Mama, what does the chicken say? Draft draff? Really giraffe draw? You're not gonna get it all right. Just make sure you know the big stuff, like making sure your kids are buckled correctly in the right seat for their agent's eyes. Get it right visits n h S A dot gov slash the Right Seat brought to you by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the AD Council. Hello, and welcome to our show. I'm Zoe de Chanelle and I'm so excited to be joined by my friends and cast mates Hannah Simone and Lamar and Morris to recap our hit television series, New Girl. Join us every Monday on the Welcome to Our Show podcast, where we'll share behind the scenes stories of your favorite New Girl episodes. Each week, we answer all your burning questions like is there really a bear in every episode of New Girl? Plus you'll hear hilarious stories like this that was one of your things from all fashional basketball players. Yeah seven Yeah. Listen to the Welcome to Our Show podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What Girls in the Forest, our imagination and our family bonds The Forest is closer than you think. Find a forest near you and discover the force dot Org brought to you by the United States for Service and the AD Council. What's Parley Voo? And my fran says, I'm Robert Bastards while it's behind the Insurrections, It's both. It's like it's like, it's like Bourbon, right, Bourbon is whiskey, but but all whiskey is not Bourbon behind the Insurrections is behind the Bastards, but all Behind the Bastards episodes aren't Behind the Insurrections episodes. So I dig that. Yeah, I mean I think, I think that's actually that's a great analogy and throwing this Scotch thing and then you're like, wait, isn't No, I got it. I try to compare as many things to Bourbon as I can speaking of Bourbon, not speaking of Bourbon, speaking of artists. My guest today, as with the previous what four episodes we've done on this uh is Jason Petty a k A prop. What's let the lick read Bourbon and night for Breakfast for dinner? Prop? How do you feel about France? Uh? Wow, um, I feel carbs. I just think carter and bread. They do love that fresh food is delightful. Yes, I think. I think Harlem Renaissance. That's pretty cool. You know. My patron saint is is James Baldwin, so it's time out there. Yeah. Uh. But besides that, I also think, Yah don't like Americans, Yeah, which is hard to fault them for what I What I don't like the French four is appropriating Belgian French Fries or Belgian Fries and calling that they also they have a habit of having superfluous letters and they have too many way to like at least a third of the letters in any French word are unnecessary. Yeah. Yeah, we're taking France to task today, but we're not talking about how they use too many letters. That that'll be a six part we do at some point. Today we are talking without French fascism. Um, yeah, because the French actually have a long history of fascism. Although there's a weird number of French scholars who will argue that France is uniquely immune to fascism, it's not. And today we're talking about the day that fascists almost took over the French government February six, nineteen thirty four. Now, all of the stories we've shared so far in this series have borne some similarities to what happened in the US capital on January six and the events that let up to it, But what happened in France on February six, nineteen thirty four is by far the most direct comparison to what happened in the U s Capital on the six. I knew nothing about this before I started this series, but it's fascinating. It's wild. Yeah, well it failed, but also it is just the same damn thing basically. You know what's crazy is how much the thirties must have sucked the trash. A lot of this stuff happened in the thirties. Man, it sucked as much as I'm gonna guesses are going to suck suck a decade. Yeah, um yeah, it's great. It's great. How the same thing is happening again exactly a century later. Pretty much. Um So the story starts, our story today starts in many ways with something that happened in the late eighteen hundreds. Prop have you ever heard of the Dreyfus affair? No, this is I I did when I was before I dropped out of college. The only thing I ever was able to focus on for more than a semester is a major was was Holocaust studies, right I wanted to when I the the only degree I ever wanted was a degree in like Holocaust scholarship. And every class on anti Semitism in the history of the Holocaust is going to start, or at least be frontloaded with the story of the Dreyfuss affair. And most Americans don't know about this, but it's very famous in France and it's where the French far right really comes out of. In eighteen eighty four, a French army captain named Alfred Dreyfuss was accused of handing secret documents to the Imperial German military. Now this was a little over a decade since the Austro the Franco Prussian War, which is where France lost a bunch of territory to what became Germany. Um that one, so there's a lot of like panic over the Germans, right, So suddenly it comes out that like someone has been handing documents over to the German military. There's a spy in the French military, and everybody focuses on Alfred Dreyfuss. He's the immediate suspected culprit because he's Jewish, you know, like, Okay, this is starting to sound a little familiar. Now, yeah, yeah, this is this is a pretty famous moment. Yeah, I feel like okay, yeah, yeah, I'm like you and celebrity names like I think I know this immediately and his story becomes not you know, for there's a trader in the French military, but there's a treacherous Jew giving our military secrets to the Germans. Right. Um, Now, as I'm sure most of you have guessed, just because this is the show that it is, Dreyfus was innocent. The trial against him was racially motivated and flawed from the get go, and I found a good right up on the trial from the open source educational website e International Relations, which highlights just how fucked things were from the jump. On the morning of Monday, the fifteenth of October, Captain Alfred Dreyfuss was summoned to present himself at the French Ministry of War. The Commander Patty to come, along with three other inspectors, welcome Dryfus and proceeded in asking him to write a peculiar letter dictated by Patty to clam that this letter contains sentences from the infamous Borderreaux, which was a letter written by a French spy found in the dustbin of the German military attache in Paris. The French Ministry of War was searching for the spy, and we're testing various officers that could be suspected of treason. As Dryfus wrote the letter, he shivered, and the three men scrutinizing his every move noticed his trembling, thus deeming it as a sign of culpability. He is cold, he shivers, an incontestable sign of his culpability. The God he's shivered, He's guilty, held guilty. N One. One constant throughout history is people whose job it is to determine whether or not folks are guilty of a crime. Are always bad at that job. Not possible. Yes. Dreyfus was immediately arrested for high treason and deported to the prison of I'm I'm going to try to pronounce it. He was sent to prison on December nineteenth. He was court martialed in front of a set of anti Semitic juries who judged him guilty and sentenced him to a degradation and life sentence on the Devil's Aisle in French Guyana, so pretty pretty much you know, a show trial, right. Uh. That meant that the anti Semitism man all the way back from there, all the way to they build in lasers to shoot from space. They build in lasers to shoot from space. And this is a real theory because we'll talk about this later. France did not have much of a history of anti Semitism before, not nearly as much as a lot of other European countries. So about two years after Dryfus is convicted, evidence comes out that a completely different, non Jewish French officer had been the spy, and this is good evidence. The guilty man, though, was immediately acquitted by a military court because Dreyfus was Jewish and thus must be the guilty party, and Dreyfus was. Actually when the guy who was guilty was acquitted, they sentenced to Dryfus for even more crimes that he hadn't committed in the same Oh my god, it's really bad. Oh my god. Anybody who watched that ivan, the terrible docuseries on Netflix about the guy that was accused of being the the not see Oh yeah, I watched that. Yeah, oh Robert, it's up your alley. It is dude. So yeah, they're like, that's him. I'll never forget his face. He's like, no, it's not. Yeah, people are bad at remembering things, which is the real problem. Like I witness accounts and stuff. But there's not even that in this. This is just racism that dry Us is being convicted over. Like it's not even someone thinks they see him doing something. Um, it's just like, well, he's a Jew and he's in the army, so he's got to be the guy passing secrets to the Germans. Obvious felt this way. Oh sorry, what's that problem? Is gonna say? Man, uh, this is gonna be a very racist statement, but I mean it as a joke, which is even I shouldn't have even prefaced it. But I just still think that, like, dang man, because I still go when I look at like European Jews, I'm just like but white people, and I just and it's and it's so funny to because I'm like, damn, y'all got the short end of the state. You got the worst lottery ever as a white dude that you don't even get to count as a white dude, you have to, I think accept that in this period of time in Europe, Jewish people aren't white. They are excluded from the benefits of whiteness. And the way that like in the late eighteen hundreds of Italians and Irish were in the United States, right, Like just the process of becoming white for a lot of these groups. Yeah, it's so bizarre. I know in the early like this is the longest script you've ever written, so I shouldn't be at I know that, like you know stories of when when America was founded, you know, only white people could own land, so you had like Japanese immigrants standing in front of the Congress being like, nah, we're white too, you know what I'm saying, And just this argument that like I am a part of that dog. I just can't imagine as someone who's there is no way I could stand in front of any court and convince somebody I'm a white dude. You know what I'm saying that like the idea one that that's possible, and to that, like you actually are, ay dude. Yeah, and and nobody's calling you a y dude, you know what I'm saying, Like that's at least the the European jew obviously Ethiopian Jewish people are clearly now why dudes, you know, yeah, I mean, and it's it's a factor of non whiteness is a scale, right, Like everyone who is considered non white isn't considered the same um there, but it's it's it's a it's a scale. And and in this period of time and a lot of Europe, and really not in France, this had not been the case. But in a lot of Europe Jewish people are not really considered like there had been there there had been within living memory at this point, severe restrictions on whether or not Jewish people could own property in parts of Europe. Um it had not been legal like up to the First World War, almost in like Germany, for Jewish people to be officers in the military, like there were very strong restrictions around it. So it's really it's hard to almost get your head around because of how significant it is in this period. That's the point I'm trying to make is like I still can't obviously you can't, you can't pull a you know, a critical race there is based on a society in the in the twenty one century. You can't yank that back to the seventeen and think it's going to be the same. But at the same time, it's still hard to like wrap my mind around the fact that they're like but not him. And I'm like, yeah, how do you know you know I'm saying it's um, I mean, it's it's the whole the whole process of a lot of you know, it's it's the same way as how most of the kind of colonial procedures that the British carried out in Africa in order to maintain dominance and split up different tribal groups and keep them fighting each other so that they could dominate and exploit them. They beta tested that in Ireland with with with what we're effectively tribes and group tribal groups of Irish people like that that. There are people scholars who will argue that the Irish were the first people to be excluded from whiteness when they were when the idea of whiteness was being invented, before the slave trade even really existed, because like it was there an early colonized people. It's a it's a like it will do a history series about this at something History of whiteness. Yeah, there's a couple of really good books, including one titled The Invention of the White Race. That's yeah, it's a great book. Yeah, very interesting. So anyway, everything that dry Us, you know, getting tried and then getting reconvicted, when this new infro comes up, it creates a massive culture war in France. In two groups kind of rise up around this. There's the anti dry Fusards, who are confusingly the ones who think Dryfus is innocent. Okay, yeah uh, and then there's the dry Fussard's who are raging anti semites um. Like, the dry Fusards think that that dry Fus is guilty. The anti dry Fussards think that he's yeah. Okay, So it's the opposite of how you'd think it would be. It's opposite day okay, got it. So dry Fuss is pardoned by the French president and released in nineteen o three. Eventually, just like and and in fairness to France, the weight of kind of cultural opinion is that Dreyfus is guilty. People come around on this and realize that they've done him dirty. Um. So he's released in nineteen o three and in nineteen oh six of French court formally recognizes his innocence. Now, the actual spy and the racist officers who conspired against Dreyfus were never punished. And one of the saddest things about the story is how kind of incomprehensibly loyal to the state Alfred Dreyfus is because after he gets out of years of being in prison as a spy, he rejoins the French army and fights in World War One. Yeah, he retires as a lieutenant colonel and dies at nineteen thirty five. He goes right back into the military. Dry until boy, like, bro, it is hard to get your head around these people don't love you family well, so, I mean, in fairness to him, a lot of folks there was a huge culture war in his defense. In a lot of cases people this is wrong. Um, so all things considered, for what is effective lee like a racist attack on a Jewish man at multiple levels of the military. The dry Fuss affair works out about as well as you can expect for drivers because he is he is vindicated in the end, but because of how much because of what kind of like evolves in France around believing dry Fuss is guilty and starting to believe that Jewish people are kind of inherently unloyal to the state. Uh supercharges the radical right in France, and it lays the foundations for French sympathy for the Nazis and a hatred of Jewish people that would claim tens of thousands of lives in World War Two. And I'm gonna quote from that right up in the International Relations again quote. Before the affair, France had been one of the least anti Semitic countries in Europe. It in fact had been the country where the most Jews had sought political asylum. During the pogroms that took place in Russia during the eighteen eighties. Russian Jews escaped the massacres ordered by the Czar and flee towards the rest, predominantly France. Another event attesting to France's non anti Semitic past was that there was no French delegation at any of the annual congresses of anti Semitism that took place in Dressden. Yes, there used to be yearly congress is based on anti Semitism and Dressed that a bunch of European countries would send delegates to to talk about the danges you the the amount of anti like the Holocaust isn't a factor of the Nazis. The Holocaust is a factor of centuries of most of European christen of being like the Jews are dangerous, Like that's where it comes from. Just a slow moving train that ended exactly where logically it would end. Yeah, it was the result of for hundreds of years, lots of prominent people being like, we should murder these folks, and then they did. You know, it's the least surprising thing in the world if you read anything about European history. Um so. Yeah. But in France though, um that that's not really the case is much. Obviously there's anti Semitism in France, as the drivers affair shows, but it's not nearly what it was. It was one of the best places in Europe to be Jewish, and there were as dry This proves a lot of very loyal to France Jewish people. Um So, the anti Semmatism really starts to grow into a serious force in France as a result of the Dry Fust affair. The Driver's affair also leads to an explosion in the radical press for the first time in French history. Left and right start launching a series of newspapers and magazines aimed at taking different sides in a violent culture war. At the start, anti dry Fussard press outnumbered the dry Fusard press by about ten to one in terms of readership. So the guys who think dry fuss is innocent, that's the majority of the press at the beginning. But that doesn't stop the dry the dry Fusard press, which are the ones who don't like drivers, from publishing a constant stream of ever more lurid lies about a Jewish conspiracy to undermine the military. Now, some will argue that the whole reason the dry fust affair became a thing was because the press flocked to it, and that it might have disappeared um if they hadn't written so much about it. Scholar Jen Dennis Brennan wrote, the press became the power of opinion. It amplified the political movements without creating them. For the first time, the press disposed of a powerful influence on French politics, dramatizing supporting or denouncing the authorities. Now this is very familiar to everybody listening right now. It's the same thing that happened with like Q and on right, this radical press, the the and wh when we talk about radical press in this period, the people like mimeographing or whatever their own like little newsletters and stuff. It's the same as like memes and shipped on Twitter and ke went on it's like eight chance, that's what's happening. He's still ye still just dank memes, okay, And it's it's by the way, this basic process is the same thing that radicalize as Hitler when he's when he's like homeless living in Vienna, he starts picking up all of these crudely copied and written anti Semitic tracts that were passed out in mass on the street. That's what convinces him in a lot of ways about the danger of the Jewish menace. It's a lot of the same ship you see on h Chan. It's just now what happens online. Then it was like like zines you would pass out basically. I wonder if there's like some sort of psychological study or something that like lays out what that does to you mentally to see something that's like feels clandestined, if you will, Because it's like these like mimiograph things like the quality is terrible. So it's so does something in you feel like, oh, this is a secret. That's why it's not all polished and nice. It's like, does there someone if there's something to that where it's like I'm I'm in I'm in on something. I know. There's psychology about that where you feel like you're in on something everybody else isn't it. It hits a certain part of your brain. It's man, But I wonder if there's something to do with like, how sucky the quality of like y are? This is the same? You know? I talk about this a lot. There's this one of the guys behind the Lincoln Project as a fellow named Rick Wilson, who is, like I think, objectively a bad person, um, but has been historically pretty good at creating certain types of propaganda. He was the guy behind the Reverend Right campaign ads during Obama's election. Um, yeah, he's that guy. And I interviewed him in talking about kind of his opinion on Hillary Clinton's campaign ads versus Donald Trump's because the first Trump campaign ads really felt like something some teenager had cobbled together on their laptop, and Hillary's ads were like traditional campaign as and everyone was a lot of liberals were making fun of Trump's ads, but they were getting this incredible traction. And the thing he told me was essentially like the really polished slip campaign ads don't work nearly as well as the ones that look like they came out of somebody's basement, because that feels real to people, right, Like, it feels more authentic. And I, you know, like, again he's a very bad person. Um, he's not bad at making propagande. And I think about what he told me a lot um and that's I think, what kind of what you're seeing here? I think you're exactly right. So the dry Fist affair would prove in the radical press that kind of comes out of the dryf this affair would prove to be the seed of a new militant right wing in France, one that came with its own stabbed in the back myth right. We talked about how the stabbed in the back myth in Germany was crucial now the right in Frances, like we lost the Franco Prussian War because the Jews, you know, um damn it. And it's it's worth noting that when the Nazis took over France, they actually had a problem, had serious problems logistically because of how many French people were turning in their Jewish neighbors. They couldn't deal with the sheer number of Jewish people being turned into them. Yeah, it was way more normal to give up your Jewish neighbors to the Nazis than it was to hide them in a lot of Europe, but in France too. Yeah yeah, I know, like I have, we talked about so many times, like the parallels in the in like Syria and Iraq and Iran, like and I have you know, some of my homies out there, like we're trying to explain like how a caliphate kind of grows and this is a lot of the thing too. It's like this these like heavily armed dudes pull up to the house and are like are you a Christian? And you're like, uh nah, but they are you know what I'm saying, And it's like, you know, or you down for the Caliphate? You down with us. It's like, uh, well, day's data ones down there said it's just like I just don't want you to drag my daughter out of my house. So yeah them, you know what I'm saying. He just turned it down a dude down the street. You know what I'm saying, I don't know what they are, you know. And and it's like a lot of people that signed up didn't really sign up. They just you know, saying, it's just I just don't want you to drag my grandma out of the street, you know what I mean. Yeah, that's a factor in it. There's a this is about the when we talk about the Holocaust. That's a complicated factor because a lot of people would claim in their defense later, like after during the Nuremberg Trial time that they had been forced to carry These are mainly German soldiers, they had been forced to carry out acts of genocide, and a significant amount of scholarship shows that, like it's actually was unheard of for German soldiers to be punished for not engaging in acts of genocide. Um, it was. It was a lot of a lot of it was just it was a mix of like peer pressure and like legitimate radicalization. But that's a whole Holocaust is a whole another story. Um. But this is a part of the story of the Holocaust. Though. This is why part of why the French people in who are taken by the Nazis are so willing to turn in Jewish neighbors, you know. Um, And none of this should be seen as like kind of uh ignoring the fact that a lot of French people hid and protected their Jewish neighbors actually makes them much more heroic. But that was not the norm, you know. Um. So again, the dry Fust affair gives birth to the right wing in France. Um and it it's it's like it leads to this alternative media ecosystem that starts spreading propaganda at a at a huge rate. Um. Now, France, obviously, World War one comes around and France is one of the co co belligerents in that war, and they suffered, you know, terribly as a result. At one point three million French soldiers were killed and another million were left permanently disabled. Which makes which means that like in that war, France lost as many soldiers dead as the US has lost, more than the US has lost in all of its wars put together. Um. Damn. Yeah, it's bad. Um Yeah. Seventy of French soldiers who mobilized for World War One where either killed or wounded. Um. And this is not just include white frenchmen. This includes a huge number of colonial troops who were brought onto the continent by the French government to make up for the fact that after a while, German machine guns had them running low on white dudes, you know. Um. And one of the stories that's not talked about enough in World War One is how many people from India, people from chunks of Africa, from like all over the world, from the Middle East were brought in to die on the Western Front because like, we own these places and we can make them, you know, beauty of colonialism, You can just yet pull bodies from anywhere, pull them all from wherever. Now. The days and months after World War One's closed brought a wave of revolutions and insurrections across Europe. In Germany and Russia. As we've talked about, all these trauma mad young veterans were major instigators of unrest in what one scholar called the shatter zones of the empires that died as the war's conclusion um, which I think it's a neat term. Yeah, you know, all these paramilitary organizations start becoming more common, and France has spared the worst of this, in part because you know, they have their stab in the back from the War of eighteen seventy, but then they win World War One, which does kind of mean it reduces the avenues for radicalization. Right, people aren't as angry because the war was terrible, but they did win. You know, it's not as bad as it is in Germany or you know, Italy one too, but they kind of got screwed in the victory, you know, so there there's a lot more resentment in those countries. Um, France does have some unrest though, there's waves of strikes in early nineteen nineteen, but these didn't really disrupt the status quo. They did, however, terrify French conservatives. This was largely because those conservatives weren't seeing the reality of the strikes themselves, but were instead looking at the violence convulsing Russia as a result of its recent revolution and being like, that's what these people want to bring here, you know. Yeah, so everybody's scared of whatever hell happened to Russia. Everybody is, Yeah, it's a huge factor here, you know, and you have to acknowledge that. Like we talk a lot about how the people on the left are terrified about what they see happening in France and Germany. People on the right are terrified about what they see happening in Russia and a lot of again, nine million people die in that war. Yeah, you have the holludomor, which is five million Ukrainians being starved ares a result of some very fucked up policies. So like, they're not like when people are terrified as a result of what's happening in Russia. It's not like, you know, today people being scared of cultural Marxism because you know, someone wants to talk about slavery, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, basically they have very different that's a legitimate fear. Yeah, there's they have a leg to stand on right now. Again, they usually still take it to like, well now we have to just do fascism, which is yeah, it's like well bro, but but it's not quite the same. Um. So, the fear of French conservatives were exacerbated by a pattern of progressive social changes that came in the war's wake. The sheer number of men killed and rendered unable to work had to bring more women into the workplace. Right, you have a bunch of men who can't take part in capitalism anymore, so you got to bring in women. This brings in expansions and women's rights and a broadening of what was considered acceptable behavior. For the first time, large numbers of French women were both sexually and financially independent of men, and obviously this terrifies conservatives. Yeah, I can't have women making decisions. Yeah, they might, they might decide not to make more French babies, which is actually exactly where this leads because something called the birthrate movement pops up in this period of time. These guys are scared at declining rates of French birth. Now, they started whining in eighteen seventy one when Prussia beat France in that war because the French, right before they started blaming Jewish people, blame the fact that French people women weren't having enough babies, Like that's the thing, Like the right loses of war and they're like they have to find a scapegoats. So first it's the women, you're not making enough babies for us to send into German guns, which is obviously like ridiculous. We'll spoil an episode that we're going to drop soon. The reason France loses that war is because they have brass cannons that are basically Napoleonic artillery, and the Germans have modern steel cannons, and that's why France loses an eight one. That's the real reason. It has nothing to do with birthrate. Um yeah, how would it like, I'm even trying to follow your logic, like, there's not that many Germans. Yeah, it's not that many of it. What does Toddler going to do? You say, exactly? Um? But yeah, it does say something about the right wing that they're like, if we'd had more boys to send into their guns, we would have won. Yeah, okay. Um. And then of course, like after they you know, after a decade or so of blaming women, they start blaming Jewish people. Uh So, the kind of the birthrate movement got even more like gained more traction after World War One because this point a lot of French dudes had died, so they had a little bit more of a leg to stand on, like, we need to have more babies because look at how many of our boys got killed. A better answer, I think I'm just like man, I always these dudes like what I'm hearing them, just the stabbing the back thing. And then then we had no birth rate. I just wish these kids had like Little League baseball at some point to just like teach you how to take a loss, man, Just take the loss, bro. You lost none of them. That's the fucking thing. And it's the same fucking thing for like the Hindenberg and Ludendorf in Germany, where it's like, well, we can't accept that we fucked up, right, it has to be it has to be someone else's fault that we lost this war. Just take the l bro. Like sometimes you know, hey, you had a bad day, you know you just hey, buck up, champ, like you just you took your loss, all right, take the hell everybody takes ls. Yeah, it's like the fact. It's like it's like the American right wing blaming the fact that we lost Vietnam on like teenagers protesting. It's like, no, dude, like the Vietnamese kicked your ass. They were better. We just better. Like this is what happens. Sometimes you lose. Yeah, Usually you lose when you do stupid shit like it evade Vietnam or invade Afghanistan. Should away? Yeah. So anyway, obviously a bunch of members of the birth rate movement get elected to government. They pushed legislation to encourage childbirth YadA, YadA. In nineteen twenty, a conservative government is elected and immediately sets to pushing back against what they saw as a rising and sinister communist left. They were opposed by the labor government, which had been swelled by the war's need for heavy industry. During the first six months of conservative power, a series of strikes convulsed both French industry and public services. Still, the start of the twenties was a good time to be a French Conservative. The stain of defeat in eighteen seventy one had been wiped out by victory over Germany. The new right wing government was seen as being largely composed of herobic veterans, even though this wasn't really true, but the idea was that, like, these guys are all heroes. They're not normal, crooked politicians right there. They're men of the Trench generation. They could be trusted to make hard decisions to make France great again. So first on the wings agenda was of course, sticking it to the Germans. Just defeat. The defeated nations did a lot of money to France and reparations um and these were seen not only as spoils of war but were necessary to revive the French economy because the French had gone badly into debt to the United States in order to continue fighting the war. So they need German reparations to pay off the US. You know, um, uh, my money because I owe some money. Yeah, I need my money because yeah. So when the Germans begged that they couldn't afford to like feed their people and pay reparations, the French right wing assumed that they were lying, and this newly formed network of right wing newspapers and magazine starts spreading another conspiracy theory. This one is that Germany actually hadn't been all that badly hurt in World War One. They just faked a surrender so that they could rebuild their military and sneak attack Germany. All of their complaints about economic collapse and inflation and starvation were lies meant to lull the French into a false sense of security, which yeah, is not the case. So the Germans stopped paying reparations because they were literally on the verge of societal collapse, and the French government sends in troops to occupy Germany's industrial heartland, and of course, a big one of the things that happened in this period is a lot of the troops they send over are like black people from their colonial possessions, which really jump starts a lot of racism in Germany. Um because like you know, nobody ever likes the occupying soldiers. Nobody, Yeah, nobody wants the messenger. Yeah exactly. Um. Obviously, still one time I feel like in this age or in this era of history where I feel like I have a little more mercy for Germany when they're just like Doug, we may look, man, we ain't got it. Dog Like we just I ain't got it, you know what I'm saying. It's like it's your fault. Yeah, don't get me wrong, it's your fault. But you can't squeeze water out of a turn up fan. Yeah. I mean, they're fucking like the thing that they're guilty of in World War One in that era, and the reason that like France and Germany come down so hard on them is like they're primarily guilty of one to do what France and Germany had been doing for two, two or three centuries. You know, they wanted an empire, and they're like, well everyone else gets to do it, why don't we get it's bad to want an empire. Obviously, what the Germans do some really messed up stuff in the Maybia carry out a gainside themselves like but also up to World War One and including World War One, if you're looking at like the number of crimes against humanity committed by Germany versus France or England not even Yeah. In nineteen twenty four, the French Conservatives get their asses handed to them in a landslide election, and the victors in this election are an alliance between socialists and radicals. Now again because everything in Frances backwards, the Socialists were the furthest electorally relevant left wing party. So the Socialists are like as far less like the Bernie standers as far left as you could be in French politics and still get elected. Obviously they're further left in than Bernie, but like they're as far left as you can be in France and get elected. The Communists hate the Socialists in a lot of case is because the Communists are further left than that and they're not really as relevant in the government as a result. The radicals are the exact opposite of with the sound like the radicals have the same kind of position in France. And this is at this period as Democrats do. They're the center left right, the majority left. Um. So the radicals are not radicals and the Socialists are not communists, but they are far left for French politics. Again, everything in Frances backward. Um. So the radicals and socialists had worked together in the past. Um they were allied, and that they all kind of broadly supported human rights, democracy and anti clericalism, pushing against like the Catholic Church. But they didn't get along on much else. The Radicals were the party of like the petite bourgeoisie, the lower middle class, small business owners and successful peasants. They were big on individualism and self reliance and of course property ownership as a method of social advancement. The Socialists are socialists. Their partnerships were always awkward, and for one thing, the Socialist Party had a standing that none of their deputies were allowed to accept ministerial posts and radical governments because they saw themselves as a Marxist revolutionary party and if they were seen as working within a liberal government, the Communists would eat them alive and suck in their disaffected members. So they get elected to what is effectively French Parliament or Congress or whatever. They have deputies, but they won't serve in the government of the radical majority because that would mean compromising the fact that they're Marxist revolutionaries. And the lose members to the communists then, and the communists hate the socialists because they're willing to get like elected at all, basically, um, and they're willing to work with the radicals. It's very very complicated and domb but it's also like basically what happens between the left all the time. Right, you've got the left that wants to actually govern, and you've got the left that's like the system is so fucked up that governing means buying into the things that we're fighting against, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Despite the fact that actual socialists like weren't taking weren't only take up ministerial jobs, and the fact that the left coalition didn't agree on much, the election of this new government, which is called the cartel, drives the right wing completely bug fuck and I'm sure Americans can understand what that look like. The conservative print media basically calls this stage one of a communist invasion. The socialists, who the communists hated were considered to be just the same as the communists, revolutionaries, and sheep's clothing. In nineteen twenty six, the Cartel really pisses off the right wing when they approved the Washington Accords, which guaranteed that France would keep repaying her ward at to the United States even if Germany defaulted on their payments to France. At the same time, the Cartel brings the Germans into the League of Nations. The Cartel in France are like this liberal government, they're trying to rehabilitate Germany because Germany is kind of socialist at this point. They're like, let's bring them back into the national community, like we we can't keep ostracizing them as a result of World War One, and part of bringing Germany back in as they negotiate a more reasonable repayment arrangement with Germany that the right wing sees is the left selling out the country and it's war dead. Right, So yeah, do you just oh man, yeah, I'm getting I feel like I'm feeling itchy on my back. Man. You know, everyone knows where this is going, yes, bro, Like and then and then the thing is this, it's like in the same way that we call that y'all call Bernie Sanders a radical leftist. I'm like talking about Bernie Sanders talking about stuff that they do in Canada. You know what I'm saying, the communist bastion of Canada, you know what I'm saying, So like he ain't really radically not really that you know what I'm saying, lightweight, you know, And what I compare like a party to like they're the Bidens or whatever. I'm not saying They're politics are like it, it's like a comparative thing, like, yeah, I get the scale. I totally I'm totally following the scale, and I'm saying, yeah, in this scenario, it's like what they're suggesting is reasonable. They you're not gonna get your money. Yeah, they're not gonna get your money if you kill the Germans. Let's bring them back to let them rebuild and will eventually get paid if they please be like this, if we never rehabilitate them. It's the same thing with like with like prison reform exactly this like it's just gonna keep No, we have to do this, this is reasonable. We're not going to get the result that we both want. So let me just and you Tom I'm selling you out. Okay, I'm getting itchy. Yeah yeah, So the years that Cartel is in power are basically a constant stream of outrage porn for the now exploding right wing media ecosystem. Okay. Newspapers like Action, Francois, Candied which means candid, Gringore, and Jesuit Part two which means I Am everywhere reach hundreds of thousands and eventually more than a million conservative French readers. The first of these was Candide, which had been established in eighteen sixty five and from the beginning was both anti democratic and anti Semitic. When Communism kind of went viral worldwide, it added a violently anti Communists to its repertoire. Candeed is followed by Gringar, which was named after a French journalist, and just Suite Part two was initially not anti semitic or right wing, but throughout the nineteen twenties, at the direction of its head editor, the paper got more and more extreme. In the late twenties and early thirties, it goes all in from Mussolini and it starts to get progressively anti semitic, until by the late nineteen thirties it was literally just a Nazi magazine. So these are like the big the big names and right wing media candy, yeah, candy, gringo. Anyway, So in the early years of the cartel, well, the French left is like I think, objectively, being pretty reasonable. The French right wing is losing its entire damn mind. And as will again sound familiar to everyone, the right wing reacts to the left having some success by forming a system of violent street fighting gangs so they could beat up their opponents in the streets. Um This was of course part of a trend in Europe that exploded from nineteen nineteen to nineteen twenty three or so. We've talked about this both in the case of Italy and Germany. Now again in France, there's less unrest and there's less angry veterans who want to tear down to the state because they in that state had won their war. So it takes longer in France for a paramilitary culture to really kick off. One of the most direct causes comes in nineteen twenty four, as the study France and Fascism by Brian Jenkins notes, the right suspicions about revolutionary and anti national nature of the Cartel were apparently confirmed in November nineteen twenty four, when the government sanctioned the internment of the ashes of the socialist founding father Jean Jaure and the Pantheon. While socialists and radicals led a cortage to the Temple of the Republic, the conservative press focused on a communist counter demonstration held in protest at the parliamentary left hijacking of Jarre. The presence of noisy communists in the streets with socialist and radical deputy suggested that the cartel had accepted Bolsheviks into its ranks, and the Chamber of Deputies right wing deputy Pierre Tattinger denounced the revolutionary saturnalia of the day, which he claimed he had witnessed a true outbreak of revolution from the international underworld that infects France. Tadinger promised that if the government could not take matters into hand, the leagues of public safety are ready to defend and save are threatened society. Now the leagues are these these militant organizations, the street organizations. So what happens here is this socialist guy's ashes get brought back to France. It's like founder of the French Socialist Party and the socialists and the radicals. Is kind of a demonstration of left unity. Have a have a ceremony for this this dead socialist. The communists who hate everybody who's not a communist have their own rally, and they're more extreme, but they're very tiny, and they obviously hate the rest of the left. The conservative media looks at just the communist demonstration says, that's all of them, that's the whole left. They're all like these guys again, it's the same, nothing changes, nothing changes, you know, isn't going to change me asking you to take an yep, you know who won't uh radicalize the French right over anti semit has m based on communist demonstrations taken out of context. Yeah, man, hopefully these uh, these other podcasts, these other podcasts or whatever advertising to that. What grows in the forest trees, Sure, no, what else grows in the forest, our imagination, our sense of wonder, and our family bonds grow too, because when we disconnect from this and connect with this, we reconnect with each other. The forest is closer than you think. Find a forest near you and start exploring. I Discover the Forest dot Org brought to you by the United States Forest Service and the AD Council. Hi, I'm Robert laund and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're the hosts of the science podcast Stuff to Blow Your Mind, where every week we get to explore some of the weirdest questions in the universe, like if sci fi teleportation was possible, how would it square with the multitudes of organisms that inhabit our human bodies? Can we find evidence of emotions in animals like bees, ants, and crayfish? How would an interplanetary civilization function just free will exist? Stuff to Blow Your Mind examines neurological quandaries, cosmic mysteries, evolutionary marvels, and the wonders of techno history. Basically, this show is the altar where we worship the weirdness of reality. If anybody ever told you you ask the weirdest questions, it is time to come join us in the place where you belong. The Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast new episodes publish every Tuesday and Thursday, with bonus episodes on Saturdays. Listen to Stuff to Blow Your Mind on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Look for your children's eyes to see the true magic of a forest. It's a storybook world for them. You look and see a tree, They see the rink of ace of a wizard with arms outstretched to the sky. They see treasuring pebbles, they see a windy path that could lead to adventure, and they see you. They're fearless. Guide. Is this fascinating world? Find a forest near you and start exploring and discover the forest dot org brought to you by the United States Forest Service and the ad Council. Alright, we're back. So this guy, I know you're gonna say that, Yeah, you get your own gay. So this guy, Pere Tattinger, who will talk about in a bit, is a big advocate of these leagues, these right wing street fighting gangs, and he keeps like for years afterwards. He will talk about in November ninet this like one communist rally as and use it as like the whole reason why the entire left needs to be defeated. Um and a lot of like a huge chunk of Catholics and nationalists in France believe that like, based on again this one demonstration, a communist revolution is like right about to happen now, so this was made worse by the fact that the mid nineteen sufferance suffering economic contraction that, while not as severe as the one experienced by Germany, was pretty bad. Now you mix that in with the declining birth rate, and as Brian Jenkins rights quote, in comparison to the dynamic and youthful regimes abroad such as Mussolini's Italian Fascist State, the Republic did not seem fit for purpose. Sections of the right thus looked for a solution beyond the institutions of the regime to violent extra parliamentary groups known as leagues. So France is having trouble here, and the right, rather than like trying to take any accurate stock of things, looks at the propaganda coming out of the Italian Fascist State, which is not accurate, and it's like, see, everything is great in Italy. Why don't we do that? Oh my god, yeah, oh my god, dude, it's great. Uh So, the leagues are not quite like the black Shirts or the Free Corps. They're not heavily armed. Most of them are veterans, but they don't have like machine guns generally and like massive Like they're not private armies. They're groups of combat veterans generally who want to like drink and fight in the streets against the left. One of the first leagues was founded by that Pierre Tattinger, and he called them the Juness Patriots or the Young Patriots, and they were initially the youth wing of the League of Patriots, which was a political organization the same it's it's yeah, the young Republicans, right, turn the point USA or whatever. Patriots like, they're all proud boys, you know, they're all proud, proud boys. So a lot of people on the left recognize the League's as a threat um and they are. One French leftist Louver noted that since Mussolini's March on Rome, one could no longer so much as walk in the street without wearing a colored shirt. You know. He's talking about like they've got you've got the black shirts in Rome, the brown search in Germany, and now like all of our guys have their own shirts, their own colored shirts for each league's and he warns that. Louver warns that if these leagues were able to like stop fighting each other over petty bullshit and could unite under a single charismatic leader, the way would be open for what he called the rule of castor Oil and the grenade. So like, basically, we've got all these fascists. If they could unify behind one guy, we're in trouble. You know, there's the castor oil again. Yeah, it's a real thing in this period. So in this the left wing fear was you know, accurate, reasonable, but perhaps a bit premature. The French leagues regularly reprinted fascist brockpaganda and definitely admired the black Shirts, but they were also French, and if you know anything about France, it's that France kind of hates the idea of other people's cultures coming into France and gaining influence. They are very proud of being French, and even French proto fascists, like their Spanish counterparts, were kind of didn't like, would argue that they didn't want fascism because fascisms with foreign ideology, right, we were extreme rightists, but we want our own French version of that. We don't want to like steal from Italy. We're France, We're better than that. I was like, that's pretty, that's pretty on brand France. Yeah, it's very rand France, very France. Yea, So one scholar named Dobris. Is this the dilemma of the authoritarian nationalist, which is the fact that nationalists want to be authentically of their nation because fascism tends to gain power by reacting against purported foreign influence. Um. But at the same time they want to imitate successful authoritarians abroad, and this creates a problem for a lot of fascists. We again, we saw the same thing in France. Now the struggle within the French right over this continued through the mid nineteen twenties while the Leagues went through what Dobri calls an apprenticeship period to the Fascist International. So the French Shire behind the German and Italian fascist they're not as as quick. They're kind of learning from them, right, and they're slower on the uptake as a result. Um. Now, because a lot of awful lot of French League members were veterans, the League's benefited from what became known as the veterans mystique, which was a near worship in France of what we're called the Front generation. People celebrated the trench ocracy, which is like the democracy of the trenches. Right. Um, this is huge in Europe. It's not just in France, because in Germany, Hitler makes a lot of hay out of the fact that he'd been a corporal in the trenches, not like an officer or a nobleman, but a normal soldier. Um. But I think Americans can understand how like right wing groups can use veneration of veterans as a way to push their own radical lens. You know. Um yeah. Brian Jenkins writes about how one right wing fire brand named The Law used the idea of the pure trench warrior. Quote. The Law warned veterans that the Republic had sabotaged the hard won gains of the war. Only the installation of a fascist and dictatorial combatant state would restore France to the politics of victory. Likewise, the Young Patriots leader Tatinger extolled the virtue of the new elite born of war. His group alleged that the cartel had sabotaged the fruits of the war and clipped the wings of victory. These leagues were not attracted solely to the veterans supposed moral quantities. Only veterans were purported to join the Young Patriots, Iron Brigade and the Legions, both elite paramilitary action squads. Now, obviously most veterans don't join the League's uh, and a lot of them also joined communist veterans organizations. But the worship of veterans and the idea that the sacrifices of nineteen eighteen had been betrayed by the leftist leaders of France becomes a popular right wing rallying cry in the mid twenties. Throughout this whole period, the right press continues to gin up a desire for the blood of their political opponents. One right wing journalist, politician, and street organizer named Charles Morris was jailed in nineteen five for threatening to have the Minister of the Interior killed like a dog if police kept at harrassing the leads. O. Lord, Yeah, there's a couple Marjorie Taylor Green or whatever her name is, the Q and on lady who's talking about that Jewish space later and probably helped carry out and incite and advise that sees the jew laser. Yeah, that that that lady. There's like three of her in France in this period, Okay, and Mars is kind of one of them. Now, Mars is an interesting guy. He was born a monarchist and it is what we would probably call a Catholic fascist today. His earliest politic call memory was the was the French defeat in the Franco Prussian War, which seems to have fueled a lot of his anti left hatred later in life. He became an anti democratic activist in the eighteen nineties, and then came the Dreyfus affair, and of course Maris is a dry fuss Art. He believes that Dryfus is guilty because he's Jewish, and he grows increasingly anti Semitic after the Dryfus affair. In eighteen ninety nine, he founds a newspaper uh Action France, which literally means French Action, and yes it does sound kind of like a porn. His magazine becomes very influential among the French right wing, and Marius uses his influence to, among other things, convince a lot of conservatives that destroying democracy and going full monarchy is the right thing to do. He writes an article in eighteen ninety nine titled Dictator and King that's about how we should have a dictator king and Franciso yeah, yeah, you know what France's problem is not enough kings, you know, what remember, we has served him. Yeah, and peddle back to that. Let's go back to that. That was amazing Ricketts. In nineteen o five, Mars starts writing articles about how swell it would be for the right wing to create extra legal paramilitary organizations and have them do a coutaita. When the league's rose up, Mars was thrilled, and soon Action Francais or Front the French Action, has its own league. When Mars goes to jail for threatening to murder a member of the government, his business partner at the newspaper says this to a gathering of their followers in nine if Mars were wounded or hit, I would at once give orders to have the ministers of the Republic immediately assassinated. So like the right wing isn't just like dog whistling violence, So like we should kill them all, we should kill everyone on the left. Yes, it's like like the American right now. So what do you so in what what way do you mean? I mean, I mean we shoot them today, we kill them, yeah, yeah, it's why. And then it's the same as what's been had, what happened ahead of the sixth you know, now obviously Marris and his business partner were not alone in their calls for violence against the left. I'm gonna quote from France and fascism here. Such calls to violence often went unheeded, and law and order were not threatened to the extent. Scene in Germany and Italy, however, low level physical violence was common. Newspaper sellers from rival organizations regularly came to blows in the street, while political meetings were frequently the scene of violence. Furthermore, despite their claims to stand for authority in order, the leagues could fight with the police. To the French actions created mayhem in the Latin Quarter and beyond beating political opponents and reveling in confrontations with the police. Meanwhile, a young Patriots leaguer died in March nineteen six during fighting with police at a demonstration against the Minister of the Interior, Louis Malvi. So they these organizations are kind of recruiting and growing because they're fighting with the left and they're fighting with the cops right now. In most of France, the armed paramilitary start to decline in popularity after nineteen and in France they mostly faded into the background, temporarily by nineteen twenty six, after two years of regular street brawls, they left behind them, in the words of some scholars, a culture of violent rhetoric, uniformed politics, and street fighting right which again very similar violent rhetoric, uniformed politics, and street fighting. The proud Bols know it's proud um. Now, this was not the end of violent unrest in France. Just to pause, because in nineteen six a new Conservative government gets elected and the cartel comes to an end. So that's why the league's kind of fade after twenty six is the Conservatives get elected again. It comes a home game again, okay exactly yep. And the reason the right wins in nineteen twenty six is that the left has fractured again. The Communist launch a series of attacks against the Socialists, who they call social fascists in fighting causes the less to temporarily dissolve this meaningful opposition, and this meant the League's also had a lot less of a reason to exist. Big business that's spent the previous four years pumping money into the far right, and they withdraw their financial support after twenty six, which causes the leagues to collapse. So the leagues are floated by rich businessmen who then like, well, now conservatives are in power again, we don't we don't want street games anymore. Yeah. So the temporary fall of the League's and the victory of the center right did not mean the fever swamps of far right media ceased operation, and no magazine or newspaper was more influential than French action from a right up end of all things. The Harvard Crimson quote it collected within itsels the inheritors of a tradition of nationalist, monarchist and reactionary thought extending back almost a hundred years. It was no mere cabal of a moral big businessman, such as supported the so called Committee France alec Main and the ultra conservative Grand Press, but a meeting place for distinguished and gifted intellectuals whose disdain for the republic was wholly disinterested, the result of literary and philosophical predispositions, not any desire to safeguard financial investments. So again, the far right in the in the period where the left is in control, is did by businessmen who are safeguarding their investments. Right, and that's why they want to fight socialists in the street. But the guy's propagandizing to the far right are true believers. It's not about money for them, It's about fascist you know about the thing? Okay, yeah so, and Mars being a monarchist is only marginally happier under a conservative government than liberal one. The king is still gone and he wants a fucking king. So throughout the years of right wing power in France, he continues to advocate for an armed coup is the only way to bring back the monarchy. It would have been easy for people in the left and mistake he and his followers for isolated loons, and a lot of people in the center particularly did. Then the global economy crashed, and in France it crashes with the right wing and power. And May of nineteen thirty two the left wins again. Their victory is again enabled by the fact that the radicals who are the moderates, ally with the socialists again to avoid splitting the left wing vote. So left continuously wins in France and Spain, uh and Germany when the left and the center left are willing to like work together electorally right um and the right is obviously enraged and terrified by what was surely a prelude to full on Stalinism. Now, I just said that, like the left consistently wins elections in Europe against the right in this period when you know they're all willing to work together. The problem with the far left and the center left working together is the same thing that we're seeing now under Biden. Liberals and the left can never get their ship together to agree on anything, and in France they can't put aside their differences to get a basic aid package together to help people with the depression, which again does not sound at all familiar. Yeah, there's my back tingle again. Yeah. So the socialist demand direct aid for the unemployed, while the radicals worry about the deficit and think that it's much more important to balance the budget exact thing, Okay, the radicals, who are centrists, their best idea is, of course austerity cuts in wages for public workers. The intractable debate between the socialists in the radicals leads to a series of different liberal left governments. Obviously, it's like a parliamentary system, so you can have votes of no confidence, you dissolve the government, you bring in a new government, new ministers. This happens a number of times, and none of these governments are able to actually help people, and the French economy spirals downhill. The right wing correspondingly surges and it unifies behind the thing the right wing does best, picking up weapons and making death threats to people they disagree with. The leagues that had remained functional after nineteen six, namely French Action and the Young Patriots see a swell in their membership. They're soon joined by new leagues. In June of nineteen thirty three, a perfume magnate and fascist named Coti forms his own paramilitary group, which he uses to spread anti Republican authoritarian propaganda and pushes this through the newspaper that he owns as well. By February of nineteen thirty four, the Perfume Guys paramilitary gang slash newspaper is the most influential and largest fascist movement in France. Are you saying perfume? Yeah, he's a perfume guy. Like France's most influential fascist gang leader is a perfume dude, the guy that like fragrance. Okay, I was big into the fragrance business. Yeah, this is again pretty on brand, pretty on brand. Cody's men wore blue shirts and lots of leather, and one has to assume smelled incredible. Yeah, it sound like they probably looked amazing too. I'm sure they did. Yeah. Now, another fascist French guy named Marcel Bouchard starts a league called the Francists in the September of ninety three. Bouchard repeatedly praised foreign fascist governments, and he was famous for making long speeches about the almost sexual love he had for his revolver. Again, another Marjorie Taylor Green right, like I'm gonna take my clock into congress kind of guy. It's the same fucking ship. Just the worship of weapons and such. And then of course there's the Craw the Few, which is like the cross of Fire. This is an organization that had been founded as a veterans association for men who had been decorated for bravery and combat. So all of the crawl, if you, the Cossa firemen are like not just combat veterans, but men who have been particularly awarded for their courage under fire. So it's not founded necessarily as a right wing, radical militant organization, but it becomes one very quickly. Its leader is a guy named Colonel Laroq, and he holds military style parades and is not afraid to use his men as a political cudgel. And the way their organized is actually pretty genius. They have at their height about half a million officers and n c o s and their membership, and the officers and n c o s are each like put in charge of ten guys to other former soldiers who were of lower ranks, and their job is to get help with those guys for those guys using the resources of the league, and also control their votes. So the half million or so officers and n c o s and the Cross of Fire control about five million votes. They're very politically influential as a result. So these guys are right wing and kind of militant, but they're also very system loyal right there. Not we want to overthrow the government there, We want to organize as a political entity in order to dominate the government, so Brian Jenkins rights quote. In November of nineteen thirty one, the colonel and his followers stormed the stage at a meeting on disarmament at Trucadero, bringing an end to the proceedings. Meanwhile, the league's shock troopers called Dispose were employed to maintain security at meetings and fight the left in the street. In October nineteen thirty three, a new manifesto announced a more radically anti parliamentary direction, while the group opened its ranks to non veterans through its volunteers nationa auxiliary, so they get, you know, start more system loyal, and they get kind of more closer and closer to fascism as time goes on. As nineteen thirty four dawned, right wing paramilitaries were as organized and as large as they had ever been in France. The left was too was fighting too much within themselves to the with it between themselves to deliver any kind of meaningful aid that might have tamped down on unrest. Meanwhile, the right blamed the global economic collapse on their own leftists and of course the Jews. Um. They also are able to look abroad at the propic and that's being put out by Italy and now Germany and be like, look at how good things are going in the fascist countries where I assume I have accurate information from We should do that. What did they do that we're not doing? Yeah, they're not We're we're not killing enough leftists clearly yeah. And then, as everything in France is about as hot as it could get, what comes to be known as the Stavitsky affair bursts onto the front page of every rightist newspaper in France, and I'm gonna see how long it takes you to like figure out what the most modern parallel to stay affair? All right? Sergey Alexander Stavisky was born in Ukraine in eighteen eighty six to a Jewish family who'd immigrated to France in eighteen ninety nine. His father was a dentist. To Stavisky, however, was a born grifter. While still a teenager, he established himself as a con man. By the mid nineteen twenties had gotten good at it, making enough money to dress as a rich guy, even though he was constantly on the ViRGE of losing everything. Stavisky used his charisma and his ability to trick global rich people to keep the cash flowing France and fascism, writes Quote, he left a trail of fake companies, counterfeit checks and bonds, and fraudulent share transactions, and following his arrest in July nineteen twenty six for stealing and stolen securities. He spent seventeen months in the Lessante prison while his case awaited trial. Following his release on medical grounds, the hearing of the case against him was repeatedly deferred nineteen postponements and all, leaving Stavisky free to launch a string of further dubious ventures under the alias Sergey Alexander. In ninety eight, he embarked on a scheme which the lucrative would eventually prove his undoing, the fraudulent exploitation of municipal pawn shops in Orleans. He extracted twenty five million francs from the pawn shop in exchange for fake gimstones, subsequently redeeming the stones with cash derived from the municipal pawn shop he had since launched in bay Own. This was a much bigger operation, and the credit was financed by issuing bonds well in excess of the value of the articles deposited. Cash was then realized through the sale of these fake bonds to banks and insurance companies. In the summer of nineteen thirty three, having spent lavishly and gambled heavily, Stavisky found himself unable to redeem the bonds and his attempts to win backing for a new operation, which he hoped would bail him out, yet again, were soon frustrated. That's the nature of his con Yeah. First it sounded like an assets it's pretty good lick man he is, he is it commn for a while. Yeah. So in September nine three, one of the businesses he can't, an insurance company, called for a judicial inquiry into his business. On December twenty three, the director of a pawn shop Stavisky owned broke down under questioning he did not just incriminate his boss, but also a local elected leader from the Radical Party. Stavisky immediately went on the run, fleeing Paris on Christmas Day, and just as quickly, the right wing press picks up the story. French Action and other newspapers launched a massive campaign to allege that not just the one guy implicated, but a whole host of Radical politicians, basically all of them, had been involved in a far reaching financial conspiracy. Since Stavisky was Jewish, you can guess how this folded in with all the fact that all of these papers also had huge heart ons for Hitler and Mussolini. One Radical deputy resigned, another radical, the Minis stir of the economy was found to have encouraged people to purchase junk bonds from Stavisky back in nineteen thirty two. So two radicals are implicated, like clearly, so he resigns and to the right this proves that all of the other deputies they've been accusing were guilty. To newspaper editors were also found to have been on Stavisky's payroll, which encouraged people to buy junk bonds. And then these guys are arrested, which feeds into the narrative that liberal presses on trustworthy and part of the Jewish conspiracy. As nineteen thirty four dawned, right wing media could write about nothing else but the Stavisky affair. And then on the ninth, with public interest at its height, Stavisky himself is cornered by police at a house in Chamois. He kills himself to avoid capture. So as soon as he kills himself, both the communist and the far right press leap on the story, alleging that Stovinsky had not committed suicide, he'd been murdered to cover up his connections to powerful leaders. He's the fucking French Jeffrey Epstein's Yeah, it's the same thing. It's the same thing. Yeah, he doesn't have like a network of child prostitutes. But he's a guy who's implicated with a bunch of powerful people in a series of crimes. He goes to jail once he continues committing crime, implicates more powerful people, and then when he's cornered, kills himself. Yeah, you know, it's the same thing. It's like the exact Yeah, and and and and and the best part about the Epstein story they said the camera glitched. Yeah, and there's there's shady stuff like that with this right, it's not cameras because it's whatever. It's the same thing. But yeah, no is a one to one bro. Yeah he doesn't. Just like with Epstein, it doesn't really matter if he killed himself or was murdered, the same thing with this guy. What matters is that everyone on the far left and the far right is sure that he was murdered in order to protect liberals, right center politicians. There's too much at stake, you know, who won't murder Jeffrey. Ye you can't because he already did. But yeah, he's already dead, so they definitely won't kill him. Products and services that support this podcast. Adoption of teams from foster care is a topic not enough people know about, and we're here to change that. I'm April Dinuity, host of the new podcast Navigating Adoption presented by adopt us Kids. Each episode brings you compelling, real life adoption stories told by the families that lived them, with commentary from experts. Visit adopt us Kids dot org, slash podcast, or subscribe to Navigating Adoption presented by adopt Us Kids, brought to you by the U. S Department of Health, that Human Services Administration for Children and Families, and the ACT Council. Hello and welcome to our show. I'm Zoie de Channel and I'm so excited to be joined by my friends and cast mates Hannah Simone and Lamar and Morris to recap our hit television series New Girl. Join us every Monday on the Welcome to Our Show podcast, where we'll share behind the scenes stories of your favorite New Girl episodes, revealed the truth behind the legendary game True American, and discuss how this show got made with the writer's, guest stars and directors who made the show so special. Fans have been begging us to do a New Girl recap for years, and we finally meet a podcast where we answer all your burning questions like is there really a bear? In every episode of New Girl, plus each week you'll hear hilarious stories like this at the end when he says you got some Schmidt on your face. I feel like I pitched that joke. I believe that I feel like I did. I'm not on a thousand percent. I want to say that was I tossed that one out. Listen to the Welcome to Our Show podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Conquer your New Year's resolution to be more productive with the Before Breakfast podcast. In each bite sized daily episode, time management and productivity expert Laura vander Cam teaches you how to make the most of your time both at work and at home. These are the practical suggestions you need to get more done with your day. Just as lifting weights keeps our body strong as we age, learning new skills is the mental equivalent of pumping iron. Listen to Before Breakfast wherever you get your podcasts. So we're back. So the radical president is that he's still alive though, Like I feel like your oyebreak is yeah, I mean, we're not going to actually prove that, Robert, I am not. I'm not making any conclusions about Jeffrey Epstein on this podcast. I'm just saying that, like Epstein, this guy Stavisky is said to have killed himself, and nobody who's on the left or the right really believes there's Yeah, there's one definitive thing you could say about Jeffrey Epstein is that, I don't care how many dollars you put it before and after his name, he is a pimp. Yeahs is a different kind of pimp, but to pimp, and this guy's is pimp in yes, this is a different lick. He's selling different products, same thing. Anyway. So the radical president, like the or not president, but like Prime Minister of France, who's again a article, does his best to ignore the scandal, arguing that it's not a big deal, like, yeah, the guys who were implicated already got arrested, Like it's not a big deal. Um. And it might have even been true that, like the only people implicated had been caught, but that doesn't really matter, um, because obviously this becomes a huge conspiracy, and the Prime Minister refuses calls from both the right and from his socialist allies to call for a parliamentary inquiry into the whole situation. This just makes everything worse, proven to many Frenchmen that there had been a conspiracy. Brian Jenkins Rights what might be called the dialectics of conspiracy thus played a significant role in the escalation of crisis. Stevitsky's death gave decisive impetus to conspiracy theories on the right and intensified the campaign both in the press and on the street. Meanwhile, the perception on the left that the scandal was being orchestrated for sinister political purposes led the government to harden its opposite its position and refused to make concessions. This in turn gave the impression that the government was engaged in a cover up and therefore must have something to hide, thereby further reinforcing the rights spiracy theories. However, in this competitive press environment, it was inevitable that the more radical and scrillious newspapers that set the pace and tone for others to emulate. It was French action that crystallized public opinion around them and orchestrated the developing affair each day, adding fresh names to its dossier of suspects, and decisively raising the temperature on seventh of January with the headline down with the Thebes and an inflammatory appeal to the people of Paris. Most of the conservative press simply follow their lead, albeit in less flamboyant language, which in turn helped legitimize the message. Again, the truth doesn't matter. What matters is the narratives that take off. Yeah, yeah, totally. From January nine on, and this is there were demonstrations and street violence almost every night in Paris every week. The crowds grew larger. On Saturday, January, the situation was bad enough that the present resign and the government dissolved or the prime minister whatever resigned in the government dissolved. This was seen as a big victory by the right, but nobody knew what came next. The left are still the elected leaders. Right, you dissolve the government, you don't kick out all the deputies who have been elected. You just pick a new prime minister and new ministers. Right, that's what it means. And the left is still like gets to decide who the new government is and they bring in a new liberal president, guy named Dlatier. Now, while all this is happening, the socialists the only part of the left coalition that has not been horribly tainted by the Stavisky affair. It's radicals that are implicated. The socialists are not. The radicals need the socialists both to keep the government from being dissolved and to avoid a deeper investigation into the matter. So yeah, probably a bunch of more radicals were guilty. You know, they really don't want there to be an investigation. So since they had the radicals over a barrel, the socialists decided to make a demand of their own. Being good leftists, this demand is that the radicals fire the Paris Chief of Police, John Chiappa, because he was a piece of ship who sympathized with fascist paramilitary groups. Of course, the far right loves Chiappa, and they see his sacking and the radical promises that the police will be reformed. So the radicals, in order to keep the government going and avoid an investigation, like, we'll fire this guy and will completely reform the Paris police. That's the socialist's demand, and the right wing is like this is like, this is clearly the precursor to a communist revolution. They're trying to get rid of the police so they can take over the streets and take all of our money. Right, yeah, dog man. So this starts at ticking clock on the right because they think that there's this comic plot being carried out and they've only dazed to act in order to avert it. Laroc, Colonel Laroc of the Cross of Fire, declares his paramilitaries to be defenders of public order. One League French Solidarity declares civil war is imminent, while the Young Patriots claim the country is in danger. A wholesale purge is being prepared. Newspapers. Right wing newspapers run articles about how communist revolutionaries are on the verge of seizing power. Colonel Laroc warns his followers a government who signs the red flag wants to reduce you to slavery. We are threatened with sectarian dictatorship. Nothing, it's familiar. Yeah again, nothing that's ever happened again in any of this is so frustrating, I know, it's terrible. Yes, So elected leaders were also pushing these lines. Philip Henrio, a deputy from Bordeaux, was a Catholic militant who believed that the Stavisky affair was a Jewish Masonic conspiracy to destroy France. On three occasions in January, he took to the rostrum of the Chamber of Deputies to demand right wingers rise up and sweep the republic. British journalist Alexander Worth was in Paris at the time, and he wrote this in early February. Already on Monday, Paris was full of wild rumors. Troops, it was said, had been brought into Paris. If the demonstrators were to cause trouble, the government would not hesitate to use tanks and machine guns. The work would be entrusted to Moroccan and Senegalese soldiers who would have no compunction about shooting down their white fellow citizens. And it is, by the way, one thing you kind of have to give the French in this period is that they are kind of the first Western government to have a significant number of non white citizens. They do that, not that they treat them equally or anything, but like it is a thing that happens in the sevres really um. But why God damn man. Of course they use them for shock troops. You know of course, I'm like, I feel like it was about time that one of us say something funny. But it's yeah, I can't. I just got nothing because it's just so on the freaking nose. It's exactly all. It's exactly what's happened, you know. So this prop brings us to February six, nineteen thirty four. The French government assembles for a vote of confidence and Prime Minister Daladier so a vote on whether or not he's going to keep being the prime minister or they're going to dissolve the government again. Uh. And I found a French history website herodoty that describes how things started, quote and all hardly more than thirty thousand demonstrators, a large majority of them who were ex combatants. Everyone is mobilized on the theme down with thebes and a demand for more civility and honesty in the government. At the start, at the call of Lieutenant Colonel de la Roc. The cross of fire quickly dispersed as soon as the first clashes with the mobile guard occurred. Although it arrived at the end of the afternoon at the gates of the Palais Bourbon, Larent and his veterans refused to occupy it. Their dispersal makes any possibility of overthrowing the regime by force feudal. But on the other side of the sign around the Palace of the Concorde, the demonstration degenerates. Thousands of activists try to march on the Palais Bourbon, the Bourbon Palace. I guess, so what happens here is this crowd starts like and and the cross of fire. Guys are a huge chunk of it, starts marching on the gates of the capitol, and as soon as the police get engaged in, the crowd starts fighting with the cops. Colonel Laroc calls his men back, but thousands and thousands of other right wing militants continue to surge ahead and keep fighting the cops, And as night falls, the protests go from being just aggressive and violent to being an active attempt to storm the capital. Protesters light busses on fire and destroy property, tearing down barricades and barriers as they attempt to breach the Chamber of Deputies, where Parliament is an active session. The police panic when the crowd starts to break through the barricades and they open fire. Some in the crowd fire back and by the end of it all as many as twenty six, but we don't have an exact death told. Some will say twenty six people were killed and more than fifteen hundred are injured. Some will say it's more like, you know, five to ten and a thousand injured. But it's it's everything that happened in the capital and the sixth except they don't get intoside the capital because the French like order forces just start shooting, like firing into the crowd with what rifles um. So the riots continue for days, marking what most liberals and leftists would come to see as a coup attempt by the far right. This is probably fair, but it's also true that after the ninth the communists start coming out and force in the streets and do a lot of rioting themselves, and actually, like three or four days after the attempt to storm the capital, a lot of what's happen in on the street is being done by the communists. They didn't attempt to breach the Chamber of Deputies, though the whole affair terrifies everybody, and Prime Minister d Lattier resigns on advice from the police and army to avoid further violence. For the first time in the history of the Third Republic, street violence had brought down a French government. The week of February sixth was, in fact the most violent period of political unrest in France since the Commune of eighteen seventy one. Not everyone in the right is thrilled by this. Mars, head of French action, seems to have panicked immediately from the Crimson quote. Though he often considered the possibility of the coup in books and in the pages of his movement's newspaper, it is doubtful that he ever actually planned a revolution. On the one occasion which fate presented to his grasp, the riots before Chamber on February six ninety four, he did nothing. Professor Webber calls the sixth of February a victory lost. Maris's hesitation at what seemed the very gates of power, though this impression was exaggerated, was, as Professor Weber says, the moment of truth, which showed up the emptiness of almost every one's position. The parliamentary regime was shown to be a tottering, precarious structure. The rightest writers had made their point, but the right itself was exposed as well, exposed as a lot of theorists sorely lacking in the capacity to carry out their dreams. French Action had organized publications, public meetings, a party structure that extended through France, but they lacked the will to power. They were incapable of a Munich push, much less to ten year conspiracy to capture parliamentary power. At the moment of reactions greatest political triumphs in Europe, French fascism collapsed. Wow, it doesn't sound familiar at all. Yeah, I've never and again, fucking um Mars here he's like Alex Jones almost right. He's this guy who's telling everyone overthrow the government. And then when they start, because Alex Jones is there on the sixth and d C, he fucking leaves as soon as people cross. At first, I thought, when you saw about the other dude that ended up being Epstein, I thought it was Jones at first. No, no, no, no, Sisky's your Epstein. Yeah, he's definitely Epstein. But at first, when we first started talking, I was like, it's sound like a little Alex No, but no, that's Mars is your Alex Jon He's just like oh wait, oh no, I just wanted to make money telling people to the volt and getting them like jinned up. I didn't actually want that to happen. That's scary as hell. Yeah, y'all, y'all actually pull triggers. Oh no, yeah, yeah yeah. Um and current. You can see Colonel de Laroc kind of in the same light, although you could also argue that he was just very state loyal right like he wanted a new government. He was, he wanted less democracy, but he wasn't about to storm the capital. Um. So the main outcome of February six was that the elected right wing grows closer and closer to the insurrectionary far right. It also unifies the left wing, inspiring a popular Front in France that takes power after a brief period of conservative rule falling Daladier's fall. The nineteen thirty six French Popular Front was at its core an anti fascist political union, and domestically it does a good job of stopping the French are right from capturing power, and this has actually led to a theory in French historiography that France's itself immune to fascism in a unique way. Um. The story goes that a mix of France's long standing democratic traditions and the fact that it's right wing is split between its own native brands of extremism means the country can't fall into fascism. This is nonsense, I will tell you right now. I think this is sucking bullshit. Um. And there are a lot of scholars. The book France and Fascism is a very long scholarly treatise on why this is bullshit. Um. But a lot of French scholars after World War Two will argue this that like France is immune to fascism. Um. The reality is that France came very close to falling too fascism on the sixth and it did fall to fascism in now. This is by conquest, right. The Nazis, the fascist out gain power in France by elections. The Nazis conquer France. But when the Nazis take over, they needed to find a bunch of willing frenchmen to run v she France. And they find a ton of these guys, a huge and already radicalized group of French fascists who are ready to chip in and help out. And most of these guys who run v she France from the Nazis takeover. Are people who had been involved with the February six insurrection, right, yeah, exactly, like a ton of these day. Yeah, it's crazy that it's the six also yeah, and it's and it's the same, it's February six, right, it's very auntic. Like when I started reading about this, I was so fucking shocked because I was thinking, like, well, you know, if you want to find a good comparison to the January six, there's aspects of the Munich coup, there's aspects of of of the of the March on Rome, but like, oh, ship, no, it's it's it's feb six four, that's exactly what happens. Um. So a lot of French fascists who had been a part of, you know, what happened on the sixth wind up joining the Nazis. Remember Philippe Henrio, the Henriotte whatever, the right wing deputy who was basically the French q and on Glock congress person who was like, we need to overthrow the government. While he's in the government under occupation, this guy becomes the voice of Radio Vishi, broadcasting Nazi propaganda to millions of frenchmen. Pierre Tattinger, who founded one of the first paramilitary leagues, became the president of the Paris Municipal Council under the Nazis. Jean Chiapa, the fascist cop, was made high Commissioner of the Lavant, but thankfully died in a plane crash pretty soon after that, when he shot down over Lebanon by the Italian's accidentally. Yeah, Mars celebrated the Nazi victory as a divine surprise. Now, he was not a Nazi because he fucking hated German people, but he hated Jewish people more, and one of his chief complaints about the occupation is that it was too lenient on Jewish people. When the Third Reich fell and France was liberated, Mars was arrested and indicted for complicity with the enemy based on the pro Nazi articles he published at the start of the war. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Upon his sentencing, Mars is said to have exclaimed, it's Dreyfus's revenge. Oh God, you brought it all the way back. It's perfect. It's a perfect circerfic O man, and somebody screenshot at his tweets put him in prison. Yeah, that's exactly what happens, more or less, and that prop is the story of February six, nineteen thirty four in Paris. All right, great time my one word haunting? Yeah yeah, yeah, I like yeah, because I didn't have I didn't know much about this either. So when I was joining the chorus of everybody who's fascinated with history, going guys, I'm telling you like this, we've seen this before. I don't know, I know there's no one to one, but we've seen something like this before this one. I'm like, oh, this is the clothes. This is the closest too. Like you said in the beginning, I'm like, oh damn, I wasn't even counting this. Yeah it was. It was some somebody sent me and I honestly forget who it was, but somebody, like somebody who I have texted with on signal text, said like you should look into January six, nineteen thirty four, and I did, and I'm like, oh my god, this is the same thing. So obviously it was a great a great you know episode for are the fascists who failed part of this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, And there's a lot of lessons to take out of this one of this is that the right loses when the left and liberals work together electorally. And other is that when the left and liberals work together electorally, they generally can't agree on enough to do anything that will actually stop the fascist from getting stronger. Um. That was one of my that was one of the biggest lessons I'm learning about this one is just like, oh, we're so progressive, we're so well. Me and my wife call it. You're so open minded, your clothes minded, you know what I'm saying, So like you just can't get it together because you're not open minded enough, you know. Yeah, And it's you know, I think a lot could argue that it's largely on the radicals because they have more power in the government and they kind of refused to do any sort of meaningful aid that could actually um have have clamped down on the far right. But also, like I don't want to like Negate number one, Like the media is a huge part of this, both in the United States and in France. Right, this alternate media ecosystem kind of means that like maybe even if the radicals had agreed with the socialists and they put out an effective aid package, would that have been enough to overcome the propaganda. And I don't know, nobody does. Nobody knows. But yeah, like I forget that there's a modern historian too. It's like we went from the information age to the age of belief to the belief age. You know what I'm saying. It's like we've actually switched ages. It's not information, it's belief, you know. So like and this media circus that we're all in of, like you know, the closed ecosystem of your of your confirmation bias means that information don't matter, belief do so. But at the end of the day, like like you said, like one could speculate, I just feel like anyone, anyone votes for somebody that puts food on a table, you know what I'm saying. So, like I said, if you put if someone's not into the specificities of of caring for and others, you know what I'm saying, Like like the way that we think about government and the way that it processes. But just as simple as I need to be able to feed my kids, and you're making this possible, you know what I'm saying, In a time that like I can't just go get it myself, you know, then why would I not vote for this? You know what I'm saying, Why would I not back this? Like, you know it cut me a check for two grand a month. I think it's great, you know. Yeah, And that's one of the things do lar Rock in this Cross the Fire group, like, they actually do provide aid to other struggling veterans, and that's a big part of their power and why they're able to all get together on stuff. And it's like, yeah, you know, it's it's there's a lot in these lessons. There's a lot in the stories of just like France and Spain were like one of the things we see when you compare them to Germany, it is that when the police and the military are more on the side of at least the center and democracy than they are on the side of the right, the right can't gain power through an insurrection. Right in Germany and Italy, the police and the military are on the side of the fascists, and so the insurrections work, um, you know eventually yeah, yeah, I mean in the Munich insurrection is stopped by the police and stuff. And like the reason the Spanish Civil War becomes a war is because most of the military and most of the police in Spain don't go with the fascists in France. It's kind of the same thing. Um, which is a lesson. I think there's a great lesson, confusing lessons in all of this. Yeah. Um. Another is that regardless of what the far left does, the far right will turn them into everyone who is left of center, right yeah yeah, and even if they don't do anything, they'll lie. It's like the kind of thing where you know, liberals during the election, we're like, look at the like all what you know, these anti for kids breaking all these windows are gonna lose us the election to Donald Trump. And it's like, that's actually not what happened because the right are we're so propaganda. Is that no matter what Antifa did, it wouldn't have if they just marched peacefully in the streets, the propaganda would have would have made them seem like the coming of a communist revolution. Um. What matters is that liberals not buy into it. And and that's that's what I feel like we did, where you were just like, hey, the the fund the police would have lost his election. Look, man, don't shoot at us. Dog Like yeah, look it did, isn't you know? It did hit number one. You know what I'm saying, you like, and as much as we could, unfortunately it's like well Trump fumbling Corona. Like it's like really yeah, but you know what I'm saying, so like, don't look man, same team bro. I'm just trying to tell you this is a good idea. Yeah man, Yeah, yeah, it's There's a lot a lot to next episode, our penultimate episode behind the Insurrections. We're gonna talk about the business plot. Um, so we're gonna be coming back home to the old US us of A. Yeah, that's gonna be good. That'll be Thursday. Um, But for now, prop, you wanna drop some plug doubles? Yes, yes, this yes, because I'm so excited because the pre save link for my first single on the next record is now out excellent profit pop dot com. Yes, and all my socials. Also, there's a new coffee roast called The Culture also available on the website. Uh pull it from Ethiopia and like tasted it myself, met the farmers. This is real stuff. Uh, and I will be on hood pot Dank Anderson Anderson you want some coffee? Dog I gotta do? Is d M me ho me like you ain't gotta like yell like that and I'm telling the truth like you're barking at me like online. Uh. And the politics were props, uh, shooting out doing that's going cool. You could get on all the all the all the podcast sections, and which was funny because like just now, one of the predictions, we're not just now. Last week, one of the predictions came true. Uh, and we kind of did a little funny little roast about that was the prediction of like the Proud Boys being infiltrated. Oh yeah, I told you I was infiltrated. Guys. Well, it's it's you know, it's one of the things that's frustrating to be about the Proud Boys is that, like Enrique Terrio was an FBI informant um. And this is being taken by a lot of the left to mean that, like, well, the f the Proud Boys were an FBI op from the beginning, and like, of course that's not really how it like, it's this it's this thing, you see, it's the thing that j Edgar Hoover wrote about were like one of his goals with co Intel pro was to make the FBI seems so powerful and omnipresent that people would think they were responsible for everything. Um, And it's less that and more that like Enrique Tario is the kind of person who is immediately going to roll on everybody that he was involved with. UM yeah yeah yeah that that that Yeah, that like goes back to me like in the left where I'm like, in the same way, I'll be looking at like a lot of the right wing people and I'm like, yo, where's your antenna's man, like discerned this situation? You Like, that's not what's happening. You feel me? And I feel like with this one, that's one of those situations to where I'm just like, yeah, you said the whole thing is an FBI front, Like like it's come on, man, we anten is bro. No, they got a guy of course, a bunch of them were talking to the FEDS. Yeah they got like yeah, they saw the same they saw the same problem as we saw, and they said, we better do something about this ship. You know what I'm saying. We don't want another gang that's like one another gang. Yeah, We're we're the top gang, you know, yes. Um, but it's like people will believe what they believe. It's like with Epstein and with Stevitski, you know, yeah, you know, maybe he killed himself, maybe he didn't, you know, he maybe was murdered because he knew. And it's like, you know, fucking a with both Epstein and Stevitsky, you look at the response of the people in power to and it's like, yeah, it's pretty fucking sus You know, you don't want his you do not want his pass code, you don't want that. If if that fool's phone got hacked, broken into all the text messages on that, yeah, it's all bad. Yeah, And I mean it comes back to the fact that one of the reasons why conspiratorial thinking can be so influential and spread so quick, can be so hard to fight, is that there's a funk load of actual conspiracy is happening all the time. You know what I'm saying. It's the same thing with like, like like we talked about the anti Baxter thing, where it's like, it's not like the medical industry is helping you know what I'm saying, Like, it's not it's not like perdue pharmaceuticals reputation helps people trust vaccine. You know what I'm saying. A sackler family and ship like, y'all crooks. I know you're crooks. That's said. I don't know nobody that got polio. Mm hmm. You know I'm saying, so yeah, ship, Yeah. Anyway, it's it's it's all great and great. Our next episode will be great too. Let's talk about how the history Robert's Twitter feed. You can follow him that I write. I don't recommend that at all. Stay the off of Twitter. I think it's great. And you dropped some few gyms recently. As a matter of fact, I was waiting at this when to talk about the to talk about the Trout bait shop tweet. That was brilliant. I'm giving you what was it? Funk around and what was what was it about the the bait shop? Was it? It was funk around and I'll find out. Yeah, oh yeah, funk around and find Trout around and find Trout. I was like, let's go id Like to me, I was like, look, that's you caught out. Whatever you want. That's a brilliant I think we can make a lot of money. That's that's my that's my retirement plan. It's funk around and find Trout. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. Let me tell you why, because I wait, one time in my life too. Uh oh, we talked about before when I ended up in Wyoming and wantanna fly fishing. Just on the most the most random thing. I just got these friends in different places that allow me to do just white ship right. But it don't have to be white ship. It don't have to be like what if I like fishing, what if I think rainbow trout is beautiful. It's just uncomfortable to walk into the trout store, the fish store, and look around and just be like, oh, I look like a don't belong here, Like you made it very clear that I should not be in this place. But if it's called around and find trout, I'm like, let's shop there. Bro, this fool cool. It's it's a it's a radical intersectional bait and tackle shop, delicious and rainbow trying. I'm I'm like, I'm like a b minus pestytarian, you know what I'm saying. Like I basically eat fish, except I live in boiled heights, So the tacos are flawless, So break rules for the tacos. But bro, tuck around and find trout. Let's go fuck around and find trout Day y'all. Have y'all made the C shirt yet? Oh no, no we have not, but now that it's been in an episode, we can needs to be a T shirt anyway. Anyways, that's that's the episode. Have a nice rest of your day. Yeah Yeah. On April four, Dr Martin Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis. A petty criminal named James Earl Ray was arrested. Case closed right. James Ylvy was upon for the official story. Some of the evidence, as far as I was concerned, did not match the circumstances. This is the MLK tapes. The first episodes are available now. Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Adoption of teen from foster care is a topic not enough people know about, and we're here to change that. I'm April Dinuity, host of the new podcast Navigating Adoption presented by adopt us Kids. Each episode brings you compelling, real life adoption stories told by the families that lived them, with commentary from experts. Visit adopt us Kids dot org, slash podcast, or subscribe to Navigating Adoption presented by adopt us Kids, brought to you by the U. S Department of Health, that Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, and the ACT Council. Hello, and welcome to our show. I'm Zoia de Chanelle and I'm so excited to be joined by my friends and cast meates Hannah Simone and Lamar and Morris to recap our hit television series, New Girl. Join us every Monday on the Welcome to Our Show podcast, where we'll share behind the scenes stories of your favorite New Girl episodes. Each week, we answer all your burning questions like is there really a bear in every episode of New Girl? Plus you'll hear hilarious stories like this that was one of years. Thanks you brought back from Yeah all professional possible players. Yeah, a little seven ft hoop. Yeah. Listen to the Welcome to Our Show podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.