From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Brading. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is all they called me Ben. You're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control Decond. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. We're coming to you somewhat live from a dark, stormy mid morning here in Atlanta, Georgia. And you know, one of the things that I think we've all been thinking about in our crew is that history is a disturbing thing. Right. Some things are further away than they seem. Others are much more recent than people, governments and institutions would like to admit. I mean, just think about this. You know, April was more than thirty years ago, and as recently as the nineteen sixties, black citizens in the United States were legally prevented from voting. This struggle against institutionalized discrimination, racism, oppression. It continues today, and this struggle is often collectively referred to as the Civil rights movement, the story of amazing people struggling against massive, systemic forces hell bent on making sure the practice of the law did not measure up to the promises it made. And there is something else to this story about civil rights in the nineteen sixties. It's a twist you won't find in most history books. But first things first, here are the facts. So, I mean, just a little bit on you know, what the civil rights movement is. I think probably most people are very familiar with this, but just to lay a little bit of groundwork in context the civil rights movement, it's generally referred to a series of strategies and activities taken up by many different groups in the United States between nineteen fifty four and nineteen sixty eight in order to end racial segregation and discrimination in the country while also acquiring legal recognition for the rights that are already guaranteed under the Constitution. And and again, as we can see just by turning on the news today, we've still got a ways to go before those things are really and truly accomplished. But uh, it's it's crazy how between nineteen fifty four and nineteen sixty eight, Uh, so much work was done and progress was made in a relatively short period of time. Um. And while the aims of the movement centered on justice for the African American community, they also pushed for equal rights for people of all races. Yeah, it's astonishing when you think about it. Despite centuries of oppression through institutions and through physical violence, more a single generation was able to influence crucial legislation, was able to uh profoundly shift attitudes of a prejudice culture. And when this generation is doing it, they didn't have the Internet, They didn't have social media or any of the modern tools of communication that most people listening use every day. Yeah, we can't really overstate, um, how important and crucial the Internet has been in in so many modern uprisings, from the Arab Spring to what we're seeing now with the protests in the United States and across the world. Uh, so much sparked um and proliferated by social media, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook videos, you know, live streams, the access to information instantly that just wasn't the case in these days. So it's extra impressive and just really astonishing that how much was accomplished without those tools. Yeah, it really shows the importance of anyone who had a camera, who was willing to use that camera. You know, from fifty four to sixty people who were willing to write words and release them in a publication about what was happening. The struggles of the civil rights movement. Then they were going up against some intense issues and just some examples of those if you look at what's known as the Jim Crow laws that existed in a lot of Southern states within the US. These were laws that blatantly reinforced and propped up white supremacy within those Southern states. In in particular, there's legislation that was that existed that did things like kept schools and other public places racially segregated. Laws that tried to early attempted and were effective in ventding black people from voting. There were things like pulling taxes, literacy tests and you know, think about that, a literacy test in order for you to be able to cast your vote as a citizen of a country. And by literacy tests, that's not like the quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog or whatever that's that's uh saying, hey, read this mandarin, this thing literally written in mandarin, or you can't vote and honestly, even if it was more basic than that or or something, you know, not obviously completely set up for someone to fail. I mean, you know, the folks that were being forced to take these tests didn't have access to the same level of education that you know, people of other races did, so it was set up to fail, even if you didn't push it to those egregious levels, you know, yes, and you know, as egregious as that is. There were also laws that would prevent you possibly from marrying the person that you love or that you wanted to marry, if that person was not of the same race as you. Yeah, mis engination, right, yes, and and it is just you know, it's unthinkable in these days, those kinds of laws. But that wasn't the only these were And by the way these laws were struck down through the efforts of all of these people, um or at least to the most part, the laws were stricken. But it doesn't mean attitudes fully changed, right, And it wasn't the only thing they were up against. Right, And there are you know, now here in twenty we as a species are seeing the same patterns enacted again, like violence against citizens, right, the galvanizes communities and organizations to push for change. Consider the case of Emmett Till, fourteen year old boy, a black child who was from Chicago, traveled down to the town of Money, Mississippi to visit relatives. He was forcibly removed from his relatives home. He was brutally beaten, he was tortured, he was ultimately murdered. And when this case received national attention in the media, it galvanized the movement. It got people out into the streets and into their communities. Then there's the issue, of course, like you mentioned Matt school segregation, specifically cases like brown versus the Board of Education. And these are just a few cases. There are many, many more. These are just like some of the notable incidents that children are taught about, hopefully taught about in school today. Well, not to mention things like the ku Klux Klan. Uh, we're essentially, um just so enmeshed within these power structures. Like police officers in the South were often also members of the Ku Klux Klan and their agendas would be aligned. Um, you know, they certainly wouldn't necessarily wear their you know, quick Klux Klan hoods while on duty, but then they would go carry out whatever maybe they didn't feel comfortable doing in their officers uniforms after hours, you know, they would take the law into their own hands. Um. And you know, I've talked about this on the show before, but the Watchman series on HBO really does a fantastic job of even though it's like a you know, sci fi comic book based type series, it does an incredible job of painting a picture of what this dynamic was like. And of course, these laws, these power structures, that's what they are. Their their power structures, right. Uh, They're they're meant to uh mandate the way an individual is treated by a society and mandate the way uh an individual in a society treats other members of their own society. These these are white supremacist power structures, and they are older than this country. The white supremacist here in the US and the time of civil rights initially had a massive advantage. They controlled the media at the time, they controlled vast swaths of industry because originally they were the only people who could own the land right and who could own the businesses, and that naturally leads to them owning the government in in practice. Even you know, even though that's not what it's supposed to be on paper. If you read the legal documents founding in this country, and these forces opposed to the push for equality during the Civil Rights movement, they did use all the levels of power at their disposal, legal and criminal. They wanted to squash the movement, and when possible, they wanted to terrify or vilify any allied non black groups that may sympathize with people seeking equality. I mean not just talking about other like groups that were out marching. We're taught king about people who were listening to the radio or watching television at their house. They would be you know, bombarded with headlines about about the dangers of unrest. Right it makes me think a little bit about like workers rights, you know, struggles like with you know, union busting and things like that. And I only mentioned that because it's another example of if people in power have something to lose by some level of organization, they will do whatever they can to squash that by any means necessary. And obviously this is much more of a human rights you know, like it's so much more deeply entrenched thing. It's more than just uh, controlling money and power. There is a deep seated hatred and racism in those in power that really fueled a lot of this behavior as well, not just the money and not just the idea of controlling you know, workers and things like that. But um, yeah, I don't know. I just I'm inherently distrustful often of of of of any anybody that has so much to lose, you know, by people asking for the right thing to be done. Um, So, I don't know. It's it's a little easy to get disenchanted with all this kind of stuff, but it's also incredibly inspiring to look into the history of some of the groups and the individuals that really took this UH movement to to the next level and created this you know, blueprint for where we are now, at least in terms of activism and and um not accepting this kind of status quo. Yeah. One of the first groups you could look at, we're called the Freedom Writers. It was a group that got together on May fourth, nineteen sixty one, group group of people from varying walks of life, different races, who UH left Washington, d C. On a bus. They were headed towards New Orleans and along the way there were actions taken on the bus that seeing. You know, it seems very strange to to talk about it today in but literally changing where they were sitting on the bus became a revolutionary act. There were white freedom writers who moved to the blacks only section on that bus, and black writers who moved to the whites only section on the bus. And it was um it was something that angered people who who knew that these me these norms that were in place, and these regulations were in place, and they knew what they were doing was violating the norms right the the you can't really call them regulations, but the the rules that were put forth on that particular bus and the busses everywhere in in especially the South. They knew what they were doing was perfectly legal according to a recent Supreme Court case or several Supreme Court cases. But they also knew that there would be people who would be so angry that this action was being taken. They were just hoping that the government or they're testing to see whether or not the government would respond to help them, Uh, just prove that these things, you know, it does not matter where anybody sits on the bus. Yeah, yeah, Because again, an eloquently written line or two of legal ease feels good, right, it feels good to know that's real. But how much does it matter. It matters when it is enforced, right, it matters when it is upheld. So the Freedom Writers, you know, were mentioning some groups, notable individuals there, there are many, many, many more stories were just giving you a high level look at civil rights in the nineteen sixties. These people, like you said, matth They knew what they were doing was legal, but they did not know whether it would be enforced or whether the people who were supposed to wors the law would indeed do their jobs. They knew their lives were on the line, and they were beaten. The buses were you know, people were throwing stones at them, their tires were slashed. More than three hundred Freedom Writers were arrested during the trip, uh and it never finished its trip to New Orleans ultimately. So that's that's one group. Maybe we can talk about some of the notable individuals associated with the movement. Where we record in Atlanta, Georgia is often kind of referred to as UM one of the cradles of the civil rights movement. That's largely because of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Who was a Baptist minister and the first president of the Southern Leadership Conference or the sc LC. UM and and you know, considered probably the most prominent leader. UH. But you know there there there's even discussion of her where he wouldn't have considered himself a leader, like he was jumping off of work that had been done by others as well. And but he is, you know, history has sort of crowned him as being the leader of the civil rights move We just wanted to put that out there, UM that there were many leaders of the civil rights movement and he was just probably the most front and center one. But Dr King was incredibly instrumental in executing non violent protests UM that sort of followed the practices of Mohamma Gandhi and the idea of not meeting violence with violence and doing things like sit ins and peaceful marches and and all of that. And some of the most famous events that he um organized where the Montgomery bus boycott UH and the nineteen sixty three March on Washington, which is where he delivered of course, his uh incredibly powerful and iconic I have a Dream speech, UM. And he was in car it was locked up many times UM and for an extended period of time when he was incarcerated for civil disobedience in nineteen sixty three, he wrote UM one of his most famous UH texts, which should be the Letter from Birmingham Jail, where he included the famous quote injustice anywhere as a threat to justice everywhere. Uh. And then in nineteen sixty five he began to speak out against America's involvement in the Vietnam War. And then in early nineteen sixty eight, Martin Luther King Jr. Made his way to Memphis, Tennessee. It was you know, you can get into the full story of this and is probably an episode for another day. I believe we've talked about it on this show before the day of his assassination. I know we made a video about it back in the day. But he went to Memphis, Tennessee and support of sanitation workers there in the city who uh, you know, their safety was at risk every day they were working, and they were being severely underpaid for the work they were doing, and he went there to support them. He gave a speech on April third, nineteen sixty eight. He was at the Bishop Charles Mason Temple there in Memphis, and this is where you get his mountaintop speech. I would read a quote here, but there it's actually his words are very tightly controlled, so we probably should not include it in this But you can look up the mountaintop speech and find all of the text there. What what What is important to say here is that he seemed to at the end of that speech signal that he was not going to make it to the end of of the struggle, of the civil rights movement and all of these movements, that essentially he is a part of signaling that perhaps he wasn't long for this world. And the next day, on April fourth night, he was shot on the second floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel there in Memphis, Tennessee, a single bullet, uh, shot in the face. And you know, I think it's needless to say here, but that assassination um is highly contentious in in a lot of places, and for very good reason. Yeah, highly contentious is about the most diplomatic way to phrase that. A couple of points here. One thing that would be a profound, provable factual illustration of institutions and power structures at play and how they work is that many of the same companies that fought against civil rights definitely vilified leaders like Dr King, especially UH while he was alive, and and government agencies to UH. Now they're the same institutions, the very same institutions that will cherry pick quotes and and put them up because they want to appear to be doing the right thing. But don't forget you know what, it wasn't that long ago that those same institutions were trying to shut this person and this community and this movement down. You know what I mean, The FBI broke the laws that it made multiple times with Dr King, And you know that's that brings us to another notable figure, right. El haj Maalik el Shabaz born as Malcolm Little, better known today as Malcolm X, spent ten years in prison, and while within the prison system, he converted to the Nation of Islam. When he was released in nineteen fifty two, he became a spokesperson for the Nation of Islam, and today he's credited for increasing the group's membership from four hundred to an estimated forty thousand over just the course of eight years. Yeah, and and many of Malcolm X's messages were a good bit different than those of of MLK Jr. UM, because he didn't embrace the whole peaceful protest thing uh nearly to the same degree. Um. He he saw violence as as absolutely a legitimate response to violence being done on on his community. UM. And you can kind of sum it up in this quote where he says, if violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. Uh. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us and teach us how to be violent and defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country. He said those words in November of nineteen sixty three during a speech in New York City. UM. A year later, he left the Nation of Islam and converted to traditional Islam while on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia to Mecca. UM. And when he returned to the US, he had sort of ideologically shifted a bit and was a little more optimistic towards the idea of a peaceful resolution, uh, to the fight for civil rights. Um. And you can sum that up. And another quote that he made in February of nineteen sixty, he said, it is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the cause of brotherhood. That's the only thing that can save this country. And on February twenty one, only two days after he said those words, he was at a New York City ball or a place called the Audubon Ballroom, and he was about to give a speech. He was preparing for that. And you know, according to the official story, some members of the Nation of Islam, again according to the official story, shot and killed him. And there, you know, there are there are a ton of documentaries you can watch, in books you can read about this assassination. Um. And again, same kind of deal. The official story is very contentious. That is extremely diplomatic of us to call it highly contentious. Uh. When I recommend the autobiography of Malcolm X, which was published in nine it's Malcolm X with Alex Haley. UM. This this is a book that should be in your local school system. And you know, if you're if you wanted to watch Netflix. There's currently in as a recording this in June, UH a series you can watch called Who Killed Malcolm X? And again, you know, for many of our listeners in the audience today, this this is hopefully stuff that was already already very well known, right, but it turns out that there is more to the story of civil rights. It's something here in the U s. It's something that doesn't get reported in UH in a lot of school textbooks, doesn't doesn't really get mentioned. Almost first, almost every single concept we have just mentioned has conspiratorial aspects of its own. And some of these, uh, like like the death of Dr King, have been covered in previous episodes that we have done, and there are tons of resources out there. UH. There are clear there are clear uh contradictions in the official story, and then things that we know to be facts and we can't make any mistake. You know, Um, Matt, you mentioned that that idea about doctor the speech that doctor King gave before the assassination. You know you could interpret that also as saying, you know, this is bigger than one person, right, this is this is bigger than me. And that's correct because UH, many people have died, but this movement, Make no mistake, it continues, and racism is still shockingly apparent to anyone who bothers to explore modern statistics. But the civil rights movement had another ally. It was a foreign group halfway around the world, and they let us know if you think they wanted to help, because they wanted to at least appear to assist this struggle for equality, not because they necessarily cared about the concept of justice, but because they saw in the US civil rights movement an opportunity to attack their greatest rival. Russia, you see, had hatched a movement all its own, and we'll talk about that right after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. Let's call this the Russian angle. The Soviet government then, as as the as the Russian government does today, excelled in what are known as covert influence campaigns. You see, when you look at the global context here, the beginning of the Civil War coincides with the beginnings of what we've referred to as the civil rights movement today, and the two became intertwined, both in how the uss are sought to exploit racial strife and how the Cold War itself propelled the cause of civil rights forward. This is this is a fascinating story that should should be told more often. As far back as nineteen twenty eight, the USSR saw the stark racial inequality and divisions in the United States as an opportunity to weaken their primary rival in in what we know of as the Cold War today. Yeah, let's right. As far back as ninety eight, the U s s R UM really looked upon this divide, this this UH racial inequality and the struggle that it led to as an opportunity to weaken US as as a nation. So initially, like they had a plan, and they had sort of like, um, I don't know, kind of a smoke screen, sort of altruistic cause that they were hiding behind or at least using it as bait, which was the notion of pushing for self determination in the what they're called the Black Belt UH. In order to do this, they would recruit Southern UH individuals of color who would be all about these aims. And a lot of this work came from something known as the Common Tern or the Communist International, which sought to spread the Communist Revolution around the world. UM. And in nineteen thirty, the Common turn escalated these goals, uh the goals of its covert mission UM, and decided to work towards establishing an entirely separate black state in the Southern United States, which would kind of give them like a base camp and a base of operations um to spread that communist revolution to North America. Yeah, well, that's an excellent point. The uss are deployed a tactic that is still still viable today and still used today, starting from an understandable point like let's create let's have a racially equal society that that is, who would have a problem with that? But then take take that movement and and co opt it, begin to push it to become a vehicle for the aims of the USSR in the Cold War. And this is um, you know, this is like kind of a high level origin story. But there are notable, real concrete actions that this program took. Yeah, there are things here. It just seems it seems like it's out of comic book or something to me, the actions that were taken by the U s s R in this time. And then some of them feel like, oh, well, that's just a good or right thing to do. But then there's this underlying wave of you know what we keep saying here, of of what the true intentions were. And by the way, we learned about this part here from a an article in The New Yorker that was written by Gilanni cobb In It's called the Enduring Russian Propaganda interests in targeting African Americans. And if you look at that article, you're going to hear a couple of stories, or a bunch of stories of specific actions taken. And one of those was in ninety two when the Soviet government invited a group of black American artists, including the poet Lenkston Hughes, to go to Russia and to make a movie, to make a movie that could then be used as propaganda, both internally within the United States and externally, to be sent out to other countries and used by the Soviet Union to show how terrible and wrong the United States was. And it's so tough because it was, I mean it was the situation was dire and and terrible. It was going to be used against the country as a whole and the government in particular. And you you said the magic word, matt, propaganda, right, there was there was something, there were the We know from the evidence that the motivations of the Soviet government at the time UM were also based on what they perceived as propaganda value, and they were based on exploiting people for the economic benefit of the USSR. You know, follow the money. We have to remember again, like when when this stuff is initially happening. The nineteen thirties are the height of um when I find myself increasingly referring to as the first Great Depression. The Soviet Union advertised itself real slick, real slick ads. Uh, We're a worker's utopia. We are free of all that ethnic, national, and religious division. History, of course, would prove that this was not true, but the propaganda worked. Um So. In addition to luring thousands of white American workers, the program brought over African American workers as well, and also share croppers with the promise of the freedom to work and live unburdened by the violent restrictions of Jim Crow. Um so, in return, they were expected to help the Soviet Union build their cotton industry in Central Asia. Uh. Several hundred UM individuals answered this call, and though many eventually went back or here's you know, the kicker died uh in imprisonment, and then the Gulags because they weren't cooperating to the extent that they were expected. Because again, this whole thing is not altruistic, it's a it's a tool for you know, capitalizing on people's misfortune in an effort to just you know, screw over the United States. Uh. It's it's it's the most opportunistic kind of uh, just callous thing I could really imagine during a time like this. And just gonna give you another article here to read if you choose to do so. It's from The New York Times written by Jennifer Wilson in seventeen titled when the Harlem Renaissance went to Communist to Moscow And they're proving conspiracies here too. One particularly illuminating example comes from September n the governor of Arkansas at the time, with I don't want to make fun of him for his name, but his his name was Orville Fabius. That's it's just a weird name. He deployed the National Guard the National Guard to keep nine children from integrating the Central High School there in Little Rock. This standoff was covered by newspapers around the world and many of these newspapers, to their credit, pointed out this massive discrepancy, right, not just not just the discrepancy between what the law says and what the people who are supposed to be the law keepers do, but they noted the discrepancy between the values America was expressing and and spreading in some cases forcing around the world versus how it behaved at home, you know what I mean. And and this this was a great point the Soviet the Soviet actions take advantage of this opportunity. In Komsomolskaya Pravda, the newspaper of communist youth organization in the ussr UH, it ran this story that had a lot of photographs that were actual photographs, you know, and this wasn't photo shopped or anything. And we're about this conflict, and they said with the headline troops advance against children. That's just one, but we wanted to give you a specific source in a specific story. That sounds terrible. Ben If I saw the headline, I would be shocked. It's like it's like mean politicians murder old lady, you know, like that's the equivalent definitely shock and awe. All right, well, yeah, and I'm just gonna make a reference to headlines that are circulating today as we're recording this that are just as bad with the violence that's being carried out against protesters. But let's you know, let's just remember that that is happening now, that is our current situation, and let's jump back to the situation. And here the propaganda push. You know, by the way, that was just one of the stories, right, this is a common occurrence. It's it's happening over and over and over again as uh as other events unfold, and the propaganda push led to international consequences for the United States. There were things that actually happened to us because of the reporting. And again it's the same deal that it's right to report on that, but how it's used then can be called into question. So according to a legal historian, Mary Dudsieck uh and this is a quote here, the Russian objective then was to disrupt US international relations and undermine US power in the world and undermine the appeal of US democracy to other countries. And the propaganda was working, oh yeah, because because again it started to impact the people in power. So once they were directly impacted, they started to care to diplomats and you know, visiting countries across the globe, US diplomat noticed that they were being increasingly questioned on the hypocrisy of the US, Like, yes, ambassador, I see your arguments about uh capitalism and about you know, democracy, but everybody in the world knows about your your country's record with this profound violence against people who want the same thing that you're saying you're going to give to us. And there's a there's a moment that history hinges upon here. There was a tour of Latin America. Richard Nixon was there. He was the vice president at the time, he wasn't yet president, and he was he was, you know, going out for like a photo op, shake some hands, makes make nice internationally, geopolitically, but he was greeted instead with protesters, all of whom we're screaming little rock at him because they knew about this story. Yeah, and Secretary of State John Foster dull us Um complained that the situation was killing foreign policy. It was just really bad business, and that the effect that it was having on Asia and Africa would ultimately be worse for US, the United States than Hungary was for the Russians. Ben, with your international affairs background, can you unpack that for us a little bit? Uh? Yeah, I wanted to ask I wanted to ask you all about this, um And like you said, well, that is an actual quote from the Secretary of State at the time. It sounds like their concern is much less. Hey, maybe we should change something and much more. Well, this is uh, this is making the Cold War tougher for us. Yeah, we need to start controlling this narrative a little more tightly. Guys, they're talking about and you know, they're talking about domestic violence in Hungary, uh and and how it played Essentially there are saying everything but bad pr It feels like that's what they were worried about, more so than the the actual hypocrisy. But also unless we make the mistake of thinking that this, this operation, the series of operations was entirely altruistic, I think we pointed out earlier that it wasn't. A lot of people also don't know this. Dr Martin Luther King was the target of a KGB campaign as well. You know, the FBI tried numerous things to intimidate, to discredit, the smear, to depower to kill Martin Luther Kern. Yes, yes, exactly exactly to turn Martin Luther King. But the KGB wanted to exploit him as well. They wanted to turn him into a political insurgent against d C. And when he refused to play ball, he found himself in a terrible situation. Both the FBI and the KGB were after him, they were trying to undermine him at the same time. I can't imagine being in that situation. And again, like go back and listen to our episode and co Intel pro we have other numerous episodes where you can get more information, um, just about some of that, you know, the FBI and other intelligence agency's involvement in the in the civil rights movement. Well yeah, and the like we really like, you know, I mean, this stuff is unequivocally real. These organizations are ruthless and we'll stop at nothing to exploit their quote unquote targets or you know, their assets or whatever. And they were both like kind of jockeying for uh, you know, turning King and making him kind of like a tool for their ends. And then you know, as as you said, Matt, when he wouldn't play, then he made a powerful, powerful enemies on both sides, and I just you know, it just seems like an absolutely rock in a hard place type situation. Just you know, wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. But all of this was moving, uh, towards a bigger picture kind of end game. Uh, And we're going to talk about what that was and how things turned out. After a quick word from our sponsor, we've returned. Here's a dilemma for those of us in the crowd who might consider, you know, consider themselves staunchly anti Russian, right, not even anti uss Are, but anti Russian in general. While this massive propaganda conspiracy was not created, let's be honest, not created out of altruistic or noble reasons, it played a huge part in the positive change that occurred in the country. Right in the US, I mean in the fifties and sixties. The international pressure created by these propaganda campaigns motivated US politicians to push through things like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and this, And you do you know why they did that. Didn't do it because they said, hey, that's right, this is the right thing to do. These politicians and policymakers did this because they thought it was an issue of national security. It was a military motivation. American leaders made refuting the Soviet narrative about American racism a national security issue critical for maintaining US international leadership and promoting relationships with what was then called the Third World. And it wasn't a small impact either. Yeah, We've got a specific quotation here. This is on the legal record. The US literally admitted what what you said, mat It wasn't a backdoor conversation. And their amicus brief for Brown versus Board of Education, which we mentioned at the top of the show, they said the thought quote racial discrimination has an adverse effect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination has furnished grist for the communist propaganda mills, and it raises doubts even among friendly nations as to the intensity of our devotion to the Democratic faith. Oh oh, that's a lot to unpack. Sounds kind of fanatical too, doesn't it. I've never heard it referred to the the Democratic Faith. That's like very cultish sounding, and it's very much saying, hey, the only reason we should maybe calm down some of this systemic racism is because of the pr stuff that Matt was talking about earlier. If you really think about it, these moves against the United States, the government, and the system as a whole, like in an attempt to weaken hurt the power of the US. The end result here was that the so Union improved the United States. It made it a better place. Even if it was just incremental, it was noticeable and measurable the positive change that their propaganda campaigns had on the US. So, when you think about it, by attempting to weaken or destroy the United States, the USS are actually made it a better place. That That is one of the strangest, most important points to take away from this, Right, Yeah, I mean, I mean, you know, whatever the motivation, Right we talked about the pr nests of the whole thing and how oops, we better do a better job because making us look bad to other countries. But then whatever the reasoning behind it is, it it did affect some change. Uh does that cheapen it? I don't, I don't know what it's It's hard to even look at it in those terms because any positive change in something is imports as as race racially charged laws, um is going is going to be a positive net result. Um. No matter what the people in powers motivations actually are. It's like we're going to change the hearts and minds. It's more like affecting something that's going to affect them in their bottom line or the perception of you know, the government. Well. Yeah, and while while this international pressure certainly forced the hand to some extent of you know, the power structures within the United States to at least acknowledge a few things and you know, make a few changes, it doesn't mean that it fixed everything. You know, the the international pressure was helpful, and I think it is in every instance where where other countries, especially countries that are so closely aligned or allied with, you know, a place like the United States, are going to force them at least to an extent to take action. And it again, it doesn't mean that it's all fixed now, because I mean, look what is happening in our world today as we're recording this on June five, two twenty you know, the recent stories that have been coming out as we were I'm just a little peek behind the curtain when we were preparing to record this, when we were writing this episode, the shooting of Ahmud are Y had just happened, and you know, look at what's happened over just the course it was. It was a course of a few days, I believe, Yes, it was a week's well, I mean it was. It was a week or something. I don't know the exact timeline. But time is has been feeling very compressed and or expanded lately, depending on the day, and then stuff like this just adds to it, and in terms of like what even is time? But yeah, it got to the point where too, when I was seeing the George Floyd's story pop up, I almost was confused. I thought it was referencing the other I can't breathe story, the gentleman who was held down for selling loose cigarettes in New York. Um. And then I realized, oh no, this is brand new, and that's and then everything changed. I think that's a very good point. I also think another way to look at it is you could say that nothing had changed. You know, right now, covert influence campaigns continue to date. The the USSR has gone right, m debatably, we have an episode on that. But people will always use a tactic so long as it works. I believe, Matt, you had pointed out, you point out that the New Yorker verified this just a few years back, that's correct. Just got a quote from from the article from the New Yorker, and this is the article we mentioned before, the enduring Russian roupaganda interests in targeting African Americans. And here here's just a piece from that article. It just says the Senate Intelligence Committee released two reports on attempted Russian interference in the ten presidential election, which highlighted how those efforts targeted African Americans. And if you continue reading through, it discusses how half of the Facebook advertisements that were created by this organization called Internet Research Agency or i r a UM. And these you know, at least according to the article and according to intelligence, they were backed by the Kremlin, and they were said to be influencing Americans around the presidential election. And what they were referencing in attempt to change the way people were thinking about that election. Uh, they were referencing race. And again again, whenever whenever you run into an organization that has like a bland beige wall paper kind of name like Internet Research Agency or you know that's the same as like people for things, right, Uh, you have to you have to watch out. But of course the answer is obvious. This the goal. If if your goal is destabilization, or if you want to um, if you want to push a large group of people in a specific way, you go with what works. And the Internet Research Agency, the FSR, the Federated States of Russia, really, if we're being honest, does this because it works and because it is true, it is true that there is enormous inequality. It's not like somebody over in St. Petersburg just had a lightbulb moment and made this all up. And as you know, as that old meme says, modern problems require modern solutions. One there there are noticeable differences between the old campaigns and the new propaganda conspiracies. Nowadays, your friendly secret Russian correspondence on social media are likely to play both sides, by which we mean the same people that are pushing out anti Clinton messages in at the same time those same organizations were pushing out anti Republican messages, they were doing it on purpose. It's the same way that giant corporations often donate equal amounts of money to different political parties depending on who can help, you know, because it depends from day to day who's going to be empower and who can help them and which thing is actually going to sway positive change for them. So it's like hedging your bets. You know, there's really no ideological reasoning behind it. I would just say that the instances of corporations uh splitting donations in in that way You're right, is to maintain their own power, no no matter who else is in power. In this case, it is to equally erode the trust that you know, American voters or American citizens have in the system that supports them and the system that you know they pay taxes to UM and and that seems to be why it's so effective in making everyone just feel like there's something wrong. However, in this instance, there is something wrong. So it's odd. It's it's just odd to to think about all of this, every everything that we've talked about today. It is is a strange thing to wrap your head around. And you know, I know a lot of us listening today are thinking about about the book Foundations of Geoe Politics, right uh this this. You know, there's a lot of debate about how relevant or elevant the author is right now much people are reading Tea leaves here. But one of the one of the things we have to remember here is this is literally a conspiracy. It is a technique, It is a tactic, and it has an aim, and it is continued, It has continued innobated for nearly a century the idea of this propaganda, and make no mistake you, regardless of where you live, regardless of what you believe, regardless of which social media platform is your favorite, you are the target. Also as possible to say that the aims of these programs have become even more if it was even possible, even more cynical. At least, the Russian conspiracy of the civil rights movement was somewhat ideologically sound. They had a flavor of of of of positive ideological spinning it. They wanted to create a black state, and they wanted to empower workers. And but I don't know, man, I I still feel like a lot of that was smoking mirrors as well, just to like bait people into supporting their cause, to destabilize United States. But whatever the case might be, whatever you may think about that inequality is UH in theory the enemy of the communist revolution um. And yet, like democracy in the United States, communism and practice, UH fell far short from the ideas that they set out on paper. UM, communism and theory, we always say, sounds pretty great. Oh, everyone gets a piece, you know, you work hard, you get you know, your fair share. That sounds great. What could go wrong? Well? I think it's the ultimate corruptibility of human beings that that goes wrong. And that's the same thing that we see with democracy. Sounds real, great constitutions all well and good, but you can't change everybody's worse instincts as human beings, and power corrupts people and that's what we see time and time again. UM. But I do think it's a fascinating story. Uh. And I actually want to thank and Bright Pacheco, who I worked with some some other shows and continue to work with. UM. She's the one who turned us onto this topic. It was something that her son had been really into and told her a lot about and I've never heard of it, and UM, we discussed it as a team and decided we wanted to check it out. So thanks Lauren for the for the tip. Again, there's certainly more to discuss here, but for today we're gonna have to end off here. We would love to know what you think about all of this. UM. Are there you know, are there articles or books or movies or facts or anything else that you want to alert your fellow conspiracy realists too. 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