M what's creating my occult belief systems that, if you scratch deep beneath the surface, are fundamentally anti Semitic and racist. I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we have increasingly uh long and incoherent introductions. But this one does tie into the theme of the episode. What it doesn't tie into is my guest today, Chris crofton how are yours in there? I'm doing good. I always yeah, it's okay to be eating at croissant. You continue eating that croissant and I will introduce you as a comedian, a musician, and an advice columnist. I hope you finished the croissant now, yeah, I'm done. Fantastic that I write an advice car called The Advice King for the Nashville Scene, which is like they're oh, all weekly there and uh it's kind of a comedic advice column. But I get mad about stuff a lot, So I mean this, this podcast seems like to me a good fit. Like you guys get mad, don't you? Oh yeah, yeah, we do get mad. This is gonna be There's gonna be some anger here. There's gonna be also a lot of confusing here, this is a weird episode to bring you in on for your first episode of Bastards. I'm ready for anything. This might be the weirdest one we've done yet. Um, have you ever heard of a guy named Rudolph Steiner? You know, honestly, he sounds familiar, but I don't. I can't figure out why. Well, let me ask a follow up question. Do you know anyone who ever went to a Waldorf school? M I don't think so. That's okay. Now he's not a huge name anymore. A lot of Waldorf schools are pretty common. They're an international chain of very progressive schools that have good reputation for like particularly the arts. Uh. Jennifer Anniston graduated from Waldorf School. Rutger Howard graduated from Waldorf School. So justin throw and big Sean. Um, you know, there's there's a lot of different people who went to Waldorf schools. And the Waldorf School was the brainchild of Rudolf Steiner, among other things. Now most people again haven't heard of Mr Steiner. He also invented organic farming uh and was an influential mind behind the development of Nazi ideology. Yeah, I was thinking a Nazi. I mean his name is Rudolf. Yeah, he he was not a Nazi, although weirdly enough he ties in directly to another Nazi named Rudolf Um. It's quite the tale. Uh yeah, Well Waldorf School. Okay, so that's a chain of like progressive, yeah, high schools for rich people, who I think they're just high schools, but yet chain of progressive schools for rich people. Yeah, okay, yeah, so that makes sense that I would not have heard of those. Yeah, I'm from Connecticut, and well, actually know you know what, Connecticut definitely a w Yeah, I just didn't Okay, I'm not from I didn't have enough money to be in that loop. But yeah, I'm sure I knew people who. I'm sure I actually grew up with a lot of people who probably we're going to those things? Are you know people in New Canaan, Connecticut. I'm from New Canaan, Connecticut, which is the dude h L. Paul Bremer, the the third dismissed the Iraqi Army once went to my my my school. Yeah, and I know what, I know those kind of people. Yeah, yeah, he's Paul Bremer's the kind of guy who would send his kid to a Waldorf school, um, which is nothing against Actually, like I I have friends who went to Waldorf schools. I I know so, but somebody who teaches it one, Um, we're gonna be talking about their origins today and some things that still go on at some of them that are pretty dark. Um, but a lot of them are just kind of normal progressive e schools. So if you went to a Waldorf school, we're not calling you a Nazi, but um, there's there's about to be some Nazi ship up in this well strap In. I mean I'm not I'd like to I'm already mad at the Waldorf School for turning Justin Throw loose on us. I mean I feel like one Rutger howerd uh like equals out like one and a half Justin Thorow's that's true. I mean I'm very grateful for ungrateful for for old throw. Yeah. Yeah, so like we we can, we can both. We have we have like the Tears in the Rain speech from the end of Blade Writer to thank Waldorf schools for but also Justin Thorow and a lot of friends. So yeah, it's tough, you know. Um, I'm gonna read a Wikipedia summary of what a Waldorf Steiner school is just so that we can kind of get on the same page about how they build themselves. So this is kind of the basic description you'll get of one from our most trustworthy, randomly edited encyclopedia. Waldorf education, also known as Steiner education, is based on the educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy. It's pedagogy strives to develop pupils intellectual, artistic, and practical skills in an integrated and holistic manner. The cultivation of pupil's imagination and creativity is a central focus. So that doesn't that doesn't give you a lot of details, right. The other than that, it's like, you know, it's focused on developing people kids intellectual and artistic skills, which like you'd hope any school would do. The mention of anthroposophy um is probably the one stand out there, which have you ever heard of anthroposophy? No? Could you say that part again of that description where he said we're said in anthroposophy. Yeah, it just says that he's the founder of anthroposophy as well as, uh, the educational philosophy behind Waldorf schools. It's unusual. Yeah, yeah, you don't run into the phrase anthroposophy, lot, that's still the thing, is that the thing where you judge someone's character by the shape of their head or like lumps, lumps in their heads. Yeah, yeah, that's phrenology, although I will say probably a lot of anthroposafists were prenologists back in the day. They were like, if you're sitting around feeling each other's heads and drinking, yeah yeah, so uh, it's none of that sounds inherently bad, but obviously this is behind the bastards and it's going to get terrible. So let's first delve into Rudolph Steiner's life. Rudolf Steiner was born in eighteen sixty one in a tiny Austrian village whose name I am about to butcher Krak. His father is generally described as a what you don't even know if that's wrong, Sophie, you don't know Austrian villages. No, you probably got it right, that's the funny part. Well, our Austrian listenership will let me know if I'm wrong. His father is generally described as a mid level railway official in the Austro Hungarian Empire, once among the world's great powers. The Old Empire was in a state of advanced decay for much of Rudolph's life. It was also one of the world's major crossroads and incredibly ethnically and culturally diverse melting pot, encompassing the Balkans, much of Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean. His hometown is currently part of Croatia. So, like, I guess if you're Croatian and listening, you'll know if I've pronounced cra back wrong. He was born in c Well, but it was Austrian at the time. Yeah, you'd get shot for being Croatian back in those days. That's what it's a white melting pot. Yeah, I mean they didn't consider them all white at that point. If you were from that far least in Europe, they were like, guy, he's from the Balkans. Um. Italians were still earning their right to be called white when he was born. Um. Yeah. So he spent most of his childhood in Youth and Vienna, as well as places with names like steer Mark and bergen Land. As a young man, he showed a strong interest in mathematics, physics, and natural history. He eventually enrolled at age eighteen in the Technical University in Vienna, he started attending lectures by famous philosophers of that era, one of whom was Franz Britano. Now, Britano was the influential mind behind a number of concepts and philosophy that I don't find interesting, and one in which I kind of do, the theory of perception. The key line here was perception is misception. In short, Britanno believe that our external senses could not tell us anything concrete about the existence of the world, because we might just be hallucinating or whatever. As such. All we could know for certain was our internal perception. So if you smell a rose, you can't know that a rose is actually in front of you, but you can know that the scent of a rose is in your nose. That's may seem pedantic, but it had a big influence on Rudolf Steiner. And again, this was the eighteen eighties, so people had nothing else to do. M h, yeah, so speculate a lot of speculation going on instead of the Internet, and there's a lot of just like thinking, yeah, yeah, that's that's literally what people had instead of the Internet, which sounds like a nightmare. They were like, I think roses are actually a figment of our imagination while they were like sitting around doing nothing that was their Twitter. God. Yeah, thank god we have the Graham Now, yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if which, I think I know which is worse by longshot. Actually, I think speculating about whether roses are invisible or not as a better pastime than playing candy crush. All right, well, yeah, that's fair, that's fair. When Rudolph was in eighty two, a Germanist scholar named Carl Schroer attacked him with helping to publish Girtha's works on natural history. Now, Gartha was a freethinker who considered himself a Christian but thought all Christian churches were more or less nonsense. He was notably an anti nationalist, but is also widely considered to be one of the founding minds behind the idea of German nous. Uh As Steiner was working through Girtha's catalog, he also grew involved in the burgeoning Pan German movement. The German state had only been founded about a decade earlier at the end of the Franco p War, and a lot of people in Central Europe with background similar to Steiner, were super excited about this hip new concept called being German. He started churning out articles for the Austrian Pan German press and essentially tried to push the idea that Austria ought to be a part of this new Germany thing. So it's very into the idea of Germany, which I don't know if you're aware, has been kind of a mixed bag historically. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean it was like the narrative of of the modern world was like emerging at that time, like along with industrialization, so it was I guess, I mean, I'm actually I don't know what I'm talking about. Colebrew just made me say industrialization. Yeah, it had a lot to do with industrialization. They had like they were just establishing the narrative of of like of like modern Yeah, anyway, go ahead, I get. I mean, I'm just thinking about what they're doing, Okay, Yeah, I mean one of the things that's happening right now is they're moving past the idea of these countries that were countries because some do it had conquered an empire three hundred years before, and we're moving towards this idea of countries based on ethnic groups. So like that like the Roman Empire that like ethnicity, didn't like the wood stompire. Yeah. Yeah, it was like there was I think maybe I'm pan German. Yeah, maybe all the people who don't look exactly like me or worse, and I should just live in a country with people like me, right right right? Yeah. So that's sort of the developing idea cultural shift, A cultural shift, A big one. Yeah. Uh. From eighteen eighty four eighteen nineties, Steiner made a living as the private tutor of a rich businessman and an encyclopedia writer. Uh. He also worked on his pH d at the University of Rostock. His thesis had an appropriately boring title, the basic Question of Epistemology, especially in relation to fixed philosophy of science. I have no idea what it's about, and I'm not going to learn. Up through the eighteen nineties, there was little reason to believe stein Or would ever be a particularly influential or interesting human being. During the late eighteen nineties, who started in literature magazines and the trade papers for the German Stage Association, he became prominent among the German type setters and printers associations, and during the early nineteen hundreds, he lectured increasingly on history, literature, and the art of speaking to various audiences. But sometime around the turn of the twentieth century, Rudolf Steiner had a profound spiritual experience. And it's kind of unclear what exactly happened, but he just sort of became convinced that he could see into the spirit world and communicate with celestial beings. They're all fucking opium or something. Uh, some some stepping wolf bullshit. Yeah, Now, I wish I had a more exciting answer for the actual event that like flipped his brain on here, but yeah, it might have been fucking opium. So something he really did, truly, he he thought in some way that he had had a supernatural or was Yes, was he had a supernatural awakening. That would be a fair way to say it. He had a supernatural awakening and became convinced that he could communicate with this spiritual world outside of the regular world. Yeah, so that's where Steiner's head goes in this period of time. That's that's odd. That doesn't happen to everybody. No, it does not happen to everybody, thankfully, Um, because we really could not handle that many more. Rudolph Steiner's in our so that happens to a lot of like the worst people have those kind of epiphanies. People like Jim Jones and stuff like that don't have epiphanies. That's one of the leading messages. If you are in touch with the spirit world or whatever, you might want to settle down because you're probably about to do something bad eventually. Stick to drugs that just dull your sense of the supernatural. Sticko alcohol exactly, not opium. Chewing tobacco, yeah, stick to chewing tobacco. Keep those ghosts out of your head. Just be normal. Settled down, settled down, Yeah, yeah, if only so. In nineteen o one, Count and Countess Brockdorff, a pair of Austrian nobles with a deep interest in the occult, listened to some of Steiner's increasingly weird lectures on history and spirituality and got interested in the guy. They invited him to speak at the Theosophical Society. Yeah, yeah, what do you know about the Theosophical doesn't have something to do with Madame Blevatsky. It's sure as ship does. That's where we're headed. Yeah, yeah, Now I am very excited to talk about Holena Blvatsky. We have not talked about her on the show yet, and I think you've obviously heard of her, which is great. I'm gonna guess a lot of listeners haven't. She's one of the most important people who ever lived for some terrible reasons. Uh, and is a neat tale. We'll do an episode on her someday. Well, she tied. Did she have anything to do with Restputant? Yeah, I think there's some rumors to that effect. I haven't. I I don't know exactly that, but I can tell you she had a shipload to do with some Nazis. I didn't really know that. Oh yeah, not directly. Um. But in terms of like her ideas. Helena Blovotsky was about thirty some odd years older than Rudolf Steiner uh and while she never lived to see the rise of the National Socialist Party in Germany, her ideas were utterly critical to the formation of what those of us in the Nazi study and business call esoteric hitlersm She was a foundational mind behind the New Age movement too, and her influence extends to ship like Goop and your local vaguely witchcraft themed store. One of Helena's big ideas was the concept of root races, and this is where we get the term Arians first being used in a context similar to how the nazis used at Helena Blovotsky is the person who like invented sort of the modern context with which the word arians is used. But and by modern I mean racists. Yeah, there's an actual area and ethnic group that like went up through India and like into China. That's like a thing that like, you know, if you're an anthropologist, you're gonnat the Arians, and then there's like Nazi Arians like this idea. Because she was from Russia, right, she was not, Yeah, I think so, So she wasn't trying to if she was talking about Arians, she was probably talking about just some like uh, supernatural race or something like that, but not necessarily German and then the Germans probably that's us. Yeah, she was not talking about Germans, but she was talking about Arians in a way that like some Germans really latched on and then developed her ideas more. Yeah, that sounds like us. Yeah. So she believed in this concept of root races, and she believed that modern people's were descendants from these different root races, and in her philosophy, the extinction of Native Americans was a matter of what she called karmic necessity, as a result of the will of spiritual masters who secretly organized and ordained all human progress. So, Helena Bovotski is like arians or a thing. Whenever races get wiped out, it's good. It's ghosts making it happen because of karma. Uh So that's why genocide happened. Ghost karma. Uh Now, the spiritual that's ghost Karma's that's scientology. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a little bit of that in here. And Bolovotsky, like you know, Blovotsky had an impact on uh, what's his fucking name, the Satanist guy? Uh yeah, Crowley. Crowley had an impact a significant impact on the development of l Ron Hubbard. Um. So, like all of these all of these people are tied together. ID a lot. Have you talked about Jack Parsons on this show yet? A little bit? We talked a little bit about him in the l Ron Hubbard episode. We didn't get much into like the the ghost Baby or the devil Baby or whatever the l Ron Hubbard tried to fuck into that lady is a wild tale. Yeah, Scarlett woman, h Yeah, all of this stuff is tied. So Helena Blovotsky, like, like I said, she's in the intellectual chain of custody for Nazism as well as like kind of modern Satanism and as well as like just like random books on tarot that you pick up at like your local corner store. Like all of this ship is that she was very influential. And how did Rudolph find out about her? Well, she was just a big like he he gets invited to speak at the Theosophical Society, UM and the Helena Blovotsky was the founder of the Theosophical Society, So she's like the the intellectual guru behind this cult that he first gets invited to speak at and then finds himself being drawn into. So that's where he gets like taken in by all these ideas of root races and like spiritual masters and karmic necessity, UM and I should I should know. The spiritual masters that Blovotsky and then Steiner talked about were like vague non human entities, possibly from space. You wouldn't be far off to lump them in with HP Lovecraft's concept of the Old Ones they're they're not wildly dissimilar. So on the outside, at least, the Theosophis Society presented itself as a group of freethinking intellectuals asking questions about the nature of the universe and spirituality, but it's actual organization was fundamentally authoritarian. Only Bolovotski and her chosen successor, Annie Besant could receive the secret truths from their other worldly patrons. Ergo, all power in the organization descended by necessity from those people in a pretty straight line. Now, of course, Madame Blovotsky didn't just receive her wisdom from direct conversations with the old ones. That would be silly. She also benefited from the astral equivalent of a public library, the Akashak record. These indestructible tablets of astral light held the entirety of the human past, present, and future in them. By studying the tablets, one could discover perfect knowledge of the world and history. Now, anyone theoretically could access these records, it's sort of like Wikipedia, but since they were astral projections, the desires and biases and fears of an individual viewer could lead them to make the mistake of thinking that like they were reading the wrong thing on their records, which is why only trained occultists could be trusted to derive useful information from the Akashic Record. It's in space. It's in space. Oh so this was like was it? It was not public domain? It was it was like, I mean they okay, it's space ghost Wikipedia, right, So it's something they said existed and everybody took their word for it. Kind of thing. Yeah, exactly, exactly, kind of like the gold tablets that told Old what's the name of the guy founded? Yeah, Old, I have I found a tablet that said I can have sex with your wife and they're like, where is it? It exploded? Yeah, it's like that, but less physical, because no one even pretends that the Acashic Record was ever a physical thing. I just love that Joseph Smith got away with that. I I just I get I give it to him just for hutzpah, just to say, you know, where is the tablet? I want to see this tablet. Listen, you can have sex with my wife. I just want to see the gold tablet. It exploded. It's like I always say, Chris, great minds who want to have sex with fifteen year olds think Oh my god. I mean, uh so that that that's interesting. Adam Levatsky, Okay, so this this smells to me of just rich kids. I mean, this just sounds like rich kids. They're just a bunch of rich kids, and they got They like to do weird ship, which is um not a lot of day laborers among the theosophical Yeah, exactly. Peasant was like making bricks out of ship while these people are like talking about die in World War one. Yeah, yeah, exactly, like eating eating like root vegetables and getting ready to die in World War one, while these assholes are in some mahogany room talk yeah, being like I am the only one who could access the invisible library and like the ghost librarian space. It's fun. I've been to rich people's parties. They're fun. I mean, you know, I think they've replaced all the spiritualism has been replaced with cocaine. Now that might be a step forward. Actually it's less it's less dangerous. It's just bullshit that goes away in the morning. I will say. Sigmund Freud was also in this city and around this time, so these people were probably doing a lot of cocaine as well. God like this is the period in which people realize how awesome cocaine is. So I'm gonna guess, actually a lot of this is explained that that might be White Steiner had his spiritual awakening. So these guys go ahead, no, no, continue. Oh. I was just gonna say, like, anyway, it sounds like a lot of fun. I mean in a way, you know, if it didn't go bad, I mean like the idea of like getting together and I feel like I was born at the wrong time. I think I would have had a great time and these things being like I think that, you know, I think if I have a little another bump of cocaine, I bet I can see my grandma projected on. Yeah, or like I'll start spitting out what's that stuff that they used to Uh, what's the stuff that looked like pasta that they were always but it turned out it was like cheesecloth there? Uh during seances ectoplasm? Oh yeah yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. That that's how they would fake ecto. I would just be like, I'm about to produce ectoplasm. That would be a way to get laid by man the guy. He he produces actoplasm. It's awesome. I would just try to be there coke dealer and see if I could get get them to let me tell lies about the Acoshic record if I gave them enough blow, Like, can I see it yet? Can I see it yet? My boyfriend? Let me know what I'm there. My boyfriend says, he produces the actoplasm. But I think it's cheese cloth. I don't even know what cheese That's what they always say in the in the in the descriptions, they're like, like, you know, the debunkers are like, it was always cheese cloth. I'm never clear on what cheese cloud is. Anyway, I think those debunkers may not know because they weren't there at those cokes. I mean, like, given the amount of blow these gays are probably doing, they might just have been hawking up big wads of like congealed mucus and cocaine that it was. Oh my god, it's just all the excess coke that couldn't get in that case. I bet Justin Throws produced quite a bit of ectoplasm. Yes, yes, And speaking of ectoplasm, you know what's a lot like ectoplasm? Chris, The products and services that support this show. Yeah, this is an ad break. All right, we're back. We're back. So if he's proud of me, we're rolling right along into the tale of Rudolph Steiner. So, like I said, only trained occultists could be trusted to derive useful information from the Akashak record. And as soon as he starts speaking at the Theosophical Society, he you know, Steiner almost immediately afterwards joins the society, and he very quickly rises to become one of those experts. In nineteen o two, barely a year after his start lecturing there, he was asked to become the general secretary of the German Theosophical Society. The one term he attached to taking the gig was that he would be allowed to lecture and teach about the results of his own spiritual investigations. So they're like, will you run the German branch of this weird ghost society of ours? And he's like, I'll do it, but you gotta let me say that I'm able to read the ghost Encyclopedia too, So that's his It's a solid grift. Well, it's also a solid job. What a great job was I want to know what the salary was for for the you know, the head of the Russian division of the Theosophical Society. That's what I'd like to know. I'm gonna guess it was like an uncomfortable amount of money, but also barely enough money to buy lunch today like that, then it would have been a fortune, and today it's like a rap in downtown l A. Uh. That that's my guest for his salary. Yeah. Now, early in his studies, uh steiner studies. Most of those investigations focused on Atlantis and La Mauria. He was way into Atlantis and La Mauria. And I should say, in some occult circles, Lamuria is just another name for Atlantis. But in Steiner's conception, they were two different sunken continents, both home to different root races of humanity. Now, he wrote a number of books on these topics, and they are all complete and utter nonsense. I'm just going to quote one paragraph from one of these books where Steiner explains that human beings started out as age gender creatures capable of sucking themselves. So we're yes, yes, but not the way he pay attention. He didn't foresee climate change. But yeah, when we study the Akashak records, we see that at a period in the far past, human forms appear soft, plastic, and quite unlike those of later times, they still retain an equal measure the nature of man and woman. As time passes and matter densifies, the human body appears in two forms, one of which resembles the man's later form, the other the woman's. Before the appearance of these differentiated forms, every human being could of itself bring forth another. The fructification was no outer process, but one which took place within the human body itself. When the body took on a male or female form, it lost the possibility of self fructification. Who operation with another body was necessary in order to produce a new human being? Define, Wow, that is a horseship. That's the kind of ship, and it's That's how I would describe the beginning of the human race. Do you guys have no idea how much easier this podcast would be if I could just say that I was basing all of my write ups on a ghost encyclopedia, Like so, if you wouldn't have to put sources up, I wouldn't have to cite anything. I could just lie. It would be so much easier. That's exactly Also, how an eight year old would say that the human race started. Yeah, how did you figure this out? I saw it in the ghost book that nobody else can read. Yeah, there's always it's always something that nobody else can have access to. Yeah, that's where the best evidence comes from. By nineteen twelve, Steiner's own theories about the universe and the space Ghost Library had deviated it up from the theosophical movement that he was forced to create his own weird cult. I'm going to quote now from Anthroposophy and Eco Fascism by Peter Stoutenmeyer, the title of which sort of spoils where this story is heading quote. He broke from mainstream theosophy in nineteen twelve, taking most of the German speaking sections with him. When Bassant and her colleagues declared the young Christna Murty, a boy they discovered an India to be the reincarnation of Christ, Steiner was unwilling to accept a brown skin Hindu lad as the next spiritual master. Would had separated Steiner all along from Lavotsky, Bassant, and the other India oriented theosophis was his insistence on the superiority of European esoteric traditions in the wake of the split, Steiner founded the Anthroposophical Society in Germany. Shortly before the outbreak of World War One, he moved the fledgling organization's international headquarters to Switzerland. Under the protection of Swiss neutrality, he was able to build up a permanent center in the village of door Knock. So that's the move that he makes door Knock. Yeah, I'm probably pronouncing it wrong. Switzerland and their neutralities caused a lot of fucking trouble they m hm um. So that is very interesting. But by the way, just quickly, Hindu Lad is a great name for an Indie rock band, Yeah, it would be. And that's this, like so part of like one of the there's a couple of weird things to do with Hinduism in here. One of them is that, like one of the most influential fascist philosophers in this period was an Indian woman. Um. Another of these weird facts is that, like, yeah, the Theosophical Society was very much oriented towards India, because India was in fact where like the the actual Arians like moved through and stuff and like settled and whatnot. The Indo Aryan people's and there was a belief even among the Nazis, that like you could find some of like the like Aryan bloodlines in India, and the Nazis sent a number of expeditions up into like Tibetan ship and I don't know about that. That's so fucking weird. It's weird. And what's worth noting here is that while the Nazis were willing to accept that like India might have, like there might be Aryan bloodlines in India, Steiner was too racist for that. So that's that's the guy. Yeah, that's the guy who would look at the Nazis and their ideas towards India and be like, y'all are too open minded about this ship, right, I just want I'm just thinking about a guy in Hollywood is playing bass in a band called Hindu Lad. Those bands were like every song on their set list is eleven minutes or longer. Yeah, and they're all white. Yeah, they're all white. They opened for Vandergraft Generator once in the seventies. Yeah. Look that's deep Steiner. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we can talk about the deep. I mean, I guess, to be honest, a lot of this story has influenced different prog rock fro rock overall lap with racist early twentieth century racist philosophy esoteric. Yeah, that's cool. If I were to read this out to the founder of King Crimson, he would just nod his head and be like, of course that already you think I don't know that. Why do you think I picked up the guitar. If it wasn't for Rudolph and his theories, I would never have started playing the guitar. Yeah. So Steiner declared his new occult philosophy to be anthroposophical spiritual science, which he called human science and the broadest sense or who boy, geist, swish and shoft. In nineteen twelve, Yeah, thank you. His nineteen twelve, his followers created the Anthroposophical Society and imitation of the Theosophical Society. This was the beginning of anthroposophy, a thing which is very much still around today. Now here's where I point out that this episode is going to wind up being a little bit disordered, because both the beliefs of anthroposophy and its impacts on society are incredibly wide ranging. So at this point I'm gonna talk a little bit about anthroposophical medicine. All right, So we're we're we're pulling out of the time stream a little bit to talk about one of the impacts of Rudolf Steiner's beliefs. So Steiner was not a doctor, never had any medical training, but his spiritual revelations informed him of several critical things. And I'm going to quote now from a would right up in quack Watch that summarizes some key facts of anthroposophic medical beliefs. Good health is achieved when the physical organism is properly aligned with three non physical bodies that manifest during a human's lifetime. The etheric body a set of life forces, the astral body higher soul forces, and the eye, a spark of divine selfhood or ego that separates true humans from animals and subhumans. Real warning on that sub human thing. Yeah yeah. Bad health, on the other hand, often reflects the working out of one's karmic destiny. If one enters this world carrying spiritual impurities resulting from sins and errors committed in previous lives, disease can serve as a right of passage, purging evils from one's bodily spiritual system. Thus, medical intervention is often a bad idea. A doctor who cures a patient with drugs, etcetera. Maybe blocking the patient's karmaic self healing process. No way, that could be problematic. Yeah, that's that's Yeah, we shouldn't help that person because they're going they're gonna need to die. Yeah, they're gonna need to die as part of their journey. This dysentery sucks for them now, but when they die and come back in another life, they're gonna be so much Happy's just simple also, the simple, you know, like whatever you have, whatever bad ship is happening to somebody, is their own fault. It's like whenever I'm taking with my friends, I try to trick them into drinking ever clear at the end of the night so that they vomit and then they feel better than next morning, which is why I'm a doctor too. Essentially, Yeah, now what not a doctor? I am? I am absolutely I'm a doctor, reverend, and well, if this guy is a doctor, you're a doctor. We're all thank you. See exactly, and actually, shockingly, there are a terrifying number of doctors who believe this, Like actual doctors in Europe in the beginning of the twentieth century thought they were a doctor. Apparently, Yeah, and unfortunately that hasn't stopped Amian doctor. Yeah, a Lamirian doctor with access to a ghost library where he learned medicine. And then there were people just working yeah yeah. And then there's people like dying in a field who were working and eating gruel. Yeah yeah, excuse me, labor, Have I told you about the ghost library? My boys got the jip. Don't care your son's illnesses. Those ghosts him in the future now. Peter Staudenmeyer is an associate professor of German history at Marquette University, and he's written out a lot of stuff about this. He's maybe the world's foremost expert on on on Rudolph Steiner um. And I'm going to quote him now talking about anthroposophic medicine. Quote. Steiner's doctrine of reincarnation, embraced by latter day anthroposophis the world over, holds that individuals choose their parents before birth, and indeed that we plan out our lives before beginning them to ensure that we receive the necessary spiritual lessons. If it disembodied soul bulks at its own chosen life prospects just before incarnation, it fails to incarnate fully the source, according to anthroposophists of prenatal defects and congenital disabilities. So if you're born with like an arm that doesn't work, like you've got one of those like shrunken arms, or if you're born with like you know, paralyzed from the waist down, that's because ghost you is a coward. Yeah, so it's that's fine, that's a healthy thing to believe. It's it's all um, Well, I don't know if all these philosophies end up being this basically like I don't want to pay taxes thing, But that's what it really adds up to. It's just like that guy with no arm, it's his own fault. I I don't it's just always justifying why if you feel good, you don't have to bother with anybody who feels bad about seventy of occult beliefs historically are rooted in rich people wanting to explain why it's fine that things were great for them while everyone else was dying in a field. Yeah, it's just like libertarianism, except it's just got ghost libraries and like in fairness to the occult. That's also like most of early Christianity. Uh so, Yeah, it's just always the same. It's such a hack message too. It's just like it's just like, what's the most esoteric reason we can come up with for not giving a funk about anybody? Yeah, I guess, but not early like Middle Christianity, Like once the church becomes an institution, it starts being like, this is why the people who are rich and powerful should be rich and powerful. It's always the same fucking message. Yeah, it's always the same message. Like at the start, you get a guy who's like Jesus and it's like, I'm gonna beat the ship out of people at banks because they're assholes, and then a hundred and fifty years later it's turned into like, no, no, no, the people with banks are the people God likes the best, which is never pull away from that belief system. This is the this is the occult version of that. Yeah. Now, as fucked up and blatantly anti medical as all of this sounds, there are a shocking number of actual m d s today who practice anthroposophical medicine. Uh And, in a little bit of fairness, they do use and prescribe real drugs. They are actual doctors. They also use natural and holistic remedies and therapies, though some of which work and some of which are nonsense, will bullshit. I'm gonna quote now from the National Institute of Health. Quote. Currently, there are approximately twenty four anthroposophic medical institutions, which include hospitals, departments and hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and other inpatient health care centers in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States. In Germany, three large anthroposophic hospitals provide accident and emergency services within the requirement plans of the German federal states. Two of them are academic teaching hospitals linked to neighboring universities. So this is a thing today. There are doctors who believe this ship today. Um, and you're aware the actual m d s. Yeah there there. I didn't like them exactly where, but they exist. Yeah, I'm gonna guess there's a shipload of them in Malibu. You throw a fucking rock in Malibu, you'll hit an anthroposophic doctor telling you that your kid's birth defects her because his ghost was scared. Have you tried an anthroposophic doctor? They're amazing. They tell your kid it's his fault. They're incredible. YEA might validate your belief system. Yeah. So, um. There's a lot of people who will say that anthroposophic doctors are just doing a slightly different kind of medicine and they're perfectly good doctors. And maybe that's true. I haven't met any, but I am skeptical of the idea that any of them could be truly good doctors. For one thing, most of them are anti vaccine. See. Rudolf Steiner believed in reincarnation, and he thought disease was part of a patient's karma. So if you treat illnesses, or if you prevent an illness, you just force that person to get sick again in a future life. During one of his lectures to doctors, Steiner said this of the smallpox vaccine. If we destroy the susceptibility to smallpox, we are concentrating only on the external side of karmic activity. See, it's not a full treatment to stop someone from getting smallpox because you're not dealing with the actual root of the problem, which is space, which is like a character flaw. Yeah, it's a character flawed from the past, so that the doctor. That's why you shouldn't get vaccinated. The doctor's the doctor's job is converted from helping someone live to letting them die. I mean letting them die because whatever it's their own fault. I mean, it's some process. It's like some learning curve or or learning like you need to get sick or else you're not gonna You're not gonna, I don't know, You're not gonna die like you're supposed to because you're a bad person. It's literally, you need to get sick because when you were a ghost, you decided you were going to get like smallpox at age seven, and you have to learn the lessons that will you will be taught by getting smallpox at age seven. You picked this, so don't complain. So Steiner, this guy Steiner must not have had any ailments. I guess he never got a cold or anything. He must have thought he was because this seems like the kind of philosophy that would end up killing you. You know, It's one of those things I feel like I don't have. I wish I had more information about his early life. I just don't um I it's what he either was lucky and had none of those problems, or he had all of the fucking diseases as a kid and he just grew up thinking like, well, everybody should have to go through this, and he like came out, he came out of him and he's like that, Yes, I'm like, it's been a character builder for me, and it should be a character builder for everybody else. My guess is one of the two. Either he didn't get sick at all, or he was like the sickest son of a bitch when he was a little kid, and he just grew up thinking that that was normal. But everybody, some people, he's like, instead of pulling himself up by his bootstraps, he pulled himself up by his diseases. Yeah, exactly, his disease straps, which were etheric and existed on the astro plane. So, uh, yeah, we we just talked about Yeah. So uh. Steiner said that, yeah, if we destroyed the susceptibility to smallpox, we're concentrating only in the external side of karmic activity. So he believed that. He also believed that dark wizards might try to create evil, fake medications that would cut humanity off from its spiritual roots. Yeah, we got some wizards uh quote. Endeavors to achieve this will be made by bringing out remedies to be administered by inoculation. Only these inoculations will influence the human body in a way that will make it refuse to give a home to the spiritual inclinations of the soul. So evil wizard doctors are going to give you vaccines that make your body refuse your soul Rudolf Steiner. Yeah, so again it's like, it seems like a bold stance to take based on nothing. Yeah, it's a bold stance to take based on nothing, in a weird stance to be the basis of a type of medicine that, again, a significant number of actual m d s believed today. So there are a lot of websites out there dedicated to defending Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy, and we're going to hear from a couple of them a few times. One such site is shares us quote Anthroposophical doctors reject nothing in the toolbox of conventional medicine a priori. Every option is considered for its appropriateness in a specific instance. Antibiotics are used when necessary, but so are homeopathic remedies. Physical therapy is prescribed, but so as curative your rhythmi, which is movement exercise to balance the forces within the body. It's like dancing medicine. So you know, we'll we'll give people antibiotics when they have infections, but we'll also give them water with nothing in it. That's been like waved around a route that we say, here's things. That's a good doctor. Now that like seems I guess not the least like that. That's not the craziest thing in the world, given like the wide galaxy of stupid things people will do because they think that it's better for their health than traditional medicine. But Steiner's own words are even less reasonable than that. He told his followers that the heart was not a pump and that blood just circulates on its own, presumably by magic. He was also insistent that the brain was not involved in thought or cognition. He prescribed mistletoe for cancerous tumors, and he was in general a complete fucking quack. So I'm gonna quote from Quackwatch again talking about the doctors that Steiner inspired. Anthroposophical physicians do not appear to conduct double blind controlled experiments, so it is almost impossible to evaluate their success rates. All doctors witness mysterious declines as well as mysterious recoveries. Believers in anthroposophical medicine relate tales of highly successful treatments, but whether the alleged cures resulted from the treatments the body's natural healing processes are overly optimistic reporting cannot be determined. Using ineffective alternatives instead of necessary science based care can have serious consequences. On Waldorf critics dot org, Robert smith Hall describes how he suffered while being raised by anthroposophists. They believe that sickness is the sole incarnating and also that it has to do with karma. They don't believe in inoculation, so I had all the child diseases going around some twice. Smith Hall reports that he was constantly ill throughout his childhood, and that the primary treatment that his anthroposophical doctors prescribed was little white sugar pills called in fluto, and buckets and buckets of horsetail tea and also camera milet. What the hell's horse tail te It's like a plant, those real horsetail. No, no, no, no thing. Count me out of that one. I'm quitting. I'll quit that religion based on I'm not having some team out out of a horse tail. I mean that I would that I suspect that would work better than Cama milet mased. Horses are full of healthy diseases. Yeah. Now, certain foods made him six, so he was required to eat great quantities of these very foods. The feeling that my parents had was that I should eat more of it, as I obviously needed to incarnate through the food. So I grew up being force fed food that was making me sick. As an adult. Having broken away from anthroposophy, Smith Halt was examined by a conventional doctor who correctly diagnosed his wheat intolerance. He's been improving ever since. This Angela is this is this Angelina Jolie's kid. You kind of get the feeling, right this kid in Malibu. Yeah, yeah, like bent somewhere with rich people, and like his parents were like, oh, he gets sick whenever he eats wheat, And the doctor was like, that means you gotta feed this kid as much wheat as he can fucking stand. Yeah, never stopped pouring wheat into the boy. Yeah, it sucks. I mean that's terrible. I mean luck he didn't have a peanut allergy, or he would have died right away. You get the feeling that some kids with peanut allergies and anthroposophic doctors didn't make it. Yeah, right away, he would die. Have more peanuts. Oh, well, you know when they were ghosts. They were jerks when they were ghosts. Look, I know it's sad, but your kid picked this when he was a ghost. A jerk and a weakling your kid was when he was a ghost. Yeah, now, excuse me. I'm a doctor. Don't don't excuse me me. I'm a doctor. You know, my school of medicine is great because it's founded by a guy who never went to medical school. Why don't you take a look at the ghost library if you're so smart? Oh, I'm sorry. Have you read the Space Encyclopedia? Wow? Yeah, So we're going to talk some more about anthroposophic medicine and its impact on European vaccination rates. And I'm gonna have some more cold brus This is great. I love the show. I mean, this is very exciting stuff for me. This is my I love this stuff. This is what I'm doing my spare time. But I just don't have a show too. I don't get to talk about it. I'm all by myself. Yeah, this is what I did in my spare time until I had a show, and now it's what I do in my spare time. But now Sophie yells at me and I get money, so it works out. Yeah. So we're we are going to get back to anthroposophic medicine. But before we get there, we're gonna have to peel back a little bit and talk about the founding of the first Waldorf's cool. So, for the sake of fairness, I'm going to quote from a pro Steiner website, now Waldorf answers quote in nineteen eighteen, when a revolution took place not only in Russia note by me, the Russian Revolution started in nineteen seventeen, but also in Germany and threatened to disintegrate the social fabric. Steiner presented suggestions for a conscious threefold differentiation of society as a path for the future. It focused on the development of freedom and the cultural sphere, equality in the sphere of politics, and legislation in a globally oriented brotherhood in the sphere of economy. Steiner lectured widely on this topic, leading to a movement for social threefolding. That sounds nice, right, yeah. In nineteen nineteen, this led to the founding of the first free Waldorf school in Stuttgart at the initiative of Immolt Malt, the CEO of Waldorf Astory, a cigarette factory. The school became the model for the Waldorf movement, leading to the building and development by two thousand nine of some sixteen hundred Waldorf kindergartens and nine hundred and ninety four independent Waldorf or Rudolf Steiner schools worldwide, offering educational activities from early childhood through high school and in some cases programs for adults. So, Chris, yes, can you think of a better way for a school to start than a cigarette factory? Started? In? Oh, it was paid for, but I thought it was in a cigarette an old No. The CEO of the cigarette factory decided he liked the cut of Rudolf Steiner's jib and was like, yeah, let's make a fucking school. Right. Well, it makes sense some rich guy. Yeah, if you if you own a cigarette factory, you gotta be doing pretty good. So you probably got nothing to do. So then you want to think about things that are you know, you've got nothing to think about, so you're gonna start thinking about Hell, I want to think about something exciting. How about this bullshit? And then you make a school. Yeah, let's make a school. I got nothing to do. Let's make a school. Yeah, let's make us a bunch of money kids. That cigarettes are critical for human health. I'm in a guest that Rudolf Steiner was very supportive of cigarettes as a health remedy, which should be fair. Most people were at this. Yeah, now you know what actually is good for your health, Chris, The products and services that support this show. Oh, I see what you did? Guaranteed to cure your diseases. Every product, whatever, whatever happens to be advertised, will cure whatever you happen to have the guarantee I make. We we are all doctors. I come from the the Evans School of medicine, going by Rudolph's rules, were all doctors. You just gotta incarnate that ship you tell me, Dr Crofton, I'm the I'm the anthropomorphic whatever I like. I've got a school of dilettantism. Yeah, all right, products, we're back, well back, and we're talking about the cigarette factory that started a school. Now as you might guess, a school founded by the CEO of a cigarette factory did not portend great things for the future of human health. Doctor Edzard Ernst to determine that between nineteen ninety nine and two thousand ten, ten outbreaks of measles in the UK, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany have centered around Waldorf schools, all of which had immunization rates lower than ten percent. There are more than eight hundred Waldorf schools in the world today. Many of these are well regarded institutions, and a huge number of famous people have graduated from them. A lot of folks who work at these schools are I'm sure, find people and educators, but there are also some really fucking dark stories from these plazes. Sharon Lombard, a parent whose daughter was enrolled at a Waldorf school, had this experience when her kid got sick. Quote the anthroposophic doctor made a diagnosis my child had lost the will to live. He announced one of the potential cures we were to give our daughter red, yellow, and orange crayons to color with. I looked at my husband in disbelief. When the doctor instructed us to make the sign of a flame out of arum cream over my child's heart at bedtime. I was dumbfound it. He told us to apply the gold cream from below the heart upwards towards the sky. So that's well, that's medicine. How did this all right? But why did this? Did this woman not have any idea that the school was weird? Well, that's the thing up in a Waldorf school if you're not already a crackpot, but it's got a great it's got a great reputation for like the arts and stuff, and they do, like a lot of really famous actors and musicians and stuff went to Waldorf schools. They seem to be good at encouraging creativity and kids. So they're willing to they want the networking for their kids, and they're willing to kill them. And if they I don't think they really look into it that hard. They don't know what anthroposofic medicine is really, but they know that the doctor there is an actual d that makes sense, that makes sense. How people get people into cults, They tell them what one thing about it, They just don't tell me the other thing about it exactly. And like in this parents love the Waldorf school it's so great. It's all about creativity. And also they won't give you any medicine, but we're not gonna If your daughter sick, they'll give her crayon. Yeah, I mean that's that's that's the way that stuff works. That's true. Now, this woman's daughter was eventually hospitalized, and she did recover under the care of normal doctors. Uh. And if the only impact of Waldorf schools was a few sick and presumably a couple of dead kids, I might not be writing this episode. But the rabbit hole of weird here goes a lot deeper, and this is where things get racist as fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a lot. It was really hard to like figure out the time, like how to pattern this out time wise, because there's just so much to get to, so that we're gonna be jumping around a little bit more than usual in this episode. Caught up in that I was already mad at Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer for for for people to get sick, and now I forgot all about the racism. Yeah, so I found a fascinating right up by a former Waldorf student, also on Quack Watch. This student points out that the vast majority of steiner spiritual beliefs and ideas behind anthroposophy itself were actually hidden from the students at the school. They don't talk about these beliefs like to the kids. Quote. The Waldorf I attended was lovely, with caring teachers and pleasant, carefully selected classmates. For the most part, I enjoyed my years there. Waldorf was small, twenty or so students at each grade level. The ambiance was close and comfortable, as Steiner would have wanted. Waldorf was a religious school, but with a twist it hit its faith. The school presented itself as a progressive, ultra modern learning institution, and in some ways it was, but the secular kind of framing of this was a disguise. Quote. We students memorized no passages from holy books, we sang from no hymnals. Yet a strange aura hung about the school. There was a pervasive but unspoken spiritualistic vibe and almost every lesson, in almost every activity. It was hard for most patients to detect, but we students felt it to one degree or another. It was in the air we breathed. It defined the tenor and subtext of our days. Ultimately, it's shaped and colored our education as a actively as if priests were delivering sermons to us. So you don't state this stuff out right, but you kind of try to teach these kids some of the spiritual lessons of your beliefs, like covertly without sort of directly proselytizing or talking about the actual schitt Steiner believed. Later on in the right Up, this student gives a deeply unsettling example of what precisely lurked beneath the surface. In twelfth grade. This happened to him in a biology class taught by the school headmaster, a guy named Gardner. Quote. He explained that the various races stood at different levels of moral development, each was forging its own destiny. He said these things sympathetically, with no hint of condescension. Yet the vibe was in the room that morning. The terms he used were more metaphysical than biological. The Oriental races, he said, are ancient, wise but vitiated. The African races are youthful, unformed, childlike, he said, standing near the center of humanities. Family are currently the most advanced races. The Whites, he said, where is this do Is there any references to where the school is or I think this one. Yeah, this one's in the United States. I believe it's on the East coast. This is during the nineteen seventies. I think when this happened. Wow. Yeah. The author of this article also recalled an unsettling botany class. But the teacher named Hertha Carl who also taught German and earth science whatever that is. Can we find her on Facebook? I think she's dead now. She would have been a mature adult in the seventies. Yeah. Of all the Waldorf faculty, she made the least effort to disguise her devotion to Steiner. She drew figures of eight on the blackboard and lectured us about limnus skates, the mystic interaction of the telluric and etheric forces, which is the basic structure of nature, she said. During one day's main lesson, she veered off topic to warn us to never receive blood transfusions from members of other races. Blacks and Orientals have blood types that are physically different from ours, she taught us, and receiving such inferior blood would diminish our aryan qualities. Yeah. Nothing, nothing, nothing coded about that. Yeah, yeah, nothing, nothing coded there. So Rudolph Steiner did not live in particularly fascinating life. He mostly wrote and lectured and taught people Crazy Ship throughout the early nineteen twenties. Uh he did thousands of lectures three and thirty alone from January to September of nineteen twenty four. He died in March of nineteen twenty five, and his followers suggests that he basically exhausted himself with his workload. His what he was eighteen sixties, he would have been like in his fifties or sixties. I think, um now, he did not have what I would call a particularly compelling life by the standards of other cult leaders like l Ron Hubbard. Like when it just comes to the details we know about his existence, it's not super wacky or fun to listen to. There's no creating, forcing a bunch of kids onto boats and like searching for treasure in the ocean for thirteen years. Um, But Rudolf Steiner is something of an Iceberg. What you can see above the water line looks more or less respectable or at least nothing, no darker or sillier than like you know, your friend with a tarot deck. But below that is where things get fucked up very quickly, and where we run unto the weird race science stuff like Madame Blovotsky. Steiner believed that Native Americans were, in his words, dying out of their own nature. He believed they were one of several lower races of humans. Most Aboriginal and non white races fell into this category. In Steiner's mind, they were closer to animals than higher races of humanity. Anthroposophy teaches that many of these races are descended from degenerate remnants of the Limerian root race and are thus devolving into literal apes. Steiner called, for example, Australian Aboriginal people quote stunted men whose descendants still inhabit certain parts of the earth today as so called savage tribes. Now, Steiner believed that I still don't understand. I mean, I can't believe people. I mean, it's just like there's just you can just make I mean, this is all made up, just made up, I mean, just make it up. I mean, I just unbelievable. You just fucking just start just spouting off about and you were practicals or whatever and have a fucking ascot on and then that's about it. It's all theater. It's like theater and racism combined. I mean, it's only theater and racism. If you don't believe he really read from the ghost Encyclopedia in space, right, yea, who believes that? Who are these? Oh? God, I would like to I mean ghost librarians for one, I guess, so yeah, yeah, they gotta work. Yeah. Now, Styner believed that Japanese, Mongolian, and Inuit people were descendants of Atlantis, and he had a broadly positive attitude, well, a more positive attitude towards them than you know, Native Americans or obviously black people. The best race, of course, was the Aryan race. I'm gonna quote from Rudolf Steiner. Now, we are within the great root race of humanity that has peopled the earth since the land on which we now live rose up out of the inundation of the ocean. Ever since the Atlantean race began slowly to disappear, the Great Arian race has been the dominant one on Earth. If we contemplate ourselves, we here in Europe are thus the fifth sub race of the great Aryan root race. I wonder how he felt about frogs because frogs are from the water. Yep, I thought they were like wise man or something. He might have agreed with Alex Jones on the subject of frogs and their sexuality. It's hard to say frogs or some like remnant race that's on the way out, like the bad stuff. When they were ghosts. Yeah, frogs were terrible as ghosts. That's why they gotta live in swamps. Now. Rudolf believed that every race or volk had its own special aura that best fit in its own specific homeland. He believed in something called Volksgeist, a natural spirit embodied by an etheric being that spiritually led that group of people. Now, if you have studied your Nazism, that's essentially Nazism missing one or two little Yeah. Volksgeist is a national spirit, the spirit of a nation, of a specific homeland, of a racial people. That's a volks guys, like the Volksgeist is a national spirit that embodies like this spirituality of a group of people, like an etheric being who is like the soul of the German people, for example, right, okay, yeah, yeah, So the Nazis didn't believe. Obviously, Hitler was not an etheric being. He was a real person, but the Nazis did very much believe that he was the embodied national spirit of Ariannus of Germany. So again Steiner isn't it was not literally a Nazi. He died in nineteen and was probably only broadly aware of Hitler and his party. Um, but Hitler's own like the actual beliefs that the Nazis inculcated once they came to power. Uh, we're basically the same thing Rudolf Steiner's teaching, except with instead of it being an etheric being, it's literally Hitler. But it's the same idea that this birth, what happened, what led into Nazism, And um, it's like if you wanna if you want to be um like a dictator, you look, you searched around for justifications and there was a soup of convenient bullshit for them to pick from in in that was that was happening around that time. So yeah, it was like convenient, like without this guy was a dumbass, but this this other person, just if Hitler may have even thought this guy was a dumbass, but he used him as a um, you know what I mean. I mean, it's just this all becomes useful, like these philosophies become a useful to someone who puts them all together and says, here's why I need to do this bad ship. Yeah, and it's you know, Steiner is not the only guy saying stuff like this and lead up to the Nazis, like the Theosophical Society saying similarly like he's part of like a constellation of thinkers who prepares the intellectual soil in Germany for the kind of beliefs that the Nazis introduced. Um, like, he helps ready the soil. Although again I want to make it very clear, he was not a Nazi himself, was not a follower of Hitler's Yeah, back to racism. I'm gonna quote again from that stouten Meyer right up. That's the professor from Marquette unit Versity who's done a lot of the research on Rudolf Steiner. Quote. Steiner propagated a host of racist myths about negroes. He taught that black people are sensual, instinct driven, primitive creatures ruled by their brain stem. He denounced the immigration of blacks to Europe as terrible and brutal, and decried its effects on blood and race. He warned that white women shouldn't read Negro novels during pregnancy, otherwise they'd have mulatto children. In nineteen two, he declared the Negro race does not belong in Europe, and the fact that this race is now playing such a large role in Europe is of course nothing but a nuisance. But the worst insult from an anthroposophical point of view is Steiner's dictum that people of color can't develop spiritually on their own, they must either be educated by whites or reincarnated in white skin. Europeans, in contrast, are the most highly developed humans. Indeed, as Steiner said, Europe has always been the origin of all human development, which I think some people I know in the Middle East would be a little bit pissed to hear that. But it's a argument for another day. For Steiner and for anthroposophy, there is no doubt that whites are the ones who develop humanity in themselves. The white race is the race of the future, the spiritually creative race. Now this is all very fucked up. The good news is that most anthroposophists beliefs are you know, hidden away from the students at Waldorf schools. This stuff is not like the general curriculum at a Waldorf school um and a lot of Steiner's work has been edited to make it fit into the modern era, and it's been pruned of its racism and just kind of turned into a more generically harmless, weird kind of occult new ag mishmash of nonsense. Uh. The influence these deeper racist cult beliefs has on modern Waldorf schools is not consistent from country to country or from institution to institution, but it is still definitely present in some areas. In two thousand fourteen, the BBC reported that diversity training was instituted on one Waldorf campus after quote, four white teachers asked to tick a box giving their ethnicity ticked every box. They believe that had ascended through all the races. Now that's not a harmless belief, because that means that if you have a student who would say black or hispanic or you know, any other kind of non white race, you don't just believe that, like you know what it's like to be them because you lived that in the past life. You believe that you're better than them, because you ascended past their level of existence, and that they're going to have to live and die before they can come back as a better skin color. It's horrible, horrible, absolutely horrible. It's awful. Um now they're reporting was based on the Department of Education memo on this school in the UK, which revealed that at least some Waldorf campuses were teaching children that Atlantis was a real thing, and if those kids were being taught Stanner's ideas about Atlantis, they were probably being taught at least a few of his ideas about a racial hierarchy. And again this is in two thousand and fourteen and the United Kingdom. Yeah. In response to this, the Steiner Waldorf School's Fellowship, an umbrella group representing the community of walt Or schools, said this, while the superficial reading of a handful of Steiner's voluminous, extensive lectures present statements that appear racist in modern terms, none of these occur in the educational writings. See the idea that that was the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship, which is a group that represents these schools collected and their spokesman Chris Angel. Yeah, Look, it's like, okay, superficially me saying that black people are a less evolved race and are degenerating into an ape like species. That sounds racist superficially, but just superficially, well boy, yeah it's bad now SWSF, which is that that Umbrella Groups guidelines published in two thousand eleven noted that in order to be considered a Waldorf school, an institution needed to be able to show that quote an anthroposophical impulse lies at the heart of planning for the school. And there's your ship. Is racism in Rudolf Steiner's writings on anthroposophy. So it does seem like there's got to inherently be some racism in any of these schools that actually like stick to the heart of anthroposcopic teachings. That said, Waldorf schools are very decentralized. They aren't part of a strict hierarchy, and there's a lot of variance between different schools. If you went to a Waldorf school that seemed totally fine, I'm not trying to say that you imbibed a bunch of stealth racism that said, maybe come through your memories and see if there was some weirdness that you learned, like never quite made sense to you, because there might be. If you meet a rich kid who's who's a racist and has smallpox? You have the Waldorf school system to think. I'm just saying, maybe we should check in with Jennifer Aniston. I mean, so it's all it's fucking rich people who have nothing fucking to do, so they fill their time with a bunch of nonsense because they got nothing to fucking do. Yeah, it's really true. It's just a simple matter of spare time. You've got nothing to fucking do and everything's going right, so you just make up a bunch of ship to cause some trouble because you're bored out of your goddamn mind. I mean, that's where this all comes from. I'm sure a lot of students today in Waldorf schools. There's a lot of rich kids, but I'm sure there's also a lot of like middle class and working class kids whose parents just sacrifice because they're like, well, look at all of the great My kid wants to be a dancer, and a bunch of great dancers. Don't trying to sell me Waldorf schools being good. I'm not trying to sell high schools. I'm trying to point out, like, I'm sure there's a bunch of parents who are who are like, and I'm sure it works out for some of them. Have a lot of great dancers. Go to Waldorf. Robert, it takes me. It takes it. First of all, we don't need any more dancers. Second of all, Robbert, Robber, you have no idea how easy it is to make me decide that I fucking hate something. I am so mad already. I want to go. Uh, you know, I want to write. As soon as I'm done with this podcast, I'm gonna drink even more colebrew and just go to the nearest Waldorf school and uh find out what the punch of on. Yeah, just find out where the fun is going on, like racist dancing, smallpox people. I was going to defend the people going there a little bit, but I it sounds like more fun to declare, like essentially an intellectual jihad on the concept of dancing. So let's do that. I'm just just fucking rich people, fucking you know, not just adjusting to the fact that life is essentially a one note situation. You fucking live and then you die, and there's no ghost libraries, and and as much as it's fun to poke around with the idea that maybe there I believe in ghosts actually sort of, But well then why not a ghost library. Well that's the thing, is like, it's like, but just keep it within realize that this is something that you're doing as a hobby because you're bored. Don't take it seriously, for God's sake. For it's one thing to think maybe ghosts are real because you've got a day off and you've got nothing better to do. But to fucking take that and run with it till you establish a school. Then you're an absolute moron. I mean, that's the thing is, you're at actually a dumbass. The whole idea that you would take your musings, the musings of a board human go every which way possible, and the fact that you would codify them and make a school out of your dumbass musings while your board is just so maddening to me and also a perfect example of the egos of these wealthy people that they decide that their own dumbass musings are actually true. I mean, the things that cross people's minds, you know, are the fact that, oh God just makes me mad anyway. No, I mean, I I agree with you about Steiner and the original people who cooked this up and the people who believe seriously in this stuff. It does. See like most of the parents at these schools no none of this stuff. Like I'm gonna be willing to bet if you, like ask a bunch of parents at Waldorf school's what's anthroposophy, they wouldn't be able to give you like an answer. I don't have any kids, so I'm mad at parents to just generally oh yeah, like everybody involved in this whole story, if you send your kids to an alternative school, you should make sure that a guy who was like ten steps away from Hitler didn't come up with the philosophy behind how it's taught. But yeah, anyway, um, like I said, if you went to a Waldorf school, I'm very curious for your experiences, but you may not have imbibed any racism from this podcast. If you get response from people who want to waltis what they got through it and just a great dancers and no racism, yeah, I'm sure they will. But there there are, there are, There is documented evidence of eruptions of dangerous racist bullshit within them. Dancer he sees a racist with smallpox. All dancers are racist and disease. That is the that's the official stance. Piece of shit, you fucking Nazi. Oh yeah, I'm gonna quote from Peter stadden Meyer again or Professor stott Meyer again quote in. There was a scandal in the Netherlands when it became publicly known that the Dutch Waldorf schools were teaching racial ethnography, where children learned that the black race has thick lips and a sense of rhythm, and that the yellow race hides its emotions behind a permanent smile. In nineteen nine four, the Steiner Wright lecturer Rayner Schnur, at one of his frequent seminars for the Anthroposophist Adult school in Berlin, give a talk with a rather baffling title, Overcoming Racism and Nationalism through Rudolph Steiner. According to a contemporary account, Schner emphasized the essential differences between races, noted the infantile nature of blacks, an alleged that due to immutable racial disparities, no equal in global system can be created for all people on Earth, and that because of the differences between races, sending aid to the developing world is useless. What year was that, nineteen ninety four? Wow, and that was in Amsterdam. That's in Berlin. Fucking slick Willie's the president in the United States and you're in Berlin, and like, yeah, that's the kind of ship, people are saying. Steiner supporters, when they acknowledge his racism, tend to try to write it off as him being a product of his time. And that's not an inherent currently unfair argument. There's a lot of great thinkers who believed racist ship because it was the accepted wisdom in their day. And we shouldn't discount all of a person's ideas just because they grew up in a time where people like didn't know things were bullshit. That are bullshit after all, people they believe in the moon, and we wouldn't want future generations to ignore all of our philosophers just for that. However, the product of his time argument doesn't hold water in the case of Rudolf Steiner. Remember, according to anthroposophic belief, he was reading all of this ship off of the Akashic records, which transcend time and space. So if anthroposophists truly believe what their guru wrote down about the source of his revelations, then when those revelations took place can't matter. If you actually are anthroposophists who believes in all of this stuff literally. That means that you have to take his race science stuff literally because he's not influenced by the bias of his times. He's reading what the record says about the nature of the black race and the yellow race and like whatever racist terms that he came up for for them. You can't like say both things. You can't say you believe him. And then you also, I think he's a product of his times, yeah, exactly, because he's not a product of his times. You think he's invested with some sort of supernatural Yeah. Yeah, he can't be a product of his times because he's reading the ghost books from you're giving you you're you're allowing this guy, uh extra normal power. I mean, part of this belief system is to believe that this man had some sort of supernatural power. Yeah, exactly, exactly, the supernatural site. Yeah, and that that these these race things he's talking about or somehow um you know, not only not only true, but but sort of sort of like you know, like in the written in the in the in the ether. I mean it's even more like it's even worse. It's like this is this is definitely, this isn't even coming. He's basically a vessel for this stuff. This is like divine truth. Yeah, it's divine like inherent truth. It's not even based on his deep theories. Yeah, that's cults ship. Yeah, that's that's yeah. Oh, it's definitely cult shit. Yeah. So this is why people like Professor Stadenmeyer will argue that anthroposophy is the covert curriculum. Those are his words of most Waldorf schools. There is evidence that in internal forum discussions online, anthroposophist educators have been caught talking about their belief that karma and reincarnation is quote the basis of all true education, and just as children choose their parents before birth, many anthroposophist teachers believe that teachers and students choose one another ethereally as well. I'm going to quote from Peter Stadenmeyer one more time. The curriculum at Waldorf schools is structured around the stages of spiritual maturation positive by anthroposophy. From one to seven years, a child develops his or her physical body, from seven to fourteen years the etheric body, and from fourteen to twenty one the astral body. These stages are supposed to be marked by physical changes. Thus, kindergarteners at Waldorf schools can't enter first grade until they begun to lose their baby teeth. In addition, each pupil is classified according to the medieval theory of humors. A Waldorf child is either melancholic, hilaric, sanguine, or phlegmatic. The categorization is in part based on the child's external physical appearance and is treated accordingly by the teachers. We all know the medieval humor philosophy of it was absolutely correct, which is why people lived so long in the medieval era. For the nurse's office at their schools, like just just a bunch of leeches in the jar. It's an axe on a table. Yeah, I don't want to go to the nurse she puts that snake on me. Send me to the crayon. Now, I can't it won't speculate on how all this might have influenced famous Waldorf grads like Jennifer Anison. I can't say. Yeah, I'm deeply curious. I want Okay, first of all, I've always wanted to be a fly. I mean I would give my right arm to hear just forty five minutes of conversation between Justin Throw and Jennifer Aniston, you know, a dinner. I mean, I would normally like just because I can only imagine how fucking stupid it would be, not because they're necessarily stupid, but because are in this bubble that would just make what they would talk about be so uniquely weird that there's a certain level of fame and exclusion from normality where you can't talk about things that don't sound like insane bullshit. To anybody who already figured, listening to Justin Throwing Jennifer Anniston would be fascinating, you know, in a way that would be, you know, fascinating in a sense of like, holy fuck, these people are out of touch, but then to imagine them having Now, I just want forty can anyone who's listening to this podcast, does anyone have forty five minutes of overheard? I asked our listeners to wire tap a lot of different people, So maybe add Jennifer Anniston and h just Throw Jennifer Preston dated can you imagine their breakup? They probably said that it was to do with some kind of PASSI The Ecashak Records wrote about that what happened. Yeah there, Like it was like, Jennifer, I have to break up with you because I think my most child was I don't know, it just wasn't up to snuff. I mean, she's like, it's entirely possible. If like, if Jennifer Aniston listened to this podcast, she would just be going like what the fuck for real? Oh that's why that one teacher said that weird thing about root races like that. Yeah, yeah, so yeah. One Waldorf school in King's Langley, England, was shut down in two thousands seventeen following a series of failed safety inspections. A Department of Education report noted, they pupil say that they are safe, but they are not because of flaws in the school systems and procedures for safeguarding and child protection. So it does seem like again and this is something like the former students who are critical of the schools do say, I we all really enjoyed our time there. It seemed like a really good place. It was only kind of later that you started to realize there was some weird ship going on. Um. In this case, the closing seems to have been due to the school's failure to abide by basic safety rules and not directly due to their wacky occult beliefs. The Waldorf School in Garden City, Long Island, however, was nearly shut down vehicle beliefs. Yeah is my hometown. That's where I went to Thanksgiving every year growing up. Yeah. The the student that we read about who was talking about like how some of his teachers would drop weird ship about race science and stuff. That's where he went. Oh yeah, yeah. In nineteen seventy nine, and The New York Times published this very fun article titled psychic X student's influence shakes Waldorf School. That's a great headline. The issues started by talking about the Garden Cities Waldorf Schools teacher training program, which trained roughly twenty student teachers per year to take positions in one of the dozens upon dozens of Waldorf schools operating at the time. Quote what was described by one parent as internal chaos began when Mr Walton, who has said that he is able to communicate with certain beings in the spiritual world, allegedly used these powers to advise school officials on matters ranging from language curriculum to what music to play at a school. Dance as his influen and s reportedly grew among leading faculty members and with John F. Gardner, a former headmaster and at the time director of the Waldorf Institute, other staff and faculty members became resentful, called a meeting and voted to seek the resignations of those who accepted his suggestions. So we see a couple of things here. One is that the student basically claims to have the same thing happened to him that happened to Steiner, where suddenly he can talk to spirits and like a bunch of high level teachers go along with him and change the school's policies based on this guy's what this guy says, ghosts told him. It's it was like he was like the rest putin of yeah, the Waldorf school. Yeah, but in what you know, you got to point out a couple of times just for the sake of fairness. Other members of the faculty were like, this is bullshit, like yeah, made him resign and stuff. So like it it is a scandal, and it's it is emblematic of some problems within the Waldorf schools. It also suggests that a number of the staff and faculty are not howling lunatics who believe in ghost libraries. So I do want to be fair. This is a long time past Steiner's death, and there's evidence that, like some, a lot of them don't believe the craziest parts of this belief system. Now, in spite of the scandal in the Garden City Waldorf School continue to operate and is still teaching students to this day. It is one of a thousand operating Waldorf schools on the planet. There are a hundred and fifty in North America some parts of the world. Yeah that's three parts. Yeah, that is three estate. In some parts of the world, like the United Kingdom, several of these institutes even received public funding. At any given point in time, several hundred thousand children are enrolled in taking classes using lesson plants based in anthroposophy, a fundamentally racist philosophy. And it gets worse because racism is not the only horrifying thing at the core of anthroposophy. See Rudolf Steiner was a very influential academic in Germany during World War One. He'd been a friend of helm With von Moltka, the chief of the German General staff, until his death in nineteen sixteen. Sorry, there's just nobody that there's an know there are no people in the world who fucking were more dangerous than German academics during the Old War One. Yeah, I mean, if we go back in time and take all the fucking academies of of Germany during World War One and just dump them into a volcano, would be better off? Yeah, maybe, like all of the people with any position of power whatsoever in Germany and World War One and dumping it that was a dangerous God, the people who are like philosophizing in Germany during World War One or king dangerous motherfucker's Yeah. Now. After von Moltke's death in nineteen sixteen, Steiner continued to channel his ghost and ask it for advice. As bady as this sounds, he was held in not insignificant influence among the German leadership, of course, yeah, of course not. He's talking to our old general. They're ready, they're ready for as these stuffy older aristocrats and their ridiculous hats watched the Bolshevik revolutions sweep through Russia and listen to Woodrow Wilson sketch out his ideas on self determination, Rudolf Steiner was hard at work providing them with an alternate theory for how the world could be reorganized after the war. He called this the tripartite structuring of the social organism. Modern anthropost sophists call it social threefolding or the threefold commonwealth. Here's how stalden Miter describes what that is. Quote. The three branches of this scheme, which resembles both fascist and semi feudal corportus models, are the state, political, military and police functions, the economy, and the cultural sphere. This last fear encompasses all judicial, educational, intellectual, and spiritual matters which are to be administered by corporations, with individuals free to choose their school, church, court, etcetera. Anthropists ophists consider this threefold structure to be naturally ordained. Its central axiom is that the modern integration of politics, economy, and culture into an ostensibly democratic framework must falter, because, according to Steiner, neither the economy nor cultural life can or should be structured democratically. The cultural sphere, which Diner defined very broadly, is a realm of individual achievement, where the most talented and capable should predominate, and the economy was never be subject to democratic public control because then it would collapse. Steiner's economic and political naivete are encapsulated in his claim that capitalism will become a legitimate capitalism if it is spiritualized. This is diner Still, this is the same guy. Is the same fucking guy. He had so many ideas, and they're all terrible. I mean, they're so they're very much like I mean, I guess maybe we'll get to this later. But the the fact is that what's going on in the American government right now is that there's that ship is going on like that, this whole school belief of like getting rid of public education and like this. You know, I'm not saying charter schools are necessarily associated with racism or but but the idea of what's her face, who's the head of the education department, Like I would not be surprised if eugenics played some you know, whether she realizes it or not. Her and her brother, Erik Prince, they have these ideas of like Judeo Christian values that are under attack, and I mean there's a lot of that kind of mysticism under it's it's it's, it's, it's, it's underlying modern conservatism as well in America. Um, they don't call it mysticism. They call it, Uh, make America great again. But this this, this make America great again? But this great again has a sort of mystical quality to it because it's they can't really define what that means. And it has a lot to do, of course, or is entirely to do with race. But you know, make America great again is is a mystical slogan because it doesn't it's not grounded in reality. It's just it's it's it's something that's open to interpretation. I mean, it's the whole shining city on a hill idea of America is a mystical bullshit. Uh. People love that ship and it's it's interesting. I would not be surprised if Betsy Devas uh uh has read this man, Rudolf st You know, to be honest, I guess the person in American politics right now who he had a lot more influence on than Betsy Divas is Mary Ann Williamson. And we are going to talk about that and Rudolf Steiner's history with the Nazis and how we invented organic farming in Part two of this Jesus Christ was relentless. This dude had There's still so much gas left in the tank wild Yeah, but you know what it's time for now what it's for time for you to plug your plugubles? Oh is it right? Um? Yeah, yeah yeah. This is at the end of the first episode on Steiner. Um. God, I've had this fucking sinus infection for well it's not even a science infection. It's just like endless sinus shit for a month. Anyway. Um, you can hear me complain about my sinuses on Twitter at the Crofton Show or on my Instagram Chris Underscore Crofton and uh, I do my famous Colebrew Got Me Like series on there, which is just very important. And um, and I write an advice column called The Advice King for the Nashville scene and you should google the Advice King and read all of them. There's like two d and they're all fucking good. And you should go listen to my record, Um, hello, it's me, which came out last year and got a seven point four on Pitchfork and you can find me, uh not on Pitchfork, but often brandishing a pitchfork. A passers by on the Highway. Um, I just I love pitchforking. It's a an art as much as it is a science. You can find this uh podcast on the Internet at behind the Bastards dot com. You can find us on Instagram and Twitter at at bastards pod. You can find me on Twitter at I right, okay. Uh. You can find Waldorf schools in the real world by finding a rich kid who wants to dance well uh yeah, shouting that out of them. Um so um. That's the end of the episode until Thursday and part two. I just want everyone to remember that at one point in his life, Joe Biden almost got into a knife fight with a guy nicknamed corn Pop.