What's overthrowing the government? My consortium of shady financial interests? What's yeah, I don't know, I got no. Uh. This is behind the Insurrections of the Find Behind the Bastards mini series about fascist attempts to seize power. Uh. And this is our last episode of this beautiful mini series. We did have a seventh episode planned, but UM, I had some personal news. That's that's gonna alter our work schedule a little bit. But we will get to that episode at some point, but not next week. UM. My guest with this one, as as with always on our mini series, Jason Petty a k A. Prop. What's alwa's al? What's properties in a building? Now? Prop? I'm gonna come right to the chase. Have you heard of the business plot? No? Oh good? Oh well. One of the things that's fun about this is that, um, one of our characters from behind the Police is the main character of this story. UM, our old friend Smedley Butler. Yeah, the guy who ran the police in Philadelphia, the marine l that's that's going to be exciting. Yeah, I know that guy. So the business plot is there's a reason why you haven't heard of it. Uh. A lot of people have put in a lot of effort to make sure that people don't talk about this anymore. UM. Imagine a cadre of plutocratic bankers, financiers, and media moguls all conspired to take over US democracy and institute of fascist state hidden as a fake democracy. UM. Shouldn't take a whole lot of imagination. Yeah. Um, that's what people say to record industry is yeah, the record industry or the way a lot of our government works right now, like the fact that Janet Yellen uh had financial ties to one of the giant hedge funds that shut down the game stock trading and stuff like. Yeah, you know, it may sound that sounds familiar to people, UM, but usually we're talking about it. Most people were talking about you know when we talk about like, well, there's a codra of elites who control you know, the government. Um, they meet it in sort of a deep state. Since but there was a time where the wealthiest men in America engaged in a very real conspiracy to have a paramilitary army sees the levels of power overthrow the president and institute of fascist state. UM. And there's people alive today who lived through it. It happened in the thirties. So yeah, yeah, yeah, this is this is a story people should know. Um, I think you'll find this one interesting, props. So, okay, is gonna this is gonna be one of those ones where I'm like, I'm actually going in Yeah, this is a fun one. Yes. So our our story starts with one of my favorite historical figures. As I told you, Major General Smedley Butler. We're talking about old Smedley again. Um, so we're gonna start by talking about him because he's at the center of all this. So okay. Smedley Butler was born in eighteen eighty one, who was the eldest son of a Quaker family from Westchester, Pennsylvania. His father, Thomas, was a congressman and his maternal grandfather was in Congress as well. So this is a guy who comes from a lot of privilege in power. Um. He attended the Haverford School, which is a secondary school for rich kids from Philadelphia, and he thrived in this upper crust, elite institution. He became captain of the school baseball team and quarterback of the football team, and he seemed to be on the road to a career in politics or business. But then thirty eight days before his seventeenth birthday, he left school to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. UM. So he's on like a path to follow you into business or into politics, and then when he's sixteen, he leaves home to join the Marines. Now this pisses off his dad, who didn't want his kid joining the Marines. But the reason Smedley had joined is that the Spanish American War had just started, which we chatted about of it last week, and Smedley wanted to fight UM. So he lied about his age too the Marines and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He landed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, shortly after it was captured, and he didn't see any action there. His unit was sent back to the mainland and he could have been cashiered out, you know, gone back into go you know, doing a business thing. But he decided to stay in the Marines and take a commission as a first lieutenant and go fight in the Philippines. UM. He was not immediately good at war. He was initially tasked with garrison duty, which boared him so much that he just spent all of his time drunk. He was at one point relieved of command temporarily due to something he did in his bedroom, which is all that we know about the incident. He did. He did something with alcohol in his bedroom that made his superiors be like, this guy can't be in charge of people for a while. Yeah, yeah, Phil, Phil in the blanks, you know. Um. So in October of eighteen nine, he saw his first combat action when he led three Marines to conquer a town from the people who you know lived there, right, Like, this is a colonial, brutal colonial war, still colonial, got it? Like he's he's a he's the bad guy right there. We're we're the bad guys in that war. Um. Yeah. And Butler fell in love with battle and with the Marine Corps. He just was very it was very good at fighting. Like he this is a really difficult, desperate situation, and he comports himself well, he's good at leading men in combat. Um. And he becomes after fighting so enthralled with the Marine Corps that he hires a tattoo artist to give him a full from his neck to his belly tattoo of the Marine Corps emblem like this, He's very into the Marines. Okay, loves him some being a marine. Yeah, you're getting a full day. That's that's that's some being affleck you know what I'm saying. But I think, yeah, there's I know people, including some Marine bets, who will argue that the Marine Corps kind of the cultist of the of the military branches. Um. Yeah, And some might argue that's because they're the best at what they do. Um. But Butler is definitely drinking the fucking kool aid. Right. So he gets sent to China next as part of the US detachment sent over during the Boxer Rebellion. He's wounded in combat and despite having a bullet like, one of his men gets hurt and he runs out to get him and gets shot in the leg. And despite having a bullet in his leg, he drags multiple men to safety while actively under fire and bleeding. Um and again the box Rebellion another brutal colonial action. Um, but he's he comports himself very well. Now, at that time, commissioned officers were unable to receive the Medal of Honor, otherwise he probably would have earned one, but he received some decorations for his gallantry under fire. Smedley Butler would spend the next couple of decades as he would grow into what was probably the best soldier in the American Empire. Like he is an exceptional imperial soldier. Um. He fights in the Banana Wars, which were a series of police actions and intervention in the Caribbean and in Central America made on behalf of US business interests, killing people for He's he's killing people for banana companies. He's killing people for United you know. Uh. He fights in Honduras, where he was constantly near death with fever and received the nickname Old Gimlet Eye because his eye his every like he was. He looked terrifying. He was this gaunt, scar filled monster with bloodshot eyes. Um and like just feverish. Yeah, that's his Old Gimlet Eye is, Like he looks like a fucking a wraith. You know. I love this guy. He's except for his except for his colonial colonial stuff. Yeah. Yeah, he's fighting on the wrong side, but he's objectively a badass. Um. So Butler racks up promotion after promotion. He enforces US foreign policy in Nicaragua. He sent us a spy during the Mexican American War. He sent us a spy to Mexico City or one of the wars that we fall with Mexico. He sent us a spy to Mexico City to help the United States gather information for the Siege of Vera Cruz, which a lot of people don't know we were doing in the early nineteen hundreds, We like bombed Vera Cruz. Yeah, yeah, there's a good warren Zevon song about it. Butler was one of nearly sixty American servicemen who received Medals of Honor for their service in Mexico because he fights in in Vera Cruz as well. Uh, And virtually all of those medals were complete bullshit, Like they hand out sixty medals of honor for the siege of Vera Cruz, and they're doing it because Woodrow Wilson, the President, knows that, like this is an ugly colonial war, and he wants to dress it up by making it look like by putting out a bunch of stories of heroism and stuff. So he hands out the military's highest honor like candy. And there's actually a bunch of It's a big controversy at the time because a lot of veterans are like, you're devaluing the Medal of honor by using it this way UM and Smedley. Butler receives one of these show medals of honor and he tries to return it, arguing that he'd done nothing to deserve it and he shouldn't get it, but he's ordered by his superiors to keep the medal and wear it on his uniform. UM. So you're seeing he's started. He's starting to like realize, like that's kind of messed up. Why why, like I I don't deserve this, don't give this to me? Um like that. Yeah, he's he keeps me, He keeps me like imbalanced. Yeah yeah, yeah, you're gonna he's he's he's a growth story, Smedley. Smedley is always changing, especially knowing because of the behind the police stuff, like I know where this guy lands where I'm just like, why am I feeling any stupidly about you? Yeah? It's it's that's that's not even quite Yeah, well we'll talk about it. So in Haiti. In Haiti, Butler wins his second Medal of honor UM and this was one for actual fighting. His unit was sent into the country when the president was murdered by a mob. Butler and his troops repeatedly outnumbered by insurgents, and over a long campaign succeeded in breaking the insurgency and establishing order for the U. S back dictatorship. Butler himself helped organize the Haitian police, and in his own recollection, he and his men hunted enemy rebels quote like pigs. Um. So again this he is a brutal soldier of empire, like building the police force for a dictator. Um. You have to kind of look at what. Yeah, it's not great. Um, it's not great now. Smedley was promoted to brigadier general at age thirty seven. He was in remains one of the most highly decorated soldiers in the entire history of the United States military. He's got two medals of honor. Um, and he's he's like, you know, as a general rule, generals don't get medals of honor, certainly not two of them. Um, they don't tend to be fighting guys. But Smedley is a fighting guy. He's not a stand back and give orders. He should get stuck in kind of dude. Um. He desperately wanted to fight in France during World War One, but he was not assigned combat duty. This is probably because by the later stage of his career, he was seen as politically unreliable due to the tendency he developed over the years to say exactly what he felt. But the retired in late nineteen thirty one. He ran for Senate in nineteen thirty two, supporting prohibition, but he was defeated. And in the late stage of his career, while he's still in the Marines, is when he's running the police in Philadelphia during that brief tenure. UM. So this is you know, our story starts after he's he you know, he took what he learned in Haiti and tried to apply it to the Philadelphia police. It didn't work out great. But he's kind of the father in a lot of ways, one of the fathers of militarizing the U. S. Police. UM. And now he's he's retired, he tries to get into politics. He's not good at it. UM And by the early nineteen thirties Smedley Butler, who is probably the greatest soldier in any empire ever had UM had started to change his mind on some things. A lot of this had to do with the Great Depression and a social movement that has spawned called the Bonus Army. The gist of it is that when the economy crashed, a bunch of World War One veterans found themselves unemployed, in a lot of cases, homeless and starving. These guys had been given what we're called service certificates in nineteen twenty four, which was the government saying we will pay you a bunch of money for what you did in the war, but not yet because these were bonds, so they couldn't redeem them until nineteen forty five. Right. It was like imaginary money, imaginary money that like, in thirty years, this will be enough money to maybe retire on, but like not now. But there's we're starving now, you know, like I can't wait another fifty years? Cool? Um, So obviously don't seemed like a good deal. But after two years of economic collapse, a lot of people just couldn't wait anymore. Uh. And in June of nineteen thirty two, more than forty veterans protested in Washington, d c u. They called themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force or the Bonus Army, and they advocated for Congress to pass an immediate soldiers bonus for serving in World War One. Now again, we're all living through our own version of of something similar. So you know what comes next. Congress adjourned without actually doing anything. Here we go. This pisses the bonus army off and they started getting loud and unruly, so the shot two of them, which eventually provoked a riot the whole massive men set up this enormous camp in order to hold up and wait for Congress to do something. Right. They like, build a camp and they're like, we're not leaving until you give us some fucking money. Um. The bill makes its way into Congress, but it gets defeated. Congress, based on some powerful financial interests, decides it's too expensive to pay these veterans UM, so they lose. They don't get their bonus. But the camp doesn't disperse. Um. And when the camp doesn't disperse, the Hoover administration announces that it's sending in the army to evict the soldiers. Now, it was at this point that General Smedley Butler visited the camp. Um. He told the soldiers that he thought they were well within their rights to lobby Congress. Corporations can why can't Why can't people like us? You know? Um? He spent the night there with the men, he had breakfast with them. He told them they were good soldiers and he was proud of them. Um And a week or so later he leaves. In a week or so later, America's most overrated general, Douglas McArthur disperses the crowd with a mix of men on horseback and poison gas. Um and this radicalizes Butler. Um. Initially he just becomes very anti Herbert Hoover and and you know, advocates for Hoover to get his ass kicked in the election that year. And Hoover does lose reelection that year. It turned out to maybe be a bad idea. I can't turn on the people. No, no, And he's a ship president in general. Um So, obviously Fdr Franklin Delano Rose about wins wins the election that year, he becomes the president. He promises Americans a new deal, which wealth they capitalists saw as a clear sign that Roosevelt was about to open the door to Soviet communism and take all of their money. Why are you also scared all the time? Man? We're gonna talk about that. There's an interesting story there. Um So. One of the men who get scared by the New Deal is a guy named Robert Sterling Clark, and he's the heir to the singer sewing machine for fortune. Um. Everybody's seen a singer sewing machine. That's the kind of money this guy has, you know. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, And we're talking singer sewing machines in the thirties when everybody uses them all the time. Actually, every house had it. It's yeah, it's not a hobby. It's the only way you have pants. Um. Another guy who got scared was a Wall Street financier named Grayson M. P. Murphy. And another was Prescott Bush, the father of President George H. W. Bu And who is it that? Yeah, yeah, he he really doesn't like the New Deal. Um. And Prescott Bush is an investment banker on Wall Street at the time. Um okay, yeah, So these three are the best known members of what came to be called the Business Plot. And we'll talk about them all a bit more. But before we get into their plan to overthrow the United States government and institute a fascist state, I should probably make it clear that a lot of rich Americans in the nineteen thirties wanted to at least see FDR thrown out on his ask for suggesting that rich people be taxed to stop poor people from dying in the street. Again, not surprising to anyone that it's not It wasn't new then, Yes, um, I'm gonna read of I found a very good summary of of kind of this situation and the American culture at the time from a college thesis by Bradley Galka of the University of Albany that I really recommend reading. He does a great job of putting this all together. Quote William Manchester, in his book The Glory and the Dream, describes the fear which upper class Americans had of a lower class revolt in the months before Roosevelt's inauguration. Among the propertied classes, he writes, the distinction between the poor wanting bread and a full on communist revolutionary was often non existent. The rich would have to take their security into their own hands. If the government could not keep order, each man must look to his own Businessmen in a number of cities formed committees to cope with nameless terrors, should railroad and telephone lines be cut and surrounding highways blocked, Candles and canned goods were stockpiled. A Hollywood director carried with him a wardrobe of old clothes so that he could disappear into the crowd on a moment's notice. In New York hotels, discovered that wealthy guests who usually leased suits for the winter, were holding up in their country homes. Some had mounted machine guns on their roofs. Manchester goes on to say that the paranoid elites were not really so paranoid. The evidence strongly suggests. He writes that had Roosevelt in fact been another Hoover, the United States would have followed seven Latin American countries whose governments had been overthrown by depression victims. So there is revolution in the air, and it scares the funk out of these people there bolton machine guns to their country houses, you know. Um. So the fears of this particular group of rich white dudes were further confirmed by the fact that left wing writers and intellectuals were louder than ever in their anticipation of a coming communist revolution. Things were, from the outside, at least, looking pretty good in Soviet Russia, compared to at least the reality that a lot of Americans knew. In nineteen thirty two, the socialist presidential candidate we used to have socialist presidential candidates tripled his share of the vote from the nine election. Um, and uh, yes, so socialism is actually doing starting to do pretty well in American politics. Socialism was mainstream in a way that seems impossible now. One example of how mainstream it was, Governor Floyd Olson of Minnesota announced that he would not take any recruit for the National Guard, who quote doesn't carry a red card, because he said, Minnesota is a left wing state. Like, I'm communists in the army. I'm the governor of Minnesota. What world is this? Okay? Yeah? So yeah, Obviously, if you've got a left wing governor of an entire state saying Minnesota is socialist and we're raising an army, a lot of capitalists are going to get freaked out. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah. The right wing governor of Kansas, Alf Landon declared that quote, the iron hand of a national dictator is in preference to a paralytic stroke. So the right is saying we need a dictator, and the left is saying we need an army. Um. You might recognize this as kind of identical in rhetoric to both what we were hearing in Portugal and Spain before those countries had couz Right, Portugal saying like an iron chancellor. Yeah, he's saying, maybe the iron hand of a dictator, you know, yeah, same rhetoric. Republicans were surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, willing to endorse outright fascism over socialism. Senator David Reid of Pennsylvania, a Republican, stated, if this country ever needed a Mussolini, it needs one now. Wait wait, wait, you let that come about your mouth. He let that come out of his mouth. Okay, okay, you are not you are not thinking. You're not thinking a long game, big homie. Okay, long game. Things turn out kind of upside down for Mussolini. But that's a story for another day. So in saying this, Senator Reid was tapping into what was at that point more or less an American meme, a surprising love of Mussolini. Benito Mussolini was huge in America in this period. This is like the twenties and thirties. People did not know that. So I did not know because I spent so you know, obviously during this time, I'm I'm in Harlem. Yeah. My whole history is what's happening with black people right now? You know what I'm saying. So I never even thought about my lord, Like there was Mussolini standing yeah, okay, yeah, that's what's half sting with white people at the time. They're getting real jazz. You here have been jazz. Mussolini kind of fly man. That guy. Look at the way he wears boots. So. Historian John P. Diggins argues that a large number of American journalists in the twenties and thirties supported Italy's fascist regime from the March on Rome out up to the outbreak of Italy's invasion at the Ethiopia in ninety five. That's kind of what like stops the Mussolini uh honeymoon period when he gasses a bunch of people to death. Um, But up until that point, he's really big. Diggins writes that a large number of American journalists quote succumbed to fascist propaganda and if you actually prostituted themselves in the pay of the Italian government. So Mussolini spends a lot of money, um, trying to push articles and think pieces that would give fascism a positive reputation in the United States. He's bribing reporters and editors UM to write articles that make fascism seem good. Now History and Jeanne mcnowne uh notes that he Mussolini spent particular effort influencing quote, the financiers who needed to be able to count on favorable future conditions for their European investments. Mussolini's favorite target and his best friends in the United States were JP Morgan and his family. You go dropping his names, he's out of nowhere names. We're like, wait, that guy, Like, the story just turned so weird, that JP Morgan, that JP Morgan loved fascism turns out wild. This is when I wish I had one of those buttons so I could do that. Yeah. Now, another big Mussolini fan and his primary propaganda distributor was the Press Syndicate run by William Randolph Hurst UM, also big fan of fascism. So we'll talk a little bit more about Hurst in a bit, But I want to note that there were also some very good reporters at the time who saw what was happening, what Mussolini was doing, and who spoke out against it lucidly improperly. The Chicago Tribunes George Selds was probably one of the best journalists for this. He wrote, quote, far away fascism has been attacked, exposed, and denounced by the same publications which for years ran articles lauding Mussolini and his notable backers in all lands and the Hurst Newspapers, which published from nineteen thirty four to Pearl Harbor dozens of signed propaganda articles by Dr Gebel's Gearing and other Nazis now call them names, but no publication which takes money from certain big business elements will dare name the native or nearby fascists. In many instances, the publications themselves are part of our own fascism, and that selves is kind of recognizing. And it was one of the few guys to be like, really try to drum home, drive them openly and this he wrote this obviously after World War two started. It like, oh, yeah, as soon as we're war, y'all are against Mussolini and Hitler. But you let them publish fucking articles before you before this ship happened. Come on, you ignore, yeah. Selds argued that fascism, American fascism was not just limited to lunatic fringes of society, but was influential in major economic, social, and political circles. He asserted that there were communists in the United States who quote organized big business in a movement against labor, signed a pact with Nazi agents for political and economic penetration of the US, founded a million dollar a year propaganda outfit to corrupt the press, radio schools, and churches, and delayed the winning of the war through the acts of dollar a year men looking out for present profits and future monopoly rather than for the quick defeat of fascism. And there's a lot of these guys. And like, when you're looking at American corporations who directly with their money supported fascism and funded fascist propaganda. You're talking General Motors, you're talking the DuPont Corporation, and you're talking Readers Digest who were weigh ins in fascism. God dog man, It's like, yeah, there's no ending, bro, there's just no Wow. We don't talk about the time Reader's Digest was whole hog for Mussolini. Yeah, like again, yeah, that's number three. The name you never thought you'd get. When the last time you said, will you because you when the last time any of y'all said the word reader's digen. I've been published in them and I don't think about them. Roberts, what that's funny? Yeah, but you know who won't fund a fascist propaganda campaign to convince financiers that Benito Mussolini has the right idea? Pick me, pick me, pick me. I know the answer to the answer and the answer who who is it? Who won't do that? Sophie, the Fine Products and Services that sponsor this podcast nailed it, nail We're back, and God almighty, I know that JP Morgan. The bank does advert throw in random adds sometimes, and I kind of hope one came in and between as we're talking about incredible. Uh, it's very funny, Um, very funny. So uh, this is all all of this stuff that we're talking about, is what's cooking off in the background when a funkload of rich guys and we don't know all of the folks involved or who they were. We'll talk about why near the end of this, but obviously some of them are JP Morgan, like um, William Randolph Hurst is is almost certainly a part of it. There's a good chance Henry Ford was, but we don't know exactly who was involved. We know some of the people though, including George H. W. Bush's dad. So at any rate, this cabal of financiers and rich guys pick a couple of patsy's to do the grunt work because they decide, okay, you know, the very wealthiest men are like, Okay, we need to find a way to take power, and we need to do it stealthily because Americans won't stand for an open fascist coup. Um, so we're going to need They pick a couple of guys to kind of do the grunt work of actually organizing this fascist coup. And the dudes they pick are are Gerald C. McGuire and Bob Doyle, um. And they're these guys are bond salesmen, right, their stock traders essentially, um. And they're both veterans imaginary money again, yeah, their imaginary money guys. Uh. And they're both members of the American Legion, which had been established to support veterans rights and activities. And they're both vets, you know, um, which is not you know a lot of people are vets. World War One's just ended. So these guys, like these rich dudes, some of whom were had also been veterans. UM had watched what had happened with the Bonus Army in d C. They'd seen tens of thousands of veterans march on Washington UM and obviously they hadn't supported those guys getting any money because it would have been taxing rich people. But they thought there was potential and having tens of thousands of combat hardened men march on the capitol, and they basically started saying to themselves, what if we could harness that kind of force and put it under the control of a guy that we control and they trust, maybe we could overthrow the government. WHOA And Americans wouldn't be because they'd say, oh, these are our vets, you know, they're they're coming into fix things, you know. Yeah, well there, you know, we support our troops exactly. It's a good idea, you know, you get to overthrow. So obviously they're looking at who can we who can we put in control of tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of veterans who will be easy for us to control, but also who everyone respects and loves and who no one's going to accuse of any ulterior motives. Oh my god, who is it. Well, it's the perfect soldier of empire, the greatest imperial warrior whoever existed, Retired General Smedley Butler. They're like, this is the guy who can do it. And he and they look look at all of these all of these wars that we profited from, that we got America into to make money. He fought in and ran things. Like he he's already done this for us. He's perfect, you know. Damn Yeah. So I'm gonna quote right up by our Kia Publishing for what happens next. Yeah yeah, they's yeah, like he's he's the obviously, he's who you go with. Quote. During a first meeting with Butler, McGuire and Doyle asked the Major General to speak at a Legion convention in Chicago, claiming they wanted to point out the various problems with the Legion's leadership. But there was at first open to this idea, knowing that the Legion had several administrative issues that ultimately compromised veteran benefits. So they're like, hey, the Legions having a vote in convention to like vote on it's its leaders. You know, we are also vets and like we you know obviously you're you're the guy we respect the most. Would you give a speech about some of the problems our organization is happening? And he's like, sure, you know, it seems like a reasonable thing to do. He's always going to try to help out soldiers when he can. Um. But then he as he kind of looks through the speech that they've written, he realizes that it says almost nothing about the American Legion leadership and is instead entirely about the gold standard and about how the government needs to go back to the gold standard. Yo, I the clapper because I'm like, that is a juke. That is a really good june. Yeah, that's that's that's a zag. And Smedley's like, wait a second, what I thought you wanted me to help get the American Legion working better? Why the funk? Do I care about the gold standards? I care about that? Yeah? Yeah. Um. So they were like, basically the what was that The actual case here is that all of these bankers were scared that they had gold back loans from the government that weren't going to be paid back in full by the president. Um. And you know, they also kind of wanted to get Butler used to working for them as their agents and see if they could like use them further. It's a couple of things going on here that is textbook rich guy man, very textbook rich, like just right on the nose. And what they don't realize about Butler is that he's not the perfect imperial soldier anymore. By this point, he's he's become a socialist um and he doesn't bite. Uh. He actually thought McGuire might be mentally ill because what the guy was suggesting seems so strange to him. And Butler's impression of McGuire didn't change over the next few months, because the stockbroker keeps approaching the old general with new requests to address the American Legion for really incoherent reads what seems to Butler incoherent reasons, okay, and so in August of nineteen thirty three, Butler and McGuire meet again, and by this point Butler had started to realize that McGuire was working for someone. He starts to piece together there's a through line for all these weird things he's asking me to do. There's gotta be someone pulling the strings behind this um now, because McGuire was the kind of guy who only valued money. He saw Butler's reticence and decided that, like, oh, he's not suspicious because I'm asked him to do weird things. He wants to know that I have backing. So he basically flashes a huge pile of cash and Butler's so so rich guy only thinks yeah that everybody thinks like rich guys. Yeah. Butler's like, it's really weird that you keep asking me to make all of these bizarre political addresses to the American Legion. And McGuire's like, hey, I got a hundred grand right, Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, but what are you talking about though? Yeah, And this actually makes Butler more suspicious because in his mind, no honest man has access to a hundred thousand dollars. Keep it real, but like, I'm not supposed to like you, bro, But like, day, that's a great answer. Was like what what? Well, he's changed at this point, but there's he goes through a very satisfying evolution. McGuire admits that he has a backer. He says like, yeah, I work as a bond salesman for Grayson Murphy, who's a wealthy Wall Street financier who had also been a colonel during World War One, but not like a real like his job had been coordinating with the Red Cross. He got a rich guy job in the army for the war, you know. Um, So McGuire had paid a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars to underwrite the start of the American Legion because it starts after World War One, and he thought of it as as an investment, right, like Murphy's putting the American Legion together because he has a really rich guy is like, it's probably a good idea to have an organization of combat veterans who I can kind of direct, right, Yeah, there's a plot going on here. Butler and McGuire start talking about McGuire's backers, and McGuire admits to Butler that his boss, Grayson, is one of nine Richmond who were trying to pay for a national convention of the American Legion in d C. Now by this point, Smedley Butler knew something very crooked was going on, and Bradley Galka writes quote Butler did not commit to anything, but rather waited and listen to what McGuire had to say. The two met at the beginning of September. When asked if he had begun recruiting men to go to the National Convention, Butler said no. He told McGuire that he would not even consider cooperating unless he was allowed to meet with one of the principal backers of the plot. McGuire promised to set up a meeting as soon as was possible. Treated his word, McGuire arranged for Butler to meet with one of the principles the following week. The man was actually an acquaintance of the general. His name was Robert Sterling Clark, known to Butler as the Millionaire Lieutenant This is the Singer Guy. Clark had been a junior officer under Butler's command in China during the Boxer Rebellion. According to Butler, Clark had been a batty sort of queer fellow who did all sorts of extravagant things. Tell him a batty bad like like as in like how we say that girls a batty, or like as in batta b a t t y like this, this he's this, you know. There he goes to war with this guy, and everyone knows this kid is a millionaire and he's weird, right like he's a rich kid, you know. He's yeah. I was like, wait, what do you mean by a batty? Like and I was like, wait, you're calling him a batty and then saying, well he does queer stuff like you just called him a batty like, bro, Like just okay, now I get it. Yeah you know so man, Yeah that's clarify that so so so so wait so make sure I'm following along. So at this point, Smedley's antennas are all like his spidy in angling all over the place like some now right something. He's saying yeah, and then he's like, and I don't trust you rich kids like y'all never see no combat. You ain't no blood on your hands. Man. You you stayed on the words the whole time. He wasn't running with the wild dog, So help me understand. And then he goes and he meets what he's rich dude. He's like, I remember this kid, Yeah, this fucking kid. Yeah yeah. And he's also he's also, this is kind of the guy that Smedley's a very intelligent man. He thinks something is fishy and he's like, I want to go up the food chain. I want to follow the money up and I want to talk to you. I'm want to talk to the guy. Give any money, you know. Um. So the General meets with Clark, this millionaire air uh, and Clark's first question was whether or not Butler had read the speech that that Clark had helped write for him, and Butler was like, he says, yes, but it looks as if it were a big business speech. There's something funny about that speech. Mr Clark. Now, once it was clear that Butler knew he was being used for some purpose, even though he wasn't sure what that purpose was, Clark drops the act. So Butler says that, and Clark's like, Okay, you know something's going on. So I'm just gonna tell you the truth. And he tells Butler this quote. You understand just how we are fixed. I have got thirty million dollars. I do not want to lose it. I am willing to spend half of the thirty million to save the other half. If you go out and make this speech in Chicago, I am certain that they will adopt the resolution, and that will be one step towards the return of gold. To have the soldiers stand up for it. We can get the soldiers to go out in great bodies to stand up for it. And obviously gold isn't the end goal here, but that's how they want to like start things. That's they're starting it. Yeah, And and this guy admits like, look, I am trying to use you to keep my money, and I'm willing to spend half of my money to keep the other half. You know. That's what's important to me, is continuing to be a rich man. Yeah. Now in uh, there's there's some sort of like a kind of a dark and twisted but kind of good financial advice in that, like I'll spend half of it is if it's gonna make my other half double. Yeah, it's like he said, he's also saying like I'm I'm afraid that the decisions being made by this government will reduce my class it all. Yeah, Yeah, that that's what I'm saying. Like this is like dark, like okay, this is this is why they wealthy. It's like, well, I'm not just sitting on this stuff and I'm not willing to burn at all, but I'll spend on what's gonna protect the other half and increased the other half. You know what I'm saying. It's how rich guys think, you know, it's how rich guys think. Point. This enrages Butler when when he said, like, Butler is kind of barely able to keep himself from just like flipping out at this guy. Because Butler he had been obviously an Imperial soldier, but his entire career, his focus, the thing that kept him going was the well being of the soldiers under his command. Right, he had risked his life repeatedly and been wounded to protect them in under his command. And this rich guy is saying, I want to use your fellow soldiers for my own to keep my money. And Butler's like fuck that and fuck you, like you know, at this point, yeah, we're done. Yeah. Now, at this point, Smedley didn't quite realize that his entire career up to that point had been doing the same thing in other countries. Right, had been like risking the lives of his men to protect the money of rich people. He doesn't quite get that yet, but he sees that what he he understands what this guy is trying to do now, right, Um, So he gets angry and he tells the millionaire how he feels I took an oath to sustain democracy, and that is what I'm going to do and nothing else. I Am not going to get these soldiers marching around and stirred up over the gold standard. What the hell does a soldier know about the gold standard? Um? Damn. Different when it's direct, man, when you see it like rather than like at a systemic or like a you know, ah, indirect way like you said, like ultimately you know you're at least in our most recent wars, you just went to protect somebody's money and to hold up a crooked regime, you know what I'm saying. But if somebody couldn't. But if like if your general stood up to you and just said, hey homie, uh, this place got oil, so we need to kill these people to get it, like you would be like nothing to do that. You know what I'm saying. I'm not gonna do that. What are you're talking about? You know what I'm saying. But like when it's in your face the way it was with him, He's like, no, listen, here's the thing. I'm rich and I'm might lose it, so I need you to go get my money. Yeah. And this is this is a bit of a spoiler, this it being this direct for him is what helps him realize what the rest of his career had been. Like this really is. We're not quite there yet, okay, McGuire. Like, Butler's like, I am not going to do this thing for you. I'm not gonna go fucking put my neck on the line for the gold standard. And McGuire's like, all right, all right, and he's like, can I use your phone? And while Butler listens, McGuire gets on the phone in Butler's house or not McGuire. Uh. Sterling gets on the phone in Butler's house and he calls McGuire the guy who would was his gopher um and tells him that Butler's not coming to the American Legion convention. And Sterling tells McGuire to use forty five thou dollars that he'd given him to flood the convention hall with telegrams urging a return to the gold standard. And that's exactly what happens at the convention. The telegrams flow in and the result solution is passed, condemning like the move away from the gold standard, And you know, Sterling kind of does this to show off to Butler, like, Okay, well if you're not going to do this. Let me show you what I can accomplish. I can just pay forty five grand to get fucking flyers put up and like will flood them with propaganda and make it happen. And Butler takes this as the lesson that it is right, that these are powerful men, and this is like they do have the ability to to make this ship happen. UM. So for a little while, that's kind of all it is. It's this weird thing over the gold Standard, and Butler it feels off to him, but he doesn't think much more about it until the next year, August of nineteen thirty four, when Gerald McGuire comes up to his house again and he and Butler meet and McGuire tells the general quote the him has come to get the soldiers together, and McGuire, who's a veteran himself, is referencing the Bonus Army. He's basically coming up and being like, hey, you know, the things are still hard for veterans. Why don't you and I work out something where we can get another group of soldiers together and maybe march them on Washington UM. And Butler's like willing to have this conversation. Right, he's not willing to do the gold standard thing, but like, oh, you're talking about getting people together because veterans need some money. Absolutely, that's my whole thing. Yeah, But then the conversation turns. McGuire tells Butler that he'd just gotten back from an overseas trip and it was on It wasn't a vacation, but his wealthy backers were paying him to go scouting. And this is what McGuire says, quote. I went abroad to study the part that the veteran plays and the various setups of the governments that they have abroad. I went to Italy for two or three months and studied the position that the veterans of Italy occupy and the fascist setup of government, and I discovered that they are the background of Mussolini. They keep them on the payrolls in various ways and keep them contented and happy, and they're his real backbone, the force on which he may depend in case of trouble to sustain him. But that set up would not suit us at all. The soldiers of America would not like that. I then went to Germany to see what Hitler was doing and his whole strength lies in organizations of soldiers too, but that would not do. I looked into the Russian business. I found the use of soldiers over there would never appeal to our men. Then I went to France and I found just exactly the sort of organization we are going to have. It is an organization of super soldiers. And what he's talking about, you remember the cross of Fire that we talked about last episode in France, that French veterans organization. You've got five officers, a thousand officers and n c o s and they control the votes of five million men, and they're very, very far right right, and they have a role in the insurrection that happens over in France, which has just happened at this point. So these rich guys watch what happens in France and almost succeeds and are like, oh, you know, that's that's not a bad idea. Why don't we set up a veterans organization like that? Yeah, So that's what McGuire fires like. We need to build the same thing that they have in France, because if we can get five million votes or so, like a coalition of five million votes, we can win any election. We want we can get rid of, you know, Roosevelt, or we can march them on the capitol, you know, if we have half a million soldiers. So Butler said, alright, like, I'm not I'm not against this idea. If you want to organize a bunch of veterans to to to make political changes, act as a voting block, that makes sense to me because I care about veterans issues. Um, but what do you want to use them for? Right? Why are you why are we building this because he's still suspicious of this guy over the Golden State doing yeah, And McGuire shares them, like, no, they're going to support the president. That's what we want them to do, is to kind of support the president and his efforts to fix the economy. And Butler points out when McGuire says this, Butler points out that like, well, in all these speeches you wanted me to give earlier, you would have me. You wanted me to oppose all of FDR's policies. So why are you trying to make a veterans organization to support FDR now? And McGuire responds, don't you understand that the setup has got to be changed a bit? Now? We have got him. We have got the president. He has got to have more money. There's not any more money to give him. Eight percent of the money now is in government bonds. And he cannot keep this racket up much longer. He has got to do something about it. He has either got to get more money out of us or he has got to change the method of financing the government. And we are going to see to it that he does not change that method. He will not change it. They're worried about him, like going into debt and devaluing the dollar and stuff. Um. So, Butler sees where this is going, and he asks McGuire straight up, the idea of this great group of soldiers then is to sort of frighten him, is it. McGuire lying said that no, they don't want to scare FDR. They just want to support him. And then he introduces a new idea. He tells Butler, you know, the president's overworked, and he's he's an old man, he's not healthy. Wouldn't it be nice if we could give FDR an assistant president. We can use this big armed group of veterans to convince the president to create a new cabinet position. Secretary of General Affairs, and this person will do all of the actual work of the president, and he'll institute policies that my rich backers nowhere going to fix things for the American people. F DR will still be president, but he'll just be ceremonial and will be controlling things. And this big armed group of veterans will make sure that everybody plays that right up under our noses. Bro So McGuire tells Butler that this is all necessary because the president is sick, and even if it's not true that he's unable to do the job anymore, the American people will believe them if they say he's sick, because quote, we have got the newspapers. He's talking about the fact that William Randolph Hurst is one of the guys involved in this plot. Like whatever, whatever we need the American people to believe, they'll believe because we control the newspapers. So all we need to do is organize this body of men. So, in suggesting this, McGuire's rich backers were looking to treat FDR kind of the same way Mussolini treated the King of Italy or Hitler treated Hindenburg. In his last of course, McGuire didn't point this out to Butler, but he asked, would you be interesting and heading up this super organization of veterans that we're going to use to take power. So he's all on the table now, like we're going to take over the government. We're going to do it in a way that's not obvious. We're going to use the newspapers to make sure people don't know that we've just stopped FDR from having any power, and we're if things are going to be run by the rich um and but so he's like, do you want to be the guy who leads this army of veterans into the capital to demand these things? And Butler response, I'm interested in it. I'm interested in this veterans organization, but I don't know about heading it. I am very greatly interested in it, because you know, my interest, my one hobby is maintaining a democracy. If you get these five thousand soldiers advocating anything smelling a fascism, I'm going to get five thousand more and lick the hell out of you and we'll have a real war right at home. He's a direct man. Yeah, I love it. He's like, look made mean wars I fought. Do you think I'm scared of you? Like yeah, Like and this like if you do this and I think you're trying to create a fascist state, I'll raise an army and I'll win. Like you don't know about actual war vet like I actually know the veterans. Yeah. Yeah, So this makes McGuire backpedal a little bit. He's realized he's maybe like gone, he was maybe a little bit too open about what they were planning to do. And he insists like, we're not trying to overthrow. We just want to support the president. We're not trying to take power. We want to support him. And Butler says, well, if that's the case, you're gonna need a lot of money, right, This is not going to be a cheap thing to do. And McGuire is like, well, we've got three million dollars on hand, you know, and problem money and a problem we get access to three hundred million dollars if necessary. And so Butler again it's like, who in the funk is putting up this money? Honest, men don't have three million dollars to throw around, And so he's like, where are you getting all of this money? And I know, it's not just Clark Um or Sterling, the guy that I had met earlier. And McGuire says, you know how Clark told you he would spend half of his uh fortune to save the other half. Well, there's a lot of other rich guys who feel the same way, right, Prescott Bush and JP Morgan and all these all these other dudes feel the same way. So Smedley Butler meant what he said. He was absolutely committed to American democracy and he never actually considered helping. But he knew the danger of what he was hearing and he wanted to be able to expose it, and to do that he was going to need a corroborating witness. So his goal now too becomes, I need someone else credible to be witnessed to the whole plans that we can go testify to Congress just in case, Dude, Smith dog, This dude's antenna's are like they are a tuned because to be like you can't just be like f you and storm the room because these people don't need you. Don't find somebody else, you know what I'm saying. And it's like the understanding that like just that power play when you in a role with people that wealthy, they always feel like they in charge. But that but that power is given to them. If you don't, if you'll give a shit about their money, you know what I'm saying, then the power don't matter, you know what I'm saying. Then you realize really what's happening here. It's like, oh wait, y'all got all this money and you still need this meeting with me. So there's some you know what I'm saying. So like he had his antenna's enough to be like, I need to make sure because it's not like these people can't put me away. I need somebody over here to watch all this happening because they wield in all his power and I am you know what I'm saying, Like right now, I'm in their good graces right now, They're still hungry for me. So let me make sure I'm playing his antenna's are art? I love it? Yeah? You know he's he's thinking, he's thinking, and he's thinking that right up by Arcadia Publishing again for What Happens Next. Having previously worked as the police captain of Philadelphia, Butler reached out to a Philadelphia record writer, Paul come Lely, French, who agreed to meet with McGuire as well. During this meeting, McGuire told French that he believed a fascist state was the only answer for America and that Smedley was the ideal leader because he could organize a million men overnight. So French, the very skilled journalist, comes in and kind of on the guys of like, yeah, you want the press on your side, let's talk about what you're trying to do. And he's like, French is clearly a good interview and gets mugguire to admit, like, yeah, I want to We want to make a fascist state. It's the only way forward for America, and Butler's the best guy to do it. So French takes detailed notes after all of these meetings, he would later tell Congress. Quote, during the course of the conversation, he continually discussed the need of a man on a white horse, as he called it, a dictator who would come galloping in on his white horse. He said that was the only way, either through the threat of armed force or the delegation of power and the use of a group of organized veterans to save the capitalistic system. Speaking of capitalistic systems, Speaking of capitalism. You know who won't inside a fascist revolution. I mean hopefully hopefully fingers crossed. I have something to tell you at this ad break that just broken the news, But I guess I'll tell you now. Jeff I saw just stepped down at CEO of Amazon. What the funk is happening? He's transitioning to an executive chair role. Something's about to go down. Yes, I have some theories. That's big. Take this break. Take yeah, yeah, yeah, we're We're all what are your theories? Something's fucking happening. So here's my theories. I think there was two things going on here. I think uh one is He's like, I would like the money without the headache, So let me just let somebody else had a headache, says All. Says this is from obviously the Washington Post because he hounds it. Baviss will step down from the role after founding the company more than twenty years ago. I'll sharing a new era for the e commerce merchant giant currently current Amazon Web Services chief and Jassy will take on the mantel of CEO. I don't like our words mantel first of all. Yeah, yeah, but I think the money from the like from the from the web support platform services is now outpacing the products, so they like, we need to move that way. Number one and number two. I'm positive they're gonna break the company up. They're gonna break this up because it's yeah, and he's like, I better get out now. They're gonna break this ship up. I really hear. Um, Yeah, it should be broken up. It's too much of a business. You can't be the grocery store and the groceries. Yeah. I think he just wants to go off into the moon and just spend the rest of this. You want to be no one. I want all the money without the headache. No reasonable person would be worth a hundred billion plus dollars and want to keep doing a job. Why do you keep working? Yeah, go filling the island with I don't know, no more, no more guys with the islands. I always do, yes, But what have to say? Yeah, it's like, you don't take a hundred million dollars to keep working? He said, He'll he'll never spend this You will never spend this money. It's the only billion who's ever made sense to me. Is one of the Google founders who like spent hundreds of millions of dollars making a house blimp and it's like, yeah, that's rad. Like, yeah, I'm gonna live in a blimp like I can never you can't even give it away. There's not enough there's not enough hours in the day. You know, you're not gonna live enough years to spend this. Yeah you couldn't. Yeah. Uh, all right, we're back. Uh what a great what a great time. So uh we're talking about Yeah, this guy Butler brings in this journalist French who gets who gets these guys to throw down some dirt right and admit what they're actually looking to do? Yeah? Um now in his right up on the business plot, Bradley Galka notes quote. McGuire also discussed this group's intended solution to the national employment crisis. He said they were inspired by Adolf Hitler's policies in Europe that the solution would be the institution of labor camps and barrys in America to mobilize the unemployed. You said, you said it out loud. You're not say that out loud. Bro, This hed the guy has some good ideas. I'm just saying, like we could save you. Hear me, hear me? Out. We could save capitalism. We could save cap What if we put the par in camps and make them work for us. They're not doing anything right. They're not doing anything right. Shouldn't be voting. They've just gotta vote to take our money. But I'm in camps. Uh. Such an initiative, McGuire insisted, would solve the problem overnight. He also revealed that the Plotters would force all suspected radicals across the country to register their movements with the government. That way, said McGuire, the new regime could stop a lot of these communist agitators who were running around the country. McGuire ended by insisting at another economic crash was inevitable and would come when bonds reached five percent interest. When that time comes, he said, the soldiers must prepare to save the nation. Now. It's worth reiterating two important takeaways from McGuire's interactions with Butler and French. First, during McGuire's meeting with Butler at the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia, McGuire claimed that he and the Plotters have got the newspapers. He told Butler that whatever cover story his boss has decided to put in the papers, would be accepted by the dumb American people who would fall for it. In a second, damn it not wrong, not wrong, not wrong, and is right up. This is very good, it's and it's free. So I really recommend it for folks. Now. At this point, Butler decided he had enough information to go to Congress. November four, he appeared before the Special Committee on Unamerican Activities. Before the Committee and its lawyers General, Butler laid out the details of the whole sordid scheme, providing Congress with French is corroboration and the detailed notes that he himself had taken of every conversation. He swore under oath that this was all true and that a cabal of bankers and industrial magnates were plotting to overthrow American democracy. So he goes to Congress and he puts it all out on the line, and the story hits the news media. Soon after, The New York Post, which at this time is a liberal newspaper, publishes the first report, which is written by French himself. It outlines the details of the plot accurately. The Post also publishes a second, shorter piece which provides the accused plotters with an opportunity to give their denials. Now. The Post coverage here was both responsible and vital, but McGuire had not been lying when he said that his secret backers controlled much of America's print media. A second wave of coverage bursts from conservative Hearst owned newspapers. These papers tended to provide only the barest details of the actual plot and spend most of their time publishing denials by the accused magnates. One popular columnist, Arthur Brisbane, who worked for the Hearst owned San Francisco Examiner, suggested that somebody may have been deceiving General Butler. He portrayed the business plot as more or less a practical joke, and wrote mockingly that those wicked and bad and outrageous Wall Street men were the ones who actually had the most to fear from a fascist dictatorship. Yeah. Flim flam boy, Yeah, flim flam Yeah. Look at this dumb General. He just he just he got took in by a practical joke. You know, listen, he doesn't understand, you know, Doug, and I man, I imagine even like how you stand in front of Congress and like this, I don't know, like if you have this this like sinking feeling when you're trying to say something that you know is true and you're positive to people in front of you don't believe you, and you're like, uh, damn, this ain't gonna I'm stuck, ain't I You know what I'm saying? Like, I wonder if I don't know why? As he was talking, that was like the moment I pictured when he's like he went to Congress to tell them that, like he's snitching, but it's like a good type of snitch to where I'm like, no, I'm trying to tell you the truth. This is what these people are doing. Yeah, I don't know, because it's like even coming out of his mouth, he was probably like, do I sound crazy? I might sound crazy, but I'm trying to tell you just what they're doing. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So Adam Ox, a writer for The New York Times, wrote an article about the business plot, and again it's not just herst papers. The New York Times gets in on this ship. He writes an article titled Credulity Unlimited, which also mocked Butler and painted him as a crank. What can we believe? Apparently anything to judge by the number of people who lend a credulous ear to the story of General Butler's five hundred fascists and Buckram marching on Washington to seize the government. Details are lacking to lend versimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. The whole story sounds like a gigantic hoax. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this guy's crazy, talk to him. No, this silly old manular rich dudes, we're just saying it's fine. And there is. One of the things that really does corroborate that the story is true is there's a massive and very organized media campaign to discredit Butler. And it's not just journalists. Will Rogers, the former Cowboy actor who like half of l A is named after Yeah, I was like wait, wait, yeah, yeah that Will Rogers, publishes an article in the New York Times. He gets to write a column for The Times, and this article both mocks uh Smedley Butler and in the article, after making fun of Butler for being an idiot, Will Rogers volunteers to lead a fascist army in his stead. If Smedley Butler don't take that job of marching down Pennsylvania at the head of Wall Streets Fighting Brigade. I would like to get my application in. I got the Gray Horse. It won't be such a novelty as people think. This is clearly bullshit. But if it's not, I'd lead a fascist army on behalf of Wall. Straight Man Katie Perry tried to buy his house out here. Oh yeah, it's a nice house. It's a very nice house. Went on a field trip once, anyway. Yeah. New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia called the business plot a cocktail push, by which he means he thought Butler had heard the plans at a part as a joke at a party and run away with the idea. Um, that's a great you. The more I hear their defense, that's a great cover story, it's a great cover step. They were just joking. Dude, we're just drinking. It's like the guy got to this party. He don't really wrong with us. He don't know how, we don't know how you work. We're just playing around. Yeah, yeah, it's not it's not dumb, right, These aren't idiots. Now. The Committee, the Congressional Committee, the House an American Activities Committee, continues their investigation though, and they find additional evidence of the plot. Concerted digging revealed that a number of the men implicated in the plot had recently formed a conservative lobbying group called the American Liberty League. Its members included JP Morgan Jr. Irene DuPont, the CEO of General Voters, the CEO of General Foods, and other industrial leaders controlling roughly forty billion dollars in assets, which in modern terms is three quarters of a trillion dollars um. All of the richest guys and that like, these are the dudes behind it now. This digging also turns up the fact that Prescott Bush, who was heavily involved in with the Nazi government. Right he's working with them on the Hamburg America allions and stuff. Um that Prescott Bush, under the proposed American fascist government would have acted as a liaison between the American dictatorship and the Nazi government. So George W. Bush's grandpa volunteered for the job of liaison between a fascist American state and the Nazis. I was like, oh, I love the Nazis. I'd be perfect at this job. Yeah, Prescott so and then gave birth to presidents two of them well, his wife gave birth to presidents. Let me clear that up. Sorry, ladies, he didn't give birth to nobody yet. Okay, he donated genetic material that led to two presidents, both of whom were Trash. So the committee, after its investigation, never releases an official report on the business plot, but they do give a report to Congress, and in it they say that they quote trash. Oh, it's about to get trasher before it's trash. The committee goes to Congress and they say everything we checked out that Butler said, we were able to verify. They say that they quote had received evidence that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country. There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution win and if the financial backers deemed it expedient. The names of the individuals involved, they said, would have to be kept secret until they could be investigated and their complicity verified. So they're like, we we we looked this up, and we found a lot of evidence that it was true, but we can't confirm anything yet, and we're not going to give the names of the individuals. We found evidence about because we haven't finished the investigation, right, which sounds reasonable, that's how it's supposed to work. But they never finished the investigation, oh man, after saying hey, yeah this, Yeah, we've collaborated everything you said, Okay, cool, And we don't know why the investigation doesn't get finished. There are some theories, and I'm gonna quote the Washington Post from one of them. According to journalist John Buchanan speaking to the BBC in two thousand seven, this was probably because Roosevelt struck a deal with the backers of the plot. They could avoid treason charges and possible execution if they backed off their opposition to the new deal. Sally Denton, an author who wrote a book about the business plot, thinks the press may have ignored the report at the urging of the government, which didn't want the public to know how precarious things might have been. So the government that like was threatened by this may not have wanted it to be super public knowledge, right, just like the I don't think it's a good idea for people to know how quickly they came close they came to overthrowing us. Yeah, yeah, you shouldn't notice. Yeah, And and FDR probably sits down with these rich guys and it's like, look, we can hang you and it'll be ugly for everybody, Like there will be consequence, it will suck for me, Like listen, or you shut the funk up and let me do the new you know, I love it man, the brand. Listen, this is a bad this is bad for everybody. Everybody loses. I'm gonna cut your head off. But like, let's just I love it. Good job. A yeah, I mean it was probably I don't know. I'm not gonna say it was the right thing. I think it would have been better to prosecute these guys, but totally he's in a rough position. He does what it seems like the best thing to do at the time. Now, based on her research, Sally Denton believes that hadn't Smedley Butler gone along with the plot, it would have succeeded, and he might have been the only person capable of leading that fascist coup who also would have refused to do it. It is hard to overstate how lucky we are that he was the man they went to write, like the one guy who had that kind of respect among veterans who had that kind of talent. And that kind of experience, and also doesn't give a funk about money, right, like the perfect yes, the perfect combo. Yeah yeah, because he could if he even wanted it and and cared about money, He could even extort these Yeah yeah he could. And I'm saying, they're promisingly, we'll take care of your family, your kids are never damn right. You're gonna take care of my family, Joe, say, take care of my neighbor's family, and to take care of my children, eight children. You're gonna take care of us until the twenties. But he instead decides, the thing that I swore an oath for was to defend democracy, and that's what I'm going to fucking do. Um And for his part, the business plot seems to have been the final straw in Butler's radicalization. He realizes, after having been these rich guys trying to use him as a pond, that that's all he'd been doing his entire career as a soldier. He'd been upon a mambage uh. In nineteen thirty six, he votes for the socialist presidential candidate UM. In nineteen thirty five, he publishes a short book based on a series of speeches he delivered. He starts traveling around the country delivering speeches, a speech titled war is a racket, and I'm going to read you a summary. Butler wrote of his own book that kind of explains where this goes. War is a racket, always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war, a few people make huge fortunes. And he's there's a lot of good quote from Butler in general. That is good when he say the losses are in lives, but the profits are in dollars. Yeah, God, yeah, God, that's a bar and he is truly unsparing. Another quote is that I love our boys were sent off to die with beautiful ideals painted in front of them. No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason they were marching off to kill and die. Got dog, Dude, I have a homeboy, the musician. He's a friend, but he's an incredible rappers Ames Bamboo, Yeah from Filipino. Dude. U uh, well, he's from l A. He lives in the Bay. His wife, Rocky Rivera both amazing artists. Uh, their whole label beat Rock. There all these like left wing guerrilla warfare like super revolutionary dudes. But he was he was an l A dude, got in trouble with the law and then, you know, like any other brown kid, you go to the military to try to like you know, get out of jail and kind of the same scenario. He came out of that so radicalized, so ready to be like this is all bull and I would never send another child. You know, I'm saying. He's not at all a pacifist, Don't get me wrong. Like the brother got a collection of like ancient island weapons, let alone guns, you know what I'm saying. So he ain't no pacifists. But he's like, I'm not dying for someone else's pockets. Yeah, Like yeah, this is crazy. Yeah. And and Butler, Butler is that Butler's not a fashion or not a not a pacifist, and he's not anti military. He loves the military, he hates what it's used for, and he when he's delivering these speeches, he's trying to get Americans on board with a complete reformation of the military. Um. He believes that it should only ever be defensive in nature, and in order to make it that, he thinks the Navy should be limited to operating within two hundred miles of the coastline and the Army restricted from ever leaving the confines of the continental United States. Um. Yeah. Now that same year, Yeah, Yeah, that he's he's trying to like, he thinks we need a military. It just we have to find a way to stop bankers from being able to use it to fight wars for profit. That's the problem. Um. In that same year, nineteen thirty five, Butler gives an interview to common Sense magazine where he tells the nation quote, I spent thirty three years and four months in active terry service, and during that period, I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer. A gangster for capitalism. I remember that quote. Remember that quote from the Police one. Yeah, he was just like, man, I'm just a goon. I was just a goon. Yeah, just muscle, just a moon and man, this needs to be in dog I wish there's a reason it's not in your history textbooks, you know, every history book. You know what I'm saying, because yeah, because the reality is we don't have. Like I was as you were talking, I was like, do is there any figure in America now that could do that? And I'm like, I don't know, only the imaginary one. Like who's the movie The American Sniper? Was that movie? Yeah? Yeah? That yeah, Yeah, that dude's imaginary. The real the real person that he was was like a lunatic, like dangerous, like er and a liar. Yeah yeah, and he couldn't lead a fascist insurrection. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. But like if if, if the guy that that was portrayed was a real person, and maybe, but we ain't got one in real life, you know what I'm saying. But the one that did exist came out of the other end, going Yo, these wars were crap and I was just out there getting y'all's bags, and this is ridiculous. I was a fucking gangster. Got He spent the rest of his life giving speeches and trying to radicalize veterans and mourning in public that he and his comrades had only ever fought for, in his words, the benefit of millionaires and billionaires. He insisted that he had named names to the committee, that he had, that he had given the names of the people involved, but that those names had been removed from his testimony before it was made public. In a radio of an interview, he insisted, like most committees, it has slaughtered the little and allowed the big to escape. The big shots weren't even called to testify. Yeah, if that ain't the Straights, broy it's very And it's not for nothing that he names himself as a gangster. You know, he recognizes, Like it's exactly why ye know what I'm saying, the little the little cornerboy doing fifteen years, you know what I'm saying, But nobody go to the You know what I'm saying, that the Russian oligarch that got him fifteen bricks, you know what I'm saying, Like he's living nice in the Hollywood Hills. They don't even he's not even in the testimony. You know what I'm saying. That's crazy, And it's fucking one of the things that is because there's so much that's a bummer about this story, right that they just get away with it. But there is there's hope in it too, And and the hope, I think is in the story of Smedley Butler, this guy who could not have been a more dedicated soldier of imperialism and realizes he was wrong and spends the rest of his life fighting against you. You can't, you can't. You know, there's no time machine. You can't go back and undo what you did to freaking Haiti and Costa Rica and banana walls. You can't go back and redo that. But I can do the best, my best to pay it forward. That's good man, Yeah, it's it is. It's a real story of redemption, of redemption and of a man who was had. You gotta respect the amount of self knowledge to be able to admit I spent thirty three fucking years as a gangster. My friends died in a gang wharf over money, you know, like overt even ours. But we don't even get to collect Big Sean on it. Last record was like, dude, John dying over street corners you don't even own, like and it's like, yeah that like that where you just like, we don't even oh we don't even own these projects. We'll own these property. Dang, that's crazy. Yeah, anyway, that's the business plot. So it happened here. It happened here. Uh and the only reason it didn't happen all the way is that there happened to be one really good man in the middle of it. Dang, that is crazy. Yeah, So thanks Smedley Butler, Right, we appreciate you one good dude. Yeah, And I will say I think that's maybe another one of the optimistic things to take out of it is that it is a story of sometimes a single person with the right who is willing to make a moral stand can be the difference between calamity um and and and not calamity. You know. Yeah, wow, anyway, proper, you got some plug doubles to plug as we as we roll out of behind the insurrections. This has been You can't say a pleasure, can you, but it was. I enjoy every time I get to like work with you all, and here about the most horrible things in the world. They're always just They're a great time in my day, although it takes me like an hour to recoup after we do this. Um, but yeah, thank you so much again for having me prop hit pop dot com. Uh if this as of the day that you're hearing this, um, which is Thursday, right is Thursday one? Yeah, I will be dropping new music the next day Friday morning, new video, new music. So uh please go to proper pop dot com. You can subscribe to the YouTube, get on Spotify of a ton of new music. Um a new coffee drop into uh yeah, prop hitpop dot com. I gotta get you a bean man. Yeah you do. Yeah, you dotta get you on poor Gummi Fridays to man. You're not on Instagram? Well, yeah, I do have an Instagram. I only follow one guy so far, and he's the guy who's making knives for me. You have an Instagram. I feel betrayed. I wanted to look at knives. I mean, I forgive that part, but but I could I could add I could have coffee and knives be my Instagram things. What about Sophie and Anderson and I get I talked to you on signal. This is true, this is heartful. But I feel you. I feel you. Either way, We're going to figure it out. Yes, I do. You're a fun follow. Wait, maybe you could log into the Bastards pods Instagram and I've never posted or whatever it is you do on Instagram. Do you post? Yeah? You post? Yeah, I could ask you. All right, Well, don't find me on anyway Gram because I'm not going to tell any action there. You'll find me prop on Instagram, no one else. I will find it. Yes, um, and yeah we'll we'll be back next week for something different. Um, it'll be fun. Uh in a little bit of a break, and then we'll probably get back to talking about genocides pretty soon. Won't be long genocide every month. That's the behind the Bastards promise. That is our promise. I have a good one. Byewses