Behind the Insurrections - The Business Plot: When Rich Fascists Almost Took Over America

In the early 1930s a consortium of America's wealthiest men conspires to overthrow President Roosevelt and institute a fascist state. This is the story of how they almost succeeded.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
What's overthrowing the government? My consortium of shady financial interests?
What's yeah, I don't know, I got no. Uh. This
is behind the Insurrections of the Find Behind the Bastards
mini series about fascist attempts to seize power. Uh. And

(00:23):
this is our last episode of this beautiful mini series.
We did have a seventh episode planned, but UM, I
had some personal news. That's that's gonna alter our work
schedule a little bit. But we will get to that
episode at some point, but not next week. UM. My
guest with this one, as as with always on our

(00:43):
mini series, Jason Petty a k A. Prop. What's alwa's al?
What's properties in a building? Now? Prop? I'm gonna come
right to the chase. Have you heard of the business plot? No?
Oh good? Oh well. One of the things that's fun
about this is that, um, one of our characters from

(01:04):
behind the Police is the main character of this story. UM,
our old friend Smedley Butler. Yeah, the guy who ran
the police in Philadelphia, the marine l that's that's going
to be exciting. Yeah, I know that guy. So the
business plot is there's a reason why you haven't heard
of it. Uh. A lot of people have put in

(01:24):
a lot of effort to make sure that people don't
talk about this anymore. UM. Imagine a cadre of plutocratic bankers, financiers,
and media moguls all conspired to take over US democracy
and institute of fascist state hidden as a fake democracy. UM.
Shouldn't take a whole lot of imagination. Yeah. Um, that's

(01:46):
what people say to record industry is yeah, the record
industry or the way a lot of our government works
right now, like the fact that Janet Yellen uh had
financial ties to one of the giant hedge funds that
shut down the game stock trading and stuff like. Yeah,
you know, it may sound that sounds familiar to people, UM,
but usually we're talking about it. Most people were talking

(02:06):
about you know when we talk about like, well, there's
a codra of elites who control you know, the government. Um,
they meet it in sort of a deep state. Since
but there was a time where the wealthiest men in
America engaged in a very real conspiracy to have a
paramilitary army sees the levels of power overthrow the president
and institute of fascist state. UM. And there's people alive

(02:29):
today who lived through it. It happened in the thirties.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, this is this is a story
people should know. Um, I think you'll find this one interesting, props. So, okay,
is gonna this is gonna be one of those ones
where I'm like, I'm actually going in Yeah, this is
a fun one. Yes. So our our story starts with

(02:50):
one of my favorite historical figures. As I told you,
Major General Smedley Butler. We're talking about old Smedley again. Um,
so we're gonna start by talking about him because he's
at the center of all this. So okay. Smedley Butler
was born in eighteen eighty one, who was the eldest
son of a Quaker family from Westchester, Pennsylvania. His father, Thomas,
was a congressman and his maternal grandfather was in Congress

(03:11):
as well. So this is a guy who comes from
a lot of privilege in power. Um. He attended the
Haverford School, which is a secondary school for rich kids
from Philadelphia, and he thrived in this upper crust, elite institution.
He became captain of the school baseball team and quarterback
of the football team, and he seemed to be on
the road to a career in politics or business. But

(03:32):
then thirty eight days before his seventeenth birthday, he left
school to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. UM.
So he's on like a path to follow you into
business or into politics, and then when he's sixteen, he
leaves home to join the Marines. Now this pisses off
his dad, who didn't want his kid joining the Marines.
But the reason Smedley had joined is that the Spanish

(03:52):
American War had just started, which we chatted about of
it last week, and Smedley wanted to fight UM. So
he lied about his age too the Marines and was
commissioned as a second lieutenant. He landed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
shortly after it was captured, and he didn't see any
action there. His unit was sent back to the mainland
and he could have been cashiered out, you know, gone
back into go you know, doing a business thing. But

(04:14):
he decided to stay in the Marines and take a
commission as a first lieutenant and go fight in the Philippines. UM.
He was not immediately good at war. He was initially
tasked with garrison duty, which boared him so much that
he just spent all of his time drunk. He was
at one point relieved of command temporarily due to something
he did in his bedroom, which is all that we
know about the incident. He did. He did something with

(04:36):
alcohol in his bedroom that made his superiors be like,
this guy can't be in charge of people for a while. Yeah, yeah, Phil,
Phil in the blanks, you know. Um. So in October
of eighteen nine, he saw his first combat action when
he led three Marines to conquer a town from the

(04:57):
people who you know lived there, right, Like, this is
a colonial, brutal colonial war, still colonial, got it? Like
he's he's a he's the bad guy right there. We're
we're the bad guys in that war. Um. Yeah. And
Butler fell in love with battle and with the Marine Corps.
He just was very it was very good at fighting.
Like he this is a really difficult, desperate situation, and

(05:20):
he comports himself well, he's good at leading men in combat. Um.
And he becomes after fighting so enthralled with the Marine
Corps that he hires a tattoo artist to give him
a full from his neck to his belly tattoo of
the Marine Corps emblem like this, He's very into the Marines. Okay,

(05:41):
loves him some being a marine. Yeah, you're getting a
full day. That's that's that's some being affleck you know
what I'm saying. But I think, yeah, there's I know people,
including some Marine bets, who will argue that the Marine
Corps kind of the cultist of the of the military branches. Um. Yeah,
And some might argue that's because they're the best at
what they do. Um. But Butler is definitely drinking the

(06:03):
fucking kool aid. Right. So he gets sent to China
next as part of the US detachment sent over during
the Boxer Rebellion. He's wounded in combat and despite having
a bullet like, one of his men gets hurt and
he runs out to get him and gets shot in
the leg. And despite having a bullet in his leg,
he drags multiple men to safety while actively under fire

(06:24):
and bleeding. Um and again the box Rebellion another brutal
colonial action. Um, but he's he comports himself very well. Now,
at that time, commissioned officers were unable to receive the
Medal of Honor, otherwise he probably would have earned one,
but he received some decorations for his gallantry under fire.
Smedley Butler would spend the next couple of decades as

(06:45):
he would grow into what was probably the best soldier
in the American Empire. Like he is an exceptional imperial soldier. Um.
He fights in the Banana Wars, which were a series
of police actions and intervention in the Caribbean and in
Central America made on behalf of US business interests, killing
people for He's he's killing people for banana companies. He's

(07:06):
killing people for United you know. Uh. He fights in Honduras,
where he was constantly near death with fever and received
the nickname Old Gimlet Eye because his eye his every
like he was. He looked terrifying. He was this gaunt,
scar filled monster with bloodshot eyes. Um and like just feverish. Yeah,
that's his Old Gimlet Eye is, Like he looks like

(07:27):
a fucking a wraith. You know. I love this guy.
He's except for his except for his colonial colonial stuff. Yeah. Yeah,
he's fighting on the wrong side, but he's objectively a badass. Um.
So Butler racks up promotion after promotion. He enforces US
foreign policy in Nicaragua. He sent us a spy during

(07:48):
the Mexican American War. He sent us a spy to
Mexico City or one of the wars that we fall
with Mexico. He sent us a spy to Mexico City
to help the United States gather information for the Siege
of Vera Cruz, which a lot of people don't know
we were doing in the early nineteen hundreds, We like
bombed Vera Cruz. Yeah, yeah, there's a good warren Zevon
song about it. Butler was one of nearly sixty American

(08:10):
servicemen who received Medals of Honor for their service in
Mexico because he fights in in Vera Cruz as well. Uh,
And virtually all of those medals were complete bullshit, Like
they hand out sixty medals of honor for the siege
of Vera Cruz, and they're doing it because Woodrow Wilson,
the President, knows that, like this is an ugly colonial war,
and he wants to dress it up by making it
look like by putting out a bunch of stories of

(08:32):
heroism and stuff. So he hands out the military's highest
honor like candy. And there's actually a bunch of It's
a big controversy at the time because a lot of
veterans are like, you're devaluing the Medal of honor by
using it this way UM and Smedley. Butler receives one
of these show medals of honor and he tries to
return it, arguing that he'd done nothing to deserve it
and he shouldn't get it, but he's ordered by his

(08:52):
superiors to keep the medal and wear it on his uniform. UM.
So you're seeing he's started. He's starting to like realize,
like that's kind of messed up. Why why, like I
I don't deserve this, don't give this to me? Um
like that. Yeah, he's he keeps me, He keeps me
like imbalanced. Yeah yeah, yeah, you're gonna he's he's he's
a growth story, Smedley. Smedley is always changing, especially knowing

(09:15):
because of the behind the police stuff, like I know
where this guy lands where I'm just like, why am
I feeling any stupidly about you? Yeah? It's it's that's
that's not even quite Yeah, well we'll talk about it.
So in Haiti. In Haiti, Butler wins his second Medal
of honor UM and this was one for actual fighting.
His unit was sent into the country when the president
was murdered by a mob. Butler and his troops repeatedly

(09:35):
outnumbered by insurgents, and over a long campaign succeeded in
breaking the insurgency and establishing order for the U. S
back dictatorship. Butler himself helped organize the Haitian police, and
in his own recollection, he and his men hunted enemy
rebels quote like pigs. Um. So again this he is
a brutal soldier of empire, like building the police force

(09:56):
for a dictator. Um. You have to kind of look
at what. Yeah, it's not great. Um, it's not great now.
Smedley was promoted to brigadier general at age thirty seven.
He was in remains one of the most highly decorated
soldiers in the entire history of the United States military.
He's got two medals of honor. Um, and he's he's like,

(10:17):
you know, as a general rule, generals don't get medals
of honor, certainly not two of them. Um, they don't
tend to be fighting guys. But Smedley is a fighting guy.
He's not a stand back and give orders. He should
get stuck in kind of dude. Um. He desperately wanted
to fight in France during World War One, but he
was not assigned combat duty. This is probably because by
the later stage of his career, he was seen as
politically unreliable due to the tendency he developed over the

(10:40):
years to say exactly what he felt. But the retired
in late nineteen thirty one. He ran for Senate in
nineteen thirty two, supporting prohibition, but he was defeated. And
in the late stage of his career, while he's still
in the Marines, is when he's running the police in
Philadelphia during that brief tenure. UM. So this is you know,
our story starts after he's he you know, he took

(11:01):
what he learned in Haiti and tried to apply it
to the Philadelphia police. It didn't work out great. But
he's kind of the father in a lot of ways,
one of the fathers of militarizing the U. S. Police. UM.
And now he's he's retired, he tries to get into politics.
He's not good at it. UM And by the early
nineteen thirties Smedley Butler, who is probably the greatest soldier
in any empire ever had UM had started to change

(11:23):
his mind on some things. A lot of this had
to do with the Great Depression and a social movement
that has spawned called the Bonus Army. The gist of
it is that when the economy crashed, a bunch of
World War One veterans found themselves unemployed, in a lot
of cases, homeless and starving. These guys had been given
what we're called service certificates in nineteen twenty four, which
was the government saying we will pay you a bunch

(11:45):
of money for what you did in the war, but
not yet because these were bonds, so they couldn't redeem
them until nineteen forty five. Right. It was like imaginary money,
imaginary money that like, in thirty years, this will be
enough money to maybe retire on, but like not now.
But there's we're starving now, you know, like I can't
wait another fifty years? Cool? Um, So obviously don't seemed

(12:06):
like a good deal. But after two years of economic collapse,
a lot of people just couldn't wait anymore. Uh. And
in June of nineteen thirty two, more than forty veterans
protested in Washington, d c u. They called themselves the
Bonus Expeditionary Force or the Bonus Army, and they advocated
for Congress to pass an immediate soldiers bonus for serving
in World War One. Now again, we're all living through

(12:27):
our own version of of something similar. So you know
what comes next. Congress adjourned without actually doing anything. Here
we go. This pisses the bonus army off and they
started getting loud and unruly, so the shot two of them,
which eventually provoked a riot the whole massive men set
up this enormous camp in order to hold up and
wait for Congress to do something. Right. They like, build

(12:48):
a camp and they're like, we're not leaving until you
give us some fucking money. Um. The bill makes its
way into Congress, but it gets defeated. Congress, based on
some powerful financial interests, decides it's too expensive to pay
these veterans UM, so they lose. They don't get their bonus.
But the camp doesn't disperse. Um. And when the camp
doesn't disperse, the Hoover administration announces that it's sending in

(13:08):
the army to evict the soldiers. Now, it was at
this point that General Smedley Butler visited the camp. Um.
He told the soldiers that he thought they were well
within their rights to lobby Congress. Corporations can why can't
Why can't people like us? You know? Um? He spent
the night there with the men, he had breakfast with them.
He told them they were good soldiers and he was
proud of them. Um And a week or so later

(13:29):
he leaves. In a week or so later, America's most
overrated general, Douglas McArthur disperses the crowd with a mix
of men on horseback and poison gas. Um and this
radicalizes Butler. Um. Initially he just becomes very anti Herbert
Hoover and and you know, advocates for Hoover to get
his ass kicked in the election that year. And Hoover
does lose reelection that year. It turned out to maybe

(13:52):
be a bad idea. I can't turn on the people. No, no,
And he's a ship president in general. Um So, obviously
Fdr Franklin Delano Rose about wins wins the election that year,
he becomes the president. He promises Americans a new deal,
which wealth they capitalists saw as a clear sign that
Roosevelt was about to open the door to Soviet communism

(14:13):
and take all of their money. Why are you also
scared all the time? Man? We're gonna talk about that.
There's an interesting story there. Um So. One of the
men who get scared by the New Deal is a
guy named Robert Sterling Clark, and he's the heir to
the singer sewing machine for fortune. Um. Everybody's seen a

(14:33):
singer sewing machine. That's the kind of money this guy has,
you know. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, And we're talking singer
sewing machines in the thirties when everybody uses them all
the time. Actually, every house had it. It's yeah, it's
not a hobby. It's the only way you have pants. Um.
Another guy who got scared was a Wall Street financier

(14:53):
named Grayson M. P. Murphy. And another was Prescott Bush,
the father of President George H. W. Bu And who
is it that? Yeah, yeah, he he really doesn't like
the New Deal. Um. And Prescott Bush is an investment
banker on Wall Street at the time. Um okay, yeah,
So these three are the best known members of what

(15:13):
came to be called the Business Plot. And we'll talk
about them all a bit more. But before we get
into their plan to overthrow the United States government and
institute a fascist state, I should probably make it clear
that a lot of rich Americans in the nineteen thirties
wanted to at least see FDR thrown out on his
ask for suggesting that rich people be taxed to stop
poor people from dying in the street. Again, not surprising

(15:35):
to anyone that it's not It wasn't new then, Yes, um,
I'm gonna read of I found a very good summary
of of kind of this situation and the American culture
at the time from a college thesis by Bradley Galka
of the University of Albany that I really recommend reading.
He does a great job of putting this all together.
Quote William Manchester, in his book The Glory and the Dream,

(15:59):
describes the fear which upper class Americans had of a
lower class revolt in the months before Roosevelt's inauguration. Among
the propertied classes, he writes, the distinction between the poor
wanting bread and a full on communist revolutionary was often
non existent. The rich would have to take their security
into their own hands. If the government could not keep order,
each man must look to his own Businessmen in a

(16:20):
number of cities formed committees to cope with nameless terrors,
should railroad and telephone lines be cut and surrounding highways blocked,
Candles and canned goods were stockpiled. A Hollywood director carried
with him a wardrobe of old clothes so that he
could disappear into the crowd on a moment's notice. In
New York hotels, discovered that wealthy guests who usually leased
suits for the winter, were holding up in their country homes.

(16:42):
Some had mounted machine guns on their roofs. Manchester goes
on to say that the paranoid elites were not really
so paranoid. The evidence strongly suggests. He writes that had
Roosevelt in fact been another Hoover, the United States would
have followed seven Latin American countries whose governments had been
overthrown by depression victims. So there is revolution in the air,
and it scares the funk out of these people there

(17:03):
bolton machine guns to their country houses, you know. Um.
So the fears of this particular group of rich white
dudes were further confirmed by the fact that left wing
writers and intellectuals were louder than ever in their anticipation
of a coming communist revolution. Things were, from the outside,
at least, looking pretty good in Soviet Russia, compared to
at least the reality that a lot of Americans knew.

(17:24):
In nineteen thirty two, the socialist presidential candidate we used
to have socialist presidential candidates tripled his share of the
vote from the nine election. Um, and uh, yes, so
socialism is actually doing starting to do pretty well in
American politics. Socialism was mainstream in a way that seems
impossible now. One example of how mainstream it was, Governor

(17:49):
Floyd Olson of Minnesota announced that he would not take
any recruit for the National Guard, who quote doesn't carry
a red card, because he said, Minnesota is a left
wing state. Like, I'm communists in the army. I'm the
governor of Minnesota. What world is this? Okay? Yeah? So yeah, Obviously,

(18:13):
if you've got a left wing governor of an entire
state saying Minnesota is socialist and we're raising an army,
a lot of capitalists are going to get freaked out. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah.
The right wing governor of Kansas, Alf Landon declared that quote,
the iron hand of a national dictator is in preference
to a paralytic stroke. So the right is saying we

(18:36):
need a dictator, and the left is saying we need
an army. Um. You might recognize this as kind of
identical in rhetoric to both what we were hearing in
Portugal and Spain before those countries had couz Right, Portugal
saying like an iron chancellor. Yeah, he's saying, maybe the
iron hand of a dictator, you know, yeah, same rhetoric.
Republicans were surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, willing to

(18:59):
endorse outright fascism over socialism. Senator David Reid of Pennsylvania,
a Republican, stated, if this country ever needed a Mussolini,
it needs one now. Wait wait, wait, you let that
come about your mouth. He let that come out of
his mouth. Okay, okay, you are not you are not thinking.
You're not thinking a long game, big homie. Okay, long game.

(19:21):
Things turn out kind of upside down for Mussolini. But
that's a story for another day. So in saying this,
Senator Reid was tapping into what was at that point
more or less an American meme, a surprising love of Mussolini.
Benito Mussolini was huge in America in this period. This
is like the twenties and thirties. People did not know that.

(19:43):
So I did not know because I spent so you know,
obviously during this time, I'm I'm in Harlem. Yeah. My
whole history is what's happening with black people right now?
You know what I'm saying. So I never even thought
about my lord, Like there was Mussolini standing yeah, okay, yeah,
that's what's half sting with white people at the time.
They're getting real jazz. You here have been jazz. Mussolini

(20:09):
kind of fly man. That guy. Look at the way
he wears boots. So. Historian John P. Diggins argues that
a large number of American journalists in the twenties and
thirties supported Italy's fascist regime from the March on Rome
out up to the outbreak of Italy's invasion at the
Ethiopia in ninety five. That's kind of what like stops

(20:29):
the Mussolini uh honeymoon period when he gasses a bunch
of people to death. Um, But up until that point,
he's really big. Diggins writes that a large number of
American journalists quote succumbed to fascist propaganda and if you
actually prostituted themselves in the pay of the Italian government.

(20:49):
So Mussolini spends a lot of money, um, trying to
push articles and think pieces that would give fascism a
positive reputation in the United States. He's bribing reporters and
editors UM to write articles that make fascism seem good.
Now History and Jeanne mcnowne uh notes that he Mussolini
spent particular effort influencing quote, the financiers who needed to

(21:10):
be able to count on favorable future conditions for their
European investments. Mussolini's favorite target and his best friends in
the United States were JP Morgan and his family. You
go dropping his names, he's out of nowhere names. We're like, wait,
that guy, Like, the story just turned so weird, that

(21:31):
JP Morgan, that JP Morgan loved fascism turns out wild.
This is when I wish I had one of those
buttons so I could do that. Yeah. Now, another big
Mussolini fan and his primary propaganda distributor was the Press
Syndicate run by William Randolph Hurst UM, also big fan

(21:52):
of fascism. So we'll talk a little bit more about
Hurst in a bit, But I want to note that
there were also some very good reporters at the time
who saw what was happening, what Mussolini was doing, and
who spoke out against it lucidly improperly. The Chicago Tribunes
George Selds was probably one of the best journalists for this.
He wrote, quote, far away fascism has been attacked, exposed,

(22:13):
and denounced by the same publications which for years ran
articles lauding Mussolini and his notable backers in all lands
and the Hurst Newspapers, which published from nineteen thirty four
to Pearl Harbor dozens of signed propaganda articles by Dr
Gebel's Gearing and other Nazis now call them names, but
no publication which takes money from certain big business elements
will dare name the native or nearby fascists. In many instances,

(22:36):
the publications themselves are part of our own fascism, and
that selves is kind of recognizing. And it was one
of the few guys to be like, really try to
drum home, drive them openly and this he wrote this
obviously after World War two started. It like, oh, yeah,
as soon as we're war, y'all are against Mussolini and Hitler.
But you let them publish fucking articles before you before

(22:57):
this ship happened. Come on, you ignore, yeah. Selds argued
that fascism, American fascism was not just limited to lunatic
fringes of society, but was influential in major economic, social,
and political circles. He asserted that there were communists in
the United States who quote organized big business in a
movement against labor, signed a pact with Nazi agents for

(23:20):
political and economic penetration of the US, founded a million
dollar a year propaganda outfit to corrupt the press, radio schools,
and churches, and delayed the winning of the war through
the acts of dollar a year men looking out for
present profits and future monopoly rather than for the quick
defeat of fascism. And there's a lot of these guys.
And like, when you're looking at American corporations who directly

(23:41):
with their money supported fascism and funded fascist propaganda. You're
talking General Motors, you're talking the DuPont Corporation, and you're
talking Readers Digest who were weigh ins in fascism. God
dog man, It's like, yeah, there's no ending, bro, there's
just no Wow. We don't talk about the time Reader's

(24:04):
Digest was whole hog for Mussolini. Yeah, like again, yeah,
that's number three. The name you never thought you'd get.
When the last time you said, will you because you
when the last time any of y'all said the word
reader's digen. I've been published in them and I don't
think about them. Roberts, what that's funny? Yeah, but you

(24:27):
know who won't fund a fascist propaganda campaign to convince
financiers that Benito Mussolini has the right idea? Pick me,
pick me, pick me. I know the answer to the
answer and the answer who who is it? Who won't
do that? Sophie, the Fine Products and Services that sponsor
this podcast nailed it, nail We're back, and God almighty,

(24:52):
I know that JP Morgan. The bank does advert throw
in random adds sometimes, and I kind of hope one
came in and between as we're talking about incredible. Uh,
it's very funny, Um, very funny. So uh, this is
all all of this stuff that we're talking about, is
what's cooking off in the background when a funkload of

(25:14):
rich guys and we don't know all of the folks
involved or who they were. We'll talk about why near
the end of this, but obviously some of them are
JP Morgan, like um, William Randolph Hurst is is almost
certainly a part of it. There's a good chance Henry
Ford was, but we don't know exactly who was involved.
We know some of the people though, including George H. W.
Bush's dad. So at any rate, this cabal of financiers

(25:36):
and rich guys pick a couple of patsy's to do
the grunt work because they decide, okay, you know, the
very wealthiest men are like, Okay, we need to find
a way to take power, and we need to do
it stealthily because Americans won't stand for an open fascist coup. Um,
so we're going to need They pick a couple of
guys to kind of do the grunt work of actually

(25:56):
organizing this fascist coup. And the dudes they pick are
are Gerald C. McGuire and Bob Doyle, um. And they're
these guys are bond salesmen, right, their stock traders essentially, um.
And they're both veterans imaginary money again, yeah, their imaginary
money guys. Uh. And they're both members of the American Legion,
which had been established to support veterans rights and activities.

(26:19):
And they're both vets, you know, um, which is not
you know a lot of people are vets. World War
One's just ended. So these guys, like these rich dudes,
some of whom were had also been veterans. UM had
watched what had happened with the Bonus Army in d C.
They'd seen tens of thousands of veterans march on Washington
UM and obviously they hadn't supported those guys getting any
money because it would have been taxing rich people. But

(26:41):
they thought there was potential and having tens of thousands
of combat hardened men march on the capitol, and they
basically started saying to themselves, what if we could harness
that kind of force and put it under the control
of a guy that we control and they trust, maybe
we could overthrow the government. WHOA And Americans wouldn't be
because they'd say, oh, these are our vets, you know,

(27:03):
they're they're coming into fix things, you know. Yeah, well there,
you know, we support our troops exactly. It's a good idea,
you know, you get to overthrow. So obviously they're looking
at who can we who can we put in control
of tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of veterans
who will be easy for us to control, but also
who everyone respects and loves and who no one's going
to accuse of any ulterior motives. Oh my god, who

(27:25):
is it. Well, it's the perfect soldier of empire, the
greatest imperial warrior whoever existed, Retired General Smedley Butler. They're like,
this is the guy who can do it. And he
and they look look at all of these all of
these wars that we profited from, that we got America
into to make money. He fought in and ran things.
Like he he's already done this for us. He's perfect,

(27:47):
you know. Damn Yeah. So I'm gonna quote right up
by our Kia Publishing for what happens next. Yeah yeah,
they's yeah, like he's he's the obviously, he's who you
go with. Quote. During a first meeting with Butler, McGuire
and Doyle asked the Major General to speak at a
Legion convention in Chicago, claiming they wanted to point out
the various problems with the Legion's leadership. But there was

(28:10):
at first open to this idea, knowing that the Legion
had several administrative issues that ultimately compromised veteran benefits. So
they're like, hey, the Legions having a vote in convention
to like vote on it's its leaders. You know, we
are also vets and like we you know obviously you're
you're the guy we respect the most. Would you give
a speech about some of the problems our organization is happening?
And he's like, sure, you know, it seems like a

(28:30):
reasonable thing to do. He's always going to try to
help out soldiers when he can. Um. But then he
as he kind of looks through the speech that they've written,
he realizes that it says almost nothing about the American
Legion leadership and is instead entirely about the gold standard
and about how the government needs to go back to
the gold standard. Yo, I the clapper because I'm like,

(28:54):
that is a juke. That is a really good june. Yeah,
that's that's that's a zag. And Smedley's like, wait a second,
what I thought you wanted me to help get the
American Legion working better? Why the funk? Do I care
about the gold standards? I care about that? Yeah? Yeah. Um.
So they were like, basically the what was that The

(29:16):
actual case here is that all of these bankers were
scared that they had gold back loans from the government
that weren't going to be paid back in full by
the president. Um. And you know, they also kind of
wanted to get Butler used to working for them as
their agents and see if they could like use them further.
It's a couple of things going on here that is
textbook rich guy man, very textbook rich, like just right

(29:38):
on the nose. And what they don't realize about Butler
is that he's not the perfect imperial soldier anymore. By
this point, he's he's become a socialist um and he
doesn't bite. Uh. He actually thought McGuire might be mentally
ill because what the guy was suggesting seems so strange
to him. And Butler's impression of McGuire didn't change over

(29:59):
the next few months, because the stockbroker keeps approaching the
old general with new requests to address the American Legion
for really incoherent reads what seems to Butler incoherent reasons, okay,
and so in August of nineteen thirty three, Butler and
McGuire meet again, and by this point Butler had started
to realize that McGuire was working for someone. He starts

(30:19):
to piece together there's a through line for all these
weird things he's asking me to do. There's gotta be
someone pulling the strings behind this um now, because McGuire
was the kind of guy who only valued money. He
saw Butler's reticence and decided that, like, oh, he's not
suspicious because I'm asked him to do weird things. He
wants to know that I have backing. So he basically
flashes a huge pile of cash and Butler's so so

(30:42):
rich guy only thinks yeah that everybody thinks like rich guys. Yeah.
Butler's like, it's really weird that you keep asking me
to make all of these bizarre political addresses to the
American Legion. And McGuire's like, hey, I got a hundred
grand right, Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, but what are you
talking about though? Yeah, And this actually makes Butler more
suspicious because in his mind, no honest man has access

(31:04):
to a hundred thousand dollars. Keep it real, but like,
I'm not supposed to like you, bro, But like, day,
that's a great answer. Was like what what? Well, he's
changed at this point, but there's he goes through a
very satisfying evolution. McGuire admits that he has a backer.
He says like, yeah, I work as a bond salesman

(31:24):
for Grayson Murphy, who's a wealthy Wall Street financier who
had also been a colonel during World War One, but
not like a real like his job had been coordinating
with the Red Cross. He got a rich guy job
in the army for the war, you know. Um, So
McGuire had paid a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars
to underwrite the start of the American Legion because it
starts after World War One, and he thought of it

(31:45):
as as an investment, right, like Murphy's putting the American
Legion together because he has a really rich guy is like,
it's probably a good idea to have an organization of
combat veterans who I can kind of direct, right, Yeah,
there's a plot going on here. Butler and McGuire start
talking about McGuire's backers, and McGuire admits to Butler that

(32:06):
his boss, Grayson, is one of nine Richmond who were
trying to pay for a national convention of the American
Legion in d C. Now by this point, Smedley Butler
knew something very crooked was going on, and Bradley Galka
writes quote Butler did not commit to anything, but rather
waited and listen to what McGuire had to say. The
two met at the beginning of September. When asked if

(32:27):
he had begun recruiting men to go to the National Convention,
Butler said no. He told McGuire that he would not
even consider cooperating unless he was allowed to meet with
one of the principal backers of the plot. McGuire promised
to set up a meeting as soon as was possible.
Treated his word, McGuire arranged for Butler to meet with
one of the principles the following week. The man was
actually an acquaintance of the general. His name was Robert
Sterling Clark, known to Butler as the Millionaire Lieutenant This

(32:50):
is the Singer Guy. Clark had been a junior officer
under Butler's command in China during the Boxer Rebellion. According
to Butler, Clark had been a batty sort of queer
fellow who did all sorts of extravagant things. Tell him
a batty bad like like as in like how we
say that girls a batty, or like as in batta
b a t t y like this, this he's this,

(33:13):
you know. There he goes to war with this guy,
and everyone knows this kid is a millionaire and he's weird,
right like he's a rich kid, you know. He's yeah.
I was like, wait, what do you mean by a batty?
Like and I was like, wait, you're calling him a
batty and then saying, well he does queer stuff like
you just called him a batty like, bro, Like just okay,

(33:33):
now I get it. Yeah you know so man, Yeah
that's clarify that so so so so wait so make
sure I'm following along. So at this point, Smedley's antennas
are all like his spidy in angling all over the
place like some now right something. He's saying yeah, and

(33:53):
then he's like, and I don't trust you rich kids
like y'all never see no combat. You ain't no blood
on your hands. Man. You you stayed on the words
the whole time. He wasn't running with the wild dog,
So help me understand. And then he goes and he
meets what he's rich dude. He's like, I remember this kid, Yeah,
this fucking kid. Yeah yeah. And he's also he's also,
this is kind of the guy that Smedley's a very

(34:15):
intelligent man. He thinks something is fishy and he's like,
I want to go up the food chain. I want
to follow the money up and I want to talk
to you. I'm want to talk to the guy. Give
any money, you know. Um. So the General meets with Clark,
this millionaire air uh, and Clark's first question was whether
or not Butler had read the speech that that Clark
had helped write for him, and Butler was like, he says, yes,

(34:36):
but it looks as if it were a big business speech.
There's something funny about that speech. Mr Clark. Now, once
it was clear that Butler knew he was being used
for some purpose, even though he wasn't sure what that
purpose was, Clark drops the act. So Butler says that,
and Clark's like, Okay, you know something's going on. So
I'm just gonna tell you the truth. And he tells
Butler this quote. You understand just how we are fixed.

(34:57):
I have got thirty million dollars. I do not want
to lose it. I am willing to spend half of
the thirty million to save the other half. If you
go out and make this speech in Chicago, I am
certain that they will adopt the resolution, and that will
be one step towards the return of gold. To have
the soldiers stand up for it. We can get the
soldiers to go out in great bodies to stand up
for it. And obviously gold isn't the end goal here,

(35:19):
but that's how they want to like start things. That's
they're starting it. Yeah, And and this guy admits like, look,
I am trying to use you to keep my money,
and I'm willing to spend half of my money to
keep the other half. You know. That's what's important to me,
is continuing to be a rich man. Yeah. Now in uh,
there's there's some sort of like a kind of a
dark and twisted but kind of good financial advice in that,

(35:43):
like I'll spend half of it is if it's gonna
make my other half double. Yeah, it's like he said,
he's also saying like I'm I'm afraid that the decisions
being made by this government will reduce my class it all. Yeah, Yeah,
that that's what I'm saying. Like this is like dark,
like okay, this is this is why they wealthy. It's like, well,

(36:05):
I'm not just sitting on this stuff and I'm not
willing to burn at all, but I'll spend on what's
gonna protect the other half and increased the other half.
You know what I'm saying. It's how rich guys think,
you know, it's how rich guys think. Point. This enrages
Butler when when he said, like, Butler is kind of
barely able to keep himself from just like flipping out

(36:25):
at this guy. Because Butler he had been obviously an
Imperial soldier, but his entire career, his focus, the thing
that kept him going was the well being of the
soldiers under his command. Right, he had risked his life
repeatedly and been wounded to protect them in under his command.
And this rich guy is saying, I want to use
your fellow soldiers for my own to keep my money.

(36:46):
And Butler's like fuck that and fuck you, like you know,
at this point, yeah, we're done. Yeah. Now, at this point,
Smedley didn't quite realize that his entire career up to
that point had been doing the same thing in other countries. Right,
had been like risking the lives of his men to
protect the money of rich people. He doesn't quite get
that yet, but he sees that what he he understands

(37:09):
what this guy is trying to do now, right, Um,
So he gets angry and he tells the millionaire how
he feels I took an oath to sustain democracy, and
that is what I'm going to do and nothing else.
I Am not going to get these soldiers marching around
and stirred up over the gold standard. What the hell
does a soldier know about the gold standard? Um? Damn.

(37:29):
Different when it's direct, man, when you see it like
rather than like at a systemic or like a you know, ah,
indirect way like you said, like ultimately you know you're
at least in our most recent wars, you just went
to protect somebody's money and to hold up a crooked regime,
you know what I'm saying. But if somebody couldn't. But

(37:51):
if like if your general stood up to you and
just said, hey homie, uh, this place got oil, so
we need to kill these people to get it, like
you would be like nothing to do that. You know
what I'm saying. I'm not gonna do that. What are
you're talking about? You know what I'm saying. But like
when it's in your face the way it was with him,
He's like, no, listen, here's the thing. I'm rich and

(38:13):
I'm might lose it, so I need you to go
get my money. Yeah. And this is this is a
bit of a spoiler, this it being this direct for
him is what helps him realize what the rest of
his career had been. Like this really is. We're not
quite there yet, okay, McGuire. Like, Butler's like, I am

(38:37):
not going to do this thing for you. I'm not
gonna go fucking put my neck on the line for
the gold standard. And McGuire's like, all right, all right,
and he's like, can I use your phone? And while
Butler listens, McGuire gets on the phone in Butler's house
or not McGuire. Uh. Sterling gets on the phone in
Butler's house and he calls McGuire the guy who would
was his gopher um and tells him that Butler's not

(38:59):
coming to the American Legion convention. And Sterling tells McGuire
to use forty five thou dollars that he'd given him
to flood the convention hall with telegrams urging a return
to the gold standard. And that's exactly what happens at
the convention. The telegrams flow in and the result solution
is passed, condemning like the move away from the gold standard,
And you know, Sterling kind of does this to show

(39:20):
off to Butler, like, Okay, well if you're not going
to do this. Let me show you what I can accomplish.
I can just pay forty five grand to get fucking
flyers put up and like will flood them with propaganda
and make it happen. And Butler takes this as the
lesson that it is right, that these are powerful men,
and this is like they do have the ability to
to make this ship happen. UM. So for a little while,

(39:43):
that's kind of all it is. It's this weird thing
over the gold Standard, and Butler it feels off to him,
but he doesn't think much more about it until the
next year, August of nineteen thirty four, when Gerald McGuire
comes up to his house again and he and Butler
meet and McGuire tells the general quote the him has
come to get the soldiers together, and McGuire, who's a
veteran himself, is referencing the Bonus Army. He's basically coming

(40:05):
up and being like, hey, you know, the things are
still hard for veterans. Why don't you and I work
out something where we can get another group of soldiers
together and maybe march them on Washington UM. And Butler's
like willing to have this conversation. Right, he's not willing
to do the gold standard thing, but like, oh, you're
talking about getting people together because veterans need some money. Absolutely,
that's my whole thing. Yeah, But then the conversation turns.

(40:29):
McGuire tells Butler that he'd just gotten back from an
overseas trip and it was on It wasn't a vacation,
but his wealthy backers were paying him to go scouting.
And this is what McGuire says, quote. I went abroad
to study the part that the veteran plays and the
various setups of the governments that they have abroad. I
went to Italy for two or three months and studied
the position that the veterans of Italy occupy and the

(40:50):
fascist setup of government, and I discovered that they are
the background of Mussolini. They keep them on the payrolls
in various ways and keep them contented and happy, and
they're his real backbone, the force on which he may
depend in case of trouble to sustain him. But that
set up would not suit us at all. The soldiers
of America would not like that. I then went to
Germany to see what Hitler was doing and his whole
strength lies in organizations of soldiers too, but that would

(41:12):
not do. I looked into the Russian business. I found
the use of soldiers over there would never appeal to
our men. Then I went to France and I found
just exactly the sort of organization we are going to have.
It is an organization of super soldiers. And what he's
talking about, you remember the cross of Fire that we
talked about last episode in France, that French veterans organization.

(41:34):
You've got five officers, a thousand officers and n c
o s and they control the votes of five million men,
and they're very, very far right right, and they have
a role in the insurrection that happens over in France,
which has just happened at this point. So these rich
guys watch what happens in France and almost succeeds and
are like, oh, you know, that's that's not a bad idea.
Why don't we set up a veterans organization like that? Yeah,

(41:59):
So that's what McGuire fires like. We need to build
the same thing that they have in France, because if
we can get five million votes or so, like a
coalition of five million votes, we can win any election.
We want we can get rid of, you know, Roosevelt,
or we can march them on the capitol, you know,
if we have half a million soldiers. So Butler said, alright, like,
I'm not I'm not against this idea. If you want

(42:20):
to organize a bunch of veterans to to to make
political changes, act as a voting block, that makes sense
to me because I care about veterans issues. Um, but
what do you want to use them for? Right? Why
are you why are we building this because he's still
suspicious of this guy over the Golden State doing yeah,
And McGuire shares them, like, no, they're going to support
the president. That's what we want them to do, is
to kind of support the president and his efforts to

(42:43):
fix the economy. And Butler points out when McGuire says this,
Butler points out that like, well, in all these speeches
you wanted me to give earlier, you would have me.
You wanted me to oppose all of FDR's policies. So
why are you trying to make a veterans organization to
support FDR now? And McGuire responds, don't you understand that
the setup has got to be changed a bit? Now?
We have got him. We have got the president. He

(43:05):
has got to have more money. There's not any more
money to give him. Eight percent of the money now
is in government bonds. And he cannot keep this racket
up much longer. He has got to do something about it.
He has either got to get more money out of
us or he has got to change the method of
financing the government. And we are going to see to
it that he does not change that method. He will
not change it. They're worried about him, like going into
debt and devaluing the dollar and stuff. Um. So, Butler

(43:28):
sees where this is going, and he asks McGuire straight up,
the idea of this great group of soldiers then is
to sort of frighten him, is it. McGuire lying said
that no, they don't want to scare FDR. They just
want to support him. And then he introduces a new idea.
He tells Butler, you know, the president's overworked, and he's
he's an old man, he's not healthy. Wouldn't it be
nice if we could give FDR an assistant president. We

(43:51):
can use this big armed group of veterans to convince
the president to create a new cabinet position. Secretary of
General Affairs, and this person will do all of the
actual work of the president, and he'll institute policies that
my rich backers nowhere going to fix things for the
American people. F DR will still be president, but he'll
just be ceremonial and will be controlling things. And this

(44:14):
big armed group of veterans will make sure that everybody
plays that right up under our noses. Bro So McGuire
tells Butler that this is all necessary because the president
is sick, and even if it's not true that he's
unable to do the job anymore, the American people will
believe them if they say he's sick, because quote, we

(44:36):
have got the newspapers. He's talking about the fact that
William Randolph Hurst is one of the guys involved in
this plot. Like whatever, whatever we need the American people
to believe, they'll believe because we control the newspapers. So
all we need to do is organize this body of men. So,
in suggesting this, McGuire's rich backers were looking to treat
FDR kind of the same way Mussolini treated the King

(44:57):
of Italy or Hitler treated Hindenburg. In his last of course,
McGuire didn't point this out to Butler, but he asked,
would you be interesting and heading up this super organization
of veterans that we're going to use to take power.
So he's all on the table now, like we're going
to take over the government. We're going to do it
in a way that's not obvious. We're going to use
the newspapers to make sure people don't know that we've

(45:17):
just stopped FDR from having any power, and we're if
things are going to be run by the rich um
and but so he's like, do you want to be
the guy who leads this army of veterans into the
capital to demand these things? And Butler response, I'm interested
in it. I'm interested in this veterans organization, but I
don't know about heading it. I am very greatly interested

(45:38):
in it, because you know, my interest, my one hobby
is maintaining a democracy. If you get these five thousand
soldiers advocating anything smelling a fascism, I'm going to get
five thousand more and lick the hell out of you
and we'll have a real war right at home. He's
a direct man. Yeah, I love it. He's like, look
made mean wars I fought. Do you think I'm scared

(45:59):
of you? Like yeah, Like and this like if you
do this and I think you're trying to create a
fascist state, I'll raise an army and I'll win. Like
you don't know about actual war vet like I actually
know the veterans. Yeah. Yeah, So this makes McGuire backpedal
a little bit. He's realized he's maybe like gone, he
was maybe a little bit too open about what they

(46:19):
were planning to do. And he insists like, we're not
trying to overthrow. We just want to support the president.
We're not trying to take power. We want to support him.
And Butler says, well, if that's the case, you're gonna
need a lot of money, right, This is not going
to be a cheap thing to do. And McGuire is like, well,
we've got three million dollars on hand, you know, and
problem money and a problem we get access to three
hundred million dollars if necessary. And so Butler again it's like,

(46:41):
who in the funk is putting up this money? Honest,
men don't have three million dollars to throw around, And
so he's like, where are you getting all of this money?
And I know, it's not just Clark Um or Sterling,
the guy that I had met earlier. And McGuire says,
you know how Clark told you he would spend half
of his uh fortune to save the other half. Well,
there's a lot of other rich guys who feel the

(47:02):
same way, right, Prescott Bush and JP Morgan and all
these all these other dudes feel the same way. So
Smedley Butler meant what he said. He was absolutely committed
to American democracy and he never actually considered helping. But
he knew the danger of what he was hearing and
he wanted to be able to expose it, and to
do that he was going to need a corroborating witness.
So his goal now too becomes, I need someone else

(47:24):
credible to be witnessed to the whole plans that we
can go testify to Congress just in case, Dude, Smith dog,
This dude's antenna's are like they are a tuned because
to be like you can't just be like f you
and storm the room because these people don't need you.
Don't find somebody else, you know what I'm saying. And
it's like the understanding that like just that power play

(47:47):
when you in a role with people that wealthy, they
always feel like they in charge. But that but that
power is given to them. If you don't, if you'll
give a shit about their money, you know what I'm saying,
then the power don't matter, you know what I'm saying.
Then you realize really what's happening here. It's like, oh wait,
y'all got all this money and you still need this
meeting with me. So there's some you know what I'm saying.

(48:10):
So like he had his antenna's enough to be like,
I need to make sure because it's not like these
people can't put me away. I need somebody over here
to watch all this happening because they wield in all
his power and I am you know what I'm saying,
Like right now, I'm in their good graces right now,
They're still hungry for me. So let me make sure
I'm playing his antenna's are art? I love it? Yeah?

(48:31):
You know he's he's thinking, he's thinking, and he's thinking
that right up by Arcadia Publishing again for What Happens Next.
Having previously worked as the police captain of Philadelphia, Butler
reached out to a Philadelphia record writer, Paul come Lely, French,
who agreed to meet with McGuire as well. During this meeting,
McGuire told French that he believed a fascist state was
the only answer for America and that Smedley was the

(48:53):
ideal leader because he could organize a million men overnight.
So French, the very skilled journalist, comes in and kind
of on the guys of like, yeah, you want the
press on your side, let's talk about what you're trying
to do. And he's like, French is clearly a good
interview and gets mugguire to admit, like, yeah, I want
to We want to make a fascist state. It's the
only way forward for America, and Butler's the best guy

(49:14):
to do it. So French takes detailed notes after all
of these meetings, he would later tell Congress. Quote, during
the course of the conversation, he continually discussed the need
of a man on a white horse, as he called it,
a dictator who would come galloping in on his white horse.
He said that was the only way, either through the
threat of armed force or the delegation of power and

(49:34):
the use of a group of organized veterans to save
the capitalistic system. Speaking of capitalistic systems, Speaking of capitalism.
You know who won't inside a fascist revolution. I mean
hopefully hopefully fingers crossed. I have something to tell you

(49:55):
at this ad break that just broken the news, But
I guess I'll tell you now. Jeff I saw just
stepped down at CEO of Amazon. What the funk is happening?
He's transitioning to an executive chair role. Something's about to
go down. Yes, I have some theories. That's big. Take
this break. Take yeah, yeah, yeah, we're We're all what

(50:17):
are your theories? Something's fucking happening. So here's my theories.
I think there was two things going on here. I
think uh one is He's like, I would like the
money without the headache, So let me just let somebody
else had a headache, says All. Says this is from
obviously the Washington Post because he hounds it. Baviss will

(50:39):
step down from the role after founding the company more
than twenty years ago. I'll sharing a new era for
the e commerce merchant giant currently current Amazon Web Services
chief and Jassy will take on the mantel of CEO.
I don't like our words mantel first of all. Yeah, yeah,
but I think the money from the like from the

(51:01):
from the web support platform services is now outpacing the products,
so they like, we need to move that way. Number
one and number two. I'm positive they're gonna break the
company up. They're gonna break this up because it's yeah,
and he's like, I better get out now. They're gonna
break this ship up. I really hear. Um, Yeah, it

(51:24):
should be broken up. It's too much of a business.
You can't be the grocery store and the groceries. Yeah.
I think he just wants to go off into the
moon and just spend the rest of this. You want
to be no one. I want all the money without
the headache. No reasonable person would be worth a hundred

(51:45):
billion plus dollars and want to keep doing a job.
Why do you keep working? Yeah, go filling the island
with I don't know, no more, no more guys with
the islands. I always do, yes, But what have to say? Yeah,
it's like, you don't take a hundred million dollars to
keep working? He said, He'll he'll never spend this You

(52:05):
will never spend this money. It's the only billion who's
ever made sense to me. Is one of the Google
founders who like spent hundreds of millions of dollars making
a house blimp and it's like, yeah, that's rad. Like, yeah,
I'm gonna live in a blimp like I can never
you can't even give it away. There's not enough there's
not enough hours in the day. You know, you're not

(52:28):
gonna live enough years to spend this. Yeah you couldn't. Yeah. Uh,
all right, we're back. Uh what a great what a
great time. So uh we're talking about Yeah, this guy

(52:48):
Butler brings in this journalist French who gets who gets
these guys to throw down some dirt right and admit
what they're actually looking to do? Yeah? Um now in
his right up on the business plot, Bradley Galka notes quote.
McGuire also discussed this group's intended solution to the national
employment crisis. He said they were inspired by Adolf Hitler's

(53:08):
policies in Europe that the solution would be the institution
of labor camps and barrys in America to mobilize the unemployed.
You said, you said it out loud. You're not say
that out loud. Bro, This hed the guy has some
good ideas. I'm just saying, like we could save you.
Hear me, hear me? Out. We could save capitalism. We

(53:29):
could save cap What if we put the par in
camps and make them work for us. They're not doing
anything right. They're not doing anything right. Shouldn't be voting.
They've just gotta vote to take our money. But I'm
in camps. Uh. Such an initiative, McGuire insisted, would solve
the problem overnight. He also revealed that the Plotters would
force all suspected radicals across the country to register their

(53:51):
movements with the government. That way, said McGuire, the new
regime could stop a lot of these communist agitators who
were running around the country. McGuire ended by insisting at
another economic crash was inevitable and would come when bonds
reached five percent interest. When that time comes, he said,
the soldiers must prepare to save the nation. Now. It's
worth reiterating two important takeaways from McGuire's interactions with Butler

(54:14):
and French. First, during McGuire's meeting with Butler at the
Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia, McGuire claimed that he and the
Plotters have got the newspapers. He told Butler that whatever
cover story his boss has decided to put in the papers,
would be accepted by the dumb American people who would
fall for it. In a second, damn it not wrong,
not wrong, not wrong, and is right up. This is
very good, it's and it's free. So I really recommend

(54:36):
it for folks. Now. At this point, Butler decided he
had enough information to go to Congress. November four, he
appeared before the Special Committee on Unamerican Activities. Before the
Committee and its lawyers General, Butler laid out the details
of the whole sordid scheme, providing Congress with French is
corroboration and the detailed notes that he himself had taken

(54:56):
of every conversation. He swore under oath that this was
all true and that a cabal of bankers and industrial
magnates were plotting to overthrow American democracy. So he goes
to Congress and he puts it all out on the line,
and the story hits the news media. Soon after, The
New York Post, which at this time is a liberal newspaper,
publishes the first report, which is written by French himself.

(55:17):
It outlines the details of the plot accurately. The Post
also publishes a second, shorter piece which provides the accused
plotters with an opportunity to give their denials. Now. The
Post coverage here was both responsible and vital, but McGuire
had not been lying when he said that his secret
backers controlled much of America's print media. A second wave
of coverage bursts from conservative Hearst owned newspapers. These papers

(55:40):
tended to provide only the barest details of the actual
plot and spend most of their time publishing denials by
the accused magnates. One popular columnist, Arthur Brisbane, who worked
for the Hearst owned San Francisco Examiner, suggested that somebody
may have been deceiving General Butler. He portrayed the business
plot as more or less a practical joke, and wrote
mockingly that those wicked and bad and outrageous Wall Street

(56:02):
men were the ones who actually had the most to
fear from a fascist dictatorship. Yeah. Flim flam boy, Yeah,
flim flam Yeah. Look at this dumb General. He just
he just he got took in by a practical joke.
You know, listen, he doesn't understand, you know, Doug, and
I man, I imagine even like how you stand in

(56:25):
front of Congress and like this, I don't know, like
if you have this this like sinking feeling when you're
trying to say something that you know is true and
you're positive to people in front of you don't believe you,
and you're like, uh, damn, this ain't gonna I'm stuck,
ain't I You know what I'm saying? Like, I wonder
if I don't know why? As he was talking, that

(56:47):
was like the moment I pictured when he's like he
went to Congress to tell them that, like he's snitching,
but it's like a good type of snitch to where
I'm like, no, I'm trying to tell you the truth.
This is what these people are doing. Yeah, I don't know,
because it's like even coming out of his mouth, he
was probably like, do I sound crazy? I might sound crazy,
but I'm trying to tell you just what they're doing. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

(57:12):
So Adam Ox, a writer for The New York Times,
wrote an article about the business plot, and again it's
not just herst papers. The New York Times gets in
on this ship. He writes an article titled Credulity Unlimited,
which also mocked Butler and painted him as a crank.
What can we believe? Apparently anything to judge by the
number of people who lend a credulous ear to the
story of General Butler's five hundred fascists and Buckram marching

(57:34):
on Washington to seize the government. Details are lacking to
lend versimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. The
whole story sounds like a gigantic hoax. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
this guy's crazy, talk to him. No, this silly old
manular rich dudes, we're just saying it's fine. And there is.

(58:00):
One of the things that really does corroborate that the
story is true is there's a massive and very organized
media campaign to discredit Butler. And it's not just journalists.
Will Rogers, the former Cowboy actor who like half of
l A is named after Yeah, I was like wait, wait, yeah,
yeah that Will Rogers, publishes an article in the New
York Times. He gets to write a column for The Times,

(58:20):
and this article both mocks uh Smedley Butler and in
the article, after making fun of Butler for being an idiot,
Will Rogers volunteers to lead a fascist army in his stead.
If Smedley Butler don't take that job of marching down
Pennsylvania at the head of Wall Streets Fighting Brigade. I
would like to get my application in. I got the
Gray Horse. It won't be such a novelty as people think.

(58:41):
This is clearly bullshit. But if it's not, I'd lead
a fascist army on behalf of Wall. Straight Man Katie
Perry tried to buy his house out here. Oh yeah,
it's a nice house. It's a very nice house. Went
on a field trip once, anyway. Yeah. New York City
Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia called the business plot a cocktail push,

(59:03):
by which he means he thought Butler had heard the
plans at a part as a joke at a party
and run away with the idea. Um, that's a great you.
The more I hear their defense, that's a great cover story,
it's a great cover step. They were just joking. Dude,
we're just drinking. It's like the guy got to this party.
He don't really wrong with us. He don't know how,
we don't know how you work. We're just playing around. Yeah, yeah,
it's not it's not dumb, right, These aren't idiots. Now.

(59:26):
The Committee, the Congressional Committee, the House an American Activities Committee,
continues their investigation though, and they find additional evidence of
the plot. Concerted digging revealed that a number of the
men implicated in the plot had recently formed a conservative
lobbying group called the American Liberty League. Its members included
JP Morgan Jr. Irene DuPont, the CEO of General Voters,

(59:48):
the CEO of General Foods, and other industrial leaders controlling
roughly forty billion dollars in assets, which in modern terms
is three quarters of a trillion dollars um. All of
the richest guys and that like, these are the dudes
behind it now. This digging also turns up the fact
that Prescott Bush, who was heavily involved in with the
Nazi government. Right he's working with them on the Hamburg

(01:00:10):
America allions and stuff. Um that Prescott Bush, under the
proposed American fascist government would have acted as a liaison
between the American dictatorship and the Nazi government. So George W.
Bush's grandpa volunteered for the job of liaison between a
fascist American state and the Nazis. I was like, oh,
I love the Nazis. I'd be perfect at this job. Yeah,

(01:00:32):
Prescott so and then gave birth to presidents two of
them well, his wife gave birth to presidents. Let me
clear that up. Sorry, ladies, he didn't give birth to
nobody yet. Okay, he donated genetic material that led to
two presidents, both of whom were Trash. So the committee,

(01:00:53):
after its investigation, never releases an official report on the
business plot, but they do give a report to Congress,
and in it they say that they quote trash. Oh,
it's about to get trasher before it's trash. The committee
goes to Congress and they say everything we checked out
that Butler said, we were able to verify. They say

(01:01:13):
that they quote had received evidence that certain persons had
made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country.
There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned,
and might have been placed in execution win and if
the financial backers deemed it expedient. The names of the
individuals involved, they said, would have to be kept secret
until they could be investigated and their complicity verified. So

(01:01:36):
they're like, we we we looked this up, and we
found a lot of evidence that it was true, but
we can't confirm anything yet, and we're not going to
give the names of the individuals. We found evidence about
because we haven't finished the investigation, right, which sounds reasonable,
that's how it's supposed to work. But they never finished
the investigation, oh man, after saying hey, yeah this, Yeah,

(01:02:00):
we've collaborated everything you said, Okay, cool, And we don't
know why the investigation doesn't get finished. There are some theories,
and I'm gonna quote the Washington Post from one of them.
According to journalist John Buchanan speaking to the BBC in
two thousand seven, this was probably because Roosevelt struck a
deal with the backers of the plot. They could avoid
treason charges and possible execution if they backed off their

(01:02:21):
opposition to the new deal. Sally Denton, an author who
wrote a book about the business plot, thinks the press
may have ignored the report at the urging of the government,
which didn't want the public to know how precarious things
might have been. So the government that like was threatened
by this may not have wanted it to be super
public knowledge, right, just like the I don't think it's
a good idea for people to know how quickly they

(01:02:43):
came close they came to overthrowing us. Yeah, yeah, you
shouldn't notice. Yeah, And and FDR probably sits down with
these rich guys and it's like, look, we can hang
you and it'll be ugly for everybody, Like there will
be consequence, it will suck for me, Like listen, or
you shut the funk up and let me do the
new you know, I love it man, the brand. Listen,
this is a bad this is bad for everybody. Everybody loses.

(01:03:05):
I'm gonna cut your head off. But like, let's just
I love it. Good job. A yeah, I mean it
was probably I don't know. I'm not gonna say it
was the right thing. I think it would have been
better to prosecute these guys, but totally he's in a
rough position. He does what it seems like the best
thing to do at the time. Now, based on her research,
Sally Denton believes that hadn't Smedley Butler gone along with

(01:03:26):
the plot, it would have succeeded, and he might have
been the only person capable of leading that fascist coup
who also would have refused to do it. It is
hard to overstate how lucky we are that he was
the man they went to write, like the one guy
who had that kind of respect among veterans who had
that kind of talent. And that kind of experience, and

(01:03:47):
also doesn't give a funk about money, right, like the
perfect yes, the perfect combo. Yeah yeah, because he could
if he even wanted it and and cared about money,
He could even extort these Yeah yeah he could. And
I'm saying, they're promisingly, we'll take care of your family,
your kids are never damn right. You're gonna take care
of my family, Joe, say, take care of my neighbor's family,

(01:04:08):
and to take care of my children, eight children. You're
gonna take care of us until the twenties. But he
instead decides, the thing that I swore an oath for
was to defend democracy, and that's what I'm going to
fucking do. Um And for his part, the business plot
seems to have been the final straw in Butler's radicalization.

(01:04:29):
He realizes, after having been these rich guys trying to
use him as a pond, that that's all he'd been
doing his entire career as a soldier. He'd been upon
a mambage uh. In nineteen thirty six, he votes for
the socialist presidential candidate UM. In nineteen thirty five, he
publishes a short book based on a series of speeches
he delivered. He starts traveling around the country delivering speeches,

(01:04:50):
a speech titled war is a racket, and I'm going
to read you a summary. Butler wrote of his own
book that kind of explains where this goes. War is
a racket, always has been. It is possibly the oldest,
easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is
the only one international in scope. It is the only
one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and

(01:05:10):
the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe,
as something that is not what it seems to the
majority of the people. Only a small inside group knows
what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit
of the very few, at the expense of the very many.
Out of war, a few people make huge fortunes. And
he's there's a lot of good quote from Butler in general.

(01:05:34):
That is good when he say the losses are in lives,
but the profits are in dollars. Yeah, God, yeah, God,
that's a bar and he is truly unsparing. Another quote
is that I love our boys were sent off to
die with beautiful ideals painted in front of them. No
one told them that dollars and cents were the real

(01:05:56):
reason they were marching off to kill and die. Got dog, Dude,
I have a homeboy, the musician. He's a friend, but
he's an incredible rappers Ames Bamboo, Yeah from Filipino. Dude.
U uh, well, he's from l A. He lives in
the Bay. His wife, Rocky Rivera both amazing artists. Uh,
their whole label beat Rock. There all these like left

(01:06:17):
wing guerrilla warfare like super revolutionary dudes. But he was
he was an l A dude, got in trouble with
the law and then, you know, like any other brown kid,
you go to the military to try to like you know,
get out of jail and kind of the same scenario.
He came out of that so radicalized, so ready to

(01:06:38):
be like this is all bull and I would never
send another child. You know, I'm saying. He's not at
all a pacifist, Don't get me wrong. Like the brother
got a collection of like ancient island weapons, let alone guns,
you know what I'm saying. So he ain't no pacifists.
But he's like, I'm not dying for someone else's pockets. Yeah,

(01:07:00):
Like yeah, this is crazy. Yeah. And and Butler, Butler
is that Butler's not a fashion or not a not
a pacifist, and he's not anti military. He loves the military,
he hates what it's used for, and he when he's
delivering these speeches, he's trying to get Americans on board
with a complete reformation of the military. Um. He believes
that it should only ever be defensive in nature, and

(01:07:21):
in order to make it that, he thinks the Navy
should be limited to operating within two hundred miles of
the coastline and the Army restricted from ever leaving the
confines of the continental United States. Um. Yeah. Now that
same year, Yeah, Yeah, that he's he's trying to like,
he thinks we need a military. It just we have
to find a way to stop bankers from being able

(01:07:43):
to use it to fight wars for profit. That's the problem. Um.
In that same year, nineteen thirty five, Butler gives an
interview to common Sense magazine where he tells the nation quote,
I spent thirty three years and four months in active
terry service, and during that period, I spent most of
my time as a high class muscle man for big business,

(01:08:05):
for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was
a racketeer. A gangster for capitalism. I remember that quote.
Remember that quote from the Police one. Yeah, he was
just like, man, I'm just a goon. I was just
a goon. Yeah, just muscle, just a moon and man,
this needs to be in dog I wish there's a
reason it's not in your history textbooks, you know, every

(01:08:29):
history book. You know what I'm saying, because yeah, because
the reality is we don't have. Like I was as
you were talking, I was like, do is there any
figure in America now that could do that? And I'm like,
I don't know, only the imaginary one. Like who's the
movie The American Sniper? Was that movie? Yeah? Yeah? That yeah, Yeah,

(01:08:52):
that dude's imaginary. The real the real person that he
was was like a lunatic, like dangerous, like er and
a liar. Yeah yeah, and he couldn't lead a fascist insurrection. Yeah,
you know what I'm saying. But like if if, if
the guy that that was portrayed was a real person,
and maybe, but we ain't got one in real life,

(01:09:13):
you know what I'm saying. But the one that did
exist came out of the other end, going Yo, these
wars were crap and I was just out there getting
y'all's bags, and this is ridiculous. I was a fucking gangster.
Got He spent the rest of his life giving speeches
and trying to radicalize veterans and mourning in public that

(01:09:34):
he and his comrades had only ever fought for, in
his words, the benefit of millionaires and billionaires. He insisted
that he had named names to the committee, that he had,
that he had given the names of the people involved,
but that those names had been removed from his testimony
before it was made public. In a radio of an interview,
he insisted, like most committees, it has slaughtered the little

(01:09:54):
and allowed the big to escape. The big shots weren't
even called to testify. Yeah, if that ain't the Straights,
broy it's very And it's not for nothing that he
names himself as a gangster. You know, he recognizes, Like
it's exactly why ye know what I'm saying, the little
the little cornerboy doing fifteen years, you know what I'm saying,

(01:10:17):
But nobody go to the You know what I'm saying,
that the Russian oligarch that got him fifteen bricks, you
know what I'm saying, Like he's living nice in the
Hollywood Hills. They don't even he's not even in the testimony.
You know what I'm saying. That's crazy, And it's fucking
one of the things that is because there's so much
that's a bummer about this story, right that they just
get away with it. But there is there's hope in

(01:10:37):
it too, And and the hope, I think is in
the story of Smedley Butler, this guy who could not
have been a more dedicated soldier of imperialism and realizes
he was wrong and spends the rest of his life
fighting against you. You can't, you can't. You know, there's
no time machine. You can't go back and undo what
you did to freaking Haiti and Costa Rica and banana walls.

(01:11:00):
You can't go back and redo that. But I can
do the best, my best to pay it forward. That's
good man, Yeah, it's it is. It's a real story
of redemption, of redemption and of a man who was had.
You gotta respect the amount of self knowledge to be
able to admit I spent thirty three fucking years as
a gangster. My friends died in a gang wharf over money,

(01:11:23):
you know, like overt even ours. But we don't even
get to collect Big Sean on it. Last record was like, dude,
John dying over street corners you don't even own, like
and it's like, yeah that like that where you just like,
we don't even oh we don't even own these projects.
We'll own these property. Dang, that's crazy. Yeah, anyway, that's

(01:11:44):
the business plot. So it happened here. It happened here.
Uh and the only reason it didn't happen all the
way is that there happened to be one really good
man in the middle of it. Dang, that is crazy. Yeah,
So thanks Smedley Butler, Right, we appreciate you one good dude. Yeah,

(01:12:10):
And I will say I think that's maybe another one
of the optimistic things to take out of it is
that it is a story of sometimes a single person
with the right who is willing to make a moral
stand can be the difference between calamity um and and
and not calamity. You know. Yeah, wow, anyway, proper, you

(01:12:37):
got some plug doubles to plug as we as we
roll out of behind the insurrections. This has been You
can't say a pleasure, can you, but it was. I
enjoy every time I get to like work with you all,
and here about the most horrible things in the world.

(01:12:57):
They're always just They're a great time in my day,
although it takes me like an hour to recoup after
we do this. Um, but yeah, thank you so much
again for having me prop hit pop dot com. Uh
if this as of the day that you're hearing this, um,
which is Thursday, right is Thursday one? Yeah, I will

(01:13:18):
be dropping new music the next day Friday morning, new video,
new music. So uh please go to proper pop dot com.
You can subscribe to the YouTube, get on Spotify of
a ton of new music. Um a new coffee drop
into uh yeah, prop hitpop dot com. I gotta get
you a bean man. Yeah you do. Yeah, you dotta

(01:13:38):
get you on poor Gummi Fridays to man. You're not
on Instagram? Well, yeah, I do have an Instagram. I
only follow one guy so far, and he's the guy
who's making knives for me. You have an Instagram. I
feel betrayed. I wanted to look at knives. I mean,
I forgive that part, but but I could I could
add I could have coffee and knives be my Instagram things.

(01:13:58):
What about Sophie and Anderson and I get I talked
to you on signal. This is true, this is heartful.
But I feel you. I feel you. Either way, We're
going to figure it out. Yes, I do. You're a
fun follow. Wait, maybe you could log into the Bastards
pods Instagram and I've never posted or whatever it is
you do on Instagram. Do you post? Yeah? You post? Yeah,

(01:14:23):
I could ask you. All right, Well, don't find me
on anyway Gram because I'm not going to tell any
action there. You'll find me prop on Instagram, no one else.
I will find it. Yes, um, and yeah we'll we'll
be back next week for something different. Um, it'll be fun.
Uh in a little bit of a break, and then

(01:14:44):
we'll probably get back to talking about genocides pretty soon.
Won't be long genocide every month. That's the behind the
Bastards promise. That is our promise. I have a good one.
Byewses