered by World War One. They lost and that ****** ** their citizenry because there was no more storyline. People need storylines to proceed ahead. People like them and they they really need them for security sake, even if they're imaginary and in the United States right now, post 911 and post. A government bailout of the banks and post Iraq war, no one is sure what we stand for anymore. They don't believe that America stands for, you know, bringing democracy to the globe. But they don't believe that we stand for. They don't believe the American dream anymore. And it's so often that these these spaces and history are filled with racist narratives to give a storyline back to culture. Because right now American culture is flailing around similar to. Germany Post World War One. I feel like America feels pretty bad about itself, and it's looking for a way, a narrative to attach. Like, I'm sure you've seen hyper normalization. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that kind of thing where it's just these, these spaces and history are very dangerous because they allow for anybody to come in with some crackpot philosophy that people will be like, oh, thank God, I just need something to follow. Well, and one of the things that's luckiest about our current time because we are in what I consider to be a dangerous situation. And there are some parallels to where Germany was in between 1913 and 1932. One of the big benefits that we have is that. A very, very, very, very, very, very, very vanishingly tiny fraction of our adult population has any experience in combat or war. And that the wars that sort of have have had a cratering impact on kind of our national self-image didn't involve very many people. One of the reasons that the early Nazis were so dangerous, that is not something we see with most of like the proud boys and the other sort of fascist groups. The vast majority of those guys in modern day have never seen combat. All of the Nazis were guys. Not a single one of them flinched from physical they were all physically courageous. Adolf Hitler got into whip fights with people where he would be, like, tearing pieces of their faces off and would be like getting shot at and stuff like they they they were all. I know. I mean, one of the benefits we have is that our fascists are mostly physical cowards, which is one of the reasons, yeah, it's one of the reasons I have some hope that we can overwhelm this. This thing is that most of these guys, like the Nazis, were more willing to gamble. And our fascists have so far been so if we have a saving grace, it's that I wish there was a way democratic, and I say democratic. I mean, politicians could just say something like that instead of the nonsense Democratic candidates say in debates. Like, I mean, I I just, I wish they could just say, hey, here's here's a nuanced view of what's happening right now. Here's what Trump is. I mean I know that's not gonna happen, but you know, I mean like Trump is a cartoon to fill space in a historical narrative that is lacking direction right now. Yeah. We we need a new myth because myths are the the core of any society and that's that's part of what like Steiner and a number of other people like collectively and over a long period of time created for Germans. Yeah. That's what that's kind of why Madame Blavatsky's. Etchings really take off in a big way and like the immediately pre war and post war period is like she's she's. And these other thinkers like Steiner are providing this mythical idea of like the Aryan race and like this conflict that they have with the Jews. And it explains like like that was necessary for the Germans to explain how they lost World War One was this idea that like there was this deeper conspiracy and you know, Steiner wasn't saying that. As much he did say a bit of stuff like that, but his beliefs about sort of how these like alien races are like weakening the the Aryans and how like the Jews are not really a part of this. This, this like thing like that. That all played into this greater theory of somebody is trying to stop us from taking our our rightful ascendant place in the Community of nations. Now let's talk about organic farming. So I've mentioned a couple of times that Rudolf Steiner kind of invented organic farming. And I don't mean that he invented the concept of like farming without like pesticides or fertilizer. Like obviously people have been doing that since forever, but he is one of the main people behind inventing kind of our modern concept of organic farming, as in opposition to industrial farming. What time does this guy get up in the morning? That's what I want. He he ******* got a lot done. Take like 1/2 hour a night. Like a lot of criticisms of Rudolph Steiner. Laziness is not one of them. I wish he had done less the thing. Yeah, these people need to ******* settle down. When I started my research into Steiner, I found my way to a Twitter thread started by Doctor Sarah Taber. She's a crop scientist and she had a hot take on Steiner's particular farming innovation, which is called biodynamic farming quote. So organic is what? Happened when Europe had to start using artificial fertilizers because they'd spent 100 plus years throwing sewage into the ocean and the land was all out of nutrients. German spiritualists were like chemical fertilizers and my food. Oh hell no, that's way too Jewish. Rudolf Steiner's work was like 64 to 70% racist theory and organic was just the so this is what my racist theory means for farming side of his work. German racism was soon judged to be embarrassing, so later editions of his work just deleted those chapters. Eventually, 1960s US counterculture kids picked up additions of Steiner's books with the most. Religious racial theory material deleted, they picked up on the yay nature and back to the land down with artificial vibe and had no idea that it was all an anti-Semitic tirade. And that's essentially accurate. Uh Doctor Sarah Taber gives a pretty good summary there. But but we're going to get into the weeds of biodynamic farming next. But before we get into the weeds, incredible. You know what doesn't promote weeds? What is this? Are you doing an ad break from Monsanto? Doing an ad plug? Yes. You know if you need glyco phosphate that you can healthily drink. Are you tired of bees existing? Do bees **** you off? Have you been saying to me recently? Roundup? Yeah, they just play that scene from stand by me when Macaulay Culkin gets killed by the bee. Yeah, looks like Monsanto putting it into this ********. So this is an ad break, I assume? Yeah, this is a ******* ad break. Yeah, is it? Products. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tiktok. You maybe even heard the rumors from your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes their answers. That people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you. For the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know. Now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. His unspeakable crimes and the incompetence or unwillingness of the police to stop him brought the entire country of Belgium to the brink of revolution. Just December. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio this is la Monstra. A story of abomination and conspiracy that led to the demise of the entire institution of Belgian federal police and rattle the foundations of its government. The story about the man who's simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up you guys? It's your girl Betty who here? And you know this about me. It has always been very important to me to stand out and be authentically me, not only with my music, but my style and my vibe. And JBL really gets that. They know your headphones and speakers should look as original as the music you're listening to, or in my case, making. That's why I'm obsessed with my JBL headphones and speakers that help me reflect who I really am, from true wireless headphones to pulsing party boxes. Ohh yeah, party boxes guys. JBL has a wide and colourful range of products that help me feel myself when I wanna vibe my way. I literally record this entire podcast on my favorite JBL headphones. They are absolutely incredible. So JBL wants us all to listen on our terms living in the moment. Our moment unfiltered. The JBL podcast at jbl.com. We're back. So now we're talking about what what did Rudolf Steiner do now? What did that ******* biodynamic caffeinated racist do now? Biodynamic farming. This is still a thing today. You know what's funny? Real quick Robert, I gotta tell you, I've. I've mentioned this on other podcasts sub. I don't know why I just said that, but I just mentioned. I mentioned this all the time. Let me put it that way. Not on podcast, on the street anywhere because I'm still knocked out by the fact that the Renaissance. Happened because of coffee. Like coffee became readily available in Europe at the exact same time that, I mean that kicked off of the Renaissance. And I guess that's a real fact. So I really, it had an influence for sure. Yeah, I know it's not, probably not the whole, yeah, the whole thing, but I'd say it was 5050. So so I just, it's amazing. I wish that we could have shut off the coffee supply to a Germany between the years 1918 and 1934. I I will say this, when you really get into the weeds of reading about European history, one of the thoughts you repeatedly are are led to is like, boy, we should have really cut the Germans off from their caffeine. So yeah, 100% was a mistake. People give those people more tired. Yeah, these people needed to be sleepy. I swear to God really got too much done time machine. Go back smash all the ******* coffee machines in Germany in 19 well. You know what Speaking of where coffee came into Europe. There's a single point in which you could have stopped coffee spread so one of the sort of the which generally credited is like? How coffee became part of Europe is like when the Ottomans laid siege to. I think it was Umm. I think it might have been *******. I don't know if it was Vienna or yeah. I think it was Vienna when the Ottoman Empire laid sieged one of the cities in Europe and they got their ***** beat I think this is when. At the Polish winged Hussars, like, like, broke their army and routed it. They'll take your word for it. There. They left their camp behind. Right. So they outside this European city, they leave their camp behind. And being Turks, their camp included huge bags of coffee. And like, Jesus was, you know, they're kind of coffee pots that use for Turkish coffee. These are the stories I live for. So Europeans, like, started trying this **** out. And they were like, Oh my God, this stuff's amazing. But also, they were like, Oh my God, this is like a heathen evil Muslim drink. Like, is this something we have to ban and prosecute? And so they took it to the Pope. And, like, the Pope tried the coffee because everyone was like, is this a devil drink? Can we drink this? And the Pope tried it and was like, this ****** amazing. I've never wanted to say mass more than in my life. The Pope, I think it was Pope Clement. I forget which number, but he had numbers after him. But it was a Pope. Clement, I think, baptized the beverage of coffee in order to make it acceptable for Christians. Like, that's how coffee came into Christendom. Is the Pope, like, officially baptized it so that that Christians could drink? But that's one of those hats got tall, too. Yeah. That's an awesome story. That that's so great. I love that. The first people who discovered coffee in in Europe, man or anybody. The first person who discovered coffee. I'm just jealous of Oht. Yeah, OK, a lot of cool myths about that too. But back to biodynamic farming. The Biodynamic Association, which is like a an organization for biodynamic farmers, says this and explaining what it is quote each biodynamic farmer garden is an integrated whole living Organism. This Organism is made-up of many interdependent elements. Fields, forests. Plants, animals, soils, composts, people in the spirit of the place. Biodynamic farmers and gardeners work to nurture and harmonize these elements, managing them in a holistic and dynamic way to support the health and vitality of the whole. So that sounds good, right? Yeah, yeah. Now, right above that, on their biodynamic principles and practices page, they say this quote biodynamics is rooted in the work of philosopher and scientist Doctor Rudolf Steiner, who's 1924 lectures to farmers opened a new way to integrate scientific understanding with a recognition of spirit and nature. Now, as with Anthroposophic medicine, Rudolf Steiner was never a farmer. That's interesting. Absolutely. Until we have was a scientist either. Yeah, of course not. Why would you do that? I was wondering if he was wondering. I'm saying this man has got boundless was never a ******* doctor either. Like he's dictating while he was farming dictating. I think he might add like a PhD. But he was never a medical doctor. Yeah. Wow. OK yeah. So he never he just like he just passed. He's like had this idea based on basically racism that maybe farms could be purer if they had less Jew in them. Well, that's. That's kind of where this is headed. And I sort of already said, yeah, I mean, one of the things about impurities, kind of, there's too many impurities in society and in the farm. He wasn't wrong about every aspect of biodynamic farming because he was one of a number of people looking at the way industrial farming had been started in Europe since, like World War One. And it was like really toxic and involved a lot of horrible chemicals. And like, people were doing ****** ** **** to the land and he was able to see like, oh, maybe we should do less ****** ** **** to the land. He also mixed that in with a bunch of insane. ********. But every aspect of what he was saying wasn't wrong. There were a lot of problems with industrial agriculture as there are today, and he was one of the first people who pointed that out. He just also was not a farmer and did not know what the **** he was talking about in any complex sense of the phrase, right? It's like a clock being right every whatever they say. Broken clock in a racist clock is occasionally right about farm sides, yeah. Yeah, now you may notice that none of what I've read there gives us much insight into what biodynamic farming actually involves. It's just a lot of vaguely positive, flowery language about the spirit of the land. So I found a 2017 article in The Guardian which focuses on the rapid growth of biodynamic farms in the United States. It cited the Co director of Demeter USA. Remember the name of that company, a nonprofit certifier of biodynamic farms in the United States? They claimed the acreage devoted to biodynamic farming in this country increased by 16. Percent in 2017 here's how the Guardian described the methodology behind biodynamic farming quote Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, a controversial public figure, introduced biodynamic principles by encouraging farmers to look to the cosmos before planting and harvesting crops. So it's pretty big space farming. It's space farming, yeah. What does look to the cosmos mean? Yeah, it it it it means farming with witchcraft, basically, you know, and essentially as wooly as that sounds. And it's about to get woolier biodynamic foods are growing in popularity. Demeter works with more than 50 US brands, including Whole Foods, to add more of their food to the shelf. They, and a lot of people, claim it tastes better. But you know what doesn't taste good? Naziism and that's where biodynamic farming first got its start. So in the upper episode we recently did on Fritz Haber, we talked about how the explosion in the use of nitrogen fertilizers made possible the growth of the world's population beyond around 3 billion people or so. But all those chemical fertilizers also ****** ** the topsoil, and in many cases they had a negative effect on the flavor of food. This was noticed at the time, particularly by people living in Germany, and the organic farming movement first arose as a response to this. Steiner was not the only person who started pushing for a reformation of farming methods. But he was among the first and might have been the most influential his biodynamic approach involved rejecting artificial fertilizers and pesticides and instead using compost and manure. He urged farmers to reject monocultures giant farms growing just a single crop. These are all good enough ideas, but Steiners bio dynamism also involved a lot of ******** not just following the lunar calendar, but using homeopathy to channel. Astral energy and other **** **** like that, it wasn't just harmless. Magic though Bio dynamism took off in large part because it tapped into a very dangerous part of the zeitgeist. I found an article from the Journal of Environmental History titled Organic Farming in Nazi Germany, the politics of biodynamic agriculture. It's written by Guess who, our old buddy Peter Stoudenmire of Marquette University. He seems to have something of an obsession for all things Steiner, and he's definitely the guy to go for on this one. I'm going to quote from him now. In the 1930s, biodynamic advocates touted their version of organic agriculture as spiritually aware peasant wisdom in contrast to civilization, technology, and modern urban culture. Hippies now? Yeah, hippies. But there's. A thinner line than you'd think between Nazis and hippies. Uh, because you know who else stood against modern urban culture and really pushed ideas of spiritually aware peasant wisdom? The ******* Nazis? Yeah, and biodynamic advocates found a welcome home once the New Reich started winding up in 1932. At that point, the main company selling biodynamic to the German people was Demeter, who's still around today. Now, Demeter sold organic food and Willetta sold cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Both companies exist today and are as far as I know. Responsible corporate citizens, but back in the 1930s they were responsible corporate citizens of the National Socialist government. In July of 1933, biodynamic farmers founded the Reich League for Biodynamic Agriculture. Their leader was an anthroposophists named Erhard Barch. The movement saw Nazi policies as more or less in line with their own esoteric beliefs. They encountered some early issues and were briefly banned in 1933, which is something the anthroposophists will point out regularly, but that ban only lasted a year. Quote. As early as 1934, Nazi Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick visited Barchus biodynamic estate and expressed his support for the organization. He was followed by a parade of similarly high profile figures, including Rudolf Hess, Robert Lay, and Alfred Rosenberg, who were guests at biodynamic headquarters in Bad Saarow, and voiced their support for the undertaking. Representatives of the Reich League for Biodynamic Agriculture publicized the achievements of their organic farming methods in various media, highlighting the virtues of a natural approach to growing food for their revitalization of the German nation. They claim that biodynamic farms enjoyed more abundant harvests and produced higher quality crops than conventional agriculture, adding that organic procedures were more efficient, healthier, and more conducive to the well-being of the peasantry and the German people at large. Depicting the farm as a unified Organism, Barch disdained the Americanization and mechanization of agriculture as hazardous to the German peasant life and its connection to the living soil. One Nazi catch phrase that you'll hear a lot even today is blood and soil. And most people think of that more literally than they should is talking about, like, the area and blood and the soil of Germany. But when they talk about the soil, they're actually talking more about like, a metaphysical connection to the dirt. Because again, this sort of like connection to, like, peasant farming and stuff is a huge aspect of what the Nazis were pushing at the time. And it's something that, you know, biodynamic farming really played into quite where did the Nazis? Get all this free time. This is what I want to understand. I mean, I really do want to understand this. Robert, you might know something that I I don't really understand. Why? Did like what exactly made the German economy? Function. What was? What was the money behind all this? Like like obviously if you want. To sit around and talk about farming and and and and whether or not people should be more like peasants or any of this kind of stuff. You need spare time and you need a functioning society. Which certainly Germany did not have like for a while before. What militarization? I mean, who was funding that? That's. Who was funding all this free time speculation that these Germans were doing there's OK. So this is a very, there's the answer that's very complicated answer if you don't want to. For a lot of these German philosophers, many of them did in the the 20s especially, receive funding from a number of kind of shady sources, including a lot of very wealthy American businessmen, including some of the businessmen who carried out the business plot, which was an attempted fascist coup against FDR. Yeah, yeah, which is an incredible story. It is an incredible. We're doing an episode on it, but more to the point, #1 the the Weimar Republic had a lot of problems and was also came of age in a very difficult time to be running Germany. But it was not as dysfunctional as history books often painted. It had its bad years, but by the time the Nazi Party really started to rise, the economy had started, was well on its path to recovery. Now a big part of what, you know, there's a lot of people who mistakenly believe that at least Hitler's policies were good for the economy of Germany. They were not. Where all of the money came from in the early chunk of the the Nazi parties, like time and power was they stole it from all of the Jewish people. They took their businesses, they took their money, they took their houses, and they gave them to party members. And robbery is a large part of what stimulated the German economy. They also borrowed at sort of like unsustainably high rates, and used that to push a remilitarization, which, like, gave jobs and stuff. But it was not sustainable and it was not sound economic policy, which is part of why conquest eventually became. Necessary if they were going to maintain anything close to the same pace of development, but it's interesting because deep thinking. Cultural. Like, like, the like, like, intellectualism is not is is is good. And we're kind of going through that right now. Like, the good part of it is maybe thinking, well, maybe. I just mean the good part would be the part where you think about, well, maybe farming should be, should be organic. Yeah, yeah, like, yeah, maybe we should reform things with it. Yeah. But then that same thinking, that same, like sort of luxury to ruminate leads to terrible ideas as well. I it's just very interesting to me. Because, you know, like what we, it seems like this is proceeding toward is like so many things that are currently happening came out of this ******* horrible. Like, like and some of them are good and some of them are horrible, but you know what I mean. Like, but they all come from this, like deep thinking and consideration that doesn't exist in culture anymore. It doesn't seem to me anyways, just a thought. That's just something that's occurring to me is like it's like it seems like a lot of stuff happened. As a result of the Nazis having too much time on their hands. And I wonder where that time came from and why. There's no time anymore for it. Or it seems like there's no, there's no, there's no bunch of good people doing the deep thinking that would be necessary to bring culture forward in. Good. Don't know how to explain it. That's what we try to do here at behind the best. OK, well, good. There you go. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's it. If you, if you wanna, if you wanna draw even more comparisons between the rise of the Nazis and our own incipient fascist movement. One uncomfortable thing to look at could be the fact that if you guys like Hitler and his uh, his fellow thinkers and the Nazi party did a lot of their development after they started becoming political figures and they were essentially paid and subsisted on donations and sales of their books. Hitler got very wealthy off of the sales of Mein Kampf, and that's what gave him a lot of the time to formulate the rest of his philosophies and, like, figure **** out. And nowadays we have a class of people who have been paid by a mix of largely by right wing oil billionaires and fracking billionaires like the Wilkes family and stuff. People like Ben Shapiro, people like Dave Rubin, people like Jordan Peterson. And you know also from the fact that they sell a **** load of books about their philosophies and stuff. And these people are just continuing to think about things and stuff like cultural Marxism and whatnot. And it's scary where that might lead and we kind of. While we're at LED once, when you give dumb ******** tell them that they're really smart and give them a bunch of money to think of more **** **** it gets really bad. And yeah, I got you OK. I'm just thinking about OK, so maybe, maybe the best is is less. Less thinking. Well, yeah, OK. I'm just. I'm just trying to figure out what the what the Hell's going on. This is a lot. It's hard to find lessons from history sometimes. Yeah. So when the autobahn construction started in 1934, a group of landscape advocates oversaw the construction. The guy in charge of this was Owen Sievert, a biodynamic advocate who was considered the Third Reich's most prominent environmentalist. Siefert considered himself to be national socialist through and through, and his beliefs on bio dynamism were directly intertwined with his beliefs on race. Science. It is true that Anthroposophists and Biodynamics, who are often one and the same, regularly encountered pushback it even oppression from Reich officials. But that's had less to do with the fact that Nazis saw them as fundamentally dangerous movements, and more to do with petty infighting and bickering between different factions of Nazis. So, like the Waldorf answers, people will claim that, like, well, no, look the all these Nazis hated anthroposophy and, like, banded at a couple of points and, like, that's proof that we were oppressed by the Nazis, too, and the reality is that certain Nazis. Loved anthroposophy and certain Nazis hated it because Nazis were catty ******* who spent most of their time fighting with each other. As Stoudenmire lays out, most practitioners of Steiner based philosophies had no problem with the Third Reich. Quote. In 1937, an organic dairy farmer from Silesia declared that both Biodynamics and Nazism were based on closeness to nature, while in 1938 biodynamic advocates blamed profit oriented chemical agriculture on Jewish influence. A 1941 letter from an anthroposophists and biodynamic advocate. Similarly lamented that German efforts to maintain healthy soil were threatened by Jewish influence and racially foreign infiltration. The biodynamic movements anti materialist stance sometimes when it prays from Nazi anti Semites and adulatory 1940 text proclaimed. We are confident that biodynamic agriculture will continue to realize the ideal goal. Ordinary materialism is digging its own grave. The cow is not a milk factory, the hen is not an egg laying machine. The soil is not a chemical laboratory as the Jew professors would have us believe. See you. First half of the sentence is like maybe they're maybe they're being in college. When my Jewish professor told me that hens were egg laying machines, yes. Classic Judaism. Yeah. The class was called hens. Yeah. Now, anthroposophy did succeed in getting itself heavily purged by the Nazis. Now, this is largely because of a little fella named Rudolf Hess. What do you know about Rudolf Hess? Well, I know Rudolf Hess was wasn't he Hitler's best friend for a long time? Or is he was Hitler's better than what he calls his reichsfuhrer, or his second in command or whatever. He was the deputy fuhrer of the Reich for awhile. And then he was like, you see yet butcher or something? I mean, all these ******* rich guys were all, like, ex like, like, just regular ************* like loading dock managers and **** who put on like, Alex Casey was a favorite chicken farmer, stupid *** outfits. So Hess was the guy. He was Hitler's best friend for a long time. When they were in prison together, Hitler dictated Mein Kampf and Hess did a lot of the actual typing for it. So Hess was like as close to Hitler as a person could be, and Hess was a believer in all of the ridiculous. Esoteric witchcraft. Nazism stuff that you could possibly ******* believe you. Sophie just showed me a picture of his eyebrows. I yeah, that's the first thing that came to my mind. I don't understand how these master race ************* excused like these these obvious. I mean, like the master race has ******* eyebrows look like 2 *** **** snakes. Yeah. Or yeah. Anyway, it's Batty. So yeah, Hess was a big, big fan of the occult, big supporter of. He was in, you know, the the the Tula Society. He was a big believer in like, a lot of the stuff Steiner said. Uh and he was a major supporter of anthroposophy and like biodynamic farming and like was a big advocate for Steiner type beliefs in the Reich. But in 1941 he hopped in a plane and flew to Scotland. Now we don't know why exactly. The most plausible theory is that he was a legitimately delusional person and actually mentally ill and convinced himself that he could negotiate peace with England on the eve of the German invasion of Russia, right? He did not succeed in this and was instantly captured and that number was incredibly embarrassing. Yeah, Hess had again been Hitler's right hand man throughout most of his rise to power, literally writing down. Yeah, a lot of Hitler's words when it has abandoned him. Hitler took it personally. And since Hess had been a major Nazi advocate for a cult ******** his exiting the picture provided more practical monsters like Reinhard Heidrich with an opportunity to purge other Nazis they disagreed with. Heidrich, by the way, is like maybe the worst of the Nazis I know, widely considered to be the architect of the Holocaust, the butcher of Moravia, terrible person. Now, while Anthroposophy was excised from German public life due to this, biodynamic farming continued. From the very start of World War Two biodynamic growers had worked with Heinrich Himmler's s s to help plan for the agricultural colonization of the occupied eastern territories. The plan was to uproot and eliminate the slobs and replace them with German farmers. To biodynamic advocates, this represented an incredible opportunity. They would have a chance to rework all of Eastern Europe into one enormous, organic, biodynamic farm. Starting in October of 1939, the US established a biodynamic agricultural school in occupied Poland. So after Hesse's flight, Heinrich Himmler ordered the US to use the term natural farming for organic agriculture rather than biodynamic. But nothing changed about the methods or the individuals involved, many of whom were dedicated Anthroposophists and Steiner followers. Gunther Punk, a biodynamic advocate, became head of the US Office of Race and Settlement in 1938. His goal was to fill the Concord. East with biodynamic farms run by soldier farmers. I'm going to quote from Stoudenmire one more time. The centerpiece of the biodynamic operations was the sizeable plantation at Dachau, which produced medicinal herbs and other organic goods for the s s. As at Ravensbrook, the labor at the Dachau biodynamic plantation was performed by camp inmates from 1941 onwards. The Dachau operation was overseen by Anthroposophists Franz Lippert, a leader of the biodynamic movement from its beginnings and head gardener at Weleda from 1924 to 1940. So in at least two concentration camps there were biodynamic farms operated by slave laborers. That is, the birth of organic, biodynamic farming was literal concentration camps, so that's cool, we'll let it into meter. Both operated happily under the Third Reich, along with other less mystical companies like IBM. But the inherently fascistic roots of much of the organic farming movement have continued. Today, a sizable minority of organic farmers in the US and Europe are far right extremists whose quest for purity unfortunately extends beyond keeping their corn pesticide free. Obviously, this doesn't mean anyone who runs an organic farm or supports. Panic farming is a Nazi. The ideas have evolved a lot since then, anymore than the IBM chip in my laptop makes me a fascist. But it is important to understand the problematic roots of Steiner's ideas, because they are still very much influential to this day. And this. My friend is when we talk about Marianne Williamson. OK, yeah, now, she is not, to my knowledge, in Anthroposophists, but her beliefs are close enough in line to anthroposophy that she regularly shows up alongside them in literature. For example, I found the book isms analogies, all the movements, ideas, and doctrines that have shaped our world. It includes a brief discussion of Steiner and Anthroposophy. The very next paragraph discusses the Unity Church, which was founded in 1889 as a sort of combination of new thought, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Theosophy. Quote today, Unity and New thought have blurred into the new Age, which adds a spiritualized version of quantum physics and a psychological, therapeutic aspect to the doctrinal mix. Marianne Williamson, who is a unity pastor, Gary Zukoff, and Wayne Dwyer are only a few best selling writers who proclaim that spiritual growth follows from a transformation of our ways of thinking. Now I found another interesting article on the Southern Cross Review reflection on the anthroposophical path of schooling. It mentions Williamson and Steiner in the same paragraph. Like Steiner, we must read and make connections with the great spiritual literatures of the world. This enriches our view of the spiritual world and can also provide assistance when we have difficulty with meditation or get stuck in our personal growth. Although our goal is to gain knowledge of the spiritual world that Steiner saw so clearly and beautifully, we should not become dependent on his insights if we were to develop our own ability to see the spirit we must have. What the ability to think for ourselves. Even study of contemporary spiritual teachers like Marianne Williamson can help us develop this ability. So that's that's a guy advocating for the charitable reading of Steiners texts. Now, again, there's nothing inherently Nazi here, and I'm not saying the author of that piece or Marianne are fascists, because, again, a lot of the racism has been pruned out of the modern publications of Steiner's work. But it is worrying to me how close some of her beliefs seem to intertwine with Steiners. A terrifying number of his followers had no difficulty diving head first into fascism. Many considered it a natural step forward, and I'm worried that some of those same ideas are still very common. Today now Marianne Williamson herself is of course Jewish and I do not believe she is a fascist, but I do think she harbors a number of these toxic beliefs. She's famously said sickness is an illusion and does not actually exist, and the fact that this sort of nonsense isn't seen as immediately disqualifying in a candidate deeply concerns me. When one type of anti scientific ******** can propagate, other more toxic ideas can also breed. This is the most important lesson we can take from the life and ideas of Rudolf Steiner. That's the end of the episode. Hey, listen to this. Marianne Williamson is another one of these rich kids. She she had a wasted decade where she moved to New Mexico and lived in a geodesic Dome with her boyfriend. And she also was going to pursue a career as a cabaret singer, but got distracted by, quote, Bad Boys and Good Dope. I mean, well, you know, we all get distracted by bad boys and good dope for a period of time, right? But then when these people. Find the way or what they think is the way. These big ego people decide that everybody, I mean. It's so like you basically attach universal, you have a huge ego. So you attach like you take your personal journey and then you, you kind of try and impose it on everybody else. It's like. It's very, it's very like a myopic yeah, tunnel vision. There's some. It's just very selfish. It's this idea that that your personal journey, somehow you forget that you're a you're one of this privileged class that gets to spend all its time. You know, thinking about **** that you really shouldn't be thinking about. You should just be, most of the time, probably minding your own ******* business. But you ended up with this huge amount of space in your life where you live in geodesic domes and then and it just leads to this, I don't know, attaching so much importance to your own narrative that it doesn't deserve. Yeah, and it's it leads to problematic **** like like what you see in Marianne Williamson's writings. Stuff where she'll talk about sickness and disease as if it's it's not a thing that just happens randomly to some people. It's tied into like aspects of your what you believe or like how you act, like what sort of energy you invite. And it's it's not she would never say you if you have cancer, it's your fault. But that's one of the interpretations of the things that she writes. And it's why a lot of like disabled people, like people who were born with like, you know, disabilities or whatever, like get really scared when they see this person. Starting to gain steam in politics because a **** load of stuff that she's written is the same kind of **** Steiner was writing about how like, Oh well, you know, if you didn't, I don't think she would literally says that. Like, oh, you your ghost, you know, balked before jumping into your body and that's why your arm doesn't work, right? But a lot of her beliefs about sickness and stuff are very much in line with that. And it's this, like, it's this new age, positive thinking ******** a lot of which is directly descended from Theosophy. Which is also one of the root movements of the Nazi movement. And it doesn't mean that, like, if you're in the new age, **** you're a Nazi, obviously. But it does mean that, like, similar patterns of thought can lead to to both things. And like, one of the things I found that was really interesting to me while I was doing this research was just like a Twitter post, Marianne Williamson said, where she noted that, like, oh, people on the left are way meaner than me than people on the right. Like, everybody talks about how mean the right is, but the left has been really like, those are the ones who been the meanest to me. And somebody quoted and said, I think one of the scary things about American politics in the next few years is that people don't realize how easy it is for folks with kind of kooky new age left wing views to turn hard, right? I knew and not like it was a journalist talk about like I talked to a Nazi militia leader once who sent his kids to a Waldorf school because he believed in a lot of the same wooley ********. Like there's a certain level of like if you get into some of these weird esoteric beliefs, other esoteric belief systems like. Nazism are going to be more enticing to you than just embracing like uh, the world's like like yeah, let's not believe this kind of ********. Like and you'll be more exactly like, fix problems. Yeah, if you get, you'll be more accepted. If you get kooky, you're gonna wanna hang out with kooks. And only kooks are gonna are gonna tolerate you or or respect you because you are talking **** and you make no sense. I mean she has no business speculating about the causes of diseases. She's not a doctor she's a a person who comes from a background of geodesic domes and bad boys and good dope and and you know I, I hate the expression stay in your lane, but to an extent to it is a it's a matter of you're talking out of your *** and people who are. Also, talking out of their ***** will be a lot nicer to you than other people who are like realistic and saying you don't know what you're talking about. Stop talking about diseases and causes of diseases. You don't know what the **** you are saying. Pure, you know and then oh, but these other people are much nicer to me because because they're insane, that's why. Yeah. And it's it's like you find, like a lot of the **** that like was at the core of bio dynamism is also at the core of, like, what Williamson says about health care. She said this recently in Detroit while she was, like, campaigning for president and talking about, like, reforming the healthcare system. We need to be the party talking about why so many of our chemical policies and our food policies and our agricultural policies and our environmental policies and even our economic policies are leading to people getting sick to begin with. Which, again, you can interpret that in a reasonable way or you can interpret it in a Stein Marian way where it's like, oh, that could lead to some really *******. Uncomfortable conclusions about the world, she said. **** like people who want to avoid the swine flu should pour God's love on their immune systems. Yeah, like she said, **** about vaccines. That's really unsettling. And you know, obviously like Steiner was an anti vaccine guy and so are a lot of Nazis and it's one of those things. There's a lot of very far left people who are very anti vaccine and a lot of Nazis who are anti vaccine. And one of the things that's scary to me is that if you push a lot of those far left anti VAX. People. They won't drop being anti VAX and stay left wing, they'll just go over to the Nazis like not all of them, but a decent amount of them. It happens. Yeah, I feel like. I feel like. People need to tell more people who are talking about stuff that they don't know anything about to shut the **** **. Yeah and and when somebody who yeah when somebody who. I mean it's narcissism. All all it is is narcissism. It's just narcissism makes you think you're an expert on ******* everything. And and once someone it's just annoying to me this is so many good people who don't aren't aren't just aren't blabbing what is I forget who what finker it was said this but like the the greatest problem in the world is that. Fools are so confident and wise men are so full of doubt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's. I was trying to get at this whole episode. Yeah. Be regular beat. Be really ******* careful about anybody. And this is one of the problems, the fundamental problems with having a president is that then you have this person who has to pretend like they are competent about everything from nuclear policy to energy policy to climate change to international policy to National Defense to military intervention. There's not a single human being on the face of this earth, and there never will be who is competent on all those things. Not one. Never will be, never will happen. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever. But because of our system. They all have to be able to ******** at being good at all that even though. At best, the best of them are competent at like, two or three of those things. Yeah. I mean, yeah, the, the yeah. And and once you get into the world of like, oh, I know about diseases even though I don't have any background in science, then next thing you know, your best friends are gonna be a people who don't believe in climate change because they think it's a, you know, some people who have expert opinions on things that they know nothing about. Yep, **** this and **** Rudolph. Whatever. Steiner. Rudolf Steiner. So in conclusion for today, **** Rudolph Steiner. **** punch a dancer and farms are bad mail. That might not be the lesson to take out of this. **** Rudolph Steiner, man. He's a you know. I don't know what to say. Yeah, it's just a wild story. It's almost hard because it's like, obviously there are actually very important aspects of, like, organic farming. And some of the ideas, even in biodynamic farming, like, about like that are critical. Like, like, we're having a major problem now with, like, our topsoil is being eroded, and there's like certainly aspects of organic farming and of biodynamic farming that are better for the topsoil than a lot of the industrial **** we're doing. That's absolutely a fair point. He wasn't wrong about everything he just talked about. Everything. So he was mostly wrong like that. Yeah, that Steiner in a nutshell. Yeah, I wonder if Jennifer Aniston's a farmer. I don't know. I I wonder if Jennifer Aniston is just like, I just thought it was a school about acting. Like, I just learned how to be an actress. Yeah, that's right. These these kids, I, you know, I don't know. I I don't know. I, I I think that. I have. I have no idea. I'm trying to think of something to say, and I can't think of anything. I mean, I guess in order to determine whether or not Steiner's influence was on balance, bad or good, you have to weigh on one hand slave farms, on concentration camps, and on another hand, Rutger hauer's tears in the rain speech from the end of Blade Runner. And really, who's to say which is worth more? Uh, concentration camps. It was bad. Oh boy, good times. How do you wrap it up usually? Do you wrap it up with a with a grand statement about the history or is it just sort of like a no public service grant statements? I don't trust grand statements. If I were to come out with some like conclusive simple one sentence summary of like what actually is worth understanding in this, that would be me over simplifying things to the the point of inaccuracy. Just like all of these grifters I talk about do. I'm not going to try to do it. It's ******* complex. So you're providing context for is information. It's really I tend to want, I tend to want narratives. And endings and things, but this is sort of seems like one of those things where it's like you're just, it's good to know these things and they give you the ability to keep an eye on. On the warning signs and and sort of problematic little things about yeah, keep an eye on your organic farmer because he he might be getting a little too weird. If there's a single sentence summary I can give this that isn't entirely inaccurate or too too succinct to be valuable, it would be. Don't trust anyone who talks with expertise about everything because no one's an expert on everything and sometimes that includes me. Definitely don't trust me. I'm. I'm a I'm a terrible person. And that's the note that we should end on. You want to plug your plugable? Thank you, Robert, so much. I really, really enjoyed being on your show. And I'm. I'm deeply impressed with with your research and and writing and and I would love to come back on again. And in the meantime, you can find me on at the Crofton Show where I talk about a complete nonsense so you don't have to worry about me being an expert on anything on there. And my advice column, which is equally. Yeah, I mean, it's sometimes it's serious, sometimes it's not serious, but it's called the advice king, and you can listen to my album, hello, it's me on Spotify and everywhere, and Pitchfork gave it a 7.4. So go listen to my pitchfork approved album hello, it's me, and go buy a pitchfork along with some bolt cutters to get ready for the upcoming civil unrest. That's that's my plug. I am Robert Evans. You can find me on, well, you can find the sources for this website. Behindthebastards.com, I do want to give a special shout out to Peter Stoudenmire, who has done a whole ******** of the lifting jobs, he said with his own research. So thank you Professor Stoudenmire, I hope I pronounced your name not wrong. You can also find us on Instagram and Twitter at Bastarde pod. Uh, you can find me on Twitter at I write OK you can buy T-shirts at teepublic.com. If you want T-shirts that have anything to do with this podcast, you should look up behind the ******** on T public.com and that is. It. That's the episode. Go ******* hug a cat and punch a dancer. Thanks, Robert. OK, Sophie, should we be advising people to assault random dancers? OK, well the episode's over. Cool. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioral discoveries on chimpanzees. It wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app. Or wherever you get your podcasts. 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